The Defector

Saul Boulevard had discovered that the bodyguards were supplied by Exton Executive Security Services Ltd, of Hill Street, Mayfair. Exton was regarded as the finest private security company in London, no small accomplishment in a city filled with many rich people worried about their safety.
    Gabriel was about to leave when he saw three bodyguards emerge from the Range Rover. One took up a post at the gate of No. 43, while the other two blocked the sidewalk in either direction. With the perimeter security in place, the front door of the house swung open, and Viktor Orlov stepped outside, flanked by two more bodyguards. Gabriel managed to see little of the famous Russian billionaire other than a head of spiky gray hair and the flash of a pink necktie bound by an enormous Windsor knot. Orlov ducked into the back of the Bentley, and the doors quickly closed. A few seconds later, the motorcade was speeding along Royal Hospital Road. Gabriel sat on his bench for ten more minutes, then got to his feet and headed back to Victoria.

    IT TOOK less than an hour for Heathrow security to produce the first batch of photographs of the man known only as Anatoly. Unfortunately, none were terribly helpful. Gabriel was not surprised. Everything about Anatoly suggested he was a professional. And like any good professional, he knew how to move through an airport without getting his picture taken. The fedora had done much to shield his face, but he had done a good deal of the work himself with subtle turns and movements. Still, the cameras made a valiant effort: here a glimpse of a sturdy chin, here a partial profile, here a shot of a tight, uncompromising mouth. Flipping through the printouts in the Victoria safe house, Gabriel had a sinking feeling. Anatoly was a pro’s pro. And he was playing the game with Ivan’s money.
    Both British services ran the photos through their databases of known Russian intelligence officers, but neither held out much hope for a match. Between them, they produced six possible candidates, all of whom were dismissed by Gabriel late that same night. At which point Seymour decided it was probably time to bring the dreaded Americans into the picture. Gabriel volunteered to make the trip himself. There was someone in America he was anxious to see. He hadn’t spoken to her in months. She had written him a letter once. And he had painted her a painting.

30
    CIA HEADQUARTERS, VIRGINIA
    INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES refer to their spies in different ways. The Office calls them gathering officers, and the department for which they work is referred to as Collections. Spies for the CIA are known as case officers and are employed by the National Clandestine Service. Adrian Carter’s tenure as chief of the NCS began when it was still known by its old name: the Directorate of Operations. Regarded as one of the Agency’s most accomplished secret warriors, Carter had left his fingerprints on every major American covert operation of the last two generations. He had tinkered with the odd election, toppled the odd democratically elected government, and turned a blind eye to more executions and murders than he cared to remember. “I did the Lord’s work in Poland and propped up the devil’s regime in El Salvador in the span of a single year,” he once confessed to Gabriel in a moment of interagency candor. “And for an encore, I gave weapons to the Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan, even though I knew that one day they would rain fire and death on me.”
    Since the morning of September 11, 2001, Adrian Carter had been focused on primarily one thing: preventing another attack on the American homeland by the forces of global Islamic extremism. To accomplish that end he had used tactics and methods even a battle-hardened covert warrior such as himself sometimes found objectionable. The black prisons, the renditions, the use of coercive interrogation techniques: it had all been made public, much to Carter’s detriment. Well-meaning editorialists and politicians on Capitol Hill had been baying for Carter’s blood for years. He should have been on the short list to become the CIA’s next director. Instead, he lived in fear that one day he would be prosecuted for his actions in the global war against terrorism. Adrian Carter had kept America safe from its enemies. And for that, he would languish in the fires of hell for all eternity.
    He was waiting for Gabriel the following afternoon in a conference room on the seventh floor of