The Defector

recently placed a telephone call to FSB Headquarters requesting information as to the whereabouts of her former husband, a question greeted by a curt dismissal. All things considered, they believed a woman in Ms. Bulganova’s position might relish the opportunity to make an all-expenses-paid visit to Italy. And what Muscovite wouldn’t? On the day the invitation was sent, the weather forecast was calling for heavy snow and temperatures of perhaps twenty below.
    It was dispatched via e-mail and signed by none other than Veronica Ricci, NITA’s chief executive officer. It began with an apology for the last-minute nature of the offer and concluded with promises of first-class air travel, luxury hotel accommodations, and gourmet Italian cuisine. If Ms. Bulganova chose to attend—and it was NITA’s fervent hope that she would—an information packet, airline tickets, and a welcoming gift would follow. The e-mail neglected to say that the aforementioned materials were already in Moscow and would be delivered by a courier company that did not exist. Nor did it mention the fact that Ms. Bulganova would remain under surveillance to make certain she was not being followed by agents of Ivan Kharkov. It made only one request: that she RSVP as quickly as possible so that other arrangements could be made should she be unable to attend.
    Fortunately, such a contingency would not prove necessary, for exactly seven hours and twelve minutes after the e-mail was sent, a reply arrived from Moscow. At Villa Teresa, the celebration was boisterous but brief. Irina Bulganova was coming to Italy. And they had much work to do.

    IN EVERY OPERATION, Shamron was fond of saying, there is a choke point. Navigate it successfully, and the operation can sail easily into open waters. Stray off course, even by a few degrees, and it can become stranded on the shoals or, worse still, smash to pieces on the rocks. For this operation, the choke point was none other than Irina herself. As of that moment, they still did not know whether she was heaven-sent or whether she might bring the devil to their doorstep. Handle her well, and the operation might go down as one of the team’s finest. Make one mistake, and there was a chance she might get them all killed.
    They rehearsed as if their lives depended on it. Mikhail’s Russian was superior to Eli Lavon’s, and so it was Mikhail, despite his youth, who would serve as lead inquisitor. Lavon, blessed with a kindly face and unthreatening demeanor, would play the role of benefactor and sage. The only variable, of course, was Irina herself. Olga helped them to prepare for any contingency. At Gabriel’s direction, she was terrified one minute, belligerent the next. She cursed them like dogs, collapsed in tears, took a vow of silence, and once flew at them in a blind rage. By the final night, Mikhail and Lavon were confident they were prepared for whatever version of Irina they might encounter. All they needed now was the star of the show.
    But was she Ivan’s pawn or Ivan’s victim? It was the question that had troubled them from the beginning, and it was foremost in their thoughts throughout the last long night of waiting. Gabriel made it clear he believed in Irina, but Gabriel was the first to admit his faith had to be viewed through the prism of his well-known fondness for Russian women. The women, he said over and over, were Russia’s only hope. Other members of the team, Yaakov in particular, took a far less optimistic view of what lay ahead. Yaakov had seen mankind at its worst and feared they were about to admit one of Ivan’s agents into their midst. The fact she was still alive, he argued, was proof of her perfidy. “If Irina was good, Ivan would have killed her,” he said. “That’s what Ivan does.”
    With the help of their assets in Moscow and King Saul Boulevard, they kept careful watch over Irina’s final preparations, searching for evidence of treachery. On the evening before her departure they monitored a pair of telephone calls, one to a childhood friend, the other to her mother. They heard her alarm go off at the ungodly hour of 2:30 a.m. and heard it go off again ten minutes later while she was in the shower. And at five minutes past three, they caught a flash of her temper when she called the limousine company to say her car hadn’t arrived. Mikhail, who listened to a recording of the call over the secure link, refused to translate it for the rest of the team. Unless Irina