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

by Daniel Silva

  “I don’t want any of Ivan’s money. It’s blood money.”

  “Then do it for your children, Elena.”

  She looked at the sketch he had given her—the two children on a beach. “I have access to joint accounts in London and Moscow,” she said softly. “But if I make any large withdrawals, Ivan will know about it.”

  “He didn’t salt away any funds in Switzerland for a rainy day?”

  “There’s a safe-deposit box in Zurich where he usually keeps a couple of million in cash. You would have to empty it out for me before Ivan has a chance to put a freeze on it.”

  “Do you know the number and password?”

  She nodded her head.

  “Give them to me, Elena—for the children.”

  She recited them slowly, then looked at him curiously.

  “Don’t you want to write them down?”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “You have a spy’s memory, just like Ivan.”

  She picked at her food without appetite.

  “I must say, your performance today was quite extraordinary. You should have seen Ivan’s face when he was informed his plane couldn’t take off.” She looked at him. “I assume you have the next act well choreographed, too?”

  “We do, but all the choreography in the world isn’t worth a damn if the performer can’t pull it off.” A pause. “Last chance to bow out, Elena. And no hard feelings if you do.”

  “I’m going to finish what I started,” she said. “For Aleksandr Lubin. For Boris Ostrovsky. And for Olga.”

  Gabriel signaled the flight attendant and asked her to remove their food. Then he placed his briefcase on the tray table and opened the combination locks. He removed four items: a small plastic spray bottle, a device that looked like an ordinary MP3 player, a second rectangular device with a short USB connector cord, and a boarding pass for El Al Flight 1612, departing Moscow for Tel Aviv at 6:15 P.M. on Sunday.

  “As you can probably tell by now, Elena, timing is everything. We’ve put together a schedule for your final hours in Moscow and it is important you adhere to it rigorously. Pay close attention to everything I tell you. We have a lot of ground to cover and very little time.”

  The flight touched down at Sheremetyevo punctually at 8:05 P.M. Elena left the plane first and walked a few paces ahead through the terminal, with her handbag over her left shoulder and her overnight bag rolling along the cracked floor at her side. Arriving at passport control, Gabriel joined a line for unwanted foreigners, and by the time he was finally admitted into the country Elena was gone. Outside the terminal, he joined another endless line, this one for a taxi. He eventually climbed into the back of a rattling Lada, driven by a juvenile in mirrored sunglasses. Uzi Navot climbed into the car behind him.

  “Where are you going?” asked Gabriel’s driver.

  “Ritz-Carlton Hotel.”

  “Your first time in Moscow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Some music?”

  “No, I have a terrible headache.”

  “How about a girl instead?”

  “The hotel would be just fine, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Are you sure you can drive?”

  “No problem.”

  “Is this car actually going to make it to the Ritz?”

  “No problem.”

  “It’s getting dark out. Are you sure you need those sunglasses?”

  “They make me look like I have money. Everyone with money in Moscow wears sunglasses at night.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Can this car go any faster? I’d like to get to the Ritz sometime tonight.”

  "No problem.”

  Word of Gabriel and Elena’s arrival in Moscow reached the operations center in Grosvenor Square at 6:19 P.M. local time. Graham Seymour stood up from his chair and rubbed the kinks out of his lower back.

  “Nothing more to be done from here tonight. What say we adjourn to the Grill Room of the Dorchester for a celebratory supper? My service is buying.”

  “I don’t believe in mid-operation celebrations,” Shamron said. “Especially when I have three of my best operatives on the ground in Moscow and three more on the way.”

  Carter placed a hand on Shamron’s shoulder. “Come on, Ari. There’s nothing you can do now except sit there all night and worry yourself to death.”

  “Which is exactly what I intend to do.”

  Carter frowned and looked at Graham Seymour. “We can’t leave him here alone. He’s barely housebroken.”

  “How would you feel about Indian takeaway?”

  “Tell them to take it easy on the spices. My stomach isn’t what it used to be.”

  55

  MOSCOW

  With just one week remaining until election day, there was no escaping the face of the Russian president. It hung from every signpost and government building in the city center. It stared from the front pages of every Kremlin-friendly newspaper and flashed across the newscasts of the Kremlin-controlled television networks. It was carried aloft by roving bands of Unity Party Youth and floated godlike over the city on the side of a hot-air balloon. The president himself acted as though he were waging a real election campaign rather than a carefully scripted folly. He spent the morning campaigning in a Potemkin village in the countryside before returning to Moscow for a massive afternoon rally at Dinamo Stadium. It was, according to Radio Moscow, the largest political rally in modern Russian history.

  The Kremlin had allowed two other candidates the privilege of contesting the election, but most Russians could not recall their names, and even the foreign press had long ago stopped covering them. The Coalition for a Free Russia, the only real organized opposition force in the country, had no candidate but plenty of courage. As the president was addressing the throng in Dinamo Stadium, they gathered in Arbat Square for a counterrally. By the time the police and their plainclothes helpers had finished with them, one hundred members of Free Russia were in custody and another hundred were in the hospital. Evidence of the bloody melee was still strewn about the square late that afternoon as Gabriel, dressed in a dark corduroy flat cap and Barbour raincoat, headed down the Boulevard Ring toward the river.

  The Cathedral of Christ the Savior rose before him, its five golden onion domes dull against the heavy gray sky. The original cathedral had been dynamited by Kaganovich in 1931 on orders from Stalin, supposedly because it blocked the view from the windows of his Kremlin apartment. In its place the Bolsheviks had attempted to erect a massive government skyscraper called the Palace of Soviets, but the riverside soil proved unsuitable for such a building and the construction site flooded repeatedly. Eventually, Stalin and his engineers surrendered to the inevitable and turned the land into a public swimming pool—the world’s largest, of course.

  Rebuilt after the fall of communism at enormous public expense, the cathedral was now one of Moscow’s most popular tourist attractions. Gabriel decided to skip it and made his way directly to the river instead. Three men were standing separately along the embankment, gazing across the water toward a vast apartment building with a Mercedes-Benz star revolving slowly atop the roof. Gabriel walked past them without a word. One by one, the men turned and followed after him.

  Upon closer inspection, it was not a single building but three: a massive trapezium facing the riverfront, with two L-shaped appendages running several hundred yards inland. On the opposite side of Serafimovicha Street was a melancholy patch of brown grass and wilted trees known as Bolotnaya Square. Gabriel was seated on a nearby bench next to a fountain when Uzi Navot, Yaakov Rossman, and Eli Lavon came over the bridge. Navot sat next to him, while Lavon and Yaakov went to the edge of the fountain. Lavon was chattering away in Russian like a movie extra in a cocktail party scene. Yaakov was looking at the ground and smoking a cigarette.

  “When did Yaakov t
ake up smoking again?” asked Gabriel.

  “Last night. He’s nervous.”

  “He’s spent his career operating in the West Bank and Gaza and he’s nervous being in Moscow?”

  “You’re damn right he’s nervous being in Moscow. And you would be, too, if you had any sense.”

  “How’s our local station chief?”

  “He looks a little better than Yaakov, but not much. Let’s just say he’ll be quite happy when we get on that plane tomorrow night and get out of town.”

  “How many cars was he able to come up with?”

  “Four, just like you wanted—three old Ladas and a Volga.”

  “Please tell me they run, Uzi. The last thing we need is for the cars to break down tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry, Gabriel. They run just fine.”

  “Where did he get them?”

  “The station picked up a small fleet of old Soviet cars and trucks for a song after the fall of communism and put them on ice. All the papers are in order.”

  “And the drivers?”

  “Four field hands from Moscow Station. They all speak Russian.”

  “What time do we start leaving the hotel?”

  “I go first at two-fifty. Eli goes five minutes after that. Then Yaakov five minutes later. You’re the last to leave.”

  “It’s not much time, Uzi.”

  “It’s plenty of time. If we get here too early, we might attract unwanted attention. And that’s the last thing we want.”

  Gabriel didn’t argue. Instead, he peppered Navot with a series of questions about cell phone jammers, watch assignments, and, finally, the situation at the apartment house on the Kutuzovsky Prospekt where Elena was now staying with her mother. Navot’s answer did not surprise him.

  “Arkady Medvedev has placed the building under round-the-clock surveillance.”

  “How’s he doing it?”

  “Nothing too technical. Just a man in a car outside in the street.”

  “How often is he changing the watcher?”

  “Every four hours.”

  “Does he change the car or just the man?”

  “Just the man. The car stays in place.”

  Gabriel adjusted his tinted eyeglasses. His gray wig was making his scalp itch terribly. Navot was rubbing a sore patch above his elbow. He always seemed to develop some small physical malady whenever he was anxious about an operation.

  “We should assume that Arkady has instructed the watchers to follow Elena wherever she goes, including tomorrow afternoon when she leaves for the airport. If the watcher sees her making an unannounced detour to the House on the Embankment, he’ll tell Arkady. And Arkady is bound to be suspicious. Do you see my point, Gabriel?”

  “Yes, Uzi,” Gabriel said pedantically. “I believe I do. We have to make sure the watcher doesn’t follow her tomorrow or all our work could go up in flames in a Moscow minute.”

  “I suppose we could kill him.”

  “A minor traffic accident should suffice.”

  “Shall I tell the station chief that we need another Lada?”

  “What kind of car are the watchers using?”

  "An S-Class Mercedes.”

  “That’s not really a fair fight, is it?”

  “Not really.”

  “We’d better make it an official car, then. Something that can take a punch. Tell the station chief we want to borrow the ambassador’s limo. Come to think of it, tell him we want the ambassador, too. He’s really quite good, you know.”

  Elena Kharkov had left her mother’s apartment just one time that day, a fact that Arkady Medvedev and his watchers found neither alarming nor even the slightest bit noteworthy. The outing had been brief: a quick drive to a glittering new gourmet market up the street, where, accompanied by two of her bodyguards, she had purchased the ingredients for a summer borscht. She had spent the remainder of the afternoon in the kitchen with her mother, playfully bickering over recipes, the way they always had done when Elena was young.

  By evening, the soup had chilled sufficiently to eat. Mother and daughter sat together at the dining-room table, a candle and a loaf of black bread between them, images of the president’s rally in Dinamo Stadium playing silently on the television in the next room. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since Elena’s arrival in Moscow, yet her mother had assiduously avoided any discussion of the reason behind the unorthodox visit. She broached the topic now for the first time, not with words but by gently laying Elena’s letter upon the table. Elena looked at it a moment, then resumed eating.

  “You’re in trouble, my love.”

  “No, Mama.”

  “Who was the man you sent to deliver this letter?”

  “He’s a friend. Someone who’s helping me.”

  “Helping you with what?”

  Elena was silent.

  “You’re leaving your husband?”

  “Yes, Mama, I’m leaving my husband.”

  “Has he hurt you?”

  “Badly.”

  “Did he hit you?”

  “No, never.”

  “Is there another woman?”

  Elena nodded, eyes on her food. “She’s just a child of nineteen. I’m sure Ivan will hurt her one day, too.”

  “You should have never married him. I begged you not to marry him, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “I know.”

  “He’s a monster. His father was a monster and he’s a monster.”

  “I know.” Elena tried to eat some of the soup but had lost her appetite. “I’m sorry the children and I haven’t been spending more time with you the last few years. Ivan wouldn’t let us. It’s no excuse. I should have stood up to him.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Elena. I know more than you think I know.”

  A tear spilled onto Elena’s cheek. She brushed it away before her mother could see it. “I’m very sorry for the way I’ve behaved toward you. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “I forgive you, Elena. But I don’t understand why you came to Moscow like this.”

  “I have to take care of some business before I leave Ivan. I have to protect myself and the children.”

  “You’re not thinking about taking his money?”

  “This has nothing to do with money.”

  Her mother didn’t press the issue. She was a Party wife. She knew about secrets and walls.

  “When are you planning to tell him?”

  “Tomorrow night.” Elena paused, then added pointedly: “When I return to France.”

  “Your husband isn’t the sort of man who takes bad news well.”

  “No one knows that better than I do.”

  “Where are you planning to go?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Will you stay in Europe or will you come home to Russia?”

  “It might not be safe for me in Russia anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I might have to take the children someplace where Ivan can’t find them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  The Party wife understood perfectly. “Am I ever going to see them again, Elena? Am I ever going to see my grandchildren again?”

  “It might take some time. But, yes, you’ll be able to see them again.”

  “Time? How much time? Look at me, Elena. Time is not something I have in abundance.”

  “I’ve left some money in the bottom drawer of your dresser. It’s all the money I have in the world right now.”

  “Then I can’t take it.”

  “Trust me, Mama. You have to take that money.”

  Her mother looked down and tried to eat, but now she, too, had lost her appetite. And so they sat there for a long time, clutching each other’s hands across the table, faces wet with tears. Finally, her mother picked up the letter and touched it to the flame. Elena gazed at the television and saw Russia’s new tsar accepting the adulation of the masses. We cannot live as normal people, she thought. And we never wi
ll.

  Against all his considered judgment and in violation of all operational doctrine, written and unwritten, Gabriel did not immediately return to his room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Instead, he wandered farther south, to the colony of apartment houses looming over October Square, and made his way to the building known to the locals as the House of Dogs. It had no view of the Moscow River or the Kremlin—only of its identical neighbor, and of a parking lot filled with shabby little cars, and of the Garden Ring, a euphemism if there ever was one, which thundered night and day on its northern flank. A biting wind was blowing out of the north, a reminder that the Russian “summer” had come and gone and that soon it would be winter again. The poet in him thought it appropriate. Perhaps there never had been a summer at all, he thought. Perhaps it had been an illusion, like the dream of Russian democracy.

  In the small courtyard outside Entrance C, it appeared that the babushkas and the skateboard punks had declared a cessation of hostilities. Six skinny Militia boys were milling about in the doorway itself, watched over by two plainclothes FSB toughs in leather jackets. The Western reporters who had gathered at the building after the attempt on Olga Sukhova’s life had given up their vigil or, more likely, had been chased away. Indeed, there was no evidence of support for Olga’s cause, other than two desperate words, written in red spray paint, on the side of the building: FREE OLGA! A local wit had crossed out the word FREE and replaced it with FUCK. And who said the Russians didn’t have a sense of humor?

  Gabriel walked around the enormous building and, as expected, found security men standing watch at the other five entrances as well. Hiking north along the Leninsky Prospekt, he ran through the operation one final time. It was perfect, he thought. With one glaring exception. When Ivan Kharkov discovered his family and his secret papers had been stolen, he was going to take it out on someone. And that someone was likely to be Olga Sukhova.

  56

  SAINT-TROPEZ, MOSCOW

  The undoing of Ivan Borisovich Kharkov, real estate developer, venture capitalist, and international arms trafficker, began with a phone call. It was placed to his Saint-Tropez residence by one François Boisson, regional director of the Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile, the French aviation authority. It appeared, said Monsieur Boisson, that there was a rather serious problem regarding recent flights by Monsieur Kharkov’s airplane—problems, the director said ominously, that could not be discussed over the telephone. He then instructed Monsieur Kharkov to appear at Nice airport at one that afternoon to answer a few simple questions. If Monsieur Kharkov chose not to appear, his plane would be confiscated and held for a period of at least ninety days. After an anti-French tirade lasting precisely one minute and thirty-seven seconds, Ivan promised to come at the appointed hour. Monsieur Boisson said he looked forward to the meeting and rang off.