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element.”
    “If Grigori was kidnapped, why bother with the charade of a letter?”
    “The Russians committed a serious crime on your soil. It’s only natural they might try to cover their tracks with a stunt like this. No kidnapping, no crime.”
    Seymour regarded Gabriel with his granite-colored eyes. Like his handshake, they were an unfair weapon. “Two men stand before an abstract painting. One sees clouds over a wheat field, the other sees a pair of blue whales mating. Who’s correct? Does it matter? Do you see my point, Gabriel?”
    “I’m trying very hard, Graham.”
    “Your defector is gone. And nothing we say now is going to change that.”
    “My defector?”
    “You brought him here.”
    “And you agreed to protect him. Downing Street should have lodged an official protest with the Russian ambassador an hour after Grigori missed his first check-in.”
    “An official protest?” Seymour shook his head slowly. “Perhaps you’re not aware of the fact that the United Kingdom has more money invested in Russia than any other Western country. The prime minister has no intention of endangering those investments by starting another blazing row with the Kremlin.”
    “ ‘ When we hang the capitalists, they will sell us the rope.’ ”
    “Stalin, right? And the old boy had a point. Capitalism is the West’s greatest strength, and its greatest weakness.”
    Gabriel placed the letter on the table and changed the subject. “As I recall, Grigori was working on a book.”
    Seymour handed Gabriel a stack of paper. It was approximately one inch thick and bound by a pair of black metal clasps. Gabriel looked at the first page: KILLER IN THE KREMLIN BY GRIGORI BULGANOV.
    “I thought it was rather catchy,” Seymour said.
    “I doubt the Russians would agree. I assume you’ve read it?”
    Seymour nodded his head. “He’s rather hard on the Kremlin and not terribly kind to his old service. He accuses the FSB of all manner of sins, including murder, extortion, and links to organized crime and the oligarchs. He also makes a very persuasive case that the FSB was involved in those apartment-house bombings in Moscow, the ones the Russian president used as justification for sending the Red Army back into Chechnya. Grigori claims he personally knew the officers involved in the operation and identifies two by name.”
    “Any mention of me?”
    “There is a chapter in the book about the Kharkov affair, but it’s not terribly accurate. As far as Grigori is concerned, he was the one who single-handedly tracked down the missiles Ivan sold to al-Qaeda. There’s no mention of you or any Israeli connection in the manuscript.”
    “What about his handwritten notes or computer files?”
    “We searched them all. As far as Grigori was concerned, you do not exist.”
    Gabriel leafed through the pages of the manuscript. On the sixth page was a margin note, written in English. He read it, then looked at Seymour for an explanation.
    “It’s from Grigori’s editor at Buckley and Hobbes. I suppose, at some point, we’re going to have to tell them that they’re not going to get a book anytime soon.”
    “You read her notes.”
    “We read everything.”
    Gabriel turned several more pages, then stopped again to examine another margin note. Unlike the first, it was written in Russian. “It must have been written by Grigori,” Seymour said.
    “It doesn’t match the handwriting in the letter.”
    “The letter was written in Roman. The note is Cyrillic.”
    “Trust me, Graham. They weren’t written by the same person.”
    Gabriel leafed quickly through the remaining pages and found several more notations written by the same hand. When he looked up again, Seymour was removing the disk from the DVD player. He returned it to the clear plastic case and handed it to Gabriel. The message was clear. The briefing was over. If there was any doubt about Seymour’s intent, it was put to rest by a ponderous examination of his wristwatch.