The English Girl: A Novel

to Moscow for a few days so you can meet the rest of the team. If we both like what we see, we’ll take the next step. If not, you’ll stay with Viktor and pretend this never happened.”
    “Why Moscow?”
    “Are you afraid to come to Moscow, Nicolai?”
    “Of course not.”
    “You shouldn’t be. Pavel will take very good care of you.”
    The words were the last spoken by either man. After that, a door slammed, a car engine turned over, and the blue light began to move across the screen of the tablet computer. As it approached the coordinates of the café, Gabriel turned his head and saw the big black Mercedes blow past in a cloud of swirling snow. Mikhail had survived reentry. All they had to do now was pluck him from the sea and bring him home.
    T he return trip to Copenhagen lasted forty-five minutes and was so uneventful it bordered on tedium. Gabriel allowed Keller to handle the driving so he could focus all his considerable powers of concentration on the audio feed streaming live into his ear. There was no sound other than the velvety rumble of a Mercedes engine and a monotonous tapping. At first, Gabriel assumed there was something loose beneath the car. Then he realized it was Mikhail drumming his fingers on the armrest, something he always did when he was on edge.
    When he emerged from the car at the Hotel d’Angleterre, however, Mikhail looked like a man without a care in the world. Entering the lobby, he found the Brazilians drinking in the bar and decided to join them for a much-deserved nightcap. Afterward, he headed up to his room, which bore no trace of the highly professional search that had taken place in his absence. Even his laptop computer, which had been subjected to a digital ransacking, was precisely as he had left it. He used it to dash off a priority flash alert to the team, a printout of which Eli Lavon was holding in his hand as Gabriel and Keller returned to the safe flat on the street with an unpronounceable name.
    “You did it, Gabriel,” Lavon was saying. “You’ve got him.”
    “Who?” asked Gabriel.
    “Paul,” replied Lavon, smiling. “Pavel Zhirov of Volgatek Oil and Gas is Paul .”
    T he quarrel that came next was among the worst in the team’s long history together, yet it was conducted so quietly that Keller scarcely knew it was taking place at all. Uncharacteristically, they split roughly in two, with Yaakov assuming control of the rebel faction. His case was simple and passionately argued. They had undertaken the operation for one reason: to find proof that the Russians had carried out the kidnapping of Madeline Hart as part of a conspiracy to gain access to British oil. Now that proof was sitting in his room at the Imperial Hotel in the form of Pavel Zhirov, Volgatek’s chief of security and a Moscow Center thug if ever there was one. They had no choice but to move against him immediately, Yaakov argued. Otherwise, Zhirov would slip beyond their reach forever.
    Unfortunately for Yaakov, the leader of the opposing faction was none other than his future chief, Gabriel Allon, who calmly explained all the reasons why Pavel Zhirov would be leaving Copenhagen in the morning as scheduled. They had no time to plan or rehearse the operation properly, he said. Nor would they be presented with an opportunity to get Zhirov cleanly that matched any existing Office criteria. Crash operations were always risky, said Gabriel. And a crash operation without a plan was a recipe for a disaster the Office could not afford at this time. Pavel Zhirov would be allowed to walk. And, if necessary, the Office would carry his bags for him.
    And so it was that, at ten the following morning, Pavel Zhirov, aka Paul, strode from the doorway of the Imperial Hotel, accompanied by Gennady Lazarev and Dmitry Bershov. Together they rode to the Copenhagen airport in a chauffeured limousine and boarded a private plane bound for Moscow. Yossi snapped one final departure photo for a newsletter that did not exist and then boarded a flight for London. By that evening he and the other members of the team were once again gathered around Gabriel in the Grayswood safe house. Nicolai Avdonin was going to the city of heretics for a job interview, he said. And the team was going with him.

46
    GRAYSWOOD, SURREY
    T he summons arrived via the secure link late the following afternoon. Gabriel considered ignoring it, but the message made it clear that a failure to appear would result in the immediate revocation