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

by Daniel Silva

  Nigel Whitcombe made a church steeple with his fingertips and pressed it thoughtfully against his lips, as if pondering the morality of Leach’s refusal to answer.

  “And if the owner was aware of the stakes involved? I suspect he—or she, if that’s the case—might actually relish the chance to help us. I suspect the owner is a patriot, Alistair.” A pause. “Just like you.”

  The official recording of the interrogation would contain no evidence of what transpired next, for there would be no sound for the microphones to capture. It was a hand. The hand that Whitcombe placed gently upon Leach’s shoulder, as though he were petitioning him to reclaim his lost faith.

  “Boothby,” Leach said, as if the name had popped suddenly into his memory. “Sir John Boothby. Lives in a big Edwardian pile on a couple hundred acres in the Cotswolds. Never worked a day in his life, as far as I can tell. The father worked for your lot. Rumor has it he had a wonderful war.”

  Seymour twisted his head around. “You’re not talking about Basil Boothby, are you?”

  “That’s him. Ruthless bastard, from what I hear.”

  “Basil Boothby was one of the legends of the Service. He was involved in our deception program during the Second World War. Ran captured German spies back to their masters in Berlin. And, yes, he was a ruthless bastard. But there are times when one has to be. These are such times, Alistair.”

  “I’m wondering whether there’s a chance Sir John might have had a change of heart,” Gabriel said. “I’m wondering whether it might be time to have another go at him.”

  “He’s not going to sell that painting—at least, not to Elena Kharkov.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because in a moment of professional indiscretion, I may have mentioned that the prospective buyer was the wife of a Russian oligarch. Boothby’s father spent the final years of his career battling KGB spies. The old man didn’t hold with the Russians. Neither does Sir John.”

  “Sounds like a patriot to me,” said Graham Seymour.

  “I might use another word to describe him,” Leach muttered. “Elena Kharkov would have paid a premium for that painting. Two million pounds, maybe a bit more. He would have been wise to take the deal. From what I hear, Sir John is not exactly flush with funds at the moment.”

  “Perhaps we can convince him to see the error of his ways.”

  “Good luck. But remember, if that Cassatt changes hands, I get my cut.”

  “How much are you getting these days, Alistair?” asked Gabriel.

  Leach smiled. “You have your secrets, Signore Delvecchio. And I have mine.”

  31

  GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND

  Havermore, the ancestral home of the Boothby clan, lay five miles to the northwest of the picturesque Cotswold Hills market town of Chipping Camden. At its zenith, the estate had sprawled over eight hundred acres of rolling pastures and wooded hills and had employed several dozen men and women from the surrounding villages. Its fortunes had dwindled in recent years, along with those of the family that owned it. All but a hundred acres had been sold off, and the manor house, a honey-colored limestone monstrosity, had fallen into a state of rather alarming disrepair. As for the staff, it now consisted of a single farmhand called Old George Merrywood and a plump housekeeper named Mrs. Lillian Devlin.

  She greeted Gabriel and Graham Seymour early the next afternoon and informed them Sir John was eagerly awaiting their arrival. They found him standing before an easel in a patch of overgrown grass called the East Meadow, flailing away at a dreadful landscape. Boothby and Graham Seymour shook hands cordially and regarded each other for a moment in silence. They were of similar size and shape, though John Boothby was several years older and several inches bigger around the middle. He wore Wellington boots and a tan smock. His thick gray hair and tangled eyebrows gave him the appearance of a bottlebrush come to life.

  “This is an associate of mine,” Seymour said, his hand resting on Gabriel’s shoulder. “He’s a fellow traveler, Sir John. He works for an intelligence service in the Middle East whose interests occasionally intersect with our own.”

  “So you’re an Israeli then,” said Boothby, shaking Gabriel’s hand.

  “I’m afraid so,” replied Gabriel contritely.

  “No apologies necessary around here, my dear fellow. I have no quarrel with Israelis—or Jews, for that matter. We Europeans dropped you into the swamp, didn’t we? And now we condemn you for daring to stand your ground.” He released Gabriel’s hand. “Do I get to know your name or are names off-limits?”

  “His name is Gabriel, Sir John. Gabriel Allon.”

  Boothby gave a wry smile. “I thought it was you. An honor, Mr. Allon.” He returned to the easel and looked morosely at the painting. “Bloody awful, isn’t it? I can never seem to get the trees right.”

  “May I?” asked Gabriel.

  “Do you paint, too?”

  “When I get the chance.”

  Boothby handed him the brush. Gabriel worked on the painting for thirty seconds, then stepped aside.

  “Good Lord! But that’s bloody marvelous. You’re obviously a man of considerable talent.” He took Gabriel by the arm. “Let’s go up to the house, shall we? Mrs. Devlin has made a roast.”

  They ate outside on the terrace beneath an umbrella that gave their faces the sepia coloring of an old photograph. Gabriel remained largely silent during the meal while Graham Seymour talked at length about Boothby’s father and his work during the Second War. Gabriel was left with the impression that Boothby the Younger did not necessarily enjoy hearing about his father—that he had spent his life living in the shadow of Basil Boothby’s wartime exploits and wished to be taken seriously in his own right. Gabriel could only imagine what it was like to be the son of a great man. His own father had been killed during the Six-Day War and Gabriel’s memories of him were now fragmentary at best: a pair of intelligent brown eyes, a pleasant voice that was never raised in anger, a strong pair of hands that never struck him. The last time he had seen his father was the night before the war started, a figure dressed in olive green rushing off to join his army unit. Gabriel often wondered whether that memory was the source of Shamron’s hold over him, the memory of a father answering the call to defend his country and his people. A father whom he never saw again.

  Gabriel formed one other impression of Boothby during the meal: that he had the natural patience of a good spy. It wasn’t until Mrs. Devlin served the coffee that he finally asked why Seymour and his friend from Israel had come all the way to Havermore to see him. But when Seymour commenced a somewhat meandering explanation, Boothby’s patience wore thin.

  “Come, come, Graham. We’re all men of the world here, and I’m practically a member of the family. If you want me to sign a copy of the Official Secrets Act, I’ll find the pen myself. But please spare me the bullshit.” He looked at Gabriel. “You Israelis are known for your bluntness. Be blunt, for God’s sake.”

  “We’ve picked up intelligence that a Russian arms dealer named Ivan Kharkov may be about to sell some very dangerous weapons to the terrorists of al-Qaeda. Is that blunt enough for you, Sir John?”

  “Quite.” He scratched his gray head and made a show of thought. “Kharkov? Why do I know that name?”

  “Because his wife wants to buy Two Children on a Beach by Mary Cassatt.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember now. The wife’s name is Elena, isn’t it? She’s represented by Alistair Leach at Christie’s.” He grimaced. “Appropriate name for an art dealer, don’t you think? Leach. Especially when you see the size of his commissions. Good Lord, but they’re absolutely criminal.”

  “Is it true that you told Alistair you wouldn’t sell the painting to Elena because she’s Russian?”

  “Of course it’s true!”

  “Would you care to tell us why?”

  “Because they’re monsters, aren’t they? Look what they did to that poor chap in St. Peter’s a few weeks ago. Look at the way they’re bullying and
blackmailing their neighbors. If the Russians want a new Cold War, then I say we give them one.” He sat back in his chair. “Listen, gentlemen, perhaps I’m not as foxy or devious as my old father was, but what exactly are you asking me to do?”

  “I need to arrange a meeting with Elena Kharkov.” Gabriel paused a moment and looked around at the landscape. “And I’d like to do it here, at Havermore.”

  “Why do you need to meet with Elena Kharkov?”

  Graham Seymour cleared his throat judiciously. “I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to discuss that with you, Sir John.”

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you, Graham.”

  Seymour looked at Gabriel and nodded his head.

  “We have strong reason to believe Mrs. Kharkov is aware of her husband’s plans and does not approve,” Gabriel said. “And we also believe she may be receptive to a quiet approach.”

  “A recruitment? Is that what you’re suggesting? You want to ask Elena Kharkov to betray her husband—here, in my home?”

  “It’s perfect, actually.”

  “I must say, I’m rather intrigued by the idea. Who’s going to make the actual pass at her?”

  “Your American niece.”

  “But I don’t have an American niece.”

  “You do now.”

  “And what about me?”

  “I suppose we could get a stand-in,” Seymour said. “One of our older officers, or perhaps even someone who’s retired. Heaven knows, we have many fine officers who would leap at the chance to come out of retirement and take part in a novel operation like this.” Seymour lapsed into silence. “I suppose there is one other alternative, Sir John. You could play the role yourself. Your father was one of the greatest deceivers in history. He helped fool the Germans into thinking we were coming at Calais in Normandy. Deception is in your genes.”

  “And what happens if Ivan Kharkov ever finds out? I’ll end up like that poor bloke, Litvinenko, dying an agonizing death in University College Hospital with my hair falling out.”

  “We’ll make certain Ivan never gets anywhere near you. And the fact that you were never married and have no children makes our job much easier.”

  “What about Old George and Mrs. Devlin?”

  “We’ll have to deceive them, of course. You might have to let them go.”

  “Can’t do that. Old George worked for my father. And Mrs. Devlin has been with me for nearly thirty years. We’ll just have to work around them.”

  “So you’ll do it, then?”

  Boothby nodded. “If you gentlemen truly believe I’m up to the job, then it would be my honor to join you.”

  “Excellent,” said Seymour. “That leaves only the small matter of the painting itself. If Elena Kharkov wants to buy it, we have no choice but to sell it to her.”

  Boothby brought his hand down on the table hard enough to rattle the china and the crystal. “Under no circumstances am I selling that painting to the wife of a Russian arms dealer.”

  Gabriel patted his lips with his napkin. “There is another possible solution—something your father would have enjoyed.”

  “What’s that?”

  "A deception, of course.”

  They hiked up the grand central staircase beneath yellowed portraits of Boothbys dead and gone. The nursery was in semidarkness when they entered; Boothby pushed open the heavy curtains, allowing the golden Cotswold light to stream through the tall, mullioned windows. It fell upon two matching children’s beds, two matching children’s dressers, two matching hand-painted toy chests, and Two Children on a Beach by Mary Cassatt.

  “My father bought it in Paris between the wars. Didn’t pay much for it, as I recall. By then, Madame Cassatt had fallen out of fashion. My mother and sisters adored it, but, to be honest, I never much cared for it.”

  Gabriel walked over to the painting and stood before it in silence, right hand to his chin, head tilted slightly to one side. Then he licked three fingers of his right hand and scrubbed away the surface grime from the chubby knee of one of the children. Boothby frowned.

  “I say, Gabriel. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Gabriel took two steps back from the painting and calculated its dimensions.

  “Looks like thirty-eight by twenty-nine.”

  “Actually, if memory serves, it’s thirty-eight and three-quarters by twenty-nine and a quarter. You obviously have quite an eye.”

  Gabriel gave no indication he had heard the compliment. “I’m going to need a place to work for a few days. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere I’m not going to be disturbed.”

  “There’s an old gamekeeper’s cottage at the north end of the property. I did a bit of renovation a few years back. Usually, it’s rented this time of year, but it’s vacant for the next several weeks. The entire second floor was converted into a studio. I think you’ll find it to your liking.”

  “Please tell Mrs. Devlin that I’ll see to my own cleaning. And tell Old George not to come snooping around.” Gabriel resumed his appraisal of the Cassatt, one hand pressed to his chin, head tilted slightly to one side. “I don’t like people watching me while I work.”

  32

  GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND

  The following morning, Gabriel gave MI5 an operational shopping list the likes of which it had never seen. Whitcombe, who had developed something of a professional infatuation with the legendary operative from Israel, volunteered to fill it. His first stop was L. Cornelissen & Son in Great Russell Street, where he collected a large order of brushes, pigment, medium, ground, and varnish. Next, it was up to Camden Town for a pair of easels, then over to Earl’s Court for three commercial-grade halogen lamps. His final two stops were just a few doors apart in Bury Street: Arnold Wiggins & Sons, where he ordered a lovely carved frame in the French style, and Dimbleby Fine Arts, where he purchased a work by a largely unknown French landscapist. Painted outside Paris in 1884, its dimensions were 29 inches by 38 inches.

  By afternoon, the painting and the supplies were at Havermore, and Gabriel was soon at work in the second-floor studio of the old game-keeper’s cottage. Though advances in modern technology gave him considerable advantages over the great copyists of the past, he confined himself largely to the tried-and-true methods of the Old Masters. After subjecting the Cassatt to a surface examination, he snapped more than a hundred detail photographs and taped them to the walls of the studio. Then he covered the painting with a translucent paper and carefully traced the image beneath. When the sketch was complete, he removed it and made several thousand tiny perforations along the lines he had just drawn. He then transferred the tracing to the second canvas—which had been stripped bare and covered in a fresh ground—and carefully sprinkled charcoal powder over the surface. A moment later, when he removed the paper, a ghost image of Two Children on a Beach appeared on the surface.

  A copyist of lesser gifts might have produced two or three drafts of the painting before attempting the final version, but Gabriel felt no need to practice, nor was he possessed with an abundance of time. He placed the easels side by side, with Cassatt’s original on the left, and immediately prepared his first palette. He worked slowly for the first few days, but as he grew more accustomed to Cassatt’s style, he was able to apply the paint to the canvas with increasing confidence and swiftness. Sometimes he had the sensation she was standing at his shoulder, carefully guiding his hand. Usually, she appeared to him alone, in a floor-length dress and ladylike bonnet, but occasionally she would bring along her mentors—Degas, Renoir, and Pissarro—to instruct him on the finer points of palette and brushwork.

  Though the painting consumed most of Gabriel’s attention, Ivan and Elena Kharkov were never far from his thoughts. NSA redoubled its efforts to intercept all of Ivan’s electronic communications, and Adrian Carter arranged for a man from London Station to make regular trips to Havermore to share the take. As a child of the KGB, Ivan had always been careful on the telephone and remained so now. He spent those days largely sequestere
d in his walled mansion in Zhukovka, the restricted secret city of the oligarchs west of Moscow. Only once did he venture outside the country: a day trip to Paris to spend a few hours with Yekatarina, his supermodel mistress. He phoned Elena three times from Yekatarina’s bed to say that his business meetings were going splendidly. One of the calls came while she was dining with two companions at the exclusive Café Pushkin, and the moment was captured by an Office watcher with a miniature camera. Gabriel couldn’t help but be struck by the melancholy expression on her face, especially when compared to the outward gaiety of her two companions. He tacked the picture to the wall of his makeshift studio and called it Three Ladies in a Moscow Café.

  One salient operational fact eluded Gabriel: the precise date Ivan and Elena were planning to leave Moscow and return to Knightsbridge. As he labored alone before the canvas, he became gripped by a fear he was about to throw an elaborate party that no one would attend. It was an irrational notion; Ivan Kharkov tolerated his native country only in small doses and it was only a matter of time before he would be overcome by the urge to leave it once more. Finally, an MI5 team monitoring the Kharkov mansion in Rutland Gate witnessed the delivery of a large consignment of vodka, champagne, and French wine—strong evidence, they argued, of Ivan’s impending return. The next day, NSA intercepted a telephone call from Ivan to Arkady Medvedev, the chief of his personal security and intelligence service. Buried within a lengthy discussion about the activities of a Russian rival was the nugget of intelligence for which Gabriel had been so anxiously waiting: Ivan was coming to London in a week for what he described as a round of important business meetings. After leaving London, he would travel to the South of France to take up residence at Villa Soleil, his sumptuous summer palace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea near Saint-Tropez.

  That evening, Gabriel ate dinner while standing before the canvas. Shortly after nine, he heard the sound of car tires crunching over the gravel drive and an engine note that was unfamiliar to him. He walked over to the window and peered down as a tall woman with pale blond hair emerged with a single bag slung over her shoulder. She came upstairs to the studio and stood at his shoulder while he worked.