“What’s that?”
“Your last night on earth.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “This is exactly how I imagined it would be.”
“Trapped in a safe house with me. A British safe house,” Shamron added with disdain. He looked around at the walls and ceiling. “Are they listening?”
“They say they’re not.”
“Do you trust them?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t. In fact,” Shamron said, “you should never have got mixed up in this quest for Quinn in the first place. For the record, I was against it. Uzi overruled me.”
“Since when do you listen to Uzi?”
Shamron shrugged, conceding the point. “I’ve had an empty box next to Eamon Quinn’s name for quite some time,” he said. “I wanted you and your friend to put a check in it before another plane fell out of the sky.”
“The box is still empty.”
“Not for long.” Shamron’s lighter flared. The acrid smell of Turkish tobacco mixed with the scent of English wood and coal.
“And what about you?” asked Gabriel. “Did you think it would end this way?”
“With your death?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Too many times to count.”
“There was that night in the Empty Quarter,” said Gabriel.
“What about Harwich?”
“And Moscow.”
“Yes,” said Shamron. “We’ll always have Moscow. Moscow is why we’re here.”
He smoked in silence for a moment. Normally, Gabriel would have pleaded with him to stop, but not now. Shamron was grieving. He was about to lose a son.
“Your friend from the Telegraph just got off the phone with Uzi.”
“How did it go?”
“Apparently, he spoke quite well of you. A towering talent, a great loss to the country. It seems Israel is less safe tonight.” Shamron paused, then added, “I think he actually enjoyed it.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. After all,” Shamron said, “if you’re dead, you can’t become the next chief.”
Gabriel smiled.
“Don’t get any ideas,” said Shamron. “As soon as this is over, you’re going home to Jerusalem, where you will experience a miraculous resurrection.”
“Just like—”
Shamron held up a hand. He had been raised in a village in eastern Poland where there had been regular pogroms. He had yet to make his peace with Christianity.
“I’m surprised you didn’t come to England with an extraction team,” said Gabriel.
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“But?”
“It’s important we send a message to the Russians that they will pay a heavy price if they assassinate our chief in waiting. The irony of it is that the message will be delivered by you.”
“Do you think Russians understand irony?”
“Tolstoy did. But the tsar only understands force.”
“What about the Iranians?”
Shamron considered the question before answering. “They have less to lose,” he said finally. “Therefore they will have to be handled more carefully.”
He dropped the end of his cigarette into the fire and coaxed another from his crumpled packet.
“The man you’re looking for is in Vienna. He’s staying at the InterContinental Hotel. Housekeeping has arranged accommodations for you and Keller. You’ll find two old friends there as well. Use them as you see fit.”
“What about Eli?”
“He’s still sitting in that dump in Lisbon.”
“Get him to Vienna.”
“Do you want to keep the Lisbon apartment under watch?”
“No,” said Gabriel. “Quinn will never set foot there again. Lisbon has served its purpose.”
Shamron nodded his head slowly in agreement. “As far as your communications,” he said, “we’ll have to do it old school, the way we did during Wrath of God.”
“It’s hard to go old school in the modern world.”
“You have the ability to make a four-hundred-year-old painting look new again. I’m sure you’ll think of something.” Shamron consulted his wristwatch. “I wish you could make one last phone call to your wife, but I’m afraid it’s not possible under the circumstances.”
“How’s she taking word of my death?”
“As well as can be expected.” Shamron glanced at Gabriel. “You’re a lucky man. There aren’t many women who would let their husbands go to war against the Kremlin in the final weeks of a pregnancy.”
“It’s part of the deal.”
“That’s what I thought, too. I devoted my life to my people and my country. And in the process I drove away everyone I ever held dear.” Shamron paused, then added, “Everyone but you.”
Outside, it was beginning to rain again, a sudden onslaught that sent fat drops hissing onto the grate. Shamron seemed not to notice; he was staring at his wristwatch. Time had always been his enemy, never more so than now.
“How much longer?” he asked.
“Not long,” replied Gabriel.
Shamron smoked in silence as the raindrops sacrificed themselves upon the red-hot grate.
“Is this how you imagined it would be?” he asked.
“It’s exactly how I pictured it.”
“A terrible thing, isn’t it?”
“What’s that, Ari?”
“For the child to die before the parent. It upends the natural order of things.” He dropped his cigarette into the fire. “One can’t grieve properly. One can only think of vengeance.”
Ari Shamron, like Gabriel, had reached only limited accommodation with the modern world. He carried a mobile cellular device grudgingly, for he knew better than most the degree to which such contraptions could be turned against their users. Presently, it was resting in the wooden box on Parish’s desk reserved for the prohibited possessions of “company.” Parish was not ashamed to admit that he did not care for the old man. The smoking! My word, the smoking. Worse than the young Englishman who was always walking the moors. The old man smelled like an ashtray. Looked like death warmed over. And the teeth! Had a smile like a steel trap and just about as pleasant.
It was unclear whether the old man planned to spend the night. He had given no indication of his plans, and Parish had received no guidance from Vauxhall Cross, save for a curious note regarding the Web site of the Telegraph newspaper. Parish was to check it regularly beginning at midnight. A story would appear there that would be of interest to the two men from Israel. Vauxhall Cross didn’t bother to say why it would be of interest. Apparently, it would be self-evident. Parish was to print out the story and deliver it to the two men without comment and with appropriate solemnity, whatever that meant. Parish had worked for MI6 for nearly thirty years in one capacity or another. He was used to strange instructions from headquarters. In his experience, they went hand-in-hand with important operations.
And so he remained at his desk late that night, long after Miss Coventry had been driven home to her dreary Devon village, and long after the security guards, worn thin after a day of chasing the young Englishman across the moors, had turned in for the night. The installation had gone electronic, which meant that it was being protected by machines rather than men. Parish read a few pages of P. D. James, bless her soul, and listened to a bit of Handel on the radio. Mainly he listened to the rain. Another dirty night. When would it ever end?
Finally, at the stroke of midnight, he opened the Web browser on his computer and keyed in the address for the Telegraph. It was the usual drivel: a Westminster row over the NHS, a bombing in Baghdad, something about a pop star’s love life that Parish found deeply repellent. There was nothing, however, that looked as though it would be remotely of interest to the “company” from the Holy Land. Oh, there was some faint glimmer of hope regarding the Iran nuclear negotiations, but surely they didn’t need Parish to tell them about that.
So he returned to his P. D. Ja
mes and his Handel until five minutes past, when he clicked REFRESH and saw the same rubbish as before. At ten past nothing had changed. But when he refreshed the page at twelve fifteen it froze like a block of ice. Parish was no expert in cybermatters, but he knew that Web sites often became unresponsive during periods of transition or heavy traffic. He knew, too, that no amount of clicking or tapping would speed the process, so he allowed a few more lines of the novel to flow past his eyes while the Web page wriggled free of its digital restraints.
It happened at 12:17 precisely. The page rolled over, three words appeared at the top. Big typeface, big as Dartmoor. Parish took the Lord’s name in vain, immediately regretted it, and clicked print. Then he shoved the pages into his coat pocket and struck out across the courtyard to the back door of the cottage. And all the while he was turning over the curious instructions he had received from Vauxhall Cross. Appropriate solemnity, indeed! But how exactly was one supposed to tell a man he was dead?
38
LONDON–THE KREMLIN
IT LAY THERE FOR THE better part of an hour, unreported by the rest of the media, perhaps unnoticed. Then a producer from the BBC World Service, prompted by a phone call from a Telegraph editor, inserted the story into the one o’clock news bulletin. Israel Radio was listening, and within a few minutes phones were ringing and reporters were being roused from their beds. So, too, were members of the country’s influential security and intelligence services, past and present. On the record, no one would go near it. Off the record, they suggested it was probably true. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said only that it was looking into the report; the prime minister’s office said it hoped there was some mistake. Nevertheless, as the first rays of sun fell upon Jerusalem that morning, somber music filled the airwaves. Gabriel Allon, Israel’s avenging angel, next in line to be the chief of the Office, was dead.
In London, however, the news of Allon’s death was an occasion for controversy rather than sorrow. He’d had a long history on British soil, some of which was known to the public, most of which thankfully was not. There were his operations against Zizi al-Bakari, the Saudi financier of terror, and Ivan Kharkov, the Kremlin’s favorite arms dealer. There was his dramatic rescue of Elizabeth Halton, the daughter of the American ambassador, outside Westminster Abbey, and there was the nightmare in Covent Garden. But why had he been following the bomb car along Brompton Road? And why had he made a headlong dash toward a white Ford trapped in the stalled traffic? Was he working in concert with MI6, or had he returned to London of his own accord? Was Israel’s notorious intelligence service somehow to blame for the tragedy? British intelligence refused all comment, as did the Metropolitan Police. Prime Minister Lancaster, while touring a distressed state school in London’s East End, ignored a reporter’s question about the matter, which the rest of the British media took as proof the story was true. The leader of the opposition demanded a parliamentary inquiry, but the imam of London’s most radical mosque could scarcely contain his joy. He called Allon’s death “long overdue and a welcome gift from Allah to the Palestinian people and the Islamic world at large.” The Archbishop of Canterbury gently criticized the remarks as “unhelpful.”
At Green’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar, an elegant watering hole in St. James’s frequented by inhabitants of London’s art world, the mood was decidedly funereal. They had known Gabriel Allon not as an intelligence operative but as one of the finest art restorers of his generation—though some had been unwittingly drawn into his operations, and a few had been willing accomplices. Julian Isherwood, the noted dealer who had employed Allon for longer than he cared to remember, was inconsolable with grief. Even tubby Oliver Dimbleby, the lecherous dealer from Bury Street who was thought to be incapable of tears, was seen sobbing over a glass of Montrachet he’d poached from Roddy Hutchinson. Jeremy Crabbe, the director of Old Master paintings at the venerable Bonhams auction house, called Allon “one of the greats, truly.” Not to be outdone, Simon Mendenhall, the permanently suntanned chief auctioneer from Christie’s, said the art world would never be the same. Simon had never laid eyes on Gabriel Allon and probably couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup. And yet somehow he had spoken words of undeniable truth, something he rarely did.
There was sadness, too, across the pond in America. A former president for whom Allon had run many secret errands said the Israeli intelligence officer had played a crucial role in keeping the U.S. homeland safe from another 9/11-style terror spectacular. Adrian Carter, the longtime chief of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, called him “a partner, a friend, perhaps the bravest man I have ever known.” Zoe Reed, an anchor on CNBC, faltered while reading a scripted account of Allon’s death. Sarah Bancroft, a special curator at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, inexplicably canceled her appointments for the day. A few hours later she told her secretary she would be taking the remainder of the week off. Those who witnessed her abrupt departure from the museum described her as distraught.
It was no secret that Allon had been fond of Italy, and for the most part Italy had been fond of him, too. At the Vatican, His Holiness Pope Paul VII repaired to his private chapel upon hearing the news, while his powerful private secretary, Monsignor Luigi Donati, made several urgent phone calls, trying to determine whether it was true. One of the calls was to General Cesare Ferrari, chief of the Carabinieri’s famed Art Squad. The general had nothing to report. Nor did Francesco Tiepolo, the owner of a prominent Venetian restoration firm who had retained Allon to secretly restore several of the city’s most prominent altarpieces. Allon’s wife was from the ancient Jewish ghetto, and his father-in-law was the chief rabbi of the city. Donati placed several calls to the rabbi’s office and home. All went unanswered, leaving the papal private secretary no choice but to assume the worst.
In several other places around the world, however, the reaction to Allon’s death was far different—especially inside the complex of heavily guarded buildings located in the southwestern Moscow suburb of Yasenevo. The complex had once been the headquarters of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. Now it belonged to the SVR. Even so, most of those who worked there still referred to it by its old KGB name, which was Moscow Center.
In most parts of the complex, life went on normally that day. But not in the third-floor office of Colonel Alexei Rozanov. He had arrived at Yasenevo at three a.m. in a blinding snowstorm and had spent the remainder of the morning in a tense exchange of cables with the SVR’s rezident in London, a close friend named Dmitry Ulyanin. The cables were protected by the SVR’s latest encryption and transmitted over the service’s most secure link. Nevertheless, Rozanov and Ulyanin discussed the matter as though it were a routine problem involving the visa request of a British businessman. By one that afternoon, Ulyanin and his well-staffed London rezidentura had seen enough to convince them that the Telegraph report was true. Rozanov, a cynic by nature, remained skeptical, however. Finally, at two o’clock, he snatched up the receiver of his secure phone and dialed Ulyanin directly. Ulyanin had encouraging news.
“We spotted the old man leaving the big building on the Thames about an hour ago.”
The big building on the Thames was the headquarters of MI6, and the old man was Ari Shamron. The London rezidentura had been following Shamron on and off since his arrival in the United Kingdom.
“Where did he go next?”
“He went to Heathrow and boarded an El Al flight to Ben-Gurion. By the way, Alexei, the flight was delayed by several minutes.”
“Why?”
“It seemed the ground crew had to load one final item into the cargo hold.”
“What was that?”
“A coffin.”
The secure line crackled and hissed during the ten long seconds during which Alexei Rozanov did not speak.
“Are you sure it was a coffin?” he asked finally.
“Alexei, please.”
“Maybe it was a recently deceased British Jew who wished to be buried in the Promised Land.”
&
nbsp; “It wasn’t,” said Ulyanin. “The old man stood at attention on the tarmac while the coffin was being loaded.”
Rozanov killed the connection, hesitated, and then dialed the most important number in Russia. A male voice answered. Rozanov recognized it. Inside the Kremlin the man was known only as the Gatekeeper.
“I need to see the Boss,” Rozanov said.
“The Boss is tied up all afternoon.”
“It’s important.”
“So is our relationship with Germany.”
Rozanov swore softly. He’d forgotten that the German chancellor was in town.
“It will only take a few minutes,” he said.
“There’s a short break between the last meeting and the dinner. I might be able to squeeze you in.”
“Tell him I have good news.”
“You’d better,” the Gatekeeper said, “because the chancellor is giving him quite an earful about Ukraine.”
“What time should I be there?”
“Five o’clock,” said the Gatekeeper, and the line went dead. Alexei Rozanov replaced the receiver and watched the snow falling on the grounds of Yasenevo. Then he thought about a coffin being loaded onto an Israeli jetliner at Heathrow Airport while an old man stood at attention on the tarmac, and for the first time in almost a year he actually smiled.
In point of fact, it had been ten months to the day. Ten months since Alexei Rozanov had learned that his old friend and comrade Pavel Zhirov had been found in a birch forest in Tver Oblast, frozen solid, two bullets in his brain. Ten months since he had been summoned to the Kremlin for a meeting with the federal president himself. The Boss wanted Rozanov to undertake a mission of vengeance. A series of messy killings wouldn’t do. The Boss wanted to punish his enemies in a way that would sow discord among their ranks and make them think twice about ever interfering in Russia’s affairs again. More than anything, though, the Boss wanted to make certain that Gabriel Allon never became chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service. The Boss had big plans. He wanted to restore Russia’s faded glory, reclaim its lost empire. And Gabriel Allon, an intelligence operative from a minuscule country, was one of his most meddlesome opponents.