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

by Daniel Silva

  There was something in his accent she could not quite place. He was a polyglot, she decided. A man without roots. A man who had lived many places. A man with many names.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I am employed by a small agency answerable only to the prime minister of the State of Israel. But there are other countries involved as well. Your husband’s actions have caused an international crisis. And the response to this crisis has been international as well.”

  “Is Sarah an Israeli, too?”

  “Only in spirit. Sarah is an American. She works for the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “And Mikhail?”

  “As you can probably tell by Mikhail’s perfect Russian, he was born in Moscow. He left when he was a young boy and moved to Israel. He left Russia because of men like your husband. And now your husband is planning to sell very dangerous weapons to people who are sworn to destroy us.’

  “How much do you know?”

  “Very little, unfortunately. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have upended your life by bringing you here today. We only know that your husband has entered into a deal with the Devil. He’s killed two people to keep that deal a secret. And others will surely die as well, unless you help us.” He reached out and took her by the hand. “Will you help us, Elena?”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to finish what you started when you arranged to meet with your old friend Olga Sukhova. I want you to tell me the rest of the story.”

  Five miles due east of Saint-Tropez, the rocky headland known as the Pointe de l’Ay juts defiantly into the Mediterranean Sea. At the base of the point lies a small beach of fine sand, often overlooked because it is absent any boutiques, clubs, or restaurants. The girl with shoulder-length dark hair and scars on her leg had taken great care in choosing her spot, selecting an isolated patch of sand near the rocks with an unobstructed view out to sea. There, shielded from the sun by a parasol, she had passed a pleasant if solitary afternoon, now sipping from a plastic bottle of mineral water, now delving into the pages of a worn paperback novel, now peering out to sea through a pair of miniature Zeiss binoculars toward the enormous private motor yacht called October adrift on the calm waters some three miles offshore.

  At 3:15, she noticed something in the ship’s movements that made her sit up a bit straighter. She watched it another moment to make certain her initial impression was correct, then lowered the glasses and removed a BlackBerry PDA from her canvas beach bag. The message was brief; the transmission, lightning fast. Two minutes later, after complying with a request for confirmation, she placed the device back into her beach bag and peered out to sea again. The yacht had completed its turn and was now making for Saint-Tropez like a frigate steaming toward battle. Party’s over a bit early, the girl thought as she traded the glasses for her paperback novel. And on such a lovely day.

  44

  THE MASSIF DES MAURES, FRANCE

  Elena began by setting the scene, as much for her own benefit as for his. It was autumn, she said. November. Mid-November, she added for the sake of clarity. She and Ivan were staying at their country dacha north of Moscow, a palace of pine and glass built atop the remains of a smaller dacha that had been given to Ivan’s father by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. It was snowing heavily. A good Russian snow, like falling ash from a volcanic eruption.

  “Ivan received a phone call late in the evening. After hanging up, he told me some business associates would be coming to the house in a few hours for an important meeting. He didn’t identify these business associates and I knew far better than to ask. For the rest of the evening, he was on edge. Anxious. Pacing. Cursing the Russian weather. I knew the signs. I’d seen my husband in moods like this before. Ivan always gets very excited before a big dance.”

  “Dance?”

  “Forgive me, Mr. Allon. Dance is one of the code words he and his men use when discussing arms transactions. ‘We have to make final arrangements for the dance.’ ‘We have to book a hall for the dance.’ ‘We have to hire a band for the dance.’ ‘How many chairs will we need for the dance?’ ‘How many bottles of vodka?’ ‘How much caviar?’ ‘How many loaves of black bread?’ I’m not sure who they think they’re deceiving with this nonsense but it certainly isn’t me.”

  “And did Ivan’s visitors actually come that evening?”

  “Technically, it was the next morning. Two-thirty in the morning, to be exact.”

  “You saw them?”

  “Yes, I saw them.”

  “Describe the scene for me. Carefully, Elena. The smallest details can be important.”

  “There were eight of them in all, plus a team of Ivan’s bodyguards. Arkady Medvedev was there as well. Arkady is the chief of my husband’s personal security service. The bodyguards have a joke about Arkady. They say Arkady is Ivan on his worst day.”

  “Where was the delegation from?”

  “They were from Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa.” She managed a smile. “Sarah’s area of expertise.”

  “Which country?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Did you meet them?”

  “I’m never allowed to meet them.”

  “Had you ever seen any of them before?”

  “No, just different versions of them. They’re all the same, really. They speak different languages. They fly different flags. They fight for different causes. But in the end they’re all the same.”

  “Where were you while they were in the dacha?”

  “Upstairs in our bedroom.”

  “Were you ever able to hear their voices?”

  “Sometimes. Their leader was a giant of a man. He was a baritone. His voice made the walls vibrate. He had a laugh like thunder.”

  “You’re a linguist, Elena. If they spoke another European language, what would it be?”

  “French. Most definitely French. It had that lilt, you know?”

  They drank first, she said. There was always drinking involved when Ivan was planning a dance. By the time the hard bargaining began, the guests were well lubricated, and Ivan made no effort to control the volume of their voices, especially the voice of their baritone leader. Elena began to hear words and terms she recognized: AKs. RPGs. Mortars. Specific types of ammunition. Helicopter gunships. Tanks.

  “Before long they were arguing about money. The prices of specific weapons and systems. Commissions. Bribes. Shipping and handling. I knew enough about my husband’s business dealings to realize they were discussing a major arms deal—most likely with an African nation that was under international embargo. You see, Mr. Allon, these are the men who come to my husband, men who cannot purchase arms legally on the open market. That’s why Ivan is so successful. He fills a very specific need. And that’s why the poorest nations on earth pay vastly inflated prices for the weaponry they use to slaughter each other.”

  “How big a deal are we talking about?”

  “The kind that is measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.” She paused, then said, “Why do you think Ivan didn’t bat an eye when I asked him for two and a half million dollars for your worthless Cassatt?”

  “How long did these men stay in your home?”

  “Until early the next morning. When they finally left, Ivan came upstairs to our room. He was soaring. I’d seen him in moods like that, too. It was bloodlust. He crawled into bed and practically raped me. He needed a body to pillage. Any body. He settled for mine.”

  “When did you realize this deal was different?”

  “Two nights later.”

  “What happened?”

  “I answered a phone I shouldn’t have answered. And I listened long after I should have hung up. Simple as that.”

  “You were still at the dacha?”

  “No, we’d left the dacha by then and had returned to Zhukovka.”

  “Who was on the line?”

  “Arkady Medvedev.”

  “Why was he calling?”

  “There was a problem
with final arrangements for the big dance.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  "Big trouble. Merchandise-gone-astray trouble.”

  Ivan had a tradition after big transactions. The blowout, he called it. A night on the town for the clients, all expenses paid, the bigger the deal, the bigger the party. Drinks in the hottest bars. Dinner in the trendiest restaurants. A nightcap with the most beautiful young girls Moscow had to offer. And a team of Ivan’s bodyguards serving as chaperones to make sure there was no trouble. The blowout with the African delegation was a rampage. It began at six in the evening and went straight through till nine the next night, when they finally crawled back to their beds at the Ukraina Hotel and passed out.

  “It’s one of the reasons Ivan has so many repeat customers. He always treats them well. No delays, no missing stock, no rusty bullets. The dictators and the warlords hate rusty bullets. They say Ivan’s stock is always top drawer, just like Ivan’s parties.”

  The post-transaction blowouts served another purpose beyond building customer loyalty. They allowed Ivan and his security service to gather intelligence on clients at moments when their defenses were compromised by alcohol and other recreational pursuits. Given the size of the deal with the African delegation, Arkady Medvedev went along for the ride himself. Within five minutes of dumping the Africans at the Ukraina, he was on the phone to Ivan.

  “Arkady is former KGB. Just like Ivan. He’s normally a very cool customer. But not that night. He was agitated. It was obvious he’d picked up something he wasn’t happy about. I should have hung up, but I couldn’t bring myself to take the telephone from my ear. So I covered the mouthpiece with my hand and held my breath. I don’t think I took a single breath for five minutes. I thought my heart was going to burst through my skin.”

  “Why didn’t Ivan know you were on the line?”

  “I suppose we picked up separate extensions at the same moment. It was luck. Stupid, dumb luck. If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here now. Neither would you.”

  “What did Arkady tell Ivan?”

  “He told him that the Africans were planning to resell some of the supplies from the big dance at a substantial markup to a third party. And this third party wasn’t the usual sort of African rebel rabble.” She lowered her voice and furrowed her brow in an attempt to give a masculine cast to her face. “‘They are the worst of the worst, Ivan,’” she said, imitating Arkady’s voice. “‘They are the sort who fly airplanes into buildings and blow up backpacks on European subways, Ivan. The ones who kill women and children, Ivan. The head choppers. The throat slitters.’”

  “Al-Qaeda?”

  “He never used that name but I knew who he was talking about. He said it was essential that they cancel that portion of the deal because the merchandise in question was too dangerous to be placed in the hands of just anyone. There could be blowback, he said. Blowback for Russia. Blowback for Ivan and his network.”

  “How did Ivan react?”

  “My husband shared none of Arkady’s alarm. Quite the opposite. The merchandise in question was the most lucrative part of the overall deal. Instead of taking that portion of the deal off the table, Ivan insisted that, in light of the new information, they had to renegotiate the entire package. If the Africans were planning to resell at a substantial markup, then Ivan wanted his cut. In addition, there was the potential for more money to be earned on shipping and handling. ‘Why let the Africans deliver the weapons?’ he asked. ‘We can deliver them ourselves and make a few hundred thousand in the process.’ It’s how Ivan earns much of his money. He has his own cargo fleet. He can put weapons on the ground anywhere in the world. All he needs is an airstrip.”

  “Did Ivan ever suspect you’d eavesdropped on the call?”

  “He never did or said anything to make me think so.”

  “Was there another meeting with the Africans?”

  “They came to our house in Zhukovka the next evening, after they’d had a chance to sober up. It wasn’t as cordial as the first gathering. There was a great deal of shouting, mostly by Ivan. My husband doesn’t like double dealings. It brings out the worst in him. He told the Africans he knew all about their plans. He told them that unless they agreed to give him his fair share of the deal, the merchandise was off the table. The baritone giant screamed back for a while but eventually buckled to Ivan’s demands for more money. The next night, before they flew home, there was another blowout to celebrate the new deal. All sins had been forgiven.”

  “The merchandise in question—how did they refer to it?”

  “They called them needles. In Russian, the word needle is igla. I believe the Western designation for this weapon system is SA-18. It’s a shoulder-launch antiaircraft weapon. Though I’m not an expert in matters such as these, it is my understanding that the SA-18 is highly accurate and extremely effective.”

  “It’s one of the most dangerous antiaircraft weapons in the world. But are you sure, Elena? Are you sure they used the word igla?”

  “Absolutely. I’m also certain that my husband didn’t care whether hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of innocent people might die because of these weapons. He was only concerned that he get his cut of the action. What was I supposed to do with knowledge such as this? How could I sit silently and do nothing?”

  “So what did you do?”

  “What could I do? Could I go to the police? We Russians don’t go to the police. We Russians avoid the police. Go to the FSB? My husband is the FSB. His network operates under the protection and the blessing of the FSB. If I had gone to the FSB, Ivan would have heard about it five minutes later. And my children would have grown up without a mother.”

  Her words hung there for a moment, an unnecessary reminder of the consequences of the game they were playing.

  “Since it was impossible for me to go to the Russian authorities, I had to find some other way of telling the world what my husband was planning to do. I needed someone I could trust. Someone who could expose his secrets without revealing the fact that I was the source of the information. I knew such a person; I’d studied languages with her at Leningrad State. After the fall of communism, she’d become a famous reporter in Moscow. I believe you’re familiar with her work.”

  Though Gabriel had pledged fidelity to Elena, he had been less than forthright about one aspect of the debriefing: he was not the only one listening. Thanks to a pair of small, concealed microphones and a secure satellite link, their conversation was being beamed live to four points around the globe: King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv, the headquarters of both MI5 and MI6 in London, and the CIA’s Global Ops Center in Langley, Virginia. Adrian Carter was in his usual seat, the one reserved for the director of the national clandestine service. Known for his tranquil, detached demeanor in times of crisis, Carter appeared somewhat bored by the transmission, as though he were listening to a dull program on the radio. That changed, however, when Elena uttered the word igla. As a Russian speaker, Carter did not need to wait for Elena’s translation to understand the significance of the word. Nor did he bother to listen to the rest of her explanation before picking up the extension of a hotline that rang only on the desk of the director. “The arrows of Allah are real,” Carter said. “Someone needs to tell the White House. Now.”

  45

  THE MASSIF DES MAURES, FRANCE

  They adjourned to the terrace. It was small, cluttered with potted herbs and flowers, and shaded by a pair of umbrella pine. An ancient olive grove spilled into a small gorge, and on the opposite hillside stood two tiny villas that looked as though they had been rendered by the hand of Cézanne. Somewhere in the distance, a child was crying hysterically for its mother. Elena did her best to ignore it while she told Gabriel the rest of the story. Her quiet lunch with Olga Sukhova. The nightmare of Aleksandr Lubin’s murder in Courchevel. The near breakdown she had suffered after Boris Ostrovsky’s death in St. Peter’s Basilica.

  “I shut myself off from the outside world. I stoppe
d watching television. I stopped reading the newspaper. I was afraid—afraid that I would learn an airplane had been shot down, or another journalist had been murdered because of me. Eventually, as time went by, I was able to convince myself it had never actually happened. There were no missiles, I told myself. There was no delegation of warlords who had come to my home to buy weapons from my husband. There was no secret plan to divert a portion of the consignment to the terrorists of al-Qaeda. In fact, there were no terrorists at all. It had all been a bad dream. A misunderstanding of some sort. A hoax. Then I got a telephone call from my friend Alistair Leach about a painting by Mary Cassatt. And here I am.”

  On the other side of the ravine, the child was still wailing. “Won’t someone help that poor thing?” She looked at Gabriel. “Do you have children, Mr. Allon?”

  He hesitated, then answered truthfully. “I had a son,” he said quietly. “A terrorist put a bomb in my car. He was angry at me because I killed his brother. It exploded while my wife and son were inside.”

  “And your wife?”

  “She survived.” He gazed silently across the gorge for a moment. “It might have been better if she hadn’t. It took me a few seconds to get her out of the car. She was burned very badly in the fire.”

  “My God, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t—”

  “It’s all right, Elena. It was a long time ago.”

  “Did it happen in Israel?”

  “No, not in Israel. It was in Vienna. Not far from the cathedral.”

  On the other side of the ravine, the child fell silent. Gabriel seemed not to notice, for all his considerable concentration was now focused on the task of opening a bottle of rosé. He filled a single glass and handed it to Elena.

  “Drink some. It’s important you have wine on your breath when you go home. Ivan will expect that.”

  She raised the glass to her lips and watched the pine trees moving in the faint breeze.