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

by Daniel Silva

  "We’re history.”

  "What are you talking about?”

  “The Old Man just issued the order to abort.”

  “Tell him I want ten more minutes.”

  “I’m not telling him anything. I’m following his order.”

  “You go. I’ll meet you at Sheremetyevo.”

  “We’re out of here. Now.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “Get off the radio and into your car.”

  Gabriel and Peled rose in unison and walked calmly from the park in the driving rain. Peled headed to the Volga; Gabriel, to Bolotnaya Square. Navot and Lavon joined him. Navot was wearing a waxed cap but Lavon was hatless. His wispy hair was soon plastered to his scalp.

  “Why are we here?” Navot demanded. “Why are we standing in the rain in this godforsaken park when we should be in our cars heading to the airport?”

  “Because I’m not leaving yet, Uzi.”

  “Of course you are, Gabriel.” Navot tapped the PDA. “It says right here you are: ’Abort at 5 P.M. Moscow time and board flight at SVO.’ That’s what the message says. I’m quite certain it’s not a suggestion. In fact, I’m sure it is a direct order from the Memuneh himself.”

  Memuneh was a Hebrew word that meant “the one in charge.” For as long as anyone in the Office could remember, it had been reserved for a single man: Ari Shamron.

  “You can stand here in the park and shout at me until you’re hoarse, Uzi, but I’m not leaving her behind.”

  “It’s not your call, Gabriel. You made a promise to Shamron in Paris. If she doesn’t come out of that building within the allotted period of time, you leave.”

  Gabriel wiped the rain from his tinted glasses. “You’d better get moving, Uzi. The traffic to Sheremetyevo can be terrible this time of night.”

  Navot seized Gabriel’s upper arm and squeezed it hard enough for Gabriel’s hand to go numb.

  “What do you intend to do, Uzi? Drag me to the car?”

  “If I have to.”

  “That might cause a bit of a spectacle, don’t you think?”

  “At least it will be brief. And unlike your desire to stay here in Moscow, chances are it won’t be fatal.”

  “Let go of my arm, Uzi.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Gabriel. I’m the chief of Special Ops, not you. You’re nothing but an independent contractor. Therefore, you report to me. And I am telling you to get into that car and come with us to the airport.”

  Eli Lavon carefully removed Navot’s hand from Gabriel’s arm. “That’s enough, Uzi. He’s not getting on the plane.”

  Navot shot Lavon a dark look. “Thanks for the support, Eli. You Wrath of God boys always stick together, don’t you?”

  “I don’t want him to stay behind any more than you do. I just know better than to waste my breath trying to talk him out of it. He has a hard head.”

  “He’ll need it.” The rain was now streaming off the brim of Navot’s hat onto his face. “Do you know what’s going to happen if I get on that plane without you? The Old Man will line me up against the wall and use me for target practice.”

  Gabriel held up his wristwatch so Navot could see it. “Five o’clock, Uzi. Better be running along. And take Eli with you. He’s a fine watcher, but he’s never been one for the rough stuff.”

  Navot gave Gabriel a Shamronian stare. He was done arguing.

  “If I were you, I’d stay away from your hotel.” He reached into his coat pocket and handed Gabriel a single key. “I’ve been carrying this around in case we needed a crash pad. It’s an old Soviet wreck of a building near Dinamo Stadium, but it will do.”

  Navot recited the street address, the building number, and the number of the apartment. “Once you’re inside, signal the station and bar the door. We’ll put in an extraction team. With a bit of luck, you’ll still be there when they arrive.”

  Then he turned away without another word and pounded across the rain-swept square toward his car. Lavon watched him for a moment, then looked at Gabriel.

  “Sure you don’t want some company?”

  “Get to the airport, Eli. Get on that plane.”

  “What would you like me to tell your wife?”

  Gabriel hesitated a moment, then said, “Tell her I’m sorry, Eli. Tell her I’ll make it up to her somehow.”

  “It’s possible you might be making a terrible mistake.”

  “It won’t be the first time.”

  “Yes, but this is Moscow. And it could be the last.”

  Navot’s transmission appeared on the screen of the London ops center at 5:04 Moscow time: LEAVING FOR SVO ... MINUS ONE . . . Adrian Carter swore softly and looked at Shamron, who was turning over his old Zippo lighter in his fingertips.

  Two turns to the right, two turns to the left . . .

  “It seems you were right,” Carter said.

  Shamron said nothing.

  Two turns to the right, two to the left . . .

  “The French say Ivan is about to blow, Ari. They say the situation at Nice is getting tenuous. They would like a resolution, one way or the other.”

  “Perhaps it’s time to let Ivan see the scope of the dilemma he is now facing. Tell your cyberwarriors to turn the phones back on in Moscow. And tell the French to confiscate Ivan’s plane. And, while they’re at it, take his passport, too.”

  “That should get his attention.”

  Shamron closed his eyes.

  Two turns to the right, two to the left . . .

  By the time Ivan Kharkov emerged from the airport conference room at the Côte d’Azur International Airport, his anger had reached dangerous levels. It exploded into mild physical violence when he found his two bodyguards dozing on the couch. They stormed down a flight of stairs together, Ivan ranting in Russian to no one in particular, and climbed into the armored Mercedes limousine for the return trip to Saint-Tropez. When the car was two hundred feet from the building, Ivan’s phone rang. It was Arkady Medvedev calling from Moscow.

  “Where have you been, Ivan Borisovich?”

  “Stuck at the airport, dealing with my plane.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s been going on?”

  “The French are trying to steal my plane. And my passport. That’s what’s going on, Arkady.”

  “They’re trying to steal more than that. They’ve got your children, too. It’s part of some elaborate operation against you. And it’s not just going on there in France. Something’s happening here in Moscow, too.”

  Ivan made no response. Arkady Medvedev knew it was a dangerous sign. When Ivan was merely angry, he swore violently. But when he was mad enough to kill, he went dead silent. He finally instructed his chief of security to tell him everything he knew. Medvedev did so in a form of colloquial Russian that was nearly indecipherable to a Western ear.

  “Where is she now, Arkady?”

  “Still in the apartment.”

  “Who put her up to this?”

  “She claims she did it on her own.”

  “She’s lying. I need to know what I’m up against. And quickly.”

  “You need to get out of France.”

  “With no plane and no passport?”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Throw a party, Arkady. Somewhere outside the city. See if anyone shows up without an invitation.”

  “And if they do?”

  “Give them a message from me. Let them know that if they fuck with Ivan Kharkov, Ivan Kharkov is going to fuck with them.”

  61

  SHEREMET YEVO 2 AIRPORT, MOSCOW

  They arrived at intervals of five minutes and made their way separately through security and passport control. Uzi Navot came last, hat pulled low over his eyes, raincoat drenched. He walked the length of the terminal twice, searching for watchers, before finally making his way to Gate A23. Lavon and Yaakov were gazing nervously out at the tarmac. Between them was an empty seat. Navot lowered himself into it and rested his attaché case on his kn
ees. He stared hard at Chiara for a moment, like a middle-aged traveler admiring a beautiful younger woman.

  “How’s she doing?”

  Lavon answered. “How do you think she’s doing?”

  “She has no one to blame but her husband.”

  “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time for recriminations later.” Lavon checked the departure board. “How much longer do you think Shamron is going to hold the plane?”

  “As long as he thinks he can.”

  “By my estimate, she’s been in the hands of Arkady Medvedev for two hours now. How long do you think it took him to tear her bag apart, Uzi? How long did it take him to find Ivan’s disks and Gabriel’s electronic toys?”

  Navot typed a brief message on his BlackBerry. Two minutes later, the status window in the departure monitor changed from DELAYED to NOW BOARDING. One hundred eighty-seven weary passengers began to applaud. Three anxious men stared gloomily through the window at the shimmering tarmac.

  “Don’t worry, Uzi. You did the right thing.”

  “Just don’t ever tell Chiara. She’ll never forgive me.” Navot shook his head slowly. “It’s never a good idea to bring spouses into the field. You’d think Gabriel would have learned that by now.”

  There was a time in Moscow, not long ago, when a man sitting alone in a parked car would have come under immediate suspicion. But that was no longer the case. These days, sitting in parked cars, or cars stuck in traffic, was what Muscovites did.

  Gabriel was on the northern edge of Bolotnaya Square, next to a billboard plastered with a dour portrait of the Russian president. He did not know whether the spot was legal or illegal. He did not care. He cared only that he could see the entrance of the House on the Embankment. He left the engine running and the radio on. It sounded to Gabriel like a news analysis program of some kind: long cuts of taped remarks by the Russian president interspersed with commentary by a panel of journalists and experts. Their words were surely laudatory, for the Kremlin tolerated no other kind. Forward as one! as the president liked to say. And keep your criticism to yourself.

  Twenty minutes into his vigil, a pair of underfed Militia officers rounded the corner, tunics glistening. Gabriel turned up the radio and nodded cordially. For a moment, he feared they might be contemplatinga shakedown. Instead, they frowned at his old Volga, as if to say he wasn’t worth their time on a rainy night. Next came a man with lank, dark hair, and an open bottle of Baltika beer in his hand. He shuffled over to Gabriel’s window and opened his coat, revealing a veritable pharmacy underneath. Gabriel motioned for him to move on, then flicked the wipers and focused his gaze on the building. Specifically, on the lights burning in the ninth-floor apartment overlooking the Kremlin.

  They went dark at 7:48 P.M. The woman who emerged from the building soon after had no handbag hanging over her left shoulder. Indeed, she had no handbag at all. She was walking more swiftly than normal; Luka Osipov, bodyguard turned captor, held one arm while a colleague held another. Arkady Medvedev walked a few steps behind, head lowered against the rain, eyes up and on the move.

  A Mercedes waited at the curb. The seating arrangements had clearly been determined in advance, for the boarding process was accomplished with admirable speed and efficiency: Elena in the backseat, wedged between bodyguards; Arkady Medvedev in the front passenger seat, a mobile phone now pressed to his ear. The car crept to the end of Serafimovicha Street, then disappeared in a black blur. Gabriel counted to five and slipped the Volga into gear. Forward as one.

  62

  MOSCOW

  They roared southward out of the city on a road that bore Lenin’s name and was lined with monuments to Lenin’s folly. Apartment blocks—endless apartments blocks. The biggest apartment blocks Gabriel had ever seen. It was as if the masters of the Communist Party, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to uproot the entire population of the world’s biggest country and resettle it here, along a few wretched miles of the Leninsky Prospekt. And to think that by the end of September it would be covered beneath a blanket of snow and ice.

  At that hour, the Leninsky was two different roads: inbound lanes clogged with Muscovites returning from the weekend at their dachas, outbound lanes filled with giant trucks thundering out of the capital toward the distant corners of the empire. The trucks were both his allies and enemies. One moment, they granted Gabriel a place to hide. The next, they obscured his view. Shmuel Peled had been right about the Volga—it did run decently for a twenty-year-old piece of Soviet-made junk—but it was no match for the finest automobile Bavaria had to offer. The Volga topped out at about eighty-five, and did so with much protest and pulling to the left. Its little wipers were altogether useless against the heavy rain and road spray, and the defroster fan was little more than a warm exhalation of breath against the glass. In order to see, Gabriel had to lower both front windows to create a cross draft. Each passing truck hurled water against the left side of his face.

  The rain tapered, and a few rays of weak sunlight peered through a slit in the clouds near the horizon. Gabriel kept his foot pressed to the floor and his eyes fastened to the taillights of the Mercedes. His thoughts, however, were focused on the scene he had just witnessed at the House on the Embankment. How had he managed it? How had Arkady convinced her to walk into the car without a fight? Was it with a threat or a promise? With the truth or a lie, or some combination of both? And why were they now hurtling down the Leninsky Prospekt, into the yawning chasm of the Russian countryside?

  Gabriel was pondering that final question when he felt the first impact on his rear bumper: a car, much bigger and faster than his own, headlights doused. He responded by pressing the accelerator to the floor but the Volga had nothing more to give. The car behind gave him one more tap, almost as a warning, then moved in swiftly for the kill.

  What followed was the classic maneuver that every good traffic policeman knows. The aggressor initiates contact with the victim, right front bumper to left rear bumper. The aggressor then accelerates hard and the victim is sent spinning out of control. The impact of such a tactic is magnified substantially when there is a sharp imbalance in the weight and power of the two vehicles—for example, when one is an S-Class Mercedes-Benz and the other is a rattletrap old Volga already being pushed to the breaking point. How many times Gabriel’s car actually rotated, he would never know. He only knew that, when it was over, the car was resting on its side in a field of mud at the edge of a pine forest and he was bleeding heavily from the nose.

  Two of Arkady Medvedev’s finest waded into the mud to retrieve him, though their motives were hardly altruistic. One was a skinheaded giant with a right hand like a sledgehammer. The hammer struck Gabrielonly once, for once was all that was necessary. He toppled backward, into the mud, and for an instant saw upside-down pine trees. Then the trees streaked skyward toward the clouds like missiles. And Gabriel blacked out.

  At that same moment, El Al Flight 1612 was rapidly gaining altitude over the suburbs of Moscow and banking hard toward the south. Uzi Navot was seated next to the window in the final row of first class, hand wrapped around a glass of whiskey, eyes scanning the vast carpet of winking yellow lights beneath him. For a few seconds, he could see it all clearly: the ring roads around the Kremlin, the snakelike course of the river, the thunderous prospekts leading like spokes into the endless expanse of the Russian interior. Then the plane knifed into the clouds and the lights of Moscow vanished. Navot pulled down his window shade and lifted the whiskey to his lips. I should have broken his arm, he thought. I should have broken the little bastard’s arm.

  Gabriel opened his eyes slowly. Not eyes, he thought. Eye. The left eye only. The right eye was unresponsive. The right eye was the one that had been punched by the bald giant. It was now swollen shut and crusted over with clotted blood.

  Before attempting movement, he took careful stock of his situation. He was sprawled on the concrete floor of what appeared to be a warehouse, with his hands cuffed at his back and his legs in som
ething resembling a running position, right leg lifted in front of him, left extended backward. His right shoulder was pressing painfully against the floor, as was the right side of his face. Somewhere, a light was burning, but his own corner of the building was in semidarkness. A few feet away stood a stack of large wooden crates with Cyrillic markings on the sides. Gabriel struggled to make out the words but could not. The alphabet was still like hieroglyphics to him; the crates could have been filled with tins of caviar or vials of deadly polonium and he would have never known the difference.

  He rolled onto his back and lifted his knees to his chest, then levered himself into a sitting position. The exertion of the movement, combined with the fact that he was now upright, caused his right eye to begin throbbing with catastrophic pain. He reckoned the blow had fractured the orbit around the eye. For all he knew, he no longer had an eye, just an immense crater in the side of his head where once his eye had been.

  He leaned against the wooden crates and looked around him. There were other stacks of crates, towering stacks of crates, receding into the distance like the apartment buildings of the Leninsky Prospekt. From his limited vantage point, Gabriel could only see two rows, but he had the impression there were many more. He doubted they were filled with caviar. Not even the gluttonous Ivan Kharkov could devour that much caviar.

  He heard the sound of footsteps approaching from a distance. Two sets. Both heavy. Both male. One man significantly larger than the other. The big man was the bald giant who had hit him. The smaller man was several years older, with a fringe of iron-gray hair and a skull that looked as if it been specially designed to withstand much blunt trauma.

  “Where are the children?” asked Arkady Medvedev.

  “What children?” replied Gabriel.

  Medvedev nodded to the giant, then stepped away as if he didn’t want his clothing to be spattered with the blood. The sledgehammer crashed into Gabriel’s skull a second time. Same eye, same result. Pine trees and missiles. Then nothing at all.