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

by Daniel Silva

  He mounted the dais in the grand hall of the Marble Palace at the end of the second day’s session and, as Uzi Navot had forecast, many of the delegates immediately walked out. Those who remained found the speech quite unlike anything they had ever heard from an Israeli representative before. The chief of UNESCO declared it “a clarion call for a new paradigm in the Middle East.” The French delegate referred to Monsieur Golani as “a true man of culture and the arts.” Everyone in attendance agreed that a new wind seemed to be blowing from the Judean Hills.

  There was no such wind blowing, however, from the headquarters of the FSB. Their break-in artists searched his hotel room each time he left, and their watchers followed him wherever he went. During the final gala at the Mariinsky Theatre, an attractive female agent flirted shamelessly with him and invited him back to her apartment for an evening of sexual compromise. He politely declined and left the Mariinsky with no company other than Igor and Natasha, who were by now too bored to even bother concealing their presence.

  It being his final night in St. Petersburg, he decided to climb the winding steps to the top of St. Isaac’s golden dome. The parapet was empty except for a pair of German girls, who were standing at the balustrade, gazing out at the sweeping view of the city. One of the girls handed him a camera and posed dramatically while he snapped her picture. She then thanked him profusely and told him that Olga Sukhova had agreed to attend the embassy dinner. When he returned to his hotel room, he found the message light winking on his telephone. It was the Israeli ambassador, insisting that he come to Moscow. “You have to see the place to believe it, Natan! Billionaires, dirty bankers, and gangsters, all swimming in a sea of oil, caviar, and vodka! We’re having a dinner party Thursday night—just a few brave souls who’ve had the chutzpah to challenge the regime. And don’t think about trying to say no, because I’ve already arranged it with your minister.”

  He erased the message, then dialed Tel Aviv and informed his ersatz wife that he would be staying in Russia longer than expected. She berated him for several minutes, then slammed down the phone in disgust. Gabriel held the receiver to his ear a moment longer and imagined the FSB listeners having a good laugh at his expense.

  13

  MOSCOW

  On Moscow’s Tverskaya Street, the flashy foreign cars of the newly rich jockeyed for position with the boxy Ladas and Zhigulis of the still deprived. The Kremlin’s Trinity Tower was nearly lost in a gauzy shroud of exhaust fumes, its famous red star looking sadly like just another advertisement for an imported luxury good. In the bar of the Savoy Hotel, the sharp boys and their bodyguards were drinking cold beer instead of vodka. Their black Bentleys and Range Rovers waited just outside the entrance, engines running for a quick getaway. Conservation of fuel was hardly a priority in Russia these days. Petrol, like nearly everything else, was in plentiful supply.

  At 7:30 P.M., Gabriel came down to the lobby dressed in a dark suit and diplomatic silver tie. Stepping from the entrance, he scanned the faces behind the wheels of the parked cars before heading down the hill to the Teatralnyy Prospekt. Atop a low hill loomed the hulking yellow fortress of Lubyanka, headquarters of the FSB. In its shadow was a row of exclusive Western designer boutiques worthy of Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue. Gabriel could not help but marvel at the striking juxtaposition, even if it was only a bit of pantomime for the pair of watchers who had left the comfort of their air-conditioned car and were now trailing him on foot.

  He consulted a hotel street map—needlessly, because his route was well planned in advance—and made his way to a large open-air esplanade at the foot of the Kremlin walls. Passing a row of kiosks selling everything from Soviet hockey jerseys to busts of the murderers Lenin and Stalin, he turned to the left and entered Red Square. The last of the day’s pilgrims stood outside the entrance of Lenin’s Tomb, sipping Coca-Cola and fanning themselves with tourist brochures and guides to Moscow nightlife. He wondered what drew them here. Was it misplaced faith? Nostalgia for a simpler time? Or did they come merely for morbid reasons? To judge for themselves whether the figure beneath the glass was real or more worthy of a wax museum?

  He crossed the square toward the candy-cane domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, then followed the eastern wall of the Kremlin down to the Moscow River. On the opposite bank, at Serafimovicha Street 2, stood the infamous House on the Embankment, the colossal apartment block built by Stalin in 1931 as an exclusive residence for the most elite members of the nomenklatura. During the height of the Great Terror, 766 residents, or one-third of its total population, had been murdered, and those “privileged” enough to reside in the house lived in constant fear of the knock at the door. Despite its bloody history, many of the old Soviet elite and their children still lived in the building, and flats now sold for millions of dollars. Little of the exterior had changed except for the roof, which was now crowned by a Stalin-sized revolving advertisement for Mercedes-Benz. The Nazis may have failed in their bid to capture Moscow, but now, sixty years after the war, the flag of German industrial might flew proudly from one of the city’s most prestigious landmarks.

  Gabriel gave his map another pointless glance as he set out across the Moskvoretsky Bridge. Crimson-and-black banners of the ruling Russian Unity Party hung from the lampposts, swaying drunkenly in the warm breeze. At the opposite end of the bridge, the Russian president smiled disagreeably at Gabriel from a billboard three stories in height. He was scheduled to face the Russian “electorate,” such that it was, for the fourth time at the end of the summer. There was little suspense about the outcome; the president had long ago purged Russia of dangerous democratic tendencies, and the officially sanctioned opposition parties were now little more than useful idiots. The smiling man on the billboard was the new tsar in everything but name—and one with imperial ambitions at that.

  On the other side of the river lay the pleasant quarter known as Zamoskvoreche. Spared the architectural terror of Stalin’s replanning, the district had retained some of the atmosphere of nineteenth-century Moscow. Gabriel walked past flaking imperial houses and onion-domed churches until he came to the walled compound at Bolshaya Ordynka 56. The plaque at the gate read EMBASSY OF ISRAEL in English, Russian, and Hebrew. Gabriel held his credentials up to the fish-eye lens of the camera and heard the electronic dead-bolt locks immediately snap open. As he stepped into the compound, he glanced over his shoulder and saw a man in a car across the street raise a camera and blatantly snap a photograph. Apparently, the FSB knew about the ambassador’s dinner party and intended to intimidate the guests as they arrived and departed.

  The compound was cramped and drab, with a cluster of featureless buildings standing around a central courtyard. A youthful security guard—who was not a security guard at all but an Office field agent attached to Moscow Station—greeted Gabriel cordially by his cover name and escorted him into the foyer of the small apartment building that housed most of the embassy’s personnel. The ambassador was waiting on the top-floor landing as Gabriel stepped off the lift. A polished career diplomat whom Gabriel had seen only in photographs, he threw his arms around Gabriel and gave him two thunderous claps between the shoulder blades that no FSB transmitter could fail to detect. “Natan!” he shouted, as though to a deaf uncle. “My God! Is it really you? You look as though you’ve been traveling an age. St. Petersburg surely wasn’t as bad as all that.” He thrust a glass of tepid champagne into Gabriel’s hand and cast him adrift. “As usual, Natan, you’re the last to arrive. Mingle with the masses. We’ll chat later after you’ve had a chance to say hello to everyone. I want to hear all about your dreadful conference.”

  Gabriel hoisted his most affable diplomatic smile and, glass in hand, waded into the noisy smoke-filled sitting room.

  He met a famous violinist who was now the leader of a ragtag opposition party called the Coalition for a Free Russia.

  He met a playwright who had revived the time-tested art of Russian allegory to carefully criticize the new regime.

 
He met a filmmaker who had recently won a major human rights award in the West for a documentary about the gulag.

  He met a woman who had been confined to an insane asylum because she had dared to carry a placard across Red Square calling for democracy in Russia.

  He met an unrepentant Bolshevik who thought the only way to save Russia was to restore the dictatorship of the proletariat and burn the oligarchs at the stake.

  He met a fossilized dissident from the Brezhnev era who had been raised from the near dead to wage one last futile campaign for Russian freedom.

  He met a brave essayist who had been nearly beaten to death by a band of Unity Party Youth.

  And finally, ten minutes after his arrival, he introduced himself to a reporter from Moskovsky Gazeta, who, owing to the murders of two colleagues, had recently been promoted to the post of acting editor in chief. She wore a black sleeveless dress and a silver locket around her neck. The bangles on her wrist clattered like wind chimes as she extended her hand toward Gabriel and gave him a melancholy smile. “How do you do, Mr. Golani,” she said primly in English. “My name is Olga Sukhova.”

  The photograph Uzi Navot had shown him a week earlier in Jerusalem had not done justice to Olga’s beauty. With translucent eyes and long, narrow features, she looked to Gabriel like a Russian icon come to life. He was seated at her right during dinner but managed only a few brief exchanges of conversation, largely because the documentary filmmaker monopolized her attention with a shot-by-shot description of his latest work. With no place to take shelter, Gabriel found himself in the clutches of the ancient dissident, who treated him to a lecture on the history of Russian political opposition dating back to the days of the tsars. As the waiters cleared the dessert plates, Olga gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’m afraid I feel a cigarette coming on,” she said. “Would you care to join me?”

  They rose from the table together under the crestfallen gaze of the filmmaker and stepped onto the ambassador’s small terrace. It was empty and in semidarkness; in the distance loomed one of the “the Seven Sisters,” the monstrous Stalinist towers that still dominated the Moscow skyline. “Europe’s tallest apartment building,” she said without enthusiasm. “Everything in Russia has to be the biggest, the tallest, the fastest, or the most valuable. We cannot live as normal people.” Her lighter flared. “Is this your first time in Russia, Mr. Golani?”

  “Yes,” he answered truthfully.

  “And what brings you to our country?”

  You, he answered truthfully again, but only to himself. Aloud, he said that he had been drafted on short notice to attend the UNESCO conference in St. Petersburg. And for the next several minutes he spoke glowingly of his achievements, until he could see that she was bored. He glanced over his shoulder, into the ambassador’s dining room, and saw no movement to indicate that their moment of privacy was about to be interrupted anytime soon.

  “We have a common acquaintance,” he said. “Actually, we had a common acquaintance. I’m afraid he’s no longer alive.”

  She lifted the cigarette to her lips and held it there as though it were a shield protecting her from harm. “And who might that be?” she asked in her schoolgirl English.

  “Boris Ostrovsky,” Gabriel said calmly.

  Her gaze was blank. The ember of her cigarette was trembling slightly in the half-light. “And how were you acquainted with Boris Ostrovsky?” she asked guardedly.

  “I was in St. Peter’s Basilica when he was murdered.”

  He gazed directly into the iconic face, assessing whether the fear he saw there was authentic or a forgery. Deciding it was indeed genuine, he pressed on.

  “I was the reason he came to Rome in the first place. I held him while he died.”

  She folded her arms defensively. “I’m sorry, Mr. Golani, but you are making me extremely uncomfortable.”

  “Boris wanted to tell me something, Miss Sukhova. He was killed before he could do that. I need to know what it was. And I think you may know the answer.”

  “I’m afraid you were misled. No one on the staff knew what Boris was doing in Rome.”

  “We know he had information, Miss Sukhova. Information that was too dangerous to publish here. Information about a threat of some sort. A threat to the West and Israel.”

  She glanced through the open doorway into the dining room. “I suppose this evening was all staged for my benefit. You wanted to meet me somewhere you thought the FSB wouldn’t be listening and so you threw a party on my behalf and lured me here with promises of an exclusive story.” She placed her hand suggestively on his forearm and leaned close. Her voice, when she spoke again, was little more than a whisper. “You should know that the FSB is always listening, Mr. Golani. In fact, two of the guests your embassy invited here tonight are on the FSB payroll.”

  She released his arm and moved away. Then her face brightened suddenly, like a lost child glimpsing her mother. Gabriel turned and saw the filmmaker advancing toward them, with two other guests in his wake. Cigarettes were ignited, drinks were fetched, and within a few moments they were all four conversing in rapid Russian as though Mr. Golani was not there. Gabriel was convinced he had overplayed his hand and that Olga was now forever lost to him, but as he turned to leave he felt her hand once more upon his arm.

  “The answer is yes,” she said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You asked whether I would be willing to give you a tour of Moscow tomorrow. And the answer is yes. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Savoy.”

  “It’s the most thoroughly bugged hotel in Moscow.” She smiled. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  14

  NOVODEVICHY CEMETERY

  She wanted to take him to a cemetery. To understand Russia today, she said, you must first know her past. And to know her past, you had to walk among her bones.

  She telephoned the Savoy the first time at ten and suggested they meet at noon. A short time later she called again to say that, due to an unforeseen complication at the office, she would not be able to meet him until three. Gabriel, playing the role of Natan Golani, spent much of the day touring the Kremlin and the Tretyakov Gallery. Then, at 2:45, he stepped onto the escalator of the Lubyanka Metro station and rode it down into the warm Moscow earth. A train waited in the murky light of the platform; he stepped on board as the doors rattled closed and took hold of the overhead handrail as the carriage lurched forward. His FSB minder had managed to secure the only empty seat. He was fiddling with his iPod, symbol of the New Russian man, while an old babushka in a black headscarf looked on in bewilderment.

  They rode six stops to Sportivnaya. The watcher emerged into the hazy sunlight first and went to the left. Gabriel turned to the right and entered a chaotic outdoor market of wobbly kiosks and trestle tables piled high with cheap goods from the former republics of central Asia. At the opposite end of the market a band of Unity Party Youth was chanting slogans and handing out election leaflets. One of them, a not-so-youthful man in his early thirties, was trailing a few steps behind Gabriel as he arrived at the entrance of the Novodevichy Cemetery.

  On the other side of the gate stood a small redbrick flower shop. Olga Sukhova was waiting outside the doorway, a bouquet of carnations in her arms. “Your timing is impeccable, Mr. Golani.” She kissed Gabriel formally on both cheeks and smiled warmly. “Come with me. I think you’re going to find this fascinating.”

  She led him up a shaded footpath lined with tall elm and spruce. The graves were on either side: small plots surrounded by iron fences; tall sculpted monuments; redbrick niche walls covered in pale moss. The atmosphere was parklike and tranquil, a reprieve from the chaos of the city. For a moment, Gabriel was almost able to forget they were being followed.

  “The cemetery used to be inside the Novodevichy Convent, but at the turn of the last century the Church decided that there were too many burials taking place inside the monastery’s walls so they created this place.” She spoke to him in English, at tour gu
ide level, loudly enough so that those around them could hear. “It’s the closest thing we have to a national cemetery—other than the Kremlin wall, of course. Playwrights and poets, monsters and murderers: they all lie together here in Novodevichy. One can only imagine what they talk about at night when the gates are closed and the visitors all leave.” She stopped before a tall gray monument with a pile of wilted red roses at its base. "Do you like Chekhov, Mr. Golani?”

  "Who doesn’t?”

  “He was one of the first to be buried here.” She took him by the elbow. “Come, I’ll show you some more.”

  They drifted slowly together along a footpath strewn with fallen leaves. On a parallel pathway, the watcher who had been handing out leaflets in the market was now feigning excessive interest in the grave of a renowned Russian mathematician. A few feet away stood a woman with a beige anorak tied around her waist. In her right hand was a digital camera, pointed directly at Gabriel and Olga.

  “You were followed here.” She gave him a sideways glance. “But, then, I suppose you already know that, don’t you, Mr. Golani? Or should I call you Mr. Allon?”

  “My name is Natan Golani. I work for the Israeli Ministry of Culture.”

  “Forgive me, Mr. Golani.”

  She managed a smile. She was dressed casually in a snug-fitting black pullover and a pair of blue jeans. Her pale hair was pulled straight back from her forehead and secured by a clasp at the nape of her neck. Her suede boots made her appear taller than she had the previous evening. Their heels tapped rhythmically along the pavement as they walked slowly past the graves.