The English Spy (25 page)

I
’
M SORRY
,”
SAID
L
ARS
M
ORTENSEN
, “but I didn’t catch your name.”

“Merchant,” replied Christopher Keller.

“Israeli, are you?”

“Afraid so.”

“And the accent?”

“Born in London.”

“I see.”

Mortensen was the chief of the PET, Denmark’s small but efficient internal security and intelligence service. Officially, it was a branch of the Danish national police and operated under the authority of the Ministry of Justice. Its headquarters was located in an anonymous office north of the Tivoli Gardens. Mortensen’s office was on the top floor. Its furnishings were solid, pale, and Danish. So was Mortensen.

“As you might expect,” Mortensen was saying, “Allon’s death came as a terrible shock to me. I considered him a friend. We worked together on a case a few years back. Things went bad in a house up north. I took care of it for him.”

“I remember.”

“You worked on that case, too?”

“No.”

Mortensen tapped the tip of a silver pen against the contents of an open file. “Allon struck me as the sort of man who would be difficult to kill. It’s hard to imagine he’s really gone.”

“We feel the same way.”

“And this request of yours—it has something to do with Allon’s death?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“And I’d rather not be having this meeting,” Mortensen said coolly. “But when a friend requests a favor, I try to be accommodating.”

“Our service has experienced a terrible loss,” said Keller after a moment. “As you can imagine, we’re focused on nothing else.”

It was thin gruel, but good enough for the Danish secret policeman. “What will we be looking for in the video?”

“Two men.”

“Where did they meet?”

“A restaurant called Ved Kajen.”

“In the New Harbor?”

Keller nodded. Mortensen asked for the date and the time. Keller supplied both.

“And the two men?” asked Mortensen.

Keller handed over a photograph.

“Who is he?”

“Reza Nazari.”

“Iranian?”

Keller nodded.

“VEVAK?”

“Absolutely.”

“And the other man?”

“He’s an SVR hood named Alexei Rozanov.”

“Do you have a photograph?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Mortensen laid the photograph of the Iranian thoughtfully on his desktop. “We are a small country,” he said after a moment. “A peaceful country, except for a few thousand hotheaded Muslim fanatics. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I believe I do.”

“I don’t want any trouble with the Persian Empire. Or the Russians, for that matter.”

“Not to worry, Lars.”

Mortensen glanced at his watch. “This might take a few hours. Where are you staying?”

“The d’Angleterre.”

“What’s the best way to reach you?”

“Hotel phone.”

“What’s the name?”

“LeBlanc.”

“I thought you said your name was Merchant.”

“I did.”

Keller left the PET’s headquarters on foot and walked as far as the Tivoli Gardens—far enough to confirm that Mortensen had assigned two teams of watchers to follow him. The skies above Copenhagen
were the color of granite, and a few gritty flakes of snow were swirling in the light of the streetlamps. Keller crossed the Rådhuspladsen and loitered in the Strøget, Copenhagen’s main pedestrian shopping street, before returning to the stately Hotel d’Angleterre. Upstairs in his room, he killed an hour watching the news. Then he rang the hotel operator and in French-accented English told her he was heading down to the Balthazar champagne bar for a drink. He spent another hour at a corner table nursing a glass of brut alone. It was, he thought glumly, a glimpse of the life that awaited him at MI6. The great Gabriel Allon, may he rest in peace, had once described the life of a professional spy as one of constant travel and mind-numbing boredom broken by interludes of sheer terror.

Finally, a few minutes after seven, a waitress wandered over and informed Keller that he had a call. He took it on a house phone in the lobby. It was Lars Mortensen.

“I think we might have found the picture you’re looking for,” he said. “There’s a car waiting outside.”

It wasn’t hard to spot the PET sedan. It was occupied by two of the same men who had followed him earlier. They ferried him across the city and deposited him in a room at PET headquarters equipped with a large video screen. On it was a still image of a Persian-looking man crossing a narrow cobbled street. The date and time code matched the information the Iranian had supplied during his interrogation outside Vienna.

“Nazari?” asked Lars Mortensen.

When Keller nodded, Mortensen tapped a few keys on an open laptop and a new image appeared on the screen. A tall man, wide cheekbones, fair hair thinning on top. A Moscow Center hood, if ever there was one.

“Is that the man you’re looking for?”

“I’d say he’s the one.”

“I’ve got a few more pictures and a bit of video, but that’s definitely
the best.” Mortensen ejected a disk from the computer, placed it in a case, and held it up for Keller to see. “Compliments of the Danish people,” he said. “No charge.”

“Were you able to find anything on their travel?”

“The Iranian left Copenhagen the next morning on a flight to Frankfurt. He was scheduled to fly on to Tehran.”

“And the Russian?”

“We’re still working on that.” Mortensen handed Keller the disk. “By the way, the bill for dinner was more than four hundred euros. The Russian paid in cash.”

“It was a special occasion.”

“What were they celebrating?”

Keller slipped the disk into his coat pocket.

“I see,” said Mortensen.

The next morning Christopher Keller flew to London. He was met at Heathrow Airport by an MI6 reception team and driven at an unusually high rate of speed to a safe house on Bishop’s Road in Fulham. Graham Seymour was seated at the linoleum table in the kitchen, his Chesterfield coat tossed over the back of a chair. With a movement of his eyes, he instructed Keller to sit. Then he pushed a single sheet of paper across the tabletop and laid a silver pen upon it.

“Sign it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s for your new phone. If you’re working for us, you can’t use your old one any longer.”

Keller picked up the document. “Minutes? Data plan? That sort of thing?”

“Just sign it.”

“What name should I use?”

“Your given name.”

“When do I get my new name?”

“We’re working on that.”

“Do I get a say?”

“No.”

“Hardly seems fair.”

“Our parents don’t allow us to choose our names, and neither does MI6.”

“If you try to name me Francis, I’m going back to Corsica.”

Keller scribbled something illegible on the signature line of the document. Seymour handed him a new BlackBerry and recited an eight-digit number for the MI6 encryption.

“Recite the number back to me,” he said.

Keller did.

“Whatever you do,” said Seymour, “don’t write it down.”

“Why would I do something as foolish as that?”

Seymour placed another document in front of Keller. “This one allows you to handle MI6 documents. You’re a member of the club now, Christopher. You’re one of us.”

Keller’s pen hovered over the page.

“Something wrong?” asked Seymour.

“I’m just wondering whether you really want me to sign this.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because if I get a shot at Eamon Quinn—”

“Then I expect you to take it.” Seymour paused, then added, “Just like when you were in Ulster.”

Keller signed the document. Seymour handed him a flash drive.

“What’s this?”

“Alexei Rozanov.”

“Funny,” said Keller, “but he looked taller in the photos.”

Keller returned to Heathrow in time to make the early-afternoon British Airways flight to Vienna. He arrived a few minutes after four and took a taxi to an address just beyond the Ringstrasse. It was a fine old Biedermeier apartment building, with a coffeehouse at street level. Keller thumbed the bell push, was admitted into the foyer, and found his way to the flat on the third floor. The door hung slightly ajar. A dead man waited anxiously inside.

T
HE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM
C
OPENHAGEN
proved that Reza Nazari had met with a Russian-looking man at the time and place specified during his interrogation. And the file from MI6 proved the Russian-looking man was indeed Alexei Rozanov. He had worked in London under diplomatic cover in the 1990s. Both MI5 and MI6 knew him well.

“His full name is Alexei Antonovich.” Keller inserted the flash drive into Gabriel’s laptop, typed in the encryption password, and opened the file. “He ran a string of mid-level SVR assets at embassies all over town. Made a run at a couple of MI5 officers, too. Frankly, MI5 never thought much of him. Neither did MI6. But when Alexei returned to Moscow Center, his star was suddenly in ascent.”

“Do we know why?”

“It probably had something to do with his friendship with the
Russian president. Alexei is part of the tsar’s inner circle. A very big fish indeed.”

Gabriel scrolled through the MI6 file until he came to a photograph. It showed a man walking along a damp London street—Kensington High Street, according to the attached watch report. The subject had just left a luncheon meeting with a diplomat from the Canadian Embassy. The year was 1995. The Soviet Union was dead, the Cold War was over, and at Moscow Center nothing much had changed. The SVR regarded the United States, Great Britain, and the other members of the Western alliance as mortal enemies, and officers such as Alexei Antonovich Rozanov were ordered to spy the living daylights out of them. Gabriel compared the photograph to one of the shots from Copenhagen. The hairline was a bit higher, the face a bit fleshier and more decadent, but they were clearly the same man.

“The question is,” said Keller, “can we get him out in the open?”

“We don’t have to,” replied Gabriel. “Nazari is going to do it for us.”

“Another meeting?”

Gabriel nodded. Keller appeared dubious.

“Something wrong?”

“The negotiations between the United States and Iran are supposed to last another week.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel, tapping a copy of the
Times
of London. “I think I read something about that in the papers this morning.”

“And when the talks adjourn,” said Keller pointedly, “Reza will no doubt go back to Tehran.”

“Unless he has pressing business elsewhere.”

“A meeting with Alexei Rozanov?”

“Exactly.”

Just then, a message flashed on the computer screen. It stated that
the Iranian delegation had just returned to the InterContinental. Gabriel raised the volume and a moment later heard Reza Nazari prowling his hotel room.

“Doesn’t sound like a happy man to me,” said Keller.

Gabriel made no reply.

“There’s something else you haven’t considered,” Keller said after a moment. “There’s a good chance Alexei Rozanov won’t be interested in meeting with his co-conspirator.”

“Actually, I think Alexei is going to be relieved just to hear the sound of Reza’s voice.”

“How are you going to pull that off?”

Gabriel smiled and said, “
Taqiyya
.”

At half past seven the phone in Reza Nazari’s room bleated softly. He lifted the receiver to his ear, listened to the instructions, and rang off without a word. His overcoat lay on the floor where he had let it fall earlier that evening. He pulled it on and rode an empty elevator down to the lobby. An Iranian security man nodded as Nazari passed. He didn’t ask why the senior VEVAK man was leaving the hotel alone. He didn’t dare.

Nazari crossed the street and entered the Stadtpark. As he walked along the banks of the Vienna River, he realized he was being followed. It was the small one, the one with a forgettable face who dressed like a pile of dirty laundry. The car was waiting in the same place, at the eastern edge of the park. The Israeli whom Nazari knew as Mr. Taylor was seated in back. As usual, he did not look pleased. He searched Nazari thoroughly and then nodded into the rearview mirror. The same one was behind the wheel, the one with bloodless
skin and eyes like ice. He eased into the evening traffic and smoothly brought the car up to speed.

“Where are we going?” Nazari asked as Vienna slid gracefully past his window.

“The boss would like a word in private.”

“About what?”

“Your future.”

“I didn’t realize I had one.”

“A very bright one, if you do as you’re told.”

“I can’t be late.”

“Don’t worry, Reza. No pumpkins.”