The Defector

20

THE QUARTER of Paris known as the Marais lies on the right bank of the Seine and spreads across portions of the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. Once a marshland, it had been a fashionable address during the monarchy, a working-class slum after the Revolution, and, in the twentieth century, the city’s most vibrant Jewish neighborhood. Scene of a nightmarish Nazi roundup during the Second World War, it had fallen into a state of ruin by the 1960s, when the government launched a concerted effort to bring it back to life. Now among the most fashionable districts in Paris, the Marais was filled with exclusive shops, art museums, and trendy restaurants. It was in one such restaurant, on rue des Archives, that Uzi Navot waited late the following afternoon. He wore a roll-necked sweater that left the unflattering impression his head was bolted directly onto his thick shoulders. He scarcely lifted his eyes as Gabriel and Olga sat down.

They had arrived in Paris shortly after ten the previous evening and checked into a dreary little transit hotel across the street from the Gare du Nord. The journey had been uneventful; there had been no more attacks by Russian assassins, and Olga’s cat had behaved as well as could be expected during the train ride from Oxford to Paddington Station. Due to the Eurostar’s ban on pets, Gabriel had had no choice but to find lodging for the cat in London. He had taken it to an art gallery in St. James’s owned by a man named Julian Isherwood. Over the years Isherwood had suffered many indignities because of his secret association with the Office, but to have a stranger’s cat thrust upon him without warning was, he said, the final insult. His mood, however, changed dramatically upon seeing Olga for the first time. But then Gabriel had known it would. Julian Isherwood had a weakness for three things: Italian paintings, French wine, and beautiful women. Especially Russian women. And like Uzi Navot, he was easily appeased.

“I don’t know why we had to come to this place,” Navot said now. “You know how much I love the potted chicken at Jo Goldenberg.”

“It’s closed, Uzi. Haven’t you heard?”

“I know. But I still can’t quite believe it. What’s the Marais without Jo Goldenberg?”

For more than half a century, the kosher delicatessen had occupied a prominent corner at 7 rue des Rosiers. Jews from around the world had crowded into the restaurant’s worn red banquettes and gorged themselves on caviar, chopped liver, brisket, and potato latkes. So had French film stars, government ministers, and famous writers and journalists. But the prominence of Jo Goldenberg made it an inviting target for extremists and terrorists, and in August 1982 six patrons were killed in a grenade and machine-gun attack carried out by the Palestinian terrorist group Abu Nidal. In the end, though, it was not terrorism that brought down the Paris landmark but soaring rents and repeated citations for poor sanitary conditions.

“You’re lucky that chicken didn’t kill you, Uzi. God knows how long it had been lying around before they tossed it in a bowl and served it to you.”

“It was excellent. And so was the borscht. You loved the borscht at Jo Goldenberg.”

“I hate borscht. I’ve always hated borscht.”

“Then why did you order it?”

“You ordered it for me. And then you ate it for me, too.”

“I don’t remember it that way.”

“Whatever you say, Uzi.”

They had been speaking to one another in rapid French. Navot turned to Olga and in English asked, “Wouldn’t you have enjoyed a good bowl of borscht, Miss Sukhova?”

“I’m Russian. Why on earth would I come to Paris and order borscht?”

Navot looked at Gabriel again. “Is she always so friendly?” he asked in Hebrew.

“Russians have a somewhat dark sense of humor.”

“I’ll say.” Navot glanced out the window into the narrow street. “This place has changed since I left Paris. I used to come here whenever I had a few hours to kill. It was like a little slice of Tel Aviv, right in the center of Paris. Now…” he shook his head slowly. “It’s just another place to buy a handbag or expensive jewelry. You can’t even get good falafel here anymore.”

“That’s exactly the way the mayor wants it. Neat and tidy with lots of chic stores paying big rents and big tax bills. They even tried to put in a McDonald’s a few months back, but the neighborhood rose up in rebellion. Poor Jo Goldenberg couldn’t make a go of it anymore. At the end, his rent was three hundred thousand euros a year.”

“No wonder the kitchen was a mess.”

Navot looked down at his menu. When he spoke again, his tone was decidedly less cordial.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly. I come to Italy and order you to return to Israel because we believe your life may be in danger. You tell me that you need three days to finish a painting, and I foolishly agree. Then, within twenty-four hours, I learn that you’ve slipped away from the bodyguards and traveled to London to investigate the disappearance of one Grigori Bulganov, missing Russian defector. And this morning I receive a message saying you’ve arrived in Paris, accompanied by Russian defector number two, Olga Sukhova. Have I left anything out?”

“We had to leave Olga’s cat behind at Julian’s gallery. You need to send someone from London Station to collect it. Otherwise, Julian’s liable to let it loose in Green Park.”

Gabriel removed Grigori’s letter from his coat pocket and dealt it onto the table. Navot read it silently, his face an inscrutable mask, then looked up again.

“I want to know everything you did while you were in England, Gabriel. No shortcuts, deletions, edits, or abridgments. Do you understand me?”

Gabriel gave Navot a complete account, beginning with his first meeting with Graham Seymour and ending with the assassination attempt on Olga’s doorstep.

“They disabled the lock?” Navot asked.

“It was a nice touch.”

“It’s a shame the shooter didn’t realize you were unarmed. He could have simply climbed out of the car and killed you.”

“You don’t really mean that, Uzi.”

“No, but it makes me feel better to say it. Rather sloppy for a Russian hit team, don’t you think?”

“It’s not so easy to kill someone from a moving vehicle.”

“Unless you’re Gabriel Allon. When we set our sights on someone, he dies. The Russians are usually like that, too. They’re fanatics when it comes to planning and preparation.”

Gabriel nodded in agreement.

“So why send a couple of amateurs to Oxford?”

“Because they assumed it would be easy. They probably thought the second string could handle it.”

“You’re assuming Olga was the target and not you?”

“That’s correct.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’d only been in the country three days. Even we would be hard-pressed to organize a hit that quickly.”

“So why didn’t they call it off when they saw she wasn’t alone?”

“It’s possible they simply mistook me for Olga’s boyfriend or one of her students, not someone who knows to hit the deck when a lock suddenly stops working.”

A waiter approached the table. Navot sent him away with a subtle gesture of his hand.

“It might have been wiser if you’d shared some of these observations with Graham Seymour. He allowed you to conduct your own review of Grigori’s disappearance. And how did you repay him? By sneaking out of the country with another one of his defectors.” Navot gave a humorless smile. “Graham and I could form our own little club. Men who have placed their trust in you, only to be burned.”

Navot looked at Olga and switched from Hebrew to English.

“Your neighbors didn’t notice the bullet holes and the broken front door until about eight o’clock. When they couldn’t find you, they called the Thames Valley Police.”

“I’m afraid I know what happened next,” she said. “Because my address had a special security flag on it, the dispatch officer immediately contacted the chief constable.”

“And guess what the chief constable did?”

“I suspect he called the Home Office in London. And then the Home Office contacted Graham Seymour.”

Navot’s gaze shifted from Olga to Gabriel. “And what do you think Graham Seymour did?”

“He called our London station chief.”

“Who’d been quietly scouring the city for you for the past three days,” Navot added. “And when Graham got the station chief on the telephone, he read him the riot act. Congratulations, Gabriel. You’ve managed to bring relations between the British and the Office to a new low. They want a full explanation of what happened in Oxford last night. And they’d also like their defector back. Graham Seymour is expecting us in London tomorrow morning, bright and early.”

“Us?”

“You, me, and Olga.” Then, almost as an afterthought, Navot added, “And the Old Man, too.”

“How did Shamron manage to get himself involved in this?”

“The same way he always does. Shamron abhors a vacuum. He sees an empty space and he fills it.”

“Tell him to stay in Tiberias. Tell him we can handle it.”

“Please, Gabriel. As far as Shamron is concerned, we’re still a couple of kids trying to learn how to ride a bicycle, and he can’t quite bring himself to let go of the seat. Besides, it’s too late. He’s already here.”

“Where is he?”

“A safe flat up in Montmartre. Olga and I will stay here and get better acquainted. Shamron would like a word with you. In private.”

“About what?”

“He didn’t tell me. After all, I’m only the chief of Special Ops.”

Navot looked down at his menu and frowned.

“No potted chicken. You know how much I loved the potted chicken at Jo Goldenberg. The only thing better than the potted chicken was the borscht.”

21

THE APARTMENT house stood in the eastern fringes of Montmartre, next to the cemetery. It had a tidy interior courtyard and an elegant staircase covered by a well-worn runner. The flat was on the third floor; from the window of the comfortably furnished sitting room, it might have been possible to see the white dome of Sacré-Coeur had Shamron not been blocking the view. Hearing the sound of the door, he turned round slowly and stared at Gabriel for a long moment, as if debating whether to have him shot or thrown to the wild dogs. He was wearing a gray pin-striped suit and a costly silk necktie the color of polished silver. It made him look like an aging Middle European businessman who made money in shady ways and never lost at baccarat.

“We missed you at lunch, Ari.”

“I don’t eat lunch.”

“Not even when you’re in Paris?”

“I loathe Paris. Especially in winter.”

He fished a cigarette case from the breast pocket of his jacket and thumbed open the lid.

“I thought you’d finally given up smoking.”

“And I thought you were in Italy finishing a painting.” Shamron removed a cigarette, tapped the end three times on the lid, and slipped it between his lips. “And you wonder why I won’t retire.”

His lighter flared. It was not the battered old Zippo he carried at home but a sleek silver device that, at Shamron’s command, produced a blue finger of flame. The cigarette, however, was his usual brand. Unfiltered and Turkish, it emitted an acrid odor that was as unique to Shamron as his trademark walk and his unyielding will to crush anyone foolish enough to oppose him.

To describe the influence of Ari Shamron on the defense and security of the State of Israel was tantamount to explaining the role played by water in the formation and maintenance of life on earth. In many respects, Ari Shamron was the State of Israel. He had fought in the war that led to Israel’s reconstitution and had spent the subsequent sixty years protecting the country from a host of enemies bent on its destruction. His star had burned brightest in times of war and crisis. He was named director of the Office for the first time not long after the disaster of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and served longer than any chief before or after him. When a series of public scandals dragged the reputation of the Office down to the lowest point in its history, he was called out of retirement and, with Gabriel’s help, restored the Office to its former glory. His second retirement, like his first, was involuntary. In some quarters, it was likened to the destruction of the Second Temple.

Shamron’s role now was that of an éminence grise. Though he no longer had a formal position or title, he remained the hidden hand that guided Israel’s security policies. It was not unusual to enter his home at midnight and find several men crowded around the kitchen table in their shirtsleeves, shouting at one another through a dense cloud of cigarette smoke-and poor Gilah, his long-suffering wife, sitting in the next room with her needle-point and her Mozart, waiting for the boys to leave so that she could see to the dishes.

“You’ve managed to create quite a row on the other side of the English Channel, my son. But then, that’s become your specialty.” Shamron exhaled a stream of smoke toward the ceiling, where it swirled in the half-light like gathering storm clouds. “Your friend Graham Seymour is apparently fighting for his job. Mazel tov, Gabriel. Not bad for three days’ work.”

“Graham will survive. He always does.”

“At what cost?” Shamron asked of no one but himself. “Downing Street and the top ranks of MI5 and MI6 are in an uproar over your actions. They’re making unpleasant noises about suspending cooperation with us on a broad range of sensitive issues. We need them right now, Gabriel. And so do you.”

“Why me?”

“Perhaps it’s escaped your notice, but the mullahs in Tehran are about to complete their nuclear weapon. Our new prime minister and I share a similar philosophy. We don’t believe in sitting around while others plot our destruction. And when people talk about wiping us off the face of the earth, we choose to take them at their word. We both lost our families in the first Holocaust, and we’re not going to lose our country to a second-at least, not without a fight.”

Shamron removed his eyeglasses and inspected the lenses for impurity. “If we are forced to attack Iran, we can expect a ferocious response from their proxy army in Lebanon: Hezbollah. You should know that a delegation from Hezbollah made a secret trip to Moscow recently to do a bit of shopping. And they weren’t looking for nesting dolls and fur hats. They went to see your old friend Ivan Kharkov. Word is, Ivan sold them three thousand Kor net vehicle-mounted antitank weapons, along with several thousand RPG 32s. Apparently, he also gave them a nice discount since he knew they’d be using the weapons against us.”

“We’re sure it was Ivan?”

“We heard his name mentioned in several intercepts.” Shamron put on his eyeglasses again and scrutinized Gabriel for a moment. “With adversaries like Iran, Hezbollah, and Ivan Kharkov, we need friends wherever we can find them, Gabriel. That’s why we need good relations with the British.” Shamron paused. “And it’s why I need you to end your honeymoon without end and come home.”

Gabriel could see where this was headed. He decided not to make Shamron’s task any easier by posing a leading question. Shamron, visibly annoyed by the calculated silence, stabbed out his cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table.

“Our new prime minister has been an admirer of yours for many years. The same cannot be said of his feelings toward the current director of the Office. He and Amos served briefly together in AMAN, Israel’s military intelligence service. Their hatred was mutual and persists to this day. Amos will not survive long. Last week, over a private dinner, the prime minister asked me who I wanted to be the next chief of the Office. I gave him your name, of course.”

“I’ve made it abundantly clear I’m not interested in the job.”

“I’ve heard this speech before. It’s tiresome. More to the point, it does not reflect current realities. The State of Israel is facing a threat unlike any in its history. If you haven’t noticed, we’re not very popular right now. And the Iranian threat means even greater instability and potential violence across the region. What do you intend to do, Gabriel? Sit on your farm in Italy and restore paintings for the pope?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not realistic.”

“Perhaps not to you, Ari, but it’s what I intend to do. I’ve given my life to the Office. I’ve lost my son. I’ve lost one wife. I’ve shed the blood of other men and my own blood. I’m finished. Tell the prime minister to choose someone else.”

“He needs you. The country needs you.”

“You’re being a bit hyperbolic, don’t you think?”

“No, just honest. The country has lost faith in its political leaders. Our society is beginning to fray. The people need someone they can believe in. Someone they can trust. Someone beyond reproach.”

“I was an assassin. I’m hardly beyond reproach.”

“You were a soldier on the secret battlefield. You gave justice to those who could not seek it themselves.”

“And I lost everything in the process. I almost lost myself.”

“But your life has been restored, just like one of your paintings. You have Chiara. Who knows? Perhaps soon you’ll have another child.”

“Is there something I should know, Ari?”

Shamron’s lighter flared again. His next words were spoken not to Gabriel but the floodlit dome of Sacré-Coeur. “Come home, Gabriel. Take control of the Office. It is what you were born to do. Your future was determined when your mother named you Gabriel.”

“That was the same thing you said when you recruited me for Operation Wrath of God.”

“Was it?” Shamron gave a faint smile of remembrance. “No wonder you said yes to me then.”

Shamron had been hinting at a scenario like this for years, but never before had he stated it so unequivocally. Gabriel, were he foolish enough to accept the offer, knew only too well how he would spend the rest of his life. Indeed, he had to look no further than the man standing before him. Running the Office had ruined Shamron’s health and wreaked havoc with his family. The country regarded him as a national treasure, but as far as his children were concerned, Shamron was the father who had never been there. The father who had missed birthdays and anniversaries. The father who traveled in armored cars, surrounded by men with guns. It was not the life Gabriel wanted, nor did he intend to inflict it on his loved ones. To say those words to Shamron now was not an option. Better to hold out a glimmer of hope and use the situation to his advantage. Shamron would understand that. It was exactly the way he would have played it if the roles were reversed.

“How long before I would have to take control?”

“Does that mean you’ll take the job?”

“No, it means I’ll consider the offer-on two conditions.”

“I don’t like ultimatums. The PLO learned that lesson the hard way.”

“Do you want to hear my terms?”

“If you insist.”

“Number one, I get to finish my painting.”

Shamron closed his eyes and nodded. “And the second?”

“I’m going to get Grigori Bulganov out of Russia before Ivan kills him.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.” Shamron took a final pull at his cigarette and ground it out slowly in the ashtray. “See if there’s some coffee in this place. You know I’m incapable of discussing an operation without coffee.”

22

GABRIEL SPOONED coffee into the French press and briefed Shamron while waiting for the water to boil. Shamron sat motionless at the small table in his shirtsleeves, his liver-spotted hands bunched thoughtfully beneath his chin. He moved for the first time to read the letter Grigori had left with Olga Sukhova in Oxford, then a moment later to accept his first cup of coffee. He was pouring sugar into it when he announced his verdict.

“It’s clear Ivan is planning to hunt down and kill everyone who was involved in the operation against him. First he went after Grigori. Then Olga. But the person he really wants is you.”

“So what do you want me to do? Spend the rest of my life hiding?” Gabriel shook his head. “To quote the great Ari Shamron, I don’t believe in sitting around while others plot my destruction. It seems to me we have a choice. We can live in fear. Or we can fight back.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

“By treating Ivan and his operators as though they are terrorists. By putting them out of business before they can go after anyone else. And if we’re lucky, we might be able to get Grigori back.”

“Where do you plan to start?”

Gabriel unzipped the side compartment of his overnight bag and withdrew an enlarged photograph of a Mercedes sedan with two people in the backseat. Shamron slipped on a pair of battered half-moon reading glasses and examined the image. Then Gabriel placed another photograph before him: the photo that had been attached to the letter in Oxford. Grigori and Irina in happier times…

“I suppose we know how they got him into the car so quietly,” Shamron said. “Did you share this with your British friends?”

“It might have slipped my mind while I was fleeing the country one step ahead of a Russian hit squad.”

“Accompanied by Graham Seymour’s defector.” Shamron spent a moment scrutinizing the photograph. “Tell me what you have in mind, my son.”

“I made a promise to Grigori the night he saved my life. I intend to keep that promise.”

“Grigori Bulganov has a British passport. That makes him a British problem.”

“Graham Seymour made one thing abundantly clear to me in London, Ari. As far as the British are concerned, Grigori is my defector, not theirs. And if I don’t try to get him back, no one will.”

Shamron tapped the photograph. “And you think she can help you?”

“She saw their faces. Heard their voices. If we can get to her, she can help us.”

“And what if she’s not willing to help you? What if she willingly took part in the operation?”

“I suppose anything is possible…”

“But?”

“I doubt it very seriously. Based on what Grigori told me, Irina hated the FSB and everything it stood for. It was one of the reasons their marriage came apart.”

“Were there any other reasons?”

“She was ashamed of Grigori for taking money from Ivan Kharkov. She called it blood money. She wouldn’t touch it.”

“Perhaps Irina had a change of heart. Russians can be very persuasive, Gabriel. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that everyone has a price.”

“You might be right, Ari. But we won’t know for sure until we ask her.”

“A conversation? Is that what you’re suggesting?”

“Something like that.”

“What makes you think they haven’t killed her?”

“I called her office this morning. She answered the phone.”

Shamron drank some of his coffee and pondered the implications of Gabriel’s statement. “Let me make one thing clear from the outset. Under no circumstances are you or anyone else from the original operation against Ivan going back to Moscow. Ever.”

“I have no intention of going back.”

“So how are you going to arrange a meeting with her?”

Gabriel gave the rough outlines of his plan. Shamron twirled his lighter between his fingertips while he listened: two turns to the right, two turns to the left.

“It has one flaw. You’re assuming she’ll cooperate.”

“I’m assuming nothing.”

“She’ll have to be handled carefully until you’re certain of her true loyalties.”

“And after that as well.”

“I suppose you’d like to use your old team.”

“It saves time having to get acquainted.”

“How much money is this going to cost me?”

Gabriel added coffee to Shamron’s cup and smiled. The Old Man had worked for the Office during a time when it counted every shekel, and he still acted as if operational funds came directly from his own pocket.

“A hundred thousand should cover it.”

“A hundred thousand!”

“I was going to ask for two.”

“I’ll transfer the funds into your account in Zurich tomorrow morning. As soon as you’ve established a base of operations, I’ll dispatch the team.”

“What are you going to tell Amos?”

“As little as possible.”

“And the British?”

“Leave that to me. I’ll brief them about your plans and make it clear we’ll share whatever information you discover.” Shamron paused. “You will share nicely, won’t you, Gabriel?”

“Absolutely.”

“To be honest, I’m sure they’ll be relieved we’re handling it. The last thing Downing Street wants is another confrontation with the Russians-not with the British economy on life support. They’re more interested in making sure that Russian money continues to flow into the banks of London.”

“That leaves one problem.”

“Just one?”

“Olga.”

“I’ll return her to the British tomorrow and fall on my sword on your behalf. I’ve brought along a little present for them, some chatter we’ve been picking up in Lebanon about a possible terror plot in London.”

“You can tell them about the chatter in Lebanon, Ari, but I’m afraid Olga isn’t going back to Britain anytime soon.”

“You can’t leave her here in Paris.”

“I don’t intend to. I’m taking her with me. She’s really rather good, you know.”

“Something tells me my stay in London isn’t going to be a pleasant one.” Shamron sipped his coffee. “You’d better have a word with Uzi. Whatever you do, don’t mention our conversation about your taking control of the Office. He’s not going to be thrilled about the prospect of working for you.”

“I never said I would take the job, Ari. I said I would consider it.”

“I heard you the first time. But I know you wouldn’t be leading me on, not over something as important as this.”

“I need you to do me one other favor while you’re in London.”

“What’s that?”

“I had to leave Olga’s cat with Julian Isherwood.”

Shamron began turning his lighter again. “I hate cats. And the only thing I hate worse than cats is being lied to.”

23

LAKE COMO lies in the northeastern corner of the region of Lombardy, just a few miles from the Swiss border. Shaped like an inverted Y, it is surrounded by soaring Alpine peaks and dotted with picturesque towns and villages. One of Europe’s deepest lakes, it is also, sadly, among its most polluted. In fact, a recent study by an Italian environmental group found that bacteria levels had reached sixty-eight times the limit for safe human bathing. The culprits were antiquated lakeside sewage systems, runoff from nearby farms and vineyards, and a reduction in rainfall and mountain snowpack attributed, rightly or wrongly, to global warming. Under pressure from the local tourism industry, the government had promised dramatic action to prevent the lake from slipping past the point of no return. Most Italians weren’t holding their breath. Their government was rather like a charming rogue-good at making promises, not so good at keeping them.

To stand on the terraces of Villa Teresa, however, was to forget that the magnificent waters of Lake Como had been spoiled in any way. Indeed, at certain times of the day and under proper light and weather conditions, one could imagine there was no such thing as global warming, no wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, no worldwide financial crisis, and no possible threat looming anywhere over the ring of protective mountains. Built by a wealthy Milanese trader in the eighteenth century, the villa stood on its own small peninsula. It was three floors in height, tawny orange in color, and accessible only by boat-a fact that Herr Heinrich Kiever, chief operating officer of Matrix Technologies of Zug, Switzerland, found highly appealing.

Herr Kiever, it seemed, was looking for a private retreat where his employees could complete work on a major project free from distractions and in a setting that would inspire greatness. After a brief tour, he declared Villa Teresa perfection itself. The contracts were signed over coffee in the town of Laglio, home of an American movie star whose highly publicized presence in Como was, in the opinion of many longtime habitués, the worst thing to happen to the lake since the invention of the gasoline-powered engine. Herr Kiever paid the entire lease with a certified check drawn on his bank in Zurich. He then informed the rental agent he required complete privacy, meaning no maid service, no cooks, and no follow-up calls from the agency. If there were any problems, he explained, the agent would be the first to know.

Herr Kiever took up residence in the villa that same afternoon along with two women. One was a striking brunette with a face like a Russian icon; the other, an attractive Italian accompanied by a pair of matching bodyguards. Unbeknownst to the rental agency, Herr Kiever and the bodyguards had a brief but heated argument before conducting a meticulous sweep of the property for hidden microphones or other eavesdropping equipment. Satisfied the estate was secure, they settled into their rooms and awaited the arrival of the remaining guests. There were six in all, four men and two women, and they came not from Zug but from an anonymous-looking office block on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. They had traveled to Europe separately under false names and with false passports in their pockets. Three landed in Rome and made the drive north; three landed in Zurich and drove south. By some miracle, they arrived at the villa’s private landing just five minutes apart. Herr Kiever, who was waiting to greet them, declared it a good omen. The six men and women withheld judgment. They had sailed under Herr Kiever’s star before and knew calm waters often gave way to storm-tossed seas with little or no warning.

So, too, did the newest addition to this illustrious band of operatives: Olga Sukhova. They knew her by name and reputation, of course, but none had ever actually met the famed Russian journalist. Gabriel saw to the introductions with a studied evasive-ness only a veteran of the secret world could summon. He provided Olga with first names but made no mention of current positions or past professional exploits. As far as Gabriel was concerned, the six individuals were blank slates, tools that had been lent to him by a higher power.

They approached her in pairs and carefully shook her hand. The women, Rimona and Dina, came first. Rimona was in her mid-thirties and had shoulder-length hair the color of Jerusalem limestone. A major in the IDF, she had worked for several years as an analyst for AMAN before transferring to the Office, where she was now part of a special Iran task force. Dina, petite and dark-haired, was an Office terrorism specialist who had personally experienced its horrors. In October 1994 she was standing in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square when a Hamas terrorist detonated his suicide belt aboard a No. 5 bus. Twenty-one people were murdered that day, including Dina’s mother and two of her sisters. Dina herself had suffered a serious leg wound and still walked with a slight limp.

Next came a pair of men in their forties, Yossi and Yaakov. Tall and balding, Yossi was currently assigned to the Russia Desk of Research, which is how the Office referred to its analytical division. He had read classics at All Souls College at Oxford and spoke with a pronounced English accent. Yaakov, a compact man with black hair and a pockmarked face, looked as if he couldn’t be bothered with books and learning. For many years he had served in the Arab Affairs Department of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, recruiting spies and informants in the West Bank and Gaza. Like Rimona, he had recently transferred to the Office and was currently running agents into Lebanon.

Next came an oddly mismatched pair who shared one common attribute. Both spoke fluent Russian. The first was Eli Lavon. An elfin figure with wispy gray hair and intelligent brown eyes, Lavon was regarded as the finest street surveillance artist the Office had ever produced. He had worked side by side with Gabriel through countless operations and was the closest thing Gabriel had to a brother. Like Gabriel, Lavon’s ties to the Office were somewhat tenuous. A professor of biblical archaeology at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, he could usually be found waist-deep in an excavation trench, sifting through the dust and artifacts of Israel’s ancient past. Twice each year, he lectured on surveillance techniques at the Academy, and he was forever being drawn out of retirement by Gabriel, who was never truly comfortable in the field without the legendary Eli Lavon watching his back.

The figure standing at Lavon’s side had eyes the color of glacial ice and a fine-boned, bloodless face. Born in Moscow to a pair of dissident Jewish scientists, Mikhail Abramov had come to Israel as a teenager within weeks of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Once described by Shamron as “Gabriel without a conscience,” he had joined the Office after serving in the Sayeret Matkal special forces, where he had assassinated several of the top terrorist masterminds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. His talents were not limited to the gun; the previous summer, in Saint-Tropez, he had infiltrated Ivan Kharkov’s entourage, along with a CIA officer named Sarah Bancroft. Of all those gathered at the villa by the lake, only Mikhail had had the distinct displeasure of actually sharing a meal with Ivan. Afterward, he admitted it was the most terrifying experience of his professional life-this coming from a man who had hunted terrorists across the badlands of the Occupied Territories.

Within the corridors and conference rooms of King Saul Boulevard, these six men and women were known by the code name “Barak”-the Hebrew word for lightning-because of their ability to gather and strike quickly. They had operated together, often under conditions of unbearable stress, on secret battlefields stretching from Moscow to Marseilles to the exclusive Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy. Usually, they conducted themselves in a highly professional manner and with few intrusions of egotism or pettiness. Occasionally, a seemingly trivial issue, such as assigning bedrooms, could provoke outbursts of childishness and flashes of ill temper. Unable to resolve the dispute themselves, they turned to Gabriel, the wise ruler, who imposed a settlement by decree and somehow managed to satisfy no one, which, in the end, they regarded as just.

After establishing a secure communications link with King Saul Boulevard, they convened for a working dinner. They ate like a family reunited, which in many respects they were, though their conversation was more circumspect than usual, owing to the presence of an outsider. Gabriel could tell by the inquisitive looks on their faces that they had heard rumors in Tel Aviv. Rumors that Amos was yesterday’s man. Rumors that Gabriel would soon be taking his rightful place in the director’s suite at King Saul Boulevard. Only Rimona, Shamron’s niece by marriage, dared to ask whether it was true. She did so in a whisper and in Hebrew, so that Olga could not understand. When Gabriel pretended not to hear, she gave him a covert kick in the ankle, a retaliatory strike only a relative of Shamron would dare undertake.

They adjourned to the great room after dinner and there, standing before a crackling fire, Gabriel conducted the first formal briefing of the operation. Grigori Bulganov, the Russian defector who had twice saved Gabriel’s life, had been abducted by Ivan Kharkov and brought to Russia, where in all likelihood he was undergoing a severe interrogation that would end with his execution. They were going to get him back, Gabriel said, and they were going to put Ivan’s operatives out of business. And their quest would begin with an extraction and interrogation of their own.

In another country, in another intelligence service, such a proposal might have been greeted with expressions of incredulity or even mockery. But not the Office. The Office had a word for such unconventional thinking: meshuggah, Hebrew for crazy or foolish. Inside the Office, no idea was too meshuggah. Sometimes, the more meshuggah, the better. It was a state of mind. It was what made the Office great.

There was something else that set them apart from other services: the freedom felt by lower-ranking officers to make suggestions and even to challenge the assumptions of their superiors. Gabriel took no offense when his team embarked on a rigorous deconstruction of the plan. Though they were an eclectic mix-indeed, most were never meant to be field agents at all-they had carried out some of the most daring and dangerous operations in Office history. They had killed and kidnapped, committed acts of fraud, theft, and forgery. They were Gabriel’s second eyes. Gabriel’s safety net.

The discussion lasted another hour. Most of it was conducted in English for Olga’s benefit, but occasionally they lapsed into Hebrew for reasons of security or because no other language would do. There were occasional flashes of temper or the odd insult, but for the most part the tone remained civil. When the last issue had been resolved, Gabriel brought the session to a close and broke the team into working groups. Yaakov and Yossi would acquire the vehicles and secure the routes. Dina, Rimona, and Chiara would prepare the cover organization and create all necessary websites, brochures, and invitations. The Russian speakers, Mikhail and Eli Lavon, would handle the interrogation itself, with Olga serving as their consultant. Gabriel had no specific task, other than to supervise and to worry. It was fitting, he thought, for it was a role Shamron had played many times before.

At midnight, when the table had been cleared and the dishes washed, they filed upstairs to their rooms for a few hours of sleep. Gabriel and Chiara, alone in the master suite, made quiet love. Afterward, they lay next to each other in the darkness, Gabriel staring at the ceiling, Chiara tracing her fingertip along his cheek.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Moscow,” he said.

“What are you doing?”

“Watching Irina.”

“What do you see?”

“I’m not quite sure yet.”

Chiara was silent for a moment. “You’re never happier than when they’re around, Gabriel. Maybe Uzi was right. Maybe the Office is the only family you have.”

“You’re my family, Chiara.”

“Are you sure you want to leave them?”

“I’m sure.”

“I hear Shamron has other plans.”

“He usually does.”

“When are you going to tell him that you’re not going to take the job?”

“As soon as I get Grigori back from the Russians.”

“Promise me one thing, Gabriel. Promise me you won’t get too close to Ivan.” She kissed his lips. “Ivan likes to break pretty things.”

24

THE NORTHERN Italian Travel Association, or NITA, occupied a suite of small offices on a narrow pedestrian lane in the town of Bellagio-or so it claimed. Its stated mission was to encourage tourism in northern Italy by aggressively promoting the region’s incomparable beauty and lifestyle, especially to booking agents and travel writers in other countries. A website for the association appeared soon after Gabriel’s team convened on the opposite side of the lake at Villa Teresa. So, too, did a handsome brochure, printed not in Italy but in Tel Aviv, along with an invitation to the third annual winter seminar and showcase at the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni-odd, since no one at the Serbelloni would have recalled a first annual showcase and seminar, or even a second for that matter.

With only seventy-two hours until the start of the conference, the organizers were dismayed to learn of a last-minute cancellation and began searching for a replacement. The name Irina Bulganova of Galaxy Travel, Tverskaya Street, Moscow, came quickly to mind. Were NITA an ordinary travel association, there might have been some question as to whether Ms. Bulganova would be able to come to Italy on such short notice. NITA, however, possessed means and methods unavailable to even the most sophisticated organizations. They hacked into her computer and inspected her appointment calendar. They read her e-mail and listened to her telephone calls. Their colleagues in Moscow followed Ms. Bulganova wherever she went and even had a peek at her passport to make certain it was in order.

Their inquiries revealed much about the tangled state of her personal affairs. They learned, for example, that Ms. Bulganova had recently stopped seeing her lover for the vaguest of reasons. They learned she was having trouble sleeping at night and preferred music to television. They learned she had recently placed a telephone call to FSB Headquarters requesting information as to the whereabouts of her former husband, a question greeted by a curt dismissal. All things considered, they believed a woman in Ms. Bulganova’s position might relish the opportunity to make an all-expenses-paid visit to Italy. And what Muscovite wouldn’t? On the day the invitation was sent, the weather forecast was calling for heavy snow and temperatures of perhaps twenty below.

It was dispatched via e-mail and signed by none other than Veronica Ricci, NITA’s chief executive officer. It began with an apology for the last-minute nature of the offer and concluded with promises of first-class air travel, luxury hotel accommodations, and gourmet Italian cuisine. If Ms. Bulganova chose to attend-and it was NITA’s fervent hope that she would-an information packet, airline tickets, and a welcoming gift would follow. The e-mail neglected to say that the aforementioned materials were already in Moscow and would be delivered by a courier company that did not exist. Nor did it mention the fact that Ms. Bulganova would remain under surveillance to make certain she was not being followed by agents of Ivan Kharkov. It made only one request: that she RSVP as quickly as possible so that other arrangements could be made should she be unable to attend.

Fortunately, such a contingency would not prove necessary, for exactly seven hours and twelve minutes after the e-mail was sent, a reply arrived from Moscow. At Villa Teresa, the celebration was boisterous but brief. Irina Bulganova was coming to Italy. And they had much work to do.

IN EVERY OPERATION, Shamron was fond of saying, there is a choke point. Navigate it successfully, and the operation can sail easily into open waters. Stray off course, even by a few degrees, and it can become stranded on the shoals or, worse still, smash to pieces on the rocks. For this operation, the choke point was none other than Irina herself. As of that moment, they still did not know whether she was heaven-sent or whether she might bring the devil to their doorstep. Handle her well, and the operation might go down as one of the team’s finest. Make one mistake, and there was a chance she might get them all killed.

They rehearsed as if their lives depended on it. Mikhail’s Russian was superior to Eli Lavon’s, and so it was Mikhail, despite his youth, who would serve as lead inquisitor. Lavon, blessed with a kindly face and unthreatening demeanor, would play the role of benefactor and sage. The only variable, of course, was Irina herself. Olga helped them to prepare for any contingency. At Gabriel’s direction, she was terrified one minute, belligerent the next. She cursed them like dogs, collapsed in tears, took a vow of silence, and once flew at them in a blind rage. By the final night, Mikhail and Lavon were confident they were prepared for whatever version of Irina they might encounter. All they needed now was the star of the show.

But was she Ivan’s pawn or Ivan’s victim? It was the question that had troubled them from the beginning, and it was foremost in their thoughts throughout the last long night of waiting. Gabriel made it clear he believed in Irina, but Gabriel was the first to admit his faith had to be viewed through the prism of his well-known fondness for Russian women. The women, he said over and over, were Russia’s only hope. Other members of the team, Yaakov in particular, took a far less optimistic view of what lay ahead. Yaakov had seen mankind at its worst and feared they were about to admit one of Ivan’s agents into their midst. The fact she was still alive, he argued, was proof of her perfidy. “If Irina was good, Ivan would have killed her,” he said. “That’s what Ivan does.”

With the help of their assets in Moscow and King Saul Boulevard, they kept careful watch over Irina’s final preparations, searching for evidence of treachery. On the evening before her departure they monitored a pair of telephone calls, one to a childhood friend, the other to her mother. They heard her alarm go off at the ungodly hour of 2:30 a.m. and heard it go off again ten minutes later while she was in the shower. And at five minutes past three, they caught a flash of her temper when she called the limousine company to say her car hadn’t arrived. Mikhail, who listened to a recording of the call over the secure link, refused to translate it for the rest of the team. Unless Irina was an award-winning actress, he said, her anger was real.

As it turned out, the car was only fifteen minutes late, something of a coup for late January, and she arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport at 3:45. Shmuel Peled, a field hand from Moscow Station, caught a glimpse of her as she emerged from the car in an angry blur and headed into the terminal. Her plane, Austrian Airlines Flight 606, departed on time and arrived at Vienna’s Schwechat at 6:47 a.m. local time. Dina, who had flown to the Austrian capital the previous day, was waiting when Irina emerged from the Jet-way. They walked to the departure gate, separated by a generous gap, and settled into their seats in the third row of the first-class cabin-Irina in 3C along the aisle, Dina in 3A against the window. Upon touching down in Milan, she sent a message to Gabriel. The star had arrived. The show was about to begin.

When the aircraft doors opened, Irina was once more in motion, headed toward passport control at a parade-ground clip, her chin at a defiant angle. Like most Russians, she dreaded encounters with men in uniform and presented her travel documents as if braced for combat. After being admitted to Italy without delay, she made her way toward the arrivals hall, where Chiara was holding a sign that read: NITA WELCOMES IRINA BULGANOVA, GALAXY TRAVEL. Lior and Motti, Chiara’s ever-present bodyguards, were loitering at a nearby information kiosk, eyes fixed on their quarry.

No one seemed to take notice of Dina as she headed outside to the passenger pickup area where Gabriel was standing at the door of a rented luxury minibus, dressed in the black suit of a chauffeur and wearing wraparound sunglasses. Two cars back, Yaakov was seated behind the wheel of a Lancia sedan, pretending to read the sports pages of Corriere della Sera. Dina climbed into the front passenger seat and watched as Irina boarded the minibus. Gabriel, after quickly scanning her bags for tracking beacons, loaded them into the luggage hold.

The drive was ninety minutes in length. They had rehearsed it several times and by that morning could have done it in their sleep. From the airport, they headed northeast through a series of small towns and villages to the city of Como. Had the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni been their true destination, they would have split the inverted Y of the lake and headed straight to Bellagio. Instead, they followed the westernmost shoreline to Tremezzo and stopped at a private dock. A boat waited, Lior at the wheel, Motti at the stern. It bore Chiara and Irina slowly across the flat waters of the inlet to the large tawny-orange villa standing at the end of its own peninsula. In the grand entrance foyer was a man with eyes the color of glacial ice and a fine-boned, bloodless face. “Welcome to Italy,” he said to Irina in perfect Russian. “May I see your passport, please?”

25

THERE IS an audio recording of what transpired next. It is one minute and twelve seconds in length and resides to this day in the archives of King Saul Boulevard, where it is considered required listening for its lessons in tradecraft and, in no small measure, for its pure entertainment value. Gabriel had warned them about Irina’s temper, but nothing could have prepared them for the ferocity of her response. Eli Lavon, the biblical archaeologist, would later describe it as one of the epic battles in the history of the Jewish people.

Gabriel was not present for it. At that moment he was coming across the inlet by boat and listening to the proceedings over a miniature earpiece. Hearing a sound he took to be the shattering of a crystal vase, he hurried into the villa and poked his head into the dining room. By then, the skirmish was over, and a temporary cessation of hostilities had been declared. Irina was seated along one side of the rectangular table, breathing heavily from exertion, with Yaakov and Rimona each holding one arm. Yossi was standing to one side, with his shirt torn and four parallel scratch marks along the back of one hand. Dina stood next to him, her left cheek aflame, as if it had been recently slapped, which it had. Mikhail was positioned directly across from Irina, his face expressionless. Lavon was at his side, a better angel, staring down at his tiny hands as though he had found the whole sorry spectacle deeply embarrassing.

Gabriel slipped quietly into the library where Olga Sukhova, former crusading journalist, now a member in good standing of the team, was seated before a video monitor, headphones over her ears. Gabriel sat next to her and slipped on a second pair of headphones, then looked at the video screen. Mikhail was now slowly turning through the pages of Irina’s passport with a bureaucratic insolence. He placed the passport on the table and stared at Irina for a moment before finally speaking again in Russian. Gabriel uncovered one ear and listened to Olga’s translation as the interrogation commenced.

“You are Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, born in Moscow in December 1965?”

“That is correct.”

“Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov, of the Russian Federal Security Service?”

“That is correct.”

“Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, traitor and spy for enemies of the Russian Federation?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I believe you do. I believe you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Olga lifted her gaze from the monitor. “Maybe he shouldn’t be so rough with her. The poor woman is frightened to death.”

Gabriel made no response. Eventually, Mikhail might be able to release the pressure. But not now. They needed answers to a few questions first. Was she Ivan’s pawn or Ivan’s victim? Had she been sent by heaven or did they have an agent of the devil in their midst?

26

WHO ARE YOU?” she asked.

“If you wish to call me a name, you may refer to me as Yevgeny.”

“Whom do you work for?”

“That is not important.”

“You are Russian?”

“Again, that is not important. What is important is your passport. As a citizen of the Russian Federation, you are not allowed to enter the United Kingdom without obtaining a visa in advance of your arrival. Please tell me how you were able to enter the country without such a visa in your passport.”

“I’ve never been to Britain in my life.”

“You’re lying, Irina Iosifovna.”

“I’m telling you the truth. You said it yourself. Russians need a visa to visit the United Kingdom. My passport contains no visa. Therefore, it is obvious I have never been there.”

“But you went to London earlier this month to assist in the abduction of your former husband, Colonel Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov of the Russian Federal Security Service.”

“That is completely ridiculous.”

“You were in contact with your former husband after his defection to the United Kingdom?”

She hesitated, then answered truthfully. “I was.”

“You were discussing the possibility of rekindling your romance. Of reuniting. Of remarrying, perhaps.”

“This is none of your business.”

“Everything is my business. Now, answer my question. Grigori wanted you to come to London?”

“I never agreed to anything.”

“But you talked about it.”

“I listened only.”

“Your husband is a defector, Irina Iosifovna. Having contact with him is an act of state treason.”

“Grigori contacted me. I did nothing wrong.”

She was resisting. Gabriel had prepared for this scenario. Gabriel had prepared for everything. Give her a crack of the whip, he thought. Let her know you mean business.

Mikhail placed three sheets of paper on the table.

“Where were you on January tenth and eleventh?”

“I was in Moscow.”

“Let me ask you one more time. Think carefully before you answer. Where were you on January tenth and eleventh?”

Irina was silent. Mikhail pointed to the first sheet of paper.

“Your computer calendar contains no entries on any of those dates. No meetings. No luncheons. No scheduled phone calls with clients. Nothing at all.”

“January is always slow. This year, with the recession…”

Mikhail cut her off with a curt wave of his hand and tapped on the second sheet of paper.

“Your telephone records show you received more than three dozen calls on your mobile but placed none of your own.”

Greeted by silence, he placed his finger on the third sheet of paper.

“Your e-mail account shows a similar pattern: many e-mails received, none sent. Can you explain this?”

“No.”

Mikhail extracted a manila folder from the attaché case at his feet. Lifting the cover with funereal solemnity, he removed a single photograph: Colonel Grigori Bulganov, climbing into a Mercedes sedan on London’s Harrow Road on the evening of January the tenth, at 6:12 p.m. He held it carefully by the edges, as though it were crucial evidence in need of preservation, and turned it so Irina could see. She managed to maintain a stoic silence, but her expression had changed. Gabriel, gazing at her face in the monitor, saw it was fear. A remembered fear, he thought, like the fear of a childhood trauma. One more push, and they would have her. On cue, Mikhail produced a second photograph, an enlargement of the first. It was grainy and heavily shadowed, but left no doubt as to the identity of the woman seated nearest the car window.

“This makes you an accessory to a very serious crime committed on British soil.”

Irina’s eyes flickered round the room, as if searching for a way out. Mikhail calmly returned both photos to the attaché case.

“Let us begin again, shall we? And this time you will answer my questions truthfully. You have no entrance visa for the United Kingdom, valid or otherwise, in your passport. How were you able to enter the country?”

Her response was so soft as to be nearly inaudible. Indeed, Mikhail and Lavon were not at all sure of what they had just been told. There was no uncertainty, however, at the listening post in the library, which was receiving a crystal clear signal from a pair of ultrasensitive microphones concealed inches from Irina’s place at the table. Olga looked at Gabriel and said, “We’ve got her.” Mikhail looked at Irina and asked her to speak up.

“I used a different passport,” she said, louder this time.

“By that you mean it was in another name?”

“Correct.”

“Who gave you this passport?”

“They said they were friends of Grigori. They said I had to use a false passport for my own protection.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this the first time?”

“They told me that I was never to discuss the matter with anyone. They told me they would kill me.” A single tear spilled onto her cheek. She punched away the tear, as if ashamed by her weakness. “They threatened to kill my entire family. They are not human, these people. They are animals. Please, you have to believe me.”

It was not Mikhail who responded but the previously silent figure seated to his left. The kindly little soul with flyaway hair and a crumpled suit. The better angel who was now holding a letter in his tiny hands. The letter left by Grigori Bulganov in Oxford two weeks before his disappearance. He presented the letter to Irina now, as if handing a folded flag to the wife of a fallen soldier. Her hands trembled as she read it.

I am afraid my desire to reunite with my former wife may have placed her in danger. If your officers in Moscow would check in on her from time to time, I would be grateful.

“We don’t think he’s dead,” Lavon said. “Not yet. But we have to work quickly if we’re going to get him back.”

“Who are you?”

“We’re friends, Irina. You can trust us.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Tell us how they did it. Tell us how they took your husband. And whatever you do, don’t leave anything out. You’d be surprised, Irina, but sometimes the smallest details are the most important.”

27

SHE REQUESTED tea and permission to smoke. Yossi and Dina saw to the tea; Lavon, a heavy smoker himself, joined her in a cigarette. Their bond cemented by shared tobacco, she turned her body a few degrees and raised a hand to the side of her face like a blinder, thus excluding Mikhail from her field of vision. As far as Irina was concerned, Mikhail no longer existed. And therefore Mikhail did not need to know that the man who deceived her into taking part in the abduction of her husband made first contact on December the nineteenth. She could recall the date with certainty because it was her birthday. A birthday she shared with Leonid Brezhnev, which, in her childhood, was a great honor in school.

It was a Monday, she recalled, and her colleagues had insisted on taking her out for champagne and sushi at the O2 Lounge at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Given the state of the Russian economy, she had thought it rather a profligate thing to do. But they all needed an excuse to get drunk, and her birthday seemed as good a reason as any. Drunkenness was achieved by eight o’clock, and they sailed on together until ten, at which point they stumbled into Tverskaya Street and went in search of their cars, though none of them, including Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov, was in any condition to drive.

She had left her car a few blocks away in a narrow street where the Moscow City Militia, for a reasonable bribe, of course, allowed Muscovites to park all day without fear of a ticket. The militiaman on duty was a pimply child of twenty who looked as though he was frozen solid from the cold. Still feeling the effects of the alcohol, Irina had tried to give him a generous handful of rubles. But the boy stepped away and made a vast show of refusing to accept the money. At first, Irina found the display rather amusing. Then she saw a man standing by her car. She knew the type instantly. He was a member of the siloviki, the brotherhood of former or current officers of the Russian security services. Irina knew this because she had been married to such a man for twelve years. They had been the worst years of her life.

Irina considered walking away but knew she was in no shape to take evasive action. And even if she weren’t drunk, there was no way she could hide for long. Not in Russia. So she walked over and, with more courage than she was actually feeling at the time, demanded to know what was so damn interesting about her car. The man bade her a pleasant evening-Russian style, first name and patronymic-and apologized for the unorthodox circumstances of their meeting. He said he had an important message concerning her husband. “Former husband,” Irina replied. “Former husband,” he repeated, correcting himself. And by the way, she could call him Anatoly.

“I don’t suppose he showed you any identification?” Lavon wondered in the meekest tone he could manage.

“Of course not.”

“Would you please describe him?”

“Tall, well built, sturdy jaw, blond hair going to gray.”

“Age?”

“Over fifty.”

“Facial hair?”

“No.”

“Eyeglasses?”

“Not then. Later, though.”

Lavon let it go. For now.

“What happened next?”

“He offered to take me to dinner. I told him I didn’t make a habit of having dinner with strangers. He said he wasn’t a stranger; he was a friend of Grigori’s from London. He knew it was my birthday. He said he had a present for me.”

“And you believed him because you’d had contact with Grigori?”

“That’s correct.”

“So you went with him?”

“Yes.”

“How did you travel?”

“In my car.”

“Who drove?”

“He did.”

“Where did you go?”

“Café Pushkin. Do you know Café Pushkin?”

Lavon, with an almost imperceptible nod of his head, indicated that he did indeed know the famous Café Pushkin. Despite the financial crisis, it was still nearly impossible to get a reservation. But the man named Anatoly had somehow managed to secure a prized table for two in a secluded corner of the second floor. He ordered champagne, which was the last thing she needed, and made a toast. Then he gave her a jewelry box. Inside was a gold bracelet and a note. He said they were both from Grigori.

“Did the gift box have a name on it?”

“Bulgari. The bracelet must have cost a fortune.”

“And the note? Was it Grigori’s handwriting?”

“It certainly looked like his.”

“What did it say?”

“It said he never wanted to spend another birthday apart. It said he wanted me to come to London with the man named Anatoly. It said not to worry about money. Everything would be arranged and paid for by Viktor.”

“No last name?”

“No.”

“But you knew it was Viktor Orlov?”

“I’d read about Grigori and Viktor on the Internet. I even saw a photo of the two of them together.”

“Did Anatoly describe his relationship to Mr. Orlov?”

“He said he worked for him in a security capacity.”

“Those were his exact words?”

“Yes.”

“And the letter? I take it you were moved by it?”

Irina gave an embarrassed nod. “It all seemed real.”

Of course it had, thought Gabriel, gazing at Irina in the monitor. It had seemed real because Anatoly, like Gabriel, was a professional, well versed in the arts of manipulation and seduction. And so it came as no surprise to Gabriel when Irina said she and Anatoly had spent the rest of that evening in pleasant conversation. They had talked about many things, she said, moving from topic to topic with the ease of old friends. Anatoly had seemed to know a great deal about Irina’s marriage, things he couldn’t possibly have known unless Grigori had told him-or so Irina believed at the time. Over dessert, almost as an afterthought, he had mentioned that the British government was prepared to grant her asylum if she came to London. Money, he had said, would not be a problem. Viktor would take care of the money. Viktor would take care of everything.

“And you agreed to go?” asked Lavon.

“I agreed to pay a brief visit, but nothing more.”

“And then?”

“We talked about the travel arrangements. He said because of Grigori’s circumstances, great care would have to be taken. Otherwise, it was possible the Russian authorities wouldn’t allow me to leave the country. He told me not to speak to anyone. That he would be in contact when it was time to go. Then he drove me home. He didn’t bother asking my address. He already knew it.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

“Not a soul.”

“When did he make contact with you again?”

“The ninth of January, as I was leaving my office. A man came alongside me on Tverskaya Street and told me to look in my bedroom closet when I got home. There were suitcases and a handbag. The suitcases were neatly packed with clothing, all my size. The handbag had the usual assortment of things, but also a Russian passport, airline tickets to London, and a wallet filled with credit cards and cash. There was also a set of instructions, which I was to burn after reading.”

“You were to depart the next day?”

“Correct.”

“Tell me about the passport.”

“The photograph was mine, but the name was false.”

“What was it?”

“Natalia Primakova.”

“Lovely,” said Lavon.

“Yes,” she said. “I rather liked it.”

28

SHE DID not sleep that night. She did not even try. She was too nervous. Too excited. And, yes, maybe a bit too frightened. She paced the rooms of the little apartment she had once shared with Grigori and pondered the most trivial of keepsakes as if she might never see them again. In violation of Anatoly’s strict instructions, she telephoned her mother, a family tradition before a trip of any magnitude, and she slipped a few personal items into the suitcases of Natalia Primakova. A bundle of yellowed letters. A locket with her grandmother’s photo. A small gold cross her mother had given her after the fall of Communism. Lastly, her wedding band.

“You thought you might be leaving Russia for good?”

“I allowed myself to consider the possibility.”

“Do you recall your flight number?”

“Aeroflot Flight 247, departing Sheremetyevo at 2:35 p.m., arriving London Heathrow at 3:40.”

“Very impressive.”

“It is what I do for a living.”

“What time did you leave your apartment?”

“Ten o’clock. Moscow traffic is terrible that time of day, especially on the Leningradsky Prospekt.”

“How did you travel to the airport?”

“They sent a car.”

“Was there any trouble with your new passport?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Your travel was first class or economy?”

“First class.”

“Did you recognize anyone on the flight?”

“Not a soul.”

“And when you arrived in London? Any problems with the passport there?”

“None. When the customs official asked me to state the purpose of my visit, I said tourism. He stamped my passport right away and told me to have a pleasant stay.”

“And when you came into the arrivals hall?”

“I saw Anatoly waiting along the railing.” A pause, then, “Actually, he saw me. I didn’t recognize him at first.”

“He was wearing eyeglasses?”

“And a fedora.”

“Would you describe his mood, please?”

“Calm, very businesslike. He took one of my bags and led me outside. A car was waiting.”

“Do you recall the make?”

“It was a Mercedes.”

“The model?”

“I’m not good with models. It was big, though.”

“Color?”

“Black, of course. I assumed it was Viktor’s. A man like Viktor Orlov would only ride in a black car.”

“What happened next?”

“He said Grigori was waiting at a safe place. But first, for my protection, we had to make certain no one was following us.”

“Did he say who he thought might be following you?”

“No, but it was clear he was referring to Russian intelligence.”

“Did he talk to you?”

“He spent most of the time on the telephone.”

“Did he place calls or receive them?”

“Both.”

“Was he speaking English or Russian?”

“Only Russian. Very colloquial.”

“Did you make any stops?”

“Just one.”

“Do you remember where?”

“It was on a quiet road not far from the airport, next to a pond or reservoir of some sort. The driver got out of the car and did something to the front and back of the car.”

“Could he have been changing the license plates?”

“I couldn’t say. It was dark by then. Anatoly acted as though nothing was happening.”

“Do you happen to recall the time?”

“No, but afterward we headed straight into central London. We were driving along the edge of Hyde Park when Anatoly’s telephone rang. He spoke a few words in Russian, then looked at me and smiled. He said it was safe to go see Grigori.”

“What happened next?”

“Things moved very quickly. I put on some lipstick and checked my hair. Then I saw something from the corner of my eye. A movement.” She paused. “There was a gun in Anatoly’s hand. It was pointed at my heart. He said if I made a sound, he would kill me.”

She lapsed into silence, as if unwilling to go on. Then, with a gentle nudge from Lavon, she began speaking again.

“The car stopped very suddenly, and Anatoly opened the door with his other hand. I saw Grigori standing on the sidewalk. I saw my husband.”

“Anatoly spoke to him?”

She nodded, blinking away tears.

“Do you remember what he said?”

“I will never forget his words. He told Grigori to get in the car or I was dead. Grigori obeyed, of course. He had no choice.”

Lavon gave her a moment to compose herself.

“Did Grigori say anything after he got in?”

“He said he would do whatever they wanted. That there was no need to harm or threaten me in any way.” Another pause. “Anatoly told Grigori to shut his mouth. Otherwise, he was going to splatter my brains all over the inside of the car.”

“Did Grigori ever speak to you?”

“Just once. He told me he was very sorry.”

“And after that?”

“He didn’t say a word. He barely looked at me.”

“How long were you together?”

“Just a few minutes. We drove to a parking garage somewhere close. They put Grigori into the back of a van with markings on the side. A cleaning service of some sort.”

“Where did you go?”

“Anatoly took me into an adjacent building through an underground passage, and we rode an elevator to the street. A car was waiting nearby. A woman was behind the wheel. Anatoly told me to follow her instructions carefully. He said if I ever spoke to anyone about this, I would be killed. And then my mother would be killed. And then my two brothers would be killed, along with their children.”

A heavy silence fell over the dining room of the villa. Irina treated herself to another cigarette; then, emotionally exhausted, she recounted the remaining details of her ordeal in a detached voice. The long drive to the seacoast town of Harwich. The sleepless night in the Hotel Continental. The stormy crossing to Hoek van Holland aboard the Stena Britannica car ferry. And the trip home aboard Aeroflot Flight 418, operated by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, departing Amsterdam at 8:40 p.m., arriving Sheremetyevo at 2 a.m. the following morning.

“Did you and the woman travel together or separately?”

“Together.”

“Did she ever give you a name?”

“No, but I heard the flight attendant call her Ms. Gromova.”

“And when you arrived in Moscow?”

“A car and driver took me to my apartment. The next morning, I returned to work as if nothing had happened.”

“Was there any other contact?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you have the impression you were under surveillance?”

“If I was, I couldn’t see them.”

“And when you received the invitation to attend the conference in Italy, they made no effort to prevent you from attending?”

She shook her head.

“Were you at all reluctant after what you had just been through?”

“The invitation seemed very real. Just like Anatoly’s.” A silence, then, “I don’t suppose there really is a conference, is there?”

“No, there isn’t.”

“Who are you?” she asked again.

“We truly are friends of your husband. And we’re going to do everything we can to get him back for you.”

“What happens now?”

“The same as before. You return to your job at Galaxy Travel and pretend this never happened. After you attend the third annual seminar and showcase of the Northern Italian Travel Association, of course.”

“But you just said it wasn’t real.”

“Reality is a state of mind, Irina. Reality can be whatever you want it to be.”

29

LAKE COMO • LONDON

FOR THE next three days, they put her gently through her paces. They described the sumptuous meals she would not eat, the boozy cocktail parties she would not attend, and the deeply boring seminars that mercifully she would be spared. They took her on a frigid cruise of the lake and a long drive through the mountains. They filled her suitcases with gifts and brochures for her colleagues. And they anxiously awaited the hour of her departure. There was not one among them who doubted her authenticity-and not one who wanted to send her back to Russia. When it came time to leave, she marched onto her plane the way she had come off it three days earlier, with her chin up and at a parade-ground clip. That night, they huddled around the secure communications link, waiting for the flash from Moscow that she had arrived safely. It came, much to their relief, a few minutes after midnight. Shmuel Peled followed her home and pronounced her tail clean as a whistle. The following morning, from her desk at Galaxy Travel, Irina sent an e-mail to Veronica Ricci of NITA, thanking her for the wonderful trip. Signora Ricci asked Ms. Bulganova to stay in touch.

Gabriel was not present in Como to witness the successful end of the operation. Accompanied by Olga Sukhova, he flew to London the morning after the interrogation and was immediately whisked to a safe flat in Victoria. Graham Seymour was waiting and subjected Gabriel to a ten-minute tirade before finally permitting him to speak. After first insisting that the microphones be switched off, Gabriel described the remarkable debriefing they had just conducted on the shores of Lake Como. Seymour immediately placed a secure call to Thames House and posed a single question: Did a woman bearing a Russian passport in the name of Natalia Primakova arrive at Heathrow Airport aboard Aeroflot Flight 247 on the afternoon of January the tenth? Thames House called back within minutes. The answer was yes.

“I’d like to schedule a meeting with the prime minister and my director-general right away. If you’re willing, I think you should be the one to brief them. After all, you proved us all wrong, Gabriel. That gives you the right to rub our noses in it.”

“I have no intention of rubbing your noses in anything. And the last thing I want you to do is mention any of this to your prime minister or director-general.”

“Grigori Bulganov is a British subject and, as such, is owed all the protections offered by the British Crown. We have no choice but to present our evidence to the Russians and insist that they return him at once.”

“Ivan Kharkov went to a great deal of trouble to get Grigori, in all likelihood with the blessing of the FSB and the Kremlin itself. Do you really think he’s going to hand him over because the British prime minister insists on it? We have to play the game by the same rules as Ivan.”

“Meaning?”

“We have to steal him back.”

Graham Seymour made one more phone call, then pulled on his overcoat.

“Heathrow security is getting us pictures. You and Olga stay here. And do try to keep the gunfire to a minimum. I have enough problems at the moment.”

BUT GABRIEL did not remain in the safe flat for long. Indeed, he slipped out a few minutes after Seymour’s departure and headed directly to Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. Once a quiet riverside promenade, this historic London street now overlooked the busy Chelsea Embankment. On some of the grand houses were brass plaques commemorating famous occupants of the past. Turner had lived secretly at No. 119, Rossetti at No. 19. Henry James had spent his final days at No. 21; George Eliot had done the same at No. 4. These days, few artists and writers could afford to live in Cheyne Walk. It had become the preserve of wealthy foreigners, pop stars, and moneymen from the City. It also happened to be the London address of one Viktor Orlov, exiled Russian oligarch and Kremlin critic, who resided at the five-story mansion at No. 43. The same Viktor Orlov who was now the target of a clandestine investigation being conducted by a team of burrowers at King Saul Boulevard.

Gabriel entered the small park across the street and sat down on a bench. Orlov’s house was tall and narrow and covered in wisteria. Like the rest of the residences along the graceful terrace, it was set several meters back from the street behind a wrought-iron fence. An armored Bentley limousine stood outside, a chauffeur at the wheel. Directly behind the Bentley was a black Range Rover, occupied by four members of Orlov’s security detail, all former members of Britain’s elite Special Air Service, the SAS. King Saul Boulevard had discovered that the bodyguards were supplied by Exton Executive Security Services Ltd, of Hill Street, Mayfair. Exton was regarded as the finest private security company in London, no small accomplishment in a city filled with many rich people worried about their safety.

Gabriel was about to leave when he saw three bodyguards emerge from the Range Rover. One took up a post at the gate of No. 43, while the other two blocked the sidewalk in either direction. With the perimeter security in place, the front door of the house swung open, and Viktor Orlov stepped outside, flanked by two more bodyguards. Gabriel managed to see little of the famous Russian billionaire other than a head of spiky gray hair and the flash of a pink necktie bound by an enormous Windsor knot. Orlov ducked into the back of the Bentley, and the doors quickly closed. A few seconds later, the motorcade was speeding along Royal Hospital Road. Gabriel sat on his bench for ten more minutes, then got to his feet and headed back to Victoria.

IT TOOK less than an hour for Heathrow security to produce the first batch of photographs of the man known only as Anatoly. Unfortunately, none were terribly helpful. Gabriel was not surprised. Everything about Anatoly suggested he was a professional. And like any good professional, he knew how to move through an airport without getting his picture taken. The fedora had done much to shield his face, but he had done a good deal of the work himself with subtle turns and movements. Still, the cameras made a valiant effort: here a glimpse of a sturdy chin, here a partial profile, here a shot of a tight, uncompromising mouth. Flipping through the printouts in the Victoria safe house, Gabriel had a sinking feeling. Anatoly was a pro’s pro. And he was playing the game with Ivan’s money.

Both British services ran the photos through their databases of known Russian intelligence officers, but neither held out much hope for a match. Between them, they produced six possible candidates, all of whom were dismissed by Gabriel late that same night. At which point Seymour decided it was probably time to bring the dreaded Americans into the picture. Gabriel volunteered to make the trip himself. There was someone in America he was anxious to see. He hadn’t spoken to her in months. She had written him a letter once. And he had painted her a painting.

30

INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES refer to their spies in different ways. The Office calls them gathering officers, and the department for which they work is referred to as Collections. Spies for the CIA are known as case officers and are employed by the National Clandestine Service. Adrian Carter’s tenure as chief of the NCS began when it was still known by its old name: the Directorate of Operations. Regarded as one of the Agency’s most accomplished secret warriors, Carter had left his fingerprints on every major American covert operation of the last two generations. He had tinkered with the odd election, toppled the odd democratically elected government, and turned a blind eye to more executions and murders than he cared to remember. “I did the Lord’s work in Poland and propped up the devil’s regime in El Salvador in the span of a single year,” he once confessed to Gabriel in a moment of interagency candor. “And for an encore, I gave weapons to the Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan, even though I knew that one day they would rain fire and death on me.”

Since the morning of September 11, 2001, Adrian Carter had been focused on primarily one thing: preventing another attack on the American homeland by the forces of global Islamic extremism. To accomplish that end he had used tactics and methods even a battle-hardened covert warrior such as himself sometimes found objectionable. The black prisons, the renditions, the use of coercive interrogation techniques: it had all been made public, much to Carter’s detriment. Well-meaning editorialists and politicians on Capitol Hill had been baying for Carter’s blood for years. He should have been on the short list to become the CIA’s next director. Instead, he lived in fear that one day he would be prosecuted for his actions in the global war against terrorism. Adrian Carter had kept America safe from its enemies. And for that, he would languish in the fires of hell for all eternity.

He was waiting for Gabriel the following afternoon in a conference room on the seventh floor of CIA Headquarters, the Valhalla of America’s sprawling and often dysfunctional intelligence establishment. The antithesis of Graham Seymour in appearance, Carter had tousled thinning hair and a prominent mustache that had gone out of fashion with disco music, Crock-Pots, and the nuclear freeze. Dressed as he was now, in flannel trousers and a burgundy cardigan, he had the air of a professor from a minor university, the sort who championed noble causes and was a constant thorn in the side of his dean. He peered at Gabriel over his reading glasses, as if mildly surprised to see him, and offered his hand. It was cool as marble and dry to the touch.

Gabriel had contacted Carter the previous day before leaving London via a secure cable sent from the CIA station at the American Embassy. The cable had given Carter only the broadest outlines of the affair. Now Gabriel filled in the details. At the conclusion of the briefing, Carter picked through the physical evidence, beginning with the letter Grigori had left in Oxford and ending with the Heathrow Airport surveillance photos of the man known only as Anatoly.

“In all honesty,” said Carter, “we never put much stock in the story that Grigori had a change of heart and redefected to the motherland. As you might recall, I actually had a chance to spend some time with him the night you came out of Russia.”

Gabriel did recall, of course. In a logistical feat only the Agency could manage, Carter had put a squadron of Gulfstream executive jets on the ground in Kiev, just a few hours after the car bearing Gabriel and his trio of Russian defectors had crossed the Ukrainian border. Gabriel had returned to Israel, while Grigori and Olga had flown into exile in Britain. Carter had personally brought Elena Kharkov to the United States, where she was granted defector status. Her current circumstances were so closely held that even Gabriel had no idea where the CIA had hidden her.

“We sent a team to debrief Grigori within twenty-four hours of his arrival in England,” Carter resumed. “No one who took part ever voiced any skepticism about Grigori’s authenticity. After his disappearance, I ordered a review of the tapes and transcripts to see if we’d missed something.”

“And?”

“Grigori was as good as gold. Needless to say, we were rather surprised when the British thought otherwise. As far as Langley is concerned, it seemed a rather transparent attempt to foist some of the blame for his disappearance onto you. They have no one to blame but themselves. He should have never been allowed to get mixed up with opposition types floating around London. It was only a matter of time before Ivan got to him.”

“Is Ivan still a target of NSA surveillance?”

“Absolutely.”

“Did you know he just sold several thousand antitank missiles and RPGs to Hezbollah?”

“We’ve heard rumors to that effect. But for the moment, keeping track of Ivan’s business activities is low on our list of priorities. Our main concern is keeping his former wife and children safe from harm.”

“Has he ever made any formal effort to reclaim them?”

“A couple of months ago, the Russian ambassador raised the issue during a routine meeting with the secretary of state. The secretary acted somewhat surprised and said she would look into the matter. She’s a good poker player, the secretary. Would have made an excellent case officer. A week later, she told the ambassador that Elena Kharkov and her children were not currently residing in the United States, nor had they ever resided here at any time in the past. The ambassador thanked the secretary profusely for her efforts and never raised the matter again.”

“Ivan must know they’re here, Adrian.”

“Of course he knows. But there’s nothing he and his friends in the Kremlin can do about it. That operation you ran in Saint-Tropez last summer was a thing of beauty. You plucked the children from Ivan cleanly and with a veneer of legality. Furthermore, when Ivan divorced Elena in a Russian court, he effectively gave up all legal claim to them. The only way he can get them now is to steal them. And that’s not going to happen. We take better care of our defectors than the British do.”

“She’s somewhere safe, I hope.”

“Very safe. But will you allow me to give you a piece of advice, as one friend to another? Take Grigori’s words to heart. Forget about that promise you made that night in Russia. Besides, I suspect Ivan has already put a bullet in the back of his head. Knowing Ivan, I imagine he did the deed himself. Go home to your wife, and let the British clean up their mess.”

“I like to keep promises. I used to think you did, too, Adrian.”

Carter steepled his fingertips and pressed them to his chin. “I think your characterization is a tad unfair. But since you put it that way, how can Langley be of service?”

“Give those photos of Anatoly to the Counterintelligence Center. See if they can put a name and a résumé to that face.”

“I’ll ask the chief to handle it personally.” Carter gathered up the photos. “How long are you planning to stay in town?”

“As long as it takes.”

“One of our officers is about to leave on an overseas assignment. She was wondering if you might be free for dinner.”

Gabriel didn’t bother to ask the officer’s name.

“Where’s she going, Adrian?”

“That’s classified.”

“I don’t suppose I have to remind you that she was involved in the operation against Ivan?”

“No, you don’t.”

“So why are you letting her leave the country?”

“Your concern over her safety is touching but completely unnecessary. What should I tell her about dinner?”

Gabriel hesitated. “I’ll take a rain check, Adrian. It’s complicated.”

“Why? Because she’s dating one of your team?”

“What are you talking about?”

“She and Mikhail are seeing each other. I’m surprised no one told you.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“It started shortly after the Saint-Tropez operation. Since Mikhail is an employee of a foreign intelligence service, she was required to report the relationship to the Office of Personnel. Personnel wasn’t pleased about it, but I intervened on their behalf.”

“How thoughtful of you, Adrian. Actually, I will have dinner with her.”

Carter jotted the time and place on a slip of paper. “Just be nice to her, Gabriel. I think she’s happy. It’s been a long time since Sarah has been happy.”

31

1789 RESTAURANT, a Georgetown landmark, is regarded as one of the finest in Washington and is one of the few that still requires gentlemen to wear a jacket. With that admonition, Carter sent Gabriel to Brooks Brothers, where in the span of ten minutes he picked out gabardine trousers, an oxford-cloth shirt, and the requisite blue blazer. He drew the line at a necktie, though. Like most Israelis, he wore them only under duress or for the purposes of cover. Besides, if he wore a tie, Sarah might get the wrong impression. The blazer was going to cause him enough problems.

He arrived a few minutes early and was informed by the hostess that his dinner companion was already seated. He wasn’t surprised; he had personally overseen Sarah Bancroft’s training and regarded her as one of the finest natural operatives he had ever encountered. Multilingual, well-traveled, and extremely well-educated, she had been working as an assistant curator at the Phillips Collection in Washington when Gabriel recruited her to find a terrorist mastermind lurking in the entourage of Saudi billionaire Zizi al-Bakari. After the operation, Sarah joined the CIA on a full-time basis and was assigned to the Counterterrorism Center. Gabriel had borrowed her again the previous summer and, with the help of a forged painting, had placed her alongside Elena Kharkov. Mikhail had posed as Sarah’s Russian-American boyfriend during the operation, and they had spent several nights together in a five-star Saint-Tropez hotel. Gabriel reckoned the attraction had started then.

He was not happy about it for a number of reasons, not least of which because it violated his ban on sexual relationships between members of his team. But his anger went only so far. He knew the unique combination of stress and boredom could sometimes lead to romantic entanglements in the field. In fact, he could speak from experience. Twenty years earlier, while preparing for a major assassination in Tunis, he had an affair with his female escort officer that nearly destroyed his marriage to Leah.

The hostess escorted him through the intimate dining room to a corner table near the fireplace. Sarah was seated along the banquette with her shoulders turned in a way that allowed her to discreetly survey the entire space. She was wearing a black sleeveless dress and a double strand of pearls. Her pale hair hung loosely about her shoulders, and her wide blue eyes shone with the warm light of the candles. One hand was resting on the stem of a martini glass. The other was placed lightly against her teardrop chin. Her cheek, when kissed, smelled of lilac.

“Can I get you one of these?” she asked, tapping a manicured nail on the base of the glass.

“I’d rather drink your nail polish remover.”

“Would you like that with a twist or just on the rocks?” She looked up at the hostess. “A glass of champagne, please. Something nice. He’s had a long day.”

The hostess withdrew. Sarah smiled and raised the martini to her lips.

“They say it’s bad to drink the night before you fly, Sarah.”

“If I can survive one of your operations, I think I can survive a transatlantic flight with a bit of gin in my bloodstream.”

“So it’s Europe? Is that where Carter is sending you?”

“Adrian warned me to be on my toes around you. You’re not going to get it out of me.”

“I think I have a right to know.”

“Really?” She set down her glass and leaned forward over the table. “You might find this difficult to believe, Gabriel, but I don’t actually work for the Office. I am employed by the National Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency, which means Adrian Carter, not you, makes my assignments.”

“Would you like to say that a little louder? I’m not sure the cooks and the dishwashers heard you.”

“Weren’t you the one who told me that nearly every important professional conversation you’d ever had was conducted in public places?”

It was true. Safe rooms were only safe if they hadn’t been bugged.

“At least rule out a couple of places for me. I’ll sleep easier knowing that Langley, in its infinite wisdom, hasn’t decided to send you to Saudi Arabia or Moscow.”

“You may sleep in peace because Langley has decided nothing of the sort.”

“So it is Europe?”

“Gabriel, really.”

“What kind of work will you be doing?”

She gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s related to my government’s continuing efforts to combat global terrorism.”

“How gallant. And to think that four years ago you were putting together an exhibition called Impressionists in Winter.”

“I hope that was meant as a compliment.”

“It was.”

“You obviously don’t approve of my going into the field without you.”

“I’ve stated my concerns. But Adrian is your boss, not me. And if Adrian thinks it’s appropriate, then who am I to question his judgment?”

“You’re Gabriel Allon, that’s who you are.”

The waiter appeared. He gave them menus and a detailed briefing on the evening’s specials. When he was gone, Gabriel perused the entrées and, with as much detachment as he could manage, asked whether Mikhail was aware of Sarah’s travel plans. Greeted by silence, he looked up and saw Sarah staring at him, her alabaster cheeks flushed.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t act like that when you were around Zizi and Ivan,” Gabriel said.

“Did Mikhail tell you?”

“Actually, the chief of the National Clandestine Service let it slip in conversation.”

Sarah made no response.

“So it’s true, then? You’re actually dating a member of my team?”

“Are you jealous or angry?”

“Why on earth would I be jealous, Sarah?”

“I couldn’t carry a torch for you forever. I had to move on.”

“And you couldn’t find anyone else other than someone who works for me?”

“Funny how that worked out. I guess there was something about Mikhail that I found familiar.”

“Dating a man who’s employed by the intelligence service of a foreign country isn’t exactly a wise career move, Sarah.”

“Langley is having trouble retaining bright young talent. They’re willing to bend some of the old rules.”

“Maybe I should have a quiet word with Personnel. They might have second thoughts.”

“You wouldn’t dare, Gabriel. You also have no right to interfere in my private life.”

Sarah’s private life, Gabriel knew, had been largely in ruins since 9:03 on the morning of September 11, 2001, when United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. On board the doomed aircraft was a young Harvard-trained lawyer named Ben Callahan. Ben had been able to make one call during the final moments of his life, and it had been to Sarah. Since that time, she had permitted herself to have feelings for only one other man. Unfortunately, that man had been Gabriel.

“You should think long and hard before you get involved with a man who kills people for a living. Mikhail’s done a lot of terrible things for the sake of his country.” Gabriel paused, then added, “Things that might make him difficult to be around sometimes.”

“Sounds like someone I know.”

“This isn’t a joke, Sarah. This is your life. Besides, Israeli men are notoriously unreliable. Just ask your average Israeli woman.”

“The Israeli men I know are quite wonderful, actually.”

“That’s because we’re the best of the best.”

“Mikhail included?”

“He wouldn’t be on my team if he wasn’t. How much time have you spent with him?”

“He’s come here a few times, and we met in Paris once.”

“It’s not safe for you to be in Paris alone.”

“I’m not alone. I’m with Mikhail.” A silence, then, “It’s almost like being with you.”

Her words hung between them for a moment. “Is that what this is about, Sarah?”

“Gabriel, please.”

“Because I’d feel bad if Mikhail got hurt in any way.”

“I’m sure I’m the only one who’ll get hurt.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

She smiled for the first time since Mikhail’s name had come up. “I was going to tell you tonight. We were just waiting until we knew it was…” Her voice trailed off.

“Until it was what?”

“Real.”

“And is it?”

She held his hand. “Don’t be upset, Gabriel. I was hoping this could be a celebration.”

“I’m not upset.”

She looked at his champagne glass. He hadn’t touched it.

“Do you want something else?”

“Nail polish remover. On the rocks, with a twist.”

SINCE GABRIEL had come to Washington with the full knowledge of the CIA, Housekeeping had assigned him a not-so-safe flat on Tunlaw Road north of Georgetown. In a somewhat curious twist of fate, the apartment overlooked the rear entrance of the Russian Embassy. As Gabriel was crossing the lobby, his secure mobile vibrated in his coat pocket. It was Adrian Carter.

“Where are you?”

Gabriel told him.

“I have something you need to see right away. We’ll pick you up.”

The connection went dead. Fifteen minutes later, Gabriel was climbing into the back of Carter’s black sedan on New Mexico Avenue. Carter handed him a single sheet of paper: a transcript of a National Security Agency communications intercept, dated the previous evening Moscow time. The target was Ivan Kharkov. He had been speaking to someone inside FSB Headquarters at Lubyanka Square. Though most of the conversation was conducted in coded colloquial Russian, it was clear Ivan had given something to the FSB and now he wanted it back. That something was Grigori Bulganov.

“You were right, Gabriel. Ivan handed Grigori over to the FSB so they could settle accounts, too. Apparently, the FSB interrogation is going too slowly for Ivan’s taste. He spent a great deal of money getting his hands on Grigori, and he’s tired of waiting. But the good news is Grigori’s alive.”

“Is there any way you can prevail upon the FSB to keep him that way?”

“Not a chance. Our relations with the Russian services are getting worse by the day. There’s no way they would tolerate our meddling in a strictly internal matter. And, frankly, if the roles were reversed, neither would we. From their point of view, Grigori is a defector and a traitor. You can be sure they want to kill him just as much as Ivan does.”

“Does the CIC have anything for me?”

“Not yet. Who knows? Maybe your friend Anatoly is a ghost.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts, Adrian. If there’s one thing we know about Ivan, he wouldn’t have entrusted Grigori’s kidnapping to someone he didn’t know.”

“That’s Ivan’s way. Everything is personal.”

“So it’s possible someone who’s spent a considerable amount of time around Ivan might have encountered this man at some point.” Gabriel paused. “Who knows, Adrian? She might even know his real name.”

Carter told the driver to head back to the safe flat, then looked at Gabriel.

“A car will pick you up at six o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m afraid we’ll have to play this one rather close to the vest. You won’t know where you’re going until you’re airborne.”

“How should I dress?”

Carter smiled.

“Warmly. Very warmly.”

32

THE ADIRONDACK PARK, a vast wilderness area sprawling over six million acres in northeastern New York, is the largest public land preserve in the contiguous United States. Roughly the size of Vermont, it is larger than seven other American states-so large, in fact, the national parks of Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier, the Grand Canyon, and the Great Smoky Mountains could all fit neatly within its boundaries. Gabriel had not known these facts until one hour after takeoff, when his pilot, a veteran of the CIA’s rendition program, had finally revealed their destination. The forecast was rather grim: clear skies with a high temperature of perhaps zero. Gabriel assumed the pilot had converted the temperature from Fahrenheit to centigrade for the benefit of his foreign-born passenger. He hadn’t.

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.”

33

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.”

“How much do they know about what happened to their father?”

“They know he had some trouble with his business. And they know he divorced me in order to marry his friend, Yekaterina. As for the arms trafficking and the killings…” Her voice trailed off. “They’re far too young to understand. I’ll wait until they’re a bit older before telling them the truth. Then they can come to their own conclusions.”

“Surely they must be curious.”

“Of course they are. They haven’t seen or spoken to Ivan for six months. It’s been hard on Nikolai. He idolizes his father. I’m sure he blames me for his absence.”

“How do you explain the fact that you live in isolation surrounded by bodyguards?”

“That part is actually not so hard. Anna and Nikolai are the children of a Russian oligarch. They spent their entire lives surrounded by men with guns and radios, so it seems perfectly natural to them. As for the isolation, I tell them it’s only temporary. Someday soon, they’ll be allowed to have friends and go to school like normal American children. For now, they have a lovely tutor from the CIA. She works with them from nine until three. Then I make sure they go outside and play, regardless of the weather. We have several thousand acres, two lakes, and a river. There’s plenty for the children to do. It’s heaven. But I would never have been able to afford it if not for you and your helpers.”

Elena was referring to the team of Office cyberspecialists who, in the days after her defection, had raided Ivan’s bank accounts in Moscow and Zurich and made off with more than twenty million dollars in cash. The “unauthorized wire transfers,” as they were euphemistically referred to at King Saul Boulevard, were one of many actions connected to the affair that skirted the edge of legality. In the aftermath, Ivan had been in no position to quibble over the missing money or to question the sequence of events that led to the loss of custody of his two children. He was dealing with charges in the West that he had sold some of Russia’s deadliest antiaircraft missiles to the terrorists of al-Qaeda, a sale concluded with the blessing of the Kremlin and the Russian president himself.

“Adrian tells me the CIA agreed to provide protection for you and the children for only two years,” Gabriel said.

“You obviously don’t think that’s long enough.”

“No, I don’t.”

“The American taxpayer can’t pay the bill forever. When the CIA men leave, I’ll hire my own bodyguards.”

“What happens when the money runs out?”

“I suppose I could always sell that painting you forged for me.” She smiled. “Would you like to see it?”

She led him into the great room and stopped before a precise copy of Two Children on a Beach by Mary Cassatt. It was the second version of the painting Gabriel had produced. The first had been sold to Ivan Kharkov for two and a half million dollars and was now in the possession of French prosecutors.

“I’m not sure it matches the Adirondack décor.”

“I don’t care. I’m keeping it right where it is.”

He placed his hand to his chin and tilted his head to one side. “I think it’s better than the first one, don’t you?”

“Your brushstrokes were a bit too impasto in the first version. This one is perfect.” She looked at him. “But I don’t suppose you came all this way to talk about my children or to hear me criticize your work.”

Gabriel was silent. Elena gazed at the painting.

“You know, Gabriel, you really should have been an artist. You could have been great. And with a bit of luck, you would have never had the misfortune of meeting my husband.”

MORE THAN a hundred intelligence professionals from four countries had been involved in the Kharkov affair, and most were still vexed by a single question: Why had Elena Varlamova, the beautiful and cultured daughter of a Communist Party economic planner from Leningrad, ever married a hood like Ivan in the first place?

He had been working for the notorious Fifth Directorate of the KGB at the time of their wedding and seemed destined for a glittering career. But in the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union lay wheezing on its deathbed, his fortunes took a sudden and unexpected turn. In a desperate bid to breathe life into the moribund Soviet economy, Mikhail Gorbachev had introduced economic reforms that allowed the limited formation of investment capital. With the encouragement of his superiors, Ivan left the KGB and created one of Russia’s first privately owned banks. Aided by the hidden hand of his old colleagues, it was soon wildly profitable, and when the Soviet Union finally breathed its last, Ivan was uniquely positioned to snatch up some of its most valuable assets. Among them was a fleet of transport ships and aircraft, which he converted into one of the largest freight-forwarding companies in the world. Before long, Ivan’s boats and planes were bound for destinations in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, laden with one of the few products the Russians made well: weapons.

Ivan liked to boast he could lay his hands on anything and ship it anywhere, in some cases overnight. He cared nothing about morality, only money. He would sell to anyone, as long as they could pay. And if they couldn’t, he offered to arrange financing through his banking arm. He sold his weapons to dictators and he sold them to rebels. He sold to freedom fighters with legitimate grievances and to genocidal maniacs who slaughtered women and children. He specialized in providing weapons to regimes so beyond the pale they were unable to obtain arms from legal sources. He perfected the practice of selling weapons to both sides of a conflict, judiciously moderating the flow of arms in order to prolong the killing and maximize his profits. He destroyed countries. He destroyed peoples. And he became filthy rich in the process. For years, he had managed to keep his network of death carefully concealed. To the rest of the world, Ivan Kharkov was the very symbol of the New Russia-a shrewd investor and businessman who easily straddled East and West, collecting expensive homes, luxury yachts, and beautiful mistresses. Elena would later admit to Gabriel that she had been an enabler of Ivan’s grand deception. She had turned a blind eye to his romantic dalliances, just as she had shrouded herself in a willful ignorance when it came to the true source of his immense wealth.

But lives are sometimes upended in an instant. Gabriel’s had changed one evening in Vienna, in the time it took a detonator to ignite a charge of plastic explosive placed beneath his car. For Elena Kharkov, it was the night she overhead a telephone conversation between her husband and his chief of security, Arkady Medvedev. Confronted with the possibility that thousands of innocent people might die because of her husband’s greed, she chose to betray him rather than remain silent. Her actions led her to an isolated villa in the hills above Saint-Tropez, where she offered to help Gabriel steal Ivan’s secrets. The operation that followed had nearly ended both of their lives. One image would hang forever in Gabriel’s terrible gallery of memory: the image of Elena Kharkov, tied to a chair in her husband’s warehouse, with Arkady Medvedev’s pistol pressed to the side of her head. Arkady wanted Gabriel to reveal the location of Anna and Nikolai. Elena was prepared to die rather than answer.

You’d better pull the trigger, Arkady. Because Ivan is never getting those children.

Now, seated before a fire in the great room of the Adirondack lodge, Gabriel broke the news that Ivan had succeeded in kidnapping Grigori Bulganov, the man who had saved their lives that night. And that Olga Sukhova, Elena’s old friend from Leningrad State, had been the target of an assassination attempt in Oxford. Elena took the news calmly, as though she had been informed of a long-expected death. Then she accepted a photograph: a man standing in the arrivals hall of Heathrow Airport. The sudden darkening of her expression instantly told Gabriel his journey had not been in vain.

“You’ve seen him before?”

Elena nodded. “In Moscow, a long time ago. He was a regular visitor to our house in Zhukovka.”

“Did he come alone?”

She shook her head. “Only with Arkady.”

“Were you ever told his name?”

“I was never told their names.”

“And you never happened to overhear one?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Gabriel tried to conceal his disappointment and asked whether Elena could recall anything else. She looked down at the photograph, as if trying to wipe the dust from her memory.

“I remember that Arkady was always quite deferential in his presence. I found it rather odd because Arkady was deferential in front of no one.” She looked up at Gabriel. “Too bad you killed him. He could have told you the name.”

“The world is a much better place without the likes of Arkady Medvedev.”

“That’s true. Sometimes I actually wish I’d killed him myself.” She turned her head and stared across the room toward the painting. “The question is, has Ivan hired this same man to take my children from me?”

Gabriel took hold of Elena’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “I’ve experienced Adrian’s security firsthand. There’s no way Ivan will ever find you and the children here.”

“I’d feel better knowing you were here.” She looked at him.

“Will you stay with us, Gabriel? Just for a day or two?”

“I’m not sure Grigori has a day or two to spare.”

“Grigori?” She gazed despondently into the fire. “I know what my husband and his friends from the FSB do to those who betray them. You should forget about Grigori. Better to focus on the living.”

34

GABRIEL AGREED to spend the night and return to Washington the next morning. After settling into a second-floor guest room, he went in search of a telephone. As a security precaution, Ed Fielding had removed all the phones from the main lodge. Indeed, only one telephone on the entire property was capable of reaching the outside world. It was located in the second lodge, on the desk in Fielding’s office. A small sign warned that all calls, regardless of origin or destination, were monitored and recorded. “It’s no joke,” Fielding said as he handed Gabriel the receiver. “As one professional to another.”

Fielding stepped outside and closed the door. Unwilling to betray normal Office communication procedures, Gabriel dialed King Saul Boulevard on a business line and asked for Uzi Navot. Their conversation was brief and conducted in a form of Hebrew no NSA supercomputer could ever decipher. In the space of a few seconds, Navot managed to give Gabriel a thorough update. Irina Bulganova was safely on the ground in Moscow, Gabriel’s team was headed back to Israel, and Chiara was on her way back to Umbria, accompanied by her bodyguards. In fact, Navot added after checking the time, they were probably there by now.

Gabriel severed the connection and debated whether to ring her. He decided it wasn’t safe. Making contact with the Office on an Agency line was one thing, but calling Chiara at home or on her mobile was quite another. He would have to wait until he was outside the CIA’s bubble before trying to reach her. Replacing the receiver, he thought of the words Elena had just spoken. You should forget about Grigori. Better to focus on the living. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he had made a promise he couldn’t possibly keep. Perhaps it was time to go home and look after his wife. He opened the door and stepped into the corridor. Ed Fielding was there, leaning against the wall.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Feel like taking a ride?”

“Where?”

“I know you’re concerned about Elena. I thought I’d put your mind at ease by showing you some of our security measures.”

“Even though I work for a foreign service?”

“Adrian says you’re family. That’s all I need to know.”

Gabriel followed Fielding into the bitter late-afternoon cold. He had expected the tour to be conducted by Jeep. Instead, Fielding escorted him to an outbuilding where two snowmobiles glistened beneath overhead fluorescent lights. From a metal cabinet, the CIA man produced a pair of helmets, two parkas, two neoprene face masks, and two pairs of wind-stopper gloves. Five minutes later, after a perfunctory lesson on the operation of a snowmobile, Gabriel was hurtling through the woods in Fielding’s blizzardlike wake, bound for a distant corner of the estate.

They inspected the westernmost edge of the property first, then the southern border, which was marked by a branch of the St. Regis River. Two weeks earlier, a black bear had crossed onto the estate from the other side of the stream and triggered the motion detectors and infrared heat sensors. Fielding had responded to the intrusion by dispatching a pair of guards, who confronted the bear within thirty seconds of its arrival. Faced with the prospect of becoming a rug, the bear had wisely retreated to the other side of the stream and had not been seen since.

“Are there any other wild animals we need to worry about?” asked Gabriel.

“Just deer, bobcats, beavers, and the occasional wolf.”

“Wolves?”

“We had one just the other day. A big one.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“Only if you surprise them.”

Fielding twisted the throttle and vanished in a cloud of white. Gabriel followed him along the winding bank of the streambed to the eastern edge of the property. It was marked by a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. Every fifty yards or so was a sign warning that the property was private and that anyone foolish enough to attempt a crossing would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. As they sped side by side along the fence, Gabriel noticed Fielding talking over his radio. By the time they reached the road, it was clear something was wrong. Fielding stopped and motioned for Gabriel to do the same.

“You have a phone call.”

Gabriel didn’t have to ask who had placed the call. Only one person knew where he was or how to reach him.

“What’s it about?”

“He didn’t say. He wants to talk to you right away, though.”

Fielding led Gabriel back to the compound by the shortest route possible. It was dusk when they arrived, and the two Adirondack lodges were little more than silhouettes against the fiery horizon. Elena Kharkov stood on the porch of the main house, her arms folded beneath her breasts, her long dark hair moving in the frigid wind. Gabriel and Fielding swept past her without a word and entered the staff lodge. The telephone in Fielding’s office was off the hook. Gabriel raised the receiver swiftly to his ear and heard the voice of Adrian Carter.

IF THERE was indeed a recording of the conversation that followed, it did not exist for long. Carter would never speak of it, except to say that it was among the most difficult of his long career. The only other witness was Ed Fielding. The security man could not hear Carter’s words, but could see the terrible toll they were taking. He saw a hand gripping the telephone with such force the knuckles were white. And he saw the eyes. The unusually bright green eyes now burning with a terrifying rage. As Fielding slipped quietly from the room, he realized he had never seen such rage before. He did not know what his friend Adrian Carter was saying to the legendary Israeli assassin. But he was certain of one thing. Blood was going to flow. And men were going to die.