Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant

by Daniel Silva

  “Monsieur Lubin was wondering when his bags might arrive.”

  “I’ll see to it right away,” said Philippe, smothering a yawn.

  “He was also wondering whether something could be done about the heat in his room. He says it’s too warm, and the thermostat doesn’t seem to work.”

  Philippe picked up his telephone and dialed Maintenance.

  “Turn the heat up in Room 237,” he said. “Monsieur Lubin is cold.”

  Had they witnessed the first few moments of Lubin’s stay, they would have felt certain in their belief that a miscreant was in their midst. How else to explain that he removed all the drawers from the chest and the bedside tables and unscrewed all the bulbs from the lamps and the light fixtures? Or that he stripped bare the deluxe queen-size bed and pried the lid from the two-line message-center telephone? Or that he poured a complimentary bottle of mineral water into the toilet and hurled a pair of chocolates by Touvier of Geneva into the snow-filled street? Or that, having completed his rampage, he then returned the room to the near-pristine state in which he had found it?

  It was because of his profession that he took these rather drastic measures, but his profession was not one of those suggested by Ricardo the receptionist. Aleksandr Viktorovich Lubin was neither a mobster nor a spy, nor a hit man, only a practitioner of the most dangerous trade one could choose in the brave New Russia: the trade of journalism. And not just any type of journalism: independent journalism. His magazine, Moskovsky Gazeta, was one of the country’s last investigative weeklies and had been a persistent stone in the shoe of the Kremlin. Its reporters and photographers were watched and harassed constantly, not only by the secret police but by the private security services of the powerful oligarchs they attempted to cover. Courchevel was now crawling with such men. Men who thought nothing of sprinkling transmitters and poisons around hotel rooms. Men who operated by the creed of Stalin: Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.

  Confident the room had not been tampered with, Lubin again dialed the concierge to check on his bags and was informed they would arrive “imminently.” Then, after throwing open the balcony doors to the cold evening air, he settled himself at the writing desk and removed a file folder from his dog-eared leather briefcase. It had been given to him the previous evening by Boris Ostrovsky, the Gazeta’s editor in chief. Their meeting had taken place not in the Gazeta’s offices, which were assumed to be thoroughly bugged, but on a bench in the Arbatskaya Metro station.

  I’m only going to give you part of the picture, Ostrovsky had said, handing Lubin the documents with practiced indifference. It’s for your own protection. Do you understand, Aleksandr? Lubin had understood perfectly. Ostrovsky was handing him an assignment that could get him killed.

  He opened the file now and examined the photograph that lay atop the dossier. It showed a well-dressed man with cropped dark hair and a prizefighter’s rugged face standing at the side of the Russian president at a Kremlin reception. Attached to the photo was a thumb-nail biography—wholly unnecessary, because Aleksandr Lubin, like every other journalist in Moscow, could recite the particulars of Ivan Borisovich Kharkov’s remarkable career from memory. Son of a senior KGB off icer . . . graduate of the prestigious Moscow State University . . . boy wonder of the KGB’s Fifth Main Directorate . . . As the empire was crumbling, Kharkov had left the KGB and earned a fortune in banking during the anarchic early years of Russian capitalism. He had invested wisely in energy, raw materials, and real estate, and by the dawn of the millennium had joined Moscow’s growing cadre of newly minted multimillionaires. Among his many holdings was a shipping and air freight company with tentacles stretching across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The true size of his financial empire was impossible for an outsider to estimate. A relative newcomer to capitalism, Ivan Kharkov had mastered the art of the front company and the corporate shell.

  Lubin flipped to the next page of the dossier, a glossy magazine-qualityphotograph of “Château Kharkov,” Ivan’s winter palace on the rue de Nogentil in Courchevel.

  He spends the winter holiday there along with every other rich and famous Russian, Ostrovsky had said. Watch your step around the house. Ivan’s goons are all former Spetsnaz and OMON. Do you hear what I’m saying to you, Aleksandr? I don’t want you to end up like Irina Chernova.

  Irina Chernova was the famous journalist from the Gazeta’s main rival who had exposed one of Kharkov’s shadier investments. Two nights after the article appeared, she had been shot to death by a pair of hired assassins in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. Ostrovsky, for reasons known only to him, had included a photograph of her bullet-riddled body in the dossier. Now, as then, Lubin turned it over quickly.

  Ivan usually operates behind tightly closed doors. Courchevel is one of the few places where he actually moves around in public. We want you to follow him, Aleksandr. We want to know who he’s meeting with. Who he’s skiing with. Who he’s taking to lunch. Get pictures when you can, but never approach him. And don’t tell anyone in town where you work. Ivan’s security boys can smell a reporter a mile away.

  Ostrovsky had then handed Lubin an envelope containing airline tickets, a rental car reservation, and hotel accommodations. Check in with the office every couple of days, Ostrovsky had said. And try to have some fun, Aleksandr. Your colleagues are all very jealous. You get to go to Courchevel and party with the rich and famous while we freeze to death in Moscow.

  On that note, Ostrovsky had risen to his feet and walked to the edge of the platform. Lubin had slipped the dossier into his briefcase and immediately broken into a drenching sweat. He was sweating again now. The damn heat! The furnace was still blazing away. He was starting to reach for the telephone to lodge another complaint when finally he heard the knock. He covered the length of the short entrance hall in two resentful strides and flung open the door without bothering to ask who was on the other side. A mistake, he thought immediately, for standing in the semidarkness of the corridor was a man of medium height, dressed in a dark ski jacket, a woolen cap, and mirrored goggles.

  Lubin was wondering why anyone would wear goggles inside a hotel at night when the first blow came, a vicious sideways chop that seemed to crush his windpipe. The second strike, a well-aimed kick to the groin, caused his body to bend in half at the waist. He was able to emit no protest as the man slipped into the room and closed the door soundlessly behind him. Nor was he able to resist when the man forced him onto the bed and sat astride his hips. The knife that emerged from the inside of the ski jacket was the type wielded by elite soldiers. It entered Lubin’s abdomen just below the ribs and plunged upward toward his heart. As his chest cavity filled with blood, Lubin was forced to suffer the additional indignity of watching his own death reflected in the mirrored lenses of his killer’s goggles. The assassin released his grip on the knife and, with the weapon still lodged in Lubin’s chest, rose from the bed and calmly collected the dossier. Aleksandr Lubin felt his heart beat a final time as his killer slipped silently from the room. The heat, he was thinking. The damn heat . . .

  It was shortly after seven when Philippe finally collected Monsieur Lubin’s bags from storage and loaded them onto the lift. Arriving at Room 237, he found the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the latch. In accordance with the conventions of Plan B, he gave the door three thunderous knocks. Receiving no reply, he drew his passkey from his pocket and entered, just far enough to see two size-twelve Russian loafers hanging a few inches off the end the bed. He left the bags in the entrance hall and returned to the lobby, where he delivered a report of his findings to Ricardo.

  "Passed out drunk.”

  The Spaniard glanced at his watch. “It’s early, even for a Russian. What now?”

  “We’ll let him sleep it off. In the morning, when he’s good and hungover, we’ll initiate Phase Two.”

  The Spaniard smiled. No guest had ever survived Phase Two. Phase Two was always fatal.

  2

  UMBRIA, ITALY
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  The Villa dei Fiori, a thousand-acre estate in the rolling hills between the Tiber and Nera rivers, had been a possession of the Gasparri family since the days when Umbria was still ruled by the popes. There was a large and lucrative cattle operation and an equestrian center that bred some of the finest jumpers in all of Italy. There were pigs no one ate and a flock of goats kept solely for entertainment value. There were khaki-colored fields of hay, hillsides ablaze with sunflowers, olive groves that produced some of Umbria’s best oil, and a small vineyard that contributed several hundred pounds of grapes each year to the local cooperative. On the highest part of the land lay a swath of untamed woods where it was not safe to walk because of the wild boar. Scattered round the estate were shrines to the Madonna, and, at an intersection of three dusty gravel roads, stood an imposing wood-carved crucifix. Everywhere, there were dogs: a quartet of hounds that roamed the pastures, devouring fox and rabbit, and a pair of neurotic terriers that patrolled the perimeter of the stables with the fervor of holy warriors.

  The villa itself stood at the southern edge of the property and was reached by a long gravel drive lined with towering umbrella pine. In the eleventh century, it had been a monastery. There was still a small chapel, and, in the walled interior courtyard, the remains of an oven where the brothers had baked their daily bread. The doors to the courtyard were fashioned of heavy wood and iron and looked as though they had been built to withstand pagan assault. At the base of the house was a large swimming pool, and adjacent to the pool was a trellised garden where rosemary and lavender grew along walls of Etruscan stone.

  Count Gasparri, a faded Italian nobleman with close ties to the Vatican, did not rent the villa; nor did he make a habit of lending it to friends and relatives, which was why the staff were surprised by the news that they would be playing host to a long-term guest. “His name is Alessio Vianelli,” the count informed Margherita, the housekeeper, by telephone from his office in Rome. “He’s working on a special project for the Holy Father. You’re not to disturb him. You’re not to talk to him. But, most important, you are not to tell a soul he’s there. As far as you’re concerned, this man is a nonperson. He does not exist.”

  “And where shall I put this nonperson?” asked Margherita.

  “In the master suite, overlooking the swimming pool. And remove everything from the drawing room, including the paintings and the tapestries. He plans to use it as his work space.”

  “Everything?”

  “Everything.”

  “Will Anna be cooking for him?”

  “I’ve offered her services, but, as yet, have received no answer.”

  “Will he be having any guests?”

  “It is not outside the realm of possibility.”

  “What time should we expect him?”

  “He refuses to say. He’s rather vague, our Signore Vianelli.”

  As it turned out, he arrived in the dead of night—sometime after three, according to Margherita, who was in her room above the chapel at the time and woke with the sound of his car. She glimpsed him briefly as he stole across the courtyard in the moonlight, a dark-haired man, thin as a rail, with a duffel bag in one hand and a Maglite torch in the other. He used the torch to read the note she had left at the entrance of the villa, then slipped inside with the air of a thief stealing into his own home. A moment later, a light came on in the master bedroom, and she could see him prowling restlessly about, as though looking for a lost object. He appeared briefly in the window, and, for several tense seconds, they gazed at each other across the courtyard. Then he gave her a single soldierly nod and drew the shutters closed with an emphatic thump.

  They greeted each other properly the next morning at breakfast. After an exchange of polite but cool pleasantries, he said he had come to the Villa dei Fiori for the purposes of work. Once that work began, he explained, noise and interruptions were to be kept to a minimum, though he neglected to say precisely what sort of work he would be doing or how they would know whether it had commenced. He then forbade Margherita to enter his rooms under any circumstances and informed a devastated Anna he would be seeing to his own meals. When recounting the details of the meeting for the rest of the staff, Margherita described his demeanor as “standoffish.” Anna, who took an instant loathing to him, was far less charitable in her depiction. “Unbearably rude,” she said. “The sooner he’s gone, the better.”

  His life quickly acquired a strict routine. After a spartan breakfast of espresso and dry toast, he would set out on a long forced march around the estate. At first, he snapped at the dogs when they followed him, but eventually he seemed resigned to their company. He walked through the olive groves and the sunflowers and even ventured into the woods. When Carlos pleaded with him to carry a shotgun because of the wild boar, he calmly assured Carlos that he could look after himself.

  After his walk, he would spend a few moments tending to his quartersand laundry, then prepare a light lunch—usually a bit of bread and local cheese, pasta with canned tomato sauce if he was feeling particularly adventurous. Then, after a vigorous swim in the pool, he would settle in the garden with a bottle of Orvieto and a stack of books about Italian painters. His car, a battered Volkswagen Passat, gathered a thick layer of dust, for not once did he set foot outside the estate. Anna went to market for him, resentfully filling her basket with the air of a virtuoso forced to play a child’s simple tune. Once, she tried to slip a few local delights past his defenses, but the next morning, when she arrived for work, the food was waiting for her on the kitchen counter, along with a note explaining that she had left these things in his refrigerator by mistake. The handwriting was exquisite.

  As the days ground gloriously past, the nonperson called Alessio Vianelli, and the nature of his mysterious work on behalf of the Holy Father, became something of an obsession for the staff of the Villa dei Fiori. Margherita, a temperamental soul herself, thought him a missionary recently returned from some hostile region of the world. Anna suspected a fallen priest who had been cast into Umbrian exile, but then Anna was inclined to see the worst in him. Isabella, the ethereal half Swede who oversaw the horse operation, believed him to be a recluse theologian at work on an important Church document. Carlos, the Argentine cowboy who tended the cattle, reckoned he was an agent of Vatican intelligence. To support this theory, he cited the nature of Signore Vianelli’s Italian, which, while fluent, was tinged with a faint accent that spoke of many years in foreign lands. And then there were the eyes, which were an unnerving shade of emerald green. “Take a look into them, if you dare,” Carlos said. “He has the eyes of a man who knows death.”

  During the second week, there were a series of events that clouded the mystery further. The first was the arrival of a tall young woman with riotous auburn hair and eyes the color of caramel. She called herself Francesca, spoke Italian with a pronounced Venetian accent, and proved to be a much-needed breath of fresh air. She rode the horses—“Quite well, actually,” Isabella informed the others—and organized elaborate games involving the goats and the dogs. She secretly permitted Margherita to clean Signore Vianelli’s rooms and even encouraged Anna to cook. Whether they were husband and wife was unclear. Margherita, however, was sure of two things: Signore Vianelli and Francesca were sharing the same bed, and his mood had improved dramatically since her arrival.

  And then there were the delivery trucks. The first dispensed a white table of the sort found in professional laboratories; the second, a large microscope with a retractable arm. Then came a pair of lamps that, when switched on, made the entire villa glow with an intense white light. Then it was a case of chemicals that, when opened, made Margherita feel faint from the stench. Other parcels arrived in rapid succession: two large easels of varnished oak from Venice, a strange-looking magnifying visor, bundles of cotton wool, woodworking tools, dowels, brushes, professional-grade glue, and several dozen vessels of pigment.

  Finally, three weeks after Signore Vianelli’s arrival in Umbria, a dark green panel
van eased its way slowly up the tree-lined drive, followed by an official-looking Lancia sedan. The two vehicles had no markings, but their distinct SCV license plates spoke of links to the Holy See. From the back of the van emerged a vast, ghastly painting depicting a man being disemboweled. It was soon propped on the two large easels in Count Gasparri’s drawing room.

  Isabella, who had studied art history before devoting her life to horses, recognized the canvas immediately as Martyrdom of St. Erasmus by the French painter Nicolas Poussin. Rendered in the style of Caravaggio, it had been commissioned by the Vatican in 1628 and resided now in the Pinacoteca at the Vatican Museums. That evening, at the staff dinner, she announced that the mystery was solved. Signore Alessio Vianelli was a famous art restorer. And he had been retained by the Vatican to save a painting.

  His days took on a distinctly monastic rhythm. He toiled from dawn till midday, slept through the heat of the afternoon, then worked again from dusk until dinner. For the first week, the painting remained on the worktable, where he examined the surface with the microscope, made a series of detailed photographs, and performed structural reinforcements on the canvas and stretcher. Then he transferred the canvas to the easels and began removing the surface grime and yellowed varnish. It was a markedly tedious task. First he would fashion a swab, using a blob of cotton wool and a wooden dowel; then he would dip the swab in solvent and twirl it over the surface of the painting—gently, Isabella explained to the others, so as not to cause any additional flaking of the paint. Each swab could clean about a square inch of the painting. When it became too soiled to use any longer, he would drop it on the floor at his feet and start the process over again. Margherita likened it to cleaning the entire villa with a toothbrush. “No wonder he’s so peculiar,” she said. “His work drives him mad.”