The Defector Read online

  Next came a pair of men in their forties, Yossi and Yaakov. Tall and balding, Yossi was currently assigned to the Russia Desk of Research, which is how the Office referred to its analytical division. He had read classics at All Souls College at Oxford and spoke with a pronounced English accent. Yaakov, a compact man with black hair and a pockmarked face, looked as if he couldn’t be bothered with books and learning. For many years he had served in the Arab Affairs Department of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, recruiting spies and informants in the West Bank and Gaza. Like Rimona, he had recently transferred to the Office and was currently running agents into Lebanon.

  Next came an oddly mismatched pair who shared one common attribute. Both spoke fluent Russian. The first was Eli Lavon. An elfin figure with wispy gray hair and intelligent brown eyes, Lavon was regarded as the finest street surveillance artist the Office had ever produced. He had worked side by side with Gabriel through countless operations and was the closest thing Gabriel had to a brother. Like Gabriel, Lavon’s ties to the Office were somewhat tenuous. A professor of biblical archaeology at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, he could usually be found waist-deep in an excavation trench, sifting through the dust and artifacts of Israel’s ancient past. Twice each year, he lectured on surveillance techniques at the Academy, and he was forever being drawn out of retirement by Gabriel, who was never truly comfortable in the field without the legendary Eli Lavon watching his back.

  The figure standing at Lavon’s side had eyes the color of glacial ice and a fine-boned, bloodless face. Born in Moscow to a pair of dissident Jewish scientists, Mikhail Abramov had come to Israel as a teenager within weeks of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Once described by Shamron as “Gabriel without a conscience,” he had joined the Office after serving in the Sayeret Matkal special forces, where he had assassinated several of the top terrorist masterminds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. His talents were not limited to the gun; the previous summer, in Saint-Tropez, he had infiltrated Ivan Kharkov’s entourage, along with a CIA officer named Sarah Bancroft. Of all those gathered at the villa by the lake, only Mikhail had had the distinct displeasure of actually sharing a meal with Ivan. Afterward, he admitted it was the most terrifying experience of his professional life—this coming from a man who had hunted terrorists across the badlands of the Occupied Territories.

  Within the corridors and conference rooms of King Saul Boulevard, these six men and women were known by the code name “Barak”—the Hebrew word for lightning—because of their ability to gather and strike quickly. They had operated together, often under conditions of unbearable stress, on secret battlefields stretching from Moscow to Marseilles to the exclusive Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy. Usually, they conducted themselves in a highly professional manner and with few intrusions of egotism or pettiness. Occasionally, a seemingly trivial issue, such as assigning bedrooms, could provoke outbursts of childishness and flashes of ill temper. Unable to resolve the dispute themselves, they turned to Gabriel, the wise ruler, who imposed a settlement by decree and somehow managed to satisfy no one, which, in the end, they regarded as just.

  After establishing a secure communications link with King Saul Boulevard, they convened for a working dinner. They ate like a family reunited, which in many respects they were, though their conversation was more circumspect than usual, owing to the presence of an outsider. Gabriel could tell by the inquisitive looks on their faces that they had heard rumors in Tel Aviv. Rumors that Amos was yesterday’s man. Rumors that Gabriel would soon be taking his rightful place in the director’s suite at King Saul Boulevard. Only Rimona, Shamron’s niece by marriage, dared to ask whether it was true. She did so in a whisper and in Hebrew, so that Olga could not understand. When Gabriel pretended not to hear, she gave him a covert kick in the ankle, a retaliatory strike only a relative of Shamron would dare undertake.

  They adjourned to the great room after dinner and there, standing before a crackling fire, Gabriel conducted the first formal briefing of the operation. Grigori Bulganov, the Russian defector who had twice saved Gabriel’s life, had been abducted by Ivan Kharkov and brought to Russia, where in all likelihood he was undergoing a severe interrogation that would end with his execution. They were going to get him back, Gabriel said, and they were going to put Ivan’s operatives out of business. And their quest would begin with an extraction and interrogation of their own.

  In another country, in another intelligence service, such a proposal might have been greeted with expressions of incredulity or even mockery. But not the Office. The Office had a word for such unconventional thinking: meshuggah, Hebrew for crazy or foolish. Inside the Office, no idea was too meshuggah. Sometimes, the more meshuggah, the better. It was a state of mind. It was what made the Office great.

  There was something else that set them apart from other services: the freedom felt by lower-ranking officers to make suggestions and even to challenge the assumptions of their superiors. Gabriel took no offense when his team embarked on a rigorous deconstruction of the plan. Though they were an eclectic mix—indeed, most were never meant to be field agents at all—they had carried out some of the most daring and dangerous operations in Office history. They had killed and kidnapped, committed acts of fraud, theft, and forgery. They were Gabriel’s second eyes. Gabriel’s safety net.

  The discussion lasted another hour. Most of it was conducted in English for Olga’s benefit, but occasionally they lapsed into Hebrew for reasons of security or because no other language would do. There were occasional flashes of temper or the odd insult, but for the most part the tone remained civil. When the last issue had been resolved, Gabriel brought the session to a close and broke the team into working groups. Yaakov and Yossi would acquire the vehicles and secure the routes. Dina, Rimona, and Chiara would prepare the cover organization and create all necessary websites, brochures, and invitations. The Russian speakers, Mikhail and Eli Lavon, would handle the interrogation itself, with Olga serving as their consultant. Gabriel had no specific task, other than to supervise and to worry. It was fitting, he thought, for it was a role Shamron had played many times before.

  At midnight, when the table had been cleared and the dishes washed, they filed upstairs to their rooms for a few hours of sleep. Gabriel and Chiara, alone in the master suite, made quiet love. Afterward, they lay next to each other in the darkness, Gabriel staring at the ceiling, Chiara tracing her fingertip along his cheek.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “Moscow,” he said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watching Irina.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I’m not quite sure yet.”

  Chiara was silent for a moment. “You’re never happier than when they’re around, Gabriel. Maybe Uzi was right. Maybe the Office is the only family you have.”

  “You’re my family, Chiara.”

  “Are you sure you want to leave them?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I hear Shamron has other plans.”

  “He usually does.”

  “When are you going to tell him that you’re not going to take the job?”

  “As soon as I get Grigori back from the Russians.”

  “Promise me one thing, Gabriel. Promise me you won’t get too close to Ivan.” She kissed his lips. “Ivan likes to break pretty things.”

  24

  BELLAGIO, ITALY

  THE NORTHERN Italian Travel Association, or NITA, occupied a suite of small offices on a narrow pedestrian lane in the town of Bellagio—or so it claimed. Its stated mission was to encourage tourism in northern Italy by aggressively promoting the region’s incomparable beauty and lifestyle, especially to booking agents and travel writers in other countries. A website for the association appeared soon after Gabriel’s team convened on the opposite side of the lake at Villa Teresa. So, too, did a handsome brochure, printed not in Italy but in Tel Aviv, along with an invitation to the third annual winter seminar and showcase at
the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni—odd, since no one at the Serbelloni would have recalled a first annual showcase and seminar, or even a second for that matter.

  With only seventy-two hours until the start of the conference, the organizers were dismayed to learn of a last-minute cancellation and began searching for a replacement. The name Irina Bulganova of Galaxy Travel, Tverskaya Street, Moscow, came quickly to mind. Were NITA an ordinary travel association, there might have been some question as to whether Ms. Bulganova would be able to come to Italy on such short notice. NITA, however, possessed means and methods unavailable to even the most sophisticated organizations. They hacked into her computer and inspected her appointment calendar. They read her e-mail and listened to her telephone calls. Their colleagues in Moscow followed Ms. Bulganova wherever she went and even had a peek at her passport to make certain it was in order.

  Their inquiries revealed much about the tangled state of her personal affairs. They learned, for example, that Ms. Bulganova had recently stopped seeing her lover for the vaguest of reasons. They learned she was having trouble sleeping at night and preferred music to television. They learned she had recently placed a telephone call to FSB Headquarters requesting information as to the whereabouts of her former husband, a question greeted by a curt dismissal. All things considered, they believed a woman in Ms. Bulganova’s position might relish the opportunity to make an all-expenses-paid visit to Italy. And what Muscovite wouldn’t? On the day the invitation was sent, the weather forecast was calling for heavy snow and temperatures of perhaps twenty below.

  It was dispatched via e-mail and signed by none other than Veronica Ricci, NITA’s chief executive officer. It began with an apology for the last-minute nature of the offer and concluded with promises of first-class air travel, luxury hotel accommodations, and gourmet Italian cuisine. If Ms. Bulganova chose to attend—and it was NITA’s fervent hope that she would—an information packet, airline tickets, and a welcoming gift would follow. The e-mail neglected to say that the aforementioned materials were already in Moscow and would be delivered by a courier company that did not exist. Nor did it mention the fact that Ms. Bulganova would remain under surveillance to make certain she was not being followed by agents of Ivan Kharkov. It made only one request: that she RSVP as quickly as possible so that other arrangements could be made should she be unable to attend.

  Fortunately, such a contingency would not prove necessary, for exactly seven hours and twelve minutes after the e-mail was sent, a reply arrived from Moscow. At Villa Teresa, the celebration was boisterous but brief. Irina Bulganova was coming to Italy. And they had much work to do.

  IN EVERY OPERATION, Shamron was fond of saying, there is a choke point. Navigate it successfully, and the operation can sail easily into open waters. Stray off course, even by a few degrees, and it can become stranded on the shoals or, worse still, smash to pieces on the rocks. For this operation, the choke point was none other than Irina herself. As of that moment, they still did not know whether she was heaven-sent or whether she might bring the devil to their doorstep. Handle her well, and the operation might go down as one of the team’s finest. Make one mistake, and there was a chance she might get them all killed.

  They rehearsed as if their lives depended on it. Mikhail’s Russian was superior to Eli Lavon’s, and so it was Mikhail, despite his youth, who would serve as lead inquisitor. Lavon, blessed with a kindly face and unthreatening demeanor, would play the role of benefactor and sage. The only variable, of course, was Irina herself. Olga helped them to prepare for any contingency. At Gabriel’s direction, she was terrified one minute, belligerent the next. She cursed them like dogs, collapsed in tears, took a vow of silence, and once flew at them in a blind rage. By the final night, Mikhail and Lavon were confident they were prepared for whatever version of Irina they might encounter. All they needed now was the star of the show.

  But was she Ivan’s pawn or Ivan’s victim? It was the question that had troubled them from the beginning, and it was foremost in their thoughts throughout the last long night of waiting. Gabriel made it clear he believed in Irina, but Gabriel was the first to admit his faith had to be viewed through the prism of his well-known fondness for Russian women. The women, he said over and over, were Russia’s only hope. Other members of the team, Yaakov in particular, took a far less optimistic view of what lay ahead. Yaakov had seen mankind at its worst and feared they were about to admit one of Ivan’s agents into their midst. The fact she was still alive, he argued, was proof of her perfidy. “If Irina was good, Ivan would have killed her,” he said. “That’s what Ivan does.”

  With the help of their assets in Moscow and King Saul Boulevard, they kept careful watch over Irina’s final preparations, searching for evidence of treachery. On the evening before her departure they monitored a pair of telephone calls, one to a childhood friend, the other to her mother. They heard her alarm go off at the ungodly hour of 2:30 a.m. and heard it go off again ten minutes later while she was in the shower. And at five minutes past three, they caught a flash of her temper when she called the limousine company to say her car hadn’t arrived. Mikhail, who listened to a recording of the call over the secure link, refused to translate it for the rest of the team. Unless Irina was an award-winning actress, he said, her anger was real.

  As it turned out, the car was only fifteen minutes late, something of a coup for late January, and she arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport at 3:45. Shmuel Peled, a field hand from Moscow Station, caught a glimpse of her as she emerged from the car in an angry blur and headed into the terminal. Her plane, Austrian Airlines Flight 606, departed on time and arrived at Vienna’s Schwechat at 6:47 a.m. local time. Dina, who had flown to the Austrian capital the previous day, was waiting when Irina emerged from the Jet-way. They walked to the departure gate, separated by a generous gap, and settled into their seats in the third row of the first-class cabin—Irina in 3C along the aisle, Dina in 3A against the window. Upon touching down in Milan, she sent a message to Gabriel. The star had arrived. The show was about to begin.

  When the aircraft doors opened, Irina was once more in motion, headed toward passport control at a parade-ground clip, her chin at a defiant angle. Like most Russians, she dreaded encounters with men in uniform and presented her travel documents as if braced for combat. After being admitted to Italy without delay, she made her way toward the arrivals hall, where Chiara was holding a sign that read: NITA WELCOMES IRINA BULGANOVA, GALAXY TRAVEL. Lior and Motti, Chiara’s ever-present bodyguards, were loitering at a nearby information kiosk, eyes fixed on their quarry.

  No one seemed to take notice of Dina as she headed outside to the passenger pickup area where Gabriel was standing at the door of a rented luxury minibus, dressed in the black suit of a chauffeur and wearing wraparound sunglasses. Two cars back, Yaakov was seated behind the wheel of a Lancia sedan, pretending to read the sports pages of Corriere della Sera. Dina climbed into the front passenger seat and watched as Irina boarded the minibus. Gabriel, after quickly scanning her bags for tracking beacons, loaded them into the luggage hold.

  The drive was ninety minutes in length. They had rehearsed it several times and by that morning could have done it in their sleep. From the airport, they headed northeast through a series of small towns and villages to the city of Como. Had the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni been their true destination, they would have split the inverted Y of the lake and headed straight to Bellagio. Instead, they followed the westernmost shoreline to Tremezzo and stopped at a private dock. A boat waited, Lior at the wheel, Motti at the stern. It bore Chiara and Irina slowly across the flat waters of the inlet to the large tawny-orange villa standing at the end of its own peninsula. In the grand entrance foyer was a man with eyes the color of glacial ice and a fine-boned, bloodless face. “Welcome to Italy,” he said to Irina in perfect Russian. “May I see your passport, please?”

  25

  LAKE COMO, ITALY

  THERE IS an audio recording of what transpired next. It is one minute
and twelve seconds in length and resides to this day in the archives of King Saul Boulevard, where it is considered required listening for its lessons in tradecraft and, in no small measure, for its pure entertainment value. Gabriel had warned them about Irina’s temper, but nothing could have prepared them for the ferocity of her response. Eli Lavon, the biblical archaeologist, would later describe it as one of the epic battles in the history of the Jewish people.

  Gabriel was not present for it. At that moment he was coming across the inlet by boat and listening to the proceedings over a miniature earpiece. Hearing a sound he took to be the shattering of a crystal vase, he hurried into the villa and poked his head into the dining room. By then, the skirmish was over, and a temporary cessation of hostilities had been declared. Irina was seated along one side of the rectangular table, breathing heavily from exertion, with Yaakov and Rimona each holding one arm. Yossi was standing to one side, with his shirt torn and four parallel scratch marks along the back of one hand. Dina stood next to him, her left cheek aflame, as if it had been recently slapped, which it had. Mikhail was positioned directly across from Irina, his face expressionless. Lavon was at his side, a better angel, staring down at his tiny hands as though he had found the whole sorry spectacle deeply embarrassing.

  Gabriel slipped quietly into the library where Olga Sukhova, former crusading journalist, now a member in good standing of the team, was seated before a video monitor, headphones over her ears. Gabriel sat next to her and slipped on a second pair of headphones, then looked at the video screen. Mikhail was now slowly turning through the pages of Irina’s passport with a bureaucratic insolence. He placed the passport on the table and stared at Irina for a moment before finally speaking again in Russian. Gabriel uncovered one ear and listened to Olga’s translation as the interrogation commenced.