“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
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.