by Daniel Silva
They had been traveling together for the better part of a day. After crossing the border, Gabriel had surrendered himself to a waiting team of Ukrainian SBU officers. The SBU men had taken him to Kiev and handed him over to Mikhail and two other Office security men. From Kiev, they had driven to Warsaw and boarded the El Al flight. Even on the plane, Shamron had taken no chances with Gabriel’s safety. Half of the first-class cabin crew were Office agents, and, before takeoff, the entire aircraft had been carefully searched for radioactive material and other toxins. Gabriel’s food and drink had been kept in a separate sealed container. The meal had been prepared by Shamron’s wife, Gilah. “It’s the Office version of glatt kosher,” Mikhail had said. “Sanctified under Jewish law and guaranteed to be free of Russian poison.”
Gabriel tried to sit up, but his kidney began to throb again. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to subside. Mikhail, a nervous flier by nature, was now drumming on his tray table with his fingertip.
“You’re giving me a headache, Mikhail.”
Mikhail’s finger went still. “Did you manage to get any rest?”
“Not much.”
“You should have watched your step on those KGB stairs.”
“It’s called the FSB now, Mikhail. Haven’t you read the papers lately? The KGB doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Where did you ever get that idea? They were KGB when I was growing up in Moscow and they’re KGB now.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes. A reception team will be waiting for you on the tarmac. After you finish delivering your report, you can sleep for a month.”
“Unless my report makes that impossible.”
“Bad?”
“Something tells me you’ll know soon enough, Mikhail.”
An electronic ping sounded over the cabin’s audio system. Mikhail looked up at the flashing SEAT BELT sign and tapped Gabriel on the forearm.“You’d better buckle up. You wouldn’t want the flight attendant to get angry with you.”
Gabriel followed Mikhail’s gaze and saw Chiara making her way slowly down the aisle. Dressed in a flattering blue El Al uniform, she was sternly reminding passengers to straighten their seat backs and stow their tray tables. Mikhail swallowed the last of his beer and absently handed her the empty bottle.
“The service on this flight was dreadful, don’t you think?”
“Even by El Al standards,” Gabriel agreed.
“I think we should institute a training program immediately.”
“Now, that’s the kind of thinking that’s going to get you a job in the executive suite of King Saul Boulevard.”
“Maybe I should volunteer to teach it.”
“And work with our girls? You’d be safer going back to Gaza and chasing Hamas terrorists.”
Gabriel leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
“You sure you’re all right, Gabriel?”
“Just a touch of Lubyanka hangover.”
“Who could blame you?” Mikhail was silent for a moment. “The KGB kept my father there for six months when I was a kid. Did I ever tell you that?”
He hadn’t, but Gabriel had read Mikhail’s personnel file.
“After six months in Lubyanka, they declared my father mentally ill and sent him away to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. It was all a sham, of course. No one ever got better in a Soviet psychiatric hospital—the hospitals were just another arm of the gulag. My father was lucky, though. Eventually, he got out, and we were able to come to Israel. But he was never the same after being locked away in that asylum.”
Just then the cabin shuddered with the impact of a hard landing. From the depths of economy class arose a desultory patter of applause. It was a tradition for flights landing in Israel, and, for the first time, Gabriel was tempted to join in. Instead, he sat silently while the plane taxied toward the terminal and, unlike the rest of his fellow countrymen, waited until the SEAT BELT sign was extinguished before rising to his feet and collecting his bag from the overhead bin.
Chiara was now standing at the cabin door. She anonymously bade Gabriel a pleasant evening and warned him to watch his step as he followed Mikhail and the two other security agents down the stairs of the Jetway. Upon reaching the tarmac, Mikhail and the others turned to the right and filed into the motorized lounges, along with the rest of the passengers. Gabriel headed in the opposite direction, toward the waiting Peugeot limousine, and climbed into the backseat. Shamron examined the dark reddish blue bruise along Gabriel’s cheek.
“I suppose you don’t look too bad for someone who survived Lubyanka. How was it?”
“The rooms were on the small side, but the furnishings were quite lovely.”
“Perhaps it would have been better if you’d found some other way of dealing with those Chechens besides killing them.”
“I considered shooting the guns out of their hands, Ari, but that sort of thing really only works in the movies.”
“I’m glad to see you emerged from your ordeal with your fatalistic sense of humor intact. A team of debriefers is waiting for you at King Saul Boulevard. I’m afraid you have a long night ahead of you.”
“I’d rather go back to Lubyanka than face the debriefers tonight.”
Shamron gave Gabriel a paternalistic pat on the shoulder.
“I’ll take you home, Gabriel. We’ll talk on the way.”
21
JERUSALEM
They still had much ground to cover when they arrived at Gabriel’s apartment in Narkiss Street. Despite the fact it was after midnight, Shamron invited himself upstairs for coffee. Gabriel hesitated before inserting his key into the lock.
“Go ahead,” Shamron said calmly. “We’ve already swept it.”
“I think I like fighting Arab terrorists better than Russians.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t always have the luxury of choosing our enemies.”
Gabriel entered the apartment first and switched on the lights. Everything was exactly as he had left it a week earlier, including the half-drunk cup of coffee he had left in the kitchen sink on the way out the door. He poured the now-moldy remnants down the drain, then spooned coffee into the French press and placed a kettle of water on the stove to boil. When he went into the sitting room, he found Shamron with a cigarette between his lips and a cocked lighter poised before it. “You don’t get to take up smoking again just because I got thrown into Lubyanka. Besides, if Chiara smells smoke in here when she comes home I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“So you’ll blame it on me.”
“I blame everything on you. The impact has been diluted by overuse. ”
Shamron extinguished the lighter and laid the cigarette on the coffee table, where it would be easily accessible for a sneak attack at a moment when Gabriel’s back was turned.
“I should have left you in Russia,” Shamron muttered.
“How did you get me out?”
“When it became clear to our ambassador and Moscow Station chief that the FSB had no intention of respecting your diplomatic passport, we decided to go on offense. Shin Bet regularly monitors the movements of Russian Embassy employees. As it turned out, four of them were drinking heavily in the bar of the Sheraton Hotel.”
“How surprising.”
“A mile from the hotel, they were pulled over for what appeared to be a routine traffic stop. It wasn’t, of course.”
“So you kidnapped four Russian diplomats and held them hostage in order to coerce them into releasing me.”
“We Israelites invented tit for tat. Besides, they weren’t just diplomats. Two of them were known intelligence officers of the SVR.”
When the KGB was disbanded and reorganized, the directorate that conducted espionage activities abroad became a separate agency known as the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. Like the FSB, the SVR was merely KGB with a new name and a pretty wrapper.
“When we received confirmation from the Ukrainians that you’d made it safely across the
border, we released them from custody. They’ve been quietly recalled to Moscow for consultations. With a bit of luck, they’ll stay there forever.”
The teakettle screamed. Gabriel went into the kitchen and removed it from the stove, then switched on the television while he saw to the coffee. It was tuned to the BBC; a gray-haired reporter was standing before the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral bellowing about the possible motives behind the attempt on Olga Sukhova’s life. None of his theories were even remotely close to the truth, but they were delivered with an authority that only a British accent can bestow. Shamron, who was now standing at Gabriel’s shoulder, seemed to find the report vaguely amusing. He viewed the news media only as a source of entertainment or as a weapon to be wielded against his enemies.
“As you can see, the Russians are being rather circumspect about exactly what transpired inside that apartment building. They’ve acknowledged Olga was the target of an attack, but they’ve released few other details about the incident. Nothing about the identity of the gunmen. Nothing about the man who saved her life.”
“Where is she now?”
“Back in her apartment, surrounded by private security guards and brave Western reporters like our friend from the BBC. She’s as safe as one can be in Russia, which is to say not terribly safe at all. Eventually, she might want to consider a new life in the West.” His eyes settled on Gabriel. “Is she as good as she appears or is it possible she’s something else entirely?”
“Are you asking whether she’s been turned by the FSB and was blowing smoke in my face?”
“That is precisely what I’m asking.”
“She’s golden, Ari. She’s a gift from the intelligence gods.”
“I’m just wondering why she asked you to take her home. I’m wondering whether it’s possible she led you into that stairwell to be killed.”
“Or maybe that wasn’t Olga Sukhova at all. Maybe it was Ivan Kharkov in a clever disguise.”
“I’m paid to think dark thoughts, Gabriel. And so are you.”
“I saw her reaction to the shooting. She’s the real thing, Ari. And she agreed to help us at great risk to herself. Remember, I was allowed to leave. Olga is still in Moscow. If the Kremlin wants her dead, they’ll kill her. And there’s nothing those security guards and brave reporters can do to protect her.”
They sat down at the kitchen table. The BBC had moved on from Russia and was now showing footage of a fatal bomb blast in a Baghdad market. Gabriel aimed the remote at the screen and, frowning, pressed the MUTE button. Shamron fiddled with the French press for a moment before appealing to Gabriel for assistance. He occupied his spare time by restoring antique radios and clocks yet even the most basic kitchen appliances were beyond his capabilities. Coffeemakers, blenders, toasters: these items were a mystery to him. Gilah often joked that her husband, if left to his own devices, would find a way to starve to death in a house filled with food.
“How much do we have on Ivan Kharkov?” Gabriel asked.
“Plenty,” said Shamron. “Ivan’s been active in Lebanon for years. He makes regular deliveries to Hezbollah, but he also sells weapons to the more radical Palestinian and Islamist factions operating inside the refugee camps.”
“What kind of weapons?”
"The usual. Grenades, mortars, RPGs, AK-47s—and bullets, of course. Lots of bullets. But during our war with Hezbollah, the Kharkov network arranged for a special shipment of armor-piercing antitank weapons. We lost several tank crews because of them. We dispatched the foreign minister to Moscow to protest, all to no avail, of course.”
“Which means Ivan Kharkov has an established track record of selling weapons directly to terrorist organizations.”
“Without question. RPGs and AK-47s we can deal with. But our friend Ivan has the connections to lay his hands on the most dangerous weapons in the world. Chemical. Biological. Even nuclear weapons aren’t out of the question. We know that agents of al-Qaeda have been scouring the remnants of the old Soviet Union for years looking for nuclear material or even a fully functioning nuclear device. Maybe they’ve finally found someone willing to sell it to them.”
Shamron spooned sugar into his coffee and stirred it slowly. “The Americans might have better insight into the situation. They’ve been watching Ivan closely for years.” He gave a sardonic smile. “The Americans love to monitor problems but do nothing about them.”
“They’ll have to do something about him now.”
Shamron nodded in agreement. “It’s my recommendation we dump this in their lap as soon as possible and wash our hands of the affair. I want you to go to Washington and see your friend Adrian Carter. Tell him everything you learned in Moscow. Give them Elena Kharkov. Then get on the next plane to Umbria and finish your honeymoon. And don’t ever accuse me of failing to live up to my word again.”
Gabriel stared at the silent television but made no response.
“You disagree with my recommendation?” Shamron asked.
“What do you think Adrian Carter and the Americans are going to do with this information?”
“I suspect they’ll go cap in hand to the Kremlin and plead with the Russian president to block the sale.”
“And he’ll tell the Americans that Ivan is a legitimate businessman with no ties to the illegal international arms trade. He’ll dismiss the intelligence as an anti-Russian slur spread by Jewish provocateurs who are conspiring to keep Russia backward and weak.” Gabriel shook his head slowly. “Going to the Russians and appealing for help is the last thing we should be doing. We should regard the Russian president and his intelligence services as adversaries and act accordingly.”
“So what exactly are you suggesting?”
“That we have a quiet word with Elena Kharkov and see if she knows more than she told Olga Sukhova.”
“Just because she trusted Olga Sukhova once doesn’t mean she’ll trust an intelligence service of a foreign country. And remember, two Russian journalists have lost their lives because of her actions. I don’t suspect she’s going to be terribly receptive to an approach.”
“She spends the majority of her time in London, Ari. We can get to her.”
“And so can Ivan. She’s surrounded by his security goons night and day. They’re all former members of the Alpha Group and OMON. All her contacts and communications are probably monitored. What do you intend to do? Invite her to tea? Call her on her cell phone? Drop her an e-mail?”
“I’m working on that part.”
“Just know Ivan is three steps ahead of you. There’s been a leak from somewhere in his network and he knows it. His private security service is going to be on high alert. Any approach to his wife is going to set off alarm bells. One misstep and you could get her killed.”
“So we’ll just have to do it quietly.”
“We?”
“This isn’t something we can do alone, Ari. We need the assistance of the Americans.”
Shamron frowned. As a rule, he didn’t like joint operations and was uncomfortable with Gabriel’s close ties to the CIA. His generation had lived by a simple axiom known as kachol lavan, or “blue and white.” They did things for themselves and did not rely on others to help them with their problems. It was an attitude borne from the experience of the Holocaust, when most of the world had stood by silently while the Jews were fed to the fires. It had bred in men like Shamron a reluctance—indeed, a fear—of operating with others.