The Other Woman: A Novel Read online

“The Madrid rezidentura.”

  “In that case, Spain has nothing to fear from the SVR.”

  “They warned me about your sharp tongue.”

  “What else did they warn you about?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said. “I was beginning to think I would never hear from the Center again.”

  “Surely, you’ve noticed the money in your bank account.”

  “The first of every month, never a day late.”

  “Others are not so fortunate.”

  “Few,” she countered, “have given so much.” Their footfalls echoed in the dead silence of the narrow street, as did those of the two support officers, who followed several paces behind. “I was hoping you might have something for me other than money.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” He drew an envelope from his stylish coat and held it aloft between two fingers.

  “Let me see it.”

  “Not here.” He returned the letter to his pocket. “Our mutual friends would like to make you a generous offer.”

  “Would they?”

  “A holiday in Russia. All expenses paid.”

  “Russia in the dead of winter? How could I possibly resist?”

  “St. Petersburg is lovely this time of year.”

  “I still call it Leningrad.”

  “Like my grandparents,” he said. “We’ve arranged an apartment overlooking the Neva and the Winter Palace. I can assure you, you will be very comfortable.”

  “I prefer Moscow to Leningrad. Leningrad is an imported city. Moscow is the real Russia.”

  “Then we’ll find something for you near the Kremlin.”

  “Sorry, not interested. It’s not my Russia any longer. It’s your Russia now.”

  “It’s the same Russia.”

  “You’ve become everything we fought against!” she snapped. “Everything we despised. My God, he’s probably turning somersaults in that grave of his.”

  “Who?”

  Apparently, Karpov did not know the reason she received the rather substantial sum of ten thousand euros in her bank account the first of each month, never a day late.

  “Why now?” she asked. “Why do they want me to come to Moscow after all these years?”

  “My brief is limited.”

  “Like your Spanish.” He absorbed her insult in silence. “I’m surprised you bothered to ask. Once upon a time, you would have bundled me onto a freighter and taken me to Moscow against my will.”

  “Our methods have changed.”

  “I doubt that very much.” They had reached the base of the town. She could just make out her little villa at the edge of the crag. She had left the lights on so she could find her way home in the dark. “How’s Comrade Lavrov?” she asked suddenly. “Still with us?”

  “It is not in my purview to say.”

  “And Modin?” she asked. “He’s dead now, isn’t he?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I don’t suppose you would. He was a great man, a true professional.” Contemptuously, she looked him up and down, Comrade Karpov, the new Russian. “I believe you have something that belongs to me.”

  “Actually, it belongs to Moscow Center.” He fished the envelope from his pocket again and handed it over. “You may read it, but you cannot keep it.”

  She carried the envelope a few paces along the street and opened it in the glow of an iron lamp. Inside was a single sheet of paper, typewritten, in stilted French. She stopped reading after a few lines; the words were counterfeit. She returned the letter coolly and set out alone through the darkness, counting her steps, thinking of him. One way or another, voluntarily or by force, she would be leaving for Russia soon, she was sure of it. Perhaps it would not be so horrid after all. Leningrad was really quite lovely, and in Moscow she could visit his grave. Have a d-d-drink with me . . . If only she had said no. If only . . .

  32

  Frankfurt—Tel Aviv—Paris

  Globaltek Consulting occupied two floors of a glassy modern office tower on the Mainzer Landstrasse in Frankfurt. Its shimmering Web site offered all manner of services, most of which were of no interest to its clients. Companies hired Globaltek for one reason, to gain access to the Kremlin and by extension the lucrative Russian market. All of Globaltek’s senior advisers were Russian nationals, as were most of the support and administrative staff. Sergei Morosov’s advertised area of expertise was the Russian banking sector. His curriculum vitae spoke of an elite Russian education and business career but made no mention of the fact he was a full colonel in the SVR.

  Planning for his defection to the State of Israel commenced within minutes of Uzi Navot’s return to King Saul Boulevard from Vienna. It would not be a typical defection, with its mating rituals and offers of safe harbor and a new identity. It would be of the crash variety, and highly coerced. Furthermore, it would have to be conducted in such a way that Moscow Center would not suspect Sergei Morosov was in the hands of the opposition. All undercover intelligence officers, regardless of their country or service, maintained regular contact with their controllers at headquarters; it was a basic operating principle of the trade. If Sergei Morosov missed more than one check-in, Moscow Center would automatically make one of three assumptions—that he had defected, that he had been kidnapped, or that he had been killed. Only under the third scenario, Sergei Morosov’s death, would the SVR believe its secrets to be safe.

  “So you’re going to kill another Russian?” asked the prime minister. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Only temporarily,” answered Gabriel. “And only in the minds of his controllers at Moscow Center.”

  It was late, a few minutes after ten in the evening, and the prime minister’s office was in semidarkness. “They’re not fools,” he said. “Eventually, they’re going to figure out he’s alive and well and in your hands.”

  “Eventually,” agreed Gabriel.

  “How long will it take?”

  “Three or four days, a week at the outside.”

  “What happens then?”

  “That depends on how many secrets he has rattling around in his head.”

  The prime minister regarded Gabriel in silence for a moment. On the wall behind his desk, the portrait of Theodor Herzl did the same. “The Russians aren’t likely to take this lying down. They’re liable to retaliate.”

  “How much worse can it get?”

  “A lot worse. Especially if it’s directed at you.”

  “They’ve tried to kill me before. Several times, actually.”

  “One of these days, they might succeed.” The prime minister picked up the single-page document Gabriel had brought from King Saul Boulevard. “This represents a lot of valuable resources. I’m not prepared to let this run indefinitely.”

  “It won’t. In fact, once I get my hands around Sergei Morosov’s neck, I suspect it will be over very quickly.”

  “How quickly?”

  “Three or four days.” Gabriel shrugged. “A week at the outside.”

  The prime minister signed the authorization and slid it across the desk. “Remember Shamron’s Eleventh Commandment,” he said. “Don’t get caught.”

  The next day was a Thursday—an ordinary Thursday throughout much of the world, with a typical allotment of murder, mayhem, and human misery—but inside King Saul Boulevard, no one would ever speak of it again without first uttering the word black. For it was on Black Thursday that the Office went on war footing. The prime minister had made it clear Gabriel was playing on borrowed time, and he resolved not to waste a minute of it. A week from Friday, he decreed, the shade would be drawn in the window of a Vienna apartment. And the following Tuesday evening, a phone would ring in the same apartment, and a caller would ask for one of four women: Trudi, Anna, Sophie, or Sabine. Trudi was Linz, Anna was Munich, Sophie was Berlin, and Sabine was Strasbourg, capital of the Alsace region of France. The Office would have no say in choosing the venue; it was Sergei Moro
sov’s party. Or, as Gabriel put it coldly, it was Sergei’s going-away party.

  Trudi, Anna, Sophie, Sabine: four safe flats, four cities. Gabriel ordered Yaakov Rossman, his chief of Special Operations, to plan for Sergei Morosov’s abduction from all four sites. “Out of the question. Not possible, Gabriel, really. We’re stretched to the breaking point already chasing Sergei around Frankfurt and keeping an eye on Werner Schwarz in Vienna. The watchers are doubled over. They’re folding like deck chairs.” Yaakov then did precisely as Gabriel asked, though for operational reasons he stated a clear preference for Sabine. “She’s lovely, she’s the girl of our dreams. Friendly country, lots of bolt-holes. Get me Sabine, and I’ll get you Sergei Morosov, gift-wrapped with a bow on top.”

  “I’d rather have him bruised and a little bloody.”

  “I can do that, too. But get me Sabine. And don’t forget the body,” said Yaakov over his shoulder as he sulked out Gabriel’s door. “We need the body. Otherwise, the Russians won’t believe a word of it.”

  Black Thursday was followed by Black Friday, and Black Friday by a black weekend. And by the time the sun rose on Black Monday, King Saul Boulevard was at war with itself. Banking and Identity were in open rebellion, Travel and Housekeeping were secretly plotting a coup, and Yaakov and Eli Lavon were barely speaking. It fell to Uzi Navot to play the role of in-house referee and peacemaker because more often than not Gabriel was one of the combatants.

  There was little mystery as to the source of his dark mood. It was Ivan who drove him. Ivan Borisovich Kharkov, international arms dealer, friend of the Russian president, and Gabriel’s personal bête noire. Ivan had taken a child from Chiara’s womb, and in a frozen birch forest outside Moscow he had placed a gun to the side of her head. Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon . . . One never forgot a sight like that, and surely one never forgave. Ivan was the warning shot the rest of the world missed. Ivan was proof that Russia was once more reverting to type.

  On the Wednesday of that terrible week, Gabriel slipped from King Saul Boulevard and rode in his motorcade across the West Bank to Amman, where he met with Fareed Barakat, the Anglophile chief of Jordanian intelligence. After an hour of small talk, Gabriel politely requested use of one of the king’s many Gulfstream jets for an operation involving a certain gentleman of Russian persuasion. And Barakat readily agreed, for he loathed the Russians almost as much as Gabriel did. The Butcher of Damascus and his Russian backers had driven several hundred thousand Syrian refugees across the border into Jordan. Fareed Barakat was anxious to return the favor.

  “But you won’t make a mess in the cabin, will you? I’ll never hear the end of it. His Majesty is very particular about his planes and his motorcycles.”

  Gabriel used the aircraft to fly to London, where he briefed Graham Seymour on the current state of the operation. Then he popped into Paris to have a quiet word with Paul Rousseau, the professorial chief of the Alpha Group, an elite counterterrorism unit of the DGSI. Its officers were skilled practitioners in the art of deception, and Paul Rousseau was their undisputed leader and lodestar. Gabriel met him in a safe flat in the twentieth arrondissement. He spent most of the time batting away the smoke of Rousseau’s pipe.

  “I wasn’t able to find an exact fit,” the Frenchman said as he handed Gabriel a photograph, “but this one should do.”

  “Nationality?”

  “The police were never able to determine that.”

  “How long has he been—”

  “Four months,” said Rousseau. “He’s a bit ripe but not offensive.”

  “The fire will take care of that. And remember,” Gabriel added, “take your time with the investigation. It’s never good to rush in a situation like this.”

  That was midmorning of the Friday, the same morning a shade was drawn in the window of an apartment in Vienna. The following Tuesday evening, a telephone rang in the same apartment, and a caller asked to speak to a woman who did not reside there. The next morning the members of Gabriel’s team boarded flights for five different European cities. All, however, would eventually make their way to the same destination. It was Sabine, the girl of their dreams.

  33

  Tenleytown, Washington

  Rebecca Manning awoke the next morning with a start. She had been dreaming, unpleasantly, but as always she had no memory of the subject matter. Outside her bedroom window the sky was dishwater gray. She checked the time on her personal iPhone. It was six fifteen, eleven fifteen at Vauxhall Cross. The time difference meant her day typically started early. In fact, it was rare she was permitted to sleep so late.

  Rising, she pulled on a robe against the chill and padded downstairs to the kitchen, where she smoked her first L&B of the day while waiting for the coffee to brew. The house she rented was on Warren Street, in the section of Northwest Washington known as Tenleytown. She had inherited it from a consular officer who had lived there with his wife and two young children. It was quite small, about the size of a typical English cottage, with a peculiar Tudor facade above the portico. At the end of the flagstone walkway stood an iron lamp, and across the street was a communal green garden. The lamp burned weakly, almost invisibly, in the flat light of morning. Rebecca had switched it on the previous evening and had neglected to switch it off again before going to bed.

  She drank her coffee from a bowl, with frothy steamed milk, and skimmed the headlines on her iPhone. There were no more stories about Alistair’s death. The news from America was the usual fare—a looming government shutdown, another school shooting, moral outrage over a presidential tryst with an adult film star. Like most MI6 officers who served in Washington, Rebecca had come to respect the professionalism and immense technical capabilities of America’s intelligence community, even if she didn’t always agree with the underlying policy priorities. She found less to admire, however, in America’s culture and politics. It was a crude and unsophisticated country, she thought, always lurching from crisis to crisis, seemingly unaware of the fact its power was fading. The postwar global security and economic institutions America had so painstakingly built were crumbling. Soon they would be swept away, and with them would go the Pax Americana. MI6 was already planning for the post-American world. So, too, was Rebecca.

  She carried the bowl of coffee upstairs to her room and pulled on a cold-weather tracksuit and a pair of Nike trainers. Despite her pack-a-day habit, she was an avid runner. She saw no contradiction in the two activities; she only hoped that one might counteract the effects of the other. Downstairs, she zipped her iPhone, a house key, and a ten-dollar bill into the pocket of her trousers. On her way out the door, she switched off the lamp at the end of the walk.

  Sunlight was starting to seep through the clouds. She performed a few halfhearted stretching exercises beneath the shelter of the portico while scanning the quiet street. Under the rules of the Anglo-American intelligence accord, the FBI was not supposed to follow her or keep watch on her home. Still, she always checked to make certain the Americans were living up to their word. It wasn’t difficult; the street offered little protection for watchers. Commuters used it occasionally, but only residents and their guests and housekeepers ever parked there. Rebecca kept a detailed mental catalogue of the vehicles and their license plates. She had always been good at memory games, especially games involving numbers.

  She set out at an easy pace along Warren Street and then turned onto Forty-Second and followed it to Nebraska Avenue. As always, her pace slowed as she passed the house on the corner, a large three-story colonial with tan brick, white trim, black shutters, and a stubby addition on the southern-facing flank.

  The addition had not been there in 1949 when a deeply respected MI6 officer, a man who had helped to build America’s intelligence capability during World War II, moved into the house with his long-suffering wife and young children. It was soon a popular gathering spot for Washington’s intelligence elite, a place where secrets flowed as easily as the martinis and the wine, secrets that eventually found t
heir way to Moscow Center. On a warm late-spring evening in 1951, the deeply respected MI6 officer removed a hand trowel from the potting shed in the rear garden. Then, from a hiding place in the basement, he retrieved his miniature KGB camera and supply of Russian film. He concealed the items in a metal canister and drove into the Maryland countryside, where he buried the evidence of his treachery in a shallow grave.

  Down by the river near Swainson Island, at the base of an enormous sycamore tree. The stuff is probably still there if you look . . .

  Rebecca continued along Nebraska Avenue, past the Department of Homeland Security, around Ward Circle, and through the campus of American University. The rear entrance of the sprawling Russian Embassy compound, with its enormous SVR rezidentura and permanent FBI surveillance presence, was on Tunlaw Road in Glover Park. From there, she headed south to Georgetown. The streets of the West Village were still quiet, but rush-hour traffic was pouring across Key Bridge onto M Street.

  The sun was now shining brightly. Rebecca entered Dean & DeLuca and ordered a café latte and carried it outside to a cobbled alleyway stretching between M Street and the C&O Canal. She sat down next to three young women dressed, as she was, in athletic wear. There was a yoga studio on the opposite side of M Street, thirty-one paces from the table where Rebecca now sat, ninety-three feet exactly. The class the three young women would be attending commenced at 7:45. It would be taught by a Brazilian citizen named Eva Fernandes, a trim, blond, strikingly attractive woman who was at that moment walking along the sunlit pavement, an athletic bag over her shoulder.

  Rebecca took out her iPhone and checked the time. It was 7:23. For the next several minutes she drank her coffee and saw to a few personal e-mails and texts while trying to block out the conversation of the three women at the next table. They really were insufferable, she thought, these pampered millennial snowflakes with their yoga mats and their designer leggings and their contempt for concepts such as hard work and competition. She only wished she’d brought along a packet of L&Bs. One whiff of smoke would have sent them scurrying.