The Defector

with Grigori in secret. As you might expect, I want this book to be a big success.”
    “Why am I not surprised, Viktor?”
    “It’s my nature. I enjoy helping others. Which is why I’m so pleased you’re here. Tell me about the story you’re working on. Tell me how I can be of service.”
    “It’s a story about a defector. A defector who disappeared without a trace.”
    “Does the defector have a name?”
    “Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov.”

    IN THE surveillance van, Graham Seymour removed his headphones and looked at Gabriel.
    “Very nicely played.”
    “She’s good, Graham. Very good.”
    “Can I have her when you’re done?”
    Gabriel raised a finger to his lips. Viktor Orlov was speaking again. They heard a burst of rapid Russian, followed by the voice of the translator.
    “Tell me what you know, Olga. Tell me everything.”

42
    CHELSEA , LONDON
    ORLOV WAS suddenly in motion in several places at once. The spectacles were twirling, the fingers were drumming on the back of the brocade couch, and the left eye was twitching anxiously. When he was a child, the twitch had made him the target of merciless teasing and bullying. It had made him burn with hatred, and that hatred had driven him to succeed. Viktor Orlov wanted to beat everyone. And it was all because of the twitch in his left eye.
    “Are you sure he’s missing?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “When did he disappear?”
    “January the tenth. Six-twelve in the evening. On his way to chess.”
    “How do you know this?”
    “I’m Olga Sukhova. I know everything.”
    “Do the British know?”
    “Of course.”
    “What do they think happened?”
    “They believe he redefected. They think he’s now back at Lubyanka telling his superiors everything he learned about your operation while he was working for you.”
    The eye was now blinking involuntarily like the shutter of a high-speed automatic camera.
    “Why didn’t they tell me?”
    “I’m not sure you were their first concern, Viktor. But don’t worry. It’s not true about Grigori. He didn’t redefect. He was kidnapped.” She let it sink in, then added, “By Ivan Kharkov.”
    “How do you know this?”
    “I’m Olga Sukhova.”
    “And you know everything.”
    “Not quite everything. But perhaps you can help me fill in some of the missing pieces. I don’t know the identity of the man Ivan hired to handle the kidnapping. All I know is that this man is very good. He’s a professional.” She paused. “The kind of man you used to hire in Moscow—in the bad old days, Viktor, when you had a problem that just wouldn’t go away.”
    “Be careful, Ms. Sukhova.”
    “I’m always careful. I never had to print a single retraction in all the years I worked for the Gazeta . Not one.”
    “That’s because you never wrote a story about me.”
    “If I had, it would have been airtight and completely accurate.”
    “So you say.”
    “I know a great deal about the way you made your money, Viktor. I did you a favor by never publishing that information in the Gazeta . And now you’re going to do one for me. You’re going to help me find the man who kidnapped my friend. And if you don’t, I’m going to pour everything I have in my notebooks into the most unflattering exposé ever written about you.”
    “And I’ll take you to court.”
    “ Court? Do you really think I’m afraid of a British court?”
    She reached into her handbag and withdrew a photograph: a man standing in the arrivals hall of Heathrow Airport. Orlov slipped on his spectacles. The eye twitched nervously. He pressed a button on the side table, and the maid materialized.
    “Bring me a bottle of the Pétrus. Now .”

    HE TRIED to slip out of the noose, of course, but Olga was having none of it. She calmly recited a couple of names, a date, and the details of a certain transaction involving a company Viktor once owned—just enough to let him know her threats were not idle. Viktor drank his first glass of Pétrus quickly and poured another.
    Olga had never seen Viktor show fear before, but he was clearly afraid now. An experienced reporter, she recognized the manifestations of that fear in the behavior that came next: the exclamations of disbelief, the attempts at misdirection, the effort to foist blame onto others. Viktor tended to blame all his problems on Russia. So it came as no surprise to Olga when he did so now.
    “You have to remember what it was like in the nineties. We tried to snap our fingers and turn