The defector

THE WARNING sign at the entrance was Soviet era. The birch trees on either side had been there since the time of the tsars. Forty yards along the narrow track was a Range Rover, two Russian guards in the front seat. Mikhail flashed his lights. The Range Rover made no move.

Mikhail opened his door and climbed out. He was wearing a heavy gray parka zipped to the chin and a dark woolen hat pulled low. For now, he was just another Russian. Another one of Ivan’s boys. An Alpha Group veteran with a bad attitude. The sort who didn’t like having to get out of the car when it was ten below zero.

Hands shoved into his pockets, head down, he went to the driver’s side of the Range Rover. The window slid down. Mikhail’s gun came out.

Six bright flashes. Scarcely a sound.

Gabriel murmured a few words into his lip mic. Mikhail reached across the lifeless driver, turned the wheel hard to the right, moved the shift from PARK to DRIVE. The Range Rover eased clear of the track and came to rest against a birch tree. Mikhail switched off the engine and threw the keys into the woods. A few seconds later, he was next to Gabriel again, speeding toward the front of the dacha.

AT THAT same instant, on the back side of the dacha, three men acquired three targets. Then, on Navot’s mark, three men fired three shots.

Three bright flashes. Scarcely a sound.

They crept forward through the birch trees and knelt over their dead. Secured weapons. Silenced radios. Navot spoke softly into his lip mic. Targets neutralized. Rear perimeter secured.

EXACTLY ONE hundred twenty-eight miles to the east, on Moscow’s Tverskaya Street, Irina Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Bulganov, unlocked the door of Galaxy Travel and changed the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. Seven minutes late, she thought. Not that it mattered. Business had fallen off a cliff-or, in the words of Galaxy’s sometimes poetic general manager, it was locked up tighter than the Moscow River. The Christmas holidays had been a bust. Bookings for the spring ski season were nonexistent. These days even the oligarchs were hoarding their cash. What little they had left.

Irina settled into her desk near the window and did her utmost to appear busy. There was talk of cutbacks at Galaxy. Reduced commissions. Even firings. Thank you, capitalism! Perhaps Lenin had been right after all. At least he had managed to do away with the uncertainty. Under the Communists the Russians had been poor and they had stayed poor. There was something to be said for consistency.

The ping of the automatic entry chime interrupted Irina’s thoughts. Looking up, she saw a small male figure slipping through the doorway: heavy overcoat, woolen scarf, fedora, earmuffs, briefcase in right hand. There were a thousand more just like him on Tverskaya Street, walking mounds of wool and fur, each indistinguishable from the next. Stalin himself could stroll down the street bundled in his warms, and no one would give him a second look.

The man loosened his scarf and removed his hat, revealing a head of thinning, flyaway hair. Irina immediately recognized him. He was the better angel who had convinced her to talk about the worst night of her life. And he was now walking toward her desk, hat in one hand, briefcase in the other. And, somehow, Irina was now on her feet. Smiling. Shaking his cold, tiny hand. Inviting him to sit. Asking how she might be of assistance.

“I need some help planning a trip,” he said in Russian.

“Where are you going?”

“The West.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“How long will you be staying?”

“Indefinitely.”

“How many in your party?”

“That, too, is still to be determined. With luck, we’re going to be a large group.”

“When are you planning to leave?”

“Late this evening.”

“So what precisely can I do?”

“You can tell your supervisor you’re going out for coffee. Make sure you bring your valuables. Because you’re never coming back here again. Ever.”

64

VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA

A RUSSIAN DACHA can be many things. A timbered palace. A toolshed surrounded by radishes and onions. The one at the end of the narrow track fell somewhere in between. It was low and stout, solid as a ship, and clearly built by Bolshevik muscle. There was no veranda or steps, just a small door in the center, reached by a well-worn groove in the snow. On either side of the door was a window of paned glass. Once upon a time, the frames had been forest green. Now they were something like gray. Thin curtains hung in both windows. The curtain on the right moved as Mikhail slid the Range Rover into PARK and killed the engine.

“Take the key.”

“You sure?”

“Take it.”

Mikhail removed the key and zipped it into a small pocket over his heart. Gabriel glanced at the two sentries. They were standing about ten feet from the dacha, guns cradled across their chests. Their positioning presented Gabriel with something of a challenge. He would have to fire at a slight upward trajectory so that the rounds didn’t shatter the windows upon exiting the Russians’ skulls. He made this calculation in the time it took Mikhail to pick up a cylindrical thermos flask. He had been making such calculations since he was a boy of twenty-two. Just one more decision to make. Which hand? Right or left? He had the ability to make the shot with either. Because he would be climbing out of the Rover on the passenger’s side, he decided to fire with the right. That way there would be no chance of banging the suppressor against the fender on the way up.

“Are you sure you want them both, Gabriel?”

“Both.”

“Because I can take the one on the left.”

“Just get out.”

Once again, Mikhail opened the door and climbed out. This time, Gabriel did the same thing, parka unzipped, Beretta at the seam of his trousers. Mikhail approached the sentries, thermos aloft, chattering in Russian. Something about hot coffee. Something about the Moscow traffic being shit. Something about Ivan being on the warpath. Gabriel couldn’t be certain. He didn’t much care. He was looking at the spot, just beyond the Rover’s right-front tire, where he was going to drop to one knee and end two more Russian lives.

The guards were no longer looking at Mikhail but at each other. Shoulders shrugged. Heads shook.

And Gabriel knelt on his spot.

Two more flashes. Two more Russians down.

No sound. No broken windows.

Mikhail leaned the thermos against the base of the door and quickly retreated several steps.

The birch forest trembled.

Silence no more.

ON THE back side of the dacha, three men rose in unison and advanced slowly through the trees. Navot reminded them to keep their heads down. There was about to be a lot of lead in the air.

CHIARA SAT up with a start, hands cuffed, feet shackled, dust and debris raining down on her in the pitch-