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

by Daniel Silva

“What are you doing? How dare you touch me! Who do you think you are?”

  Luzhkov removed his hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry what?”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kharkov. I shouldn’t have placed my hand on you.”

  “No, Pyotr, you should not have placed your hand on me. Wait until Ivan finds out about this!”

  She set out down the hallway toward the office. The bodyguard followed.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kharkov, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to enter the office unless your husband is with you.”

  “Except in the event of an emergency.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And I’m telling you this is an emergency. Go back to your post, you fool. I can’t punch in the code with you looking over my shoulder.”

  “If there is an emergency, Mrs. Kharkov, why wasn’t I notified by Arkady Medvedev?”

  “You might find this difficult to believe, Pyotr, but my husband does not tell Arkady everything. He asked me to collect some important papers from his office and bring them to France. Now, ask yourself something, Pyotr: How do you think Ivan is going to react if I miss my plane because of this?”

  The bodyguard held his ground. “I’m just doing my job, Mrs. Kharkov. And my instructions are very simple. No one is allowed to enter that office without clearance from Mr. Kharkov or Arkady Medvedev. And that includes you.”

  Elena looked toward the ceiling and sighed in exasperation. “Then I suppose you’ll just have to call Arkady and tell him that I’m here.” She pointed to the telephone resting on a small decorative table. “Call him, Pyotr. But do it quickly. Because if I miss my flight to France, I’m going to tell Ivan to cut out your tongue.”

  The guard turned his back to Elena and snatched up the receiver. A few seconds later, he reached down, brow furrowed, and rattled the switch several times.

  “Something wrong, Pyotr?”

  “The phone doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “That’s odd. Try my cell phone.”

  The guard placed the receiver back in the cradle and turned around, only to find Elena with her arm extended and a spray bottle in her hand. The spray bottle that Gabriel had given her on the plane. She squeezed the button once, sending a cloud of atomized liquid directly into his face. The guard struggled for several seconds to maintain his balance and for an instant Elena feared the sedative hadn’t worked. Then he fell to the floor with a heavy thud, toppling the table in the process. Elena stared at him anxiously as he lay sprawled on the floor. Then she sprayed his face a second time.

  That’s what you get for touching me, she thought. Swine.

  Nine floors beneath her, a fat man in a gray fedora entered the foyer for the private elevators, quietly cursing his mobile phone. He looked at Luka Osipov with an expression of mild frustration and shrugged his lumpy shoulders.

  “The damn thing was working a minute ago, but when I got near the building it stopped. Perhaps it’s the ghost of Stalin. My neighbor claims to have seen him wandering the halls at night. I’ve never had the misfortune of meeting him.”

  The elevator doors opened; the tubby Russian disappeared inside. Luka Osipov walked over to the lobby windows and gazed into the street. At least two other people—a woman walking along the sidewalk and a taxi driver standing next to his car—were having obvious difficulty with their cell phones. The damn thing was working a minute ago, but when I got near the building it stopped. . . Though Comrade Stalin was a man of great power, Luka Osipov doubted whether his ghost had anything to do with the sudden interruption in cellular communications. He suspected it was something far more tangible. Something like a signal jammer.

  He tried his mobile one more time without success, then walked over to the porter’s desk and asked to use his landline telephone. After ascertaining that Osipov intended to make a local call, the porter turned the instrument around and told the bodyguard to make it quick. The admonition was unnecessary. The phone wasn’t working.

  “It’s dead,” Osipov said.

  “It was working a minute ago.”

  “Have you received any complaints from anyone in the building about trouble with their phones?”

  “No, nothing.”

  Luka left the porter’s desk and stepped outside. By the time he reached the limousine, the driver had his window down. Luka poked his head through the opening and told the man in the passenger seat to go inside and stand guard in the foyer. Then he turned toward the Kremlin and started walking. By the time he reached the middle of the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, his phone was working again. The first call he made was to the Sparrow Hills.

  58

  MOSCOW

  The floor was hardwood and recently polished. Even so, it took every bit of Elena’s strength to drag the two-hundred-pound unconscious body of Pyotr Luzhkov into the bathroom of the master bedroom suite. She locked the door from the inside, then made her way back to the entrance of Ivan’s office. The keypad was mounted at eye level on the left side. After punching in the eight-digit access code, she placed her thumb on the scanner. An alarm chirped three times and the armored door eased slowly open. Elena stepped inside and opened her handbag.

  The desk, like the man who worked there, was heavy and dark and entirely lacking in grace. It also happened to be one of Ivan’s most prized possessions, for it had once belonged to Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB who had succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as Soviet leader in 1982. The computer monitor and keyboard sat next to a silver-framed photograph of Ivan’s father in his KGB general’s uniform. The CPU was concealed beneath the desk on the floor. Elena crouched down and pressed the POWER button, then opened a small door on the front of the unit and plugged in the USB device that Gabriel had given her on the plane. After a few seconds, the drive engaged and the computer began to whir. Elena checked the monitor: a few characters of Hebrew, a time bar indicating that the job of copying the data files would take two minutes.

  She glanced at her wristwatch, then walked over to the set of ornate bookcases on the opposite side of the room. The button was hidden behind Ivan’s first edition of Anna Karenina—the second volume, to be precise. When pressed, the button caused the bookcases to part, revealing the door to Ivan’s vault. She punched the same eight-digit code into the keypad and again placed her thumb on the scanner pad. Three chirps sounded, followed this time by the dull thud of the locks.

  The interior light came on automatically as she pulled open the heavy door. Ivan’s secret disks, the gray matter of his network of death, stood in a neat row on a shelf. One shelf below were some of the proceeds of that network: rubles, dollars, euros, Swiss francs. She started to reach for the money but stopped when she remembered the blood. The blood shed by men wielding Ivan’s weapons. The blood of children forced to fight in Ivan’s wars. She left the money on the shelf and took only the disks. The disks that would help Gabriel find the missiles. The disks that Gabriel would use to destroy her husband.

  At the edge of Serafimovicha Street lies a broad traffic island. Like most in Moscow, it is cluttered day and night with parked cars. Some of the cars that afternoon were foreign and new; others were Russian and very old, including a battered Lada of uncertain color and registry occupied by Uzi Navot and his driver from Moscow Station. Navot did not appear happy, having witnessed several developments that had led him to conclude the operation was rapidly unraveling. He had shared that view with the rest of his teammates in the calmest voice he could manage. But now, as he watched Luka Osipov coming back over the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge at a dead sprint, he knew that the time for composure had passed. “He’s on his way back,” he murmured into his wrist mike. “And it looks like we’re in serious trouble.”

  Though Shmuel Peled had no radio, the steadily darkening expression on Gabriel’s face told him everything he needed to know.

  "Are we losing her, boss? Tell me we’re not losing her.”

  “We’ll know soon enough. If she comes out of that building with he
r handbag over her left shoulder, everything is fine. If she doesn’t . . .” He left the thought unfinished.

  “What do we do now?”

  “We wait. And we hope to God she can talk her way back into her car.”

  “And if she doesn’t come out?”

  “Speak Russian, Shmuel. You’re supposed to be speaking Russian.”

  The young driver resumed his ersatz Russian monologue. Gabriel stared at the western façade of the House on the Embankment and listened for the sound of Uzi Navot’s voice.

  Luka Osipov had gained fifteen pounds since leaving the Alpha Group and lost much of his old physical fitness. As a result, he was breathing heavily by the time he arrived back at the porter’s desk in the lobby.

  “I need to get into Apartment 9A immediately.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible—not without a security card for the elevator and a key for the apartment itself.”

  “I believe a woman under my protection is in grave danger in that apartment at this very moment. And I need you to get me inside.”

  “I’m sorry, but it’s against policy.”

  “Do you know who I work for, you fool?”

  “You work for Mrs. Kharkov.”

  “No, I work for Ivan Kharkov. And do you know what Ivan Kharkov is going to do if anything happens to his wife?”

  The porter swallowed hard. “I can get you up to the ninth floor but I can’t get you into that apartment. Mr. Kharkov doesn’t let us keep a key on file.”

  “Leave that part to me.”

  “Good luck,” the porter said as he came out from behind his desk. “From what I hear, you’re going to need a Red Army tank to get into that place.”

  Elena closed the bookcases, removed the USB device from the computer, and switched off the power. Stepping into the hallway, she glanced at her watch: 4:02 ... The entire thing had taken just eight minutes. She shoved the device into the bag and closed the zipper, then punched the eight-digit code into the keypad. While the heavy door swung slowly shut, she righted the fallen table and returned the telephone to its proper place. After taking one last look around to make certain everything was in order, she started for the door.

  It was then she heard the pounding. A large male fist, interspersed with a large male palm. She reckoned it was the same sort of pounding the occupants of this house of horrors had heard nearly every night during the Great Terror. How many had been dragged from this place to their deaths? She couldn’t remember the exact number now. A hundred? A thousand? What difference did it make. She only knew she might soon join them. Perhaps one day she would be the answer in a macabre Russian trivia question. Who was the last person to be taken from the House on the Embankment and murdered? Elena Kharkov, first wife of Ivan Borisovich Kharkov . . .

  Like all those who had heard the dreaded knock, she entertained thoughts of not answering it. But she did answer. Everyone answered eventually. She did so not in fear but in a fit of feigned outrage, with her handbag over her left shoulder and her right hand wrapped around the plastic spray bottle in her coat pocket. Standing in the vestibule, his face pale with anger and damp with sweat, was Luka Osipov. A gun was in his hand and it was pointed directly at Elena’s heart. She feared the gun might go off if she attempted to deploy the spray bottle, so she drew her empty hand slowly from her pocket and placed it on her hip, frowning at her bodyguard in bewilderment.

  “Luka Ustinovich,” she said, using his patronymic. “Whatever’s gotten into you?”

  “Where’s Pyotr?”

  “Who’s Pyotr?”

  “The guard who’s supposed to be on duty at this flat.”

  “There was no one here when I arrived, you idiot. Now, let’s go.”

  She tried to step into the vestibule. The bodyguard blocked her path.

  “What game do you think you’re playing, Luka? We have to get to the airport. Trust me, Luka Ustinovich, the last thing you want is for me to miss my plane.”

  The bodyguard said nothing. Instead, he reached into the elevator, with the gun still aimed at her abdomen, and sent the carriage back down to the lobby. Then he pushed her into the apartment and slammed the door.

  59

  GROSVENOR SQUARE, LONDON

  Shamron’s lighter flared in the gloom of the ops center, briefly illuminating his face. His eyes were focused on the large central display screen at the front of room, where Uzi Navot’s last transmission from Moscow flashed with all the allure of a dead body lying in a gutter.

  BG ENTERING HOTE . . . TROUBLE . . .

  BG stood for bodyguard. HOTE for House on the Embankment. TROUBLE required no translation. Trouble was trouble.

  The screen went black. A new message appeared.

  AM ENTERING HOTE . . . ADVISE . . .

  The initials AM stood for Arkady Medvedev. The word ADVISE meant that Gabriel’s meticulously planned operation was in serious danger of crashing and burning, with significant loss of life a distinct possibility.

  “They’re your boys,” Carter said. “It’s your call.”

  Shamron flicked ash into his coffee cup. “We sit tight. We give her a chance.”

  Carter looked at the digital clock. “It is now four-fifteen, Ari. If your team is to have any chance of getting on that plane, they need to be in their cars and heading to the airport in the next ten minutes.”

  “Airplanes are complicated machines, Adrian. A lot of little things can go wrong with an airplane.”

  “It might be a good idea to get that over and done with.” Shamron picked up a secure telephone connected to the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard. A few terse words in Hebrew. A calm glance at Carter.

  “It appears a cabin pressure warning light is now flashing in the cockpit of El Al Flight 1612. Until that problem is resolved to the satisfaction of the captain, a man who happens to be a decorated former IAF fighter pilot, that aircraft isn’t going anywhere.”

  “Well played,” said Carter.

  “How long can our French friends keep Ivan tied up in Nice?”

  “Monsieur Boisson is just getting started. The children, however, are another matter entirely. We have a decision to make, Ari. What do we do about the children?”

  “I wouldn’t want my children sitting around a gendarmerie station, would you, Adrian?”

  “Can’t say I would.”

  “Then let’s take them. Who knows? Depending on what happens inside the apartment building in the next ten minutes, we may need them.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m not going to give her up without a fight, Adrian, and you can be sure Gabriel isn’t either.” Shamron dropped his cigarette into his coffee cup and gave it a swirl. “Call the French. Get me Ivan’s children.”

  Carter picked up the secure line connected to the French ops center in Paris. Shamron looked at the message screen, where Uzi Navot’s last message flashed incessantly.

  AM ENTERING HOTE . . . ADVISE . . .

  AM ENTERING HOTE . . . ADVISE . . .

  AM ENTERING HOTE . . . ADVISE . . .

  They had placed Sonia and the children in a pleasant holding room and plied them with cold fruit juice and ice cream. A pretty young female gendarme remained with them at all times, more for company than for reasons of security. They watched cartoons and played a noisy game of cards that made no sense to anyone, least of all the children themselves. The chief duty officer made them honorary gendarmes for the day and even allowed Nikolai to inspect his firearm. Later, he would tell his colleagues that the boy knew rather too much about guns for a child of seven.

  After receiving a telephone call from headquarters in Paris, the duty officer returned to the holding room and announced that it was time for everyone to go home. Anna and Nikolai greeted this news not with joy but tears; for them, the arrest and detention had been a great adventure and they were in no hurry to return home to their palace by the sea. They were finally coaxed into leaving with a promise they could come back to play anytime they wished. As they hea
ded down the central corridor of the station, Anna held the hand of the female gendarme while Nikolai lectured the duty officer about the superiority of Russian-made weapons. Sonia asked after the whereabouts of the bodyguards but received no response.

  They left the station not through the front entrance but through a rear door that gave onto an enclosed courtyard. Several official Renaults were parked there, along with an older-model Peugeot wagon. Seated behind the wheel, wearing a white Lacoste polo, was a man with gray hair. Seeing the children, he climbed out of the car with a tranquil smile on his face and opened the rear door. Sonia froze and turned to the duty officer in confusion.

  “What’s going on? Who is this man?”

  “This is Monsieur Henri. He’s a good man. He’s going to take you and the children somewhere safe.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Kharkov is in a bit of trouble at the moment. Mrs. Kharkov has made arrangements to place the children in the care of Monsieur Henri until she returns. She has asked that you remain with them. She promises you will be extremely well compensated. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Mademoiselle?”

  “I think so.”

  “Very good. Now, get into the car, please. And try not to look so frightened. It will only upset the children. And that is the last thing they need at a time like this.”

  At Moscow’s Sheremetyevo 2 Airport, Chiara was standing at her post at the check-in counter when the status window on the departure board switched from ON TIME to DELAYED. Ten feet away, in the crowded passenger lounge, 187 weary voices groaned in unison. One brave soul, a bearded Orthodox Jew in a dark suit, approached the counter and demanded an explanation. “It’s a minor mechanical problem, ” Chiara explained calmly. “The delay shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.” The man returned to his seat, skeptical he had been told the truth. Chiara turned and looked up at the board: DELAYED . . .

  Walk away, Gabriel, she thought. Turn around and walk away.

  60

  MOSCOW

  The clouds opened up at the same instant Gabriel’s earpiece crackled with the sound of Uzi Navot’s voice.