by Daniel Silva
“Naughty,” said Sarah. “But not illegal.”
“There’s nothing I love more than naughty. But I’m afraid we’ll need to adjust the terms of the deal.”
“Name your price, Oliver. You have me over a barrel.”
“If only.” He lifted his gaze toward the skylight and with the tip of his forefinger tapped his damp lips. At length, he said, “Ten for you, five for me.”
“For a day’s work? I should think a cut of three million is more than sufficient.”
“Ten and five. Hurry, Sarah. The gavel’s about to fall.”
“All right, Oliver. You win.” She touched her champagne flute to his. “I’ll send over the contract in the morning.”
“What about the restoration?”
“The buyer has someone in mind. Apparently, he’s quite good.”
“I certainly hope so. Because our lute player needs a great deal of work.”
“Don’t we all,” sighed Sarah. “I nearly had a heart attack in Hyde Park today.”
“What were you doing?”
“Jogging.”
“How positively American of you.” Oliver refilled his glass. “Is that boyfriend of yours really out of the country?”
“Behave, Oliver.”
“Why on earth would I want to do that? It’s so bloody boring.”
30
Geneva–Zurich
Martin Landesmann, financier, philanthropist, philanderer, money launderer, evader of international nuclear sanctions, scion of a proud if dubious Zurich banking dynasty, threw himself into his newest endeavor with an energy and a sense of purpose that astonished even his wife, Monique, who had seen through his saintly public persona long ago and was among his harshest critics, as wives often were.
A master of branding and image-making, he focused first on a name for his undertaking. He thought Freedom House had a nice ring to it and was bereaved to learn it was the name of a respected think tank based in Washington. Gabriel suggested the Global Alliance for Democracy instead. Admittedly, it was dull, and its English-language acronym was atrocious. But it left nothing to the imagination, especially the Russian imagination, which was the entire point of the exercise. Martin commissioned a suitably grandiose logo, and the One World Global Alliance for Democracy, dedicated to the promotion of freedom and human rights, was born.
It took time, of course. But Gabriel, if he felt the pressure of a ticking clock, gave no sign of it. He had a story to tell, and he was going to pay it out slowly, with each plot element revealed in its proper sequence and with appropriate detail given to each character and setting. It was not necessarily a story with mass appeal. But then, Gabriel’s audience was small—a wealthy former KGB officer who had at his disposal an elite unit of cyber operatives. Nothing would be left to chance.
Such was the case with the unveiling of the One World Global Alliance for Democracy. The group’s interactive, multilingual website went live at nine a.m. Geneva time, on the one-month anniversary of Viktor Orlov’s murder in London. With content written and edited largely by Gabriel and his team, it depicted a planet drifting inexorably toward authoritarianism. Martin issued the same dire warning in a whirlwind series of television interviews. The BBC granted him thirty minutes of precious airtime, as did Russia’s NTV, where he engaged in a spirited debate with a popular pro-Kremlin host. Not surprisingly, Martin got the better of him.
The reviews broke along ideological and partisan lines, but that was to be expected. The progressive press found much to admire in Martin’s initiative, the populist fringe less so. One far-right American cable news host dismissed the Global Alliance for Democracy as “warmed-over George Soros.” If there was a threat to democracy, he added, it was from know-it-all, nanny-state lefties like Martin Landesmann. Gabriel was pleased to see that the website of Russia Today, the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda arm, wholeheartedly agreed.
No news outlet or purveyor of opinion, regardless of its ideological tilt, questioned Martin’s sincerity. Neither, it seemed, did the Russians, who mounted their first spearfishing probe of the Global Alliance for Democracy the following afternoon. Unit 8200 traced the attack to a computer in an office building in the Place du Port in Geneva—the same building that housed the offices of NevaNeft Holdings SA and its subsidiary, the Haydn Group.
Clearly, Gabriel’s opening gambit had caught the eye of his target. He did not permit himself the luxury of a celebration, however, for he was already crafting the next chapter of his story. The setting was the Zurich office of RhineBank AG, otherwise known as the dirtiest outpost of the world’s dirtiest bank.
The first to receive an email was a New York Times correspondent who had written authoritatively on RhineBank in the past. It purported to be from an employee of the firm’s headquarters. It was not. Gabriel had composed it himself, with Yossi Gavish and Eli Lavon standing over his shoulder.
Attached were several hundred documents. A small portion were drawn from the archives of Isabel Brenner. The rest had been acquired clandestinely by Unit 8200, which conducted its hack so skillfully that RhineBank never knew its system had been breached. Taken together, the documents provided indisputable proof that the firm’s Zurich office was operating a secret unit known as the Russian Laundromat, a smooth-running conveyor belt that funneled dirty money out of Russia and deposited clean money throughout the world. No other office or division of RhineBank was implicated, and none of the documents pertained to the activities of Arkady Akimov or his anonymous shell corporation, Omega Holdings.
The reporter’s story appeared on the Times website a week later. It was followed in short order by similar stories in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Die Welt, and the Neue Züricher Zeitung—all of which had received document-laden emails as well. At RhineBank headquarters, its glossy spokeswoman dodged and denied while upstairs on the top floor the Council of Ten considered its options. All were in agreement that only a complete massacre would satisfy the bloodlust of the press and the regulators.
The order went out at midnight on a Thursday, and the executions commenced at nine the following morning. Twenty-eight employees of the Zurich office were terminated, including Isabel Brenner, a compliance officer who had signed much of the Russian Laundromat’s paperwork. Somehow, Herr Zimmer managed to survive. In his fishbowl office, in full view of the trading floor, he presented Isabel with a termination agreement. She signed the document where indicated and accepted a severance check for one million euros.
She walked out of RhineBank for the final time at four fifteen that afternoon, clutching a cardboard box of her possessions, and the following evening moved into a fully furnished apartment in the Old Town of Geneva owned by her new employer, Global Vision Investments. The bulk of Gabriel’s team went to Geneva with her. Their new safe house was located in the upscale diplomatic neighborhood of Champel, a steal at sixty thousand a month.
Gabriel, however, remained behind in Zurich, with only Eli Lavon and Christopher Keller for company. All in all, he thought, his operation was off to a promising start. He had his painting. He had his financier. He had his girl. All he needed now was his star attraction. It was for that reason, after carefully weighing the risks, both professional and personal, he reached for his phone and dialed Anna Rolfe.
31
Rosenbühlweg, Zurich
The villas lining the Rosenbühlweg were big and old and huddled closely together. One, however, stood atop its own promontory and was surrounded by a formidable iron fence. Gabriel arrived at the appointed hour, half past seven p.m., to find the security gate locked. Pelted by fat balls of rain, a flat cap pulled low over his brow, he laid his thumb on the call button of the intercom and endured a wait of nearly a minute for a response. He supposed he had it coming. The dissolution of their brief and tumultuous relationship had hardly ranked among his finest hours.
“May I help you?” a female voice asked at last.
“I certainly hope so.”
“Poor you. Let me see if I can figure out how to let you in. Otherwise, you’ll catch your death.”
Another long moment passed before the automatic lock finally snapped open. Drenched, Gabriel scaled a flight of steps to the soaring portico. The front door yielded to his touch. The entrance hall had not changed since his last visit; the same large glass bowl stood atop the same carved wooden table. He peered into the formal drawing room and in his memory glimpsed a well-dressed man of advancing years and obvious wealth lying in a pool of his own blood. His socks, Gabriel remembered suddenly, had been mismatched. One of the suede loafers, the right, had a thickened sole and heel.
“Hello?” he called out, but there was no reply other than a silken G-minor arpeggio. He climbed the stairs to the second floor of the villa and followed the sound to the music room, where Anna had spent much of her unhappy childhood. She appeared unaware of his arrival. She was lost to the simple arpeggio.
Tonic, third, fifth . . .
Gabriel removed his sodden cap and, wandering the perimeter of the room, scrutinized the outsize framed photographs adorning the walls. Anna with Claudio Abbado. Anna with Daniel Barenboim. Anna with Herbert von Karajan. Anna with Martha Argerich. In only one of the photographs was she alone. The setting was the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, where she had just completed an electrifying performance of her signature piece—Giuseppe Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata. Gabriel had been standing not ten feet away, beneath Tintoretto’s Temptation of Christ. At the conclusion of the recital, he had accompanied the soloist to her dressing room, where she had found a Corsican talisman hidden in her violin case, along with a brief note written by the man who had been contracted to kill her that night.
Tell Gabriel he owes me one . . .
The violin fell silent. At length, Anna said, “I never played the Devil’s Trill better than I did that night.”
“Why do you suppose that was?”
“Fear, I imagine. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was falling in love.” She played the sonata’s languid opening passage, then stopped abruptly. “Were you ever able to find him?”
“Who?”
“The Englishman, of course.”
Gabriel hesitated, then said, “No.”
Anna eyed him down the barrel of the violin’s neck. “Why are you lying to me?”
“Because if I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me.” He looked at the violin. “What happened? Did you get tired of the Stradivarius and the Guarneri?”
“This one isn’t mine. It’s an early-eighteenth-century Klotz on loan from the estate of its original owner.”
“Who was that?”
“Mozart.” She displayed the violin vertically. “He abandoned it in Salzburg when he came to Vienna. I’m going to use it to record his five violin concertos the minute it’s safe to go back into the studio. Unlike most older violins, it was never upgraded in the nineteenth century. Its sound is very smooth and veiled.” She offered it to Gabriel. “Would you like to hold it?”
He declined.
“What’s wrong? Are you afraid you’re going to drop it?”
“Yes.”
“But you touch priceless objects all the time.”
“A Titian, I can repair. But not that.”
She placed the violin beneath her chin and played an arresting, dissonant double-stop from Tartini’s sonata. “You’re dripping on my floor.”
“That’s because you intentionally made me stand in the rain.”
“You should have brought an umbrella.”
“I never carry umbrellas.”
“Yes,” she said distantly. “It’s one of the things I remember most about you, along with the fact that you always slept with a gun on the bedside table.” She placed the violin carefully in its case and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “What does one do in a situation like this? Shake hands or exchange a passionless kiss?”
“One uses the excuse of the pandemic to keep one’s distance.”
“What a shame. I was hoping for a passionless kiss.” She laid her hand atop the Bechstein Sterling grand piano. “I have been involved with many men in my life—”
“Many,” agreed Gabriel.
“But never has one vanished so thoroughly as you.”
“I was trained by the best.”
“Do you remember how long you stayed at my villa in Portugal?”
“Six months.”
“Six months and fourteen days, actually. And yet I’ve received not a single phone call or email in all these years.”
“I’m not a normal person, Anna.”
“Neither am I.”
Gabriel surveyed the photographs lining the walls. “No,” he said after a moment. “You most certainly are not.”
She was, by any objective standard, the finest violinist of her generation—technically brilliant, passionate and fiery, with a matchless liquid tone that she pulled from her instrument by the sheer force of her indomitable will. She was also prone to immense swings of mood and episodes of personal recklessness, including a hiking accident that had left her with a career-threatening injury to her famous left hand. In Gabriel she had seen a stabilizing force. For a brief time, they were one of those endlessly fascinating couples one reads about in novels, the violinist and the art restorer sharing a villa on the Costa de Prata. Never mind that Gabriel was living under a false identity, or that he had the blood of a dozen men on his hands, or that she was never, under any circumstances, allowed to point a camera in his direction. Were it not for a few Swiss surveillance photos, there would be no proof that Gabriel Allon had ever made the acquaintance of the world’s most famous violinist.
To the best of his knowledge, she had kept him a secret as well. Indeed, a part of Gabriel was surprised she remembered him at all; her love life since their parting had been as tempestuous as her playing. She had been linked romantically to an assortment of moguls, musicians, conductors, artists, actors, and filmmakers. Twice she had married, and twice she had been spectacularly divorced. For better or worse, neither union had produced offspring. She had told a recent interviewer that she was through with love, that she planned to spend the final years of her career in search of perfection. The pandemic had played havoc with her plans. She had not set foot in a studio or on a stage since her appearance at Zurich’s Tonhalle with Martha Argerich. Not surprisingly, she was desperate to perform in public again. The adulation of a crowd was for Anna like oxygen. Without it, she would slowly die.
She looked at the ring on his finger. “Still married?”
“Remarried, actually.”
“Did your first wife—”
“No.”
“Kids?”
“Two.”
“She’s Jewish, your wife?”
“A rabbi’s daughter.”
“Is that why you left me?”
“Actually, I found your constant practicing unbearable.” Gabriel smiled. “I couldn’t concentrate on my work.”
“The smell of your solvents was atrocious.”
“Obviously,” said Gabriel archly, “we were doomed from the start.”
“I suppose we’re lucky it ended before someone got hurt.” Anna smiled sadly. “Well, that about covers it. Except, of course, why you showed up at my door after all these years.”
“I’d like to hire you for a recital.”
“You can’t afford me.”
“I’m not paying.”
“Who is?”
“Martin Landesmann.”
“His Holiness? I saw Saint Martin on the television just the other day warning about the end of democracy.”
“He does have a point.”
“But he’s an imperfect messenger, to say the least.” Anna moved to the window, which overlooked the villa’s rear garden. “When I was a child, Walter Landesmann was a frequent visitor to this house. I know exactly where Martin got the money to form that private equity firm of his.”
“You
don’t know the half of it. But he’s agreed to help me with a matter of some urgency.”
“Will I be in any danger?”
“None whatsoever.”
“How disappointing.” She turned to face him. “And where will this performance be?”
“The Kunsthaus.”
“An art museum? What’s the occasion?”
Gabriel explained.
“The date?”
“Mid-October.”
“Which will give me more than enough time to shake off the coronavirus cobwebs.” She retrieved Mozart’s violin from the case. “Any requests?”
“Beethoven and Brahms, if you don’t mind.”
“Never. Which Beethoven?”
“The F Major sonata.”
“A delight. And the Brahms?”
“The D Minor.”
She raised an eyebrow. “The key of repressed passion.”
“Anna . . .”
“I performed the D Minor that night in Venice. I believe it goes something like this.” She closed her eyes and played the haunting opening theme from the sonata’s second movement. “It sounds better on the Guarneri, don’t you think?”
“If you say so.”
Anna lowered the violin. “Is that all you need from me? Two little sonatas?”
“You seem disappointed.”
“To be honest, I was hoping for something a bit more . . .”
“What?”
“Adventurous.”
“Good,” said Gabriel. “Because there’s one more thing.”
32
London–Zurich
It was Amelia March of ARTnews who got wind of it first. Her source was the fashion model turned art dealer Olivia Watson, who for reasons never made clear had been granted a private viewing. But where on earth had he found it? Even Olivia, with all her obvious physical endowments, hadn’t been able to coax it out of him. Nor had she been able to ascertain the name of the art historian who had supplied the updated attribution. Evidently, it was unassailable. Stone tablets on Mount Sinai. Word of God.