The English Girl: A Novel (Gabriel Allon)

  Strelkin started toward the door.

  “One more thing, Vadim.”

  Strelkin stopped.

  “Do the same thing in St. Petersburg,” Milchenko said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  The man in question was at that moment resting comfortably in an isolated dacha in Tver Oblast, along with the other members of the Israeli team. Shortly after 5:00 a.m., having passed yet another sleepless night, they departed the dacha in twos and threes and made their way to the train station in Okulovka—all but Christopher Keller, who remained at the dacha alone to keep watch on Pavel Zhirov and the driver.

  The train from Okulovka was late in departing, which was not true of El Al Flight 625. It left Ben Gurion Airport promptly at 1:10 a.m. and landed in St. Petersburg two minutes ahead of schedule, at 8:03 a.m. Its twelve-member flight and cabin crew remained with the aircraft until it had been emptied of its passengers. Then, after clearing customs, they climbed into an unmarked El Al ground services van for the twenty-minute drive to the Astoria Hotel, where they had rooms for the day. One of the flight attendants was a tall woman with dark hair and eyes the color of caramel. After leaving her small rolling bag at the foot of her bed, she walked to a room at the end of the corridor and, ignoring the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the latch, knocked softly. Receiving no answer, she knocked again. This time the door opened a few inches, just wide enough for her to pass, and she slipped inside.

  What are you doing here?” asked Gabriel.

  Chiara lifted her eyes to the ceiling, as if to remind her husband, the future chief of Israeli intelligence, that they were in a Russian hotel room and that the Russian hotel room was probably bugged. He indicated to her that the room was clean. Then he repeated the question. His hands were on his hips and his green eyes were narrowed. He was angrier than Chiara had seen him in a very long time.

  “Silly me,” she said, “but I actually allowed myself to think that you would be happy to see me.”

  “How did you manage this?”

  “We needed girls for the flight crew. I volunteered.”

  “And Uzi couldn’t find anyone other than my wife?”

  “Actually, Uzi was against it.”

  “So how did you get on the team?”

  “I went behind Uzi’s back to Shamron,” she said. “I told him that I wanted in on the operation, and that if he didn’t give me what I wanted, I wouldn’t give him what he wanted.”

  “Me?”

  She smiled.

  “Clever girl.”

  “I learned from the best.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t want to come to Russia. I thought you said you wouldn’t be able to hold up under the pressure.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to share this with you.” Chiara walked over to the window and peered into the darkness of St. Isaac’s Square. “Does it ever get light here?”

  “This is light.”

  Chiara drew the blind over the window and turned around. In her blue skirt and crisp white blouse, she looked irresistible. Gabriel was no longer angry that she had come to Russia against his wishes. In fact, he was pleased to have her company. It would make the waiting of the next few hours much more bearable.

  “What’s she like?” Chiara asked.

  “Madeline?”

  “Is that what we call her?”

  “It’s the only name she knows,” said Gabriel. “She was . . .”

  “What?”

  “Raised by wolves,” he said.

  “Maybe she’s a wolf, too.”

  “She isn’t.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I’m sure, Chiara.”

  “Because she fooled you once before.”

  Gabriel was silent.

  “I’m sorry, Gabriel, but you must have considered the possibility that she’s still loyal to her service.”

  “I must have,” said Gabriel, unable to keep a trace of irritation out of his voice. “But if she’s clean when she leaves her apartment this afternoon, I’m bringing her in. And then I’m bringing her home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “England.”

  “She’s going to cause quite a stir.”

  “Quite,” agreed Gabriel.

  “What are you going to do with her?”

  “I’m going to use her to repay a small debt,” replied Gabriel. “And then I’m going to place her in the capable hands of Graham Seymour.”

  “Poor Graham.” Chiara sat on the edge of the bed and removed her pumps.

  “How was the flight?” asked Gabriel.

  “I managed not to injure any of the passengers during the food service.”

  “Well done.”

  “There was a baby in first class that cried all the way from Ankara to Minsk. A few of the passengers were quite upset about it. The mother was mortified.” Chiara paused, then added, “And all I could think was that she was the luckiest woman in the world.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have come,” Gabriel said after a moment.

  “I had to come,” Chiara replied. “I’m going to enjoy this very much.”

  She wriggled out of her skirt, laid it neatly on the bed, and began unbuttoning her blouse.

  “What are you doing?” asked Gabriel.

  “What does it look like?”

  “It looks like a very pretty flight attendant is taking her clothes off in my hotel room.”

  “I have to get some rest. And so do you,” she added as she removed her blouse. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Gabriel, but you look terrible. Sleep for an hour or two. You’ll feel better.”

  “I couldn’t possibly sleep now.”

  “What are you going to do? Stand in that window all day and worry yourself to death?”

  “That was my plan.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time for that when you become chief. Come to bed,” she said. “I promise not to hurt you.”

  Gabriel relented, slipped out of his shoes and jeans, and crawled into bed next to her. Her body felt feverish. Her lips, when kissed, tasted of honey. She ran her fingertip along the line of his nose.

  “Chiara . . .”

  “What is it, darling?” she asked, kissing him again.

  “I’m on duty.”

  “You’re always on duty. And you’re going to remain on duty for the rest of your life.”

  She kissed him again. His lips. His neck. His chest.

  “I suppose she was right all along,” she said.

  “Who?” murmured Gabriel.

  “The old woman from Corsica. She said you would know the truth when Madeline was dead. In a way, she died that morning in France. And now you know the truth.”

  “The old woman was wrong about one thing, though. She warned me not to go to the city of heretics. She said I would die there.”

  Chiara stopped kissing him and looked directly into his eyes. “I thought you told me that she said you would be safe.”

  “I did.”

  “So you lied to me.”

  “I’m sorry, Chiara. I shouldn’t have.”

  She kissed him again. “I knew you were lying all along,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “I always know when you’re lying, Gabriel.”

  “But I’m a professional.”

  “Not when it comes to me.” She pulled his shirt over his head and sat astride his hips. “It’s still a possibility, you know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you could die in the city of heretics.”

  “She was referring to Moscow. I think I’m safe now.”

  “Actually,” she said, running her hands over his stomach, “you’re in grave danger.”

  “I?
??m sensing that.”

  She took him into the tender warmth of her body. He was no longer in Russia, he thought. He was in the room in Venice where he made love to her for the first time, in a bed of white linen. He was safe. And so was she.

  “Maybe she won’t come,” Chiara said afterward, as Gabriel was drifting toward sleep.

  “She’ll come,” he said. “And then we’ll take her home.”

  “I want to go home, too.”

  “Soon,” he said.

  “Is it ever going to get light out?”

  “No, Chiara. Not today.”

  57

  ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

  They had done it a dozen times before, on a dozen secret battlefields, and so a few minutes over a street map in Gabriel’s room at the Astoria was all it took to put their plan in place—the route, the static posts, the fallbacks, the parachutes. Gabriel referred to it as Moscow Center’s last chance. They were going to troll her through the streets of St. Petersburg one final time to make sure she was clean. And then they were going to reel her in and make her disappear. Again.

  And so it was that, shortly after two on that lightless afternoon in St. Petersburg, six officers of Israel’s secret intelligence service slipped from the Astoria Hotel and made their way past the dreamlike churches and palaces to their holding points. Eli Lavon had the farthest to travel, for it was Lavon who was waiting outside Madeline’s apartment house when she emerged at 2:52 p.m.—the precise time that Gabriel had told her to appear if it was her intention to defect. She crossed the Palace Bridge on foot, strode through the Embankment entrance of the Hermitage Museum, and then went directly to the Monet Room, where she was seated on her usual bench at seven minutes past three. Lavon joined her two minutes later. “So far so good,” he said quietly in English. “Now listen carefully and do exactly as I say.”

  They ran her across the Palace Square, beneath the Triumphal Arch, and up the Nevsky Prospekt. She had a coffee and a slice of Russian cake at the Literary Café, strolled the Roman colonnade of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, and did a bit of shopping at Zara. At each point along the route, she passed a member of the team. And each member reported that there was no sign of the opposition.

  Leaving Zara, she headed to the Moyka River and made her way along the Venetian walkways to the sprawl of St. Isaac’s Square, where Dina waited, a mobile phone pressed to her right ear. Had she been holding the phone to her left ear, it would have been a signal to Madeline to keep walking. The right meant it was safe for her to enter the lobby of the Hotel Astoria, which she did at 3:48 p.m. Eli Lavon joined her in the elevator and rode with her to the third floor. Madeline stared at the snow on her boots. Lavon stared at the ornate ceiling. When the doors rattled open, he held out his hand formally and said, “After you.” Madeline slipped past him without a word and headed toward the room at the end of the hall. The door opened as she approached. Gabriel drew her inside.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  The update flashed across the status screens in the Op Center at King Saul Boulevard two minutes later. Uzi Navot stared at it for a moment, almost in disbelief. Then he looked at Shamron.

  “They’ve actually done it, Ari. They’ve got her.”

  “That’s good,” replied Shamron joylessly. “Now let’s see if they can keep her.”

  He lit another cigarette.

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

  They blackened her hair and her eyebrows and added the color of the Mediterranean to her Baltic cheeks. Mordecai took her photograph and inserted it into the passport she would use to exit the country. For now, she was Ilana Shavit. She had been born in October 1985 and lived in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon LeZion, which happened to be one of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine. Before joining El Al, she had served in the IDF. She was married but childless. Her brother had been killed in the most recent Lebanon war. Her sister had been murdered by a Hamas suicide bomber during the Second Intifada. This was not an invented life, Gabriel told her. This was an Israeli life. And for a few hours it would be Madeline’s.

  If there was a chink in her armor, it was her inability to speak more than a few hastily learned words of Hebrew. This weakness was alleviated to some degree by the fact that her English contained no trace of a Russian accent, and by the fact that cockpit and cabin crews cleared passport control in a group. It was likely to be a pro forma affair, little more than a glance at the photograph and a wave of the hand. Gabriel was confident that Madeline would resist the natural impulse to respond to a question spoken in Russian. She had been doing it her entire life. She had to tell one more lie, give one last performance. And then she would be free of them forever.

  And so, a few minutes after 5:00 p.m., the girls removed the last of Madeline’s Russian clothing, dressed her in her crisp El Al uniform, and coiffed her newly black hair. Then they presented her to Gabriel, who studied her for a long moment as though she were a painting upon an easel.

  “What is your name?” he asked tersely.

  “Ilana Shavit.”

  “When were you born?”

  “October 12, 1985.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Rishon LeZion.”

  “What does that mean in Hebrew?”

  “First to Zion.”

  “What was your brother’s name?”

  “Moshe.”

  “Where was he killed?”

  “Lebanon.”

  “What was your sister’s name?”

  “Dalia.”

  “Where was she killed?”

  “The Dolphinarium discotheque.”

  “How many others were killed that day?”

  “Twenty.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Ilana Shavit.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Rishon LeZion.”

  “What street in Rishon LeZion?”

  “Sokolow.”

  Gabriel had no more questions. He placed one hand to his chin and tilted his head to one side.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Five minutes,” he said. “Then we leave.”

  Eli Lavon was drinking coffee in the paneled gloom of the lobby. Gabriel sat down next to him.

  “I’ve got a funny feeling,” said Lavon.

  “How funny?”

  “Two outside the door, two in the bar, and one hanging around the concierge desk.”

  “Could be anything,” said Gabriel.

  “Could be,” Lavon agreed uncertainly.

  “They might be watching a guest of the hotel.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Another guest, Eli.”

  Lavon said nothing.

  “Are you sure she was clean when we brought her in?”

  “As a whistle.”

  “Then she’s clean now,” said Gabriel.

  “So why is the lobby filled with FSB officers?”

  “Could be anything.”

  “Could be,” Lavon repeated.

  Gabriel looked out the window at the El Al van idling outside the hotel’s entrance.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Lavon.

  “We’re going to leave as planned.”

  “Are you going to tell her?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Lavon sipped his coffee. “Good call,” he said.

  It would be three long minutes before the first members of the El Al cabin crew emerged from the elevators into the lobby. Two trim young women, they were both in fact employed by Israel’s national carrier, which was not true of the four women and two men who followed, all of whom were veteran Office field agents. Next came the
captain and the flight engineer, followed a moment later by a heavily disguised version of Mikhail, who was posing as the first officer. The FSB man at the concierge desk had turned his head and was staring unabashedly at the backside of one of the ersatz flight attendants. Watching the scene from across the lobby, Gabriel permitted himself a brief smile. If the FSB man had time to check out the Israeli talent, chances were good he wasn’t looking for a missing Russian illegal.

  Finally, at 5:10 p.m., Chiara and Madeline appeared, trailing their smart El Al rolling suitcases behind them. Chiara was recounting a story about a recent flight in rapid Hebrew, and Madeline was laughing as though it was the most amusing thing she had heard in a long time. The other members of the crew absorbed them into their midst. Then, together, they headed outside and climbed into the waiting van. The doors closed. And then they were gone.

  “What do you think?” asked Gabriel.

  “I think she’s very good,” replied Eli Lavon.

  “Are we clean?”

  “As a whistle.”

  Gabriel rose without another word, collected his overnight bag, and headed outside, into the eternal night.

  A taxi was waiting outside the hotel; it bore him down one last prospekt. Past a hulking statue of Lenin leading his people into seventy years of stagnation and murder. Past the monuments to a war no one could remember. Past mile after mile of ruined apartment houses. And, finally, to the international terminal at Pulkovo Airport. He checked in for the flight to Tel Aviv, slipped effortlessly through passport control as Jonathan Albright of Markham Capital Services, and then made his way to El Al’s heavily fortified departure gate. The Russians claimed the barriers were for the safety of the Israel-bound passengers. Even so, Gabriel had the uncomfortable feeling he was entering Europe’s last ghetto.

  He settled into an empty seat in the corner of the lounge, near a large family of haredim. No one was speaking Russian, only Hebrew. Were it not for his disguise, they surely would have recognized him. But now he sat among them as a stranger, their secret servant, their invisible guardian angel. Soon he would be the chief of their vaunted intelligence service. Or would he? Surely, he thought, this would be a fine way to end a career. He had obtained proof that an oil company owned and operated by Russian intelligence had destabilized the government of the United Kingdom in order to gain access to North Sea oil—all at the behest of the Russian president himself. There would be no more resets after this, he thought. No more happy talk about Russia as a friend of the West. He would prove once and for all that the former members of the KGB who now ran Russia were ruthless, authoritarian, and not to be trusted—that they were to be marginalized and contained, just like in the old days of the Cold War.