—
Vladimir Krazovsky was parked at the corner of Charles Street, at the wheel of a gray Golf belonging to his nominal employer, Petropavlovsk.
He was watching the entrance of Annabel’s and saw Lynn Marsh when she emerged. He’d been tailing her since she left her home. The orders had come from Moscow that morning: stick close to Dr. Marsh and make note of everyone she saw.
Krazovsky hadn’t been able to drive into Harrods Village, where she lived. It was a gated community with a guard, so he’d been forced to wait outside. When Lynn drove by in her gray Mercedes convertible, he waited a moment before following it down Trinity Church Road and then Castlenau, which was empty.
It was only after crossing the old Hammersmith Bridge that he encountered a little traffic. He watched as his “customer” entrusted her Mercedes to a bowler-hatted Lanesborough valet parker. He then quickly turned onto Grosvenor Crescent so he could circle around and park near the hotel entrance.
Krazovsky was surprised when Marsh promptly came back out, now accompanied by someone he had no trouble identifying: the man he had beaten in the Hôtel de Paris elevator on Alexei Khrenkov’s orders.
He followed their taxi to Annabel’s, and had been waiting nearby since. From time to time he drove around Berkeley Square, because police patrols were vigilant in these days of high terrorist alert. A car and driver that remained parked in the same place for too long looked suspicious and was likely to be checked.
He knew the couple was now heading to the Lanesborough, so Krazovsky let their taxi get some distance ahead of him. There, he watched as the young woman bid her date good night and retrieved her car. A less conscientious man wouldn’t have bothered following her on the highway back to Hammersmith, but Krazovsky had been properly trained.
—
Malko gazed thoughtfully as the taillights of Lynn’s Mercedes merged with the Brompton Road traffic. All in all, his evening had been well spent, even if it wasn’t personally rewarding. The young woman’s thoughts were elsewhere, and she hadn’t responded to his discreet flirtation.
There weren’t many dentists in London who could afford a Mercedes convertible. It represented thousands of mouths worked on. The existence of the luxury car was certainly a clue. It was a typical gift from a millionaire in love.
—
Once again, umbrellas were blooming in London. The weather had been terrible for the last two days. In a word, London-like.
Malko was feeling restless, especially since Alexandra was now growing unduly suspicious of his extended stay. Malko assured her that he was only waiting for the CIA’s green light to leave, which happened to be absolutely true.
Stepping out of the shower, he wondered what he was going to do with his day.
The ringing of his cell pulled him from his morose mood.
“Did I wake you?” It was Richard Spicer’s friendly voice.
“Almost.”
“Tough luck. I’m sending you a car around noon. We’re having lunch at the embassy.”
The torment will finally be over, Malko thought. He would be able to return to his castle and to Alexandra, whom he promptly called.
She was out in the vineyards, and the connection was poor.
“Are you coming back today?” she asked.
“I think so.”
“That’s good timing! The Von Thyssens have invited us to dinner.”
Gunther von Thyssen was another of Alexandra’s many admirers. As if she could read Malko’s thoughts, she proceeded smoothly:
“If you can’t make it back, I’ll go alone. I don’t want to disappoint Gunther.”
Bitch! Malko said to himself. Alexandra had a gift for perfectly maintaining the tension between them. She was well aware that knowing other men desired her turned Malko on.
“I’ll be there!” he assured her. “I’d like you to wear your Dior suit, the one with the skirt slit up the side.” “Your wish is my command!” she said sarcastically. “I’ll wear the suit, but you better get here, because a lot of men seem to like it.”
On that veiled threat, they hung up.
—
Having traveled by a secure and complicated route, an email had just reached Rem Tolkachev: an hour-by-hour account of the surveillance on Lynn Marsh.
What it told him was deeply troubling. Alexei Khrenkov’s mistress had seen the CIA agent again! True, it was only for a dinner, but why had she wanted to see him for a second time? There was still a small chance that it was just a social or a romantic impulse. After all, Marsh was a very attractive woman.
But the idea that a CIA agent should be getting close to his lastochkas nest made Tolkachev extremely nervous. He had to warn Khrenkov. Marsh knew nothing of Alexei’s role in the spy ring, so she may have sinned out of ignorance.
Still, Tolkachev had to be careful not to bring everything crashing down by acting hastily. The CIA would be keeping a close watch on a mission leader like Linge. If something happened to him, they would want to know why.
In his tiny handwriting, Tolkachev wrote a brief note to the Petropavlovsk branch in New York, where Khrenkov was.
The company, which exported crab and smoked fish, was an invaluable cover. Now run by the Kremlin, it was an old KGB shell company that had never been identified. Because it had branches in several major capitals, it was an unrivaled communication network.
—
Richard Spicer had dropped Malko off at the American embassy, which was as well guarded as Fort Knox. It was patrolled by officers of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, with weapons at the ready and radio links to an emergency center. In their dark body armor, the men looked like turtles.
Ushered into the CIA station chief’s office, Malko found an unknown man already there, sitting in an armchair and reading the Times. He was about fifty, wore glasses, and had a big leather briefcase at his feet. An anonymous bureaucrat type.
The man stood up when Malko came in, and Spicer introduced them.
“This is Irving Boyd. He flew in this morning from Washington. He didn’t get much sleep on the 777, so try not to rattle him.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Malko, shaking Boyd’s hand.
“Irving runs the Russia branch at the Directorate of Intelligence,” Spicer continued. “He came to London especially to meet you.”
“We’re very interested in what you’ve learned,” said Boyd, giving Malko a smile.
Malko, who realized he wouldn’t be accompanying Alexandra to the Von Thyssens’ that evening, said nothing.
A CIA counterintelligence chief flying across the Atlantic to meet him meant the Agency took Zhanna Khrenkov’s proposal very seriously.
Chapter 9
Engrossed by Malko’s account, the two Americans in the embassy dining room hadn’t touched their smoked salmon appetizer. The Marine waiter served them an excellent Pouilly Fumé, then left.
Malko sipped his wine after describing Zhanna Khrenkov’s offer in detail.
“As soon as I got Richard’s message I opened our file on the Khrenkovs,” said Irving Boyd. “The FBI provided the most useful material. They didn’t have much on Alexei, but a lot on Zhanna.
“She arrived in New York on an Aeroflot flight on March 13, 1991. She first lived in Coney Island with a Ukrainian woman. Worked as a live-in nanny for a few families, and eventually for a couple named Bartok, who had two children, on the Upper East Side. After she had been with them a year, John Bartok divorced his wife. He married Zhanna six months later.” Boyd paused. “To judge by the photos, she was a very good-looking blonde.”
“A pretty typical story,” said Malko.
“The FBI investigated her, of course, but didn’t turn up anything,” continued Boyd. “Then there’s a gap in her bio. Next she appears in Moscow in 1993, traveling on an American passport in the name of Bartok, though she’d gotten divorced six months earlier. She had enough alimony to live on for five years.”
“Do we know why she got divorced?” asked Malko
.
“Not really. We checked the Brooklyn court records, and they mention irreconcilable differences. It went through pretty fast; not much to get excited about.”
Falling silent, the three men turned their attention to the smoked salmon. When their plates were empty, Boyd continued his account.
“Zhanna renewed her American passport in 1995 at our Moscow consulate. That’s about the time she met Alexei Khrenkov, who was working at Inkombank.
“For the 1995 to 2000 period, the Moscow station only has the Russian files, and they’re pretty slim. I suspect the Khrenkovs were being left alone. Zhanna wasn’t working. Probably living on the money Alexei was skimming from Inkombank.
“She traveled regularly to New York. With her American passport, that was no problem. She bought a brownstone on East Eighty-Third Street. She also got involved in cultural affairs, sponsoring an exhibit of Russian art at the Guggenheim Museum, which got her noticed, of course.”
“Who paid for that?” asked Malko as the waiter cleared the table.
“Zhanna. She also brought a Russian philharmonic orchestra to the city. Meanwhile she continued to travel between Moscow and New York.”
The waiter brought the men slabs of roast beef so succulent you could grab and tear them to pieces with your bare hands.
“What about Alexei during this time?” asked Malko.
Boyd waited for the waiter to leave before answering.
“We don’t know a whole lot about him. Before you brought him to our attention he didn’t appear in any Agency files.”
“Anybody else’s?”
“The FBI told us what they had: practically nothing,” said Boyd. “Two years ago he and Zhanna paid eleven million dollars for the place on Eighty-Third Street. The money came from a Cayman Islands account. The FBI saw Khrenkov as a minor oligarch, a Russian businessman who’d gotten rich. And of course nobody’s gotten rich honestly there for the last twenty years.
“When Khrenkov left Russia for good in 2008, we didn’t know anything about him. The Moscow station alerted us to his financial exploits.”
“How much did he steal?”
“The Russians put it in the billions, but we think it’s less than that: about seven hundred million dollars. At least that’s what some banker friends in Moscow say.”
“But if Khrenkov was considered a crook, how was he able to enter the United States?” asked Malko.
“Good question,” said Boyd, pausing to finish the last of his roast beef. “The Russian authorities didn’t issue an international arrest warrant against him, for some reason. So he isn’t wanted by Interpol, and outside of Russia he’s presumed innocent. The Russians have never asked us any questions about him.
“Besides, as the husband of an American citizen, we couldn’t bar him entry to the United States. The FBI knows about his activities from their Moscow office, of course. They sent his file to Immigration with a strong recommendation not to issue him an American passport. For now, he’s using his Russian one. It’s still valid, and Moscow hasn’t canceled it.”
A hush fell on the group. The story had so many strange twists and turns, they realized the Khrenkovs should have come to official notice a long time ago.
“So the Agency never took an interest in Alexei before you got my message?” asked Malko.
“Never,” said Boyd.
“He would be an ideal candidate to run a spy network,” said Malko. “The fact that he can’t go back to Russia on pain of arrest puts him above suspicion.”
“Of course.”
“I guess if Mikhail Khodorkovsky got out of Siberia and moved to the United States, no one would suspect him, either. His status as a fugitive would give him the perfect cover.”
“That assumes that some of Zhanna Khrenkov’s story is true,” Boyd pointed out a bit nervously.
“Look, Irving, if you doubted her story, you wouldn’t have crossed the Atlantic to come see me,” said Malko.
The hush descended again. People in counterintelligence were always so strange, both paranoid and naïve. Even though the Aldrich Ames case showed that the truth can be right under their noses.
Boyd was silent for a few moments, then looked over at Malko.
“Counterintelligence is my beat,” he said, “so I can’t dismiss the possibility of a spy ring operating in our country, even if I don’t believe it.”
Richard Spicer, who had been silent until then, spoke up.
“What do you make of it, Malko?”
He thought for a moment, then said:
“I know the Russians well enough to be cautious. Zhanna could certainly have cooked up this story to put something over on us. She sure hates Lynn Marsh, so that part of the story is credible.”
He described the evening he’d spent with Marsh the night before, then said:
“Zhanna seems to know a lot about the intelligence services, but that doesn’t mean anything. Right now, I couldn’t say whether a network exists or if she’s putting me on.”
A very long silence followed.
Malko turned to Boyd, and asked:
“Does the existence of a clandestine spy ring strike you as plausible?”
“It’s not impossible,” said Boyd cautiously. “The Russians used plenty of sleeper agents in the old days. They called them lastochkas, ‘swallows.’ We identified some of them, but not all.
“But with the improvement in our relations, the network theory seems less likely. President Obama would be furious if he discovered that such a spy ring existed, and it would have serious consequences.”
“Like what?” countered Malko. “Benjamin Netanyahu made him lose face over the settlements issue, and he didn’t do anything about it.”
Boyd looked down in embarrassment.
“So what do we do now?” asked Spicer after the waiter brought the men coffee.
“We have to determine if the network really exists,” said Boyd, reviving a bit.
Malko couldn’t help smiling.
“Of course, but how?”
The silence returned, thick as molasses. Then the counterintelligence chief spoke.
“We have to pretend to be interested in Zhanna Khrenkov’s proposal but make her prove she has something to peddle.”
“What kind of proof do you want?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “You know this affair better than I do.”
Malko rolled his eyes. Even if Zhanna gave him proof that the mysterious network existed, they still faced a major obstacle. Was the CIA really prepared to kill an innocent young woman to shut it down?
Malko doubted it.
In any case, the next step was up to him.
Boyd glanced at his watch.
“I have an appointment with MI5 at three. That’s the official reason for my trip. I’m heading back to Washington tonight. Richard will pass on whatever you find out. And if need be, I can send you my deputy. He knows Russia well and speaks the language.”
“Are you going to mention this business to MI5?” asked Malko.
Boyd nearly choked.
“Of course not. Not to anybody, not even our Moscow station. If the network exists, we’ll want to come down on it like a Predator drone. This calls for absolute secrecy. Aside from the three of us, nobody knows.”
Standing up, Boyd gave Malko a warm handshake but an apologetic smile.
“The Russians are pros, Malko. I can’t see them running a network with people who would betray them over something as trivial as a marital problem.”
Malko couldn’t help but smile.
“You don’t know what a jealous woman is like, Irving. She’ll destroy the world to get rid of her rival. On that point, I don’t doubt how much Zhanna hates Alexei’s girlfriend.”
The counterintelligence chief didn’t answer.
—
Entering the Dorchester, Malko passed a fat Arab woman in hijab who was struggling to squeeze through the revolving door with a half dozen enormous bags from Louis Vuitton, Dolce &
Gabbana, Hermès, and Valentino. Without the doorman’s help, she would never have managed.
Another fashion victim, Malko thought sadly.
Once in the lobby, which housed a tea shop and a bar, Malko turned right and walked to the elevators. He was going downstairs.
He came out on a hall with blue wallpaper and a sign that read “The Spa at the Dorchester” in silver letters.
A little farther, a staircase to the left led down to the spa proper, while a door opened to the fitness area. The stairs brought Malko to a small room with beige fabric on the walls and a big sofa. The hostess was a charming Asian woman, as slender as a reed.
“What can I do for you, sir?” she asked, a little surprised to see a man there.
Malko gave her a reassuring smile.
“I’d like to leave a message for one of your clients who is coming by today, Mrs. Zhanna Khrenkov.”
The young woman opened a register and glanced at it.
“Yes, she has an appointment at six o’clock.”
Malko took the envelope he’d prepared from his pocket.
“See that she gets this, please.”
After window shopping for a while, Malko walked back to the Lanesborough. He would have to call Alexandra and give her the bad news that he was extending his stay in London.
—
“Those spooks are always screwing up your life,” Alexandra said with a sigh. “Too bad. I was just thinking about wearing that suit you like. It goes beautifully with gray stockings. I’ll be thinking about you.”
In Malko’s mind, the warning lights were all flashing red. Alexandra wasn’t using the caustic tone she usually took when blaming him for something. That was worrisome. His absence clearly wasn’t breaking her heart.
“Behave yourself,” he said without conviction. “I’ll be home very soon.”
“Have fun with your spooks!” she said coolly, and hung up.
Malko only waited thirty seconds before calling Gwyneth Robertson. He got her voice mail again but figured she would have to show up sooner or later. He could always try his luck with Lynn Marsh, but she really didn’t seem receptive.
Lord of the Swallows Page 7