The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(76)

Though the town was no longer a fashionable resort, Frintonians had clung, with varying degrees of success, to the genteel ways of the past. Older, wealthier, and deeply conservative, they did not hold with immigrants, the European Union, or the policies of the Labour Party. Much to their dismay, Frinton’s first pub, the Lock & Barrel, had recently opened its doors on Connaught Avenue. It was still a violation of the town’s bylaws, however, to sell ice cream on the beach or to take a picnic lunch on the grassy Greensward atop the cliffs. If one wanted to spread a blanket and eat out of doors, one could drive down the road to neighboring Clacton, a place where few Frintonians ever set foot.

Between the Greensward and the sea was a promenade lined with pastel-colored beach huts. Because it was early April and the afternoon was chill and windblown, Nikolai Azarov had the walkway to himself. He carried a rucksack on his back and wore a pair of Zeiss binoculars around his neck. Had a passerby wished him a pleasant afternoon or asked for directions, he would have assumed that Nikolai was exactly what he appeared to be—a well-educated Englishman of the middle classes, probably from London or one of the Home Counties, almost certainly a graduate of Oxbridge or one of the better redbrick universities. A more discerning eye might have noticed a vaguely Slavic cast to his features. But no one would have assumed he was Russian, or that he was an assassin and special operative employed by Moscow Center.

It was not the career Nikolai had chosen for himself. Indeed, as a young man growing up in post-Soviet Moscow, he had dreamed of working as an actor, preferably in the West. Unfortunately, the prestigious school where he learned to speak his flawless British-accented English was the Moscow Institute for Foreign Languages, a favorite hunting ground for the SVR. Upon graduation, Nikolai entered the SVR’s academy, where his instructors determined he had a natural flair for certain darker aspects of the trade, including the construction of explosive devices. At the conclusion of his training, he was assigned to the SVR directorate responsible for “active measures.” They included the assassination of Russian citizens who dared to oppose the Kremlin, or intelligence officers who were spying for Russia’s enemies. Nikolai had personally killed more than a dozen of his countrymen living in the West—with poison, with chemical or radiological weapons, or with a gun or a bomb—all on the direct orders of the Russian president himself.

The next town to the north of Frinton was Walton-on-the-Naze. Nikolai stopped for a coffee at the pier before making his way to the marshlands of the Hamford Water nature reserve. At the tip of the headland, he paused for a moment and, binoculars to his eyes, gazed across the North Sea toward the Netherlands. Then he headed south along the banks of Walton Channel. It led him to the river Twizzle, where he found a marina filled with many fine sailing vessels and motor yachts. Nikolai planned to leave Britain the same way he had entered it, by car ferry. But in his experience, it was always best to have an ace in the hole. Operations did not always go as planned. Like Geneva, he thought suddenly. Or France.

You’re dead! Dead, dead, dead . . .

Two women, holidaymakers, pensioners, were coming up the footpath, trailed by a rust-colored spaniel. Nikolai bade them a pleasant afternoon, and they chirped a greeting in return before continuing north to the headland. Despite their age, he scrutinized them carefully as they moved off. And for an instant he even considered how best to kill them both. He had been trained to assume that every encounter—especially one that occurred in a remote location, such as a marshland in Essex—was potentially hostile. Unlike ordinary SVR operatives, Nikolai possessed the authority to kill first and worry about the consequences later. So, too, did Anna.

He checked the time. It was nearly two o’clock. He crossed the headland to Naze Tower and then retraced his steps along the seafront to Frinton. The sun had finally burned a hole in the clouds by the time he arrived at the Bedford House. One of the last surviving hotels from the town’s golden age, it stood at the far southern end of the Esplanade, a Victorian mausoleum with pennants flying from its turrets. The woman had chosen it, the woman known in the West as Rebecca Manning and at Moscow Center as Rebecca Philby. The Bedford’s management was under the impression that Nikolai was Philip Lane, a writer of television crime dramas who had come to Essex in search of inspiration.

Entering the hotel, he made his way to the atrium-like Terrace Café for afternoon tea. Phoebe, the tight-skirted waitress, showed him to a table overlooking the Esplanade. Nikolai, playing the role of Philip Lane, spread a Moleskine notebook before him. Then, absently, he took up his SVR-issue mobile phone.

Concealed within its applications was a protocol that allowed him to communicate securely with Moscow Center. Even so, the wording of the message he typed was so vague as to be incomprehensible to an adversarial signals intelligence service like Britain’s GCHQ. It stated that he had just completed a long surveillance-detection run and had seen no evidence he was being followed. In his opinion, it was safe to insert the next member of the team. Upon arrival, she was to make her way to Frinton to collect the weapon of assassination, which Nikolai had smuggled into the country. And upon completion of her assignment, Nikolai would see that she made it out of Britain safely. For this operation, at least, he was little more than a glorified delivery boy and driver. Still, he was looking forward to seeing her again. She was always better when they were in the field.

Phoebe placed a pot of Earl Grey tea on the table, along with a plate of dainty sandwiches. “Are you working?”