The Mark of the Assassin

and
    the A429. He pulled into a car park outside a row of shops and climbed
    out. The Ford parked fifty meters away. The card was next to a butcher.
    Dead pheasant hung in the doorway. Michael thought of Sarah, sitting
    across from him with a plate of rice and beans and yellow squash,
    glaring at him as he pulled meat from the bones of a roasted Cotswolds
    pheasant. He went inside the cafe, ordered coffee and pastry from the
    plump girl behind the counter, and sat down. Michael recognized Ivan
    Drozdov from Agency photographs. He was bald except for a gray monkish
    fringe, his tall frame bent over a stack of morning newspapers. Gold
    reading glasses rested on the end of his regal nose, gray eyes squinted
    against the smoke of a cigarette poking from thin lips. He wore a gray
    rollneck sweater and a green field jacket with a corduroy collar. A pair
    of matching corgis groomed themselves next to Wellington boots caked
    with fresh mud. Michael carried his food to the table next to him and
    sat down. Drozdov looked up briefly, smiled, and returned to his
    newspapers. Several minutes passed this way, Michael drinking tea,
    Drozdov reading The Times and smoking. Finally, without looking up,
    Drozdov said, "Are you ever going to speak, or are you just going to sit
    there and annoy my dogs?"
    Michael, surprised, said, "My name is Carl Blackburn, and I was
    wondering if I might have a word with you."
    "Actually, your name is Michael Osbourne. You work for the CIA's
    Counterterrorism Center in Langley, Virginia. You used to be a field
    agent, until your lover was murdered in London and the Agency brought
    you inside."
    Drozdov carefully folded the newspaper and fed pieces of cake to the
    dogs. "Now, if you'd like to talk about something, perhaps we could take
    a walk," he said. "But don't lie to me ever again. It's insulting, and I
    don't take well to insults."
    "DO YOU REALIZE you're under surveillance, Mr. Osbourne?"
    They were walking along a one-lane track toward the village of Aston
    Magna, where Drozdov had taken up residence when the Soviet Union
    crumbled and the threat of assassination from his old KGB masters
    vanished. He was taller than Michael by a narrow head, and like many
    large men he stooped slightly to shrink himself. He walked slowly, hands
    clasped behind his back, head down as if looking for a lost valuable.
    The dogs walked a few meters ahead, like countersurveillance. Michael,
    by nature a fast walker, struggled to keep pace with Drozdov's loping
    disjointed gait. He wondered how the old man had spotted the
    surveillance, for Michael had never seen him look for it. "Two men,"
    Drozdov said. "White Ford van."
    "I spotted them on the M-Forty, a few miles outside London."
    "Does anyone know you were coming to see me?"
    "No," Michael lied. "I'm not here as a representative of the CIA, and I
    didn't request permission from the British. It's strictly a personal
    matter."
    "You've placed yourself in a rather difficult position, Mr. Osbourne. If
    you do something I don't care for, all I need do is pick up the
    telephone and ring my handler at MI-Six, and you'll be in a good deal of
    trouble."
    "I know. Obviously, as a professional courtesy, I ask that you not do
    so."
    "It must be rather important."
    "It is."
    "I suspect those men in the white van have a long-range microphone.
    Perhaps we should walk someplace they can't follow."
    They turned onto a footpath bordering a field of dead winter grass. In
    the distance, hills rose into low cloud. A gang of sheep bleated at them
    along the fence line. Drozdov scratched the thick wool of their heads as
    they passed. The path was muddy with the night's rain, and after a few
    paces Michael's suede Italian loafers were ruined. He turned around and
    looked back. The van was heading back toward Moreton. "I think we can
    speak now, Mr. Osbourne. Your friends seem to have given up the chase."
    For ten minutes Michael did all the talking. He ran through the list of
    assassinations and terrorist attacks. The Spanish minister in Madrid.
    The French police official in Paris. The BMW executive in Frankfurt. The
    PLO official in Tunis. The Israeli businessman in London. Drozdov
    listened intently, sometimes nodding, sometimes grunting quietly. The
    dogs tore across the meadow and scattered pheasant. "And what is it you
    want to know exactly?" Drozdov asked, when Michael had finished. "I want
    to know whether the KGB carried out those hits."
    Drozdov whistled for his dogs. "You're