Free No Time for Heroes by Brian Freemantle

comparison system to link what had been found in the National Airport parking lot with the killing of Petr Serov.
    â€˜Just like yours, so I thought you’d be interested,’ suggested the Alexandria detective, Hal Maine. ‘Two in the chest and the third right in the mouth. And Christ, does he stink!’
    It looked precisely the triumphal procession it was intended to be; a cavalcade of five BMWs, Gusovsky, Yerin and Zimin protectively in the middle vehicle, their minders in the others. They drove too fast along the central corridor which, until the collapse of Communism, had been exclusively reserved on the major Moscow highways for members of the Party. Now the Mafia considered if rightfully theirs, as the new rulers. No other cars impeded their progress. The GIA traffic police, in their elevated pods at the main intersections, controlled the lights in favour of the Mafia cars, as they once had for Party limousines.
    â€˜The Ostankino torched two of our airport lorries last night,’ reported Zimin.
    â€˜How do you know it was them?’ demanded Yerin. The Ostankino were the rival Family, jealous of the Chechen rule at airports, disputing all their territory.
    â€˜It’s the word around,’ said Zimin, which was sufficient.
    â€˜I’m not anxious for a war until we get the Swiss thing settled and make the arrangements in Italy,’ said Gusovsky.
    â€˜If we don’t respond it’ll be regarded as weakness,’ warned Yerin.
    That morning’s motorised tour was intended publicly to demonstrate their presence in their domain. Gusovsky leaned slightly forwards, to the driver. ‘Make the left, on Ulitza Sadovaya,’ he ordered.
    â€˜That’ll take us on to Ostankino turf,’ warned the man.
    â€˜Exactly,’ smiled Gusovsky. ‘Let’s hope they take it as the warning it’s meant to be.’

CHAPTER NINE
    He did stink.
    Few drivers had parked near the grey Ford for the past two days, so it had been easy to tape the area off, which Cowley thought hardly necessary because no-one was coming anywhere close to look. Four scene-of-crime technicians around the open trunk all wore respirators and gloves as well as protective overalls; the local officers, plain-clothed and uniformed, were well away from the car and carefully upwind. Cowley looked for Rafferty and Johannsen, whom he had alerted, but they hadn’t arrived. Rafferty had said they’d found out where Serov had eaten the night he’d been killed, and sounded rebuffed when Cowley topped that news with the announcement of a second, matching murder.
    As he approached the police group there was the now familiar burst of television lights and flash-gun bulbs from the penned-off media. The commotion alerted the watching police group. Hal Maine hoped he’d done right calling Cowley direct; conscious of boundary jealousies, Cowley warned the local man he’d asked the two DC homicide detectives to join him.
    â€˜You’re welcome to this,’ said Maine sincerely. He was a faded man in a creased suit and shirt; Cowley guessed he had about five years before retirement.
    â€˜What do we know?’ asked Cowley.
    Maine waved towards an open-doored, unmarked police car inside the cordon, where an overalled FBI specialist, a respirator discarded beside him, was sitting in the rear, transferring things from a crocodile briefcase into exhibit bags. ‘The case was in the car, not the trunk, so there’s not much smell. Swiss passport, in the name of Michel Paulac. Difficult to make a facial comparison with the photograph, because of the state of the body. Swiss driving licence in the same name, which matches that in which the car was rented from Hertz at Dulles, nine days ago. The rental agreement was in the briefcase, too. So was a first class return ticket, which should have been taken up four days ago, to Geneva. There’s a wallet of visiting cards. Paulac’s address is