Prologue
London, 1961
It happened the day after a slushy March snow.
A jogger approached the Soviet Embassy, her breath puffs of white as she ran along Kensington Road Gardens at the junction with Bayswater Road. She was even with the embassy gates when she stopped, coming to rest, her woolen gloves on her knees. She turned her face to the side and studied the snowy strip between sidewalk and asphalt.
The runner took a step closer, leaving the sidewalk. Another step, bending low to see. She gasped and jerked back. In the melting snow lay two bodies, side by side, empty eye sockets leering back. There was blood at the heads and hands, which explained what had caught her eye. She cried out, frightened, at a passing bicyclist. He paid no attention. Her instinct was to run, run far away. Instead, she jogged over to the embassy gatehouse and waved at the guard on duty. The guard walked over to the mounds, then ran back and picked up his phone and called the rezident, KGB General Anatoly Anchev.
Anchev called KGB Colonel Nikolai Semenov. "Dead bodies are said to be in the snow outside the embassy."
"What?"
Nikolai Semenov turned to a second-story window overlooking the scene below. Weak early morning light shone through the plate glass.
He saw the mounds in the snow. "Okay, I see it now." It affected him oddly, the sight below. To think it was dead bodies. It was like something out of a dream. Then he touched the window glass to steady himself. Too terrible to even think—might that be her down there?
Anchev cried, "You need to get out there!" Then the phone went dead.
Nikolai struggled into his coat and returned to the window. His hands shook so badly he couldn't zip. For he was a spy betraying the Soviet Union, feeding Soviet secrets to the British three years now. A spy whose wife hadn't come home from work that morning. Had he been found out? Was the KGB toying with him, sending him outside to discover his wife lying dead in the snow?
He watched from above as London police officers arrived at the curb and gestured with gloved hands, talking across the snowy bodies. One ran back to the car and lifted the microphone. A police van pulled in. A camera appeared, flashes of light all around.
Then Anchev called again. Nikolai picked up and listened while watching the police toe the bodies. Anchev said it was on Soviet Union property. The investigation rightfully should belong to the KGB. He said Nikolai needed to rush down and claim the inquiry for the KGB. Nikolai wanted to ask, "What about the London police?" but thought otherwise. One didn't argue with the rezident.
He placed the phone back in the cradle, hurried out into the hallway, and jogged to the end where he double-timed it down the stairs to the lobby door. His heart was pounding. With each step, it became more and more apparent what he was about to find, and it made him want to cry out in horror at what the KGB had done that Anchev was leading him to see.
He hit the ground running, hardly noticing the early morning London air that tasted of burnt coal and traffic exhaust.
"Hey!" he shouted down the drive. "Don't touch anything!"
The London police officers ignored him. He called again. This time they turned to see the thirty-one-year-old run up to the murder scene, coat flapping, sweeping the hair from his eyes.
"This crime scene belongs to the KGB. Embassy property out to the street." He caught his breath and flashed his ID. "I will decide who comes and goes here." He said this while averting his eyes from the mound of snow, fearful he might be looking down into his wife's face. But then he could stand it no longer, and he turned.
Two females, no faces.
Blood was everywhere. It looked like the slaughter had happened right there.
His breathing shallowed. The world tipped. He pressed his hand against a tree overlooking the scene, steadying himself. When he could let go, he approached, closer this time.
He could see well enough through the mix of ice and snow to make out a white blouse on the closer body. Yulia had the same blouse, but he latched onto a small hope that it was someone else’s blouse, someone other than his Yulia.
His gaze traveled down to the hands folded across the woman’s abdomen, where he studied the wedding ring she wore. Was it the ring he had saved up to buy and presented to her over dinner in Moscow? The tiny stone caused tears to form in his eyes. He looked away, studying the hair all matted and bloody, unrecognizable. But the teeth—her lips were cut away—perfect save for one eyetooth that stood forward. All Yulia.
He blinked away his tears, fighting the impulse to drop to his knees and dig with his hands and lift her away from the cold. But he knew Anchev was watching from the embassy, and Nikolai didn’t want to give him the pleasure of destroying a KGB officer turned spy. Instead, he came fully upright, a confident posture, his face that of a stolid KGB Colonel.
There was a more important reason to show no reaction. It was better for him to assume a mantle of innocence, of one who didn’t expect harm to come to a loved one. For he was the father of a one-year-old daughter, and if it was Yulia in the snow, and if the KGB had learned he was a double agent, Sasha would become an orphan. The Soviet Union would own her.
He stepped away from the bodies and crossed his arms. He spoke to the London police as if directing them. This was for Anchev’s benefit as he studied Nikolai from his gaudy second-floor office filled with awards from the Party and photographs of him with Stalin—hidden away when visitors came from Moscow—him with Khrushchev, him with his wife mounted on her prize horse at their dacha outside Moscow. Nikolai hated him for his loyalty, yet admired him as well, though he would never admit it.
Nikolai said to the sergeant with the stripes on his coat, "You are definitely needed here. But it is still a Soviet investigation."
The nearby police officers shrugged. "Fine," said the sergeant, and he turned to leave, tugging his partner with him. "Come on."
"Wait," said Nikolai. His position in the KGB had nothing whatever to do with the investigation of homicides. He had no idea what came next, and Anchev hadn't appeared yet to direct him. "I didn't say to leave. We shall do this together."
The police stopped and came back. "We do this every day," said the sergeant. "This is our job. If you will go back to the sidewalk and take these other people with you, we will proceed."
He turned. All around, a crowd had collected, the jogger among them. One officer took her aside. Nikolai could hear him taking down her name and phone number. The sergeant became riled. "Get rid of the crowd!"
Nikolai shouted at them to move back onto the sidewalk but didn't approach them. Instead, he bent down and sat on his haunches to view the closest body.
He looked down at the ring again. Did it have his words inside? Yulia forever, Nikolai.
Anchev be damned, he could not restrain his hand as he reached out and brushed at the cover of snow. It was icy, but he saw enough. Her fingertips were missing.
"Bring dogs," he ordered the police. "We've fingertips to find."
Anatoly Anchev finally strode out the gate. As he drew near, he stroked his chin and hummed the Soviet National Anthem. It wasn't lost on Nikolai—Anchev was toying with him. "What little gift has someone left on the Soviet doorstep?" Anchev wondered aloud. "Who do we have, Colonel?"
Nikolai shook his head. "Nobody. We have nobody."