The Defector

the FSB was involved in those apartment-house bombings in Moscow, the ones the Russian president used as justification for sending the Red Army back into Chechnya. Grigori claims he personally knew the officers involved in the operation and identifies two by name.”
    “Any mention of me?”
    “There is a chapter in the book about the Kharkov affair, but it’s not terribly accurate. As far as Grigori is concerned, he was the one who single-handedly tracked down the missiles Ivan sold to al-Qaeda. There’s no mention of you or any Israeli connection in the manuscript.”
    “What about his handwritten notes or computer files?”
    “We searched them all. As far as Grigori was concerned, you do not exist.”
    Gabriel leafed through the pages of the manuscript. On the sixth page was a margin note, written in English. He read it, then looked at Seymour for an explanation.
    “It’s from Grigori’s editor at Buckley and Hobbes. I suppose, at some point, we’re going to have to tell them that they’re not going to get a book anytime soon.”
    “You read her notes.”
    “We read every thing.”
    Gabriel turned several more pages, then stopped again to examine another margin note. Unlike the first, it was written in Russian. “It must have been written by Grigori,” Seymour said.
    “It doesn’t match the handwriting in the letter.”
    “The letter was written in Roman. The note is Cyrillic.”
    “Trust me, Graham. They weren’t written by the same person.”
    Gabriel leafed quickly through the remaining pages and found several more notations written by the same hand. When he looked up again, Seymour was removing the disk from the DVD player. He returned it to the clear plastic case and handed it to Gabriel. The message was clear. The briefing was over. If there was any doubt about Seymour’s intent, it was put to rest by a ponderous examination of his wristwatch. Gabriel made one final request. He wanted to see the rest of the house. Seymour rose slowly to his feet. “But we’re not going to be pulling up any floorboards or peeling back the wallpaper,” he said. “I have a dinner date. And I’m already ten minutes late.”

12
    MAIDA VALE, LONDON
    GABRIEL FOLLOWED Seymour up two flights of narrow stairs to the bedroom. On the night table to the right of the double bed was an ashtray filled with crushed cigarettes. They were all the same brand: Sobranie White Russians, the kind Gri- gori had smoked during Gabriel’s interrogation at Lubyanka and during their escape from Russia. Piled beneath the brass reading lamp were several books: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Agatha Christie, P. D. James. “He loved English murder mysteries,” Seymour said. “He thought that reading P. D. James would help him become more like us, though why anyone would want to become more like us is beyond me.”
    At the foot of the bed was a white box printed with the logo of a dry-cleaning and laundry service located in Elgin Avenue. Lifting the lid, Gabriel saw a half dozen shirts, neatly pressed and folded and wrapped in tissue paper. Resting atop the shirts was a cash register receipt. The date on the receipt matched the date of Grigori’s disappearance. The time of the transaction was recorded as 3:42 p.m.
    “We assume his controllers wanted his last day in London to be as normal as possible,” Seymour said.
    Gabriel found the explanation dubious at best. He entered the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. Scattered among the various lotions, creams, and grooming devices were three bottles of prescription medication: one for sleep, one for anxiety, and one for migraine headaches.
    “Who prescribed these?”
    “A doctor who works for us.”
    “Grigori never struck me as the anxious type.”
    “He said it was the pressure of writing a book on deadline.”
    Gabriel removed a bottle of indigestion medication and turned the label toward Seymour.
    “He had a fickle stomach,” Seymour said.
    “He should have eaten something other than salted herring and pasta sauce.”
    Gabriel closed the cabinet and lifted the lid of the hamper. It was empty.
    “Where’s his dirty laundry?”
    “He dropped it off the afternoon he vanished.”
    “That’s exactly what I would do if I were preparing to redefect.”
    Gabriel switched off the bathroom lights and followed Seymour down a flight of steps to the sitting room. The coffee table was scattered with newspapers, a few from London, the rest from Russia: Izvestia , Kommersant ,