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lunch, for Christ’s sake!’
    Johannsen’s hostility had practically disappeared, and Cowley did not want to resurrect it. The decision was made for him as he turned right on to M Street and saw the vacant meter; they crossed back to Nathans before the lights changed.
    â€˜What’ll it be?’ invited Johannsen.
    â€˜Club soda. Lime wedge,’ said Cowley.
    Johannsen frowned. ‘You don’t drink?’
    â€˜Wrong metabolism,’ evaded Cowley. There’d been a couple of slips since he’d gone dry, but it was rarely a problem any more. Oddly, it was now. He practically salivated at the thought of the taste, the taste of anything, beer or whisky, whatever would give that hit, that warm, comfortable, relaxing feeling spreading up from his stomach. He moved as far away from the bar as he could, to the ledge fronting out on to the street. The lime soured the soda Johannsen handed to him.
    â€˜You know something that surprised me?’ demanded Johannsen. He was drinking Jack Daniels, straight, over ice: Cowley could smell it further along the ledge.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜There weren’t any questions from the Russians about it being a hit. Not serious questions. Pavlenko used the word murder and said it was bestial, but he didn’t press when you said you didn’t know why Serov was shot in the mouth. He just let it go.’
    â€˜The mouth wound doesn’t have the significance in Russia that it has here.’
    â€˜They were being told the significance from dawn, on every radio station! And every television station. And every newspaper. Wouldn’t you have expected them to be a damned sight more curious?’
    â€˜Yes,’ conceded Cowley.
    Johannsen took a long pull at his drink, and Cowley watched the other man’s throat move as he swallowed. The detective said: ‘I liked the way you fucked him over the photograph.’
    â€˜We’re going to need the best we can get. With Raisa in Moscow, he pretty definitely ate around here somewhere.’
    â€˜Raisa? You got a file on them?’
    â€˜He was a genuine diplomat.’
    â€˜Who’s been killed by the Mafia, like genuine Russian diplomats are killed all the time!’ said Johannsen. ‘Wouldn’t it be good to screw Pavlenko further with a pocket diary among Serov’s stuff, detailing lots of scuttlebutt!’
    â€˜I’d settle for a simple entry and a phone number.’
    Johannsen finished his drink and put the empty glass pointedly on the ledge, Cowley had to wait several minutes in the crush at the bar, surrounded by people and glasses and the smells he remembered so well; he felt the perspiration prick out on his face.
    When he got back, Cowley said: ‘I think you’re going to be proved right. It’ll be a miracle if anyone heard anything down there: certainly not enough to take them to a window, to look out.’
    â€˜We as good as told you.’
    â€˜Routine to be gone through,’ insisted Cowley.
    â€˜On the subject of which,’ grinned Johannsen, ‘I think it would be a Christian act if I volunteered a little assistance to my regular partner ringing doorbells in one of those apartment blocks over there, don’t you?’
    The man might instead tell Rafferty he’d just agreed it was a waste of time and call the door-to-door enquiries off, thought Cowley, but he was anxious to get out of the bar. ‘I guess he’d appreciate it.’
    The telephone monitor registered a call when Cowley got into the Bureau car. He returned it without starting the engine.
    â€˜Got something intriguing,’ said Harry Robertson, the scientific co-ordinator. ‘Looks like your Russian was shot dead with a Russian gun! How about that!’

CHAPTER SIX
    There was no move to humiliate Danilov publicly until the day Leonid Lapinsk officially left. The old Director retired without any ceremony, merely touring the Petrovka building to