The Defector

73

IN THE DAYS following the conclusion of the G-8 summit in Moscow, three seemingly unconnected news stories broke in quick succession. The first concerned Russia ’s uncertain future; the second, its dark past. The last managed to touch upon both, and ultimately would prove to be the most controversial. But then, that was to be expected, grumbled a few of the old hands at British intelligence, since the subject of the story was none other than Grigori Bulganov.

The first story unfolded exactly one week after the summit and had for its backdrop the Russian economy-more to the point, its all-important energy industry. Because it was good news, at least from Moscow ’s point of view, the Russian president chose to make the announcement himself. He did so in a Kremlin news conference, flanked by several of his most senior aides, all veterans of the KGB. In a terse statement, delivered with his trademark glare, the president announced that Viktor Orlov, the dissident former oligarch now residing in London, had finally been brought to heel. All of Orlov’s shares in Ruzoil, the Siberian oil giant, were to be immediately placed under the control of Gazprom, Russia ’s state-owned oil-and-gas monopoly. In exchange, said the president, Russian authorities had agreed to drop all criminal charges against Orlov and withdraw their request for his extradition.

In London, Downing Street hailed the Russian president’s gesture as “statesmanlike,” while Russia hands at the Foreign Ministry and the policy institutes openly wondered whether a new wind might be blowing from the East. Viktor Orlov found such speculation hopelessly naïve, but the reporters who attended his hastily called London news conference did walk away with the sense that Viktor was not long for the fight. His decision to surrender Ruzoil, he said, was based on a realistic assessment of the facts. The Kremlin was now controlled by men who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. When fighting such men, he conceded, victory was not possible, only death. Or perhaps something worse than death. Viktor promised not to be silenced, then promptly announced he had nothing further to say.

Two days later, Viktor Orlov was quietly awarded his first British passport during a small reception at 10 Downing Street. He was also granted a private tour of Buckingham Palace, led by the queen herself. He took many photographs of Her Majesty’s private apartments and gave them to his decorator. Delivery trucks were soon spotted in Cheyne Walk, and passersby were sometimes able to catch a glimpse of Viktor working in his study. Apparently, he had finally decided it was safe to throw open his curtains and enjoy his magnificent view of the Thames.

The second story also originated in Moscow, but, unlike the first, it seemed to leave the Russian president at a loss for words. It concerned a discovery in a birch forest in Vladimirskaya Oblast: several mass graves filled with victims of Stalin’s Great Terror. Preliminary estimates placed the number of bodies at some seventy thousand souls. The Russian president dismissed the find as “of little significance” and resisted calls for him to pay a visit. Such a gesture would have been politically tricky, since Stalin, dead for more than a half century, was still among the most popular figures in the country. He reluctantly agreed to order a review of KGB and NKVD archives and granted the Russian Orthodox Church permission to construct a small memorial at the site-subject to Kremlin approval, of course. “But let’s leave the breast-beating to the Germans,” he said during his one and only comment. “After all, we must remember that Koba carried out these repressions to help prepare the country for the coming war against the fascists.” All those present were chilled by the detached manner in which the president spoke of mass murder. Also, by the fact he referred to Stalin by his old Party nom de guerre, Koba. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the killing ground were never revealed, nor was the owner of the property ever identified. “It is for his own protection,” insisted a Kremlin spokesman. “History can be a dangerous thing.”

The third story broke not in Moscow but in the Russian city sometimes referred to as London. This, too, was a story of death-not the death of thousands but of one. It seemed the body of Grigori Bulganov, the FSB defector and very public dissident, had been discovered on a deserted Thames dock, the victim of an apparent suicide. Scotland Yard and the Home Office took shelter behind claims of national security and released scant details about the case. However, they did acknowledge that Grigori was a somewhat troubled soul who had not adjusted well to a life in exile. As evidence, they pointed out that he had been trying to rekindle his relationship with his former wife-though they neglected to mention that same former wife was by then living in the United Kingdom under a new name and government protection. Also revealed was the somewhat curious fact that Grigori had failed to appear recently for the finals of the Central London Chess Club championship, a match he was expected to win easily. Simon Finch, Grigori’s opponent, surfaced briefly in the press to defend his decision to accept the title by forfeit. He then used the exposure to publicize his latest cause, which was the abolition of land mines. Buckley & Hobbes, Grigori’s publisher, announced that Olga Sukhova, Grigori’s friend and fellow dissident, had graciously agreed to complete Killer in the Kremlin. She appeared briefly at Grigori’s burial in Highgate Cemetery before being escorted away by several armed security men and whisked back into hiding.

Many in the British press, including reporters who had dealt with Grigori, dismissed the government’s claim of suicide as hog-wash. Without any other facts, however, they were left only to speculate, which they did without hesitation. Clearly, they said, Grigori had enemies in Moscow who wished him dead. And clearly, they insisted, one of those enemies must have killed him. The Financial Times pointed out that Grigori was quite close to Viktor Orlov and suggested the defector’s death might somehow be tied to the Ruzoil affair. For his part, Viktor referred to his dead countryman as a “true Russian patriot” and established a freedom fund in his name.

And there the story died, at least as far as the mainstream press was concerned. But on the Internet and in some of the more sensational scandal sheets, it would continue to generate copy for weeks. The wonderful thing about conspiracies is that a clever reporter can usually find a way to link any two events no matter how disparate. But none of the reporters who investigated Grigori’s mysterious death ever attempted to link it to the newly discovered mass graves in Vladimirskaya Oblast. Nor did they posit a connection between the Russian defector and the heart-broken couple who by then had taken refuge in a quiet little apartment on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem. The names Gabriel Allon and Chiara Zolli were not a factor in the story. And they never would be.

THEY HAD recovered from operational trauma before, but never at the same time and never from wounds so deep. Their physical injuries healed quickly. The others refused to mend. They huddled behind locked doors, watched over by men with guns. Unable to tolerate more than a few seconds of separation, they followed each other from room to room. Their lovemaking was ravenous, as if each encounter might be the last, and rare was the moment they were not touching. Their sleep was torn by nightmares. They dreamed of watching each other die. They dreamed of the cell beneath the dacha in the woods. They dreamed of the thousands who were murdered there and the thousands who lay beneath the birch trees in graves with no markers. And, of course, they dreamed of Ivan. Indeed, it was Ivan whom Gabriel saw most. Ivan roamed Gabriel’s subconscious at all hours, dressed in his fine English clothing, carrying his Makarov pistol. Sometimes he was accompanied by Yekaterina and his bodyguards. Usually he was alone. Always he was pointing his gun in Gabriel’s face.

Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon…

Chiara was not eager to speak of her ordeal, and Gabriel did not press her. As the child of a woman who had survived the horrors of the Birkenau death camp, he knew Chiara was suffering an acute form of guilt-survivor’s guilt, which is its own special kind of hell. Chiara had lived and Grigori had died. And he had died because he had stepped in front of a bullet meant for her. This was the image Chiara saw most in her dreams: Grigori, battered and barely able to move, summoning the strength to place himself in front of Ivan’s gun. Chiara had been baptized in Grigori’s blood. And she was alive because of Grigori’s sacrifice.

The rest of it came out in bits and pieces and sometimes at the oddest moments. Over dinner one evening, she described in detail for Gabriel the moment of her capture and the deaths of Lior and Motti. Two days later, while doing the dishes, she recounted what it was like to spend all those hours in the dark. And how once each day, just for a few moments, the sun would set fire to the snowbank outside the tiny window. And finally, while folding laundry one afternoon, she tearfully confessed that she had lied to Gabriel about the pregnancy. She was eight weeks gone at the time of the abduction and lost the child in Ivan’s cell. “It was the drugs,” she explained. “They killed my child. They killed your child.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth? I would never have gone after Grigori.”

“I was afraid you would be mad at me.”

“For what?”

“For getting pregnant.”

Gabriel collapsed into Chiara’s lap, tears flowing down his face. They were tears of guilt but also tears of rage. Though Ivan did not know it, he had managed to kill Gabriel’s child. His unborn child but his child nonetheless.

“Who gave you the shots?” he asked.

“It was the woman. I see her death every night. It’s the one memory I don’t run from.” She wiped away his tears. “I need you to make me three promises, Gabriel.”

“Anything.”

“Promise me we’ll have a baby.”

“I promise.”

“Promise me we’ll never be apart.”

“Never.”

“And promise me you’ll kill them all.”

The next day, these two human wrecks presented themselves at King Saul Boulevard. Along with Mikhail, they were subjected to rigorous physical and psychological evaluations. Uzi Navot reviewed the results that evening. Afterward, he telephoned Shamron at his home in Tiberias.

“How bad?” Shamron asked.

“Very.”

“When will he be ready to work again?”

“It’s going to be a while.”

“How long, Uzi?”

“Maybe never.”

“And Mikhail?”

“He’s a mess, Ari. They’re all a mess.”

Shamron fell silent. “The worst thing we can do is let him sit around. He needs to get back on the horse.”

“I take it you have an idea?”

“How’s the interrogation of Petrov coming along?”

“He’s putting up a good fight.”

“Go down to the Negev, Uzi. Light a fire under the interrogators.”

“What do you want?”

“I want the names. All of them.”

74

BY THEN it was late March. The cold winter rains had come and gone, and the spring weather was warm and fine. At the suggestion of the doctors, they tried to get out of the apartment at least once a day. They reveled in the mundane: a trip to the bustling Makhane Yehuda Market, a stroll through the narrow streets of the Old City, a quiet lunch in one of their favorite restaurants. At Shamron’s insistence, they were accompanied always by a pair of bodyguards, young boys with cropped hair and sunglasses who reminded them both too much of Lior and Motti. Chiara said she wanted to visit the memorial north of Tel Aviv. Seeing the bodyguards’ names engraved in stone left her so distraught Gabriel had to practically carry her back to the car. Two days later, on the Mount of Olives, it was his turn to collapse in grief. Lior and Motti had been buried only a few yards from his son.

Gabriel felt an unusually strong desire to spend time with Leah, and Chiara, unable to bear his absence, had no choice but to go with him. They would sit with Leah for hours in the garden of the hospital and listen patiently while she wandered through time, now in the present, now in the past. With each visit she grew more comfortable in Chiara’s company, and, in moments of lucidity, the two women compared notes on what it was like to live with Gabriel Allon. They talked about his idiosyncrasies and his mood swings, and his need for absolute silence while he was working. And when they were feeling generous, they talked about his incredible gifts. Then the light would go out in Leah’s eyes, and she would return once more to her own private hell. And sometimes Gabriel and Chiara would return to theirs. Leah’s doctor seemed to sense something was amiss. During a visit in early April, he pulled Gabriel and Chiara aside and quietly asked whether they needed professional help.

“You both look as if you haven’t slept in weeks.”

“We haven’t,” said Gabriel.

“Do you want to talk to someone?”

“We’re not allowed.”

“Trouble at work?”

“Something like that.”

“Can I give you something to help you sleep?”

“We have a pharmacy in our medicine cabinet.”

“I don’t want to see you back here for at least a week. Take a trip. Get some sun. You look like ghosts.”

The next morning, shadowed by bodyguards, they drove to Eilat. For three days, they managed not to speak about Russia, or Ivan, or Grigori, or the birch forest outside Moscow. They spent their time sunning themselves on the beach or snorkeling amid the coral reefs of the Red Sea. They ate too much food, drank too much wine, and made love until they were overcome by exhaustion. On their last night, they talked about the future, about the promise Gabriel had made to leave the Office, and about where they might live. For the moment, they had no choice but to remain in Israel. To leave the country and the protective cocoon of the Office was not possible so long as Ivan was still walking the face of the earth.

“And if he wasn’t?” asked Chiara.

“We can live wherever we like-within reason, of course.”

“Then I suppose you’ll just have to kill him.”

They left Eilat the next morning and set out for Jerusalem. While crossing the Negev, Gabriel decided quite spontaneously to make a brief detour near Beersheba. His destination was a prison and interrogation center, located in the center of a restricted military zone. It housed only a handful of inmates, the so-called worst of the worst. Included in this select group was Prisoner 6754, also known as Anton Petrov, the man Ivan had hired to kidnap Grigori and Chiara. The commander of the facility arranged for Petrov to be brought to the exercise yard so Gabriel and Chiara could see him. He wore a blue-and-white tracksuit. His muscle was gone, along with most of his hair. He walked with a heavy limp.

“Too bad you didn’t kill him,” Chiara said.

“Don’t think it didn’t cross my mind.”

“How long will we keep him?”

“As long as we need to.”

“And then?”

“The Americans would like a word with him.”

“Someone needs to make sure he has an accident.”

“We’ll see.”

It was dark when they arrived in Narkiss Street. Gabriel could tell by the abundance of bodyguards they had a visitor waiting upstairs in the apartment. Uzi Navot was seated in the living room. He had a dossier. He had names. Eleven names. All former KGB. All living well in Western Europe on Ivan’s money. Navot left the folder with Gabriel and said he would wait to hear from him. Gabriel allowed Chiara to make the decision.

“Kill them all,” she said.

“It’s going to take time.”

“Take as much time as you need.”

“You won’t be able to come.”

“I know.”

“You’ll go to Tiberias. Gilah will look after you.”

THEY CONVENED the next morning in Room 456C of King Saul Boulevard: Yaakov and Yossi, Dina and Rimona, Oded and Mordecai, Mikhail and Eli Lavon. Gabriel arrived last and tacked eleven photographs to the bulletin board at the front of the room. Eleven photographs of eleven Russians. Eleven Russians who would not survive the summer. The meeting did not take long. The order of death was established, the assignments were made. Travel saw to the flights, Identity to the passports and visas. Housekeeping opened many doors. Banking gave them a blank check.

They left Tel Aviv in waves, traveled in pairs, and reconvened two weeks later in Barcelona. There, on a quiet street in the Gothic Quarter, Gabriel and Mikhail killed the man who had been walking behind Grigori on Harrow Road the evening of his abduction. For his sins he was shot at close range with.22 caliber Berettas. As he lay dying in the gutter, Gabriel whispered two words into his ear.

For Grigori…

A week later, in the Bairro Alto of Lisbon, he whispered the same two words to the woman who had been walking toward Grigori, the woman who had carried no umbrella and had been hatless in the rain. Two weeks after that, in Biarritz, it was the turn of her partner, the man who had been walking next to her on Westbourne Terrace Road Bridge. He heard the two words while taking a midnight stroll along La Grande Plage. They were spoken to his back. When he turned, he saw Gabriel and Mikhail, arms extended, guns in their hands.

For Grigori…

After that, news of the killings began to circulate among those still to die. To prevent the survivors from fleeing to Russia, the Office planted false stories that it was Ivan, not the Israelis, who was responsible. Ivan had launched a Great Terror, according to the rumors. Ivan was pruning the forest. Anyone foolish enough to set foot in Russia would be killed the Russian way, with great pain and extreme violence. And so the guilty stayed in the West, close to ground, below radar. Or so they thought. But one by one they were targeted. And one by one they died.

The driver of the Mercedes that took Irina to her “reunion” with Grigori was killed in Amsterdam in the arms of a prostitute. The driver of the van that carried Grigori on the first leg of his journey back to Russia was killed while leaving a pub in Copenhagen. The two flunkies sent to kill Olga Sukhova in Oxford were next. One died in Munich, the other in Prague.

It was then Sergei Korovin made a frantic attempt to intervene. “The SVR and FSB are getting itchy,” Korovin told Shamron. “If this continues, who knows where it might lead?” In a page taken from Ivan’s playbook, Shamron professed ignorance. Then he warned Korovin that the Russian services had better watch their step. Otherwise, they were next. By that evening, Office stations across Europe detected a notable increase in security around Russian embassies and known Russian intelligence officers. It was unnecessary, of course. Gabriel and his team had no interest in targeting the innocent. Only the guilty.

At that point, just four names remained. Four operatives who had carried out the abduction of Chiara in Umbria. Four operatives who had Office blood on their hands. They knew they were being stalked and tried not to remain in one place long. Fear made them sloppy. Fear made them easy pickings. They were killed in a series of lightning-strike operations: Warsaw, Budapest, Athens, Istanbul. While dying, they heard four words instead of two.

For Lior and Motti.

By then it was nearly August. It was time to go home again.

75

BUT WHAT of Ivan? For many weeks after the nightmare in the birch forest outside Moscow, he stayed out of sight. There were rumors he had been arrested. Rumors he had fled the country. Rumors, even, that he had been taken away by the FSB and killed. They were false, of course. Ivan was just observing another great Russian tradition, the tradition of internal exile. For Ivan, it was not marked by backbreaking labor or starvation rations. Ivan’s gulag was his fortresslike mansion in Zhukovka, the secret city of the oligarchs east of Moscow. And he had Yekaterina to soothe his wounds.

Though Ivan’s name was never publicly linked to the killing site in Vladimirskaya Oblast, its exposure seemed to do harm to his standing inside the Kremlin. In certain circles, much was made of the fact that Ivan’s development firm lost out on an important construction project. And that his nightclub was suddenly out of fashion with the siloviki and the other Moscow well connected. And that his luxury-car dealership saw a sudden sharp decrease in sales. These were false readings, though, more symptomatic of Russia’s troubled economy than any real decline in Ivan’s fortunes. What’s more, his arms dealings continued apace, weapons sales being one of the few bright spots in an otherwise bleak global financial climate. Indeed, British, American, and French intelligence all noticed a sharp spike in the number of Kharkov-owned aircraft touching down on isolated landing strips from the Middle East to Africa and beyond. And the Russian president continued to take his cut. The tsar, as Ivan liked to say, always took his cut.

NSA surveillance revealed that Ivan was aware of the systematic liquidation of Anton Petrov’s operatives and that it troubled him not at all. In Ivan’s mind, they had betrayed him and thus deserved the fate that befell them. In fact, throughout that long summer of retribution, he seemed obsessed by only two questions. Had his children been aboard the American jet that landed in Konakovo? And had they truly composed the letter of hatred handed to him by the pilot?

The children and their mother knew the answer, of course, along with the American president and a handful of his most senior officials. So, too, did the small band of Israeli intelligence officers who convened at sunset on the first Friday of August north of the ancient city of Tiberias. The occasion was Shabbat; the setting was Shamron’s honey-colored villa overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The entire team was present, along with Sarah Bancroft, who had decided to spend her August holiday with Mikhail in Israel. There were spouses Gabriel had never met and children he had only seen in photographs. The presence of so many children was difficult for Chiara, especially when she saw their faces lit by the glow of the Shabbat candles. As Gilah recited the blessing, Chiara took Gabriel’s hand and held it tightly. Gabriel kissed her cheek and heard again the words she had spoken to him in Umbria. We mourn the dead and keep them in our hearts. But we live our lives.

The summer spent by the lake had done wonders for Chiara’s appearance. Her skin was deeply tanned, and her riotous dark hair was aglow with gold and auburn highlights. She smiled easily throughout the meal and even burst into laughter when Bella scolded Uzi for taking a second portion of Gilah’s famous chicken with Moroccan spice. Watching her, Gabriel could almost imagine none of it had actually happened. That it had only been a dream from which they both had finally awakened. It wasn’t true, of course, and no amount of time would ever fully heal the wounds Ivan had inflicted. Chiara was like a newly restored painting, retouched and shimmering with a fresh coat of varnish but still damaged. She would have to be handled with great care.

Gabriel had feared the gathering would be an occasion to relive the dreadful details of the affair, but it was mentioned only once, when Shamron spoke about the importance of what they had achieved. As Jews, they all had relatives whose earthly remains were turned to smoke by the crematoria or were buried in mass graves in the Baltics or the Ukraine. Their memories were kept by commemorative flames and by the index cards stored in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem. But there were no graves to visit, no headstones upon which to shed tears. By their actions in Russia, Gabriel’s team had given such a place to the relatives of the seventy thousand murdered at the killing ground in Vladimirskaya Oblast. They had paid a terrible price, and Grigori had not survived, but with their sacrifice they had given a kind of justice, perhaps even peace, to seventy thousand restless souls.

For the remainder of the meal, Shamron regaled them with stories of the past. He was never happier than when surrounded by his family and friends, and his good mood seemed to soften the deep cracks and fissures in his aged face. But there was sadness there, too. The operation had been traumatic for all of them, but in many ways it had been hardest on Shamron. With his cool, creative thinking, he had saved all their lives. But for more than an hour that terrible morning, he had feared that three officers, two of whom he loved as children, were about to suffer a horrible death. There was an emotional price to be paid for an operation like that-and Shamron paid it, later that evening, when he invited Gabriel to join him on the terrace for a private chat. They sat together on the spot where Gabriel and Chiara were married, Shamron smoking quietly, Gabriel gazing at the blue-black sky above the Golan.

“Your wife looks radiant this evening. Almost like new.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Ari, but she does look wonderful. I suppose I have Gilah to thank. She obviously took good care of her while I was gone.”

“Gilah is good at putting people back together again, even when she’s not sure how they ended up broken in the first place. I must say, we enjoyed having Chiara for the summer. If only my own children would come more often.”

“Maybe they would if you didn’t smoke so much.”

Shamron took a final pull at his cigarette and crushed it out slowly. “You actually looked as if you were enjoying yourself, too. Or were you just deceiving me?”

“It was a wonderful evening, Ari. In fact, it was exactly what we all needed.”

“Your team adores you, Gabriel. They would do anything for you.”

“They have, Ari. Just ask Mikhail.”

“Do you think he’s actually going to marry this American girl?”

“Her name is Sarah. Surely, as a Jew from Tiberias, you should have no trouble remembering that name.”

“Answer my question.”

“He’d be a fool not to marry her. She’s a remarkable woman.”

“But she’s not Jewish.”

“She might as well be.”

“Do you think the CIA will let her stay on if she marries one of us?”

“If they don’t, you should hire her. If it weren’t for Sarah, Anton Petrov might have killed Uzi in Zurich.”

Shamron made no response other than to light another cigarette.

“How is he?” Gabriel asked.

“Petrov?” Shamron pulled his lips into an indifferent frown. “Not so good.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Apparently, he managed to escape the detention and interrogation facility. A group of Bedouin found his body out in the Negev, about fifty miles south of Beersheba. The vultures had got to him by then. I hear it wasn’t pretty.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to have a final word with him.”

“Don’t be. While you were in Europe, we were able to wring one more confession out of him. He admitted to killing those two journalists from Moskovskaya Gazeta last year on Ivan’s orders. But given the rather sensitive circumstances of his admission, we’re in no position to forward the information to the French and Italian authorities. For now both cases will remain officially unsolved.”

“What did you do with the five million euros Petrov left in Becker and Puhl?”

“We made him sign it over to Konrad Becker to cover the costs of the mess you made in his bank. He sends his best, by the way. But he would be most grateful if you did your private banking elsewhere.”

“Were you forced to clean up any other messes?”

“Not really. Our disinformation campaign managed to deflect all suspicion from us onto Ivan. Besides, these were not exactly fine, upstanding citizens whom you killed. They were former KGB hoods who traded in murder, kidnapping, and extortion. As far as the European police and security services are concerned, we did them a favor.”

Shamron looked at Gabriel for a moment in silence. “Did it help?”

“What?”

“Killing them?”

Gabriel gazed out at the black waters of the lake. “I did terrible things in order to get Chiara back, Ari. I did things I never want to do again.”

“But?”

“Yes, it did help.”

“Eleven,” Shamron said. “Ironic, don’t you think?”

“How so?”

“Your first assignment came about because Black September killed eleven Israelis in Munich. And for your final assignment, you and Mikhail killed eleven Russians who were responsible for Chiara’s abduction and Grigori Bulganov’s death.”

A heavy silence settled between them, broken only by the sound of laughter at the dinner table.

“My final assignment? I thought you and the prime minister had decided it was my time to take over the Office.”

“Have you seen your fitness reports?” Shamron shook his head slowly. “You’re in no condition to take on the responsibility of running the Office now. Not when we have a confrontation with the Iranians looming. And not when your wife needs your attention.”

“What are you saying, Ari?”

“I’m saying that you are released from the promise you made in Paris. I’m telling you that you’re fired, Gabriel. You have a new mission now. Get your wife pregnant again as quickly as possible. You’re not so young, my son. You need to have another child quickly.”

“Are you sure, Ari? Are you really prepared to let me go?”

“I’m sure we’ll always find something for you to do. But it’s not going to be sitting behind the desk in the director’s suite. We’re going to inflict that chore on someone else.”

“Do you have a candidate in mind?”

“Actually, we’ve already settled on one. It’s going to be announced next month when Amos steps down.”

“Who is it?”

“Me,” said Uzi Navot.

Gabriel turned and saw Navot standing on the terrace, his heavy arms folded across his chest. In the half-light, he looked shockingly like Shamron in his youth.

“Brilliant choice, don’t you think?”

“I’m speechless.”

“For once.” Navot came forward and placed his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “We have a wonderful system, you and I. You turn a job down, then they give it to me.”

“But the right man got the job in both cases, Uzi. I would have been a terrible director. Mazel tov.”

“Do you mean that, Gabriel?”

“The Office is going to be in good hands for years to come.” Gabriel cocked his head toward Shamron. “Now, if we can just get the Old Man to let go of the bicycle seat.”

Shamron grimaced. “Let’s not get carried away. But let us also be clear about one thing. Uzi is not going to be my pawn. He’ll be his own man. But obviously I’ll always be here to offer advice.”

“Whether he wants it or not.”

“Be careful, my son. Otherwise, I’ll advise him to deal with you harshly.”

Navot walked over and leaned against the balustrade.

“What are we going to do with him, Ari?”

“In my opinion, he should be locked in a room with his wife and kept there until she is pregnant again.”

“Done.” Navot looked at Gabriel. “It’s an order. And you’re not going to disobey another one of my orders, are you, Gabriel?”

“No, sir.”

“So what are you going to do with all this spare time?”

“Rest. After that…” Gabriel gave a noncommittal shrug. “To be honest, I haven’t a clue.”

“Just don’t get any ideas about leaving the country,” Shamron said. “For the time being, your address is No. 16 Narkiss Street.”

“I need to work.”

“So we’ll find you some paintings to clean.”

“The paintings are in Europe.”

“You can’t go to Europe,” Shamron said. “Not yet.”

“When?”

“When we’ve dealt with Ivan. Then you can leave.”

76

GABRIEL AND Chiara made a determined effort to follow Navot’s order to the letter. They found little reason to leave the apartment; a furnacelike August heat had settled over Jerusalem, and the daylight hours were intolerably hot. They ventured out only after dark, and even then only briefly. For the first time in many years, Gabriel felt a strong desire to produce original work. His subject matter, of course, was Chiara. In just three days he painted a stunning nude that, when finished, he propped against the wall at the foot of their bed. Sometimes, when the room was in darkness and he was intoxicated with Chiara’s kisses, it was almost possible to confuse canvas with reality. It was during one such hallucination that the bedside telephone rang quite unexpectedly. With Chiara astride his hips, he was tempted not to answer. Reluctantly he brought the receiver to his ear.

“We need to talk,” said Adrian Carter.

“I’m listening.”

“Not over the phone.”

“Where?”

They met for breakfast two days later on the terrace of the King David Hotel. When Gabriel arrived, he found Carter wearing a wrinkled poplin suit and reading the International Herald Tribune. It had been many months since they had seen each other. Indeed, their last encounter had occurred at Shannon Airport in Ireland, the morning after the G-8 summit. Under the agreement reached with the Russian president, Gabriel, Chiara, Mikhail, and Irina Bulganova had been allowed to leave Moscow the same way Gabriel had arrived: surrounded by Secret Service agents, aboard the so-called car plane. They had disembarked during a refueling stop and had gone their separate ways. Irina had accompanied Graham Seymour to Britain, while Gabriel, Chiara, and Mikhail had flown home to Israel with Shamron. Carter had been so overcome by emotion that morning that he had neglected to ask Gabriel for the official American passport he had used to enter Russia. He did so now, a moment after retaking his seat. Gabriel tossed it onto the table, emblem down.

“I hope you didn’t use this during your little European holiday this summer.”

“I haven’t left Israel since I got back from Russia.”

“Nice try, Gabriel. But we have it on very good authority that you and your team spent the summer killing Anton Petrov’s friends and associates. And you did a damn good job of it.”

“It wasn’t us, Adrian. It was Ivan.”

“My European station chiefs heard those rumors, too.”

Carter opened the passport and began leafing through the pages.

“Don’t worry, Adrian. You won’t find any new visas in there. I wouldn’t do that to you or the president. My wife is alive because of you. And I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“I believe the balance of our account is still weighted heavily in your favor.” Carter sipped his coffee and changed the subject. “We hear there’s about to be a change at the helm of King Saul Boulevard. Needless to say, Langley is pleased by the choice. I’ve always been fond of Uzi.”

“But?”

“Obviously, we were hoping the next chief would be you. We understand why that’s not going to be possible. And we whole- heartedly support your decision.”

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to know I have the support of Langley, Adrian.”

“Do try to control that caustic Israeli wit of yours.” Carter dabbed his lips with his napkin. “Have you given any thought to your future plans?”

“For the moment, Chiara and I will have to stay here.” Gabriel nodded toward the pair of bodyguards seated two tables away. “Protected by children with guns.”

“You could come to America. Elena says you’re welcome anytime. In fact, she says she’d be willing to build a house for you and Chiara on the estate. If I were in your shoes, I’d be tempted to take her up on the offer.”

“That’s because you grew up in New England and you’re used to the winters. I’m from the Valley of Jezreel.”

“She’s not joking, Gabriel.”

“Please thank Elena and tell her I do appreciate the offer. But I can’t accept it.”

“Her children are going to be very disappointed.” Carter handed Gabriel an envelope. “They wrote you a letter. Actually, it’s addressed to you and Chiara.”

“What is it?”

“A letter of apology. They want you to know how sorry they are for what their father did.”

Gabriel removed the letter and read it in silence.

“It’s beautiful, Adrian, but tell the children they have no need to feel guilty about their father’s actions. Besides, we would never have been able to get Chiara back without their help.”

“Apparently, they put on quite a performance at Andrews. Fielding says it was one for the books. The Russian ambassador never suspected a thing.”

Gabriel returned the letter to the envelope and smiled. Though the Russian ambassador did not realize it, he had been a bit player in an elaborate deception. It was true that Anna and Nikolai had boarded the U.S. Air Force C-32 at Andrews, but at Gabriel’s insistence they had been kept far from Russian airspace. Indeed, within seconds after passing through the cabin door, they walked straight into the hold of a hydraulic catering vehicle, where Sarah Bancroft was waiting. Ten minutes after the ambassador departed, they joined their mother aboard the Gulfstream and returned to the Adirondacks. Only the note was genuine. It had been written by the children at Andrews and handed over to the pilot. According to Elena, they had meant every word of it.

“My director bumped into the Russian ambassador at a White House reception a couple of months back. He’s still fuming about what happened. Apparently, he lives in fear of Ivan’s wrath. He spends as little time in Russia as possible.”

Gabriel slipped the letter into his shirt pocket. Surely Carter hadn’t come all the way to Jerusalem to recover a passport and deliver a letter, but he seemed in no hurry to get around to the real reason for his visit. He was now reading his newspaper. He folded it in quarters and handed it across to Gabriel.

“You see this?” he asked, tapping a headline.

It was a story about the new memorial at the killing ground in Vladimirskaya Oblast. Though understated and small, it had already attracted tens of thousands of visitors, much to the chagrin of the Kremlin. Many of the visitors were relatives of those killed there, but most were ordinary Russians who came to see something of their dark past. Since the memorial’s opening, Stalin had seen a precipitous slide in his standing. So, too, had the current regime. Indeed, more and more Russians were beginning to voice their discontent. The reporter for the Herald Tribune wondered whether Russians might be so willing to accept an authoritarian future if they spoke more openly about their totalitarian past. Gabriel wasn’t so sure. He remembered something Olga Sukhova had once said while walking through Novodevichy Cemetery. Russians had never known true democracy. And, in all likelihood, they never would.

“It says here the Russian president still hasn’t paid a visit.”

“He’s a very busy man,” said Carter.

“Do you think he’s regretting the decision to make it public?”

“I’m afraid he had no choice. We agreed to keep everything about the affair quiet and to cover up Grigori’s death with that ridiculous story about suicide. But the graves weren’t part of the deal. In fact, we made it clear to the Kremlin that if they didn’t tell the Russian people the truth, we would do it for them.”

Gabriel folded the newspaper and tried to return it to Carter.

“Look at the story below it.”

The subject was a new round of bloodletting in the Congo that had left more than a hundred thousand people dead. It was accompanied by a photo of a distraught mother holding the body of her dead child.

“And guess who’s helping to fan the flames?” Carter asked.

“Ivan?”

Carter nodded his head. “He put two planeloads of weapons on the ground there last month. Mortars, RPGs, AKs, and several million rounds of ammunition. And what do you think the Russian president said when we asked him to intervene?”

“Ivan who?”

“Words to that effect. It’s clear no amount of cajoling or sweet talk is ever going to convince the Kremlin to shut down Ivan’s operation. If we ever want to put him out of business, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.”

“As long as Ivan is in Russia, he’s untouchable.”

“That’s true, as long as he stays in Russia. But if he were to leave…”

“He won’t leave, Adrian. Not with an Interpol Red Notice hanging over his head.”

“One would think. But Ivan can be impulsive.” Carter bunched his hands beneath his chin and gazed at the walls of the Old City. “By our count, you and your team killed eleven Russians in Europe this summer. We were wondering whether you might be interested in going after one more target.”

Gabriel felt his heart banging against his ribs. His next words were spoken with far more calm than he was feeling.

“Where’s he going?”

Carter told him.

“Isn’t he still under indictment there?”

“Langley is of the opinion the country in question has no real desire to go after him.”

“Why not?”

“Politics, of course. And oil. This country wants to improve its ties with Moscow. It believes that arresting and prosecuting a personal friend of the Russian president would only lead to Kremlin retaliation.”

“Does the intelligence service of the country in question know Ivan is headed their way?”

“Given our concerns about their politicians, we’ve chosen not to inform their spies. Also, it will make other options more difficult to execute.”

“What other options?”

“It seems to me we have three.”

“Number one?”

“Let him enjoy his holiday and forget about it.”

“Bad idea. Number two?”

“Arrest him ourselves and bring him to American soil for trial.”

“Too messy. Besides, it would cause a crisis between the United States and an important European ally.”

“Our thoughts exactly. In fact, we feel we are precluded from taking any action on the soil of this country.” Carter paused, then added, “Which brings us to the third option.”

“What’s that?”

“Kachol v’lavan.”

“How certain are you that Ivan will be there?”

Carter handed over the dossier.

“Dead certain.”

77

APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, the boat was called Mischief: one hundred seventy-eight feet of American-built, Bahamian-registered luxury, owned and operated by one Maxim Simonov, better known as Mad Maxim, king of Russia’s lucrative nickel industry, friend and playmate of the Russian president, and former guest at Villa Soleil, Ivan Kharkov’s now-vacant palace by the sea in Saint-Tropez. Though Maxim owned a villa worth twenty million dollars on Spain’s Costa del Sol, he preferred the privacy and mobility of his yacht. He’d toured the North African coast in June and had spent July island-hopping through Greece. On the final leg of the excursion, he had ordered his crew to make a brief detour to the Turkish coast, and there, on the morning of August the ninth, he had taken aboard two more passengers: a sturdy-looking man called Alexei Budanov and his ravishing young wife, Zoya. Though childless, the couple had vast quantities of luggage-so much, in fact, they required a second stateroom just for storage. Mad Maxim seemed not to mind. His friends had endured a horrible year. And Mad Maxim, a generous soul if ever there was, had taken it upon himself to see they at least had a proper summer holiday.

The host had earned his nickname not through his business acumen but through his leisure activities. His parties were notoriously wild affairs that seldom ended without violence or arrests. Indeed, several years earlier, Maxim was briefly detained after allegedly importing a planeload of Russian prostitutes to entertain guests at his château outside Paris. The French police later agreed to drop all charges after the billionaire managed to convince them the girls were simply part of a modern-dance troupe. The outrageous but somewhat comical affair did nothing to harm Maxim’s standing at home. In fact, the Moscow papers hailed him as the perfect example of the New Russian. Mad Maxim had money and he was not afraid to flaunt it, even if it meant getting into a scrape every now and again with the French police.

The pace of his partying did not slow at sea. If anything, freed from the constraints of meddlesome authorities and complaining neighbors, it reached new levels of intensity. That summer had already produced many notable evenings of debauchery, but new heights were achieved with the arrival of Alexei and Zoya Budanov. Looked after by a crew of thirty, the entourage spent the voyage eating, drinking, and fornicating their way across the Mediterranean, before finally arriving in the fabled Old Port of Saint-Tropez on the afternoon of August the twentieth. Though exhausted and deeply hungover from the previous evening’s adventures, the passengers immediately boarded Mischief ’s dinghies and headed for shore. All but the man known as Alexei Budanov, who remained on the aft deck, hands resting on the railing, staring at Saint-Tropez as if it were his forbidden city. And though Mr. Budanov did not know it, he was already being watched by a man standing at the base of the lighthouse at the end of the Quai d’Estienne d’Orves.

The man wore khaki shorts, a white pullover, a bucket hat, and wraparound sunglasses. Several months earlier, in a birch forest outside Moscow, Mr. Budanov had tried to kill his wife. Now the man planned to kill Mr. Budanov. But, for that, he needed one thing. He needed him to leave the ship. He was confident Mr. Budanov would not stay there long. The Russian was addicted to money, women, and Saint-Tropez. The French resort had been the backdrop for his downfall, and it would be the setting for his death. The man of medium height and build was sure of this. He simply had to be patient. He had to let Mr. Budanov come to him. And then he would put him down.

FORTUNATELY, he would not have to wait alone. He had eight associates to keep him company. Under different names and speaking different languages, they had spent most of the summer on a tour of Europe quite unlike any other. This would be the last stop on their itinerary. Then it would be over.

They lived together under one roof, in a villa located in the hills above the city. It had pale blue shutters and a large swimming pool with views of the distant sea. They spent little time in the pool, just enough to deceive the neighbors. Indeed, most of their time was spent on the streets of Saint-Tropez, watching, shadowing, listening. A friend at the CIA made their task easier by sending transcripts and recordings of all telephone calls made from the yacht or by its passengers. The intercepts gave them advance warning whenever Mad Maxim or a member of his party was coming to town. They knew ahead of time where they planned to have lunch each day, where they planned to have dinner, and which exclusive nightclub they planned to wreck sometime after midnight. The intercepts also allowed them to hear the voice of Alexei Budanov himself. Nearly all his calls were to Moscow. Not once did he identify himself or utter his own name.

Nor did he set foot off the Mischief. Even when the others dined at Le Grand Joseph, his favorite lunch spot, he remained a prisoner of the yacht. And the man of medium height and build passed the time a short distance away, at the foot of his lighthouse. To help fill the empty hours, he dreamed of making love to his wife. And he restored imaginary paintings. And he remembered in vivid detail the nightmare in the birch forest. For the most part, though, he kept his eyes focused on the yacht. And he waited. Always the waiting… Waiting for a plane or a train. Waiting for a source. Waiting for the sun to rise after a night of killing. And waiting for Ivan Kharkov to finally make his return to Saint-Tropez.

Late in the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, while watching Mischief’s dinghies returning to the mother ship, Gabriel received a call on his secure cell phone. The voice he heard was Eli Lavon’s.

“You’d better get up here right away.”

IN THE end, it was not American technology that would be Ivan’s undoing but Israeli cunning. While walking along the Chemin des Conquettes, a residential street south of Saint-Tropez’s bustling centre ville, Lavon had noticed a new sign on the door of the restaurant known as Villa Romana. Written in English, French, and Russian, it stated that, regrettably, the famous Saint-Tropez eatery and party spot would be closed two nights hence for a private affair. Posing as a paparazzi in search of movie stars, Lavon had tossed a bit of money around the waitstaff to see if he could learn the identity of the individual who had booked the establishment. From one despondent bartender he learned it was going to be an all-Russian affair. A busboy confided it was going to be a blowout-his word, a blowout. And finally, from the stunning hostess, he was able to obtain the name of the man who would be throwing the party and footing the bill: Mad Maxim Simonov, the nickel king of Russia. “No movie stars,” the girl said. “Just drunk Russians and their girlfriends. Every year they celebrate the last night of the season. It should be a night to remember.” It would be, Lavon thought. A very memorable night, indeed.

GABRIEL PLACED a wager, one he was confident would pay handsomely. He wagered that Ivan Kharkov could not possibly come all the way to the Côte d’Azur and resist the gravitational pull of Villa Romana, a restaurant where he had once had a regular table. He would take reasonable precautions, perhaps even wear a crude disguise of some sort, but he would come. And Gabriel would be waiting. Whether he pulled the trigger would be contingent on two factors. He would shed no innocent blood, other than that of armed bodyguards, and he would not sink to Ivan’s level by killing him in front of his young wife. Lavon came up with a plan of action. They called it fun with phones.

It was a night to remember, and, just as Gabriel predicted, Ivan was unable to resist attending the party. The techno-pop music was deafening, the women were barely clad, and the champagne flowed like a swollen river. Ivan kept a low profile, though he wore no disguise since not one of the invited guests would have dared to report his presence. As for the possibility he might have been in any physical danger, this, too, seemed to have been discounted. The two bodyguards that Mad Maxim had brought along for protection were standing like doormen outside Villa Romana’s entrance. And if either one of them so much as twitched, they would die there at two a.m. Two a.m., because Ivan’s defenses would be weakened by fatigue and alcohol. Two a.m., because that is the hour the Chemin des Conquettes finally goes quiet on a warm summer night. Two a.m., because that is when Ivan would receive the telephone call that would draw him into the street. The call that would signal that the end was finally near.

For their staging point, Gabriel and Mikhail chose the edge of a small playground at the northern end of the Chemin des Conquettes. They did this because they thought it was just and because the entrance of Villa Romana was only fifty yards away. They sat astride their motorbikes in a dark patch between the streetlamps and listened to the voices in their miniature earpieces. No one gave them a second look. Sitting idly on a motorbike at two in the morning is what one does on a warm summer night in Saint-Tropez, especially when the first crack of autumn thunder is only days away.

It was not thunder that caused them to start their engines but a quiet voice. It told them the call had just gone through to Ivan’s phone. It told them the time was nearly at hand. Gabriel touched the.45 caliber Glock at the small of his back-the Glock loaded with highly destructive hollow-tipped rounds-and made a slight modification in its position. Then he lowered the visor on his helmet and waited for the signal.

IT WAS Oleg Rudenko calling from Moscow-at least, that’s what Ivan was led to believe. He couldn’t quite be certain. He never would be. The connection was too tenuous, the music too loud. Ivan knew three things: the caller spoke Russian, had the direct number for his mobile, and said it was extremely urgent. That was enough to put him on his feet and send him marching into the quiet of the street, phone to one ear, hand over the other. If Ivan heard the approaching motorbikes, he gave no sign of it. In fact, he was shouting in Russian, his back turned, at the instant Gabriel brought his motorbike to a stop. The bodyguards at the front door immediately sensed trouble and foolishly reached into their blazers. Mikhail shot each through the heart before they managed to touch their weapons. Seeing the guards go down, Ivan whirled around in terror, only to find himself staring down the suppressor at the end of the Glock. Gabriel lifted the visor of his helmet and smiled. Then he pulled the trigger, and Ivan’s face vanished. For Grigori, he thought, as he drove off into the darkness. For Chiara.