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

by Daniel Silva

  “How did this happen? How did we end up together in this place, you and I?”

  “You were brought here by a telephone you shouldn’t have answered. I was brought here by Boris Ostrovsky. I was the reason he went to Rome. He was trying to tell me about Ivan. He died in my arms before he could deliver his message. That’s why I had to go to Moscow to meet with Olga.”

  “Were you with her when the assassins tried to kill her?”

  He nodded his head.

  “How were you able to escape that stairwell without being killed?”

  “Perhaps another time, Elena. Drink some of your wine. You need to be a bit tipsy when you go home.”

  She obeyed, then asked, “So, in the words of Lenin, glorious agent of the Revolution and father of the Soviet Union, what is to be done? What are we going to do about the missiles my husband has placed in the hands of murderers?”

  “You’ve given us a tremendous amount of information. If we’re lucky—very lucky—we might be able to find them before the terrorists are able to carry out an attack. It will be difficult, but we’ll try.”

  “Try? What do you mean? You have to stop them.”

  “It’s not that easy, Elena. There’s so much we don’t know. Which country in Africa was your husband dealing with? Have the missiles been shipped? Have they already reached the hands of the terrorists? Is it already too late?”

  His questions had been rhetorical but Elena reacted as though they had been directed toward her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel like such a fool.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I thought that by simply telling you about the deal, you would have enough information to find the weapons before they could be used. But what have I accomplished? Two people are dead. My friend is a prisoner in her Moscow apartment. And my husband’s missiles are still out there somewhere.”

  “I didn’t say it was impossible, Elena. Only that it was going to be difficult.”

  “What else do you need?”

  “A paper trail would help.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “End-user certificates. Invoices. Shipping records. Transit documents. Banking records. Wire transfers. Anything we can lay our hands on to track the sale or the flow of the merchandise.”

  She was silent for a moment. Her voice, when finally she spoke, was barely audible over the sound of the wind moving in the treetops.

  “I think I know where that information might be,” she said.

  Gabriel looked at her. “Where, Elena?”

  “In Moscow.”

  “Is it somewhere we can get to it?”

  “Not you. I would have to do it for you. And I would have to do it alone.”

  My husband is a devout Stalinist. It is not something he generally acknowledges, even in Russia.”

  Elena drank a bit of the rosé, then held it up to the fading sunlight to examine the color.

  “His love of Stalin has influenced his real estate purchases. Zhukovka, the area where we now live outside Moscow, was actually a restricted dacha village once, reserved for only the most senior Party officials and a few special scientists and musicians. Ivan’s father was never senior enough in rank to earn a dacha in Zhukovka, and Ivan was always deeply resentful of this. After the fall of the Soviet Union, when it became possible for anyone with enough money to acquire property there, he bought a plot of land that had been owned by Stalin’s daughter. He also bought a large apartment in the House on the Embankment. He uses it as a pied-à-terre and keeps a private office there. I also assume he uses it as a place to take his lovers. I’ve been only a few times. It’s filled with ghosts, that building. The residents say that if you listen carefully at night, you can still hear the screaming.”

  She looked at Gabriel for a moment in silence.

  “Do you know the building I’m talking about, Mr. Allon? The House on the Embankment?”

  “The big building on Serafimovicha Street with the Mercedes-Benz star on top. It was built for the most senior members of the nomenklatura in the early thirties. During the Great Terror, Stalin turned it into a house of horror.”

  “You’ve obviously done your homework.” She peered into the wineglass. “Stalin murdered nearly eight hundred residents of that building, including the man who lived in my husband’s apartment. He was a senior official in the Foreign Ministry. Stalin’s henchmen suspected him of being a spy for the Germans, and for that he was taken to the killing fields of Butovo and shot. No one really knows how many of Stalin’s victims are buried out there. A few years ago, the government turned the property over to the Orthodox Church, and they’ve been carefully searching for the remains ever since. There is no sadder place in Russia than Butovo, Mr. Allon. Widows and orphans filing past the trenches, wondering where their husbands and fathers might lie. We mourn Stalin’s victims in Butovo while men like my husband pay millions for their flats in the House on the Embankment. Only in Russia.”

  “Where’s the flat?”

  “On the ninth floor, overlooking the Kremlin. He and Arkady keep a guard on duty there twenty-four hours a day. The doors to Ivan’s office have a wood veneer, but underneath they’re bombproof steel. There’s a keypad entrance with a biometric fingerprint scanner. Only three people have the code and fingerprint clearance: Ivan, Arkady, and me. Inside the office is a password-protected computer. There’s also another vault, same keypad and biometric scanner, same password and procedure. All my husband’s secrets are in that vault. They’re stored on disks with KGB encryption software.”

  “Are you allowed to enter his office?”

  “Under normal circumstances, only when I’m with Ivan. But, in an emergency, I can enter alone.”

  “What kind of an emergency?”

  “The kind that could happen if Ivan ever fell out of favor with the men who sit across the river in the Kremlin. Under such a scenario, he always assumed that he and Arkady would be arrested together. It would then be up to me, he said, to make certain the files hidden in that vault never fell into the wrong hands.”

  “Are you supposed to remove them?”

  She shook her head. “The interior of the vault is lined with explosives. Ivan showed me where the detonator button was hidden and taught me how to arm and fire it. He assured me the explosives had been carefully calibrated: just enough to destroy the contents of the safe without causing any other damage.”

  “What’s the password?”

  “He uses the numeric version of Stalin’s birthday: December 21, 1879. But the password alone is useless. You need my thumb as well. And don’t think about trying to create something that will fool the scanner. The guard will never open the door to someone he doesn’t recognize. I’m the only one who can get inside that apartment, and I’m the only one who can get inside the vault.”

  Gabriel stood and walked to the low stone parapet at the edge of the terrace. “There’s no way for you to take those disks without Ivan’s finding out. And if he does, he’ll kill you—just the way he killed Aleksandr Lubin and Boris Ostrovsky.”

  “He won’t be able to kill me if he can’t find me. And he won’t be able to find me if you and your friends do a good job of hiding me away.” She paused for a moment to allow her words to have their full impact. “And the children, of course. You would have to think of some way to get my children away from Ivan.”

  Gabriel turned slowly around. “Do you understand what you’re saying?”

  “I believe that during the Cold War we referred to such operations as defections.”

  “Your life as you know it will be over, Elena. You’ll lose the houses. You’ll lose the money. You’ll lose your Cassatts. No more winters in Courchevel. No more summers in Saint-Tropez. No more endless shopping excursions in Knightsbridge. You’ll never be able to set foot in Russia again. And you’ll spend the rest of your life hiding from Ivan. Think carefully, Elena. Are you really willing to give up everything in order to help us?”’

  “What
am I giving up, exactly? I’m married to a man who has sold a cache of missiles to al-Qaeda and has killed two journalists in order to keep it a secret. A man who holds me in such contempt that he thinks nothing of bringing his mistress into my home. My life is a lie. All I have are my children. I’ll get you those disks and defect to the West. All you have to do is get my children away from Ivan. Just promise me that nothing will happen to them.”

  She reached out and took hold of his wrist. His skin was ablaze, as though he were suffering from a fever.

  “Surely a man who can forge a painting by Mary Cassatt, or arrange a meeting like this, can think of some way of getting my children away from their father.”

  “You were able to see through my forgery.”

  “That’s because I’m good.”

  “You’ll have to be more than good to fool Ivan. You’ll have to be perfect. And if you’re not, you could end up dead.”

  “I’m a Leningrad girl. I grew up in a Party family. I know how to beat them at their own game. I know the rules.” She squeezed his wrist and looked directly into his eyes. “You just have to think of some way to get me back to Moscow that won’t make Ivan suspicious.”

  “And then we have to get you out again. And get the children.”

  “That, too.”

  He added more wine to her glass and sat down next to her.

  “I hear your mother hasn’t been well.”

  “How did you hear that?”

  “Because we’ve been listening to your telephone conversations. All of them.”

  “She had a dizzy spell last week. She’s been begging me to come to see her.”

  “Perhaps you should. After all, it seems to me a woman in your position might actually want to spend some time with your mother, given everything your husband has put you through.”

  “Yes, I think I might.”

  “Can your mother be trusted?”

  “She absolutely loathes Ivan. Nothing would make her happier than for me to leave him.”

  “She’s in Moscow now?”

  Elena nodded. “We brought her there after my father died. Ivan bought her a lovely apartment in a new building on the Kutuzovsky Prospekt, which she resents terribly.”

  Gabriel placed a hand thoughtfully against his chin and tilted his head slightly to one side.

  “I’m going to need a letter. It will have to be in your own hand. It will also have to contain enough personal information about you and your family to let your mother know for certain that you wrote it.”

  “And then?”

  “Mikhail is going to take you home to your husband. And you’re going to do your best to forget this conversation ever happened.”

  At that same moment, in a darkened operations room at King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv, Ari Shamron removed a pair of headphones and cast a lethal glance at Uzi Navot.

  “Tell me something, Uzi. When did I authorize a defection?”

  “I’m not sure you ever did, boss.”

  “Send the lad a message. Tell him to be in Paris by tomorrow night. Tell him I’d like a word.”

  46

  THE MASSIF DES MAURES, FRANCE

  What did you think of him?"”

  The voice had spoken to her in Russian. Elena turned around quickly and saw Mikhail standing in the open French doors, hands in his pockets, sunglasses propped on his forehead.

  “He’s remarkable,” she said. “Where did he go?”

  Mikhail acted as though he had not heard the question.

  “You can trust him, Elena. You can trust him with your life. And with the lives of your children.” He held out his hand. “I need to show you a few things before we leave.”

  Elena followed him back into the villa. In her absence, the rustic wooden table had been laid with a lovers’ banquet. Mikhail’s voice, when he spoke, had a bedroom intimacy.

  “We had lunch, Elena. It was waiting on the table just like this when we arrived. Remember it, Elena. Remember exactly how it looked.”

  “When did we eat? Before or after?”

  “Before,” he said with a slight smile of admiration. “You were nervous at first. You weren’t sure you wanted to go through with it. We relaxed. We ate some good food. We drank some good wine. The rosé did the trick.” He lifted the bottle from the ice bucket. “It’s from Bandol. Very cold. Just the way you like it.” He poured a glass and held it out to her. “Drink a bit more, Elena. It’s important you have wine on your breath when you go home.”

  She accepted the glass and raised it to her lips.

  “There’s something else you need to see,” Mikhail said. “Come with me, please.”

  He led her into the larger of the villa’s two bedrooms and instructed her to sit on the unmade bed. At his command, she took a mental photograph of the room’s contents. The chipped dresser. The wicker rocking chair. The threadbare curtains over the single window. The pair of faded Monet prints tacked up on either side of the bathroom door.

  “I was a perfect gentleman. I was everything you could have hoped for and more. I was unselfish. I saw to your every need. We made love twice. I wanted to make love a third time, but it was getting late and you were tired.”

  “I hope I didn’t disappoint you.”

  “On the contrary.”

  He stepped into the bathroom and switched on the light, then motioned for her. There was scarcely enough room for the two of them. Their shoulders brushed as he spoke.

  “You showered when we were done. That’s why you don’t smell like you’ve been making love. Please do it now, Elena. We need to get you home to your husband.”

  “Do what now?”

  “Take a shower, of course.”

  “A real shower?”

  “Yes.”

  “But we haven’t really made love.”

  “Of course we have. Two times, in fact. I wanted to do it a third time, but it was getting late. Get in the shower, Elena. Wet your hair a little. Smudge your makeup. Scrub your face hard so you look like you’ve been kissed. And use soap. It’s important you go home smelling of strange soap.”

  Mikhail opened the taps and slipped silently out of the room. Elena removed her clothing and stepped naked into the water.

  47

  SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE

  It was the part of the day that Jean-Luc liked best: the truce between lunch and dinner, when he treated himself to a pastis and calmly prepared the battle plan for the evening. Running his eye down the reservation sheet, he could see it was going to be an arduous night: an American rapper with an entourage of ten, a disgraced French politician and his new child bride, an oil sheikh from one of the emirates— Dubai or Abu Dhabi, Jean-Luc could never remember—and a shady Italian businessman who had gone to ground in Saint-Tropez because he was under indictment in Milan. For the moment, though, the dining room of Grand Joseph was a tranquil sea of linen, crystal, and silver, undisturbed, except for the pair of Spanish waifs drinking quietly at the far end of the bar. And the red Audi convertible parked directly outside the entrance, in violation of a long-standing city ordinance, not to mention countless edicts handed down by Joseph himself.

  Jean-Luc drank from his glass of pastis and took a closer look at the two occupants of the car. The man behind the wheel was in his early thirties and was wearing an obligatory pair of Italian sunglasses. He was attractive in a vaguely Slavic way and appeared quite pleased with himself. Next to him was a woman, several years older but no less attractive. Her dark hair was done up in a haphazard bun. Her dress looked slept in. Lovers, concluded Jean-Luc. No doubt about it. What’s more, he was certain he’d seen them in the restaurant quite recently. The names would come to him eventually. They always did. Jean-Luc had that kind of memory.

  The couple talked for a moment longer before finally giving each other a kiss that put to rest any lingering doubt over how they had spent their afternoon. It was the final kiss, apparently, for a moment later the woman was standing alone on the sunlit cobbles of the square and the
Audi was speeding off like a getaway car leaving the scene of a crime. The woman watched it disappear around the corner, then turned and headed toward Joseph’s entrance. It was then Jean-Luc realized that she was none other than Elena Kharkov, wife of Ivan Kharkov, Russian oligarch and party boy. But where were her bodyguards? And why was her hair mussed and her dress wrinkled? And why in God’s name was she kissing another man in a red Audi in the middle of the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville?

  She entered a moment later, her hips swinging a little more jauntily than usual, her handbag dangling from her left shoulder. “Bonsoir, Jean-Luc, ” she sang, as though there was nothing out of the ordinary, and Jean-Luc sang “Bonsoir” in return, as though he hadn’t seen her giving mouth-to-mouth to blondie boy not thirty seconds earlier. She set the bag on the bar and yanked open the zipper, then withdrew her mobile and reluctantly dialed a number. After murmuring a few words in Russian, she closed the phone with an angry snap.

  “Can I get you anything, Elena?” Jean-Luc asked.

  “A bit of Sancerre would be nice. And a cigarette if you have one.”

  “I can do the Sancerre but not the cigarette. It’s the new law. No more smoking in France.”

  “What’s the world coming to, Jean-Luc?”

  “Hard to say.” He scrutinized her over his pastis. “You all right, Elena?”

  “Never better. But I could really use that wine.”

  Jean-Luc spilled a generous measure of Sancerre into a glass, twice the usual pour, and placed it on the bar in front of her. She was raising it to her lips when two black Mercedes sedans screeched to a stop in the square. She glanced over her shoulder, frowned, and dropped a twenty on the bar.

  “Thanks anyway, Jean-Luc.”

  “It’s on the house, Elena.”

  She rose to her feet and swung her bag over her shoulder, then blew him a kiss and headed defiantly toward the door, like a freedom fighter mounting a guillotine. As she stepped outside into the sunlight, the rear door of the first car was flung open by some immense force within and a thick arm pulled her roughly inside. The cars then lurched forward in unison and vanished in a black blur. Jean-Luc watched them go, then looked down at the bar and saw that Elena had neglected to take the money. He slipped it into his pocket and raised his glass in a silent toast to her bravery. To the women, he thought. Russia’s last hope.