The English Girl: A Novel

by Daniel Silva

  The woman descended the church steps and disappeared through the doorway of a crooked little house. Then the boy started across the square with the slip of blue paper in his hand. Much to Chiara’s surprise, he entered the café where she was seated and placed the paper on her table without a word. She waited until the boy was gone before reading the single line. I must see you at once . . .

  The old signadora was waiting in the door of her house when Chiara arrived. She smiled, touched Chiara’s cheek softly, and then drew her inside.

  “Do you know who I am?” the old woman asked.

  “I have a good idea,” answered Chiara.

  “Your husband mentioned me?”

  Chiara nodded.

  “I warned him not to go to the city of heretics,” the signadora said, “but he didn’t listen. He’s lucky to be alive.”

  “He’s hard to kill.”

  “Perhaps he is an angel after all.” The old woman touched Chiara’s face again. “And you went, too, didn’t you?”

  “Who told you I went to Russia?”

  “You went without telling your husband,” the signadora went on, as though she hadn’t heard the question. “You were together for a few hours in a hotel room in the city of night. Do you remember?”

  The old woman smiled. Her hand was still touching Chiara’s face. It moved to her hair.

  “Shall I go on?” she asked.

  “I don’t believe you can see the past.”

  “Your husband was married to another woman before you,” the old woman said, as if to prove Chiara wrong. “There was a child. A fire. The child died but the wife lived. She lives still.”

  Chiara drew away sharply.

  “You were in love with him for a long time,” the old woman continued, “but he wouldn’t marry you because he was grieving. He sent you away once, but he came back to you in a city of water.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He painted a picture of you wrapped in white bedding.”

  “It was a sketch,” said Chiara.

  The old woman shrugged, as if to say it made no difference. Then she nodded toward her table, where a plate of water and a vessel of olive oil stood next to a pair of burning candles.

  “Won’t you sit down?” she asked.

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Please,” said the old woman. “It will only take a moment or two. Then I’ll know for certain.”

  “Know what?”

  “Please,” she said again.

  Chiara sat down. The old woman sat opposite.

  “Dip your forefinger in the oil, my child. And then allow three drops to fall into the water.”

  Chiara reluctantly did as she was told. The oil, upon striking the surface of the water, gathered into a single drop. The old woman gasped, and a tear spilled onto her powdery white cheek.

  “What do you see?” asked Chiara.

  The old woman held Chiara’s hand. “Your husband is waiting for you at the villa,” she said. “Go home and tell him he’s going to be a father again.”

  “Boy or girl?”

  The old woman smiled and said, “One of each.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The English Girl is a work of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The version of Susanna and the Elders by Jacopo Bassano that appears in the novel does not exist. If it did, it would look a great deal like the one that hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims. There is indeed a small limestone apartment house on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem—several, in fact—but an Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon does not actually reside there. The headquarters of the Israeli secret service are no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv; I have chosen to keep the headquarters of my fictitious service there in part because I have always liked the name of the street. The bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 is historical fact, though Arthur Seymour, the father of my fictitious MI5 officer Graham Seymour, did not actually witness it. There is no exhibit at the Israel Museum featuring the pillars of Solomon’s Temple of Jerusalem, for no ruins from the Temple have ever been discovered.

  There is in fact a restaurant called Les Palmiers on the Quai Adolphe Landry in Calvi, but, to the best of my knowledge, it has never been used as a rendezvous point for two Russian spies. The Orsati Olive Oil Company was invented by the author, as was the friendly-fire incident that led Christopher Keller, who first appeared in The English Assassin, to desert the Special Air Service and become a Corsican-based professional killer. Those familiar with the island and its rich traditions will know that I have given my fictitious signadora powers that most of her colleagues do not profess to have.

  The Russian energy company known as Volgatek Oil & Gas does not exist. Nor is there a trade group called the International Association of Petroleum Producers, though there are many just like it. I tinkered with the times of El Al’s flights between Tel Aviv and St. Petersburg to meet the needs of my operation. Those brave souls who visit St. Petersburg in the depths of winter should not attempt to scale the glorious dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, for it is closed in cold weather. For the record, I am quite fond of the Café Nero on London’s Bridge Street. Deepest apologies to the Hotel Metropol, the Astoria Hotel, and the Ritz-Carlton for running intelligence operations from their premises, but I’m sure I was not the first.

  I did my utmost to describe the atmosphere inside 10 Downing Street accurately, though I admit that, unlike Gabriel Allon, I have never set foot beyond the security barrier along Whitehall. When creating Jeremy Fallon, my fictitious chief of staff, I gave him the broad authority that Prime Minister Tony Blair gave to his real chief of staff, Jonathan Powell. I am quite confident that, had the brilliant and scrupulous Powell been at the side of Jonathan Lancaster, the entire sordid affair portrayed in The English Girl would not have occurred.

  The increased spying on the part of Russia’s intelligence services against Western targets has been well documented. The KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky recently told the Guardian newspaper that the size of the SVR’s London rezidentura has reached Cold War levels. Gordievsky is in a unique position to make such a claim because he worked for the KGB in London from 1982 to 1985. Furthermore, he is not alone in his assessment; MI5 has come to the same conclusion. “It is a matter of some disappointment to me,” said MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans, “that I still have to devote significant amounts of equipment, money, and staff to countering this threat. They are resources which I would far rather devote to countering the threat from international terrorism.”

  While London is clearly an important hub of Russian intelligence activity, the United States remains the primary focus of Moscow Center. The FBI provided ample proof of this fact in June 2010, when it arrested ten Russian spies who had been living in the United States under non-official illegal cover for several years. Fearful of jeopardizing its much-touted “reset” in relations with the Kremlin, the Obama administration quickly agreed to return all the spies to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange, the largest between the United States and Russia since the Cold War. The most notorious of the Russian spies was Anna Chapman, a comely femme fatale who lived in London for several years before settling in New York as a real estate agent and party girl. Since returning to Russia, Chapman has hosted a television program, written a newspaper column, and posed for a magazine cover in French lingerie. She was also appointed to the guiding council of the Young Guard of United Russia, a pro-Kremlin organization affiliated with the country’s ruling party. Critics of the Young Guard often refer to it darkly as the “Putin Youth.”

  Much of Russia’s spying against the United States is industrial and economic in nature. The reasons are painfully obvious. Nearly a quarter of a century after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia remains largely an economic basket case, heavily dependent on raw materials and, of course, oil and gas. President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of what energy means to the new Russia. Indeed, the Kremlin spelled it out clearly in a 2003 strategy paper that declared the “role of the country in the global energy markets largely determines its geopolitical influence.” Wisely, the Kremlin has softened its language when talking about the importance of Russia’s energy sector, but the goals remain the same. Stripped of its empire and militarily feeble, Russia now intends to wield power on the world stage with oil and gas rather than nuclear weapons and Marxist-Leninist ideology. What’s more, the Kremlin’s state-owned energy giants are no longer content to operate only within the boundaries of Russia, where production of oil and gas has leveled off. They are now acquiring both “upstream” and “downstream” assets as part of their stratagem to become truly global energy players. In short, the Russian Federation is attempting to become a Eurasian Saudi Arabia.

  Gazprom, the state-owned Russian behemoth, is the world’s largest gas company, and its revenues are the source of much of the Kremlin’s annual federal budget. Several former Soviet Republics receive all their natural gas from Russia, as does tiny Finland. Austria receives more than 80 percent of its gas from Russia; Germany, about 40 percent. While advances in drilling technology are bringing more gas to the international marketplace, the pipelines linking Europe and Russia will help to ensure Gazprom’s dominant position for years to come. Its many European customers should bear in mind that Gazprom operated as an instrument of political repression in 2001, when it purchased NTV, Russia’s only independent national broadcast outlet and a harsh critic of Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party. NTV’s editorial outlook is now reliably pro-Kremlin.

  After a brief stint as prime minister, Putin was elected to a third term as Russia’s president in March 2012. A former officer of the KGB, he is now in a position to rule until at least 2024, longer than Leonid Brezhnev and nearly as long as Joseph Stalin. Needless to say, not all Russians support Putin’s dictatorial hold on power, but increasingly the voices of opposition are being silenced, sometimes harshly. In November 2009, Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer and accountant who accused tax officials and police officers of embezzlement, died suddenly in a Russian jail at the age of thirty-seven, provoking international condemnation and sanctions from the United States. Now it appears the Kremlin has set its sights on Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent dissident and a leader of the protest movement that swept the country after Putin’s return to the presidency. At the time of this writing, Navalny is awaiting trial on embezzlement charges—charges he and his legion of supporters have denounced as politically motivated. If convicted, he faces the prospect of spending ten years in prison, where he would be no threat to Putin and his fellow siloviki in the Kremlin.

  All too often, a prison sentence of any length in the new Russia of Vladimir Putin is tantamount to a death sentence. According to Russian officials, 4,121 people died in custody in 2012 alone, though pro-democracy advocates say the actual figure is likely far higher. Which might help to explain why Alexander Dolmatov, a Russian pro-democracy activist, chose to take his own life in a Rotterdam detention center in January 2013. Fearing arrest and prosecution in Russia, Dolmatov had fled to the Netherlands in search of political asylum; and when his application was denied, he hanged himself in his cell. The Dutch government has said the denial of asylum had nothing to do with Dolmatov’s suicide. His friends from the opposition movement believe otherwise.

  Magnitsky, Navalny, Dolmatov: their names are known in the West. But there are many others who already languish in Russian prison cells because they dared to carry a sign, or write an Internet blog, critical of Vladimir Putin. In Russia, the steady descent into authoritarianism continues. And the Kremlin’s oil and gas giants are footing the bill.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This novel, like the previous books in the Gabriel Allon series, could not have been written without the assistance of David Bull, who truly is among the finest art restorers in the world. Each year, David gives up many hours of his valuable time to advise me on technical matters related to the craft of restoration and to review my manuscript for accuracy. His knowledge of art history is exceeded only by the pleasure of his company, and his friendship has enriched our family in ways large and small.

  I spoke to numerous Israeli and American intelligence officers and policy makers while preparing this manuscript, and I thank them now in anonymity, which is how they would prefer it. My dear friend Gerald Malone, the former Conservative member of Parliament and minister of state for health, served as my guide to British politics and shared many fascinating stories about life inside the pressure-cooker atmosphere of 10 Downing Street. It goes without saying that the expertise is all his and that the mistakes and dramatic license are all mine.

  I consulted hundreds of books, newspaper and magazine articles, and Web sites while preparing this manuscript, far too many to name here. I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention the extraordinary scholarship and reporting of Daniel Yergin, Edward Lucas, Pete Earley, Allan S. Cowell, William Prochnau, and Clint Van Zandt. Additionally, the memoirs of former prime ministers Tony Blair, John Major, and Margaret Thatcher were invaluable sources of information and background.

  Louis Toscano, my dear friend and longtime personal editor, made countless improvements to my manuscript, as did my copy editor, Kathy Crosby. Obviously, responsibility for any mistakes or typographical errors that find their way into the finished book falls on my shoulders, not theirs.

  We are blessed with many friends who fill our lives with love and laughter at critical junctures during the writing year, especially Andrea and Tim Collins, Enola and Stephen Carter, Stacey and Henry Winkler, Joy and Jim Zorn, and Margarita and Andrew Pate.

  A heartfelt thanks to Robert B. Barnett, Michael Gendler, and Linda Rappaport for all their support and wise counsel. Also, to the remarkable team of professionals at HarperCollins, especially Jonathan Burnham, Brian Murray, Michael Morrison, Jennifer Barth, Josh Marwell, Tina Andreadis, Leslie Cohen, Leah Wasielewski, Mark Ferguson, Kathy Schneider, Brenda Segel, Carolyn Robson, Doug Jones, Karen Dziekonski, Archie Ferguson, David Watson, David Koral, and Leah Carlson-Stanisic.

  I wish to extend my deepest gratitude and love to my children, Nicholas and Lily. Not only did they assist me with the final preparation of my manuscript, but they kept me company while I did my research and were a source of love and comfort while I worked. Finally, I must thank my wife, the brilliant NBC News journalist Jamie Gangel, who listened with remarkable forbearance as I worked through the twists and turns of the story and then skillfully edited my early drafts. Were it not for her patience and attention to detail, The English Girl would not have been completed by its deadline. My debt to her is immeasurable, as is my love.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  DANIEL SILVA is the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, The English Assassin, The Confessor, A Death in Vienna, Prince of Fire, The Messenger, The Secret Servant, Moscow Rules, The Defector, The Rembrandt Affair, Portrait of a Spy, and The Fallen Angel. He is married to NBC News Today correspondent Jamie Gangel, and they live in Washington, DC, with their two children, Lily and Nicholas. In 2009 Silva was appointed to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.

  www.danielsilvabooks.com

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  ALSO BY DANIEL SILVA

  The Fallen Angel

  Portrait of a Spy

  The Rembrandt Affair

  The Defector

  Moscow Rules

  The Secret Servant

  The Messenger

  Prince of Fire

  A Death in Vienna

  The Confessor

  The English Assassin

  The
Kill Artist

  The Marching Season

  The Mark of the Assassin

  The Unlikely Spy

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Archie Ferguson

  Cover photograph © by Peter Dazeley/Getty Images

  COPYRIGHT

  The English Girl is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  THE ENGLISH GIRL. Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Silva. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.