Moscow Rules

pull Elena Kharkov aside for a private chat about her husband’s operations? Easier said than done, I’m afraid. Elena doesn’t put a toe outside her Knightsbridge mansion without a full complement of very nasty bodyguards. No one talks to Elena without talking to Ivan first.”
     
     
    “Actually, that’s not exactly true. There’s someone in London she talks to on a regular basis—someone who might be willing to help, considering the gravity of the situation.”
     
     
    “He’s a British citizen, I take it?”
     
     
    “Quite.”
     
     
    “Is he honestly employed?”
     
     
    “I suppose that depends on your point of view. He’s an art dealer.”
     
     
    “Where does he work?”
     
     
    Gabriel told him.
     
     
    “Oh, dear. This could be a bit ticklish.”
     
     
    “That’s why I’m here, Graham. I wouldn’t dream of operating in London without consulting you first.”
     
     
    “Spare me.”
     
     
    “I think we should have a little look under his fingernails before we make any approach. The art world is filled with a lot of shady characters. One can never be too careful.”
     
     
    “ We? No, Gabriel, we won’t go anywhere near him. The Security Service will handle this matter with the utmost discretion and a proper Home Office warrant.”
     
     
    “How soon can you start?”
     
     
    “Seventy-two hours should suffice.”
     
     
    “I’ll have a man on him by lunch,” Seymour said.“ I propose we meet once a day to review the watch reports.”
     
     
    “Agreed.”
     
     
    “We can do it here if you like.”
     
     
    “Surely you jest.”
     
     
    “Your choice, then.”
     
     
    “St. James’s Park. Six o’clock. The benches on the north side of Duck Island.”
     
     
    Graham Seymour frowned. “I’ll bring the bread crumbs.”
     

 
    28
     
     
    LONDON
     
     
    In the aftermath, when the archivists and analysts of a dozen different services and agencies were picking over the scorched bones of the affair, all would be puzzled by the fact that Gabriel’s primary target during those first tenuous days of the operation was not Ivan Kharkov or his beautiful wife, Elena, but Alistair Leach, director of Impressionist and Modern Art at the august Christie’s auction house, Number 8 King Street, St. James’s, London. They took no joy in it; he was a good and decent man who became ensnared in the affair through no fault of his own, other than his serendipitous proximity to evil. Adrian Carter would later refer to him as “our own little cautionary tale.” Few lives are lived without a trace of sin, and fewer still can stand up to the scrutiny of an MI5 telephone tap and a full-time complement of MI5 watchers. There, by the grace of God, Carter would say, went us all.
     
     
    Any intelligence officer with a modicum of conscience knows it can be a disquieting experience to rifle through the drawers of a man’s life, but Seymour, who had more scruples than most, made certain it was done with the gentlest hand possible. His listeners eavesdropped on Leach’s telephone conversations with a forgiving ear, his watchers stalked their quarry from a respectable distance, and his burrowers dug through Leach’s phone records, bank statements, and credit card bills with the utmost sensitivity. Only the room transmitters caused them to squirm—the transmitters that, at Gabriel’s insistence, had been hidden in Leach’s Kentish Town residence. It did not take long for the bugs to reveal why Leach spent so little time there. The listeners began referring to his wife, Abigail, only as “the Beast.”
     
     
    Unbeknownst to Graham Seymour and MI5, Gabriel had taken up quiet residence during this phase of the affair in an Office safe flat in Bayswater Road. He used the lull in the operation to catch up on his rest and to heal his bruised body. He slept late, usually until nine or ten, and then spent the remainder of his mornings dawdling over coffee and the newspapers. After lunch, he would leave the flat and take long walks around central London. Though he was careful to alter his routes, he visited the same three destinations each day: the Israeli Embassy in Old Court Road, the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and Duck Island in St. James’s Park. Graham Seymour appeared promptly at six o’clock the first two evenings, but on the third he arrived forty-five minutes later, muttering something about his director-general being in a snit. He immediately opened his