The Defector Read online

  “You are Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, born in Moscow in December 1965?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov, of the Russian Federal Security Service?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, traitor and spy for enemies of the Russian Federation?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “I believe you do. I believe you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Olga lifted her gaze from the monitor. “Maybe he shouldn’t be so rough with her. The poor woman is frightened to death.”

  Gabriel made no response. Eventually, Mikhail might be able to release the pressure. But not now. They needed answers to a few questions first. Was she Ivan’s pawn or Ivan’s victim? Had she been sent by heaven or did they have an agent of the devil in their midst?

  26

  LAKE COMO, ITALY

  WHO ARE YOU?” she asked.

  “If you wish to call me a name, you may refer to me as Yevgeny.”

  “Whom do you work for?”

  “That is not important.”

  “You are Russian?”

  “Again, that is not important. What is important is your passport. As a citizen of the Russian Federation, you are not allowed to enter the United Kingdom without obtaining a visa in advance of your arrival. Please tell me how you were able to enter the country without such a visa in your passport.”

  “I’ve never been to Britain in my life.”

  “You’re lying, Irina Iosifovna.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. You said it yourself. Russians need a visa to visit the United Kingdom. My passport contains no visa. Therefore, it is obvious I have never been there.”

  “But you went to London earlier this month to assist in the abduction of your former husband, Colonel Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov of the Russian Federal Security Service.”

  “That is completely ridiculous.”

  “You were in contact with your former husband after his defection to the United Kingdom?”

  She hesitated, then answered truthfully. “I was.”

  “You were discussing the possibility of rekindling your romance. Of reuniting. Of remarrying, perhaps.”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “Everything is my business. Now, answer my question. Grigori wanted you to come to London?”

  “I never agreed to anything.”

  “But you talked about it.”

  “I listened only.”

  “Your husband is a defector, Irina Iosifovna. Having contact with him is an act of state treason.”

  “Grigori contacted me. I did nothing wrong.”

  She was resisting. Gabriel had prepared for this scenario. Gabriel had prepared for everything. Give her a crack of the whip, he thought. Let her know you mean business.

  Mikhail placed three sheets of paper on the table.

  “Where were you on January tenth and eleventh?”

  “I was in Moscow.”

  “Let me ask you one more time. Think carefully before you answer. Where were you on January tenth and eleventh?”

  Irina was silent. Mikhail pointed to the first sheet of paper.

  “Your computer calendar contains no entries on any of those dates. No meetings. No luncheons. No scheduled phone calls with clients. Nothing at all.”

  “January is always slow. This year, with the recession . . .”

  Mikhail cut her off with a curt wave of his hand and tapped on the second sheet of paper.

  “Your telephone records show you received more than three dozen calls on your mobile but placed none of your own.”

  Greeted by silence, he placed his finger on the third sheet of paper.

  “Your e-mail account shows a similar pattern: many e-mails received, none sent. Can you explain this?”

  “No.”

  Mikhail extracted a manila folder from the attaché case at his feet. Lifting the cover with funereal solemnity, he removed a single photograph: Colonel Grigori Bulganov, climbing into a Mercedes sedan on London’s Harrow Road on the evening of January the tenth, at 6:12 p.m. He held it carefully by the edges, as though it were crucial evidence in need of preservation, and turned it so Irina could see. She managed to maintain a stoic silence, but her expression had changed. Gabriel, gazing at her face in the monitor, saw it was fear. A remembered fear, he thought, like the fear of a childhood trauma. One more push, and they would have her. On cue, Mikhail produced a second photograph, an enlargement of the first. It was grainy and heavily shadowed, but left no doubt as to the identity of the woman seated nearest the car window.

  “This makes you an accessory to a very serious crime committed on British soil.”

  Irina’s eyes flickered round the room, as if searching for a way out. Mikhail calmly returned both photos to the attaché case.

  “Let us begin again, shall we? And this time you will answer my questions truthfully. You have no entrance visa for the United Kingdom, valid or otherwise, in your passport. How were you able to enter the country?”

  Her response was so soft as to be nearly inaudible. Indeed, Mikhail and Lavon were not at all sure of what they had just been told. There was no uncertainty, however, at the listening post in the library, which was receiving a crystal clear signal from a pair of ultrasensitive microphones concealed inches from Irina’s place at the table. Olga looked at Gabriel and said, “We’ve got her.” Mikhail looked at Irina and asked her to speak up.

  “I used a different passport,” she said, louder this time.

  “By that you mean it was in another name?”

  “Correct.”

  “Who gave you this passport?”

  “They said they were friends of Grigori. They said I had to use a false passport for my own protection.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this the first time?”

  “They told me that I was never to discuss the matter with anyone. They told me they would kill me.” A single tear spilled onto her cheek. She punched away the tear, as if ashamed by her weakness. “They threatened to kill my entire family. They are not human, these people. They are animals. Please, you have to believe me.”

  It was not Mikhail who responded but the previously silent figure seated to his left. The kindly little soul with flyaway hair and a crumpled suit. The better angel who was now holding a letter in his tiny hands. The letter left by Grigori Bulganov in Oxford two weeks before his disappearance. He presented the letter to Irina now, as if handing a folded flag to the wife of a fallen soldier. Her hands trembled as she read it.

  I am afraid my desire to reunite with my former wife may have placed her in danger. If your officers in Moscow would check in on her from time to time, I would be grateful.

  “We don’t think he’s dead,” Lavon said. “Not yet. But we have to work quickly if we’re going to get him back.”

  “Who are you?”

  “We’re friends, Irina. You can trust us.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Tell us how they did it. Tell us how they took your husband. And whatever you do, don’t leave anything out. You’d be surprised, Irina, but sometimes the smallest details are the most important.”

  27

  LAKE COMO, ITALY

  SHE REQUESTED tea and permission to smoke. Yossi and Dina saw to the tea; Lavon, a heavy smoker himself, joined her in a cigarette. Their bond cemented by shared tobacco, she turned her body a few degrees and raised a hand to the side of her face like a blinder, thus excluding Mikhail from her field of vision. As far as Irina was concerned, Mikhail no longer existed. And therefore Mikhail did not need to know that the man who deceived her into taking part in the abduction of her husband made first contact on December the nineteenth. She could recall the date with certainty because it was her birthday. A birthday she shared with Leonid Brezhnev, which, in her childhood, was a great honor in school.

  It
was a Monday, she recalled, and her colleagues had insisted on taking her out for champagne and sushi at the O2 Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Given the state of the Russian economy, she had thought it rather a profligate thing to do. But they all needed an excuse to get drunk, and her birthday seemed as good a reason as any. Drunkenness was achieved by eight o’clock, and they sailed on together until ten, at which point they stumbled into Tverskaya Street and went in search of their cars, though none of them, including Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov, was in any condition to drive.

  She had left her car a few blocks away in a narrow street where the Moscow City Militia, for a reasonable bribe, of course, allowed Muscovites to park all day without fear of a ticket. The militiaman on duty was a pimply child of twenty who looked as though he was frozen solid from the cold. Still feeling the effects of the alcohol, Irina had tried to give him a generous handful of rubles. But the boy stepped away and made a vast show of refusing to accept the money. At first, Irina found the display rather amusing. Then she saw a man standing by her car. She knew the type instantly. He was a member of the siloviki, the brotherhood of former or current officers of the Russian security services. Irina knew this because she had been married to such a man for twelve years. They had been the worst years of her life.

  Irina considered walking away but knew she was in no shape to take evasive action. And even if she weren’t drunk, there was no way she could hide for long. Not in Russia. So she walked over and, with more courage than she was actually feeling at the time, demanded to know what was so damn interesting about her car. The man bade her a pleasant evening—Russian style, first name and patronymic—and apologized for the unorthodox circumstances of their meeting. He said he had an important message concerning her husband. “Former husband,” Irina replied. “Former husband,” he repeated, correcting himself. And by the way, she could call him Anatoly.

  “I don’t suppose he showed you any identification?” Lavon wondered in the meekest tone he could manage.

  “Of course not.”

  “Would you please describe him?”

  “Tall, well built, sturdy jaw, blond hair going to gray.”

  “Age?”

  “Over fifty.”

  “Facial hair?”

  “No.”

  “Eyeglasses?”

  “Not then. Later, though.”

  Lavon let it go. For now.

  “What happened next?”

  “He offered to take me to dinner. I told him I didn’t make a habit of having dinner with strangers. He said he wasn’t a stranger; he was a friend of Grigori’s from London. He knew it was my birthday. He said he had a present for me.”

  “And you believed him because you’d had contact with Grigori?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So you went with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you travel?”

  “In my car.”

  “Who drove?”

  “He did.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Café Pushkin. Do you know Café Pushkin?”

  Lavon, with an almost imperceptible nod of his head, indicated that he did indeed know the famous Café Pushkin. Despite the financial crisis, it was still nearly impossible to get a reservation. But the man named Anatoly had somehow managed to secure a prized table for two in a secluded corner of the second floor. He ordered champagne, which was the last thing she needed, and made a toast. Then he gave her a jewelry box. Inside was a gold bracelet and a note. He said they were both from Grigori.

  “Did the gift box have a name on it?”

  “Bulgari. The bracelet must have cost a fortune.”

  “And the note? Was it Grigori’s handwriting?”

  “It certainly looked like his.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It said he never wanted to spend another birthday apart. It said he wanted me to come to London with the man named Anatoly. It said not to worry about money. Everything would be arranged and paid for by Viktor.”

  “No last name?”

  “No.”

  “But you knew it was Viktor Orlov?”

  “I’d read about Grigori and Viktor on the Internet. I even saw a photo of the two of them together.”

  “Did Anatoly describe his relationship to Mr. Orlov?”

  “He said he worked for him in a security capacity.”

  “Those were his exact words?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the letter? I take it you were moved by it?”

  Irina gave an embarrassed nod. “It all seemed real.”

  Of course it had, thought Gabriel, gazing at Irina in the monitor. It had seemed real because Anatoly, like Gabriel, was a professional, well versed in the arts of manipulation and seduction. And so it came as no surprise to Gabriel when Irina said she and Anatoly had spent the rest of that evening in pleasant conversation. They had talked about many things, she said, moving from topic to topic with the ease of old friends. Anatoly had seemed to know a great deal about Irina’s marriage, things he couldn’t possibly have known unless Grigori had told him—or so Irina believed at the time. Over dessert, almost as an afterthought, he had mentioned that the British government was prepared to grant her asylum if she came to London. Money, he had said, would not be a problem. Viktor would take care of the money. Viktor would take care of everything.

  “And you agreed to go?” asked Lavon.

  “I agreed to pay a brief visit, but nothing more.”

  “And then?”

  “We talked about the travel arrangements. He said because of Grigori’s circumstances, great care would have to be taken. Otherwise, it was possible the Russian authorities wouldn’t allow me to leave the country. He told me not to speak to anyone. That he would be in contact when it was time to go. Then he drove me home. He didn’t bother asking my address. He already knew it.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “When did he make contact with you again?”

  “The ninth of January, as I was leaving my office. A man came alongside me on Tverskaya Street and told me to look in my bedroom closet when I got home. There were suitcases and a handbag. The suitcases were neatly packed with clothing, all my size. The handbag had the usual assortment of things, but also a Russian passport, airline tickets to London, and a wallet filled with credit cards and cash. There was also a set of instructions, which I was to burn after reading.”

  “You were to depart the next day?”

  “Correct.”

  “Tell me about the passport.”

  “The photograph was mine, but the name was false.”

  “What was it?”

  “Natalia Primakova.”

  “Lovely,” said Lavon.

  “Yes,” she said. “I rather liked it.”

  28

  LAKE COMO, ITALY

  SHE DID not sleep that night. She did not even try. She was too nervous. Too excited. And, yes, maybe a bit too frightened. She paced the rooms of the little apartment she had once shared with Grigori and pondered the most trivial of keepsakes as if she might never see them again. In violation of Anatoly’s strict instructions, she telephoned her mother, a family tradition before a trip of any magnitude, and she slipped a few personal items into the suitcases of Natalia Primakova. A bundle of yellowed letters. A locket with her grandmother’s photo. A small gold cross her mother had given her after the fall of Communism. Lastly, her wedding band.

  “You thought you might be leaving Russia for good?”

  “I allowed myself to consider the possibility.”

  “Do you recall your flight number?”

  “Aeroflot Flight 247, departing Sheremetyevo at 2:35 p.m., arriving London Heathrow at 3:40.”

  “Very impressive.”

  “It is what I do for a living.”

  “What time did you leave your apartment?”

  “Ten o’clock. Moscow traffic
is terrible that time of day, especially on the Leningradsky Prospekt.”

  “How did you travel to the airport?”

  “They sent a car.”

  “Was there any trouble with your new passport?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “Your travel was first class or economy?”

  “First class.”

  “Did you recognize anyone on the flight?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “And when you arrived in London? Any problems with the passport there?”

  “None. When the customs official asked me to state the purpose of my visit, I said tourism. He stamped my passport right away and told me to have a pleasant stay.”

  “And when you came into the arrivals hall?”

  “I saw Anatoly waiting along the railing.” A pause, then, “Actually, he saw me. I didn’t recognize him at first.”

  “He was wearing eyeglasses?”

  “And a fedora.”

  “Would you describe his mood, please?”

  “Calm, very businesslike. He took one of my bags and led me outside. A car was waiting.”

  “Do you recall the make?”

  “It was a Mercedes.”

  “The model?”

  “I’m not good with models. It was big, though.”

  “Color?”

  “Black, of course. I assumed it was Viktor’s. A man like Viktor Orlov would only ride in a black car.”

  “What happened next?”

  “He said Grigori was waiting at a safe place. But first, for my protection, we had to make certain no one was following us.”

  “Did he say who he thought might be following you?”

  “No, but it was clear he was referring to Russian intelligence.”

  “Did he talk to you?”

  “He spent most of the time on the telephone.”

  “Did he place calls or receive them?”

  “Both.”

  “Was he speaking English or Russian?”

  “Only Russian. Very colloquial.”

  “Did you make any stops?”

  “Just one.”

  “Do you remember where?”