Page 81 of The Collector
If Magnus was troubled by the sudden renewal of criticism over DanskOil’s ties to Russia, he gave no sign of it. Nor was there any indication he intended to knuckle under to the pressure. If anything, he seemed to relish the prospect of a fight. On the morning after the protesters attacked his car, he assured his senior staff that the work of the company would go on as normal and that no changes vis-à-vis the RuzNeft joint venture were imminent.
There was, however, a new addition to Magnus’s team—an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, platinum-blond hair, cat-eyed spectacles, named Astrid Sørensen. The sudden need for a second personal assistant was a mystery, especially to Nina Søndergaard, who had served Magnus faithfully for more than a decade. He gave her a splashy new title and a significant increase in salary, and all was forgiven.
The rest of DanskOil quickly fell into line as well. The HR department processed Ms. Sørensen’s paperwork in record time, and the head of security issued her an ID and an all-access keycard. When the IT department offered her the standard guided tour of the company computer system, she declined it—Magnus, she claimed, had already taught her the basics. The IT department found the story implausible, as the businessman with the soulof a poet had yet to master the fine art of loading paper into his printer.
Her desk was located outside the CEO’s fishbowl of an office. Her duties included answering his phone, greeting his visitors, reading and replying to his emails, and keeping his regimented daily schedule—in short, all the executive secretarial functions that were once the responsibility of Nina Søndergaard.
Inevitably, speculation arose as to the exact nature of the relationship between the embattled CEO of Denmark’s largest energy company and his attractive new personal assistant. Those who stalked her online found photos of a fashionable, outgoing woman of no discernible sexuality or romantic status—proof, said some, that she was engaged in a relationship with a married man. Otherwise, the only noteworthy aspect of her various social media feeds was the distinct rightward tilt to her politics. This placed her largely in the mainstream of DanskOil’s workforce. Extractors of fossil fuels in a nation of bicyclists, they were a politically self-sorting lot.
She resided, or so she claimed, in an apartment in Nørrebro. She spent most of her free time, however, in a safe house in the north Copenhagen neighborhood of Emdrup. The man for whom she purportedly worked was a frequent visitor as well, though his stays were shorter in duration—an hour or so each evening on his way home to his seaside mansion in Hellerup. Neither his wife nor his employees knew of his unusual movements, only his loyal driver, who assumed his boss was involved in nothing more interesting than another extracurricular romance.
Lars Mortensen of the PET dropped by most evenings to observe the training sessions. For better or worse, neither operative required much instruction when it came to the basics of tradecraft. One was a professional thief and confidence artist, the other a high-profile business executive who had been working as a coerced Russian asset fortwenty years. Natural deceivers and dissemblers, they were a dream couple.
It was Gabriel, with help from Natalie and Dina, who wrote the story of their on-again, off-again romance. It seemed that young, vibrant Astrid desperately wished to wed wealthy, dashing Magnus and, unlike many of his other friends, was not put off by his descent into pro-Russian infamy—in large part because young, vibrant Astrid was rabidly pro-Russian herself. Regrettably, this was the least offensive of her political views. She also believed that Denmark needed to expel its Muslim minority, that the Covid vaccine was lethal, that global warming was a hoax, that homosexuality was a lifestyle choice, and that a cabal of blood-drinking liberal pedophiles controlled the global financial system, Hollywood, and the media.
An accomplished pickpocket, she possessed the nimble fingers of a virtuoso musician. Even so, she practiced dialing the combination of Nikolai Petrov’s safe a thousand times at least—with the lights on, in pitch darkness, with her eyes open, while wearing a blindfold. Under any conditions, ten seconds was all she required.
But in order to reach the safe, she would first have to pick the lock on the door of Petrov’s office. The PET’s staff locksmith gave her a set of professional-grade bump keys and installed an array of common European locks on the internal doors of the safe house. Ingrid preferred to use the grip of a screwdriver—wrapped with tape to mute the sound—rather than a hammer to perform the actualbump. Extensive practice proved unnecessary. On her first attempt, she could open any door in the safe house in five seconds or less, a fraction of the time it took the locksmith from the Danish security service.
She was likewise proficient with the secure Office communications device known as the Genesis. Three test messages landed simultaneously at King Saul Boulevard and on Gabriel’s secure phonewithin seconds of being sent. The photograph in which the final message was embedded depicted a smiling Ingrid with her arms wrapped around the neck of a delighted Magnus Larsen.
The camera of the Genesis looked and functioned like the camera of an ordinary iPhone, but the device’s operating system had the ability to automatically hide and encrypt newly snapped photographs. Langley sent along an eighty-page mockup of the Security Council directive, complete with Cyrillic letters and numerals. Despite numerous attempts, Ingrid was never able to photograph the entire document in less than five minutes.
“An eternity,” said Lars Mortensen.
“But necessary,” replied Gabriel. “Under no circumstances can she steal the document itself. If that happens—”
“I will be negotiating with Nikolai Petrov to obtain the release of two Danish citizens from Russian custody.”
“Better you than me, Lars.”
With the help of an encrypted feed from the National Security Agency, Gabriel and his team were able to observe Petrov twice each day like clockwork—once at half past five in the morning and again around 10:00 p.m., when he arrived home from the Kremlin. On several occasions, the Russian stepped away from the desk when the door of the safe was open. There were two interior compartments. The lower was packed with gold ingots and bundles of cash. The classified documents were stored in the safe’s upper chamber, arranged vertically like books on a shelf. They appeared to be fourteen in number, all with Security Council bindings.
The camera shot allowed Gabriel and Lars Mortensen to create a scale replica of Petrov’s office inside PET headquarters. No matter which type of lock they used on the outer door, Ingrid was able to remove the mock directive from the safe and place it under the desklamp in less than thirty seconds. Only once, however, was she able to photograph the eighty pages in less than five minutes. It was the same day that Adrian Carter informed Gabriel that he was on his way to Copenhagen. The time for preparation, it seemed, was nearly over. The Russian asset code-named Komarovsky had made his move.
41
Copenhagen Station
The American Embassy, perhaps the most hideous building in all of Copenhagen, was located on the Dag Hammarskjölds Allé, about a kilometer from DanskOil headquarters. Carter received Gabriel in the secure conference room of the CIA station, dressed in a blazer and a pair of crumpled gabardine trousers. The overnight flight from Washington had been unkind to him. He looked exhausted and under stress, never a good combination.
He extracted a cup of coffee from a pump-action thermos. “The president sends his regards. He wishes to thank you for undertaking this dangerous operation on our behalf.”
“I’m not the one who’s going to do it, Adrian.”
“Is she ready?”
“As ready as she’ll ever be.”
“How long will it take her?”
“Too long for my comfort.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“If the actual Security Council directive is eighty pages, it will take her approximately six minutes from beginning to end.”
“And she knows that she can’t remove it from Petrov’s office?”
