by Daniel Silva
“Open it,” said Navot.
“Here?”
“Why not?”
Werner Schwarz lifted the lid and looked inside. There was no money, only a brief note that Navot had composed in German. Werner Schwarz’s hand trembled as he read it.
“Maybe we should take a walk in the woods before lunch,” said Navot as he rose. “It will be good for our appetite.”
29
Vienna Woods, Austria
“It’s not true, Uzi! Where ever did you get an idea like that?”
“Don’t call me by my real name. I’m Monsieur Laffont, remember? Or are you having trouble keeping the names of your controllers straight in your head?”
They were walking along a footpath of trampled snow. On their right, the trees climbed a gentle hill; on their left, they sank into the cleft of a small valley. The orange sun was low in the sky and shining directly into their faces. Mikhail was walking about thirty yards behind them. His overcoat was tightly buttoned, which meant he had moved his gun from his hip to his pocket.
“How long, Werner? How long have you been working for them?”
“Uzi, really, you have to come to your senses.”
Navot stopped suddenly and seized Schwarz’s elbow. Schwarz grimaced in pain. He was sweating in spite of the bitter cold.
“What are you going to do, Uzi? Get rough with me?”
“I’ll leave that to him.” Navot glanced at Mikhail, who was standing motionless on the footpath, his long shadow stretched behind him.
“The cadaver,” sneered Schwarz. “One phone call and he spends several years in an Austrian prison for murder. You, too.”
“Go for it, Werner.” Navot squeezed harder. “Make the call.”
Werner Schwarz made no movement for his phone. Navot, with a flick of his thick wrist, flung him down the footpath, deeper into the woods.
“How long, Werner?” asked Navot again.
“What difference does it make?”
“It might make a great deal of difference. In fact, it might determine whether you live to see Lotte tonight or whether I have my friend put a bullet in your head.”
“A year. Maybe a year and a half.”
“Try again, Werner.”
“Four years.”
“Five, perhaps? Or six?”
“Let’s say five.”
“Who made the first move?”
“You know how it goes with these things. It’s a bit like a love affair. In the end, it’s hard to remember who pursued whom.”
“Try, Werner.”
“We flirted for a while and then I sent them a bouquet of flowers.”
“Daisies?”
“Orchids,” said Werner Schwarz with a defenseless smile. “The best stuff I could lay my hands on.”
“You wanted to make a good first impression?”
“They really do matter.”
“How much did you get for it?”
“Enough to buy something nice for Lotte.”
“Who handles you?”
“At first, it was a local boy from the Vienna rezidentura.”
“Risky.”
“Not really. I was working counterintelligence then. I was allowed the occasional contact.”
“And now?”
“An out-of-towner.”
“Neighboring country?”
“Germany.”
“Berlin rezidentura?”
“Nonofficial cover, actually. Private practice.”
“What’s the fellow’s name?”
“He calls himself Sergei Morosov. Works for a consulting firm in Frankfurt. His clients are German firms wishing to do business in Russia, of which there are many, I can assure you. Sergei introduces them to the right people in Moscow and makes sure they put money in the right pockets, including Sergei’s. The company is a real cash cow. And the cash flows directly into the coffers of Moscow Center.”
“He’s SVR? You’re sure of it?”
“He’s a Moscow Center hood, one hundred percent.”
They walked on, the snow icy and slick beneath their feet. “Does Sergei give you your marching orders?” asked Navot. “Or are you a self-starter?”
“A little of both.”
“What’s the tradecraft?”
“Old school. If I have something, I draw the shades in an upstairs window on a Friday. The following Tuesday, I get a wrong-number phone call. They always ask to speak to a woman. The name they use corresponds to the place Sergei wants to meet.”
“For example?”
“Trudi.”
“Where’s Trudi?”
“Linz.”
“Who else?”
“Sophie and Anna. They’re both in Germany.”
“Is that all?”
“No. There’s Sabine. Sabine is a flat in Strasbourg.”
“How do you account for all the travel?”
“I do a lot of liaison work.”
“I’ll say.” Somewhere a dog was barking, deep and low. “And me?” asked Navot. “When did you tell the Russians about your relationship with me?”
“I never did, Uzi. I swear on Lotte’s life, I never told them.”
“Don’t swear, Werner. It insults my intelligence. Just tell me where it happened. Was it Trudi? Sophie? Anna?”
Werner Schwarz shook his head. “It happened before Sergei came on the scene, when I was still under the control of the Vienna rezidentura.”
“How much did you get for me?”
“Not much.”
“Story of my life,” said Navot. “I assume the Russians exploited the situation?”
“Exploited?”
“They used you as a means of spying on me. They also used you as a conduit to whisper false or misleading information into my ear. In fact, I’m well within my rights to assume that everything you’ve told me for the past five years was written by Moscow Center.”
“That not’s true.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me the Russians had approached you? Why didn’t you give me the opportunity to whisper a little filth into their ear?” Greeted by silence, Navot answered his own question. “Because Sergei Morosov said he would kill you if you did.” After a pause, Navot asked, “No denial, Werner?”
Werner Schwarz shook his head. “They play rough, the Russians.”
“Not as rough as we do.” Navot slowed to a stop and seized Werner Schwarz’s arm in an iron grip. “But tell me something else. Where did the Russians tell you they were planning to kill an SVR defector in Vienna? Was it Trudi? Anna?”
“It was Sophie,” admitted Werner Schwarz. “The meeting happened at Sophie.”
“Too bad,” said Navot. “I’ve always liked the name Sophie.”
30
Vienna Woods, Austria
Sophie was a safe flat in East Berlin near Unter den Linden. The building was an old Soviet-style monstrosity with several courtyards and lots of ways in and out. A girl lived there; she went by the name Marguerite. She was about thirty, skinny as a waif, pale as milk. The flat itself was quite large. Apparently, it had belonged to some Stasi colonel before the Wall came down. There were two entrances, the main door off the landing and a second one in the kitchen that led to a little-used flight of service stairs. It was classic old-school tradecraft, thought Uzi Navot, as he listened to Werner Schwarz’s description. A Moscow Center–trained hood never set foot in an apartment that didn’t have an escape hatch. Neither, for that matter, did an Office-trained hood.
“Which door did you use?” asked Navot.
“The front.”
“And Sergei? I suppose he’s a backdoor man.”
“Always.”
“And the girl? Did she stay or go?”
“Usually, she served us something to eat and drink and then beat it. But not that day.”
“What did she do?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“At whose request did the meeting take place?”
“Sergei’s.”
“Routine?”
“Crash.”
“How was it arranged?”
“Thursday-night phone call, wrong number. ‘Is Fraulein Sophie there?’ I made up an excuse to consult our German partners on a pressing security matter and flew to Berlin the next day. I spent the morning at BfV headquarters and popped over to the safe flat on my way to the airport. Sergei was already there.”
“What was so urgent?”
“Konstantin Kirov.”
“He mentioned Kirov by name?”
“Of course not.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“He said there was going to be a considerable amount of intelligence activity in Vienna in the coming days. Israeli, British, Russian. He wanted my service to take no steps to interfere. He suggested it involved a defector.”
“An SVR defector?”
“Come on, Uzi. What else would it be?”
“Did he mention that a Russian assassin was going to blow the defector’s brains out?”
“Not specifically, but he did say Allon would be dropping into town for the festivities. He said he would be staying at a safe flat.”
“Did he have the address?”
“Second District, near the Karmeliterplatz. He said there was going to be some unpleasantness. He wanted us to follow Moscow’s lead and place the blame squarely on the Israelis.”
“And it never occurred to you to tell me?”
“I would have ended up like that Kirov fellow.”
“You might still.” The sun was hovering a few degrees above the horizon, blazing through the trees. Navot reckoned they had about twenty minutes of daylight at most. “What if Sergei Morosov had been lying to you, Werner? What if they’d been planning to kill my chief?”
“Official Austria would not have shed a tear.”
Navot clenched and unclenched his fist several times and counted slowly to ten, but it was no good. The blow landed in Werner Schwarz’s fattened abdomen where it would leave no mark. It went deep. Deep enough so that Navot, at least for a moment, wondered whether his old asset would ever get up again.
“But that’s not all Sergei told you, is it?” Navot asked of the figure writhing and choking at his feet. “He was fairly confident I would come calling on you after Kirov was killed.”
Werner Schwarz gave no answer; he wasn’t capable of it.
“Shall I go on, Werner, or would you like to pick up the story? The part about Sergei telling you to leave me with the impression that MI6’s Head of Station in Vienna had a girlfriend in Switzerland. They killed her, too, by the way,” lied Navot. “I suppose you’re next. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
Navot reached down and effortlessly hauled the fat Austrian to his feet.
“So it was true?” gasped Werner Schwarz. “There really was a girl?”
Navot placed his hand in the center of Werner Schwarz’s back and sent him stumbling along the footpath. What remained of the sun was now at their backs. Mikhail led the way through the fading light.
“What are they up to?” asked Schwarz. “What are they playing at?”
“We haven’t a clue,” answered Navot untruthfully. “But you’re going to help us find out. Otherwise, we’re going to tell your chief and your minister that you’ve been working for Moscow Center. By the time we’re finished, the world will believe you were the one driving the car that killed Alistair Hughes in Bern.”
“This is the way you treat me, Uzi? After everything I’ve done for you?”
“If I were in your position, I’d watch my step. You have one chance to save yourself. You’re working for me again. Exclusively,” added Navot. “No more double and triple games.”
Their shadows were gone, the trees were all but invisible. Mikhail was a faint black line.
“I know it won’t change anything,” said Werner Schwarz, “but I want you to know—”
“You’re right,” said Navot, cutting him off. “It won’t change anything.”
“I’ll need a bit of money to tide me over.”
“Careful, Werner. The snow is slippery, and it’s dark now.”
31
Andalusia, Spain
That same afternoon, in the bone-white town in the mountains of Andalusia, the old woman known derisively as la loca and la roja sat at her desk in the alcove beneath her stairs, writing about the moment she first set eyes on the man who would forever alter the course of her life. Her first draft, which she had tossed onto the grate in disgust, had been a purple passage full of violins and beating hearts and swelling breasts. Now she adopted the spare prose of a journalist, with an emphasis on time, date, and place—half past one o’clock on a chill winter’s afternoon in early 1962, the bar of the seaside St. Georges Hotel in Beirut. He was drinking vodka and V8 juice and reading his post, a handsome if somewhat battered man, recently turned fifty, with blue eyes set within a deeply lined face and an excruciating stammer she found irresistible. She was twenty-four at the time, a committed communist, and very beautiful. She told him her name, and he told her his, which she already knew. He was perhaps the most famous, or infamous, correspondent in Beirut.
“Which paper do you write for?” he asked.
“Whichever one will print my stories.”
“Are you any good?”
“I think so, but the editors in Paris aren’t so sure.”
“Perhaps I can be of help. I know a good many important people in the Middle East.”
“So I’ve heard.”
He smiled warmly. “Sit down. Have a d-d-drink with me.”
“It’s a bit early in the day, isn’t it?”
“Nonsense. They make a fierce martini. I taught them how.”
And that, she wrote, was how it all began, a drink at the bar of the St. Georges, then another, and then, inadvisably, a third, after which she could scarcely stand, let alone walk. Gallantly, he insisted on seeing her back to her flat, where they made love for the first time. In describing the act, she once again resorted to the unadorned prose of a reporter, for her memories of the event were fogged by alcohol. She recalled only that he had been exceedingly tender and rather skillful. They made love again the following afternoon, and the afternoon after that. It was then, with a cold Mediterranean wind rattling the windows, that she screwed up the nerve to ask whether any of the things they had said about him in England in the 1950s were true.
“Do I look like the kind of man who could d-d-do that?”
“You don’t, actually.”
“It was an American witch hunt. They’re the worst people in the world, the Americans, with the Israelis a close second.”
But her thoughts were running ahead of her pencil, and her hand was growing weary. She glanced at her plastic wristwatch and was surprised to see it was nearly six; she had written all afternoon. Having skipped lunch, she was famished, and there was nothing edible in the pantry, for she had skipped her daily visit to the supermarket, too. She decided an evening in town might do her good. A quartet from Madrid was performing a program of Vivaldi in one of the churches, hardly daring material but it would be a welcome break from the television. The village was a destination for tourists but something of a cultural wasteland. There were other places in Andalusia where she would have preferred to settle after the divorce—Seville, for one—but Comrade Lavrov had chosen the bone-white village in the mountains. “No one will ever find you there,” he had said. And by “no one,” he meant her child.
It was cold outside and a wind was getting up. Eighty-seven steps along the paseo a van was parked along the rocky verge, haphazardly, as though it had been abandoned. The winding streets of the town smelled of cooking; lights burned warmly in the windows of the little houses. She entered the one restaurant in the Calle San Juan were she was still treated respectfully and was shown to a lesser table. She ordered a glass of sherry and an assortment of tapas and then opened the paperback novel she had brought along for protection. And what does anyone know about traitors, or
why Judas did what he did . . . What indeed? she thought. He had fooled everyone, even her, the woman with whom he had shared the most intimate of human acts. He had lied to her with his body and with his lips, and yet when he asked for the thing she loved most, she had given it to him. And this was her punishment, to be an old woman, pitied and reviled, sitting alone in a café in a land not her own. If only they had not met that afternoon in the bar of the St. Georges Hotel in Beirut. If only she had declined his offer of a drink, and then another, and then, inadvisably, a third. If only . . .
The sherry arrived, a pale Manzanilla, and a moment later the first of the food. As she laid down her book she noticed the man watching her unreservedly from the end of the bar. Then she noticed the couple at the nearby table, and instantly she realized why a van had been parked along the paseo eighty-seven steps from her villa. How little their tradecraft had changed.
She ate her meal slowly, if only to punish them, and leaving the restaurant hurried to the church for the recital. It was poorly attended and uninspired. The couple from the restaurant sat four pews behind her; the man, on the opposite side of the nave. He approached her after the performance, as she walked among the orange trees in the square.
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked in labored Spanish.
“Bourgeois drivel.”
His smile was the one he reserved for young children and foolish old women. “Still fighting the same old war? Still waving the same old banner? I’m Señor Karpov, by the way. I was sent by our friend. Allow me to walk you home.”
“That’s how I got into this mess.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind.”
She set out along the darkened street. The Russian walked beside her. He had attempted to dress down for the village but had not quite succeeded. His loafers were too polished, his overcoat too stylish. She thought of the old days when it was possible to spot a Russian intelligence officer by the poor quality of his suit and by his dreadful shoes. Like Comrade Lavrov, she remembered, on the day he brought her the letter from the famous English journalist she had known in Beirut. But not this one, she thought. Karpov was definitely a new Russian.