The Cellist

by Daniel Silva

  “All I need,” said Isabel, “is my phone.”

  Arkady removed it from the box and handed it over. The movement did not awaken the device from its slumber. Isabel thumbed the side button, but there was no response. The phone was powered off.

  She slipped it into her handbag and followed Comrade Clipboard down a hallway and into a waiting lift. Two other security men squeezed inside as well. One pressed a call button labeled B.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “To the party,” answered Comrade Clipboard.

  “The party is on the first floor.”

  When the door slid open, the stench of chlorine was overwhelming. Comrade Clipboard seized Isabel by the arm and pulled her from the carriage. A single figure stood on the deck at the pool’s edge, faintly lit by watery blue light. It was Fletcher Billingsley, the rich American from Goldman Sachs whom she had met at the bar upstairs.

  He approached her slowly, a benevolent smile on his face, and addressed her in Russian-accented English. “I told you that I wouldn’t forget you, Isabel.”

  He issued no threat or warning, which was inadvertently chivalrous on his part, for it gave Isabel no opportunity to prepare herself for the pain. One moment she was standing ramrod-straight, the next she was doubled over like a folding knife. He eased her with surprising tenderness to the cold tile floor, where she fought in vain to draw a breath. The chalet seemed to be spinning. Welcome to the party that never ends, she thought. Enjoy it while it lasts.

  53

  Rue de Nogentil, Courchevel

  He hauled Isabel to her feet and frog-marched her into a luxuriously appointed dressing room. There he hurled her into a ceramic wall before thrusting her head beneath the briny, scalding water of a Jacuzzi. For all she knew, he drowned her, for when she regained consciousness, she was sprawled across the tile floor, covered in her own vomit.

  “What is your name?” asked a voice from above.

  “Isabel Brenner.”

  “Your real name.”

  “It is my real name.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “Global Vision Investments.”

  He picked her up like a rag doll and forced her head beneath the water a second time. She was scarcely conscious when he finally lifted her face above the surface.

  “What is your name?”

  “Isabel. My name is Isabel.”

  “Who are you working for?”

  “I used to work for RhineBank. Now I work for Martin Landesmann.”

  He gave her an openhanded blow that filled her mouth with blood and sent her tumbling to the floor.

  “Why are you doing this?” she sobbed.

  He shook her violently. “What is your name? Your real name.”

  “Isabel,” she shouted. “My name is Isabel.”

  He released her and left the dressing room—for how long, she did not know. A few minutes, an hour. When he returned, he was holding an enormous fixed-weight dumbbell. He waved it about effortlessly, as though it were fashioned of papier-mâché.

  “Which hand would you like to keep?”

  “Please,” begged Isabel.

  “Right or left? It’s up to you.”

  “I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Yes, I know.” He seized her left hand. “This is the most important one, isn’t it?”

  He pressed her palm to the limestone tile and placed a leaden foot atop her forearm. Isabel could feel her radius bending to the point of fracture. She pummeled his leg with her right hand, but it was no use. It was as if he were made of stone.

  He raised the dumbbell above his head and aimed it toward Isabel’s splayed left hand.

  “Don’t drop it,” she pleaded.

  “Too late.” He raised the weight a few centimeters higher. “You might want to close your eyes.”

  She looked away and saw Arkady standing in the doorway of the dressing room, a look of revulsion on his face. He spoke a few words icily in Russian, and the man Isabel knew as Fletcher Billingsley of Goldman Sachs lowered the weight and removed his foot from her forearm.

  Arkady was now frowning at the droplets of Isabel’s blood on the tile floor, as though concerned about their adverse effect on the property’s resale value. He covered the blood with a plush white towel and poked at it with the toe of his shoe.

  “You’ll never remove it that way,” said Isabel.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll give it a thorough cleaning when you’re gone.”

  She wiped the blood from her face and rubbed it into the cushion of a reclining lounge chair. “What about that?”

  Arkady gave her a humorless smile. “He never liked that chair to begin with.”

  “Who?”

  Ignoring her question, he spoke a few additional words in Russian, and Isabel’s assailant withdrew.

  “I don’t suppose his name is really Fletcher Billingsley.”

  “Felix Belov.”

  “Where did he learn his English?”

  “His father was assigned to the SVR rezidentura in New York.”

  “What does he do when he’s not beating up women?”

  “He works for a small subsidiary of NevaNeft. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called the Haydn Group.”

  Isabel sat upright and looked deliberately at the resplendent wood cabinetry and gold fittings of the dressing room. “No sauna or steam room?”

  Arkady nodded toward a passageway.

  “How much did you pay for the place?”

  “I believe it was twenty-five million.”

  “Anonymous purchase?”

  “Is there any other kind?”

  “Omega Holdings?”

  “Tradewinds Capital.”

  “What about the place in Féchy? Is that Tradewinds, too?”

  “Harbinger Management.”

  “And who owns Harbinger?”

  Arkady said nothing.

  “Does he own NevaNeft, too?”

  “Most of it.”

  “Is any of it actually yours?”

  “Oksana, I suppose. At least, she used to be.” He scooped up the towel from the floor and used it to wipe Isabel’s blood from the edge of the Jacuzzi. Absently, he asked, “When did you begin working for him?”

  “Martin?”

  “Gabriel Allon.”

  Isabel didn’t bother with a denial. “How long have you known?”

  “I’m the one asking the questions. And I would advise you to answer them quickly and truthfully. Otherwise, I’ll ask Felix to finish the job he started on that hand of yours.”

  “I went to work for him not long after you murdered Viktor Orlov.”

  “Are you a professional intelligence officer?”

  “Heavens, no.”

  “Were you the one who gave those documents to Nina Antonova?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Is that why you were fired from the Russian Laundromat?”

  “No,” she answered. “That was Gabriel’s doing.”

  Arkady folded the bloody towel carefully. “The Global Alliance for Democracy?”

  “Gabriel created it in order to put a target on Martin’s back.”

  “The newly discovered Artemisia? The reception at the Kunsthaus? Anna Rolfe? It was all . . .” His voice trailed off. “What about Anil Kandar? Was he in on it, too?”

  “Anil’s just a greedy bastard. RhineBank is going down, Arkady. And so are you. We had you the minute you signed the paperwork for that office building in Miami.”

  “Then why did you come here tonight?”

  “A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

  From upstairs came a swell of rapturous applause. A moment later the Russian president began to speak. No doubt from the balustrade, thought Isabel. Thugs the world over loved nothing more than to look down on their vassals from a balcony.

  Arkady made a face at something his master said. “He’s rather crude, our Volodya. But then again, he always was. He would be nothing if it wasn’t for me. I
was the one who chose him. I was the one who facilitated his rise through the ranks of the Kremlin bureaucracy. And I was the one who made certain he won that first presidential election. And how does he repay me? By treating me the same way he did when I was a sickly little boy from Baskov Lane who wanted to be a pianist.”

  “You should have followed your dreams, Arkady.”

  “I tried.” He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ve made a fool out of me.”

  “I’m sure I wasn’t the first.”

  “I trusted you.”

  “You shouldn’t have.”

  “Do you know what’s going to happen when I get back to Moscow? With a bit of luck, I will fall from a window. Backwards, of course. That’s how all Russian businessmen jump from windows these days. It’s a tradition in the brave new Russia that I helped to create. We never face forward when we jump. We only fall backwards.” Quietly, he added, “At least that way we don’t see the cobbles of the courtyard rushing up to greet us.”

  “Perhaps there’s a deal to be made.”

  “There is,” said Arkady. “But it is you who will have to come to terms.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to deliver Gabriel Allon into my hands so that my oldest friend in the world doesn’t kill me.” He drew his phone from the breast pocket of his jacket. “How much do you want? A billion? Two billion? Name your price, Isabel.”

  “Do you really think I would take your filthy money in order to save myself?”

  “It’s not my money, it’s his. And why should you be any different from all the others who’ve taken it?” He seized a handful of Isabel’s hair, his face so contorted with desperation she scarcely recognized him. “What’s it going to be, Isabel? You have one minute.”

  “Sorry, Arkady. No deal.”

  “A very unwise decision on your part.” He released his grip on her hair. “Perhaps you’re not the shrewd, unprincipled businesswoman I imagined you to be.”

  “You’ll only make it worse for yourself by killing me.”

  “Who said anything about killing?” He stretched a hand toward her swollen cheek, but she recoiled from his touch. “Tell me something. Whose idea was it for you to play ‘Vocalise’ at the reception? Yours or Allon’s?”

  “Mine,” she lied.

  “You really did give a beautiful performance that night. It’s a shame no one will ever hear you play it again.” He returned the phone to the breast pocket of his jacket. “Happy New Year, Isabel.”

  54

  Rue de Nogentil, Courchevel

  At 11:30 p.m., approximately ninety minutes after Arkady Akimov summoned Isabel for her meeting with the Russian president, her phone remained off the air. It was possible the encounter had lasted longer than anticipated. It was also possible Isabel had left the phone in the signal-blocking receptacle after returning to the party. The more likely explanation, however, was that something had gone wrong inside the monstrous chalet on the opposite side of the rue de Nogentil.

  A prudent and battle-scarred operational planner, Gabriel had prepared for such an eventuality. Five members of his team had slipped from the safe house in rented vehicles and were now positioned at key points around Courchevel. Yossi was parked across the street from Isabel’s hotel; Rimona and Natalie, in a deserted gas station near the entrance of the village. Christopher and Mikhail, the violent tip of Gabriel’s spear, were in an Audi Q7 on the rue du Jardin Alpin, near the gondola station. Keller, an accomplished outdoorsman and climber, had protectively brought along snowshoes and hiking poles. Mikhail had nothing other than an altitude-induced headache and a gun, a Barak SP-21 .45-caliber pistol, a man-stopper.

  Only Eli Lavon remained with Gabriel in the safe house. At 11:59 p.m. they stepped onto the balcony and listened as Arkady’s inebriated guests thunderously counted down the final seconds of a most dreadful year. The motorcade departed at twelve fifteen. Yevgeny Nazarov, the ubiquitous Kremlin spokesman, had joined the president in the armored Peugeot SUV. Directly behind it was a Mercedes-Maybach. Inside were Arkady and Oksana Akimov.

  “Late as usual,” said Lavon. “But why do you suppose Arkady is going with him to the airport?”

  “It’s possible he wants to wave goodbye to the helicopter. The presence of his wife, however, would suggest he intends to be on the helicopter.”

  “So would this.”

  Lavon showed Gabriel a text message from the surveillance team in the Place du Port in Geneva. Several employees of the Haydn Group had just entered Arkady’s offices. Lights were burning on the sixth floor.

  “If I had to guess,” said Lavon, “they’re shredding documents and erasing hard drives.”

  Gabriel quickly dialed Christoph Bittel. “It looks as though Arkady is making a run for Moscow.”

  “Say the word, and I’ll order a raid on his offices.”

  “The villa in Féchy, too. And do me a favor, Bittel.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Make some noise.” Gabriel killed the connection and watched the flashing blue lights of the motorcade winding its way up the mountainside. “They wouldn’t try to take her to Russia—would they, Eli?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  The motorcade had reached the airport. A moment later the first Airbus Super Puma helicopter was airborne and turning toward the northwest.

  “You know,” said Lavon after a moment, “if Arkady had any sense, he’d stay here in the West.”

  “He handed me eleven and a half billion dollars of Mr. Big’s money on a silver platter. I rather doubt he was given that option.”

  The second helicopter rose into the black sky, then the third.

  “You’d better get it over with,” said Lavon.

  Gabriel hesitated, then dialed. “This is going to be ugly.”

  Owing to a recent string of deadly lone-wolf attacks by Islamic militants, Paul Rousseau, leader of an elite counterterrorism unit known as the Alpha Group, had decided to spend New Year’s Eve in his office on the rue Nélaton in Paris. Consequently, when his phone rang at 12:22 a.m., he assumed the worst. The fact that it was Gabriel Allon at the other end of the connection only added to his sense of impending doom. The Israeli’s briefing was rapid-fire and, without doubt, only partially accurate.

  “Are you sure they’re planning to take her to Russia?”

  “No,” answered Gabriel. “But at the very least, they know where she is.”

  “She’s Israeli, this agent of yours?”

  “German, actually.”

  “Do the Germans know—”

  “Next question.”

  “Have the Swiss issued a domestic warrant for Monsieur Akimov’s arrest?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Filed a Red Notice request with Interpol?”

  “Paul, please.”

  “We can’t detain him without legal justification. We need a piece of paper.”

  “Then I suppose we’ll need to think of an extrajudicial way to prevent him from leaving the country.”

  “Such as?”

  “Close the airport, of course.”

  “That would effectively ground the Russian president’s aircraft.”

  “Exactly.”

  “There will be diplomatic repercussions.”

  “We can only hope.”

  Rousseau sought bureaucratic shelter. “It’s not something I can do on my own. I need the approval of higher authority.”

  “How much higher?”

  “For something like this . . . Élysée Palace.”

  “How does the French president feel about his Russian counterpart these days?”

  “He loathes him.”

  “In that case, will you allow me to make a suggestion?”

  “By all means.”

  “Call the palace, Paul.”

  Which is precisely what Rousseau did, at 12:27 a.m. The French president was celebrating the New Year with a few close
friends. Much to Rousseau’s surprise, he was not opposed to the idea of grounding his Russian counterpart’s plane. In fact, he rather liked it.

  “Call the tower at Chambéry,” he said to Rousseau. “Tell them you’re acting on my behalf.”

  “The tower will have to give the Russian pilots a reason for the delay.”

  “Switch off the airport’s radar. The runway lights, too. That way, the pilots won’t try something stupid.”

  “And if they do?”

  “I’m sure you and Allon will think of something,” said the French president, and the line went dead.

  55

  Rue de Nogentil, Courchevel

  Isabel’s Jaeger-LeCoultre wristwatch was frozen at 10:47, its crystal smashed. Therefore, she did not know the precise amount of time that had elapsed since Arkady had taken his leave. She reckoned it had been at least twenty-five minutes, for that was the approximate running time of Brahms’s Cello Sonata in E Minor. She thought her imaginary performance of the piece was rather remarkable, given the fact her left forearm, having been crushed beneath the shoe of Felix Belov, had likely suffered at least a hairline fracture.

  At the conclusion of the recital, she opened her eyes and saw the Russian leaning in the doorway of the dressing room, watching her intently. “What were you doing just now?” he asked.

  “Playing the cello.”

  “On your arm?”

  “Very good, Fletcher.”

  He entered the dressing room, slowly. “Were you playing Haydn, by any chance?”

  “Brahms.”

  “You can play from memory?”

  She nodded.

  “Were you playing your imaginary cello when you sent this?”

  He handed her his mobile phone. Displayed on the screen was a copy of an email regarding a parcel of documents that had been left in a sporting ground in Zurich’s District 3. The sender was someone called Mr. Nobody. The recipient was a well-known Russian investigative reporter named Nina Antonova.