The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(74)
“Are you not the director of the United Kingdom Department of the SVR?”
“Deputy director.”
“Yes, of course.” The president glanced at Leonid Ryzhkov. “My mistake.”
54
Moscow–Washington–London
It was the assumption of the SVR’s counterintelligence directorate that MI6 did not know Colonel Rebecca Philby’s Moscow address. In point of fact, that was not the case. MI6 learned the location of her apartment quite by chance when one of its Moscow-based officers spotted her walking along the Arbat with a pair of bodyguards and a formidable-looking woman of advanced years. The officer followed them to Kuntsevo Cemetery, where they placed flowers on the grave of history’s greatest traitor, then to the entrance of a smart new apartment building on Sadovnicheskaya Street.
At the direction of Vauxhall Cross, Moscow Station took great care with its discovery. No attempt was made to place Rebecca under full-time surveillance—it wasn’t possible in a city like Moscow, where MI6 personnel were under near-constant watch themselves—and an ill-conceived scheme to purchase a flat in her building was quickly shelved. Instead, they watched her only occasionally and only from afar. They were able to confirm that she lived on the building’s ninth floor and that she reported for work each morning at SVR headquarters in Yasenevo. They never saw her run a personal errand, dine in a restaurant, or attend a performance at the Bolshoi. There was no evidence of a man in her life, or, for that matter, a woman. In general, she seemed quite miserable, which pleased them no end.
But in early March, for reasons Moscow Station could not possibly fathom, Rebecca vanished from view. When five days passed with no sign of her, the Moscow Head informed Vauxhall Cross—and Vauxhall Cross duly sent word to the sprawling Tudor house of many wings and gables in Hatch End in Harrow. There they cautiously interpreted Rebecca’s sudden disappearance as evidence that Moscow Center was feeding on the bread they had cast upon the water.
There was other evidence as well, such as an alarming spike in coded signal traffic emanating from the roof of the Russian Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens; and a second meeting in the Epping Forest between Charles Bennett and his SVR controller, Yevgeny Teplov; and the arrival in London, in mid-March, of one Konstantin Dragunov, personal friend and business associate of both the present ruler of Russia and the future king of Saudi Arabia. Taken in isolation, the developments were proof of nothing. But when viewed through the prism of the Anglo-Israeli team at Hatch End, they appeared to be the first stirrings of a great Russian undertaking.
It was Gabriel who had once again prodded the sleeping bear, but he monitored the Russian response not from Hatch End but from his desk at King Saul Boulevard, based on his firmly held operational conviction that a watched pot never boils. In late March he paid another clandestine visit to Khalid’s superyacht in the Gulf of Aqaba, if only to hear the latest gossip from Riyadh. Unbeknownst to the outside world, Khalid’s father had taken a turn for the worse—another stroke, perhaps a heart attack. He was attached to several machines at the Saudi National Guard Hospital. The vultures were circling, dividing up the spoils, fighting over the scraps. Khalid had requested permission to return to Riyadh to be at his father’s side. Abdullah had refused.
“If you have a card up your sleeve,” said Khalid, “I suggest you play it now. Otherwise, Saudi Arabia will soon be controlled by Comrade Abdullah and his puppet master in the Kremlin.”
A sudden storm grounded Tranquillity’s helicopter and forced Gabriel to spend that night at sea in one of the ship’s luxurious guest suites. When he returned to King Saul Boulevard the next morning he found a report waiting on his desk. It was the analysis of the stolen Iranian nuclear archives. The documents proved conclusively that Iran had been working on a nuclear weapon when it was telling the global community the precise opposite. But there was no firm evidence they were violating the terms of the nuclear accord they had negotiated with the previous American administration.
Gabriel briefed the prime minister that afternoon in his office in Jerusalem. And a week later he flew to Washington to bring the Americans into the picture. Much to his surprise, the meeting took place in the White House Situation Room, with the president in attendance. He had made no secret of his intention to withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear deal and was disappointed that Gabriel had not brought him incontrovertible proof—“a smoking mullah”—that the Iranians were secretly building a bomb.
Later that day Gabriel traveled to Langley, where he gave a more detailed briefing to the officers of the Persia House, the CIA’s Iran operations unit. Afterward, he dined alone with Morris Payne in a wood-paneled room on the seventh floor. Spring had finally arrived in Northern Virginia after an inhospitable winter, and the trees along the Potomac were in new leaf. Over wilted greens and cartilaginous beef, they swapped secrets and naughty rumors, including some about the men they served. Like many of his predecessors at the Agency, Payne had no background in intelligence. Before coming to Langley, he had been a soldier, a businessman, and a deeply conservative member of Congress from one of the Dakotas. He was big and bluff and blunt, with a face like an Easter Island statue. Gabriel found him a refreshing change from the previous CIA director, who had routinely referred to Jerusalem as al-Quds.
“What do you think of Abdullah?” Payne asked abruptly over coffee.