The English Spy Read online

“And I’d rather not be having this meeting,” Mortensen said coolly. “But when a friend requests a favor, I try to be accommodating.”

  “Our service has experienced a terrible loss,” said Keller after a moment. “As you can imagine, we’re focused on nothing else.”

  It was thin gruel, but good enough for the Danish secret policeman. “What will we be looking for in the video?”

  “Two men.”

  “Where did they meet?”

  “A restaurant called Ved Kajen.”

  “In the New Harbor?”

  Keller nodded. Mortensen asked for the date and the time. Keller supplied both.

  “And the two men?” asked Mortensen.

  Keller handed over a photograph.

  “Who is he?”

  “Reza Nazari.”

  “Iranian?”

  Keller nodded.

  “VEVAK?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And the other man?”

  “He’s an SVR hood named Alexei Rozanov.”

  “Do you have a photograph?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Mortensen laid the photograph of the Iranian thoughtfully on his desktop. “We are a small country,” he said after a moment. “A peaceful country, except for a few thousand hotheaded Muslim fanatics. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I believe I do.”

  “I don’t want any trouble with the Persian Empire. Or the Russians, for that matter.”

  “Not to worry, Lars.”

  Mortensen glanced at his watch. “This might take a few hours. Where are you staying?”

  “The d’Angleterre.”

  “What’s the best way to reach you?”

  “Hotel phone.”

  “What’s the name?”

  “LeBlanc.”

  “I thought you said your name was Merchant.”

  “I did.”

  Keller left the PET’s headquarters on foot and walked as far as the Tivoli Gardens—far enough to confirm that Mortensen had assigned two teams of watchers to follow him. The skies above Copenhagen were the color of granite, and a few gritty flakes of snow were swirling in the light of the streetlamps. Keller crossed the Rådhuspladsen and loitered in the Strøget, Copenhagen’s main pedestrian shopping street, before returning to the stately Hotel d’Angleterre. Upstairs in his room, he killed an hour watching the news. Then he rang the hotel operator and in French-accented English told her he was heading down to the Balthazar champagne bar for a drink. He spent another hour at a corner table nursing a glass of brut alone. It was, he thought glumly, a glimpse of the life that awaited him at MI6. The great Gabriel Allon, may he rest in peace, had once described the life of a professional spy as one of constant travel and mind-numbing boredom broken by interludes of sheer terror.

  Finally, a few minutes after seven, a waitress wandered over and informed Keller that he had a call. He took it on a house phone in the lobby. It was Lars Mortensen.

  “I think we might have found the picture you’re looking for,” he said. “There’s a car waiting outside.”

  It wasn’t hard to spot the PET sedan. It was occupied by two of the same men who had followed him earlier. They ferried him across the city and deposited him in a room at PET headquarters equipped with a large video screen. On it was a still image of a Persian-looking man crossing a narrow cobbled street. The date and time code matched the information the Iranian had supplied during his interrogation outside Vienna.

  “Nazari?” asked Lars Mortensen.

  When Keller nodded, Mortensen tapped a few keys on an open laptop and a new image appeared on the screen. A tall man, wide cheekbones, fair hair thinning on top. A Moscow Center hood, if ever there was one.

  “Is that the man you’re looking for?”

  “I’d say he’s the one.”

  “I’ve got a few more pictures and a bit of video, but that’s definitely the best.” Mortensen ejected a disk from the computer, placed it in a case, and held it up for Keller to see. “Compliments of the Danish people,” he said. “No charge.”

  “Were you able to find anything on their travel?”

  “The Iranian left Copenhagen the next morning on a flight to Frankfurt. He was scheduled to fly on to Tehran.”

  “And the Russian?”

  “We’re still working on that.” Mortensen handed Keller the disk. “By the way, the bill for dinner was more than four hundred euros. The Russian paid in cash.”

  “It was a special occasion.”

  “What were they celebrating?”

  Keller slipped the disk into his coat pocket.

  “I see,” said Mortensen.

  The next morning Christopher Keller flew to London. He was met at Heathrow Airport by an MI6 reception team and driven at an unusually high rate of speed to a safe house on Bishop’s Road in Fulham. Graham Seymour was seated at the linoleum table in the kitchen, his Chesterfield coat tossed over the back of a chair. With a movement of his eyes, he instructed Keller to sit. Then he pushed a single sheet of paper across the tabletop and laid a silver pen upon it.

  “Sign it.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s for your new phone. If you’re working for us, you can’t use your old one any longer.”

  Keller picked up the document. “Minutes? Data plan? That sort of thing?”

  “Just sign it.”

  “What name should I use?”

  “Your given name.”

  “When do I get my new name?”

  “We’re working on that.”

  “Do I get a say?”

  “No.”

  “Hardly seems fair.”

  “Our parents don’t allow us to choose our names, and neither does MI6.”

  “If you try to name me Francis, I’m going back to Corsica.”

  Keller scribbled something illegible on the signature line of the document. Seymour handed him a new BlackBerry and recited an eight-digit number for the MI6 encryption.

  “Recite the number back to me,” he said.

  Keller did.

  “Whatever you do,” said Seymour, “don’t write it down.”

  “Why would I do something as foolish as that?”

  Seymour placed another document in front of Keller. “This one allows you to handle MI6 documents. You’re a member of the club now, Christopher. You’re one of us.”

  Keller’s pen hovered over the page.

  “Something wrong?” asked Seymour.

  “I’m just wondering whether you really want me to sign this.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because if I get a shot at Eamon Quinn—”

  “Then I expect you to take it.” Seymour paused, then added, “Just like when you were in Ulster.”

  Keller signed the document. Seymour handed him a flash drive.

  “What’s this?”

  “Alexei Rozanov.”

  “Funny,” said Keller, “but he looked taller in the photos.”

  Keller returned to Heathrow in time to make the early-afternoon British Airways flight to Vienna. He arrived a few minutes after four and took a taxi to an address just beyond the Ringstrasse. It was a fine old Biedermeier apartment building, with a coffeehouse at street level. Keller thumbed the bell push, was admitted into the foyer, and found his way to the flat on the third floor. The door hung slightly ajar. A dead man waited anxiously inside.

  46

  VIENNA

  THE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM COPENHAGEN proved that Reza Nazari had met with a Russian-looking man at the time and place specified during his interrogation. And the file from MI6 proved the Russian-looking man was indeed Alexei Rozanov. He had worked in London under diplomatic cover in the 1990s. Both MI5 and MI6 knew him well.

  “His full name is Alexei Antonovich.” Keller inserted the flash drive into Gabriel’s laptop, typed in the encryption password, and opened the file. “He ran a string of mid-level SVR assets at embassies all over town. Made a run at a couple of MI5 officers
, too. Frankly, MI5 never thought much of him. Neither did MI6. But when Alexei returned to Moscow Center, his star was suddenly in ascent.”

  “Do we know why?”

  “It probably had something to do with his friendship with the Russian president. Alexei is part of the tsar’s inner circle. A very big fish indeed.”

  Gabriel scrolled through the MI6 file until he came to a photograph. It showed a man walking along a damp London street—Kensington High Street, according to the attached watch report. The subject had just left a luncheon meeting with a diplomat from the Canadian Embassy. The year was 1995. The Soviet Union was dead, the Cold War was over, and at Moscow Center nothing much had changed. The SVR regarded the United States, Great Britain, and the other members of the Western alliance as mortal enemies, and officers such as Alexei Antonovich Rozanov were ordered to spy the living daylights out of them. Gabriel compared the photograph to one of the shots from Copenhagen. The hairline was a bit higher, the face a bit fleshier and more decadent, but they were clearly the same man.

  “The question is,” said Keller, “can we get him out in the open?”

  “We don’t have to,” replied Gabriel. “Nazari is going to do it for us.”

  “Another meeting?”

  Gabriel nodded. Keller appeared dubious.

  “Something wrong?”

  “The negotiations between the United States and Iran are supposed to last another week.”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel, tapping a copy of the Times of London. “I think I read something about that in the papers this morning.”

  “And when the talks adjourn,” said Keller pointedly, “Reza will no doubt go back to Tehran.”

  “Unless he has pressing business elsewhere.”

  “A meeting with Alexei Rozanov?”

  “Exactly.”

  Just then, a message flashed on the computer screen. It stated that the Iranian delegation had just returned to the InterContinental. Gabriel raised the volume and a moment later heard Reza Nazari prowling his hotel room.

  “Doesn’t sound like a happy man to me,” said Keller.

  Gabriel made no reply.

  “There’s something else you haven’t considered,” Keller said after a moment. “There’s a good chance Alexei Rozanov won’t be interested in meeting with his co-conspirator.”

  “Actually, I think Alexei is going to be relieved just to hear the sound of Reza’s voice.”

  “How are you going to pull that off?”

  Gabriel smiled and said, “Taqiyya.”

  At half past seven the phone in Reza Nazari’s room bleated softly. He lifted the receiver to his ear, listened to the instructions, and rang off without a word. His overcoat lay on the floor where he had let it fall earlier that evening. He pulled it on and rode an empty elevator down to the lobby. An Iranian security man nodded as Nazari passed. He didn’t ask why the senior VEVAK man was leaving the hotel alone. He didn’t dare.

  Nazari crossed the street and entered the Stadtpark. As he walked along the banks of the Vienna River, he realized he was being followed. It was the small one, the one with a forgettable face who dressed like a pile of dirty laundry. The car was waiting in the same place, at the eastern edge of the park. The Israeli whom Nazari knew as Mr. Taylor was seated in back. As usual, he did not look pleased. He searched Nazari thoroughly and then nodded into the rearview mirror. The same one was behind the wheel, the one with bloodless skin and eyes like ice. He eased into the evening traffic and smoothly brought the car up to speed.

  “Where are we going?” Nazari asked as Vienna slid gracefully past his window.

  “The boss would like a word in private.”

  “About what?”

  “Your future.”

  “I didn’t realize I had one.”

  “A very bright one, if you do as you’re told.”

  “I can’t be late.”

  “Don’t worry, Reza. No pumpkins.”

  47

  VIENNA

  THEY SAID HE WAS A seer, a visionary, a prophet. He was almost never wrong—and even if he was, it was only because enough time had not passed to prove him right. He had the power to move markets, to raise alert levels, to influence policy. He was undeniable, he was infallible. He was a burning bush.

  His identity was not known, and even his nationality was a bit of a mystery. He was widely assumed to be an Australian—the Web site was hosted there—though many believed he was of Middle Eastern origin, for his insights into the region’s tangled politics were thought to be far too subtle to be the product of a non-Oriental mind. And still others were convinced he was in fact a woman. A gender analysis of his writing style said it was at least a possibility.

  Though influential, his blog was not read by the masses. Most of his readers were business elites, executives from private security firms, policymakers, and journalists who focused on matters related to international terrorism and the crisis facing Islam and the Middle East. It was one such journalist, a respected investigative reporter from an American television network, who noticed the brief item that appeared early the next morning. The reporter rang one of his sources—a retired CIA agent who had a blog of his own—and the retired agent said the item passed the smell test. That was good enough for the respected investigative reporter, who immediately posted a few lines of copy on his social media feed. And thus an international crisis was born.

  The Americans were skeptical at first, the British less so. Indeed, one proliferation expert from MI6 called it the nightmare scenario come true: one hundred pounds of highly radioactive nuclear material, enough to produce one large dirty bomb or several smaller devices that would be capable of rendering major city centers uninhabitable for years. The radioactive material—its precise nature was not specified—had been stolen from a secret Iranian laboratory near the sacred city of Qom and sold on the black market to a smuggler linked to Chechen Islamic terrorists. The whereabouts of the Chechen and the material were unknown, though the Iranians were said to be searching frantically for both. For reasons that were not clear, they had chosen not to inform their Russian friends about the situation.

  The Iranians denounced the report as a Western provocation and a Zionist lie. The laboratory named in the report did not exist, they said, and all nuclear material in the country was safe and accounted for. Even so, by the end of that day, it was all anyone was talking about in Vienna. The chief American negotiator said the report, regardless of its veracity, demonstrated the importance of reaching an agreement. Her Iranian counterpart appeared less convinced. He left the talks without addressing reporters and slipped into the back of his official car. At his side was Reza Nazari.

  They traveled to the Iranian Embassy and remained there until ten that evening, when finally they returned to the InterContinental Hotel. Reza Nazari went to his room long enough to shed his coat and attaché case and then knocked on the door of his neighbor. Mikhail Abramov drew him quickly inside. Yaakov Rossman poured him a scotch from the minibar.

  “It is forbidden,” said Nazari.

  “Take it, Reza. You deserve it.”

  The Iranian accepted the drink and raised it slightly in salutation. “My congratulations,” he said. “You and your friends managed to create quite a stir today.”

  “What’s the view from Tehran?”

  “They’re skeptical of the timing, to say the least. They assume the report was part of an Office plot designed to sabotage the talks and prevent an agreement.”

  “Did Allon’s name come up?”

  “How could it? Allon is dead.”

  Yaakov smiled. “And the Russians?” he asked.

  “Deeply concerned,” replied Nazari. “And that’s putting it mildly.”

  “Did you volunteer to reassure them?”

  “I didn’t have to. Mohsen Esfahani instructed me to make contact and arrange a meeting.”

  “Will Alexei agree to see you?”

  “I can’t guarantee it.”

  “Then perhap
s we should promise him something a bit more interesting than a mutual hand-holding session.”

  Nazari was silent.

  “Did you bring your VEVAK BlackBerry?”

  The Iranian held it up for Yaakov to see.

  “Send a message to Alexei. Tell him you’d like to discuss recent developments here in Vienna. Tell him Russia has nothing at all to be concerned about.”

  Nazari quickly composed the e-mail, showed the text to Yaakov, and then pressed SEND.

  “Very good.” Yaakov pointed at his open laptop and said, “Now send him that one.”

  Nazari walked over and looked at the screen:

  My government is lying to you about the seriousness of the situation. It is urgent I see you at once.

  Nazari typed in the address and clicked SEND.

  “That should get his attention,” said Yaakov.

  “Yes,” said Nazari. “One would think.”

  48

  VIENNA

  THEY DID NOT HEAR FROM Alexei Rozanov that first night, nor was there any response the following morning. Reza Nazari left the hotel at eight thirty along with the rest of the Iranian delegation and twenty minutes after that disappeared down the black hole of the nuclear negotiations. At which point Gabriel, trapped in the Vienna safe flat with Christopher Keller, allowed himself to ponder at length all the reasons why his operation was doomed even before it had left port. It was possible, of course, that Reza Nazari had gone on the record with his service in the hours immediately following his brutal interrogation. It was possible, too, he had then told Alexei Rozanov that the man he had conspired to kill so spectacularly was very much alive and out for vengeance. Or perhaps there was no Alexei Rozanov. Perhaps he was nothing more than a figment of Nazari’s fevered imagination, a clever piece of taqiyya designed to make himself useful to Gabriel and thus save his own life.

  “Clearly,” said Keller, “you’ve lost your mind.”

  “It happens to dead people.” Gabriel picked up a photograph of Rozanov walking along a cobbled street in Copenhagen. “Maybe he won’t come. Maybe his superiors at the SVR have decided to put him on ice for a while. Maybe he’ll ask his old friend Reza to pop over to Moscow for a night of vodka and girls.”