THE IMAGE dissolved into a blizzard of gray and white. Graham Seymour pressed the STOP button.

“As you can see, Grigori willingly got into that car. No hesitation. No sign of distress or fear.”

“He’s a pro, Graham. He was trained never to show fear, even if he was frightened half to death.”

“He was definitely a pro. He fooled us all. He even managed to fool you, Gabriel. And from what I hear, you’ve got quite an eye for forgeries.”

Gabriel refused to rise to the bait. “Were you able to trace the car’s movements with CCTV?”

“It turned left into Edgware Road, then made a right at St. John’s Wood Road. Eventually, it entered an underground parking garage in Primrose Hill, where it remained for fifty-seven minutes. When it reemerged, the passenger compartment appeared to be empty.”

“No cameras in the garage?”

Seymour shook his head.

“Any other vehicles leave before the Mercedes?”

“Four sedans and a single Ford Transit van. The sedans all checked out. The van had the markings of a carpet-cleaning service based in Battersea. The owner said he had no jobs in the area that evening. Furthermore, the registration number didn’t match any of those leased by his firm.”

“So Grigori left in the back of the Ford?”

“That’s our working assumption. After leaving the garage, it headed northeast to Brentwood, a suburb just outside the M25. At which point, it slipped out of CCTV range and disappeared from sight.”

“What about the Mercedes?”

“Southeast. We lost sight of it near Shooter’s Hill. The next day a burned-out car was discovered along the Thames Estuary east of Gravesend. Whoever set it afire hadn’t bothered to remove the serial numbers. They matched the numbers of a car purchased two weeks ago by someone with a Russian name and a vague address. Needless to say, all attempts to locate this person have proven fruitless.”

“The door of that car was clearly opened from the inside. It looked to me as if there was at least one person in the back.”

“Actually, there were two.”

Seymour produced an eight-by-ten close-up of the car. Though grainy and heavily shadowed, it showed two figures in the backseat. Gabriel was most intrigued by the one nearest the driver’s-side window. It was a woman.

“I don’t suppose you were able to get a picture of them before they got into the car?”

“Unfortunately not. The Russians deliberately ran it through a gap in the cameras a couple of miles from Heathrow Airport. We never saw anyone enter or leave it. They appeared to vanish into thin air, just like Grigori.”

Gabriel stared at the image a moment longer. “It’s a lot of preparation for something that could have been handled far more simply. If Grigori was planning to redefect, why not slip him a passport, an airline ticket, and a change of appearance? He could have left London in the morning and been back home in time for his borscht and chicken Kiev.”

Seymour had an answer ready. “The Russians would assume we had Grigori under watch. From their point of view, they had to create a scenario that would look completely innocent to the CCTV cameras.” Seymour raised a long pale hand toward the now-blank screen. “You saw it yourself, Gabriel. He was clearly checking for watchers. When he was certain we weren’t following him, he sent a signal of some sort. Then his old comrades scooped him up.”

“ Moscow Rules?”

“Exactly.”

“I assume you checked Grigori’s route for chalk marks, tape marks, or other signs of impersonal communication.”

“We did.”

“And?”

“Nothing. But as a professional field operative, you know there are any number of ways of sending a signal. Hat, no hat. Cigarette, no cigarette. Wristwatch on the left hand, wristwatch on the right.”

“Grigori was right-handed. And he was wearing his watch, as usual, on his left wrist. Also, it was a different watch than the one he was wearing in Russia last autumn.”

“You do have a keen eye.”

“I do. And when I look at those CCTV images, I see something different. I see a man who’s frightened of something and trying damn hard not to show it. Something made Grigori stop suddenly in his tracks. And something made him get inside that car. It wasn’t a redefection, Graham. It was an abduction. The Russians stole him right from under your nose.”

“Thames House doesn’t see it that way. Neither do our colleagues on the other bank of the river. As for Downing Street and the Foreign Office, they’re inclined to accept our findings. The prime minister is in no mood for another high-stakes confrontation with the Russians. Not after the Litvinenko affair. And not with a G-8 summit just around the corner.”

Confronted by the global financial meltdown, the leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations had just agreed to hold emergency talks in February to coordinate their fiscal and monetary stimulus policies. Much to the consternation of the many bureaucrats and reporters who would also be in attendance, the summit would take place in Moscow. Gabriel was not concerned about the pending G-8 summit. He was thinking of Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB man who was poisoned with a dose of radioactive polonium-210.

“Your conduct after Litvinenko’s murder probably convinced the Russians they could pull a stunt like this and get away with it. After all, the Russians carried out what amounted to an act of nuclear terrorism in the heart of London, and you responded with a diplomatic slap on the wrist.”

Seymour placed a finger thoughtfully against his lips. “That’s an interesting theory. But I’m afraid our response to Litvinenko’s murder, however feeble in your opinion, had no bearing on Grigori’s case.”

Gabriel knew that to belabor the point was futile. Graham Seymour was a trusted counterpart and occasional ally, but his first allegiance would always be to his service and his country. The same was true for Gabriel. Such were the rules of the game.

“Do I have to remind you that Grigori helped you and the Americans track down Ivan’s missiles? If it weren’t for him, several commercial airliners might have been blown out of the sky on a single day.”

“Actually, all the information we needed was contained in the records you and Elena stole from Ivan’s office. In fact, the prime minister had to be talked into giving Grigori asylum and a British passport. London is already home to several prominent Russian dissidents, including a handful of billionaires who ran afoul of the regime. He was reluctant to stick another finger in Moscow ’s eye.”

“What changed his mind?”

“We told him it was the proper thing to do. After all, the Americans had agreed to take Elena and her children. We felt we had to do our bit. Grigori promised to be a good boy and to keep his head down. Which he did.” Seymour paused, then added, “For a while.”

“Until he became a celebrity defector and dissident.”

Seymour nodded his head in agreement.

“You should have locked him away in a little cottage in the countryside somewhere and thrown away the key.”

“Grigori insisted on London. The Russians love London.”

“So this worked out rather nicely for you. You never wanted Grigori, and now the Russians have been kind enough to take him off your hands.”

“We don’t see it that way.”

“How do you see it?”

Seymour made a show of deliberation. “As you might expect, Grigori’s motivations are now the subject of rather intense debate. As you also might expect, opinion is divided. There are those who believe he was bad from the start. There are others who think he simply had a change of heart.”

“A change of heart?”

“Rather like that Yurchenko chap who came over to the Americans back in the eighties. You remember Vitaly Yurchenko? A few months after he defected, he was dining at a dreadful little French restaurant in Georgetown when he told his CIA minder that he was going out for a walk. He never came back.”