The Defector (7 page)

“What about the Mercedes?”

“Southeast. We lost sight of it near Shooter’s Hill. The next day a burned-out car was discovered along the Thames Estuary east of Gravesend. Whoever set it afire hadn’t bothered to remove the serial numbers. They matched the numbers of a car purchased two weeks ago by someone with a Russian name and a vague address. Needless to say, all attempts to locate this person have proven fruitless.”

“The door of that car was clearly opened from the inside. It looked to me as if there was at least one person in the back.”

“Actually, there were two.”

Seymour produced an eight-by-ten close-up of the car. Though grainy and heavily shadowed, it showed two figures in the backseat. Gabriel was most intrigued by the one nearest the driver’s-side window. It was a woman.

“I don’t suppose you were able to get a picture of them before they got into the car?”

“Unfortunately not. The Russians deliberately ran it through a gap in the cameras a couple of miles from Heathrow Airport. We never saw anyone enter or leave it. They appeared to vanish into thin air, just like Grigori.”

Gabriel stared at the image a moment longer. “It’s a lot of preparation for something that could have been handled far more simply. If Grigori was planning to redefect, why not slip him a passport, an airline ticket, and a change of appearance? He could have left London in the morning and been back home in time for his borscht and chicken Kiev.”

Seymour had an answer ready. “The Russians would assume we had Grigori under watch. From their point of view, they had to create a scenario that would look completely innocent to the CCTV cameras.” Seymour raised a long pale hand toward the now-blank screen. “You saw it yourself, Gabriel. He was clearly checking for watchers. When he was certain we weren’t following him, he sent a signal of some sort. Then his old comrades scooped him up.”

“Moscow Rules?”

“Exactly.”

“I assume you checked Grigori’s route for chalk marks, tape marks, or other signs of impersonal communication.”

“We did.”

“And?”

“Nothing. But as a professional field operative, you know there are any number of ways of sending a signal. Hat, no hat. Cigarette, no cigarette. Wristwatch on the left hand, wristwatch on the right.”

“Grigori was right-handed. And he was wearing his watch, as usual, on his left wrist. Also, it was a different watch than the one he was wearing in Russia last autumn.”

“You do have a keen eye.”

“I do. And when I look at those CCTV images, I see something different. I see a man who’s frightened of something and trying damn hard not to show it. Something made Grigori stop suddenly in his tracks. And something made him get inside that car. It wasn’t a redefection, Graham. It was an abduction. The Russians stole him right from under your nose.”

“Thames House doesn’t see it that way. Neither do our colleagues on the other bank of the river. As for Downing Street and the Foreign Office, they’re inclined to accept our findings. The prime minister is in no mood for another high-stakes confrontation with the Russians. Not after the Litvinenko affair. And not with a G-8 summit just around the corner.”

Confronted by the global financial meltdown, the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations had just agreed to hold emergency talks in February to coordinate their fiscal and monetary stimulus policies. Much to the consternation of the many bureaucrats and reporters who would also be in attendance, the summit would take place in Moscow. Gabriel was not concerned about the pending G-8 summit. He was thinking of Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB man who was poisoned with a dose of radioactive polonium-210.

“Your conduct after Litvinenko’s murder probably convinced the Russians they could pull a stunt like this and get away with it. After all, the Russians carried out what amounted to an act of nuclear terrorism in the heart of London, and you responded with a diplomatic slap on the wrist.”

Seymour placed a finger thoughtfully against his lips. “That’s an interesting theory. But I’m afraid our response to Litvinenko’s murder, however feeble in your opinion, had no bearing on Grigori’s case.”

Gabriel knew that to belabor the point was futile. Graham Seymour was a trusted counterpart and occasional ally, but his first allegiance would always be to his service and his country. The same was true for Gabriel. Such were the rules of the game.

“Do I have to remind you that Grigori helped you and the Americans track down Ivan’s missiles? If it weren’t for him, several commercial airliners might have been blown out of the sky on a single day.”

“Actually, all the information we needed was contained in the records you and Elena stole from Ivan’s office. In fact, the prime minister had to be talked into giving Grigori asylum and a British passport. London is already home to several prominent Russian dissidents, including a handful of billionaires who ran afoul of the regime. He was reluctant to stick another finger in Moscow’s eye.”

“What changed his mind?”

“We told him it was the proper thing to do. After all, the Americans had agreed to take Elena and her children. We felt we had to do our bit. Grigori promised to be a good boy and to keep his head down. Which he did.” Seymour paused, then added, “For a while.”

“Until he became a celebrity defector and dissident.”

Seymour nodded his head in agreement.

“You should have locked him away in a little cottage in the countryside somewhere and thrown away the key.”

“Grigori insisted on London. The Russians love London.”

“So this worked out rather nicely for you. You never wanted Grigori, and now the Russians have been kind enough to take him off your hands.”

“We don’t see it that way.”

“How do you see it?”

Seymour made a show of deliberation. “As you might expect, Grigori’s motivations are now the subject of rather intense debate. As you also might expect, opinion is divided. There are those who believe he was bad from the start. There are others who think he simply had a change of heart.”

“A change of heart?”

“Rather like that Yurchenko chap who came over to the Americans back in the eighties. You remember Vitaly Yurchenko? A few months after he defected, he was dining at a dreadful little French restaurant in Georgetown when he told his CIA minder that he was going out for a walk. He never came back.”

“Grigori was homesick?” Gabriel shook his head. “He couldn’t get out of Russia fast enough. There’s no way he would willingly go back.”

“His own words would suggest otherwise.” Seymour removed a plain buff envelope from the attaché and held it aloft between two fingers. “You might want to listen to this before attaching your star to a man like Grigori. He’s not exactly the marrying kind.”

11

MAIDA VALE, LONDON

THE LETTER was dated January the twelfth and addressed to the cover name of Grigori’s MI5 minder. The text was brief, five sentences in length, and written in English, which Grigori spoke quite well—well enough, Gabriel recalled, to conduct a rather terrifying interrogation in the cellars of Lubyanka. Graham Seymour read the letter aloud. Then he handed it to Gabriel, who read it silently.

Sorry I didn’t tell you about my plans to return home, Monty, but I’m sure you can understand why I kept them to myself. I hope my actions don’t leave a permanent stain on your record. You are far too decent to be working in a business like this. I enjoyed our time together, especially the chess. You almost made London bearable.

Regards, G

“It was mailed from Zurich to an MI5 postbox in Camden Town. That address was known to only a handful of senior people, Grigori’s minder, and Grigori himself. Shall I go on?”

“Please do.”

“Our experts have linked the original A4 stationery to a German paper company based in Hamburg. Oddly enough, the envelope was manufactured by the same company but was of a slightly different style. Our experts have also conclusively attributed the handwriting, along with several latent fingerprints found on the surface of the paper, to Grigori Bulganov.”

“Handwriting can be forged, Graham. Just like paintings.”

“What about the fingerprints?”

Gabriel lifted Seymour’s hand by the wrist and placed it against the paper. “We’re talking about Russians, Graham. They don’t play by Marquis of Queensberry rules.”

Seymour freed his hand from Gabriel’s grasp. “It’s clear from the letter that Grigori was cooperating. It was addressed to the correct cover name of his minder and mailed to the proper address.”

“Perhaps they tortured him. Or perhaps torture wasn’t necessary because Grigori knew full well what would happen if he didn’t cooperate. He was one of them, Graham. He knew their methods. He used them from time to time. I should know. I saw him in his element.”

“If Grigori was kidnapped, why bother with the charade of a letter?”

“The Russians committed a serious crime on your soil. It’s only natural they might try to cover their tracks with a stunt like this. No kidnapping, no crime.”

Seymour regarded Gabriel with his granite-colored eyes. Like his handshake, they were an unfair weapon. “Two men stand before an abstract painting. One sees clouds over a wheat field, the other sees a pair of blue whales mating. Who’s correct? Does it matter? Do you see my point, Gabriel?”

“I’m trying very hard, Graham.”

“Your defector is gone. And nothing we say now is going to change that.”

“My defector?”

“You brought him here.”

“And you agreed to protect him. Downing Street should have lodged an official protest with the Russian ambassador an hour after Grigori missed his first check-in.”

“An official protest?” Seymour shook his head slowly. “Perhaps you’re not aware of the fact that the United Kingdom has more money invested in Russia than any other Western country. The prime minister has no intention of endangering those investments by starting another blazing row with the Kremlin.”

“ ‘ When we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope.’ ”

“Stalin, right? And the old boy had a point. Capitalism is the West’s greatest strength, and its greatest weakness.”

Gabriel placed the letter on the table and changed the subject. “As I recall, Grigori was working on a book.”

Seymour handed Gabriel a stack of paper. It was approximately one inch thick and bound by a pair of black metal clasps. Gabriel looked at the first page: KILLER IN THE KREMLIN BY GRIGORI BULGANOV.

“I thought it was rather catchy,” Seymour said.

“I doubt the Russians would agree. I assume you’ve read it?”

Seymour nodded his head. “He’s rather hard on the Kremlin and not terribly kind to his old service. He accuses the FSB of all manner of sins, including murder, extortion, and links to organized crime and the oligarchs. He also makes a very persuasive case that the FSB was involved in those apartment-house bombings in Moscow, the ones the Russian president used as justification for sending the Red Army back into Chechnya. Grigori claims he personally knew the officers involved in the operation and identifies two by name.”

“Any mention of me?”

“There is a chapter in the book about the Kharkov affair, but it’s not terribly accurate. As far as Grigori is concerned, he was the one who single-handedly tracked down the missiles Ivan sold to al-Qaeda. There’s no mention of you or any Israeli connection in the manuscript.”

“What about his handwritten notes or computer files?”

“We searched them all. As far as Grigori was concerned, you do not exist.”

Gabriel leafed through the pages of the manuscript. On the sixth page was a margin note, written in English. He read it, then looked at Seymour for an explanation.

“It’s from Grigori’s editor at Buckley and Hobbes. I suppose, at some point, we’re going to have to tell them that they’re not going to get a book anytime soon.”

“You read her notes.”

“We read everything.”

Gabriel turned several more pages, then stopped again to examine another margin note. Unlike the first, it was written in Russian. “It must have been written by Grigori,” Seymour said.

“It doesn’t match the handwriting in the letter.”

“The letter was written in Roman. The note is Cyrillic.”

“Trust me, Graham. They weren’t written by the same person.”

Gabriel leafed quickly through the remaining pages and found several more notations written by the same hand. When he looked up again, Seymour was removing the disk from the DVD player. He returned it to the clear plastic case and handed it to Gabriel. The message was clear. The briefing was over. If there was any doubt about Seymour’s intent, it was put to rest by a ponderous examination of his wristwatch. Gabriel made one final request. He wanted to see the rest of the house. Seymour rose slowly to his feet. “But we’re not going to be pulling up any floorboards or peeling back the wallpaper,” he said. “I have a dinner date. And I’m already ten minutes late.”

12

MAIDA VALE, LONDON

GABRIEL FOLLOWED Seymour up two flights of narrow stairs to the bedroom. On the night table to the right of the double bed was an ashtray filled with crushed cigarettes. They were all the same brand: Sobranie White Russians, the kind Gri- gori had smoked during Gabriel’s interrogation at Lubyanka and during their escape from Russia. Piled beneath the brass reading lamp were several books: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Agatha Christie, P. D. James. “He loved English murder mysteries,” Seymour said. “He thought that reading P. D. James would help him become more like us, though why anyone would want to become more like us is beyond me.”

At the foot of the bed was a white box printed with the logo of a dry-cleaning and laundry service located in Elgin Avenue. Lifting the lid, Gabriel saw a half dozen shirts, neatly pressed and folded and wrapped in tissue paper. Resting atop the shirts was a cash register receipt. The date on the receipt matched the date of Grigori’s disappearance. The time of the transaction was recorded as 3:42 p.m.

“We assume his controllers wanted his last day in London to be as normal as possible,” Seymour said.