The Other Woman: A Novel

  It was now 7:36. Rebecca sent one final text before returning the phone to her pocket. It rang a few seconds later, giving her a terrible start. It was Andrew Crawford, a junior officer from the station.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  “Not at all. Just out for a run.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to cut it short. Our friend from Virginia would like a word.”

  “Can you give me a hint?”

  “NSA is picking up rumblings from AQAP.” Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. “Apparently, they’re rather interested in getting back in the game. It seems London is in their sights.”

  “What time does he want to see me?”

  “Ten minutes ago.”

  She swore softly.

  “Where are you?”

  “Georgetown.”

  “Don’t move, I’ll send a car for you.”

  Rebecca killed the connection and watched the three young snowflakes floating across the street. The spigot was open again, the cloud had lifted. She thought about the house on Nebraska Avenue and the man, the deeply respected MI6 officer, burying his camera in the Maryland countryside. The stuff is probably still there if you look . . . Perhaps one day she would do just that.

  34

  Strasbourg, France

  The Germans had left their indelible mark on the architecture of Strasbourg, the much-conquered city on the western bank of the river Rhine, but Sabine was defiantly French in appearance. She stood on the corner of the rue de Berne and rue de Soleure, tan and vaguely Mediterranean, with wide balconies and white aluminum shutters. Two businesses occupied the ground floor, a Turkish kebab stand and a forlorn hair studio for men whose owner spent many hours each day peering idly into the street. Between the two enterprises was the tenant entrance. The call buttons were located on the right side. The tiny nameplate for apartment 5B read bergier.

  The building directly opposite wore its Germanness without apology. Gabriel arrived there unaccompanied by bodyguards at four fifteen. He found apartment 3A in a state of permanent night, with the shades tightly drawn and the lights dimmed. Eli Lavon was hunched over an open laptop, as he had been that night in Vienna, but now Yaakov Rossman was hovering over him, pointing at something on the screen like a sommelier offering advice to a dithering customer. Mikhail and Keller, pistols in their outstretched hands, were pivoting with the silence of ballet dancers through the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Can you please make them stop?” begged Yaakov. “They’re driving us to distraction. Besides, it’s not as if they’ve never cleared a room before.”

  Gabriel watched Mikhail and Keller repeat the exercise. Then he looked down at the computer screen and saw a blinking blue light moving southward between Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, on the German side of the border.

  “Is that Sergei?”

  “Two of my boys,” explained Lavon. “Sergei’s several hundred meters ahead of them. He left Frankfurt about forty minutes ago. No SVR gorillas, no Germans. He’s clean.”

  “So was Konstantin Kirov,” said Gabriel gloomily. “What about Werner?”

  “He caught the Vienna-to-Paris sunrise express and was inside the Interior Ministry by ten. He and his French colleagues, including a certain Paul Rousseau from the Alpha Group, had a working lunch. Then Werner complained of a migraine and said he was going to his hotel to rest. He went to the Gare de l’Est instead and caught the two fifty-five to Strasbourg. He’s due in at four forty. It’s a ten-minute walk at most from the train station.”

  Gabriel tapped the blinking blue light, which was passing through the small German town of Ettlingen. “And Sergei?”

  “If he makes a beeline to the flat, he’ll arrive at four twenty. If he takes a trip to the dry cleaners first . . .”

  On a second computer was an exterior shot of the apartment building code-named Sabine. Gabriel pointed toward the figure standing in the doorway of the men’s hair salon. “What about him?”

  “Yaakov thinks we should kill him,” said Lavon. “I was hoping to find a more just solution.”

  “The solution,” said Gabriel, “is a customer.”

  “He’s only had two all day,” said Yaakov.

  “So we’ll find him a third.”

  “Who?”

  Gabriel tousled Lavon’s unruly head of hair.

  “I’m a little busy at the moment.”

  “What about Doron?”

  “He’s one of my best pavement artists. And he’s very particular about his hair.”

  Gabriel leaned down and tapped a few keys on the laptop. Then he watched Mikhail and Keller pirouetting soundlessly through the doorway.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Eli Lavon.

  “Me? I’m the chief of Israeli intelligence, for God’s sake.”

  “Yes,” said Lavon as he watched the approaching blue light. “Tell that to Saladin.”

  The blinking blue light entered Strasbourg at four fifteen, and on Gabriel’s orders the watchers broke off their pursuit. It was one thing to follow an SVR hood at a hundred miles an hour along the Autobahn, quite another to tail him through the quiet streets of an ancient Franco-German city on the banks of the river Rhine. Besides, Gabriel knew where the SVR hood was going. It was the building code-named Sabine on the opposite side of the rue de Berne. The building with two businesses on the ground floor—a Turkish kebab café where two former elite soldiers, one Israeli, the other British, were now partaking of a late lunch, and a men’s hair salon that had just received its third customer of the day.

  The SVR hood made a first motorized pass at 4:25 and a second at 4:31. Finally, at 4:35, he parked his BMW sedan directly beneath the window of the command post and crossed the street. When they saw him next it was at 4:39, and he was standing on the balcony of apartment 5B. In the corner of his mouth was an unlit cigarette, and in his right hand was something that might have been a book of matches. The cigarette was the signal. Lighted cigarette meant the coast was clear. Unlit cigarette meant abort. Old school all the way, thought Gabriel. Moscow Rules . . .

  At 4:40 a train arrived at the Gare de Strasbourg, and ten minutes later an Austrian secret policeman who was supposed to be recovering from a migraine in a Paris hotel room strolled past the window of the Turkish café. He glanced toward the balcony five floors above, where the SVR hood’s cigarette glowed like the running light of a ship. Then he went to the door of the building and pressed the call button for apartment 5B. Five floors above, the SVR hood flicked his cigarette carelessly into the street and disappeared through the French doors.

  “Move!” said Yaakov Rossman into the microphone of his miniature radio, and in the Turkish café the two former elite soldiers rose simultaneously to their feet. Outside on the pavement, they walked with no visible haste toward the tenant entrance, where the Austrian was now holding the door for them. Then the door closed and the three men vanished from view.

  It was at this point, for reasons known only to himself, that Eli Lavon began recording the feed from the exterior surveillance camera. The final unedited file was five minutes and eighteen seconds in length, and like the security video from the Schweizerhof Hotel, it would become required viewing inside King Saul Boulevard, at least for those of sufficient seniority and clearance.

  The action commences with the arrival of a Ford panel van, from which two men alight and casually enter the building. They reappear four minutes later, each carrying one end of a long and quite obviously heavy duffel bag containing a Russian intelligence officer. The bag is placed in the cargo hold of the van, and the van pulls from the curb, just as the two former elite soldiers, one Israeli, the other British, exit the apartment building. They cross the street to a BMW sedan and climb inside. The engine starts, lights flicker to life. Then the car turns onto the rue de Soleure and slides from the shot.

  There is no recording of what happened next, for Gabriel would not allow it. In fact, he insisted the camera be entirely disconnected before he stepped once more int
o the somber quiet of the rue de Berne. There he dropped into the passenger seat of a Citroën that never quite came to a full stop. The man behind the wheel was Christian Bouchard, Paul Rousseau’s chamberlain and strong right hand. He looked like one of those characters in French films who always had affairs with women who smoked cigarettes after making love.

  “Any problems?” asked Bouchard.

  “My back is killing me,” answered Gabriel. “Otherwise, everything is fine.”

  The airport was southwest of the city and bordered by farmland. By the time Gabriel and Christian Bouchard arrived, the Ford transit van was parked at the tail of a Gulfstream jet owned by the Jordanian monarch. Gabriel climbed the airstair and ducked into the cabin. The long duffel bag lay vertically on the floor. He tugged the zipper, exposing a red and swollen face, heavily bound with silver duct tape. The eyes were closed. They would remain closed for the duration of the flight. Or perhaps a bit longer, thought Gabriel, depending on the Russian’s metabolism. Generally speaking, Russians handled their sedatives about as well as they handled their vodka.

  Gabriel closed the zipper and settled into one of the swivel seats for takeoff. The Russians weren’t fools, he thought. Eventually, they would piece together what had happened. He reckoned he had three or four days to find the mole at the pinnacle of the Anglo-American intelligence establishment. A week at the outside.

  35

  Upper Galilee, Israel

  There are interrogation centers scattered throughout Israel. Some are in restricted areas of the Negev Desert, others are tucked away, unnoticed, in the middle of cities. And one lies just off a road with no name that runs between Rosh Pina, one of the oldest Jewish settlements in Israel, and the mountain hamlet of Amuka. The track that leads to it is dusty and rocky and fit for only Jeeps and SUVs. There is a fence topped with concertina wire and a guard shack staffed by tough-looking youths in khaki vests. Behind the fence is a small colony of bungalows and a single building of corrugated metal where the prisoners are kept. The guards are forbidden to disclose their place of work, even to their wives and parents. The site is as black as black can be. It is the absence of color and light.

  Sergei Morosov knew none of this. In fact, he knew little if anything at all. Not his location or the time of day, and not the identity of his captors. He knew only that he was very cold, that he was hooded and secured to a metal chair in a state of semi-undress, and that he was being subjected to dangerously loud music. It was “Angel of Death” by the thrash metal band Slayer. Even the guards, who were a hard-bitten lot, felt a little sorry for him.

  On the advice of Yaakov Rossman, an experienced interrogator, Gabriel allowed the stress-and-isolation phase of the proceedings to last thirty-six hours, which was longer than he preferred. The clock was already working against them. There were reports in the French media regarding a road accident near Strasbourg. The known facts were sparse—a BMW, a fiery crash, a single badly burned body, as yet unidentified, or so said the French authorities. It seemed Moscow Center knew full well the identity of the dead man, at least it thought it did, because a pair of hoods from the Berlin rezidentura paid a visit to Sergei Morosov’s apartment in Frankfurt the evening after his disappearance. Gabriel knew this because the apartment was under Office surveillance. He feared the SVR’s next stop would be Sergei Morosov’s last known contact, a senior official from the Austrian security service named Werner Schwarz. For that reason, Werner Schwarz was under Office surveillance, too.

  It was 12:17 p.m.—the time was carefully noted in the facility’s logbook—when the thrash metal music in the isolation chamber finally fell silent. The guards removed the bindings from Sergei Morosov’s hands and ankles and led him to a shower where, blindfolded and hooded, he was allowed to wash. Next they dressed him in a blue-and-white tracksuit and frog-marched him, still blindfolded, to the interrogation hut, where he was secured to another chair. Five more minutes elapsed before the hood and blindfold were removed. The Russian blinked several times while his eyes grew accustomed to the sudden light. Then he recoiled in fear and began to flail wildly against the restraints.

  “Take care, Sergei,” said Gabriel calmly. “Otherwise, you’re liable to dislocate something. Besides, there’s no need to be afraid. Welcome to Israel. And, yes, we accept your offer to defect. We’d like to begin your debriefing as quickly as possible. The sooner we get started, the sooner you can begin your new life. We have a nice little place picked out for you in the Negev, somewhere your friends at Moscow Center will never find you.”

  Gabriel said all this in German, and Sergei Morosov, when he ceased his thrashing, responded in the same language. “You’ll never get away with this, Allon.”

  “Accepting a defecting SVR officer? It happens all the time. It’s how the game is played.”

  “I made no offer to defect. You kidnapped me.” The Russian looked at the four windowless walls of the interrogation room, and at the two guards standing to his left, and at Mikhail, who was reclining to his right. Lastly, he looked at Gabriel and asked, “Am I really in Israel?”

  “Where else would you be?”

  “I rather thought I was in the hands of the British.”

  “No such luck. That said, MI6 is anxious to have a word with you. Can’t blame them, really. After all, you murdered their Vienna Head of Station.”

  “Alistair Hughes? The newspapers said it was an accident.”

  “I would advise you,” cautioned Gabriel, “to choose another path.”

  “And what path is that?”

  “Cooperation. Tell us what we want to know, and you’ll be treated better than you deserve.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  Gabriel looked at Mikhail. “Recognize him, Sergei?”

  “No,” lied Morosov badly. “We’ve never met.”

  “That’s not what I asked. What I asked,” said Gabriel, “is whether you recognize him. He was in Vienna that night. Your assassin took four shots at him, but somehow all four missed. His marksmanship was a little better when it came to Kirov. Konstantin took two in the face, hollow point, so there could be no open casket at his funeral. Unless you start talking, my associate and I are going to return the favor. Oh, we won’t do the deed ourselves. We’re going to make a gift of you to some friends of ours across the border in Syria. They’ve suffered greatly at the hands of the Butcher of Damascus and his Russian benefactors, and they’d love nothing more than to get their hands on a real live SVR officer.”

  The silence in the room was heavy. At last, Sergei Morosov said, “I had nothing to do with Kirov.”

  “Of course you did, Sergei. You warned Werner Schwarz a few days before the assassination that there was going to be some unpleasantness in Vienna involving an SVR defector. You then instructed Werner to follow the Kremlin’s lead and point the finger of suspicion toward our service.”

  “He’s a dead man. And so are you, Allon.”

  Gabriel sailed on as though he hadn’t heard the remark. “You also instructed Werner to whisper a bit of gossip into my deputy’s ear regarding the private life of Alistair Hughes. Something about frequent trips across the border to Switzerland. You did this,” said Gabriel, “because you wanted to leave us with the impression Alistair was on your payroll. The goal of this operation was to protect the real spy, a mole at the pinnacle of the Anglo-American intelligence establishment.”

  “Mole?” asked Morosov. “You’ve been reading too many spy novels, Allon. There is no mole. Alistair was our asset. I should know, I was his control officer. I’ve been running him for years.”

  Gabriel only smiled. “Well played, Sergei. I admire your loyalty, but it’s of no value here. Truth is the only currency we accept. And only the truth will prevent us from handing you over to our friends in Syria.”

  “I’m telling you the truth!”

  “Try again.”

  Morosov feigned impassivity. “If you know so much,” he said after a moment, “why do you need me?”

 
“You’re going to help us fill in the blanks. In exchange, you will be well compensated and allowed to live out the rest of your life in our beautiful country.”

  “In a nice little place in the Negev?”

  “I chose it myself.”

  “I’d rather take my chances across the border in Syria.”

  “I would advise you,” said Gabriel, “to choose another path.”

  “Sorry, Allon,” replied the Russian. “No such luck.”

  The Black Hawk flew east over the Golan Heights and crossed into Syrian airspace above the village of Kwdana. Its eventual destination was Jassim, a smallish city in the Daraa Governorate of southern Syria held by elements of the rebel Free Syrian Army. Under Gabriel’s leadership, the Office had forged close ties with the non-jihadist Syrian opposition, and several thousand Syrians had been brought to Israel for medical treatment. In portions of the Daraa Governorate, if nowhere else in the Arab world, Gabriel Allon was a revered figure.

  The helicopter never touched down on Syrian soil, that much is beyond dispute. The two guards on board claimed that Mikhail fixed a line to Sergei Morosov’s handcuffs and dangled him above a seething encampment of rebel fighters. Mikhail, however, took issue with this account. Yes, he had threatened to lower Sergei into the mob, but it had never come to that. After one look at the fate that awaited him, the Russian had begged—yes, begged—to be taken back to Israel.

  Whatever the case, Colonel Sergei Morosov was a changed man when he returned to the interrogation room. After first apologizing for his earlier intransigence, the Russian said he would be more than willing to offer any and all assistance to the Office in exchange for sanctuary and a reasonable financial settlement. He acknowledged, however, that Israel was not his first choice as a permanent home. He was no anti-Semite, mind you, but he had strong personal views about the Middle East and the plight of the Palestinians and had no desire to live among people whom he regarded as colonizers and oppressors.