Page 114 of Ransom

“More than a touch,” replied Gabriel. “She terrifies me.”

Suddenly there was a silence from within the office, followed by a temperate final exchange.

“It appears,” said Ingrid, “we have a resolution.”

“Which way?”

The door swung open before she could answer and Lars Mortensen, his face red with exertion, stepped into the anteroom. “We have forty-eight hours. And God help us if anything goes wrong.”

47

Rådhuspladsen

It fell to Christopher to hammer out the operational accord. Gabriel, who represented no service, and therefore had no official standing, was relegated largely to observer status, though occasionally he offered a few sage words of advice that brought the negotiations back from the brink. On one point, though, Lars Mortensen was unyielding—the surveillance of Captain Yuri Ivanov would last forty-eight hours and not a minute more. Christopher and Gabriel would be kept fully abreast of Ivanov’s movements and were welcome in the PET’s op center, day or night, but under no circumstances were they to operate themselves. This, added Mortensen, was strictly forbidden.

“That’s never stopped us before,” said Christopher.

“I realize that.”

“And when the clock expires?”

“Ivanov will be arrested.”

“He belongs to us.”

“Not anymore he doesn’t.”

“And what happens if he attempts to leave Denmark before the end of regulation play?”

“You should assume,” said Lars Mortensen, “that Captain Yuri Ivanov is never leaving Denmark.”

Unlike the British, the Danes didn’t bother with a code name. They merely went about their business calmly and quietly, in a very Danish sort of way. The first item on their to-do list was the installation of cameras and listening devices in Ivanov’s room at the Scandic Palace. Two PET tech officers saw to it the following morning while Ivanov was downstairs partaking of the complimentary buffet breakfast, and all of the devices were transmitting normally when the Russian returned to his room at eight fifteen. He watched a Spanish-language newscast until nine o’clock. Then, after conducting two brief calls in Spanish on his mobile phone, he left the room a second time.

Outside, he reprised the role of the sophisticated urban explorer, this time for the surveillance artists of the PET. For the next three hours he led them on a merry chase from one end of Copenhagen to the other. Once again coffeehouses and bookstores were his preferred oases. He made and received several phone calls during his wanderings, but he met with no one, and the watchers saw nothing that looked like a brush pass or impersonal communication.

After a traditional Danish lunch at an outdoor café in Nyhavn, he returned to the Scandic Palace long enough to collect his rentedŠkoda, which by then had been fitted with a tracking device. He drove through the streets of central Copenhagen for the better part of an hour before heading to the southeastern suburb of Kastrup, where he ate a second lunch, this time at a small café adjacent to Copenhagen Airport. Leaving the café, he set off along the airport perimeter road, stopping now and again to snap a few photographs. The PET watchers managed to snap a few photos of him as well, and the airport’s CCTV cameras recorded nearly a half hour of video. He was, in the lexicon of the intelligence game, blown to high heaven.

At seven that evening he was back in his hotel room, and Gabriel,Christopher, and Ingrid, having been summoned by Prime Minister Kalla Eriksen, were once again inside the Borgen. Also present was Denmark’s foreign minister, interior minister, and minister of defense. The mood in the room was tense. It was the assumption of everyone present, including Gabriel, that an incursion of Russian drones into Danish airspace was imminent. The prime minister again suggested taking Yuri Ivanov into custody. Though it took some doing, Lars Mortensen managed to talk her out of it.

By midnight it seemed apparent that tonight would not be the night, so the prime minister went home to her family, and Gabriel, Christopher, and Ingrid headed to the Hotel Sanders. Ingrid and Christopher made straight for the bar, and Gabriel, against all better judgment, joined them for a nightcap. While partaking of his usual Johnnie Walker Black Label, Christopher scrolled through the headlines on his phone.

“Bloody hell,” he said suddenly.

“What is it now?” asked Gabriel.

“Have a look atThe New York Times.”

Gabriel awakened his phone and opened theTimesapp. The lead story had been written by Peter Baker, the paper’s chief White House correspondent. The headline readukraine’spresident, othereuropeanleaders to meet at downing street summit.

“Exactly what we needed,” said Gabriel.

“When it rains, it pours,” added Christopher.

“Where do you suppose the leak came from?”

“I’m not an expert when it comes to the inner workings of Washington, but it looks to me as though it came from someone at the White House.”

“Why do you suppose they would have done a thing like that?”