“Colonel.”
Which meant that he had outranked Yuri Ivanov. It was important to keep him talking. Flattery seemed the safest option.
“Why would they use an important man like you to do a wet job like this? Why not kill me with a miniature drone the way they killed Yuri Ivanov in Copenhagen?”
“It was determined that you should receive a proper Russian execution.”
“Vysshayamera?”
“I never realized you spoke our language.”
“And who determined that I should receive the highest measure of punishment? The director of the GRU?”
“Oh no,” said Colonel Valery Fedorov. “It was the Russian president himself who handed down your sentence.”
“I suppose Edward Knight is next.”
“Mr. Knight,” said Fedorov with mock sadness, “is already dead.”
“Did he know your real identity?”
“Of course not.”
“How did you end up working for him?”
“My previous employer was expelled from the United Kingdomafter the beginning of the special military operation in Ukraine. He asked Mr. Knight to take me on, and Mr. Knight generously agreed.”
“Your previous employer was Dmitri Savin?”
“Very good, Allon.”
“And Dmitri, of course, knew your real identity.”
“We spoke only Russian to one another.”
Gabriel permitted himself a glance toward the approaching figure. “And when you’ve killed me?” he asked. “What then?”
“I shall return to the motherland.”
“How are you going to manage that?”
“There’s a boat waiting for me in Padstow.” It was a little fishing village on Cornwall’s northern coast. “I’ll meet up with a cargo ship in the Irish Sea. It’s part of our shadow fleet.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a plan to me, Colonel Fedorov. In fact, as someone who knows these waters well, I rank your chances of survival at one in ten.”
“Rest assured, Allon, your odds are much worse.” He pointed the Makarov at Gabriel’s face and spoke in the voice of Liam Higgins. “In all honesty, I’m a rather dreadful shot. But even I can’t miss at this range.”
Just then the air shuddered with the distant thump of a helicopter rotor. The man running along the Coast Path had closed to within about three hundred meters. He might have been nearer by now had he not been wearing a detective’s dark suit and carrying a Glock 19 pistol, which weighed nearly two pounds when fully loaded. Gabriel needed to buy him another minute.
“Your superiors have sent you on a fool’s errand,” he told Colonel Valery Fedorov. “You’ll never get out of Britain alive. Put the gun down, and I’ll make sure my friends at the Secret Intelligence Service take good care of you.”
“I’m not a traitor, Allon. And if you must know, I volunteeredfor the job of killing you. You should consider yourself lucky that I didn’t do it sooner.”
“What stopped you?”
“I had a more important assignment.”
“You and your colleague Chloé Lamont were assembling ten drones at that house in Wilton Crescent. She was the one you were talking to that evening in Berkeley Square. I only wished you had introduced us. I would have enjoyed meeting her.”
