The Cellist

by Daniel Silva

  He allowed himself to be debriefed by a team from Langley and submitted to a video interview with the FBI. Agent Emily Barnes of the Secret Service, who was on administrative leave pending an internal review of her actions, rang him from her apartment in Arlington.

  “Sorry, Director Allon. I should have put her on the ground the instant she raised that gun.”

  “Why were you even there?”

  “She walked right past me at the Capitol. We’re trained to spot people who are contemplating an act of violence. She might as well have been wearing a neon sign. When she followed you down the hill to New Jersey Avenue, I knew you were in trouble, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “She was a member of Congress.”

  The following morning, he walked five full circuits of the floor, which earned him a rousing ovation from the nursing staff. For his reward, he was poked and prodded by the doctors, who signed the papers authorizing his release. The bill for his care was astronomical. The president insisted on paying. It was, he said, the least he could do.

  For the first time in three weeks, Gabriel dressed himself in proper clothing. Downstairs, a CIA security man helped him into the backseat of an armored SUV. The driver took him on a final tour of the snow-covered city—the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the corner of New Jersey and Louisiana Avenues. The sidewalk was stained with blood, his or hers, Gabriel could not tell. He stood there for a moment, hoping to hear his mother’s voice, but she was lost to him once more.

  Their last stop was the old redbrick safe house on N Street in Georgetown. During the drive to Dulles Airport, Chiara rested her head on Gabriel’s shoulder and wept. At times like these, he thought, there was comfort in familiar routines.

  66

  Narkiss Street, Jerusalem

  For a month after his return to Israel, he remained hidden away in his apartment in Narkiss Street, surrounded by a small army of security men. Most of his neighbors viewed the additional barriers and checkpoints as a small price to pay to live in close proximity to a national treasure, but a few chafed under the restrictions. There was even a small band of heretics who wondered, not without some justification, whether the shooting in Washington had really happened. After all, they pointed out, he had once misled his enemies, and his fellow countrymen, into believing he was dead. Another grand deception on his part was hardly beyond the realm of possibility.

  The skeptics hastily withdrew their objections, however, on the day he made his first appearance. The occasion was a much-anticipated meeting with the prime minister at Kaplan Street. The video of his arrival shocked the country. Yes, he was still strikingly handsome, but his hair was a touch grayer, and it was evident from his deliberate movements that his body had been invaded by a large-caliber bullet.

  He met with the prime minister for more than an hour. Afterward, the two men fielded questions from reporters. It was the prime minister, as usual, who did most of the talking. No, he answered bluntly, there would be no changes in leadership at King Saul Boulevard at this time. Day-to-day control of the Office would remain in the hands of deputy director Uzi Navot until Gabriel was sufficiently recovered. His doctors had set a tentative date of June 1 for his return to duty, which would leave seven months on his term. He had informed the prime minister he would not serve a second term and had suggested a possible successor. The prime minister, when asked for his reaction, described the candidate as “an interesting choice.”

  Unbeknownst to the Israeli public, Gabriel and the prime minister used the meeting to add their signatures to a document known as a Red Page, an authorization for the use of lethal force. It was executed a week later in downtown Tehran. A man on a motorcycle, a limpet mine, another dead Iranian nuclear scientist. Regional analysts interpreted the operation as a pointed message to Israel’s enemies that the Office was functioning normally, and for once the analysts were right. The new administration in Washington, which was trying to lure the Iranians back to the nuclear negotiating table, offered only a muted expression of disapproval. Gabriel’s near-death experience on Inauguration Day, declared the analysts, had paid dividends at the White House and the State Department.

  Much to Chiara’s dismay, Gabriel insisted on overseeing the assassination from the ops center at King Saul Boulevard. But for the most part, he made the Office come to him. Uzi Navot was a frequent visitor to Narkiss Street, as were Yossi Gavish, Eli Lavon, Rimona Stern, Yaakov Rossman, and Mikhail Abramov. Once or twice a week they gathered in the sitting room, or around one of Chiara’s lavish dinners, to review current operations and plan new ones. Occasionally, they pressed Gabriel to reveal the name he had whispered into the ear of the prime minister, but he steadfastly refused. They were confident, however, that he would never entrust the Office to an outsider, which meant that one of them would have the misfortune of following in the footsteps of a legend.

  But it was clear the legend was not himself. He tried to hide the pain from his troops, and from his wife and children, but sometimes the smallest movement brought a grimace to his face. His weekly visit to Hadassah Medical Center rarely passed without one of the doctors remarking that he was lucky to be alive. Had the slug entered his chest a few millimeters lower, he would have bled to death before the ambulance arrived. A few millimeters lower still, they declared, and he would have died instantly.

  They prescribed for him a set of exercises to regain his strength. He read stacks of classified documents instead. And when he felt up to it, he painted. The works were filled with power and emotion, the sort of paintings for which he would have been known had he become an artist instead of an assassin. One was a portrait of a madwoman clutching a gun.

  “It’s much better than she deserves,” said Chiara.

  “It’s total crap.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “It runs in the family.”

  It was then, standing before his easel, that he told Chiara for the first time how he had heard his mother’s voice as he was dying. And how he had tried to convince the madwoman depicted in the painting, a congresswoman from America’s heartland, to lay down her gun.

  “Did she say anything to you?”

  “She called me a bloodsucker. And it was quite obvious she believed it to be true. I almost felt sorry for her. Even if I’d had a gun . . .”

  Chiara finished the thought for him. “You’re not sure you would have been able to use it.”

  Despite the subject matter, Chiara thought the painting was of sufficient quality for hanging, but Gabriel consigned it to the storage facility where he kept his mother’s paintings and works by his first wife, Leah. Near the end of April, as Israel’s aggressive national vaccination campaign allowed much of the country to reopen, he was allowed to visit her for the first time in more than a year. The hospital where she resided was atop Mount Herzl, near the ruins of the old Arab village of Deir Yassin. Afflicted with a combination of acute post-traumatic stress syndrome and psychotic depression, she had no knowledge of the global pandemic, or of Gabriel’s near-fatal shooting in Washington. Seated beneath an olive tree in the cool of the walled garden, they relived, word for word, a conversation they had had on a snowy night in Vienna thirty years earlier. She once again asked Gabriel to make certain Dani was strapped into his car seat properly. Now, as then, Gabriel assured her the child was safe.

  Emotionally drained by the encounter, he took Chiara and the children to Focaccia on Rabbi Akiva Street, the Allon family’s favorite restaurant in Jerusalem. Their photographs were soon trending on social media along with a lengthy discussion of Gabriel’s order, chicken livers and mashed potatoes. Haaretz, Israel’s most authoritative daily, felt compelled to publish several hundred words on the sighting, including quotes from two of Israel’s most prominent physicians. The general consensus was that Gabriel was starting to look a bit more like himself again.

  The next night they made a long-delayed pilgrimage to Tiberias to celebrate Shabbat with the Shamrons. O
ver dinner, Ari upbraided Gabriel for allowing himself to be shot by an American congresswoman—“The indignity of it! How could you have been so careless?”—before turning his attention to the future. Not surprisingly, he had been talking to the prime minister about Gabriel’s succession plan. The prime minister was intrigued by the idea of appointing a woman but was not sure whether Rimona was ready for the job. Shamron reckoned it was a fifty-fifty proposition at best, though he was confident that, with dogged persistence, he would be able to drag her across the finish line.

  “Unless . . .”

  “Unless what, Ari?”

  “I can convince you to stay for a second term.”

  Even the children laughed at the suggestion.

  At the conclusion of dinner, Shamron asked Gabriel to join him on the terrace overlooking the Sea of Galilee. After settling into a chair along the balustrade, he ignited a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette with his old Zippo lighter and returned to the subject of Gabriel’s brush with death in Washington.

  “Another first on your part,” Shamron pointed out. “You are the only chief in the history of the Office to have killed in the line of duty. And now you are the only one to have been shot.”

  “Do I get a citation for that sort of thing?”

  “Not if I have anything to do with it.” Shamron shook his head slowly. “I hope it was worth it.”

  “It’s quite possible I saved the new president’s life. He won’t forget that.”

  “And what about the other members of his administration?”

  “They’re only Democrats, Ari. It isn’t as if Hezbollah is going to be running the State Department.”

  “But can we count on them?”

  “The president and his team?”

  “No,” said Shamron. “The Americans.”

  “The president has assured his traditional European allies that America is back, but they’re not yet convinced. Not after what they went through the last four years. And the attack on the Capitol has made them even more skeptical.”

  “As well it should,” replied Shamron. “Who were these creatures who vandalized that beautiful building? What do they want?”

  “They say they want their country back.”

  “From whom?” asked Shamron, incredulous. “Have they not read their history? Do they not know what happens when a nation tears itself apart? Do they not realize how lucky they are to live in a democracy?”

  “They don’t believe in democracy anymore.”

  “They will if it vanishes.”

  “Not if their side is in control.”

  “An authoritarian regime in the United States? A ruling family? Fascism?”

  “These days we call it majoritarianism.”

  “How polite,” remarked Shamron. “But what about the minorities?”

  “Their votes won’t count.”

  “How will they manage that?”

  “You know the old saying about elections, Ari. It’s not about the voting, it’s about the counting.”

  “Your friend from Moscow figured that out a long time ago.” Shamron crushed out his cigarette. “I assume you’re planning to retaliate?”

  “The Americans are doing that for me.”

  “There are sanctions,” said Shamron knowingly, “and then there are sanctions, if you understand my point.”

  “I’ve been working on and off for the Office since I was twenty-two, Ari. I know what you mean when you refer to sanctions. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when we used to refer to an assassination as negative treatment.”

  Shamron lifted a hand in inquiry. “Well?”

  “After giving the matter careful consideration, I’m inclined to let it go.”

  Shamron glared at Gabriel as though he had questioned the existence of the creator. “But you must respond.”

  “Do you know how many Russians I’ve killed or kidnapped since the outbreak of our private little war? Even I’m not sure I can count them all. Besides, I took something more important from him than his life.”

  “His money?”

  Gabriel nodded. “And I proved to the Russian people that he’s nothing but a thief. Who knows? With a bit of luck, the next government citadel to be stormed by its own people will be the Kremlin.”

  “A popular uprising in Russia?”

  “It’s his biggest fear.”

  “My biggest fear,” said Shamron, “is that soon after you move to Italy, I will read a story in the newspaper about your body being fished from a Venetian canal. Which is why you must delay your departure until the situation has settled.”

  “How long do you think that will take?”

  “Ten or fifteen years.” Shamron gave a mischievous smile. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Chiara and the children are leaving the day after my term expires, with or without me.”

  “Has it been that bad?”

  “Washington was the final straw.”

  “But not the final act, I hope.”

  “I promised my wife that I would spend my last years on earth making her happy. I intend to keep that promise.”

  “And what about your happiness?” asked Shamron.

  Gabriel made no reply.

  “Do you still grieve for them?”

  “Every minute of every day.”

  “Is there any room in your heart for me?”

  “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I trained you to lie better than that, my son.” Shamron was silent for a moment. “Do you remember that day in September when I came for you?”

  “Like it was yesterday.”

  “I wish we could do it all over again.”

  “Life doesn’t work that way, Ari.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Isn’t that a shame.”

  67

  Mason’s Yard, St. James’s

  The first review of the newest recording of Dvořák’s beloved Cello Concerto in B Minor appeared on the website of Gramophone magazine. The soloist was the previously unheralded Isabel Brenner; the conductor, the legendary Daniel Barenboim. Their personal chemistry, wrote the reviewer, was evident from the cover photograph, and from the power of their performances—especially Ms. Brenner’s, which was noteworthy for its haunting, luminous tone. The fill-up material was Dvořák’s “Waldesruhe” and Brahms’s Cello Sonata in F Major. For the chamber pieces, Isabel was accompanied by the pianist Nadine Rosenberg, perhaps best known for her long collaboration with the renowned Swiss violinist Anna Rolfe.

  The concise artist’s biography contained in the press materials documented Isabel’s remarkable journey from obscurity to musical success—at least a portion of it. Born in the ancient city of Trier, she had studied the piano under the tutelage of her mother before taking up the cello. At the age of seventeen she was awarded a third prize at the prestigious ARD International Music Competition, thus guaranteeing admission to the conservatory of her choice. Instead, she earned degrees in applied mathematics from Berlin’s Humboldt University and the London School of Economics, and embarked on a career in the financial services industry—for which firm, the biography pointedly did not say.

  But a sharp-eyed business reporter from the Guardian, a classical music enthusiast herself, remembered that an Isabel Brenner had been linked to the notorious Russian Laundromat at RhineBank, the recent collapse of which was currently battering global financial markets. The reporter rang the high-powered lawyer representing Anil Kandar, the former RhineBank executive now on trial for money laundering and fraud, and asked whether Isabel Brenner the cellist was also Isabel Brenner the dirty German banker.

  “Same girl,” replied the lawyer.

  The story unexpectedly produced a notable increase in sales, as did a rave five-star review in BBC Music magazine. But it was Isabel’s sensational interview with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes that propelled the album to number one in both Britain and the United States. Yes, she admitted under questioning, she had worked for RhineBank’s Russian Laundromat, but onl
y as a means of gathering information and collecting incriminating documents. She had given those documents to the investigative reporter Nina Antonova and to the legendary Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon, who had enlisted her in an operation against Arkady Akimov. With Allon guiding her every move, she had penetrated Arkady’s inner circle and had helped to launder and conceal several billion dollars’ worth of looted Russian state assets.

  “Arkady trusted you?” asked Cooper.

  “Implicitly.”

  “Why?”

  “Music, I suppose.”

  “Were you ever in danger?”

  “Several times.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I improvised.”

  The interview was a global sensation, especially in Russia, where early the following morning Arkady Akimov’s smashed body was discovered in the courtyard of an apartment building on Baskov Lane in St. Petersburg, having landed there after a fall from an upper-floor window. Police declared the death a suicide, despite the fact the body showed signs of multiple blunt-force injuries.

  Isabel, who was in hiding at an undisclosed location, declined to comment. Nor did she discuss the matter when she arrived in Britain in mid-July for her debut concert at London’s Barbican Centre. Tickets were impossible to come by—only half the usual number were available for purchase—and security was unusually tight. Among those in attendance were the Swiss financier Martin Landesmann and his wife, Monique.

  After thrice returning to the stage to acknowledge the adulation of the crowd, Isabel was whisked clandestinely across London to a quiet backwater of St. James’s known as Mason’s Yard. There, in the glorious upper exhibition room of Isherwood Fine Arts, she was fêted as though she were a member of the family, which indeed she was.

  “Miraculous!” declared Julian Isherwood.

  “Truly,” agreed Oliver Dimbleby.

  Sarah pried Isabel from Oliver’s grasp and introduced her to Jeremy Crabbe, who was similarly entranced. Reluctantly, he surrendered her to Simon Mendenhall, the smooth-as-silk auctioneer from Christie’s, and Simon delivered her to Amelia March of ARTNews, who was the only reporter in attendance.