“Grigori was homesick?” Gabriel shook his head. “He couldn’t get out of Russia fast enough. There’s no way he would willingly go back.”

“His own words would suggest otherwise.” Seymour removed a plain buff envelope from the attaché and held it aloft between two fingers. “You might want to listen to this before attaching your star to a man like Grigori. He’s not exactly the marrying kind.”

THE LETTER was dated January the twelfth and addressed to the cover name of Grigori’s MI5 minder. The text was brief, five sentences in length, and written in English, which Grigori spoke quite well-well enough, Gabriel recalled, to conduct a rather terrifying interrogation in the cellars of Lubyanka. Graham Seymour read the letter aloud. Then he handed it to Gabriel, who read it silently.

Sorry I didn’t tell you about my plans to return home, Monty, but I’m sure you can understand why I kept them to myself. I hope my actions don’t leave a permanent stain on your record. You are far too decent to be working in a business like this. I enjoyed our time together, especially the chess. You almost made London bearable.

Regards, G

“It was mailed from Zurich to an MI5 postbox in Camden Town. That address was known to only a handful of senior people, Grigori’s minder, and Grigori himself. Shall I go on?”

“Please do.”

“Our experts have linked the original A4 stationery to a German paper company based in Hamburg. Oddly enough, the envelope was manufactured by the same company but was of a slightly different style. Our experts have also conclusively attributed the handwriting, along with several latent fingerprints found on the surface of the paper, to Grigori Bulganov.”

“Handwriting can be forged, Graham. Just like paintings.”

“What about the fingerprints?”

Gabriel lifted Seymour ’s hand by the wrist and placed it against the paper. “We’re talking about Russians, Graham. They don’t play by Marquis of Queensberry rules.”

Seymour freed his hand from Gabriel’s grasp. “It’s clear from the letter that Grigori was cooperating. It was addressed to the correct cover name of his minder and mailed to the proper address.”

“Perhaps they tortured him. Or perhaps torture wasn’t necessary because Grigori knew full well what would happen if he didn’t cooperate. He was one of them, Graham. He knew their methods. He used them from time to time. I should know. I saw him in his element.”

“If Grigori was kidnapped, why bother with the charade of a letter?”

“The Russians committed a serious crime on your soil. It’s only natural they might try to cover their tracks with a stunt like this. No kidnapping, no crime.”

Seymour regarded Gabriel with his granite-colored eyes. Like his handshake, they were an unfair weapon. “Two men stand before an abstract painting. One sees clouds over a wheat field, the other sees a pair of blue whales mating. Who’s correct? Does it matter? Do you see my point, Gabriel?”

“I’m trying very hard, Graham.”

“Your defector is gone. And nothing we say now is going to change that.”

“My defector?”

“You brought him here.”

“And you agreed to protect him. Downing Street should have lodged an official protest with the Russian ambassador an hour after Grigori missed his first check-in.”

“An official protest?” Seymour shook his head slowly. “Perhaps you’re not aware of the fact that the United Kingdom has more money invested in Russia than any other Western country. The prime minister has no intention of endangering those investments by starting another blazing row with the Kremlin.”

“ ‘ When we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope.’ ”

“Stalin, right? And the old boy had a point. Capitalism is the West’s greatest strength, and its greatest weakness.”

Gabriel placed the letter on the table and changed the subject. “As I recall, Grigori was working on a book.”

Seymour handed Gabriel a stack of paper. It was approximately one inch thick and bound by a pair of black metal clasps. Gabriel looked at the first page: KILLER IN THE KREMLIN BY GRIGORI BULGANOV.

“I thought it was rather catchy,” Seymour said.

“I doubt the Russians would agree. I assume you’ve read it?”

Seymour nodded his head. “He’s rather hard on the Kremlin and not terribly kind to his old service. He accuses the FSB of all manner of sins, including murder, extortion, and links to organized crime and the oligarchs. He also makes a very persuasive case that the FSB was involved in those apartment-house bombings in Moscow, the ones the Russian president used as justification for sending the Red Army back into Chechnya. Grigori claims he personally knew the officers involved in the operation and identifies two by name.”

“Any mention of me?”

“There is a chapter in the book about the Kharkov affair, but it’s not terribly accurate. As far as Grigori is concerned, he was the one who single-handedly tracked down the missiles Ivan sold to al-Qaeda. There’s no mention of you or any Israeli connection in the manuscript.”

“What about his handwritten notes or computer files?”

“We searched them all. As far as Grigori was concerned, you do not exist.”

Gabriel leafed through the pages of the manuscript. On the sixth page was a margin note, written in English. He read it, then looked at Seymour for an explanation.

“It’s from Grigori’s editor at Buckley and Hobbes. I suppose, at some point, we’re going to have to tell them that they’re not going to get a book anytime soon.”

“You read her notes.”

“We read everything.”

Gabriel turned several more pages, then stopped again to examine another margin note. Unlike the first, it was written in Russian. “It must have been written by Grigori,” Seymour said.

“It doesn’t match the handwriting in the letter.”

“The letter was written in Roman. The note is Cyrillic.”

“Trust me, Graham. They weren’t written by the same person.”

Gabriel leafed quickly through the remaining pages and found several more notations written by the same hand. When he looked up again, Seymour was removing the disk from the DVD player. He returned it to the clear plastic case and handed it to Gabriel. The message was clear. The briefing was over. If there was any doubt about Seymour ’s intent, it was put to rest by a ponderous examination of his wristwatch. Gabriel made one final request. He wanted to see the rest of the house. Seymour rose slowly to his feet. “But we’re not going to be pulling up any floorboards or peeling back the wallpaper,” he said. “I have a dinner date. And I’m already ten minutes late.”

GABRIEL FOLLOWED Seymour up two flights of narrow stairs to the bedroom. On the night table to the right of the double bed was an ashtray filled with crushed cigarettes. They were all the same brand: Sobranie White Russians, the kind Gri- gori had smoked during Gabriel’s interrogation at Lubyanka and during their escape from Russia. Piled beneath the brass reading lamp were several books: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Agatha Christie, P. D. James. “He loved English murder mysteries,” Seymour said. “He thought that reading P. D. James would help him become more like us, though why anyone would want to become more like us is beyond me.”

At the foot of the bed was a white box printed with the logo of a dry-cleaning and laundry service located in Elgin Avenue. Lifting the lid, Gabriel saw a half dozen shirts, neatly pressed and folded and wrapped in tissue paper. Resting atop the shirts was a cash register receipt. The date on the receipt matched the date of Grigori’s disappearance. The time of the transaction was recorded as 3:42 p.m.