The Other Woman: A Novel Read online

  “Her mother remembers you, by the way.”

  “Does she?”

  “She remembers your father, too.”

  Seymour tossed the photograph onto the coffee table. “Where is she now? Still in Seville?”

  Gabriel nodded. “I recommend she stay there until you’ve taken Rebecca into custody. But I’d move quickly. The Russians are liable to notice she’s no longer in Zahara.”

  “Arrest Rebecca Manning?” asked Seymour. “On what charge? Being the illegitimate daughter of Kim Philby?”

  “She’s a Russian mole, Graham. Make up some excuse to get her to London, something that won’t make her suspicious, and take her into custody the minute she steps off the plane at Heathrow.”

  “Did Rebecca ever actually spy for the Russians?”

  “Of course.”

  “I need proof,” said Seymour. “Otherwise, all I have is a sad story about a young child who was brainwashed by the KGB into completing the work of her treacherous father.”

  “I’d read a story like that.”

  “Unfortunately, so will a good many other people.” Seymour paused, then added, “And the reputation of the Secret Intelligence Service will be destroyed.”

  A silence fell between them. It was Gabriel who broke it.

  “Put her under blanket surveillance, Graham. Physical, cyber, cellular. Wire her home and her office. Eventually, she’ll slip up.”

  “Are you forgetting who her father was?”

  “I was the one who figured it out.”

  “She’s a child prodigy,” said Seymour. “Philby never slipped up, and neither will she.”

  “I’m sure you and Christopher will think of something.” Gabriel dropped the birth certificate atop the photograph. “I have a plane to catch and several pressing matters at home that require my attention.”

  Seymour managed a smile. “Not even a little tempted?”

  “To what?”

  “To finish what you started?”

  “I’ll wait for the movie. Besides, I have a bad feeling about how this is going to turn out.” Gabriel rose slowly to his feet. “If you don’t mind, I need to lock up. Housekeeping will slip a nasty letter into my file if I leave you behind.”

  Seymour remained seated. He was pondering his wristwatch. “There’s no way you’ll make the three-thirty El Al flight now. Why don’t you stick around for a few minutes and tell me how you’d go about it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Catching Kim Philby’s daughter red-handed.”

  “That’s the easy part. All you have to do is catch a spy to catch a spy.”

  “How?”

  “With a Ford Explorer,” said Gabriel. “On the rue Saint-Denis in Montreal.”

  Seymour smiled. “You have my full attention. Keep talking.”

  53

  Narkiss Street, Jerusalem

  It was nearly midnight by the time Gabriel’s motorcade turned in to Narkiss Street. An armored limousine was parked outside his building, and upstairs in his apartment a light burned softly in the kitchen. Ari Shamron was sitting at the little café table, alone. He was dressed, as usual, in a pair of pressed khaki trousers, a white oxford cloth shirt, and a leather bomber jacket with an unrepaired tear in the left shoulder. On the table before him was a packet of Turkish cigarettes, unopened, and his old Zippo lighter. His olive wood cane leaned against the opposing chair.

  “Does anyone know you’re here?” asked Gabriel.

  “Your wife does. Your children were asleep when I arrived.” Shamron contemplated Gabriel through his ugly steel-rimmed spectacles. “Sound familiar?”

  Gabriel ignored the question. “How did you know I was coming back tonight?”

  “I have a highly placed source.” Shamron paused, then added, “A mole.”

  “Only one?”

  Shamron gave a half smile.

  “I’m surprised you weren’t waiting at Ben Gurion.”

  “I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”

  “Since when?”

  Shamron’s smile widened, deepening the cracks and fissures in his aged face. It had been many years since his last term as chief, but he still meddled in the affairs of the Office as though it were his private fiefdom. His retirement was restless and, like Kim Philby’s, largely unhappy. He passed his days repairing antique radios in the workshop of his fortress-like home in Tiberias, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Nights he reserved for Gabriel.

  “My mole tells me you’ve been traveling a great deal of late,” he said.

  “Does he?”

  “Never make assumptions about the gender of a mole.” Shamron’s tone was admonitory. “Women are just as capable of betrayal as men.”

  “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. What else does your mole tell you?”

  “The mole is concerned that what started as a noble pursuit to clear your name after the disaster in Vienna has become something of an obsession. The mole believes you are neglecting your service and your family at a time when both need you desperately.”

  “The mole,” said Gabriel, “is mistaken.”

  “The mole’s access,” countered Shamron, “is unlimited.”

  “Is it the prime minister?”

  Shamron frowned. “Perhaps you weren’t listening earlier when I said the mole is highly placed.”

  “That leaves my wife,” said Gabriel. “Which would explain why you haven’t dared to light one of those cigarettes. You and Chiara had a nice long talk tonight, and she read you the riot act about smoking in the house before she went to bed.”

  “I’m afraid your clearance doesn’t allow you to know the mole’s true identity.”

  “I see. In that case, please tell the mole the operation is almost over and that life will soon be returning to normal, whatever that means in the context of the Allon family.”

  Gabriel took down two wineglasses from the cabinet and opened a bottle of Bordeaux-style red wine from the Judean Hills.

  “I would prefer coffee,” said Shamron with a frown.

  “And I would prefer to be in bed next to my wife. Instead, I will have a single drink with you and then send you happily into the night.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Shamron accepted the wine with a tremulous hand. It was blue-veined and liver-spotted and looked as though it had been borrowed from a man twice his size. It was one of the reasons why he had been chosen for the Eichmann operation, the immense size and strength of his hands. Even now, Shamron could not go out in public without being approached by aging survivors who simply wanted to touch the hands that had clamped around the neck of the monster.

  “Is it true?” he asked.

  “That I would prefer to be with my wife instead of you?”

  “That this mole hunt of yours is almost over.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, it already is. My friend Graham Seymour would like me to stick around for the final act.”

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

  Gabriel smiled. “I see you’ve been watching the Sergei Morosov interrogation.”

  “With great interest. I especially enjoyed the part about the British defector who worked with Lenin’s doppelgänger to plant a mole in the heart of British intelligence.” Shamron lowered his voice. “I don’t suppose any of it is true.”

  “All of it, actually.”

  “Were you able to find her?”

  “The other woman?”

  Shamron nodded, and Gabriel nodded in response.

  “Where?”

  “In the files of Graham Seymour’s father. He worked in Beirut in the early sixties.”

  “I remember,” said Shamron. “It must have been interesting reading.”

  “Especially the parts about you.”

  Shamron reached for his cigarettes but stopped himself. “And the child?”

  Gabriel tore a sheet of paper from the notepad on the counter and wrote out Rebecca Manning’s name and posi
tion at MI6. Shamron read it gravely.

  “It’s the same job as—”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel. “The exact same job.”

  Shamron returned the note and pushed the Zippo lighter across the tabletop. “Perhaps you should burn that.”

  Gabriel went to the basin and touched the corner of the paper to the flame of the lighter.

  “And the final act?” asked Shamron. “I suppose it will take place in Washington.”

  Gabriel dropped the charred paper into the basin but said nothing.

  “And what about the Americans? Have you written them into your script? Oh, no,” Shamron said hastily, answering his own question, “that wouldn’t do, would it? After all, the Americans know nothing about any of this.”

  Gabriel opened the tap and carefully washed the ashes down the drain. Then he sat down again and slid the lighter across the table. “Go ahead, Ari. I won’t tell your mole.”

  Shamron tore the cellophane from the packet of cigarettes. “I suppose Graham wants proof that she’s actually spying for the Russians.”

  “He does have a point.”

  “And he needs you to run the operation for him because he can’t trust anyone in his own service.”

  “With some justification,” said Gabriel.

  “Unless I’m mistaken, which is almost never the case, you probably made noises about not wanting any part of it. And then you promptly agreed.”

  “That sounds familiar, too.”

  “Actually, I can’t say I blame you. Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Aldrich Ames . . . they pale in comparison to this.”

  “It’s not why I’m doing it.”

  “Of course not. Heaven forbid you should ever take pleasure in any of your achievements. Why spoil your perfect record?” Shamron tapped a cigarette from the packet. “But I digress. You were about to tell me why you’re risking antagonizing Israel’s closest ally by running an unauthorized operation in Washington.”

  “Graham has promised to grant me full access to the debriefing once she’s in custody.”

  “Has he really.” Shamron slipped the cigarette between his lips and ignited it with the Zippo. “You know, Gabriel, there’s only one thing worse than having a spy in your intelligence service.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Catching her.” Shamron closed the Zippo with a snap. “But that’s the easy part. All you have to do is seize control of her method of communication with Moscow Center and induce her into action. Your friend Sergei Morosov has told you everything you need to know. I’d be happy to show you the relevant portion of the interrogation.”

  “I was listening at the time.”

  “You’ll have to think of something to tell the Americans,” Shamron continued. “Something to explain the presence of your personnel. A meeting at the station should suffice. They won’t believe a word of it, of course, which means you’ll have to watch your step.”

  “I intend to.”

  “Where will you run the operation?”

  “Chesapeake Street.”

  “A national embarrassment.”

  “But perfect for my needs.”

  “I wish I could be there,” said Shamron wistfully, “but I’d only be underfoot. These days, that’s all I am, an object around which people cautiously step, usually with their eyes averted.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  A companionable silence settled between them. Gabriel drank his wine while Shamron mechanically smoked his cigarette down to a stub, as though he feared Gabriel would not grant him permission to have another.

  “I had occasion to travel to Beirut with some regularity in the early sixties,” he said at last. “There was a little bar around the corner from the old British Embassy. Jack’s or Joe’s, I can’t remember the name of it. MI6 treated it like a club. I used to pop in there to have a listen to what they were up to. And who did I see one afternoon drinking himself into a stupor?”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “I was tempted,” said Shamron, “but I just sat at a table nearby and tried not to stare.”

  “And what were you thinking?”

  “As someone who loved his country and his people, I couldn’t possibly understand why he did what he did. But as a professional, I admired him greatly.” Shamron slowly crushed out his cigarette. “Did you ever read his book? The one he wrote in Moscow after he defected?”

  “Why bother? There isn’t an honest word in it.”

  “But some of it is fascinating. Did you know, for example, that he buried his Soviet camera and film somewhere in Maryland after learning that Burgess and Maclean had defected? It’s never been found. Apparently, he never told anyone where he hid it.”

  “Actually,” said Gabriel, “he told two people.”

  “Did he really? Who?”

  Gabriel smiled and poured himself another glass of wine.

  “I thought you said one drink.”

  “I did. But what’s the rush?”

  Shamron’s lighter flared. “So where is it?”

  “What?”

  “The camera and the film?”

  Gabriel smiled. “Why don’t you ask your mole?”

  54

  Rue Saint-Denis, Montreal

  Three far-flung events, all seemingly unrelated, portended that the quest for the Russian mole had entered its final and climactic phase. The first occurred in the sometimes-French, sometimes-German city of Strasbourg, where French authorities handed over a set of badly burned remains to a representative of the Russian government. The remains were purported to be those of a Russian business consultant from Frankfurt. They were not. And the representative of the Russian government who took possession of them was actually an officer of the SVR. Those who witnessed the transfer described the atmosphere as notably chilly. Little about the exercise, conducted on a rain-slickened tarmac of Strasbourg Airport, suggested the matter would end there.

  The second event transpired later that same morning in the pueblo blanco of Zahara in the south of Spain, where an elderly Frenchwoman known as la loca or la roja, a reference to the color of her politics, returned to her villa after a brief visit to Seville. Uncharacteristically, she was not alone. Two other people, a woman of perhaps thirty-five who spoke French and a bullet-shaped man who might have spoken no language at all, settled into the villa with her. Additionally, two of their associates took up residence at the hotel located one hundred and fourteen paces along the paseo. In early afternoon, the woman was seen quarreling with a shopkeeper in the Calle San Juan. She took her lunch amid the orange trees at Bar Mirador and afterward paid a call on Father Diego at the church of Santa María de la Mesa. Father Diego gave her his blessing—or perhaps it was his absolution—and then sent her on her way.

  The last of the three events took place not in Western Europe but in Montreal, where at 10:15 a.m. local time, as the elderly Frenchwoman was exchanging a few cross words with the checkout girl at the El Castillo supermarket, Eli Lavon alighted from a taxi on the rue Saint-Dominique. He then walked several blocks, pausing occasionally, apparently to take his bearings, to an address on the rue Saint-Denis. It corresponded to a former townhouse that had been converted, like most of its neighbors, into flats. A flight of stairs climbed from the pavement to the unit on the second floor, which Housekeeping, its budgets strained, had acquired on a sublet for a period of three months.

  The door opened with a sharp crack, as though a seal had been broken, and Lavon slipped inside. Morosely, he surveyed the stained, cigarette-burned furnishings before parting the gauzy curtains and peering out. At approximately forty-five degrees to Lavon’s right, on the opposite side of the street, was a patch of empty asphalt where, if the gods of intelligence were smiling upon them, a dark gray Ford Explorer would soon appear.

  If the gods of intelligence were smiling upon them . . .

  Lavon released the curtains. Another safe flat, another city, another watch. How long would it be this time? The great undertaking had become
the great wait.

  Christopher Keller arrived at midday; Mikhail Abramov, a few minutes before one. He was carrying a nylon duffel bag emblazoned with the name of a popular brand of ski equipment. Inside was a tripod-mounted camera with a telephoto night-vision lens, a long-range phased-array microphone, transmitters, two Jericho 9mm pistols, and two Office laptops with secure links to King Saul Boulevard. Keller had no operational paraphernalia other than his MI6 BlackBerry, which Gabriel had expressly forbidden him to use. Rebecca Manning had worked for MI6 during the critical transition from analogue to digital technology. She had no doubt given her first mobile phone to the Russians for analysis, and every one since. Eventually, MI6 would have to rewrite its software. For now, however, in order to maintain the illusion that all was normal, MI6’s officers around the globe were chattering and texting away on phones the Russians had cracked. But not Keller. Keller alone had gone dark.

  His task now was to sit in a fleabag flat in Montreal with two Israelis and keep watch on a few meters of asphalt along the rue Saint-Denis. They assumed the Russians were watching it, too—perhaps not continuously, but enough to know whether the site was secure. Thus, the three veteran operatives did more than simply wait for a dark-gray Ford Explorer to appear. They watched their new neighbors as well, along with the many pedestrians that passed beneath their window. With the aid of the microphone, they listened to snatches of conversations for any trace of operational banter or a Russian accent. Those who appeared too regularly or lingered too long were photographed, and the photos were dispatched to King Saul Boulevard for analysis. None produced positive results, which gave the three veteran operatives precious cold comfort.

  The traffic they monitored as well, especially in the small hours, when it thinned to a trickle. On the fourth night, the same Honda sedan—a 2016 Civic with ordinary Canadian license plates—appeared three times between midnight and one in the morning. Twice it passed from left to right, or southeast to northwest, but the third time it came from the opposite direction, and at a much slower speed. Mikhail captured a decent image of the driver with the long-lens camera and forwarded it to Gabriel at King Saul Boulevard. Gabriel in turn bounced it to his station chief in Ottawa, who identified the man behind the wheel as an SVR hood attached to the Russian consulate in Montreal. The drop site was most definitely in play.