Dedicated to the valiant defectors who helped us.

“Come Not between the dragon and his wrath.”

William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”

George Bernard Shaw

PROLOGUE

Georgetown, June 2012

I am done with the CIA.

I’ve been away from Langley for over four months now and have become a virtual expert on Syria. Al Jazeera was my go-to media source. But despite more hours of searching the world via the internet than I could possibly log, I’d gotten nowhere closer to finding my beloved Alex. In a slightly more productive use of my mind and time, I began tutoring Russian at Georgetown.

And then, as it does, life took another detour.

I was lounging in bed on one of those perfect June days before the miserable summer heat had set in, reading a book that had nothing to do with spies. The harsh buzz of the doorbell jarred me. I flipped my book over and jumped up to look out the upstairs window of my Georgetown house.

I could just make out a uniformed presence at the front door. No one called me, or dropped by, early in the morning—not in my rule book—and my friends knew it. I threw on my silk robe and raced down the stairs.

Another buzz. I glanced through the peephole, saw the capped head of a deliveryman, and asked who he was.

“FedEx,” he said. “An envelope for D. Raines. I’d have left it, but you need to sign.” 

He sounded real enough, so I cracked the door open. “I’m Decktora Raines.”

Barely glancing at me, he flashed his FedEx ID and then shoved the signature form in front of me. I signed and took a slim cardboard envelope from him as he dashed off.

CHAPTER 1

London, May 21, 2012

Ivan Federov had almost forgotten those early years, the Cold War now long over. As he jogged along the bank of the Thames on his morning run, his past seemed foreign to him, as if it belonged to someone else. In fact, Ivan Federov no longer existed, hadn’t for over ten years. Now he was Robert Casca Johnston. He felt the cool breeze flow over him as he ran in solitude on what would shortly become a busy path, full of people heading off to work, just before sunrise, when the light of day slowly emerges from the dark sky. The crunch of the pebbles and the undergrowth of the rain-soaked path were almost soothing. The smell of the wet grass held the promise of warm summer days ahead.

Could he be happy after what he’d been through? Content, he thought. He would settle for that. The fog today was thicker than usual, but delicious compared to the bitter cold he’d endured in his past, during those days in Moscow. Sometimes he found himself reaching into his pocket for his gun, like an amputated appendage, no longer there. When that happened, he always smiled and felt grateful for its absence. The gun wouldn’t be comfortable while jogging, he thought with a smile.

***

Not even a twig cracked as she made her move. It happened so fast he didn’t have time to turn his head. And though she was sure she’d gotten the jugular, she gave an extra push of the claw to clinch it. A speck of the white powder dropped on the ground. Her target fell quickly, without making a sound. Ivan Federov was dead. She gave it the proper two minutes and then ran calmly from the site, like a normal jogger, her weapon held tightly in her hand.

CHAPTER 2

London, May 21

Detective Chief Inspector Cransford Garvin couldn’t believe he’d gotten himself into such a mess. He didn’t do crime call-ins anymore. He was too senior. Too close to retirement.

Most days he took it for granted that he’d slide right into that so-called golden age of life along with his wife, Wallie. They’d been married thirty-eight years and she’d been a loyal and supportive wife, especially with the demands of his career. It was her turn now.

But an emergency call to his cell phone proved too much of a temptation. A body had been found along the bank of the Thames.

Garvin drove onto the grass when he got to the identified location. He assumed that prerogative in view of his status, and this was an emergency. A junior colleague, Sergeant Benjamin Fawkes, and the murder squad were already on the scene. Garvin braked the car to a stop and, straining with the extra weight he’d put on in the last few years, twisted his bulky frame out the door of his convenient, but compact, car.

His left hip hurt more than usual today, slowing him as he walked over to the younger officer. Garvin extended his hand to Fawkes.

“Detective Chief Inspector Garvin,” Fawkes said, obviously recognizing the senior officer. “I didn’t expect to see you here, sir.”

“I was in the area when the emergency call came,” said Garvin, sensing Fawkes’s uncertainty about his presence. “Old habits die hard, son—you’ll learn that someday if you’re lucky. Just thought I’d take a look,” Garvin lied, fully aware that he simply hadn’t the willpower to resist the call.

“Jogger over there called it in,” Fawkes said, nodding toward the runner who was bouncing back and forth, from one foot to another, as if waiting to continue his run. “We were about to question him,” Fawkes said as he pulled on rubber gloves.

“Let’s take a look at the victim first,” Garvin said.

They walked up to the mound, then leaned over the body—slender build, ashen face, graying dark hair and pale hazel eyes, wide open.

“What do you see?” asked the chief inspector. “Be careful what you touch.”

“Of course, sir,” said Fawkes, as he bent in close to the man’s head to see if there was any breathing, but, of course, the neat red slice that opened his throat would prohibit that. “He’s dead. No rigor yet. Hasn’t been down long.”

Garvin stood up. Something about fresh death, something frightening, even exciting, drew him. He recalled the many times he’d found himself in this position, and how much he’d loved every minute of it. He was, at heart, a street investigator, not an administrator. He stifled a sigh.

Garvin nodded at Fawkes, giving him the go-ahead to touch the clothing, but not the body. Fawkes cautiously reached into the pocket of the man’s trousers to check for pocket litter and pulled out a wallet.

“Robert C. Johnston, says his ID, address in Putney. Business card shows an insurance company in his name.” 

“Get everything we have on this fellow,” Garvin said, turning away from the body to go talk to the witness.

As he started to stand up, Fawkes gasped, “Oh, my God.”

Garvin’s head jerked back toward Fawkes. “What is it?”

“Besides the slice—there are scratches, something like a claw mark on his neck.”

“Show me.”

“And white powder or specks on the wound, like it’s been cauterized, perhaps.”

All the more reason to be present, Garvin told himself. Poison raised the case to a different level. He circled the body, leaned down near the neck, but touched nothing.

“This killer might have wanted to leave a message. Slitting his throat would have killed him. Haven’t heard of any claw markings in recent murders—maybe never. The Scenes of Crime Officers, SOCO, should be on their way. Don’t touch anything.” They moved slowly, looking at the body from different angles.

Garvin felt an uneasiness in his gut. “I don’t like this. Tell the SOCOs to get the white substance over to Forensics Sciences at Lambeth. They’re the fastest moving. We need a chemical–biological analysis right away. Use my name, if needed. We’ll check the records for killings with these markings when we get back to the station.”

Fawkes nodded, then pointed at the ground. “Sir, look at the drag marks in the grass. Some blood, too.”

The rush hour now beginning, a small group of onlookers had formed at the edge of the scene.

“Fawkes, get this damned area roped off. It won’t be long before the media arrives,” Garvin muttered quietly.

Garvin finally turned and walked over to the jogger, who was still pacing.

“Chief Inspector Cransford Garvin, Metropolitan Police,” he announced, shaking the jogger’s hand with the kind of self-confidence only time and success can build. “Thank you for contacting us. I’d appreciate any details you can recall. Nothing is too small.”

“Jeremy Ashton,” said the jogger, who’d taken the DCI’s hand then provided the few details he had.

“Please contact me if you think of anything else,” Garvin said and handed him a card. “And do not discuss this with anyone.”

The jogger looked questioningly at Garvin, confusion evident on his young face.

“In other words, this didn’t happen,” the inspector said with a nod. Not until Garvin figured out how the victim was killed—and identified the white powder.

Fawkes had just finished roping off the area when Garvin spotted a heavyset man with a shock of white hair working his way toward the body and trying to step over the rope.

“Stop. This is a protected police area,” said Fawkes firmly.

As Garvin walked toward the intruder, he immediately recognized one of his least favorite people, the tabloid journalist Alastair Sinclair-Jones, who would report anything, fact or fiction, and who had a nose for finding a murder the minute it happened. Directly behind him and nearly attached was a slight man holding a camera, taking pictures as rapidly as his fingers could move.

“Hello, inspector, good to see you.” Sinclair-Jones grinned widely at Garvin and kept walking as if out for a stroll.

“Stop, I said. No photographs,” Garvin growled. “You need to leave right now.” He knew how aggressive Sinclair-Jones was and doubted he could prevent him from scooping a good story if he thought he had one. That knowledge made him furious.

“Surely you can give me a bit of a story here,” said Sinclair-Jones, as his photographer continued to snap.

“No story, no cameras, nothing. Get lost. Now.”

“Certainly, no problem,” Sinclair-Jones said, nodding to his cameraman to stop.

“I don’t expect to see anything in The London Hour tonight.”

Sinclair-Jones smiled at him as he walked away. Garvin could only hope. But not much.

Garvin knew the press had to report something about the murder along the Thames. He worried the most about Sinclair-Jones. With good reason.

The day had been full of phone calls. Who was murdered? Why? How? Garvin deflected the calls, providing the most minimal details possible.

When he got home that evening, he immediately pulled an ale out of the refrigerator, then collapsed into his big, worn armchair, turned on the radio—his preferred media—and hoped Wallie wasn’t home yet, which would allow him to converse loudly with the radio if need be.

But Sinclair-Jones, as Garvin suspected, was not one to miss an opportunity to be in the limelight. Soon Garvin heard the fake posh accent come over the airwaves.

“Thank you for having me on this evening, Sir Edgar,” Sinclair-Jones said to the well-known radio host. “It’s been a busy day for those of us in the media who cover murders, and it’s been a long time since there’s been a murder on the bank of the Thames so close to the Tower.”

“Son of a…,” Garvin muttered to the empty room. Sinclair-Jones was off and running. Next thing, he’d be talking about Anne Boleyn.

“I regret that the CI, Cransford Garvin, was reluctant to provide any details. He virtually ordered us away from the site. Luckily, my cameraman and I got close enough to the body to see that the throat had been cut and to take a few shots. When we enlarged the photographs, we saw that the jugular had been punctured. There was plenty of blood under the head and some sort of white powdery substance near the neck. I’m afraid that’s all I could see, but at The London Hour we are looking into recent murders that mirror this killing in any way.”

Garvin jumped up from his chair, cursed at the walls, and finished his ale in one long gulp. Perhaps he should speak with Sinclair-Jones, maybe offer him the first interview once he was ready to discuss the case?

The thought, unfortunately, made him shudder.

CHAPTER 3

London, May 28–June 1

Sergei Devlin was sitting at his desk in the small but elegant office he rented in Knightsbridge. Perfect for his fledgling business, Russian Antiquarian, whose market was old Russians seeking lost family wealth. It gave him a chance to speak Russian, to meet some like-minded souls, and to make a small but unneeded return on his investment.

He’d been on holiday with his family for more than a week and had a massive amount of mail to plow through, including his daily copies of The London Hour, which he always read from cover to cover. Reading the media was a habit he’d developed when he’d been sent to London after his escape to the West. But that was over now, and whatever dreams he may have had of returning to his homeland, there would be no going back, not with the latest managers of the Kremlin, who had begun to track down old defectors. Why now? Sergei didn’t know for sure, but he was convinced the crackdown was due to the emergence to power of a former KGB chief who held these “traitors” in high contempt.

He didn’t enjoy reading the obits, but he did as part of his discipline. One day far in the future, he hoped, he would see the names of people his own age, maybe some he would even know. He did not expect that to happen today. But it did—as his eyes fell upon the name Robert Johnston. Robert Casca Johnston. He knew that name. And he knew the man.

Sergei felt his throat constrict as he read through the column. He hadn’t seen Federov in several months and hadn’t bothered to consider why until this moment. The brief obit said the man was murdered while jogging along the river Thames. The police had no suspect.

Ivan Federov had been a defector who, like Sergei, lived in a new identity somewhere on the outskirts of London. They had met at an art exhibit in Kensington several years earlier, an exhibit by a Russian artist living openly in the UK in those still warm post–Cold War days. Sergei attended such events not to meet anyone from his past, but to gain potential clients for his new business in a genteel environment. The minute he met Johnston he knew—the ordinary English name, the strong Russian accent. This man, like him, had a dark past. Their eyes met, and call it a sixth sense, or clandestine training, they understood that they shared something. They also understood that they should not get together. MI5 had strict—and sensible—rules once they had given a defector a new life and a new identity. Maintaining their security, and thus their separation, was essential to their safety. Still, the temptation was there and they agreed to meet. Once alone together, they shared the basic secret of their past—Russian intelligence officers who had spied against their own, then escaped to the West. Over time, Federov introduced Sergei to those other few souls who lived secret lives like them.

As he reread the obit, a chill crept over him.

It had been over fifteen years since Sergei Dumanovskiy had become the Englishman Sergei Devlin. MI5 had given him the odd middle name of Ligurius, for reasons he didn’t understand but never questioned. He rarely used it anyway.

In his soul, he still carried the pain of those early days in the United States, after the Soviets swapped him for a spy of their own. The death in Moscow of his beloved Katya from cancer the Russians wouldn’t treat, the “reassignment” of his two young daughters to other Russian families, his imprisonment, had put him into a deep depression, and even though he was now a free man, his melancholy continued.

It was an insightful young CIA defector handler, Decktora Raines, who took over his case and ultimately arranged Sergei’s transfer to London. For that, he would always be grateful to Raines. She’d agreed with him that it would help him psychologically, by removing him from the memories of his early years in Washington, those heady days back in the early 1990s when he was a Soviet diplomat assigned to DC with Katya and the girls. All before he began spying for the Americans in order to get medical treatment for Katya, and before he was rightly accused of treason by his own masters, sent back to Moscow and arrested.

They were both right. Everything changed for the better in London. There he met Johanna, and with the birth of their son, found his way into a new life. Johanna had no objections when several years after they were married, Sergei told her he wanted to start a small business. She knew it would be a distraction for him more than a moneymaker. He didn’t really need the money. He’d received a large sum from the American government once his relationship with them had run its course. The intelligence he’d provided had been priceless, they’d said. The medal they’d awarded him for his contribution sat in a small office in Langley, where all the Soviet defector materials were held, and which, of course, Sergei would never see again. The US government had rewarded him well, but he was more than ready for London, and yet another new life after the Agency had finished their exhaustive debriefs.

With “Russian Antiquarian,” Sergei had intentionally selected a name that would draw little attention; he’d also chosen a neighborhood where a smattering of other Russian antiquities experts and iconastas had their shops. There he could speak Russian and be among some of his own, whether old Soviets or descendants of the czarist world. In those early post–Cold War days, a few daring, perhaps unwise, souls became less secretive about their Soviet pasts. Information was not held as tightly as it had once been, but by the turn of the century, things had cooled once again between East and West, and the handful of old defectors would go silent.

Sergei worked alone in his office in Knightsbridge, with the occasional help of a techie and a legal consultant. He had no intention of handling any issues related to the actual recouping of lost money or art objects. Those he sent on to the lawyer. But because he worked alone and away from home, Johanna had insisted he install a security system in his office, which he reluctantly agreed to do. He bought a simple, inexpensive setup that was tied to a discreet service, one he had researched thoroughly. Once installed, he needed only to pay his monthly fee, and if there was ever a security problem, one tap on a small button within the kneehole of his desk would alert the service of an emergency. He told Johanna he thought it was a waste of money, but there was no arguing.

A call he received on Wednesday afternoon, on the third anniversary of his business, would prove Johanna right.

“Mr. Devlin,” said the soft Russian-accented voice Sergei heard when he picked up the receiver. “I would like to make an appointment with you, kind sir, if you can so arrange.”

“And to whom am I speaking?” said Sergei, detecting the formality of the language but not able to place the exact origin of her accent.

“My name is Yulia Semenyova. I understand through friends in London and Paris that you might be able to help me find some lost art objects that once belonged to my family. I’m the only one left now, and it would bring me great joy to learn more about my elders and to find anything left of them.”

Ah, that was the accent—northern Russia.

“I have few records, but my people were originally from St. Petersburg. After 1917, they lost everything. My mother told me so many stories about them, especially about my great-grandfather, who was an adviser to Czar Nicholas. I believe he was what they call a White Russian. I was a fool not to make a journal of my mother’s stories, but youth never appreciates such things.”

“Miss Semenyova, would you be able to come to my office?”

“Yes, I would like that. I do hope that you can help me. Oh, those awful people. How lucky we are that they are gone. Ah, well, not to bother you with my thoughts.”

“You are not alone in those thoughts, and I look forward to meeting you,” Sergei said, feeling the small sense of pleasure he got from helping other Russians find their way back to a happier past. “Will you be able to meet me Friday at two in the afternoon? I will even serve you tea from a beautiful old samovar that recently came to me.”

“Yes, of course, I shall take a late lunch from work. Thank you, dear sir, thank you. I am so grateful.”

“I have a small office in Trevor Place in Knightsbridge.” He gave her the address and told her to buzz apartment number 3B. “You need to bring nothing but your memory.”

A sad soul, Sergei thought. She sounded as if she was on the verge of tears.

Yes, he would help her.

But Sergei was unable to find anything on Yulia’s great-grandfather, a few names with similar spelling and derivation, but no one who appeared to have been connected to the Czar or any other of the old royals. It was not unusual, he reminded himself, as records were sparse at best. He collected the few bits he had and put them in a folder for her. Perhaps when they met she could add some additional details, related names on the matronymic side that could help him find something more.

The rain pelted down on the day of the appointment, and Sergei half expected Miss Semenyova to cancel the meeting. When she telephoned him in the morning to reconfirm, he offered her another date, but she turned it down. She was excited to meet him, she said, and had long ago learned to navigate London’s downpours.

Sergei had just prepared the samovar and had hot tea ready, along with the Marks and Spencer sultana cookies he kept on hand for such occasions, when the buzzer sounded.

“Miss Semenyova,” he said, opening the door and looking at the face of a woman he would recognize anywhere. His stomach wrenched. This woman’s name was not Yulia. Sergei knew who his new client was, though he had not seen her in years.

Their paths had crossed in Moscow when she worked outside the office of Vladimir Ivanchukov, the KGB officer who had had Sergei arrested for treason. He didn’t even recall if they’d ever spoken a word to each other. But hers was a face he could never forget. The eyes, those large, slightly bulging eyes. Snake Eyes, they’d called her. Sergei froze as he stared into that face. He remembered her as “Olga,” but had no recall of her surname. He assumed that had changed anyway.

Her short hair was now a pale platinum blond, not the dull brown he recalled. And her huge eyes were pale blue, no doubt because she was wearing contact lenses that didn’t fully conceal the deep brown that lay beneath.

Sergei hoped she hadn’t noted the sudden flicker of his eyes when he first saw her. Why was she here? His mind flew to the alarm system. He walked toward his desk, close enough to push the button if he needed to.

“Come in. Let me offer you some tea,” he said. Show nothing, he told himself.

“Thank you, Mr. Devlin. I am grateful to have found you and look forward to hearing what you have learned about my family line. I do so hope you will be able to find something as beautiful as this samovar from my own people.”

Sergei responded in Russian, listening even more closely to her accent, her attempts at elegant speech, and her cover story.

“Your Russian is excellent. You must have spent some time in my country?”

“Little, really,” Sergei said, in his own lie. “My parents emigrated when I was five. My father was not at all political and could not do well professionally in the Soviet system. Still, he missed Russia in many ways and insisted that we speak his native tongue at home, which has proven useful to me, since being bilingual is of great value in my business.” He spoke as casually as possible.

She mustn’t know I have figured her out. He knew instinctively it would be a matter of life and death.

“I’m sorry to report that I’ve only been able to find a few fragments that might relate to your grandfather, so I will be grateful for anything else you can give me.”

Olga didn’t show any disappointment in his poor report, he noticed. He listened to her spin out more family fiction, jotting notes once in a while, but he didn’t interrupt her.

Sergei hadn’t played this game in a long time. But it was in his DNA. Once a spy, always…, he thought to himself, almost amused.

“There is a fee, I assume?”

“Yes, but first let me see if I can find anything more.” Sergei rose, acknowledged the end of the meeting, and walked her to the door.

“Oh, I’m sure you will. I’ll be happy to pay, and I know you’ll find something for me. I have a dear friend who is also searching his family history. Now that you and I have had a chance to meet and start working together, I shall definitely refer him to you.”

Yes, she wanted to see him again. Of that he was certain. She’d confirmed his location and probably had done a quick assessment of his office, size, telephone placement, absence of colleagues, and more.

After Olga closed the door, a cold anxiety crept over Sergei, unlike any he’d felt in all the years since he’d left Moscow.

If Olga was in London and had gone to the trouble of tracking him down, could Ivanchukov be far behind? He never knew what happened to Ivanchukov after he himself got shipped off to the West in the spy swap. What Sergei did know was that he had made a vengeful, last-minute effort to destroy Ivanchukov. The chances it would work were slim, of course, but in the last debrief before he was taken to Sheremetyevo airport, Sergei whispered to the senior intelligence officer accompanying him that he had one last, dark secret. When he saw the officer’s eyes light up, he delivered it.

“This man you admire so much, Vladimir Ivanchukov. He is as traitorous as I was. We worked together. How could you have missed him all these years?”

The officer stared sharply back at Sergei, mouth suddenly opening, but said nothing. And then Sergei was gone. He didn’t even know if his tormentor was still alive. But whoever was behind Olga’s discovery was calling him by his new name, Devlin.

After all these years, his enemies had found Sergei Dumanovskiy. Sergei Devlin was no longer safe.

It was only three-thirty when she left, and, though eager to get out of his office, Sergei didn’t want to rush out earlier than his normal five o’clock closing time. He now had to consider the possibility that someone could be watching him. He looked out his window to a quiet, fairly empty street below. Yulia Semenyova was not there.

Sergei pulled the office curtains tight, then took the Russian print off the wall behind his desk. He spun the lock on the small safe implanted in the wall, rifled through the few files inside, and pulled out a slim folder tucked underneath the others. He hoped the details were current. It had been at least three years since he’d recorded them. Sergei memorized the address and tucked the file back into the safe, secured it, and headed for his office door.

He hadn’t seen or heard of Decktora Raines since she left London. He knew the rules, but he would not go to his MI5 emergency point of contact. There was not enough history there. He would turn to the one person in the intelligence world he trusted.

Sergei had had an intense and often conflicted relationship with his CIA debriefers until she came along. She was smart, but more importantly, she was the only one who seemed to feel what he’d lost, what he’d been through. Sergei had long ago told her she would be his last case officer, and he meant it.

Was he under surveillance now? Of course, he was. This meant a long, meandering trip home. He called Johanna and told her he would be later than expected, then decided on a route that would include a stop at a FedEx office. There he would compose his document and send it across the pond, urgent delivery. Sergei double-locked his office door and walked down the lighted stairs to Trevor Place.

He hadn’t been this unnerved in a long, long time.

CHAPTER 4

London, May 25

Senior British intelligence officer Jason Drake always started his workday early. It had been his habit since the height of his career at MI6, and more recently at MI5, since his transfer to the senior counterterrorism liaison position there. Now it was the morning read board that called him in. There was always a pile of messages on it, seeming to grow by the day—a terrorism incident in Indonesia, more of the same in Algeria, Yemen, Iraq, and on and on. This new business was not his game.

It was Friday and Drake was ready for a long weekend. He poured a cup of hot tea and stirred it, thinking about how he’d gotten to a place where his days started out with a mountain of hideous events. It hadn’t always been so.

Nothing had been the same since the end of the Cold War. Of late, Drake got his greatest pleasure sharing war stories with old anti-Soviet colleagues who had fought that long, mostly bloodless battle with him. He’d joined MI6 after studying International Politics at Oxford. It was the only job he’d wanted. After years in the service, mostly overseas, his devoted wife had gotten him to agree that he and the family would stay in London. Drake became one of the service’s top Soviet Russia hands and rose in position accordingly.

The 9/11 terrorism attacks in the United States changed everything, and the subsequent call from MI5 Vice Chief Kilbourne was not a surprise. Drake knew what it was about before he headed up to Kilbourne’s office.

“Not for me, Clive. I don’t have the expertise, and I’m too old,” Drake said to his longtime friend, now his superior and the one man whose orders he had to follow. “There are better people for the job. Let me do the post–Cold War assessments and put someone younger into counterterrorism.” Drake was not one to beg, but he was very close to doing it now.

“You’re one of my best people, and I need your help there now,” said the VC. “You have the contacts at MI6 and over at Security and Counterterrorism, and you don’t ruffle feathers the way some of our colleagues do. I need a top officer here to handle the liaison with both offices. Not to mention, counterterrorism is the future, and you’ll still be in a senior position. The Cold War’s done. Get over it. I’ve had to.”

Kilbourne paused and looked at Drake with a smile on his face. “I promise I’ll reassign you if the Cold War starts over again.” That was a long time ago. Drake sighed.

Today’s read board was especially thick. Drake reached for a cigarette, then quickly remembered he no longer smoked. He still retained that urge, but with the constant pressure from his wife and the fact that smoking was not allowed in MI5 headquarters, Drake had to make do with the empty satisfaction he could draw from his tobacco-less pipe, barely enough to soothe his nerves through increasingly unrewarding days at the office.

He finished the classified reading, then turned to a week’s load of open-source material, which he usually tried to flip through as quickly as possible. As he reached the bottom of the pile, an article from one of the London papers leaped off the page at him,

The small item mentioned a murder along the Thames near Tower Bridge—the victim, one Robert Casca Johnston.

Drake straightened up in his chair and reread the article. That name was damned familiar. Especially the middle name—Casca.

“Evelyn,” he called out to his secretary of over twenty years. “I need you. Right away.”

If he was correct, the victim was of one of MI5’s old Soviet defector cases. One of Drake’s former colleagues, a Shakespeare aficionado, had come up with the idea of adding to the intentionally bland first and last names assigned to their Soviet defectors, a unique middle one. This, he said, would make it all but impossible for the KGB to track down any of them, but would allow British intelligence to spot the name if one should ever appear in the public domain. What could be better and more appropriate, he proposed, than to use the names of the conspirators who had killed Julius Caesar?

Casca had just been murdered.

Evelyn appeared at Drake’s door. Slim and of medium height, she wore the kind of prim, navy blue outfit her salary could afford and that suited her position. With her hair pulled up tightly at the back of her head and her rigid stance, she looked every bit the assistant to a man of high position in MI5.

“I need you to follow up on something for me. Put everything else aside,” Drake said, showing her the article and pointing to the name.

“The files on Casca are likely to be hidden away in the archives. I suspect it will take a while to retrieve them,” she said evenly, though she didn’t need to remind him that the records were retired to secure storage.

“I know, I know. Go down there and see how long it will take to get them. God knows, I hope they’re not in that offsite storage abyss.”

As she headed out the door, Drake went back into his office and started thinking about those special assets, some of whom he had handled himself: the Caesars, a handful of defectors who had provided invaluable intelligence to the West at great risk to their own lives. They’d been uniquely coded because each had worked in a highly classified laboratory involved in dark research, about which little was known in Western intelligence circles. It seemed so long ago.

Suddenly the ashen face of Alexander Litvinenko, dying in a London hospital, popped into his mind. A former KGB officer, who left Russia after falling out with the Kremlin, made the unforgivable mistake of publicly criticizing his old government and its leader. He’d been wrong to do so. Dead wrong.

After several failed attempts, two former KGB colleagues managed to deliver a deadly dose of polonium-210 to Litvinenko in the tea room of a posh London hotel. Drake knew who killed him. Everyone did. The assassins had been so unprofessional as to leave dregs of the toxin in their hotel rooms, not to mention on the murder site’s teacup. Then they fled back to Moscow.

Drake felt a degree of guilt even though he hadn’t been directly involved. He was, after all, a senior Russia hand, and hadn’t his people owed it to Litvinenko to protect him? Some of his colleagues thought not. They would not toy with the Kremlin, not during this period of so-called good relations between the two countries. But this story became a staple of British media, resurfacing every few months. Each time it did, Drake sensed the dead man’s ghost breathing down his neck.

Today was about another defector. He slowly sucked in on his empty pipe. Life was about to get interesting again.

Drake was still at his desk when Evelyn got back upstairs. She tapped on his door, which he’d left slightly ajar, so she knew he was available. He looked up, eyes widening as he saw the two stuffed files in Evelyn’s arms.

“Casca is indeed a defector. One Ivan Federov.”

Drake took the files, beaming at Evelyn. “What would I do without you?”

She smiled. “We both know you’d get nothing accomplished. Are there any appointments I should cancel?”

“All of them. Close the door, and no calls.”

Drake remained closeted throughout the day, not bothering with lunch. He emerged later, full of energy.

“Evelyn, get me Chief Inspector Cransford Garvin on the phone,” he said, looking again at the obituary that had started this whole exercise. It had few details. He hoped Garvin had more and would share them with him. “If he has a secure line, use it.”

Drake wanted to find out what the police knew about Johnston aka Federov, most important, whether their background on him showed a Russian connection of any kind. Until he knew the story behind this murder, he would consider that the Russians were involved. And that, of course, he could not tell the chief inspector.

“After that, I want to talk to John Perlman, the Chief of Station over at Grosvenor Square.”

As the door closed behind her, he ran his right hand through his hair. This could be a bloody mess indeed. His thoughts turned to another Russia expert—an American with the CIA who had worked with him on some of their shared defectors. She had been very good at getting their Russian expats settled in England. What would Decktora Raines think of all this?

Evelyn had to deliver the news to her now impatient boss that neither Garvin nor the COS was still in the office late on this Friday afternoon.

“Dammit, am I the only one who works late in this business?”

“Well, sir, the COS is out of….”

“Never mind,” Drake snapped back. “I’ll wait till Monday.”

“Have a nice weekend, sir,” Evelyn said, closing the door and working her way out of the office.

CHAPTER 5

London, May 28

It had taken Evelyn several tries to get through to Detective Chief Inspector Garvin on the secure line. When she did, she motioned to Drake, who was still going through old Caesar files in his office, to get on the line. Though Drake didn’t know Garvin well, at their last encounter at a joint conference two years earlier, he’d felt a comfortable camaraderie with him.

“Long time, Drake. Can you hear me all right?” Garvin sounded as if he were in a cave. His equipment was definitely not state of the art.

“Yes, dandy,” Drake said, chuckling quietly to himself on his highly engineered phone. “I’m sorry to take you away from your work, but something’s come up that I hope you can shed some light on. Can you talk now?”

“Happy to take a break. Been too wrapped up in a recent murder that, except for the fact that it’s a one-off so far, has the look of a signature killing. Fellow’s neck slashed by some sort of claw. Damned puzzle, this one.” Garvin knew he was being chatty, but a little letting off of steam with a colleague who dealt only in secrets couldn’t hurt.

Drake cleared his throat. “Well, maybe that relates to the case I’m calling about,” he said, looking for a good opening for his thin excuse for calling the inspector. “I saw an article in one of the newspapers on the murder of one Robert Johnston and was mulling it over in my mind, thinking it might have been an old associate of mine. Couldn’t find anything here. The name’s too common. Thought you might be able to help, as I’d like to contact his family if he’s the man I knew.”

Drake didn’t like misleading Garvin, but he wasn’t prepared to provide any details about the likelihood that Johnston was one of his defectors. The case was highly classified, and Garvin didn’t have “need to know.” He just hoped he could elicit enough from the DCI to see if the case was more than a straight-out murder.

“We’re still very early in the investigation, and trying to get information on his background, family, the usual,” Garvin said. “A common name, as you said. I can tell you that the death appears to have come from some sort of cutting into his jugular vein. We haven’t identified the weapon yet, but it is not a marking we’ve seen in any recent cases. We also found some white powder on and near the wound, mixed in with the flush of blood that poured out of the jugular. Our forensic people are looking into this. All very strange at the moment.”

“Strange indeed,” Drake said. “I’d be most grateful if you would update me on anything you can share.”

“Will do, but sorry I can’t help you with the family or any relatives.”

“Most appreciated, chief inspector.”

Drake hung up the phone and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

Someone had murdered one of his defectors.

CHAPTER 6

London May 28, 2012

The chief inspector had been waiting several days for the toxicology report, pressing his underlings for quicker results. There had been no major news stories beyond the initial reporting by Sinclair-Jones. Thank God, the bastard hadn’t written any more articles, though he’d tried to contact Garvin, who refused his calls. Garvin needed more time to sort things out without the media breathing down his neck.

Unfortunately, by the time the Scenes of Crime Officer had arrived at the murder site, only the tiniest clean remnants of the powder remained, the rest mixed with blood, soil, and dirt from where they found Johnston’s body. How far it had been dragged, they had no idea, but they were analyzing the soil just in case they could determine exactly where he had been killed. It took too damned long to get things done, Garvin thought, quietly pounding his fist on his desk.

With the autopsy report now completed, Garvin knew for certain that the weapon had successfully pierced the jugular vein, and the victim would have died from blood loss. The role of the white substance remained a mystery for the time being. Even though the case was the only one of its kind, Garvin felt sure that the killer or killers wanted the murder to have a signature, as he had suggested to Drake, one unique enough that he suspected someone was sending a message. But what and to whom?

He’d had his people put out an all-points detailed bulletin to other constabularies in the United Kingdom to determine if there had been similar murders in the past few years. Thanks to the high technology information system the British had created after a grisly serial killing years earlier, police units across the country could coordinate with each other on any case that might need input from another jurisdiction. Nothing on other claw killings so far.

Despite all his years on the force, Garvin was not a patient man.

The phone in Garvin’s office rang loudly, Jane nowhere in sight to answer it. He finally gave in and picked up the receiver.

“It’s Fawkes, sir, I need to see you right away.”

“Come on up.”

Must be something good, Garvin thought, as Jane resurfaced at her desk. He buzzed her and told her to delay his next appointment.

Fawkes was at Garvin’s door within minutes.