The English Girl: A Novel Page 34

  Gabriel set out along the prospekt with Lavon floating watchfully in his wake. He was no longer in Russia, he thought. He was in a tsarist dreamland, imported from the West and built by terrorized peasants. Florence called to him from the facades of the Baroque palaces, and, crossing the Moyka River, he dreamed of Venice. He wondered how many bodies lay beneath the ice. Thousands, he thought. Tens of thousands. No other city in the world concealed the horrors of its past more beautifully than St. Petersburg.

  Near the end of the prospekt was its only eyesore—the old Aeroflot building, a hideous flint-gray monstrosity inspired by the Doge’s Palace in Venice, with a dash of Florentine Medici thrown in for good measure. Gabriel turned into Bolshaya Morskaya Street and followed it through the Triumphal Arch, into Palace Square. As he neared the Alexander Column, Lavon drew alongside him to say that he was not being followed. Gabriel glanced at his wristwatch, which seemed frozen to his arm. It was twenty minutes past two. It happens the same time every day, Zhirov had said. They all go a little crazy when they come home after a long time in the cold.

  Adjacent to Palace Square was a small park, green in summer, now bone-white with snow. Lavon waited there on an icy bench while Gabriel walked alone to the Palace Embankment. The Neva had been stilled by ice. He glanced at his watch one final time. Then he stood alone at the barrier, as motionless as the mighty river, and waited for a girl he did not know.

  He saw her at five minutes to three, coming across the Palace Bridge. She wore a heavy coat and boots that rose nearly to her knees. A wool hat covered her pale hair. A scarf concealed the lower half of her face. Even so, Gabriel knew instantly it was her. The eyes betrayed her—the eyes and the contour of her cheekbones. It was as if Vermeer’s girl with a pearl earring had been freed from her canvas prison and was now walking along a riverbank in St. Petersburg.

  She passed him as if he were invisible and made her way toward the Hermitage. Gabriel waited to see whether she was under surveillance before following, and by the time he entered the museum she was already gone. It didn’t matter; he knew where she was going. Same painting every time, Zhirov had said. No one can figure out why.

  He purchased an admission ticket and walked along the endless corridors and loggias to Room 67, the Monet Room. And there she sat alone, staring at The Pond at Montgeron. When Gabriel sat down next to her, she glanced at him only briefly before resuming her study of the painting. His disguise was better than hers. He meant nothing to her. He supposed he never had.

  When another minute passed and he had yet to move, she turned and looked at him a second time. That was when she noticed the copy of A Room with a View balanced upon his knee. “I believe this belongs to you,” he said. Then he placed the book carefully into her trembling hand.

  54

  LUBYANKA SQUARE, MOSCOW

  On the fourth floor of FSB Headquarters is a suite of rooms occupied by the organization’s smallest and most secretive unit. Known as the Department of Coordination, it handles only cases of extreme political sensitivity, usually at the behest of the Russian president himself. At that moment its longtime chief, Colonel Leonid Milchenko, was seated at his large Finnish-made desk, a telephone to his ear, his eyes on Lubyanka Square. Vadim Strelkin, his number two, was standing anxiously in the door. He could tell by the way Milchenko slammed down the phone it was going to be a long night.

  “Who was it?” Strelkin asked.

  Milchenko delivered his response to the window.

  “Shit,” replied Strelkin.

  “Not shit, Vadim. Oil.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He’d like a word in private.”

  “Where?”

  “His office.”

  “When?”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “It could be anything,” Milchenko said. “But if Volgatek is involved, it can’t be good.”

  “I’ll get the car then.”

  “Good idea, Vadim.”

  It took longer to haul the car from the bowels of Lubyanka than it did to make the short drive over to Volgatek headquarters on Tverskaya Street. Dmitry Bershov, the firm’s second-ranking officer, was waiting tensely in the lobby as Milchenko and Strelkin entered—another bad sign. He said nothing as he led the two FSB men into an executive elevator and pressed a button that shot them directly into an office on the building’s top floor. The office was the biggest Milchenko had ever seen in Moscow. In fact, it took a few seconds for him to spot Gennady Lazarev seated at one end of a long executive couch. Milchenko chose to remain on his feet while the Volgatek CEO explained that Pavel Zhirov, his chief of security, had not been seen or heard from since eleven the previous evening. Milchenko knew the name; he and Zhirov had been contemporaries at the KGB. He dropped a leather-bound notebook on Lazarev’s glass coffee table and sat down.

  “What was going on at eleven last night?”

  “We were having a party at Café Pushkin to celebrate an important new hire at the firm. By the way,” Lazarev added, “the new hire is missing, too. So is the driver.”

  “You might have mentioned that at the outset.”

  “I was getting to it.”

  “What’s the new hire’s name?”

  Lazarev answered the question.

  “Russian?” asked Milchenko.

  “Not really.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s of Russian ancestry but carries a British passport.”

  “So he is, in fact, British.”

  “He is.”

  “Anything else I should know about him?”

  “He’s currently employed by Viktor Orlov in London.”

  Milchenko exchanged a long look with Strelkin before staring wordlessly at his notebook. He had yet to write anything in it, which was probably wise. A missing former KGB officer and a missing associate of the Kremlin’s most vocal opponent. Milchenko was beginning to think he should have called in sick that morning.

  “I take it they left Café Pushkin together,” he said finally.

  Lazarev nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Pavel wanted to ask him a few questions.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Lazarev said nothing.

  “What kind of questions?” Milchenko asked.

  “Pavel had suspicions about him.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He thought he might be connected to a foreign intelligence service.”

  “Any service in particular?”

  “For obvious reasons,” Lazarev said carefully, “his suspicions centered on the British.”

  “So he was planning to give him a good going-over.”

  “He was going to ask him a few questions,” Lazarev said deliberately.

  “And if he didn’t like the answers?”

  “Then he was going to give him a good going-over.”

  “I’m glad we cleared that up.”

  The phone at Lazarev’s elbow emitted a soothing purr. He lifted the receiver to his ear, listened in silence, then said, “Right away,” before replacing the receiver.

  “What is it?” asked Milchenko.

  “The president would like a word.”

  “You shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

  “Actually,” said Lazarev, “you’re the one he wants to see.”

  55

  ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

  At that same moment, the man responsible for Colonel Milchenko’s summons to the Kremlin was walking along Admiralty Prospekt in St. Petersburg. He could no longer feel the cold, only the place on his arm where her hand had alighted briefly before they parted. His heart was banging against his breastbone. Surely they had been watching her. Surely he was about to be arrested. To calm his fears, he told himself lies. He was not in Russia, he thought. He was in Venice and Rome and Florence and Paris, all at the same time. He was safe. And so was she.

  St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the colossal marble ch
urch that the Soviets had turned into a museum of atheism, appeared before him. He entered it from the square and made his way up the narrow winding staircase, to the cupola surrounding the single golden dome. As expected, the platform was abandoned. The fairy-tale city stirred beneath his feet, traffic moving sluggishly along the big prospekts. On one a woman walked alone, a hat covering her pale hair, a scarf concealing the lower half of her face. A few moments later he heard her footfalls in the stairwell. And then she was standing before him. There were no lights in the cupola. She was barely visible in the darkness.

  “How did you find me?”

  The sound of her voice was almost unreal. It was the English accent. Then Gabriel realized it was the only accent she had.

  “It’s not important how I found you,” he replied.

  “How?” she asked again, but this time Gabriel said nothing. He took a step closer to her so she could see his face clearly.

  “Do you remember me now, Madeline? I’m the one who risked everything to try to save your life. It never occurred to me at the time that you were in on it from the beginning. You fooled me, Madeline. You fooled us all.”

  “I was never in on it,” she shot back. “I was just doing what I was ordered to do.”

  “I know,” he said after a moment. “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Actually,” said Gabriel, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “I’m Madeline,” she said. “Madeline Hart of Basildon, England. I followed all the rules. Did well at school and university. Got a job at Party headquarters. My future was limitless. I was going to be an MP one day. Maybe even a minister.” She paused, then added, “At least, that’s what they said about me.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “I don’t know my real name,” she answered. “I barely speak Russian. I’m not Russian. I’m Madeline. I’m an English girl.”

  She dug the copy of A Room with a View from her coat pocket and held it up. “Where did you find this?”

  “In your room.”

  “What were you doing in my room?”

  “I was trying to find out why your mother left Basildon without telling anyone.”

  “She’s not my mother.”

  “I know that now. Actually,” he added, “I think I knew when I saw a photograph of you standing next to her and your father. They look like—”

  “Peasants,” she said spitefully. “I hated them.”

  “Where are your mother and brother now?”

  “In an old KGB training center in the middle of nowhere. I was supposed to go there, too, but I refused. I told them I wanted to live in St. Petersburg, or I would defect to the West.”

  “You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

  “They threatened to.” She looked at him for a moment. “How much do you really know about me?”

  “I know that your father was an important general in the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, maybe even the big boss himself. Your mother was one of his typists. She overdosed on sleeping pills and vodka not long after you were born, or so the story goes. After that, you were placed in something like an orphanage.”

  “A KGB orphanage,” she interjected. “I was raised by wolves, truly.”

  “At a certain point,” Gabriel resumed, “they stopped speaking Russian to you in the orphanage. In fact, they said nothing at all in your presence. You were raised in complete silence until you were about three years old. Then they started speaking English to you.”

  “KGB English,” she said. “For a while I had the inflection of a newsreader on Radio Moscow.”

  “When did you meet your new parents for the first time?”

  “When I was about five. We lived together in a KGB camp for a year or so to get to know one another. Then we settled in Poland. And when the great Polish migration to London began, we went with it. My KGB parents already spoke perfect English. They established new identities for themselves and engaged in low-level espionage. Mainly, they looked after me. We never spoke Russian inside the house. Only English. After a while, I forgot I actually was Russian. I read books to learn how to be a proper English girl—Austen, Dickens, Lawrence, Forster.”

  “A Room with a View.”

  “That’s all I ever wanted,” she said. “A room with a view.”

  “Why the council house in Basildon?”

  “It was the nineties,” she replied. “Russia was broke. The SVR was a shambles. There was no budget to support a family of illegals in London, so we settled in Basildon and went on the dole. The British welfare state nurtured a spy within its midst.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “He contracted the illegal disease.”

  “He went stir-crazy?”

  She nodded. “He told Moscow Center he wanted out. Otherwise, he was going to go to MI5. The Center brought him back to Russia. God only knows what they did to him.”

  “Vysshaya mera.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Nothing mattered now other than this girl, he thought. He peered into the darkened square and saw Eli Lavon stamping his feet against the cold. Madeline saw him, too.

  “Who is he?”

  “A friend.”

  “A watcher?”

  “The best.”

  “He’d better be.”

  She turned away and set out slowly along the parapet.

  “When did they activate you?” Gabriel asked of her long, elegant back.

  “When I was at university,” she replied. “They told me they wanted me to prepare for a career in government. I studied political science and social work, and the next thing I knew I had a job at Party headquarters. Moscow Center was thrilled. Then Jeremy Fallon took me under his wing, and Moscow Center was over the moon.”

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  She turned and smiled for the first time. “Have you ever seen Jeremy Fallon?”

  “I have.”

  “Then I’m sure you won’t doubt me when I say that, no, I did not sleep with Jeremy Fallon. He wanted to sleep with me, though, and I gave him just enough hope that he gave me everything I wanted.”

  “Like what?”

  “A few minutes alone with the prime minister.”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  “It was Moscow Center’s,” she replied. “I never did anything without their approval.”

  “They thought Lancaster might be vulnerable to an approach?”

  “They’re all vulnerable,” she answered. “Unfortunately for Jonathan, he gave in to temptation. He was totally compromised the moment he made love to me for the first time.”

  “Congratulations,” said Gabriel. “You must have been very proud of yourself.”

  She turned sharply and looked at him for a moment without speaking. “I’m not proud of what I did,” she said finally. “I became very fond of Jonathan. I never wanted any harm to come to him.”

  “Then perhaps you should have told him the truth.”

  “I thought about it.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went on holiday to Corsica,” she said, smiling sadly. “And then I died.”

  But there was more to it than that, of course, beginning with the message she received from Moscow Center directing her to meet with a fellow SVR officer at Les Palmiers restaurant in Calvi. The officer informed her that her mission in England was over, that she would be returning to Russia, that they had to make it appear like a kidnapping in order to fool British intelligence.

  “You quarreled,” said Gabriel.

  “Quietly but vehemently,” she said. “I told him I wanted to stay in England and live out the rest of my life as Madeline Hart. He said that wasn’t possible. He told me that if I didn’t do exactly as he said, the kidnapping would be real.”

  “So you left your villa on your motorbike and had an accident.”

  “I’m lucky they didn’t kill
me. I still have the scars from the collision.”

  “How much time did you actually spend in the hands of the French criminals?”

  “Too much,” she answered. “But most of the time I was with an SVR team.”

  “What about the night I came to see you?”

  “Everyone in that house was SVR,” she said. “Including the girl they sent to count the money.”

  “You gave quite a performance that night, Madeline.”

  “It wasn’t all a performance.” She paused. “I did want you to get me.”

  “I tried,” said Gabriel. “But the cards were stacked against me.”

  “It must have been terrible.”

  “Especially for the girl they stuffed in the trunk of that car.”

  She said nothing.

  “Who was she?” Gabriel asked.

  “Some girl they plucked off the streets of Moscow. They spread her DNA around my apartment in London, and then . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “They lit a match.”

  Her expression darkened. She turned away and looked out over the dark, frozen city.

  “It’s not so bad here, you know. They gave me a lovely flat. It has a view. I can spend the rest of my life here and pretend that I’m in Rome or Venice or Paris.”

  “Or Florence,” said Gabriel.

  “Yes, Florence,” she agreed. “Just like Lucy and Charlotte.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  She turned to face him again. “What choice do I have?”

  “You can come with me.”

  “It can’t be done,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “You’ll get yourself killed. Me, too.”

  “If I can find you in St. Petersburg, Madeline, I can get you out.”

  “How did you find me?” she asked again.

  “I still can’t tell you that.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I can’t tell you that, either.”

  “Where will you take me?”