The Defector Page 3

  King Saul Boulevard was the address of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. The service had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Those who worked there referred to it as “the Office” and nothing else.

  The girl placed the cappuccino in front of Gabriel and a plate of pastries in the center of the table. Navot grimaced.

  “What’s wrong, Uzi? Don’t tell me Bella has you on a diet again?”

  “What makes you think I was ever off it?”

  “Your expanding waistline.”

  “We all can’t be blessed with your trim physique and high metabolism, Gabriel. My ancestors were plump Austrian Jews.”

  “So why fight nature? Have one, Uzi—for the sake of your cover, if nothing else.”

  Navot’s selection, a trumpet-shaped pastry filled with cream, disappeared in two bites. He hesitated, then chose one filled with sweet almond paste. It vanished in the time it took Gabriel to pour a packet of sugar into his coffee.

  “I didn’t get a chance to eat on the plane,” Navot said sheepishly. “Order me a coffee.”

  Gabriel asked for another cappuccino, then looked at Navot. He was staring at the pastries again.

  “Go ahead, Uzi. Bella will never know.”

  “That’s what you think. Bella knows everything.”

  Bella had worked as an analyst on the Office’s Syria Desk before taking a professorship in Levantine history at Ben-Gurion University. Navot, a veteran agent-runner and covert operative schooled in the art of manipulation, was incapable of deceiving her.

  “Is the rumor true?” Gabriel asked.

  “What rumor is that?”

  “The one about you and Bella getting married. The one about a quiet wedding by the sea in Caesarea with only a handful of close friends and family in attendance. And the Old Man, of course. There’s no way the chief of Special Ops could get married without Shamron’s blessing.”

  Special Ops was the dark side of a dark service. It carried out the assignments no one else wanted, or dared, to do. Its operatives were executioners and kidnappers; buggers and blackmailers; men of intellect and ingenuity with a criminal streak wider than the criminals themselves; multilinguists and chameleons who were at home in the finest hotels and salons in Europe or the worst back alleys of Beirut and Baghdad. Navot had never managed to get over the fact he had been given command of the unit because Gabriel had turned it down. He was competence to Gabriel’s brilliance, caution to Gabriel’s occasional recklessness. In any other service, in any other land, he would have been a star. But the Office had always valued operatives like Gabriel, men of creativity unbound by orthodoxy. Navot was the first to admit he was a mere field hand, and he had spent his entire career toiling in Gabriel’s shadow.

  “Bella wanted the Office personnel kept to a minimum.” Navot’s voice had little conviction. “She didn’t want the reception to look like a gathering of spies.”

  “Is that why I wasn’t invited?”

  Navot devoted several seconds to the task of brushing a few crumbs into a tiny hillock. Gabriel made a mental note of it. Office behaviorists referred to such obvious delaying tactics as displacement activity.

  “Go ahead, Uzi. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

  Navot swept the crumbs onto the floor with the back of his hand and looked at Gabriel for a moment in silence. “You weren’t invited to my wedding because I didn’t want you at my wedding. Not after that stunt you pulled in Moscow.”

  The girl placed the coffee in front of Navot and, sensing tension, retreated behind her glass barricade. Gabriel peered out the window at a trio of old men moving slowly along the pavement, heavily bundled against the sharp chill. His thoughts, however, were of a rainy August evening in Moscow. He was standing in the tired little square opposite the looming Stalinist apartment block known as the House on the Embankment. Navot was squeezing the life out of his arm and speaking quietly into his ear. He was saying that the operation to steal the private files of Russian arms dealer Ivan Kharkov was blown. That Ari Shamron, their mentor and master, had ordered them to retreat to Sheremetyevo Airport and board a waiting flight to Tel Aviv. That Gabriel had no choice but to leave behind his agent, Ivan’s wife, to face a certain death.

  “I had to stay, Uzi. It was the only way to get Elena back alive.”

  “You disobeyed a direct order from Shamron and from me, your direct, if nominal, superior officer. And you put the lives of the entire team in danger, including your wife’s. How do you think that made me look to the rest of the division?”

  “Like a sensible chief who kept his head while an operation was going down the tubes.”

  “No, Gabriel. It made me look like a coward who was willing to let an agent die rather than risk his own neck and career.” Navot poured three packets of sugar into his coffee and gave it a single angry stir with a tiny silver spoon. “And you know something? They would be right to say that. Everything but the part about being a coward. I’m not a coward.”

  “No one would ever accuse you of running from a fight, Uzi.”

  “But I do admit to having well-honed survival instincts. One has to in this line of work, not only in the field but at King Saul Boulevard, too. Not all of us are blessed with your gifts. Some of us actually need a job. Some of us even have our sights set on a promotion.”

  Navot tapped the spoon against the rim of his cup and placed it in the saucer. “I walked into a real storm when I got back to Tel Aviv that night. They scooped us up at the airport and drove us straight to King Saul Boulevard. By the time we arrived, you’d already been missing for several hours. The Prime Minister’s Office was calling every few minutes for updates, and Shamron was positively homicidal. It’s a good thing he was in London; otherwise, he would have killed me with his bare hands. The working assumption was that you were dead. And I was the one who had allowed it to happen. We sat there for hours and waited for word. It was a bad night, Gabriel. I never want to go through another one like it.”

  “Neither do I, Uzi.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Navot looked at the scar near Gabriel’s right eye. “By dawn, we’d all but written you off. Then a communications clerk burst into the Operations Room and said you’d just called in on the flash line—from Ukraine, of all places. When we heard your voice for the first time, it was pandemonium. Not only had you made it out of Russia alive with Ivan Kharkov’s darkest secrets, but you’d brought along a carload of defectors, including Colonel Grigori Bulganov, the highest-ranking FSB officer to ever come across the wire. Not bad for an evening’s work. Moscow was among your finest hours. But for me, it will be a permanent stain on an otherwise clean record. And you put it there, Gabriel. That’s why you weren’t invited to my wedding.”

  “I’m sorry, Uzi.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For putting you in a difficult position.”

  “But not for refusing a direct order?”

  Gabriel was silent. Navot shook his head slowly.

  “You’re a smug bastard, Gabriel. I should have broken your arm in Moscow and dragged you to the car.”

  “What do you want me to say, Uzi?”

  “I want you to tell me it will never happen again.”

  “And if it does?”

  “First I’ll break your arm. Then I’ll resign as chief of Special Ops, which will leave them with no other option but to give you the job. And I know how much you want that.”

  Gabriel raised his right hand. “Never again, Uzi—in the field, or anywhere else.”

  “Say it.”

  “I’m sorry for what transpired between us in Moscow. And I swear I’ll never disobey another direct order from you.”

  Navot appeared instantly mollified. Personal confrontation had never been his strong suit.

  “That’s it, Uzi? You came all the way to Umbria because you wanted an apology?”

  “And a promise, Gabriel. Don’t forget the promise.”

 
“I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Good.” Navot placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Because I want you to listen to me very carefully. We’re going to go back to your villa of flowers, and you’re going to pack your bags. Then we’re going to Rome to spend the night inside the embassy. Tomorrow morning, when the ten o’clock flight takes off from Fiumicino Airport for Tel Aviv, we’re going to be on it, second row of first class, side by side.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Because Colonel Grigori Bulganov is gone.”

  “What do you mean gone?”

  “I mean gone, Gabriel. No longer among us. Vanished into thin air. Gone.”

  5

  AMELIA , UMBRIA

  HOW LONG has he been missing?”

  “About a week now.”

  “Be specific, Uzi.”

  “Colonel Grigori Bulganov was last spotted climbing into the back of a Mercedes sedan on Harrow Road at 6:12 p.m. on Tuesday evening.”

  They were walking through the dying twilight, along a narrow cobblestone street in Amelia’s ancient center. Trailing a few paces behind was a pair of fawn-eyed bodyguards. It was a troubling sign. Navot usually traveled with only a bat leveyha, a female escort officer, for protection. The fact he had brought along two trained killers indicated he took the threat to Gabriel’s life seriously.

  “When did the British get around to telling us?”

  “They placed a quiet call to London Station on Saturday afternoon, four days after the fact. Because it was Shabbat, the duty officer was a kid who didn’t quite understand the significance of what he’d just been told. The kid tapped out a cable and sent it off to King Saul Boulevard at low priority. Fortunately, the duty officer on the European Desk did understand and immediately placed a courtesy call to Shamron.”

  Gabriel shook his head. It had been years now since Shamron had done his last tour as chief, yet the Office was still very much his private fiefdom. It was filled with officers like Gabriel and Navot, men who had been recruited and groomed by Shamron, men who operated by a creed, even spoke a language, written by him. In Israel, Shamron was known as the Memuneh, the one in charge, and he would remain so until the day he finally decided the country was safe enough for him to die.

  “And I assume Shamron then called you,” Gabriel said.

  “He did, though it was distinctly lacking in courtesy of any kind. He told me to send you a message. Then he told me to grab a couple of boys and get on a plane. This seems to be my lot in life—the dutiful younger son who is dispatched into the wilderness every few months to track down his wayward older brother.”

  “Was Grigori under surveillance when he got into the car?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “So how are the British so certain about what happened?”

  “Their little electronic helpers were watching.”

  Navot was referring to CCTV, the ubiquitous network of ten thousand closed-circuit television cameras that gave London’s Metropolitan Police the ability to monitor activity, criminal or otherwise, on virtually every street in the British capital. A recent government study had concluded that the system had failed in its primary objective: deterring crime and apprehending criminals. Only three percent of street robberies were solved using CCTV technology, and crime rates in London were soaring. Embarrassed police officials explained away the failure by pointing out that the criminals had accounted for the cameras by adjusting their tactics, such as wearing masks and hats to conceal their identities. Apparently, no one in charge had considered that possibility before spending hundreds of millions of pounds and invading the public’s privacy on an unprecedented scale. The subjects of the United Kingdom, birthplace of Western democracy, now resided in an Orwellian world where their every movement was watched over by the eyes of the state.

  “When did the British discover he was gone?” Gabriel asked.

  “Not until the following morning. He was supposed to check in by telephone each night at ten. When he didn’t call on Tuesday, his minder wasn’t overly concerned. Grigori played chess every Tuesday night at a little club in Bloomsbury. Last Tuesday was the championship of his club’s annual tournament. Grigori was expected to win easily.”

  “I never knew he played.”

  “I guess he never had a chance to mention it during that evening you spent together in the interrogation rooms of Lubyanka. He was too busy trying to figure out how a midlevel functionary from the Israeli Ministry of Culture had managed to disarm and kill a pair of Chechen assassins.”

  “As I recall, Uzi, I wouldn’t have been in the stairwell if it wasn’t for you and Shamron. It was one of those little in-and-out jobs you two are always dreaming up. The kind that are supposed to go smoothly. The kind where no one is supposed to get hurt. But it never seems to work out that way.”

  “Some men are born great. Others just get all the great assignments from King Saul Boulevard.”

  “Assignments that get them thrown into the cells in the basement of Lubyanka. And if it wasn’t for Colonel Grigori Bulganov, I would have never walked out of that place alive. He saved my life, Uzi. Twice.”

  “I remember,” Navot said sardonically. “We all remember.”

  “Why didn’t the British tell us sooner?”

  “They thought it was possible Grigori had simply strayed off the reservation. Or that he was shacked up with some girl in a little seaside hotel. They wanted to be certain he was missing before pulling the fire alarm. He’s gone, Gabriel. And the last place on earth they can account for him is that car. It’s as if it was a portal to oblivion.”

  “I’m sure it was. Do they have a theory yet?”

  “They do. And I’m afraid you’re not going to like it. You see, Gabriel, the mandarins of British intelligence have concluded that Colonel Grigori Bulganov has redefected.”

  “Redefected? You can’t be serious.”

  “I am. What’s more, they’ve convinced themselves he was a double agent all along. They believe he came to the West to spoon-feed us a load of Russian crap and to gather information on the Russian dissident community in London. And now, having succeeded, he’s flown the coop and returned home to a hero’s welcome. And guess whom they blame for this catastrophe?”

  “The person who brought Grigori to the West in the first place.”

  “That’s correct. They blame you.”

  “How convenient. But Grigori Bulganov is no more a Russian double agent than I am. The British have concocted this ludicrous theory in order to shift the blame for his disappearance from their shoulders, where it belongs, to mine. He should never have been allowed to live openly in London. I couldn’t turn on the BBC or CNN International last fall without seeing his face.”

  “So what do you think happened to him?”

  “He was killed, Uzi. Or worse.”

  “What could be worse than being taken out by a Russian hit team?”

  “Being kidnapped by Ivan Kharkov.” Gabriel stopped walking and turned to face Navot in the empty street. “But then you already know that, Uzi. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  6

  AMELIA , UMBRIA

  THEY CLIMBED the winding streets to the piazza at the highest point of the city and looked down at the lights glowing like bits of topaz and garnet on the valley floor. The two bodyguards waited on the opposite side of the square, well out of earshot. One held a cell phone to his ear; the other, a lighter to a cigarette. When Gabriel glimpsed the flame, an image flashed in his memory. He was riding through the misty plains of western Russia at dawn in the front passenger seat of a Volga sedan, his head throbbing, his right eye blinded by a crude dressing. Two beautiful women slept like small children in the backseat. One was Olga Sukhova, Russia’s most famous opposition journalist. The other was Elena Kharkov, wife of Ivan Borisovich Kharkov: oligarch, arms dealer, murderer. Seated behind the wheel, a cigarette burning between his thumb and forefinger, was Grigori Bulganov. He was speaking softly so as not to wake
the women, his eyes fixed on a Russian road without end.

  Do you know what we do with traitors, Gabriel? We take them into a small room and make them kneel. Then we shoot them in the back of the head with a large-caliber handgun. We make certain the round exits the face so there’s nothing left for the family to see. Then we throw the body in an unmarked grave. Many things have changed in Russia since the fall of Communism. But the punishment for betrayal remains the same. Promise me one thing, Gabriel. Promise me I won’t end up in an unmarked grave.

  Gabriel heard a sudden rustle of wings and, looking up, saw a squadron of warring rooks wheeling around the piazza’s Romanesque campanile. The next voice he heard was Uzi Navot’s.

  “You can be sure of one thing, Gabriel. The only person Ivan Kharkov wants dead more than Grigori is you. And who could blame him? First you stole his secrets. Then you stole his wife and children.”

  “I didn’t steal anything. Elena offered to defect. I just helped her.”

  “I doubt Ivan sees it that way. And neither does the Memuneh. The Memuneh believes Ivan is back in business. The Memuneh believes Ivan has made his first move.”

  Gabriel was silent. Navot turned up the collar of his overcoat.

  “You may recall that we were picking up reports last autumn about a special unit Ivan had created within his personal security service. That unit was given a simple assignment. Find Elena, get back his children, and kill everyone who participated in the operation against him. We allowed ourselves to be lulled into thinking that Ivan had cooled off. Grigori’s disappearance suggests otherwise.”

  “Ivan will never find me, Uzi. Not here.”

  “Are you willing to bet your life on that?”

  “Five people know I’m in the country: the Italian prime minister, the chiefs of his intelligence and security services, the pope, and the pope’s private secretary.”

  “That’s five people too many.” Navot laid a large hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I want you to listen to me very carefully. Whether Grigori Bulganov left London voluntarily or at the point of a Russian pistol is of little or no consequence. You’re compromised, Gabriel. And you’re leaving here tonight.”