Gregori was interested in them for two reasons. One was a hushed and angry comment made by the husband to his wife.
“Are you sure that’s where you were this afternoon?”
The other reason was perfume.
The wife loved Dolce & Gabbana perfume, so much so that she would never step outside of her home without applying too much of it to her throat and wrists. At events like these, one didn’t have to stand too close to her to smell the unmistakable rich scent on her skin. But tonight was different, because she wore no such scent. Where had she been this afternoon? Gregori thought through the possibilities. A place she’d gone to clutching the ball gown she’d collected from the dry cleaners. A venue where she could get dressed in comfort, fix her hair, and put on makeup that she’d brought along in her handbag. Some location that didn’t allow her time to rush home before meeting her husband at the party. And she would have desperately wanted to go home when she realized she’d forgotten to pack her beloved perfume.
Where was that place? Like all top spies, Gregori used his instincts and imagination to fill in the gaps. Of course, that place was another man’s home. The woman had been unfaithful to her husband. She’d dressed for the party after she’d made love.
Gregori smiled.
Her infidelity could give him leverage over her husband.
Perhaps it would make her husband betray the United States.
TWO
Will Cochrane crouched on the frozen ground, removed his gloves, and withdrew two metal tubes from his rucksack. Each tube was two and a half feet long, ten centimeters in diameter, and branded with the name of the fishing equipment manufacturer Orvis and a label denoting that one tube contained an eight-foot-four-inch mid-flex Helios 2 fly-fishing rod and the other contained a ten-foot tip-flex variant of the same precision distance-casting model. He laid the tubes side by side on the ground, pulled out binoculars from his jacket, and examined his surroundings.
The tall man was alone on a mountain escarpment along the stunningly beautiful northern coastline. Around him were large azure-blue fjords that cut through the snow-capped mountain range, low areas of barren land carved into numerous islands by thin stretches of seawater, patches of mist hanging motionless over sea and earth, and above him a windless clear sky that looked heavenly and yet was cold enough to kill an ill-equipped man in less than an hour. But there were no signs of life out here save for an occasional kittiwake bird gliding close to water.
Carefully, he moved his binoculars until he spotted an area of lowland through which a thin meandering mountain river led to the sea. It was an excellent place to cast a lure and tempt a salmon or sea trout. But it was approximately one thousand yards beneath him; one would need to be dressed in appropriate clothing and be at the very peak of physical condition to reach the area and fish there at this time of year. Thankfully, Will was supremely fit and had come fully prepared to stay out all day in this remote place. He was wearing a white woolen hat that was pulled down tightly over his close-cropped dark hair, a jacket and fleece, thermal leggings and water-resistant pants, and hiking boots covered with rubber galoshes. In these parts, an angler needed to dress like someone who was hiking to the North Pole.
As he further examined the distant stretch of river, his vision locked on the only evidence that any person had been here before: three log cabins and a track leading away from them. He wondered if the owners of the buildings had long ago deserted this place, or whether the cabins were rented out to vacationers during the summer months. He imagined clambering down to the river, preparing one of his rods, and making a few casts before being confronted by an angry owner of the cabins who would be shouting at him to leave.
Still, it would be worth the risk to try to fish there, as it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
But that experience would have to take place on another day.
Because the MI6 operative wasn’t here to fish.
He unscrewed the caps on both tubes and withdrew pieces of metal equipment that had been designed and handcrafted by specialists in England before being couriered in a diplomatic bag to the British embassy in Oslo. Carefully, he slotted each piece together. One minute later, the sound-suppressed, high-velocity sniper rifle was fully assembled. After putting his gloves back on, he lay flat on the ground and stared at the buildings through the gun’s powerful telescopic sight.
He spoke into his throat mic. “In position.”
And immediately heard an American woman’s voice in his earpiece. “Okay. We got you.”
The woman was a CIA analyst, operating in the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, and was temporarily seconded to the highly classified joint CIA-MI6 Task Force S, which Will worked for as its prime field operative. She wasn’t very experienced, but didn’t need to be, as today her job was simply to sit at her computer and make notes of what Will could see.
Getting on this assignment had infuriated Will because it had come on the back of his being told without explanation that he was to cease his hunt for Cobalt. He’d spent the last eleven months chasing the financier — a man without a name or identifiable nationality, but one of the most dangerous men on the planet due to his funding of terrorist activities across the globe. Cobalt was all the more dangerous because he had no causes beyond seeking profit; his support of terrorist cells bought him their allegiance and gave him access to opium and coca plantations under their control. He transformed the crops into salable drugs, used his extensive network to smuggle them out of the countries, made vast fortunes, and in return gave the terrorists a cut of the profits. It was a deal that suited him, and suited them. And it was one that ordinarily would require someone like Will Cochrane to put a bullet in Cobalt’s brain. But the powers that be in Washington and London had decided that Cobalt needed to be left alone.
So here he was, on a routine job that should have been given to one of the Agency’s many paramilitary Special Operations Group officers.
In the largest wooden building below was Ellie Hallowes, the CIA’s best deep-cover officer. Will had never met her, but he knew she was thirty-five years old — the same age that he was now — and was an excellent and courageous operator whose job required her to live in near constant danger. Today, he was here to watch over her while she met a Russian intelligence officer who carried the CIA code name Herald. The Russian was her spy, and during the last two years they’d met many times without the need for protection. But this meeting was different. Two days earlier the CIA had received signals intelligence that suggested the Russian intelligence services had suspicions about their officer and the real reasons for his trips overseas. The Agency was worried that the meeting could be compromised and that Ellie could be attacked. If that happened, Will was under orders to do whatever was necessary to ensure Ellie escaped to safety.
It was a straightforward job for a man like Will.
As a younger man, he’d spent five brutal years in the French Foreign Legion, initially in its elite 2e Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes before being handpicked to serve in the 11e Brigade Parachutiste’s Special Forces unit, the Groupement des Commandos Parachutistes. Upon completion of his military service, he’d returned to England and studied at Cambridge University. After being awarded a first-class degree, he’d briefly considered a career in academia, though others had different plans for him. MI6 tapped him on the shoulder and said it was very interested in someone with his skill set. He could have turned the intelligence agency down and hidden away from the world in an ivory tower, surrounded by books and with human contact limited to students and other lecturers and professors. But MI6 knew it was an impossible dream for someone like him: a man whose CIA father had been captured in Iran when Will was five years old and incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin Prison for years before being butchered, who’d fled to the Legion aged seventeen after witnessing the brutal murder of his English mother, who’d killed her four assailants with a knife to protect his sister from a similar fate, who’d been deployed not only by the GCP behind enemy lines but was also used by France’s DGSE as a deniable killer, a man who was not completely at peace with the world.