The Defector by Daniel Silva

overtures?”
    “Apparently so, but Grigori never went into the details.”
    “If I remember correctly, she’s a travel agent.”
    “She works for a company called Galaxy Travel on Tverskaya Street in Moscow. She arranges flights and accommodations for Russians traveling to Western Europe. Galaxy caters to a high-end clientele. New Russians,” she added with a distinct note of disdain. “The kind of Russian who likes to spend winters in Courchevel and summers in Saint-Tropez.”
    Olga dug a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket. “I suspect business is rather slow at the moment for Galaxy Travel. The global recession has hit Russia extremely hard.” She made no attempt to conceal her pleasure at this development. “But that was predictable. Economies that depend on natural resources are always vulnerable to the inevitable cycle of boom and bust. One wonders how the regime will react to this new paradigm.”
    Olga removed a cigarette from the pack and slipped it between her lips. When Gabriel reminded her that smoking was not permitted in the garden, she responded by lighting the cigarette anyway.
    “I might have a British passport now, but I’m still a Russian. No Smoking signs mean nothing to us.”
    “And you wonder why Russians die when they’re fifty-eight.”
    “Only the men. We women live much longer.”
    Olga exhaled a cloud of smoke, which the wind carried directly into Gabriel’s face. She apologized and switched places with him.
    “I remember the night we all left together—the four of us crammed into that little Volga, pounding over the godforsaken roads of Russia. Grigori and I were smoking like fiends. You were leaning against the window with that bandage over your eye, begging us to stop. We couldn’t stop. We were terrified. But we were also thrilled about what lay ahead. We had such high hopes, Grigori and I. We were going to change Russia. Elena’s hopes were more modest. She just wanted to see her children again.” She blew smoke over her shoulder and looked at him. “Have you seen her?”
    “Elena?” He shook his head.
    “Spoken to her?”
    “Not a word.”
    “No contact at all?”
    “She wrote me a letter. I painted her a painting.”
    Gabriel appealed to her to put out the cigarette. As she buried the butt in the gravel at her feet, he watched a group of four tourists enter the garden.
    “What did you think when Grigori became the celebrity defector and dissident?”
    “I admired his courage. But I thought he was a fool for leading such a public life. I told him to lower his profile. I warned him that he was going to get into trouble. He wouldn’t listen. He was under Viktor’s spell.”
    “Viktor?”
    “Viktor Orlov.”
    Gabriel recognized the name, of course. Viktor Orlov was one of the original Russian oligarchs, the small band of capitalist daredevils who gobbled up the valuable assets of the old Soviet state and made billions in the process. While ordinary Russians were struggling for survival, Viktor earned a king’s ransom in oil and steel. Eventually, he ran afoul of the post-Yeltsin regime and fled to Britain one step ahead of an arrest warrant. He was now one of the regime’s most vocal, if unreliable, critics. Orlov rarely allowed trivial things like facts to get in the way of the salacious charges he leveled regularly against the Russian president and his cronies in the Kremlin.
    “Ever had any dealings with him?” Gabriel asked.
    “Viktor?” Olga gave a guarded smile. “Once, a hundred years ago, in Moscow. It was just after Yeltsin left office. The new masters of the Kremlin wanted Viktor to voluntarily sell his businesses back to the state—at bargain-basement prices, of course. For understandable reasons, Viktor wasn’t interested. It got nasty—but then it always does. The Kremlin started talking about raids and seizures. That’s what the Kremlin does when it wants something. It brings to bear the power of the state.”
    “And Viktor thought