The Defector

Gabriel!”
    “I’ll never leave you.”
    “Stay with me!”
    “Can you walk?”
    “I think so.”
    He wrapped his arm around her waist and helped her up the stairs.
    “You have to hurry, Chiara.”
    “Don’t leave me, Gabriel.”
    “I’ll never leave you.”
    “Don’t leave me here with them.”
    “Everyone’s gone, my love. But we have to hurry.”
    They reached the top of the stairs. Navot was standing in the center hall, bodies at his feet, blood on the walls.
    “Grigori’s a mess,” Gabriel snapped in Hebrew. “Bring him up.”
    Gabriel helped Chiara around the bodies and headed toward the hole where the door had once been. Chiara saw more bodies. Bodies everywhere. Bodies and blood.
    “Oh, God.”
    “Don’t look, my love. Just walk.”
    “Oh, God.”
    “Walk, Chiara. Walk.”
    “Did you kill them, Gabriel? Did you do this?”
    “Just keep walking, my love.”

    NAVOT ENTERED the cell and saw Grigori’s face.
    Bastards!
    He looked at Mikhail.
    “Let’s get him on his feet.”
    “He’s in bad shape.”
    “I don’t care. Just get him on his feet.”
    Grigori screamed in agony as Mikhail and Navot pulled him upright.
    “I don’t think I can walk.”
    “You don’t have to.”
    Navot hoisted the Russian over one shoulder and nodded to Mikhail.
    “Let’s go.”

    THE BACK DOORS of the Range Rover were now open. Yaakov was standing on one side, Oded on the other. A few feet away were two Russian corpses, arms flung wide, heads surrounded by halos of blood. Gabriel led Chiara past the bodies and lifted her into the back. Then he turned and saw Navot coming out of the dacha, Grigori draped over one shoulder.
    “Put him in the back with Chiara and get out of here.”
    Navot eased Grigori into the car while Gabriel climbed into the front passenger seat. Mikhail dug the keys from the pocket of his parka and fired the engine. As the Rover shot forward, Gabriel glanced back a final time.
    Three men. Running for the trees.
    He inserted a fresh magazine into the Mini-Uzi and looked at his watch: 9:11:07.
    “Faster, Mikhail. Drive faster.”

    THEY WERE doing just under a hundred along the deserted road, two black Range Rovers, both filled with former Russian special forces now employed by the private security service of Ivan Kharkov. In the front seat of the first vehicle, a cell phone trilled. It was Oleg Rudenko, calling from the helicopter.
    “Where are you?”
    “Close.”
    “How close?”
    Very . . .

    FOR REASONS that would be made clear to Gabriel in short order, the track from the dacha to the road did not run in a straight line. Viewed from an American spy satellite, it looked rather like an inverted S rendered by the hand of a young child. Viewed from the front passenger seat of a speeding Range Rover in late winter, it was a sea of white. White snow. White birch trees. And, just around the second bend, a pair of white headlamps approaching at an alarmingly rapid rate.
    Mikhail instinctively hit the brakes—in hindsight, a mistake, since it gave a slight advantage on impact to the other vehicle. The air bags spared them serious injury but left Gabriel and Mikhail too dazed to resist when the Rover was stormed by several men. Gabriel briefly glimpsed the butt of a Russian pistol arcing toward the side of his head. Then there was only white. White snow. White birch trees. Chiara floating away from him, dressed all in white.

66
    GROSVENOR SQUARE, LONDON
    FOR SHAMRON, the first inkling of trouble was the sudden silence at King Saul Boulevard. Three times he asked for an explanation. Three times he received no reply.
    Finally a voice. “We’ve lost them.”
    “What do you mean, lost ?”
    They had heard a noise of some sort. Sounded like a collision. A crash. Then voices. Russian voices.
    “You’re sure they were Russian?”
    “We’re double-checking the tapes. But we’re sure.”
    “Were they off Ivan’s property when it happened?”
    “We don’t think so.”
    “What about their radios?”
    “Off the air.”
    “Where’s the rest of the team?”
    “Departing as planned.” A pause. “Unless you want to send them back in.”
    Shamron hesitated. Of course he wanted to send them back. But he couldn’t. Better to lose three than six. The numbers . . .
    “Tell Uzi to keep going. And no heroics. Tell them to get the hell out of there.”
    “Right.”
    “Keep the line open. Let me know if you hear anything.”
    Shamron closed his eyes for a few seconds, then