A few minutes later, Gwyneth led him onto the floor. It didn’t matter what music was playing—everybody danced the same way, holding their partner tight. She began to sway, doing a sexy belly dance, then moved closer, until she was rubbing against him. He grabbed her ass in both hands and pulled her to him.
“Do you want me to make you come?” she asked mischievously.
“Not yet.”
She opened her jacket so he could watch her breasts swaying under the satin. As he stroked Gwyneth’s nipples in the gloom, Malko felt himself getting caught up in the raw sexual atmosphere. Gwyneth took his hand and said:
“Let’s go rent a room!”
“At the Lanesborough?”
“No, we’re going to have a quickie on the down low. There’s lots of little hotels around here. Kind of hot, don’t you think?”
Thirty yards down a side street, a neon sign advertised the Royal Soho Hotel. Gwyneth led the way to the front desk.
“It’s fifty pounds, sir,” said the sleepy, ill-shaven clerk.
She had already pulled the bills from her purse. Unsurprised, the man handed her a key.
“Number Twenty-Six, young lady. Second floor. Enjoy.”
The hallway carpet was threadbare, and the light so dim it felt almost rationed. Their tiny room suggested rationing as well, with its low, narrow bed and greenish night-light. Gwyneth turned around and shrugged off her jacket. Malko was already pinching her nipples. Despite the pain, she unzipped his pants with the skill of a trained nurse. Then she knelt in front of him. Before taking his stiffening cock in her mouth, she gave it an affectionate look and murmured:
“Long time no see.”
Malko was so excited, he didn’t let her complete the ceremony. He pulled up her tweed skirt, revealing beige stockings and white garters. For once, Gwyneth wasn’t wearing panties. When he slipped his fingers inside her, he found that the dirty dancing had excited her as well.
Spinning her around, he made her kneel on the edge of the bed and pushed her skirt above her hips. Anticipating penetration, she arched her back further. The bed was so narrow, her hands were against the wall.
“Fuck me! Fuck me hard!” she cried.
Holding his breath, Malko gently put his cock close to Gwyneth’s pussy, but not in it, as she expected. Instead, he set it on her asshole and entered her at full length, as if his cock were being sucked in.
“Son of a bitch!” she squealed, surprised but not displeased.
He withdrew partway, but then plunged in again, drawing a new cry from her. Which didn’t make him give up his naughty ways; far from it. Instead, he gripped her hips more firmly.
After a few moments, Malko felt her gradually relax. Gwyneth started giving little moans. Then her hips began to sway, her pelvis rocking back and forth.
Malko came with a yell, matched by a cry from Gwyneth, who had been vigorously caressing herself ever since he first took her.
When he withdrew for good, she stood up, straightened her skirt, and put on her jacket.
“Come on, let’s get back to civilization,” she said.
These little trips to the dark side were fun, but you didn’t want to overdo them.
The man at the front desk didn’t even glance up when they walked by ten minutes later. Ten minutes was pretty typical for the couples who frequented his hotel.
—
After their sordid Soho love nest, the Lanesborough felt like a palace. Gwyneth lay on the big bed sipping champagne, clad only in stockings, garter belt, and high heels.
“By the way, you didn’t tell me why you’re in London,” she said.
Malko gave her the whole story. Gwyneth still had a top-secret clearance, and he didn’t hold anything back. But when he described meeting Lynn Marsh at Christie’s, she started in surprise.
“I’ll be damned! She’s my dentist!”
Chapter 13
Malko was stunned by the coincidence. With the hundreds of dentists in London, what were the odds that Gwyneth Robertson would be seeing Lynn Marsh?
“How in the world did that come about?” he asked.
“Lynn’s one of the best in the city,” she said, “and she shares an office with a very high-profile guy. And charges accordingly.”
“Do you know her well?”
“No, but we’ve chatted often enough. She doesn’t just take care of your teeth; for some patients, she’s like a therapist. She’s smart and good-looking. Are you attracted to her?”
“Sure, but I’ve only seen her twice. Plus, she seems very much in love with Alexei Khrenkov. Has she told you anything about her private life?”
“Not really, except that she’s divorced and is seeing someone. I actually wondered why such a beautiful woman would spend her time in such an unrewarding line of work.”
“Are you due to see her again anytime soon?”
“No, but I can find an excuse to make an appointment if it’ll help you out.”
“It might. We’ll see.”
That was one more string to his bow.
He was now waiting for Zhanna Khrenkov’s answer. If she turned the deal down, the lovely dentist would be of no further interest.
—
Lynn Marsh was having trouble focusing on the delicate work she was doing on a cracked molar. Her patient was a City banker who constantly flirted with her when he came in. He had already twice invited her to lunch, but she had turned him down. If she started going out with her patients, there’d be no end to it. Besides, she’d been feeling anxious since her last meeting with Alexei.
She’d had no news of him in spite of the many texts she’d sent. She finally confessed to having dinner with Malko Linge, the Austrian prince. She’d been foolish, she said, and hadn’t mentioned it for fear of making him angry.
Last night, she even drove along Grosvenor Place, stupidly hoping she might catch a glimpse of him.
She was acting like some lovelorn teenager.
And she couldn’t write Alexei a letter, because Zhanna would see it.
Suddenly the pressure got to be too much.
“Please excuse me, I have to step out for a moment,” she told her patient. With a bite block propping his jaw open, the banker was in no position to object. Lynn went into her little office, dialed Alexei’s number, and left a breathless message:
“I’m begging you, please call me. I miss you so much.”
Feeling a little better, she returned to the molar repair.
—
From the living room, Zhanna heard the apartment door open and close. Alexei had come home, from either his bank or his girlfriend. Zhanna willed herself not to move. There were times when she wanted to kill him, too. He was sure to stroll in acting as if everything were normal.
She waited for a while, but Alexei didn’t come in, and she eventually went into his bedroom. His clothes were strewn on the floor, and the bathroom door was closed. Zhanna stopped, intrigued. Alexei had been acting oddly for the last couple of days. He was more taciturn than usual, and seemed upset.
She had asked him if there was a problem with Moscow, and he had said no.
A little too quickly.
Spotting his jacket on the floor, she suddenly got an idea. She took his cell phone from the pocket and ran to the walk-in closet. Turning it on, she keyed in the voice-mail access code. There were thirteen messages. When she heard the most recent one, she nearly dropped the phone: it was Lynn Marsh! The woman sounded almost unrecognizable. In a hoarse, broken voice, she begged Alexei to call her back.
Zhanna listened to three more similar messages, then quickly returned the phone to Alexei’s jacket.
Back in the living room, she lit herself a Pall Mall, feeling shaken and perplexed. What troubled her even more than Alexei’s infidelity was Lynn Marsh’s connection to Malko Linge. She hadn’t expected that. The CIA agent’s interest in Marsh might be purely professional, of course. It just showed that he wasn’t putting all his eggs in one basket.
But it w
eakened Zhanna’s position vis-à-vis the Agency, because she didn’t know what Alexei might have told her. Zhanna was prepared to take chances, but something troubled her: from Marsh’s tone, it sounded as if her husband had broken up with her.
Which meant her problem was solved.
Only she had to be sure that this wasn’t just a temporary split. And for that she would have to interrogate her husband—very gingerly.
She had to know why Alexei was leaving a woman he loved.
—
Malko and Gwyneth had just reached the front doors of the Lanesborough when he received a call from an unidentified number on his cell.
“Malko, it’s Irving,” said a man’s voice. “I hope you weren’t asleep.”
It was the CIA’s head of counterintelligence. What could he want with Malko at midnight? But then he remembered it was only seven p.m. in Washington.
“Not at all,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like us to have breakfast together tomorrow.”
Malko thought he hadn’t heard right.
“In Washington?”
“No, in London. At Grosvenor Square. I’m at Dulles, and my flight leaves in forty minutes.”
“No problem,” said Malko. “Have a good trip.”
He was mystified. Why would Boyd fly to London a second time, when Malko and Zhanna hadn’t yet reached a deal?
—
Aside from the guards, Rem Tolkachev was almost certainly the only person in the Kremlin to be working so late. It was two o’clock in the morning, but the spymaster wanted to fully absorb the evening’s reports from London.
And reach a decision.
The latest news was bad.
The CIA was starting to sniff around the Khrenkovs. Alexei hadn’t been “polluted,” but Malko Linge was now in direct and regular contact with Zhanna Khrenkov and Alexei’s girlfriend.
Those were the facts.
What did Linge know, and how had he found the Khrenkovs? Was there a leak in the network? Had one of the swallows been turned and fingered Alexei Khrenkov?
Because of the dead-letter system, that wasn’t likely. But each of the swallows had met Khrenkov at least once, at the very beginning.
Tolkachev was strongly tempted to order the couple back to Russia posthaste, so as to break off any dangerous connections. But that entailed a number of inconvenient consequences.
First, the Khrenkovs would be burned. The moment the Americans saw them returning to Russia, where they were in trouble with the law, they would get suspicious.
Second, the network would lose its head. Tolkachev would have to find a replacement for the couple, which wouldn’t be easy.
Finally, if the Khrenkovs really didn’t know anything about the source of the pollution—even after being interrogated in Lefortovo—Tolkachev would be back where he started.
It would be impossible to restart the network without knowing what was going on. And that would mean throwing away years of hard work.
Suddenly another solution occurred to him. It was risky, tough to initiate, and difficult to execute. But it was the only way to answer all his questions.
After thinking for a moment, he carefully set down his cup of sweetened tea, left the office, and went to retrieve his Lada from the garage. He would give himself until tomorrow to put his plan into effect.
—
Irving Boyd looked much fresher than he had on his last visit to London. On the small table in the conference room next to his office, Richard Spicer had set out toast, Danish pastries, and croissants along with tea and coffee, but the counterintelligence chief wasn’t hungry. After a quick swig of coffee, he pulled a file from his briefcase and gave Malko an admiring look.
“You have no idea how much excitement your Russian spy ring has generated in Washington.”
“Come on,” said Malko. “I don’t think the security of the nation is at risk. The network may be a nuisance, but it’s not like they’re stealing the atomic bomb.”
Boyd smilingly brushed the demurrer aside.
“True enough. Even the FBI, which missed the network because they’re so focused on Islamic terrorism, feels they probably aren’t very high-level spies. But there’s a lot more to the picture.”
Boyd leaned closer over the table, accidentally brushing against the croissants.
“We absolutely have to arrest the members of the network. That’s an order straight from the White House.”
“Because President Obama needs a success before the midterm elections?” asked Malko with a smile.
“No, it’s more important than that.”
Boyd put on his glasses and opened the file in front of him.
“Here’s the deal. Four of our people have been sitting in Russian prisons for years. We want to get them out.
“The first is a very well-known scientist named Igor Sutyagin. We approached him during an international conference on nuclear proliferation. He’s an expert in miniaturization, an area where we need to know how our Russian friends are doing.
“In 2004, Sutyagin was sentenced to hard labor in Camp Fifteen in Siberia. He wrote his family recently that he can’t hang on much longer. We were careless with him. We thought the FSB had slacked off, and we didn’t take all the security precautions we could have.
“The second man is Alexander Zaporozhsky, who was a member of the First Directorate back in Shebarshin’s time. He started working for us in 1987, when he was stationed in China. His mistake was to continue after returning to Moscow. He’s been in prison since 2003, but we don’t know where. He spent a year in Lefortovo under terrible conditions. They blanketed the floor of his cell with large salt crystals, and let him nearly die of thirst. A bank account with more than six hundred thousand dollars is waiting for him in Washington.
“The third is Sergei Skripal, a KGB colonel who transferred to military intelligence. He was careless, too. He walked right into the American embassy, not realizing that the FSB had been watching him for months. Normally, someone in that situation would never get out of the Lubyanka alive. But Skripal was lucky. He confessed, so they let him off with thirteen years of hard labor in the camps. His wife died of cancer, and his son managed to emigrate, so he’s completely alone in Russia.”
Boyd recited these dismaying facts in a monotone.
“Is that it?” asked Malko soberly.
“No, it isn’t. The fourth one is Gennady Vasilenko, a man the Agency would give anything to get back. He’s done incredible work for us since 1978. He was recruited in Washington and gave us valuable information until Robert Hanssen betrayed him to the KGB.
“Vasilenko was arrested in 1983 and sent to Lefortovo, charged with espionage. Before they could shoot him, they needed his signature on a confession. But he never admitted anything and never signed the confession. In 1983 they struck him from the KGB rolls, canceled his pension, and threw him out on the street.
“He survived until 1990, only getting a job after the Soviet Union collapsed. And then he started working for us again, in 1995. But this time the FSB was suspicious. They nailed him in 2005 and sent him to Lefortovo. To make up for missing him the first time, the Russians decided they weren’t about to let him go. He was given eighteen years and is leaving for Siberia soon.”
Boyd paused.
“For the Agency, getting these men back is a sacred mission. Word is passed from each director to the next. Thanks to you, we now have a chance of freeing four people who have done great service for the United States.”
“I don’t see how,” Malko admitted.
“It’s pretty obvious,” Boyd said with a smile. “If we’re able to bust the Khrenkov network agents, we’ll have two options.
“Option one: we try them and send them to jail for years. Make an example of them to demonstrate the duplicity of the Russians who pretend to make nice while spying on us. That would make the White House look good, of course.
“Option two is much smarter. We discreetly arrest th
e network people, and make the Russians an offer: their spies for our spies. That way, they save face and we get our people back. What do you think?”
Malko could almost feel the years falling away. He was back in the Cold War, when such exchanges were made on the Glienicke Bridge, the ugly metal span between West Berlin and Potsdam in East Germany known as the “bridge of spies.”
Boyd’s idea was attractive, but there were a few hitches.
A lot of hitches, actually.
“Aren’t you counting your chickens before they’re hatched, Irving?” he asked. “Right now, we don’t know where those spies are. I’m not sure I can convince Zhanna Khrenkov to cooperate—assuming she’s able to, because she might still be bluffing. Even if we solve that problem, nothing says the Russians will agree to a swap.”
“That’s true, but we have to act as if they will,” said Boyd. “Your mission has absolute priority. You have a free hand to do whatever it takes to convince her. You can even offer her a carrot. Tell her that if she delivers the network, we’ll extend protection and immunity to her and her husband. They’re already rich, so the future will be wide open.”
Malko had his doubts.
“You seem to forget that the FSB has a long arm,” he said. “Remember Alexander Litvinenko.”
“We’ll do everything in our power to protect them,” said Boyd doggedly.
In other words, reserve two spaces in Arlington National Cemetery for a pair of deserving traitors.
“I have to leave this evening,” Boyd continued. “Do you have any questions?”
“No, but a lot of work. For starters, I’m going to take a calculated risk, even though it weakens my position. I’m going to contact Zhanna to see if she has thought the matter over.”
—
For once, Tolkachev was late in getting to his office. He had stopped at the Yeliseyevsky store to pick up some red caviar he’d ordered.
He drafted a short memo for his superior, explaining the plan he had in mind.
For a foreign operation, especially one that entailed political risks, Tolkachev didn’t want to act alone. While waiting for an answer, he sipped sweet tea and smoked one of his pastel-colored cigarettes.
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