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

by Daniel Silva

  “Our ambassador here is an old friend. He suggested I come to Moscow for a day or two.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To see him, of course—and to see Moscow.”

  “What did he say to you exactly, your friend the ambassador?”

  “He said I had to see Moscow to believe it. He said it was filled with billionaires, dirty bankers, and Russian gangsters. He said it was a boomtown. He said something about a sea of oil, caviar, and vodka.”

  “Did he mention a dinner party?” He tapped the file with the tip of his index finger. “The dinner party that took place at the Israeli Embassy last evening?”

  “I believe he did.”

  “Think carefully, Mr. Golani.”

  “I’m sure he mentioned it.”

  “What did he say about it—exactly, Mr. Golani?”

  “He said there would be some people from the opposition there.”

  “Is that how he described the invited guests? As members of the opposition?”

  “Actually, I think he referred to them as ‘brave souls’ who’ve had the chutzpah to challenge the regime.”

  “And why did your ambassador feel it was necessary to throw such a party? Was it his intention to meddle in the internal affairs of the Russian Federation?”

  “I can assure you no meddling took place. It was just dinner and pleasant conversation.”

  “Who was in attendance?”

  “Why don’t you ask the agents who were watching the embassy that night? They photographed everyone who entered the compound, including me. Look in your file. I’m sure it’s there.”

  The interrogator smiled. “Who was in attendance, Mr. Golani?”

  Gabriel listed the names to the best of his recollection. The last name he recited was Olga Sukhova.

  “Was that the first time you and Miss Sukhova had met?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know her by reputation?”

  “No, I’d never heard her name.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You seem to have hit it off quite well.”

  “We were seated next to each other at dinner. We had a pleasant conversation.”

  “Did you discuss the recent murders of her colleagues?”

  “The topic might have come up. I can’t remember.”

  “What do you remember, Mr. Golani?”

  “We talked about Palestine and the Middle East. We talked about the war in Iraq. We talked about Russia.”

  “What about Russia?”

  “Politics, of course—the coming election.”

  “What did Miss Sukhova say about the election?”

  “She said Russian politics are nothing more than professional wrestling. She said the winners and losers are chosen in advance. That the campaign itself is much sound and fury, signifying nothing. She said the president and the Russian Unity Party will win in a landslide and claim another sweeping mandate. The only question is, how many votes will they feel compelled to steal in order to achieve their goals.”

  “The Russian Federation is a democracy. Miss Sukhova’s political commentary, while entertaining and provocative, is slanderous and completely false.”

  The interrogator turned to a fresh page of his notebook.

  “Did you and Miss Sukhova spend any time alone at the party?”

  “Olga said she needed a cigarette. She invited me to join her.”

  “There were no cigarettes among your possessions tonight.”

  “That’s hardly surprising, given the fact that I don’t smoke.”

  “But you joined her in any case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because you wanted to have a word alone with her in a place where no one could overhear?”

  “Because I was attracted to her—and, yes, because I wanted to have a word alone with her in a place no one else could hear.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “The terrace.”

  “How long were you alone?”

  “A minute or two, no more.”

  “What did you discuss?”

  “I asked if I could see her again. If she would be willing to give me a tour of Moscow.”

  “Did you also tell her you were a married man?”

  “We’d already discussed that.”

  “At dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose idea was it to visit Novodevichy?”

  “Hers.”

  “Why did she select this place?”

  “She said that to understand Russia today you had to walk among her bones.”

  “Did you travel to the cemetery together?”

  “No, I met her there.”

  “How did you travel? By taxi?”

  “I took the Metro.”

  “Who arrived first?”

  “Olga was waiting at the gates when I got there.”

  “And you entered the cemetery together?”

  “Of course.”

  “Which grave did you visit first?”

  “It was Chekhov’s.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe it for me.”

  Gabriel closed his eyes, as if trying to summon an image of the gravestone, but instead he heard the voice of Olga whispering softly into his ear. You mustn’t give them her name, she was saying. If Ivan discovers it was Elena who betrayed him, he’ll kill her.

  19

  FSB HEADQUARTERS, MOSCOW

  They forged on together—for how long, Gabriel could only guess. At times, they wandered through unexplored territory. At others, they retraced their steps over familiar ground. Trivial inconsistencies were pounced upon as proof of treachery, minor lapses in memory as proof of deceit. There is a strange paradox to an interrogation: it can often impart more information to the subject than to the officer posing the questions. Gabriel had concluded that his opponent was but a small cog in a much larger machine. His questions, like Russia’s campaign politics, were much sound and fury signifying nothing. Gabriel’s real enemies resided elsewhere. Since he was supposed to be dead by now, his very presence in Lubyanka was something of an inconvenience for them. One factor would determine whether he survived the night: Did they have the power to reach into the basement of Lubyanka and kill him?

  The interrogator’s final questions were posed with the bored air of a traffic cop recording the details of a minor accident. He jotted the responses in his notebook, then closed the cover and regarded Gabriel through his little spectacles.

  “I find it interesting that, after killing the two Chechen gangsters, you did not become ill. I take it you’ve killed before, Mr. Golani?”

  “Like all Israeli men, I had to serve in the IDF. I fought in Sinai in ’seventy-three and in Lebanon in ’eighty-two.”

  “So you’ve killed many innocent Arabs?”

  “Yes, many.”

  “You are a Zionist oppressor of innocent Palestinians?”

  “An unrepentant one.”

  “You are not who you say you are, Mr. Golani. Your diplomatic passport is false, as is the name written in it. The sooner you confess your crimes, the better.”

  The interrogator placed the cap on his pen and screwed it slowly into place. It must have been a signal, for the door flew open and the four handlers burst into the room. They took him down another flight of stairs and placed him in a cell no larger than a broom closet. It stank of damp and feces. If there were other prisoners nearby, he could not tell, for when the windowless door was closed, the silence, like the darkness, was absolute.

  He placed his cheek against the cold floor and closed his eyes. Olga Sukhova appeared in the form of an icon, head tilted to one side, hands folded in prayer. If you are fortunate enough to make it out of Russia alive, don’t even think about trying to make contact with her. She’s surrounded by bodyguards every minute of the day. Ivan sees everything. Ivan hears everything. Ivan is a monster.

  He was sweat
ing one minute and shivering violently the next. His kidney throbbed with pain, and he could not draw a proper breath because of the bruising to his ribs. During one intense period of cold, he groped the interior of the cell to see if they had left him a blanket but found only four slick walls instead.

  He closed his eyes and slept. In his dreams, he walked through the streets of his past and encountered many of the men he had killed. They were pale and bloodless, with bullet holes in their hearts and faces. Chiara appeared, dressed in her wedding gown, and told him it was time to come back to Umbria. Olga mopped the sweat from his forehead and laid a bouquet of dead carnations at a grave in the Novodevichy Cemetery. The engraving on the headstone was in Hebrew instead of Cyrillic. It read: GABRIEL ALLON . . .

  He woke finally to the sight of flashlights blazing in his face. The men holding them lifted him to his feet and frog-marched him up several flights of steps. Gabriel tried to count, but soon gave up. Five? Ten? Twenty? He couldn’t be sure. Using his head as a battering ram, they burst through a doorway, into the cold night air. For a moment, he was blinded by the sudden darkness. He feared they were about to hurl him from the roof—Lubyanka had a long history of such unfortunate accidents—but then his eyes adjusted and he could see they were only in the courtyard instead.

  Sergei the interrogator was standing next to a black van, dressed in a fresh gray suit. He opened the rear doors, and, with a few terse words in Russian, ordered the handlers to put Gabriel inside. His hands were freed briefly, only to be restrained again a few seconds later to a steel loop in the ceiling. Then the doors closed with a deafening thud and the van lurched forward over the cobblestones.

  Where now? he thought. Exile or death?

  He was alone again. He reckoned it was before midnight because Moscow’s traffic was still moving at a fever pitch. He heard no sirens to indicate they were under escort, and the driver appeared to be obeying traffic rules, such as they were. At one long stop, he heard the sound of laughter, and he thought of Solzhenitsyn. The vans . . . That was how the KGB had moved the inhabitants of the Gulag Archipelago—at night, in ordinary-looking vans, invisible to the souls around them, trapped in a parallel world of the damned.

  Sheremetyevo 2 Airport lay north of the city center, a journey of about forty-five minutes when the traffic was at its most reasonable. Gabriel had allowed himself to hope it was their destination, but that hope dissolved after an hour in the back of the van. The quality of the roads, deplorable even in Moscow, deteriorated by degrees the farther they moved away from Lubyanka. Each pothole sent shock waves of pain through his bruised body, and he had to cling to the steel loop to avoid being thrown from his bench. It was impossible to guess in which direction they were traveling. He could not tell whether they were heading west, toward civilization and enlightenment, or east, into the cruel heart of the Russian interior. Twice the van stopped and twice Gabriel could hear Russian voices raised in anger. He supposed even an unmarked FSB van had trouble moving through the countryside without being shaken down by banditi and traffic cops looking for bribes.

  The third time the van stopped, the doors swung open and a handler entered the compartment. He unlocked the handcuffs and motioned for Gabriel to get out. A car had pulled up behind them; the interrogator was standing in the glow of the parking lamps, stroking his little beard as though deciding on a suitable place to carry out an execution. Then Gabriel noticed his suitcase lying in a puddle of mud, next to the ziplock bag containing his possessions. The interrogator nudged the bag toward Gabriel with the toe of his shoe and pointed toward a smudge of yellow light on the horizon.

  “The Ukrainian border. They’re expecting you.”

  “Where’s Olga?”

  “I suggest you get moving before we change our minds, Mr. Allon. And don’t come back to Russia again. If you do, we will kill you. And we won’t rely on a pair of Chechen idiots to do the job for us.”

  Gabriel collected his belongings and started toward the border. He waited for the crack of a pistol and the bullet in his spine, but he heard nothing but the sound of the cars turning around and starting back to Moscow. With their headlights gone, the heavy darkness swallowed him. He kept his eyes focused on the yellow light and walked on. And, for a moment, Olga was walking beside him. Her life is now in your hands, she reminded him. Ivan kills anyone who gets in his way. And if he ever finds out his own wife was my source, he won’t hesitate to kill her, too.

  PART TWO

  THE RECRUITMENT

  20

  BEN-GURION AIRPORT, ISRAEL

  Wake up, Mr. Golani. You’re almost home.”

  Gabriel opened his eyes slowly and gazed out the window of the first-class cabin. The lights of the Coastal Plain lay in a glittering arc along the edge of the Mediterranean, like a strand of jewels painted by the hand of Van Dyck.

  He turned his head a few degrees and looked at the man who had awakened him. He was twenty years younger than Gabriel, with eyes the color of granite and a fine-boned, bloodless face. The diplomatic passport in his blazer pocket identified him as Baruch Goldstein of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His real name was Mikhail Abramov. Bodyguard jobs were not exactly Mikhail’s specialty. A former member of the Sayeret Metkal special forces, he had joined the Office after assassinating the top terrorist masterminds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He had one other attribute that had made him the perfect candidate to escort Gabriel out of Eastern Europe and back to Israel. Mikhail had been born in Moscow to a pair of dissident scientists and spoke fluent Russian.

  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 s
hould 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.