No Time for Heroes by Brian Freemantle

was OK now. Just a pleasant way of spending a pleasant couple of hours.

    He’d been a coward, Lapinsk accepted. A coward when he’d been appointed to the Bureau – perhaps because the manipulators recognised him as weak – and a coward during his directorship and finally, most craven of all, a coward holding back from Dimitri Ivanovich whom he’d groomed to do what he had never had the courage to do. And who would not be able to do it, not now.
    Absolutely to accept – without any excuse or mitigation – that you are a coward is possibly the worst thing a man can be called upon to confront.
    In Russia those who ultimately control Families, their boards of directors, are called komitet , which means committee; it is the equivalent of the Italian Mafia cupola . For this gathering at Arkadi Gusovsky’s home, the indulgently fat and perfumed Zimin had been included, because he’d had to be: he spoke Italian and English, both of which were important for the coming weeks.
    â€˜According to the lawyers, the Swiss formalities will take some time,’ announced Gusovsky.
    â€˜Why don’t we postpone the Italian meeting?’ suggested Zimin, the appointed delegate.
    â€˜Because we’d lose face: show we’re not ready,’ dismissed Yerin, irritably. ‘We’re not going to do that.’
    â€˜We’re sure of getting control,’ said Gusovsky. ‘We’ll go ahead with the meeting: it’ll take several weeks, to settle everything. But then there’ll be no problem. Everything will be ours.’

CHAPTER TWELVE
    The media manipulation was perfectly orchestrated. The State Department leaks stopped short of giving a reason for the meeting between the Russian ambassador and Henry Hartz, which built up speculation. The suggestion of Moscow being invited to join the investigation was given to selected journalists by the publicity-conscious mayor, Elliott Jones, after a detailed briefing from Hartz. The campaign got the name and photograph of Dimitri Ivanovich Danilov in every newspaper and news agency report and on every television screen. The State Department and FBI both refused to comment, but after letting the stories develop their own momentum the Bureau promised a press conference in which William Cowley would take part.
    There was a totally unexpected fillip to the manipulation from the Russians themselves. The day before the Washington conference, the Interior Ministry in Moscow made an ideally low-key statement that the ambassador’s summons to the State Department had been to discuss the murder of Petr Aleksandrovich Serov. What had been discussed was being considered.
    That night Cowley considered going for another walk to Crystal City, but didn’t. He hadn’t suffered from a hangover after the previous occasion – one of the problems of the past was that no matter how much he’d drunk, he’d never felt ill the following day – but he thought it was better not to drink at all. The ease of the decision pleased him, as further proof he had everything under total control.
    Cowley travelled to the State Department, where the conference was to be staged, in the Director’s car: to achieve maximum effect they got out at the main entrance, picking their way through a white dazzle of camera lights. In an anteroom Elliott Jones was being powdered down by a make-up girl to prevent skin shine.
    The FBI Director led the way into the conference room, the mayor following. Lights burst on and the noise began and Cowley had a feeling of an event re-creating itself: it was practically a mirror image of the murder press conference in Moscow, insisted upon by Senator Burden. Cowley had detested it then, and he was detesting it today. He felt his skin flush in the heat of the lights and thought maybe he should have had make-up after all.
    Ross gestured for quiet, which he got almost at once. He talked in measured, even tones: Cowley