The English Girl: A Novel

concealed the horrors of its past more beautifully than St. Petersburg.
    Near the end of the prospekt was its only eyesore—the old Aeroflot building, a hideous flint-gray monstrosity inspired by the Doge’s Palace in Venice, with a dash of Florentine Medici thrown in for good measure. Gabriel turned into Bolshaya Morskaya Street and followed it through the Triumphal Arch, into Palace Square. As he neared the Alexander Column, Lavon drew alongside him to say that he was not being followed. Gabriel glanced at his wristwatch, which seemed frozen to his arm. It was twenty minutes past two. It happens the same time every day , Zhirov had said. They all go a little crazy when they come home after a long time in the cold .
    Adjacent to Palace Square was a small park, green in summer, now bone-white with snow. Lavon waited there on an icy bench while Gabriel walked alone to the Palace Embankment. The Neva had been stilled by ice. He glanced at his watch one final time. Then he stood alone at the barrier, as motionless as the mighty river, and waited for a girl he did not know.
    H e saw her at five minutes to three, coming across the Palace Bridge. She wore a heavy coat and boots that rose nearly to her knees. A wool hat covered her pale hair. A scarf concealed the lower half of her face. Even so, Gabriel knew instantly it was her. The eyes betrayed her—the eyes and the contour of her cheekbones. It was as if Vermeer’s girl with a pearl earring had been freed from her canvas prison and was now walking along a riverbank in St. Petersburg.
    She passed him as if he were invisible and made her way toward the Hermitage. Gabriel waited to see whether she was under surveillance before following, and by the time he entered the museum she was already gone. It didn’t matter; he knew where she was going. Same painting every time , Zhirov had said. No one can figure out why .
    He purchased an admission ticket and walked along the endless corridors and loggias to Room 67, the Monet Room. And there she sat alone, staring at The Pond at Montgeron . When Gabriel sat down next to her, she glanced at him only briefly before resuming her study of the painting. His disguise was better than hers. He meant nothing to her. He supposed he never had.
    When another minute passed and he had yet to move, she turned and looked at him a second time. That was when she noticed the copy of A Room with a View balanced upon his knee. “I believe this belongs to you,” he said. Then he placed the book carefully into her trembling hand.

54
    LUBYANKA SQUARE, MOSCOW
    O n the fourth floor of FSB Headquarters is a suite of rooms occupied by the organization’s smallest and most secretive unit. Known as the Department of Coordination, it handles only cases of extreme political sensitivity, usually at the behest of the Russian president himself. At that moment its longtime chief, Colonel Leonid Milchenko, was seated at his large Finnish-made desk, a telephone to his ear, his eyes on Lubyanka Square. Vadim Strelkin, his number two, was standing anxiously in the door. He could tell by the way Milchenko slammed down the phone it was going to be a long night.
    “Who was it?” Strelkin asked.
    Milchenko delivered his response to the window.
    “Shit,” replied Strelkin.
    “Not shit, Vadim. Oil.”
    “What did he want?”
    “He’d like a word in private.”
    “Where?”
    “His office.”
    “When?”
    “Five minutes ago.”
    “What do you think it is?”
    “It could be anything,” Milchenko said. “But if Volgatek is involved, it can’t be good.”
    “I’ll get the car then.”
    “Good idea, Vadim.”
    I t took longer to haul the car from the bowels of Lubyanka than it did to make the short drive over to Volgatek headquarters on Tverskaya Street. Dmitry Bershov, the firm’s second-ranking officer, was waiting tensely in the lobby as Milchenko and Strelkin entered—another bad sign. He said nothing as he led the two FSB men into an executive elevator and pressed a button that shot them directly into an office on the building’s top floor. The office was the biggest Milchenko had ever seen in Moscow. In fact, it took a few seconds for him to spot Gennady Lazarev seated at one end of a long executive couch. Milchenko chose to remain on his feet while the Volgatek CEO explained that Pavel Zhirov, his chief of security, had not been seen or heard from since eleven the previous evening. Milchenko knew the name; he and Zhirov had been