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

by Daniel Silva

  It wasn’t long after Gabriel began his briefing that Carter seemed to lose his appetite. He placed his partially eaten sandwich on the table next to his chair and sat motionless as a statue, with his legs crossed and his hands bunched thoughtfully beneath his chin. It had been Gabriel’s experience that any decent spy was at his core a good listener. It came naturally to Carter, like his gift for languages, his ability to blend into his surroundings, and his humility. Little about Carter’s clinical demeanor suggested that he was one of the most powerful members of Washington’s intelligence establishment—or that before his ascension to the rarified atmosphere of Langley’s seventh floor, where he served as director of the CIA’s national clandestine service, he had been a field man of the highest reputation. Most mistook him for a therapist of some sort. When one thought of Adrian Carter, one pictured a man enduring confessions of affairs and inadequacies, not tales of terrorists and Russian arms dealers.

  “I wish I could say your story sounded like the ravings of an angry wife,” Carter said. “But I’m afraid it dovetails nicely with some rather alarming intelligence we’ve been picking up over the past few months.”

  “What sort of intelligence?”

  “Chatter,” said Carter. “More to the point, a specific phrase that has popped several times over the past few weeks—so many times, in fact, that our analysts at the National Counterterrorism Center are no longer willing to dismiss it as mere coincidence.”

  “What’s the phrase?”

  “The arrows of Allah. We’ve seen it about a half-dozen times now, most recently on the computer of a jihadi who was arrested by our friend Lars Mortensen in Copenhagen. You remember Lars, don’t you, Gabriel?”

  “With considerable fondness,” Gabriel replied.

  “Mortensen and his technicians at the Danish PET found the phrase in an old e-mail that the suspect had tried to delete. The e-mail said something about ‘the arrows of Allah piercing the hearts of the infidels, ’ or sentiments to that effect.”

  “What’s the suspect’s name?”

  “Marwan Abbas. He’s a Jordanian now residing in the largely immigrant quarter of Copenhagen known as Nørrebro—a quarter you know quite well, if I’m not mistaken. Mortensen says Abbas is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamist political movement. The Jordanian GID told us he was also an associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may he rest in peace.”

  “If I were you, Adrian, I’d send that Gulfstream of yours to Copenhagen to take possession of Marwan for a private chat.”

  “I’m afraid Mortensen is in no position to play ball with us at the moment. PET and the Danish government still have bruised feelings over our actions during the Halton affair. I suppose, in hindsight, we should have signed the guestbook on the way into Denmark. We told the Danes about our presence on their soil after the fact. It’s going to take a while for them to forgive us our sins.”

  “Mortensen will come around eventually. The Danes need you. So do the rest of the Europeans. In a world gone mad, America is still the last best hope.”

  “I hope you’re right, Gabriel. It’s become popular in Washington these days to think that the threat of terrorism has receded—or that we can somehow live with the occasional loss of national monuments and American life. But when the next attack comes—and I do mean when, Gabriel—those same freethinkers will be the first to fault the Agency for failing to stop it. We can’t do it without the cooperation of the Europeans. And you, of course. You’re our secret servant, aren’t you, Gabriel? You’re the one who does the jobs we’re unwilling, or unable, to do for ourselves. I’m afraid Ivan falls into that category.”

  Gabriel recalled the words Shamron had spoken the previous evening in Jerusalem: The Americans love to monitor problems but do nothing about them . . .

  “Ivan’s main stomping ground is Africa,” Carter said. “But he’s made lucrative forays into the Middle East and Latin America as well. In the good old days, when the Agency and the KGB played the various factions of the Third World against one another for our own amusement, we were judicious with the flow of arms. We wanted the killing to remain at morally acceptable levels. But Ivan tore up the old rule book, and he’s torn up many of the world’s poorest places in the process. He’s willing to provide the dictators, the warlords, and the guerrilla fighters with whatever they want, and, in turn, they’re willing to pay him whatever he asks. He’s a vulture, our Ivan. He preys on the suffering of others and makes millions in the process. He’s responsible for more death and destruction than all the Islamic terrorists of the world combined. And now he trots around the playgrounds of Russia and Europe, safe in the knowledge that we can’t lay a finger on him.”

  “Why didn’t you ever go after him?”

  “We tried during the nineties. We noticed that much of the Third World was burning, and we started asking ourselves a single question: Who was pouring the gasoline on the flames? The Agency started tracking the movement of suspicious cargo planes around Africa and the Middle East. NSA started listening to telephone and radio conversations. Before long, we had a good idea where all the weapons were coming from.”

  “Ivan Kharkov.”

  Carter nodded. “We established a working group at NSC to come up with a strategy for dealing with the Kharkov network. Since he had violated no American laws, our options were extremely limited. We started looking for a country to issue an indictment but got no takers. By the end of the millennium, the situation was so bad we even considered using a novel concept known as extraordinary rendition to get Ivan’s operatives off the streets. It came to nothing, of course. When the administration left town, the Kharkov network was still in business. And when the new crowd settled into the White House, they barely had time to figure out where the bathrooms were before they were hit with 9/11. Suddenly, Ivan Kharkov didn’t seem so important anymore.”

  “Because you needed Russia’s help in the fight against al-Qaeda.”

  “Exactly,” said Carter. “Ivan is former KGB. He has powerful benefactors. To be fair, even if we had pressed the Kremlin on the Kharkov issue, it probably wouldn’t have done any good. On paper, there are no legal or financial ties between Ivan Kharkov the legitimate oligarch and Ivan Kharkov the international arms trafficker. Ivan is a master of the corporate front and the offshore account. The network is completely quarantined.”

  Carter fished a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from the flap pocket of his jacket. “There’s something else we need to keep in mind: Ivan has a long track record of selling his wares to unsavory elements in the Middle East. He sold weapons to Gadhafi. He smuggled arms to Sad-dam in violation of UN sanctions. He armed Islamic radicals in Somalia and Sudan. He even sold weapons to the Taliban.”

  “Don’t forget Hezbollah,” said Gabriel.

  “How could we forget our good friends at Hezbollah?” Carter methodically loaded tobacco into the bowl of his pipe. “In a perfect world, I suppose we would go to the Russian president and ask him for help. But this world is far from perfect, and the current president of Russia is anything but a trustworthy ally. He’s a dangerous man. He wants his empire back. He wants to be a superpower again. He wants to challenge American supremacy around the globe, especially in the Middle East. He’s sitting atop a sea of oil and natural gas, and he’s willing to use it as a weapon. And the last thing he’s going to do is intervene on our behalf against a protected oligarch by the name of Ivan Kharkov. I lived through the end of the first Cold War. We’re not there yet, but we’re definitely heading in that direction. I’m certain of one thing, though. If we’re going to track down those weapons, we’re going to have to do it without Russia’s help.”

  “I prefer it that way, Adrian. We Jews have a long history of dealing with Russians.”

  “So how do you suggest we proceed?”

  “I want to arrange a meeting with Elena Kharkov.”

  Carter raised an eyebrow. “I suggest you proceed carefully, Gabriel. Otherwise, you might get her killed.”


  “Thank you, Adrian. That really hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “Forgive me,” said Carter. “How can I help?”

  “I need every scrap of intelligence you have on Ivan’s network. And I mean all of it, Adrian—especially NSA intercepts of Ivan’s telephone communications. And don’t just give me the transcripts. I need to get inside his head. And to get inside his head, I need to hear his voice.”

  “You’re talking about a great deal of highly classified material. It can’t be turned over to an officer of a foreign intelligence service on a whim, even you. I have to run it through channels. It could take weeks to get approval, if at all.”

  “Those weapons could be heading toward America’s shores as we speak, Adrian.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to expedite matters.”

  “No, Adrian, you must expedite matters. Otherwise, I’m going to pick up that phone over there and call my friend at the White House. I still have that number you gave me in Copenhagen, the one that rings directly in the Oval Office.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “In a heartbeat.”

  “I’ll get the material released to you within twenty-four hours. What else do you need?”

  “A Russian speaker.”

  “Believe it or not, we’ve still got a few of those.”

  “Actually, I have one in mind. I need you to get him into the country right away.”

  “Who is it?”

  Gabriel told him the name.

  “Done,” said Carter. “Where do you intend to set up shop? At your embassy?”

  “I’ve never been fond of embassies.” Gabriel looked around the room. “This will do quite nicely. But do me a favor, Adrian. Ask your techs to come over here and remove all the cameras and microphones. I don’t want your bloodhounds watching me while I shower.”

  24

  GEORGETOWN

  It took Adrian Carter the better part of the next morning to secure the authorization necessary to release the Kharkov files into Gabriel’s custody. Then several additional hours elapsed while they were gathered, sorted, and purged of anything remotely embarrassing to the Central Intelligence Agency or the government of the United States. Finally, at seven that evening, the material was delivered to the house on N Street by an unmarked Agency van. Carter stopped by to supervise the load in and to secure Gabriel’s signature on a draconian release form. Hastily drafted by a CIA lawyer, it threatened criminal prosecution and many other forms of punishment if Gabriel shared the documents or their contents with anyone else.

  “This document is ridiculous, Adrian. How can I operate without sharing the intelligence?”

  “Just sign it,” Carter said. “It doesn’t mean what it says. It’s just the lawyers being lawyers.”

  Gabriel scribbled his name in Hebrew across the bottom of the form and handed it to Eli Lavon, who had just arrived from Tel Aviv. Lavon signed it without protest and gave it back to Adrian Carter.

  “No one is allowed in or out of the house while this material is on the premises. And that includes you two. Don’t think about trying to sneak out, because I’ve got a team of watchers on N Street and another in the alley.”

  When Carter departed, they divided up the files and retreated to separate quarters. Gabriel took several boxes of Agency cables, along with the data assembled by the now-defunct NSC task force, and settled into the library. Eli Lavon took everything from NSA—the transcripts and the original recordings—and set up shop in the drawing room.

  For the remainder of the evening, and late into the night, they were treated to the sound of Ivan Kharkov’s voice. Ivan the banker and Ivan the builder. Ivan the real estate mogul and Ivan the international investor. Ivan the very emblem of a Russia resurgent. They listened while he negotiated with the mayor of Moscow over a prime piece of riverfront property where he wished to develop an American-style shopping mall. They listened while he coerced a fellow Russian businessman into surrendering his share of a lucrative Bentley dealership located near the Kremlin walls. They listened while he threatened to castrate the owner of a London moving company over damage to his mansion in Belgravia incurred during the delivery of a Bösendorfer piano. And they listened to a rather tense conversation with an underling called Valery who was having difficulty obtaining the clearance for a large shipment of medical equipment to Sierra Leone. The equipment must have been urgently needed, for, twenty minutes later, NSA intercepted a second call to Valery, during which Ivan said the papers were now in order and that the flight could proceed to Freetown without delay.

  When not tending to his far-flung business empire, Ivan juggled his many women. There was Yekatarina, the supermodel whom he kept for personal viewing in an apartment in Paris. There was Tatyana, the Aeroflot flight attendant who saw to his needs each time their paths happened to intersect. And there was poor Ludmila, who had come to London looking for a way out of her dreary Siberian village and had found Ivan instead. She had believed Ivan’s lies and, when cast aside, had threatened to tell Elena everything. Another man might have tried to defuse the situation with expensive gifts or money. But not Ivan. Ivan threatened to have her killed. And then he threatened to kill her parents in Russia as well.

  Occasionally, they would be granted a reprieve from Ivan by the voice of Elena. Though not an official target of NSA surveillance, she became ensnared in NSA’s net each time she used one of Ivan’s phones. She was silk to Ivan’s steel, decency to Ivan’s decadence. She had everything money could buy but seemed to want nothing more than a husband with an ounce of integrity. She raised their two children without Ivan’s help and, for the most part, passed her days free of Ivan’s boorish company. Ivan bought her large houses and gave her endless piles of money to fill them with expensive things. In return, she was permitted to ask nothing of his business or personal affairs. With the help of NSA’s satellites, Gabriel and Lavon became privy to Ivan’s many lies. When Ivan told Elena he was in Geneva for a meeting with his Swiss bankers, Gabriel and Lavon knew he was actually in Paris partaking in the delights of Yekatarina. And when Ivan told Elena he was in Düsseldorf meeting with a German industrialist, Gabriel and Lavon knew he was actually in Frankfurt helping Tatyana pass a long layover in an airport hotel room. Lavon’s loathing of him grew with each passing hour. “Lots of women make deals with the Devil,” he said. “But poor Elena was foolish enough to actually marry him.”

  An hour before dawn, Gabriel was reading an excruciatingly dull cable by the CIA station chief in Angola when Lavon poked his head in the door.

  “I think you need to come and listen to something.”

  Gabriel set aside the cable and followed Lavon into the drawing room. The anonymous air of a hotel hospitality suite had been replaced by that of a university common room on the night before a final exam. Lavon sat down before a laptop computer and, with a click of the mouse, played a series of fourteen intercepts, each featuring the voice of Elena Kharkov. None required translation because in each conversation she was speaking fluent English and addressing the same man. The last intercept was only two months old. Gabriel listened to it three times, then looked at Lavon and smiled.

  “What do you think?” Lavon asked.

  "I think you may have just found a way for us to talk to Ivan’s wife.”

  25

  DUMBARTON OAKS, GEORGETOWN

  She’s obsessed with Mary Cassatt.” "Is that one of Ivan’s girlfriends?”

  “She’s a painter, Adrian. An Impressionist painter. A rather good one, actually.”

  “Forgive me, Gabriel. I’ve been somewhat busy since 9/11. I can give you chapter and verse on the one hundred most dangerous terrorists in the world, but I can’t tell you the title of the last movie I saw.”

  “You need to get out more, Adrian.”

  “Tell that to al-Qaeda.”

  They were walking along the dirt-and-gravel towpath at the edge of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. It was early morning, but the sun had yet to burn its way through the layer
of gauzy gray cloud that had settled over Washington during the night. On their left, the wide green waters of the Potomac River flowed listlessly toward Georgetown, while, on their right, warring motorists sped toward the same destination along Canal Road. Gabriel wore faded jeans and a plain white pullover; Carter, a nylon tracksuit and a pair of pristine running shoes.

  “I take it Mary Cassatt was French?”

  “American, actually. She moved to Paris in 1865 and eventually fell under the spell of the Impressionists. Her specialty was tender portraits of women and children—intriguing, since she was unmarried and childless herself. Her work is a bit too sentimental for my taste, but it’s extremely popular among a certain type of collector.”

  “Like Elena Kharkov?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Based on what we heard in the NSA intercepts, she owns at least six Cassatts already and is in the market for more. She’s on a first-name basis with every significant dealer in Paris, London, and New York. She’s also got excellent contacts at the big auction houses, including the director of the Impressionist and Modern Art department at Christie’s in London.”

  “Know him?”

  “In another life.”

  “I take it you’re planning to renew your professional relationship?”

  “One step at a time, Adrian.”

  Carter walked in silence for a moment, with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes cast downward. “I had a chance to peruse her file. Elena’s an interesting woman, to say the least. She’s a Leningrad girl. Did you notice that, Gabriel?”

  “Yes, Adrian, I did notice that.”

  “Her father was a Party muckety-muck. Worked for Gosplan, the central planning bureaucracy that oversaw the Rube Goldberg contraption once known as the Soviet economy. She went to Leningrad State University and was supposed to be an economist like her father. But apparently she had a change of heart and decided to study languages and art instead. It seems she was working at the Hermitage when she met Ivan. One wonders what she saw in him.”