Daniel Silva - The defector

It was a few minutes after ten when the plane touched down at the Adirondack Regional Airport outside Saranac Lake. Adrian Carter had arranged for a Ford Explorer to be left in the parking lot. By some miracle, the engine managed to start on the first attempt. Gabriel switched the heater to high and spent several deplorable minutes scraping ice from the windows. Climbing behind the wheel again, he could no longer feel his face. The temperature gauge of the Explorer indicated minus eight. Not possible, he thought. Surely it had to be instrument malfunction.

Carter, a cautious soul if ever there was one, had decreed no one could approach the site with anything that transmitted or received a signal, including GPS navigation systems. Gabriel followed a set of typewritten instructions he had been given on board the plane. Leaving the airport, he turned right and followed Route 186 to Lake Clear. He made another right at Route 30 and headed toward Upper St. Regis Lake. Spitfire Lake came next, then Lower St. Regis, then the small college town of Paul Smiths. A few yards beyond the entrance of the college was Keese Mills Road, a winding lane that ran eastward into one of the more remote corners of the preserve. Somewhere in this part of the Adirondacks, the Rockefellers had kept an immense summer retreat, complete with its own rail station to accommodate the private family train. Gabriel’s destination, though far smaller than the Rockefeller estate, was scarcely less secluded. The entrance was on the left side of the road and, as Carter had warned, it was easy to miss. Gabriel sped past it the first time and had to continue driving another quarter mile before finding a suitable place to execute a U-turn on the icy road.

A narrow track ran straight into the thick woods for approximately a hundred yards before encountering a metal security gate. No other fencing or barriers were visible, but Gabriel knew the grounds were littered with cameras, heat sensors, and motion detectors. Something had taken note of his approach because the gate slid open even before he brought the SUV to a stop. On the other side, he saw a Jeep Grand Cherokee speeding toward him across a clearing. Behind the wheel was a man in his mid-fifties with the bearing of a soldier. His name was Ed Fielding. A former officer in the CIA’s Special Operations Group, Fielding was in charge of security.

“We told you the entrance was hard to find,” Fielding said through his open window.

“You were watching?”

Fielding only smiled. “You remembered to leave your cell phone at home?”

“I remembered.”

“What about your BlackBerry?”

“Can’t stand the things.”

“No secret pens or X-ray glasses?”

“The only thing electronic in my possession is my wristwatch, and I’d be happy to pitch it into a nearby lake if that would make you more comfortable.”

“As long as it isn’t some secret Israeli device that transmits and receives a signal, you can keep it. Besides, all the lakes are frozen.” Fielding revved his engine. “We have a bit of driving to do. Stay close. Otherwise, you might get shot by the snipers.”

Fielding accelerated hard across the clearing. By the time they reached the next line of trees, Gabriel had closed the gap. After a half mile, the road turned up a steep hill. Though plowed and sanded earlier that morning, the surface was already frozen solid. Fielding scaled it without incident, but Gabriel struggled to maintain traction. He switched the four-wheel-drive setting from high to low and made a second attempt. This time, the tires bit into the ice, and the SUV muscled its way slowly toward the crest. In the ten seconds it had taken to make the adjustment, Fielding had slipped away. Gabriel found him a moment later, paused at a fork in the road. They headed left and drove another two miles, until they reached a clearing at the highest point of the estate.

A large, traditional Adirondack lodge stood in the center, its soaring roof and sweeping porches facing southeast, toward the faint warmth of the midday sun and the frozen lakes of St. Regis. A second lodge stood nearer the edge of the forest, smaller than the main house but still grand in its own right. Between the two structures was a meadow where two heavily bundled children were hard at work on a snowman, watched over by a tall, dark-haired woman in a shearling coat. Hearing the sound of approaching vehicles, she turned with an animal alertness, then, a few seconds later, lifted her hand dramatically into the air.

Gabriel pulled up behind Fielding and switched off the engine. By the time he had opened the door, the woman was rushing toward him awkwardly through the knee-deep snow. She hurled her arms around his neck and kissed him elaborately on each cheek. “Welcome to the one place in the world Ivan will never find me,” said Elena Kharkov. “My God, Gabriel, I can’t believe you’re really here.”

THEY HAD lunch in the large rustic dining room beneath a traditional Adirondack antler chandelier. Elena sat against a soaring window, framed by the distant lakes, Anna to her left, Nikolai to her right. Though Gabriel had carried out what amounted to a legal kidnapping of the Kharkov twins in the south of France the previous summer, he had never before seen them in person. He was struck now, as Sarah Bancroft had been upon meeting them for the first time, by their appearance. Anna, lanky and dark and blessed with a natural elegance, was a smaller version of her mother; Nikolai, fair and compact with a wide forehead and prominent brow, was the very likeness of his notorious father. Indeed, throughout an otherwise pleasant meal Gabriel had the uncomfortable feeling that Ivan Kharkov, his most implacable enemy, was scrutinizing his every move from the other side of the table.

He was struck, too, by the sound of their voices. Their English was perfect and had only the faintest trace of a Russian accent. It was not surprising, he thought. In many respects, the Kharkov children were scarcely Russian at all. They had spent most of their life in a Knightsbridge mansion and had attended an exclusive London school. In winter, they had holidayed in Courchevel; in summer, they trooped south to Villa Soleil, Ivan’s palace by the sea in Saint-Tropez. As for Russia, it was a place they had visited a few weeks each year, just to keep in touch with their roots. Anna, the more talkative of the two, spoke of her native country as though it were something she had read about in books. Nikolai said little. He just stared at Gabriel a great deal, as if he suspected the unexplained lunch guest was somehow to blame for the fact he now lived on a mountaintop in the Adirondacks instead of west London and the south of France.

When the meal was concluded, the children kissed their mother’s cheek and dutifully carried their dishes into the kitchen. “It took a little time for them to get used to life without servants,” Elena said when they were gone. “I think it’s better they live like normal children for a while.” She smiled at the absurdity of her statement. “Well, almost normal.”

“How have they handled the adjustment?”

“As well as one might expect, under the circumstances. Their lives as they knew them ended in the blink of an eye, all because their Russian bodyguards were stopped for speeding while leaving the beach in Saint-Tropez. I suspect they were the only people pulled over for speeding in the south of France the entire summer.”

“Gendarmes can be rather unpredictable in their enforcement of traffic regulations.”

“They can also be very kind. They took good care of my children when they were in custody. Nikolai still speaks fondly of the time he spent in the Saint-Tropez gendarmerie. He also enjoyed the monastery in the Alps. As far as the children were concerned, their escape was all a big adventure. And I have you to thank for that, Gabriel. You made it very easy on them.”