with Burt that nothing was discussed outside the formal times for discussion.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Anything,” he said expansively.
“Is Icarus known outside your company? And to the British, of course?”
“You mean, does the CIA know?”
“I guess so, yes.”
“That’s a very personal question,” he said.
“Then don’t answer it.”
Burt laughed. “I’ll tell you. And just you,” he said. “The answer’s no. Not yet. They know only about a possible Russian agent, that’s it.”
“A national security risk, and you haven’t told the government?”
“Not yet, as I say. But I will. It’s all about the revolving door. If I tell the agency before I’ve got it sewn up, the chances are that someone outside the agency will hear about it.”
“A competitor?”
“That’s it.” He turned to face her fully. “Yes, it’s a risk. I have a deal with Adrian. When that’s played out, then I’ll let the government in. By that time Cougar will be indispensable.” He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger and grinned at her. “More money,” he said, but she knew he was joking, at least in part.
“Does the deal with Adrian involve Mikhail?”
“Yes.”
She thought for a moment.
“Why are you so free in telling me that?”
“So you have something to give Vladimir,” he said.
She was silent, wrong-footed by Burt.
“Is all this just the thrill of risk for you, Burt?” she said at last.
“Isn’t it for all of us?” he said. “Why else would we do it?”
Chapter 27
ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING, the helicopter took all four of them back into the city. Anna was dropped at the airport to make her own way to the gym for her meeting with Vladimir, and it was arranged that she would return to the apartment as soon as she was finished.
The last thing Burt said to her was, “You’re unprotected. I know you’re close to him, or were, but be careful of what you eat, drink, and touch. I want you alive this afternoon.”
It was a warning that revived her memory of Finn’s last night.
She took a cab and felt once more the sense of freedom from oversight, a freedom that she expected to win in its fullness soon now. Whatever was to happen, her usefulness would be over in the unwinding of Vladimir and the cooperation, or not, of Mikhail. She felt that all outcomes were for her the beginning of a new life.
She entered the gym at just after midday. She did a workout and then showered and had an hour of massage. Then she dressed and found the exit at the rear of the club. It was nearly three o’clock.
She turned left out onto the street and walked the few yards to the cafe.
When she entered, she saw Vladimir hadn’t yet arrived. She took a table at the far end, looking out, where she could survey the scenes in the street and memorise the faces of anyone who didn’t just pass along. But she was confident that, at this stage, Vladimir would not have alerted the KGB bureau. He would want to meet her alone, at least one more time.
He entered the cafe eight minutes after she’d sat down and made his way to her table without looking to the right or left. He was wearing the same coat, no hat this time, his thick head of black hair seemingly always set in a neat mop. She looked at his hands as he took off the coat and, to her alarm, remembered them on her body five years before.
“You came,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Are you hungry, or shall I order coffees?”
“I’m going to eat. I’m starving,” she said.
“Then I’ll join you.”
She ordered an omelette and a coffee, and he pasta, the same as he’d eaten when they’d met before.
“Are you living on pasta, Vladimir?” she asked.
“On my salary? Yes.”
“Why aren’t you making money on the side, like all the other officers in our new democratic Russia?”
He didn’t answer. She knew that Vladimir was probably one of the best officers they had, if for no other reason than he was entirely immune from corruption. But he would only be suspected for that, of course, in the paranoia of the upside-down world of Russian intelligence.
Neither of them spoke for a minute, as if each knew that what was said next would throw them over an edge from which there was no return. It was Anna who finally broke the silence.
“So have you checked me out?” she said.
“Yes,” he replied.
“And what have you found?”
“More or less what I expected.” He wasn’t going to reveal what he knew about her apparent status with the Americans. That would only be information that was potentially useful to them.
“But you came anyway,” she said. “So what you believe to be true isn’t an obstacle.”
“Not yet.”
The coffees arrived, and he heaped spoons of sugar into his.
“You know how they blew Litvinenko’s murder,” he said casually.
“What do you mean, ‘they,’ Vladimir? Aren’t you part of them? Besides, they didn’t blow it—he’s dead, isn’t he?”
It was a little over two years since the KGB had murdered one of their own former officers in London by slipping the poison polonium-210 into his tea at a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly.
“And is it ‘they’ who murdered Finn, too?” she said. “Are you part of them or not?”
“I am, and I’m not, Anna.” He sighed. “You remember what that’s like?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Yes, I guess I do. But I remember what I said to you back in 2000, out in Yasenevo, when I hadn’t seen you for nearly ten years. ‘Aren’t you better than this?’ But you’re still there, hanging in with the thieves who stole our country and doing their dirty work.”
“And you?” he countered. “Whose dirty work are you doing?”
“Everything I do, I do for my eventual freedom,” she said. “You want to know what I’m doing here today? I’m here to persuade you, Vladimir. But aside from that, I would like it if you too did what you needed to do for your own freedom. Finn never quite made it. He was sidetracked by one more loose end he wanted to tie up. And they —or is it you, too?—got him. Can you do that? Can you act entirely for yourself?”
He didn’t reply. But she was satisfied she had made her initial move.
“The reason they blew Litvinenko’s murder,” he said, deliberately avoiding answering her, “is that they didn’t want it to be known, and it was. They didn’t want it to be traced back to Russia, back to the KGB and the Forest. There was a lot of talk at the time that they’d done it as an act that blatantly showed the ruthlessness of their power and their willingness to use it. That’s not the case. When they slipped the polonium into his tea that afternoon, he didn’t drink from it immediately. In fact he didn’t drink for so long that the tea went cold. When he finally picked it up and sipped it, that was all he did. He didn’t want cold tea. That sip was enough to kill him, but not for days. And in that time the British were able to trace the polonium in his body and build their case. A fairly watertight case, I admit. But if he’d drunk the whole cup, he’d have been dead that afternoon, and the British would never have found the poison in the autopsy. It’s extremely difficult to trace unless you’ve got a dying man to examine for days on end.”
“And what’s the purpose of this macabre story as I sit here drinking coffee with you? Wait for it to get cold
