49 Copenhagen–London
Copenhagen–London
The speech was twelve minutes in duration but meteoric in its impact. Russia’s military intelligence service, said the Danish
prime minister, had conducted a reckless and barbaric assassination on Copenhagen’s busiest shopping street using a miniature
the same unit that had carried out numerous acts of sabotage and disruption in an attempt to destabilize and undermine the
democracies of Western Europe. Any further action by Russia on Danish soil, the prime minister warned, would be met with a
swift and forceful response. No options, she added ominously, would be off the table.
The Russian retort, delivered by the mendacious Kremlin spokesman Yevgeny Nazarov, appeared only minutes after the Danish premier had concluded her remarks, which led some in the press to speculate that his statement had been prepared in advance.
It was a masterclass of mockery and misdirection, a truly bravura performance.
As Yevgeny Nazarov saw it, it was the West that was trying to undermine Russia, not the other way around.
GRU Unit 29155, he claimed, was nothing more than a clumsy piece of Western propaganda.
If anyone was to blame for what had taken place in Copenhagen, it was the Ukrainians.
Or perhaps, he suggested, the Danish intelligence service had carried out the assassination to create a pretext to attack Russia.
But the most powerful rhetorical question in the Kremlin’s arsenal was the question of why. Why would Russia’s military intelligence
service assassinate one of its own? The rented television experts had no good answer, and neither, admittedly, did Gabriel.
He met Christopher and Ingrid downstairs in the lobby of the Hotel Sanders shortly after seven the following morning, and they crawled into a PET sedan for the drive to Copenhagen Airport. The prime minister’s plane waited on the apron, surrounded
by a formidable ring of protection officers. Lars Mortensen stood at the foot of the airstair.
He handed Christopher an external hard drive. “A little reading material for the flight to London.”
“The contents of Yuri Ivanov’s phone?”
“As promised,” said Mortensen.
Ingrid led the way up the airstair, and they settled into their assigned seats. The prime minister boarded a few minutes before
eight, along with a half-dozen aides. She looked at Gabriel and gave him a warm smile.
“Good morning, Mr. Allon. Sleep well?”
“Not a wink, Prime Minister. You?”
“Never better.”
The cabin steward closed the forward door, and the engines whined. Christopher peered warily out his window. “It occurs to
me,” he said, “that now would be the perfect time for the Russians to shut down this airport with a swarm of drones. Or better
yet, they might disable the plane’s navigation system.”
Gabriel frowned. “Why do you think I couldn’t sleep last night?”
Only Ingrid had brought along a laptop. She waited until the plane was airborne before attaching the external hard drive and opening a folder labeled Pet 9055-8337. Inside were several additional folders. Emails and text messages, browsing history, location data, telephone metadata, photographs.
It was the lifeblood of an illegal Russian intelligence officer, his very operational soul. And it was theirs to explore at
their leisure, all because the GRU had sent a miniature drone to kill Yuri Ivanov instead of a man with a gun.
Ingrid copied the contents of the phone onto a second external hard drive, then said, “Where would you like to start?”
“The emails,” replied Gabriel.
There were some twenty-five thousand in all. The majority were of the encrypted variety, sent from a numeric Proton Mail address,
but the rest were from an ordinary Gmail account bearing the name Felix Serrano. They appeared innocuous in nature, but when
viewed through the proper prism, and with the benefit of hindsight, they bore the hallmarks of en clair communication between
an undercover asset and his service. One of the incoming emails concerned an auction at the Devon estate of the British real
estate baron Edward Knight. Attached was an article from ARTnews magazine, written by Amelia March.
They had only scratched the surface by the time the plane landed at RAF Northolt. The prime minister and her aides filed off
first and boarded their motorcade for a high-speed ride to Downing Street. Her three unlikely traveling companions made the
trip into central London in a neon-blue Mini Cooper piloted by Nigel Whitcombe.
“Shouldn’t you be babysitting Edward Knight?” asked Christopher.
“I needed the morning off, and Mr. Knight was most accommodating.”
“How is he holding up?”
“Better than I am,” replied Whitcombe, and lowered his window to vent the smoke of Christopher’s cigarette.
“Sorry, Nigel. But it was definitely a nonsmoking flight.”
“The chief was rather impressed, I must say.”
“Rest assured, I had nothing to do with it. For some reason, the Danish prime minister is rather fond of Gabriel, which proves
there’s no accounting for taste.” Christopher had a look at the speedometer. Whitcombe was sailing along at eighty miles per
hour. “Where’s the bloody fire, Nigel?”
“The chief is at Downing Street with the prime minister. They’d like a word before the summit begins.”
Christopher checked their speed again. Ninety and change.
They dropped Christopher at the rear entrance of Downing Street, then headed to his maisonette in Queen’s Gate Terrace. Sarah
was downstairs in the kitchen, eating a breakfast of coffee and yogurt. She was pleased to see Gabriel and Ingrid strolling
through her door but disappointed her husband was not hard on their heels. When Gabriel explained Christopher’s present whereabouts,
Sarah directed her eyes toward the Bose radio resting on the countertop.
“It’s all they’re talking about on Today. The tense security around the summit, that is.”
She put on a fresh pot of coffee, and they went upstairs to the drawing room to watch the BBC’s special coverage. Prime Minister
Jonathan Lancaster stood outside the open door of Number 10, posing for photographs with his counterpart from Denmark.
“Did you happen to catch her speech last night?” asked Sarah.
“As a matter of fact,” replied Gabriel, “we were all inside the Borgen when she delivered it.”
“Am I to assume that your visit to Copenhagen is somehow connected to yesterday’s assassination?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified,” replied Gabriel.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
With his silence, he confirmed it was so.
“I don’t suppose Captain Yuri Ivanov of the GRU was the same chap who came to the auction at Wickham House?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Another yes.”
Sarah watched a limousine drawing up at Number 10. It was the German chancellor, tall and slender and bald, who emerged from
the back seat. He pumped Jonathan Lancaster’s hand as though trying to draw water from a well.
“You know,” she said at length, “just because Christopher can’t tell me anything about his work doesn’t mean you have to abide
by the same rules. After all, you’re not actually an officer of the Secret Intelligence Service.”
“Close enough,” said Gabriel.
Sarah looked at Ingrid. “That leaves you.”
With Gabriel’s consent, she delivered a thorough briefing.
“With the exception of your regrettable exposure to Novichok,” said Sarah, “it all sounds like a great deal of fun, especially
the Lisbon game. Why wasn’t I invited?”
“You have an art gallery to run.”
The next limousine to arrive at Number 10 dispensed the president of France. In his tailored suit and dark necktie he looked
as though he were arriving for a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Heaven knows I’ve been out of the game for a while now,” said Sarah, “but once upon a time I was rather good at it. And I’m
troubled by the fact the Russians killed one of their own.”
“We all are.”
“Theory of the case?”
Gabriel repeated the same two theories he had presented to Lars Mortensen the previous evening, that the GRU killed Captain
Yuri Ivanov because they thought he was a traitor or that he was blown and about to be arrested.
“Rubbish,” said Sarah.
“You have a better one?”
“Have you considered the possibility that Yuri Ivanov knew he was under surveillance in Lisbon?”
“If that were true, why would he go to Denmark to coordinate a drone attack against Copenhagen Airport?”
“Because his controllers in Moscow knew you would be watching.”
“They wanted us to see him?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why?”
“I believe it’s known as a feint.” Just then another car rolled to a stop at the door of Number 10, and out popped the president
of Ukraine. “The five most important politicians standing between Russia and its territorial ambitions,” said Sarah. “And
they’re all gathered under the same leaky old roof.”
“What if I were to tell you that we have the contents of Yuri Ivanov’s mobile phone?”
“I would tell you that I have an art gallery to run.”
“Any appointments today?”
“No,” said Sarah. “Not a one.”