by Daniel Silva
I know who killed Viktor Orlov.
“May I make another suggestion?” asked Gabriel after a moment.
“By all means,” said Bittel dryly.
“Find out who left this next to that tree.”
The footpath was freshly paved and black as a vinyl record. On one side, the land climbed steeply toward the edge of the Old City. On the other flowed the mucus-green waters of the Aare. The poplar tree clung precariously to the grassy embankment, flanked by a pair of aluminum benches. To reach it, one had to swing a leg over a rustic-looking wooden rail and cross a patch of open ground.
The nearest CCTV camera was about fifty meters downriver. It was mounted atop a lamppost, upon which a graffiti artist had scrawled a slur directed against Muslim immigrants. Bittel obtained a week’s worth of surveillance video, commencing at dawn the previous Sunday and concluding with the parcel’s removal by the CBRN team. Gabriel and Christopher reviewed it on an NDB laptop, in a glass-enclosed conference room. Bittel used the time to clear the debris from his in-box. Because it was an otherwise quiet Sunday in Switzerland, the office was largely deserted. The only sound was the occasional ring of an unanswered telephone.
The email from Mr. Nobody had arrived in Nina Antonova’s ProtonMail in-box at 8:36 p.m. Gabriel synced the CCTV video to the same time and then played it in rewind mode at twice the normal speed.
For several minutes the footpath was deserted. Finally, two figures appeared at the distant end of the image, a man wearing a fedora and a large dog of no discernible breed. Man and beast walked backward toward the camera, pausing briefly next to a rubbish bin, from which the man appeared to extract a small plastic bag. They paused again next to the lamppost, where the canine crouched on the verge of the footpath. What happened next was rendered in reverse order.
“I wish I could unsee that,” groaned Christopher.
The evening turned to dusk, and the dusk to a golden summer afternoon. A fallen leaf rose like a resurrected soul and attached itself to a limb of the poplar tree. Lovers strolled, joggers jogged, the river flowed—all in reverse. Gabriel grew impatient and increased the speed of the playback. Christopher, however, appeared mildly bored. While serving in Northern Ireland, he had once spent two weeks watching a suspected IRA terrorist from a Londonderry attic. The Catholic family living beneath him had never known he was there.
But when the time code reached 14:27, Christopher sat up suddenly in his chair. A figure had slithered over the wooden rail and was walking backward toward the bank of the river. Gabriel clicked pause and zoomed in, but it was no use; the camera was too far away. The figure was little more than a digital smudge.
He clicked rewind, and the smudge removed the backpack it was wearing. At the base of the poplar tree, it retrieved an object.
A rectangular parcel wrapped in heavy plastic and sealed with clear packing tape . . .
Gabriel clicked pause.
“Hello, Mr. Nobody,” said Christopher quietly.
Gabriel clicked rewind again and watched as Mr. Nobody placed the parcel in the backpack and sat down on one of the aluminum benches. According to the video time code, he remained there for twelve minutes before returning to the footpath.
“Walk this way,” whispered Gabriel. “I want to have a look at you.”
The distant smudge seemed to hear him, because a moment later it was walking backward toward the lamppost upon which the CCTV camera was mounted. Gabriel increased the speed of the playback and then clicked pause.
“Well, well,” said Christopher. “Imagine that.”
Gabriel zoomed in. Shoulder-length blond hair. Stretch jeans. A pair of stylish boots.
Mr. Nobody was a woman.
Fluorescent lights flickered to life as Gabriel and Christopher followed Bittel along a corridor to the NDB’s operations center. A single technician was playing computer chess against an opponent in a distant land. Bittel gave him a camera number and a time code reference, and a moment later the woman who called herself Mr. Nobody appeared on the main video screen at the front of the room. This time they watched the drop in its proper sequence. Mr. Nobody approached from the east, sidled over the wooden rail, and spent twelve long minutes contemplating the river before placing the parcel at the base of the poplar tree and departing to the west.
The technician switched to a new camera, which captured her ascent up a flight of concrete steps to the edge of the Old City. There she made her way to the rail station, where at 3:10 p.m. she boarded a train for Zurich.
It arrived exactly one hour later. In the Bahnhofplatz she boarded a Number 3 tram and rode it to the Römerhofplatz in District 7, a residential quarter on the slopes of the Zürichberg. From there it was a pleasant walk up the incline of the Klosbachstrasse to the small modern apartment block at Hauserstrasse 21.
Two minutes after she entered the building, a light appeared in a third-floor window. A rapid check of a government property database indicated that the unit in question was owned by an Isabel Brenner, a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany. A further check revealed that she served as a compliance officer in the Zurich office of RhineBank AG, otherwise known as the world’s dirtiest bank.
15
NDB Headquarters, Bern
As a general rule of thumb, spies from different countries rarely play nicely together. Sharing a juicy piece of regional gossip or a warning about a terrorist cell is commonplace, especially between close allies. But intelligence services avoid joint operations whenever possible, if only because such endeavors inevitably expose personnel and cherished field techniques. Spymasters guard these secrets jealously, like family recipes, and reveal them only under duress. Moreover, national interests rarely align seamlessly, never less so than where matters of high finance are concerned. It was true what they said about money. It definitely changed everything.
Like ultrafine Novichok powder, it was odorless, tasteless, portable, and easy to conceal. And sometimes, of course, it was deadly. Some men killed for money. And when they had enough of it, they killed anyone who tried to take it away from them. Increasingly, much of the money that flowed through the veins and arteries of the global financial system was dirty. It was derived from criminal activity or drained from state coffers by kleptomaniacal autocrats. It poisoned everything it touched. Even the healthy were not immune to its ravages.
Many financial institutions were all too happy to soil their hands with dirty money—for a substantial fee, of course. One such institution was RhineBank AG. At least that was the rumor; money laundering was one of the few financial misdeeds for which the bank had not been punished. Its most recent brush with regulators came in New York, where the state’s Department of Financial Services fined RhineBank $50 million over its dealings with a convicted sex trafficker. One red-hot RhineBank derivatives trader remarked that the payment was smaller than his annual bonus. The trader was foolish enough to repeat the claim in an email, which ended up in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. During the mini-scandal that followed, RhineBank’s spokeswoman sidestepped questions as to whether the trader had in fact earned such an astronomical amount of money. And when the bonus was disclosed in a subsequent corporate filing, it ignited a scandal as well.
The bank was headquartered in a menacing tower in the center of Hamburg that architectural critics had derided as a glass-and-steel phallus. Its busy London office was in Fleet Street, and in New York it occupied a sparkling new skyscraper overlooking the Hudson. Because RhineBank was a truly global bank, it answered to an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies. Any one of them would have been interested to learn that a compliance officer from the Zurich office was leaving packets of sensitive documents at drop sites scattered across Switzerland. Were the nature of those documents ever to become public, RhineBank’s share prices would likely tumble, which in turn would adversely impact its infamously overleveraged balance sheet. The damage would quickly spread to RhineBank’s business partners, the banks from which it received loans or lent money
in return. Dominoes would fall. Given the fragile state of the European economy, another financial crisis was a distinct possibility.
“Obviously,” said Christoph Bittel, “such a scenario would not be in the interests of the Swiss Confederation and its all-important financial services industry.”
“So what shall we do about her?” asked Gabriel. “Pretend she doesn’t exist? Sweep her under the rug?”
“It’s a tradition here in Switzerland.” Bittel eyed Gabriel across the shimmering rectangular table in the conference room. “But then, you already know that.”
“We closed my Swiss accounts a long time ago, Bittel.”
“All of them?” Bittel smiled. “I recently had occasion to rewatch the interrogation I conducted with you after the bombing of that antiquities gallery in St. Moritz.”
“How was it the second time?”
“I suppose I did the best I could. Still, I wish I’d been able to pin you down on a few more specifics. The Anna Rolfe affair, for example. Your first Swiss adventure. Or was it the Hamidi assassination? It’s hard to keep them all straight.” Greeted by silence, Bittel sailed on. “I was lucky enough to see Anna perform with Martha Argerich a few weeks before the lockdown. An evening of Brahms and Schumann sonatas. She still plays with the same fire. And Argerich . . .” He held up his hands. “Well, what else can one say?”
“Which Brahms?”
“I believe it was the G Major.”
“She always adored it.”
“She’s living here in Switzerland again, in her father’s old villa on the Zürichberg.”
“You don’t say.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Anna?” Gabriel glanced at Christopher, who was watching the Sunday-afternoon traffic flowing along the A6, a half smile on his face. “It’s been an age.”
Bittel returned to the matter at hand. “We’re not the only ones who will suffer if there’s a scandal. The British have enormous exposure to RhineBank, as do the Americans.”
“If it’s handled properly, there won’t be a scandal. But if RhineBank has broken the law, it should be punished accordingly.”
“What do I say to RhineBank’s regulators?”
“Nothing at all.”
Bittel was appalled. “That’s not the way we do things here in Switzerland. We follow the rules.”
“Unless it suits you not to. And then you flout the rules as readily as the rest of us. We’re not policemen or regulators, Bittel. We’re in the business of stealing other people’s secrets.”
“Recruit Isabel Brenner as an agent? Is that what you’re saying?”
“How else are we going to find out the name of the high-profile Russian who’s been looting state assets and stashing them here in the West?”
“I’m not sure I want to know his name.”
“In that case, let me handle it.”
Bittel exhaled heavily. “Why do I know I’m going to regret this?”
Gabriel didn’t bother to offer his Swiss colleague assurances to the contrary. Intelligence operations, like life, were invariably full of regrets. Especially when they involved the Russians.
“What do you need from us?” asked Bittel at last.
“I’d like you to stay out of my way.”
“Surely we can provide some assistance. Physical surveillance, for example.”
Gabriel nodded toward Christopher. “Mr. Marlowe will handle the surveillance, at least for now. But with your approval, I’d like to add another operative to our team.”
“Only one?”
Gabriel smiled. “One is all I need.”
16
Zurich
Eli Lavon arrived at Zurich’s Kloten Airport late the following afternoon. He wore a cardigan sweater beneath his crumpled tweed jacket and an ascot at his throat. His hair was wispy and unkempt; the features of his face were bland and easily forgotten. The immigration authorities who met his aircraft on the tarmac did not bother to inspect his passport. Nor did they check his two large pieces of aluminum-sided luggage, which were crammed with sophisticated surveillance and communications gear.
An attendant at ExecuJet, one of the airport’s two fixed-base operators, placed the bags into the back of the BMW X5 waiting outside. Lavon slid into the front passenger seat and frowned. “Shouldn’t you have a bodyguard or two?”
“I don’t need bodyguards,” replied Gabriel. “I have Christopher.”
Lavon peered into the empty backseat. “I never knew he was so good.”
Smiling, Gabriel turned onto the access road and followed it along the edge of the airfield. “How was the flight?” he asked as an inbound jetliner passed low overhead.
“Lonely.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Private air travel? I suppose I could get used to it. But what happens when the pandemic is over?”
“The next director-general of the Office won’t be flying El Al.”
“Have you given any thought to which unlucky soul will succeed you?”
“That’s the prime minister’s decision.”
“But surely you have a candidate in mind.”
Gabriel gave Lavon a sideways glance. “I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about your future, Eli.”
“I’m too old to have a future.” Lavon smiled sadly. “Only a very complicated past.”
Like Gabriel, Eli Lavon was a veteran of Operation Wrath of God. In the Hebrew-based lexicon of the team, he had been an ayin, a tracker and surveillance specialist. When the unit disbanded, he settled in Vienna, where he opened a small investigative bureau called Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Operating on a shoestring budget, he managed to track down millions of dollars’ worth of looted Holocaust assets and played a significant role in prying a multibillion-dollar settlement from the banks of Switzerland. Brilliant and unyielding, Lavon quickly earned the contempt of senior Swiss banking officials. The Neue Züricher Zeitung, in a scathing editorial, had once referred to him as “that tenacious little troll from Vienna.”
He stared gloomily out his window. “Do you mind telling me why I’m back in Switzerland?”
“A problem with a bank.”
“Which one is it this time?”
“The dirtiest bank in the world.”
“RhineBank?”
“How did you guess?”
“Their claim to the title is undisputed.”
“Ever had any dealings with them?”
“No,” said Lavon. “But your mother and grandparents did. You see, the distinguished RhineBank AG of Hamburg financed the construction of Auschwitz and the factory that produced the Zyklon B pellets used in the gas chambers. It also trafficked in dental gold removed from the mouths of the dead and earned enormous fees through the Aryanization of Jewish-owned businesses.”
“It was a profitable venture, was it?”
“Wildly. Hitler was very good for the bank’s bottom line. The relationship went beyond mere expediency. RhineBank was all in.”
“And after the war?”
“The bank trimmed its sails and helped to finance the German economic miracle. Not surprisingly, its senior executives were all staunch anti-Communists. There were rumors that several were on the CIA’s payroll. The director was a guest at Eisenhower’s second inaugural in 1957.”
“All was forgiven?”
“It was as if Auschwitz never happened. RhineBank learned that it could get away with anything, and they’ve tested the proposition time and time again. In 2015, the Americans fined the bank two hundred and fifty million dollars for helping the Iranians to evade international sanctions.” Lavon shook his head slowly. “They’ll do business with anyone.”
“Including a high-profile Russian who’s stashing his ill-gotten money here in the West.”
“Says who?”
“Isabel Brenner. She’s a compliance officer at RhineBank’s Zurich office.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Why?”
/> “Given the firm’s track record,” said Lavon, “I didn’t think it had any.”
During the drive into central Zurich, Gabriel briefed Eli Lavon on the improbable series of events that had heralded their return to Switzerland. His long-overdue reunion with their old friend Olga Sukhova in Norwich. His exfiltration of Olga’s former colleague Nina Antonova from Amsterdam. The package that had been left at the base of a poplar tree along the bank of the river Aare. Then he outlined the provisions of the unusual accord he had reached with Christoph Bittel, the deputy director of a reasonably friendly though sometimes adversarial foreign intelligence service.
“Leave it to you to convince the Swiss, the most insular people in the world, to let you run an operation on their soil.”
“I didn’t give them much of a choice.”
“And when they figure out that the one additional operative you brought in for the job is the tenacious little troll from the Holocaust accounts scandal?”
“It was a long time ago, Eli.”
“And what about Mr. Marlowe? How many hits did he carry out in Switzerland before joining MI6?”
“He says he can’t remember.”
“Never a good sign.” Lavon ignited a cigarette and then lowered the window to vent the smoke.
“Must you?” pleaded Gabriel.
“It helps me think.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“I’m wondering why the Russians haven’t taken Isabel Brenner out of circulation. And why they didn’t pick up that package of documents she left in Bern.”
“What’s the answer?”
“The only explanation is that she made each of the drops before sending the emails to Nina Antonova. The Russians don’t know her identity.”
“And the package in Bern?”
“They were probably hoping Nina would be the one to collect it so they could kill her. But you can be sure they didn’t fall for that little stunt you and your Swiss friends pulled the other night. They know they have a problem.”