The English Girl: A Novel Read online

  “Would that be enough to keep you interested?” asked Lazarev.

  “It might be.”

  “What would it take to convince you to leave Viktor and come to me?”

  “Money, Gennady. Lots of money.”

  “I can assure you, Nicolai, money isn’t an issue.”

  “Then you have my full attention.”

  Lazarev opened a leather folio and removed a single sheet of paper. “Your compensation package will include apartments in Aberdeen, London, and Moscow,” he began. “You will fly private, of course, and you will have use of a Volgatek villa that we keep in the south of France. In addition to your base salary, you will receive bonuses and incentives that will bring your total compensation to something like this.”

  Lazarev placed the sheet of paper in front of Mikhail and pointed to the figure near the bottom of the page. Mikhail looked at it for a moment, scratched his hairless head, and frowned.

  “Well?” asked Lazarev.

  “Not even close.”

  Lazarev smiled. “I thought that would be your answer,” he said, delving into the folio again, “so I took the liberty of preparing a second offer.” He placed it in front of Mikhail and asked, “Any better?”

  “Warmer,” said Mikhail, returning Lazarev’s smile. “Definitely warmer.”

  49

  RED SQUARE, MOSCOW

  By four that afternoon, they had the broad outlines of an agreement. Lazarev drew up a one-page deal memo, booked a private room at Café Pushkin for the celebration, and sent Mikhail back to the Ritz for a few hours of rest. He made the short walk with no escort other than Gabriel, who was shadowing him along the opposite pavement, his coat collar around his ears, a flat cap pulled low over his brow. He watched Mikhail turn into the hotel’s grand entrance and then continued along Tverskaya Street to Revolution Square. There he paused briefly to watch a Lenin impersonator exhorting a group of bewildered Japanese tourists to seize the means of production from their bourgeoisie overlords. Then he slipped beneath the archway of Resurrection Gate and entered Red Square.

  Darkness had fallen and the wind had decided to give the city a reprieve to go about its evening business in peace. Head down, shoulders hunched, Gabriel looked like just another jaded Muscovite as he hurried along the northern wall of the Kremlin, past the blank stares of the frozen guards standing watch outside the Lenin Mausoleum. Directly ahead, awash in white light, rose the swirling candy-cane domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral. Gabriel glanced at the clock in the Savior Tower and then made his way to the spot along the Kremlin wall where Stalin, the murderer of millions, slumbered peacefully in a place of honor. Eli Lavon joined him a moment later.

  “What do you think?” asked Gabriel in German.

  “I think they should have buried him in an unmarked grave in a field,” Lavon responded. “But that’s just one man’s opinion.”

  “Are we clean?”

  “As clean as we can be in a place like Moscow.”

  Gabriel turned without a word and led Lavon across the square to the entrance of GUM. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, it had been the only department store in the country where Russians could reliably find a winter coat or a pair of shoes. Now it was a Western-style shopping mall stuffed with all the useless trinkets capitalism had to offer. The soaring glass roof reverberated with the chatter of the evening shoppers. Lavon stared at his BlackBerry as he walked at Gabriel’s side. These days, it was a very Russian thing to do.

  “Gennady Lazarev’s secretary just sent an e-mail to his senior staff about tonight’s dinner at Café Pushkin,” Lavon said. “Pavel Zhirov was on the invitation list.”

  “I never heard his voice when Mikhail was inside Volgatek today.”

  “That’s because he wasn’t there,” Lavon replied, still gazing at his BlackBerry. “After leaving his apartment in Sparrow Hills, he went straight to Yasenevo.”

  “Why today of all days? Why wasn’t he at Volgatek to meet the new boy?”

  “Maybe he had other business to attend to.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe there was someone else who needed to be kidnapped.”

  “That’s what worries me.”

  Gabriel paused in the window of a jewelry store and gazed at a display of glittering Swiss watches. Next door was a Soviet-style cafeteria where plump women in white aprons joylessly spooned cheap Russian food onto gray Brezhnev-era plates. Even now, more than twenty years after the fall of communism, there were still Russians who clung to the nostalgia of their totalitarian past.

  “You’re not getting cold feet, are you?” Lavon asked.

  “It’s December in Moscow, Eli. It’s impossible not to.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “I’d like the hotel to give Nicholas Avedon his special amenity a little earlier than planned.”

  “Amenities like that are frowned upon at Café Pushkin.”

  “Anyone who’s anyone carries a gun at Pushkin, Eli.”

  “It’s risky.”

  “Not as risky as the alternative.”

  “Why don’t we skip dinner and go straight to dessert?”

  “I’d love to,” said Gabriel, “but the rush-hour traffic won’t allow it. We have to wait until after ten o’clock. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to get him out of town. We’ll be dead in the water.”

  “A poor choice of words.”

  “Send the message, Eli.”

  Lavon typed a few characters into his BlackBerry and led Gabriel outside, into Il’inka Street. The wind was getting up again, and the temperature had plummeted. Tears flowed freely from Gabriel’s eyes as they walked past the Easter-egg facades of the heavy imperial buildings. In his earpiece he could hear Nicholas Avedon humming softly to himself as he ran a bath in his room at the Ritz.

  “I want full coverage on him the entire time,” Gabriel said. “We take him to dinner, we sit with him at dinner, and then we take him back to his hotel. That’s when the fun begins.”

  “Only if Pavel agrees to ride to Mikhail’s rescue.”

  “He’s the chief of Volgatek security. If Volgatek’s newest executive believes his life is in danger, Pavel will come running. And then we’ll make him very sorry that he did.”

  “I’d feel better if we could take him to another country.”

  “Which one, Eli? Ukraine? Belarus? Or how about Kazakhstan?”

  “Actually, I was thinking about Mongolia.”

  “Bad food.”

  “Terrible food,” agreed Lavon, “but at least it isn’t Russia.”

  At the end of the street, they turned to the left and climbed the hill toward Lubyanka Square.

  “Do you think it’s ever been done before?” asked Lavon.

  “What’s that?”

  “Kidnapping a KGB officer inside Russia.”

  “There is no KGB, Eli. The KGB is a thing of the past.”

  “No, it isn’t. It’s called the FSB now. And it occupies that big ugly building directly ahead of us. And they’re going to be rather upset when they find out one of their brethren is missing.”

  “If we get him cleanly, they won’t have time to do anything about it.”

  “If we get him cleanly,” Lavon agreed.

  Gabriel was silent.

  “Do me a favor tonight, Gabriel. If you don’t have the shot, don’t take it.” He paused, then added, “I’d hate to miss out on the opportunity of working for you when you become the chief.”

  They had arrived at the top of the hill. Lavon slowed to a stop and gazed at the enormous yellow fortress on the opposite side of Lubyanka Square. “Why do you suppose they kept it?” he asked seriously. “Why didn’t they tear it down and put up a monument to its victims?”

  “For the same reason they didn’t remove Stalin’s bones from the Kremlin wall,” answered Gabriel.

  Lavon was silent for a moment. “I hate this place,” he said finally. “And at the same time, I love it dearly. Am I crazy?”

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sp; “Certifiable,” said Gabriel. “But that’s just one man’s opinion.”

  “I’d feel better if we could take him to another country.”

  “So would I, Eli. But we can’t.”

  “How far is it to Mongolia?”

  “Too far to drive,” said Gabriel. “And the food is terrible.”

  Five minutes later, as Gabriel entered the Metropol’s overheated lobby, Yossi Gavish stepped from his fourth-floor room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel dressed in a banker’s gray suit and a silver necktie. In his left hand was a gold name tag that read ALEXANDER—a student of history, Yossi had chosen it himself—and in his right was a glossy blue gift bag bearing the hotel’s logo. The bag was heavier than Yossi made it appear, for it contained a Makarov 9mm pistol, one of several weapons that Moscow Station had acquired from illicit local sources before the team’s arrival. For three days the weapon had been concealed between the mattress and box spring in Yossi’s room. He was understandably relieved to finally be rid of it.

  Yossi waited until he was certain the corridor was unoccupied before quickly affixing the name tag to his lapel. Then he made his way to the doorway of Room 421. From the opposite side he could hear a man singing “Penny Lane” quite well. He knocked twice, firm but polite, the knock of a concierge. Then, upon receiving no answer, he knocked again, louder. This time a man in a white toweling robe answered. He was tall, impossibly fit, and pink from his bath.

  “I’m busy,” he snapped.

  “I’m so sorry to interrupt, Mr. Avedon,” replied Yossi in a neutral cosmopolitan accent, “but management would like to offer you a small gift of our appreciation.”

  “Tell management thanks but no thanks.”

  “Management would be disappointed.”

  “It’s not more bloody caviar, is it?”

  “I’m afraid management didn’t say.”

  The pink man in the white robe snatched the gift bag and slammed the door on Yossi’s false hotelier’s smile. With that, Yossi turned on his heel and, after plucking the name tag from his lapel, headed back to his own room. There he quickly removed his suit and changed into a pair of jeans and a heavy woolen sweater. His suitcase stood at the foot of the bed; if everything went according to plan, a courier from Moscow Station would collect it in a few hours and destroy the contents. Yossi stuffed the suit into a side pocket and pulled the zipper closed. Then he wiped down every object he had touched in the room and left it for what he hoped would be the last time.

  Downstairs in the lobby, he saw Dina leafing skeptically through an English-language Moscow newspaper. He walked past her as though they were unacquainted and stepped outside. A Range Rover waited at the curb, its tailpipe sending a plume of vaporous exhaust into the bitterly cold night. Seated behind the wheel was Christopher Keller. He pulled into the evening rush-hour traffic on Tverskaya Street even before Yossi had closed the door. Directly before them rose the Kremlin’s Corner Arsenal Tower, its red star glowing like a warning light. Keller whistled tunelessly as he drove.

  “Do you know the way?” asked Yossi.

  “Left on Okhotnyy Ryad Street, left on Bol’shaya Dmitrovka Street, and then another left on the Boulevard Ring.”

  “Spend much time in Moscow, do you?”

  “Never had the pleasure.”

  “Can you at least pretend to be nervous?”

  “Why should I be nervous?”

  “Because we’re about to kidnap a KGB officer in the middle of Moscow.”

  Keller smiled as he made the first left turn. “Easy peasy lemon squeezy.”

  It took Keller and Yossi the better part of twenty minutes to make the short drive to their holding point on the Boulevard Ring. Upon arrival, Yossi fired off a secure message to Gabriel at the Metropol, and Gabriel in turn bounced it to King Saul Boulevard, where it flashed across the status screen in the Op Center. Seated in his usual chair was Uzi Navot. He was staring at a live video image of the Ritz-Carlton’s lobby, courtesy of the miniature transmitter concealed in Dina’s handbag. The time was 7:36 in Moscow, 6:36 in Tel Aviv. At 6:38 the phone at Navot’s elbow rang. He brought the receiver swiftly to his ear, grunted something that sounded like his own name, and heard the voice of Orit, his executive secretary. Inside King Saul Boulevard, she was known as “the Iron Dome” because of her unrivaled ability to shoot down requests for a moment with the chief.

  “No way,” responded Navot. “Not a chance.”

  “He’s made it clear he’s not going to leave.”

  Navot sighed heavily. “All right,” he said. “Send him down, if you have to.”

  Navot hung up the phone and stared at the image of the hotel lobby. Two minutes later he heard the sound of the Op Center door opening and closing behind him. Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a liver-spotted hand place two packs of Turkish cigarettes on the tabletop, along with a battered old Zippo. The lighter flared. A cloud of smoke blurred the image on the screen.

  “I thought I pulled all your passes,” Navot said quietly, still staring straight ahead.

  “You did,” replied Shamron.

  “How did you get in the building?”

  “I tunneled in.”

  Shamron twirled the old lighter in his fingertips. Two turns to the right, two turns to the left.

  “You have a lot of nerve showing your face around here,” Navot said.

  “This isn’t the time or the place, Uzi.”

  “I know it isn’t,” Navot said. “But you still have a lot of nerve.”

  Two turns to the right, two turns to the left . . .

  “Would it be possible to turn up the volume on the audio feed from Mikhail’s phone?” Shamron asked. “My hearing isn’t what it once was.”

  “Your hearing isn’t the only thing.”

  Navot caught the eye of one of the technicians and gestured for him to increase the volume.

  “What’s that song he’s singing?” Shamron asked.

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Answer the question, Uzi.”

  “It’s ‘Penny Lane.’ ”

  “The Beatles?”

  “Yes, the Beatles.”

  “Why do you suppose he chose that song?”

  “Maybe he likes it.”

  “Maybe,” said Shamron.

  Navot glanced at the clock. It was 7:42 in Moscow, 6:42 in Tel Aviv. Shamron crushed out his cigarette and immediately lit another.

  Two turns to the right, two turns to the left . . .

  Mikhail was still singing to himself as he departed his hotel room, dressed for dinner. The gift bag was in his right hand as he entered the elevator, though it was absent when he came out of the lobby men’s room three minutes after that. The team in the Ops Center saw him for the first time at 7:51 as he passed within range of Dina’s camera and started toward the hotel entrance. Waiting there, his arm raised as though he were signaling a rescue aircraft, was Gennady Lazarev. The hand seized Mikhail by the shoulder and drew him into the back of a waiting Maybach limousine. “I hope you managed to get a little rest,” Lazarev said as the car eased gracefully away from the curb, “because tonight you’re going to get a taste of the real Russia.”

  50

  CAFÉ PUSHKIN, MOSCOW

  In the aftermath, when they were tidying up their files and writing their after-action reports, there would be a heated debate over the true meaning of Gennady Lazarev’s words. One camp saw them as a harmless expression of goodwill; the other as a clear warning that Gabriel, a chief in waiting, would have been wise to heed. As usual, it was Shamron who settled the dispute. Lazarev’s words were without consequence, he declared, for Mikhail’s fate had been sealed the instant he climbed into the car.

  The setting for what transpired next, Moscow’s renowned Café Pushkin, could not have appeared any more inviting, especially on a December evening, with the air brittle and snow dancing on a Siberian wind. It was located at the corner of Tverskaya Street and the Boulevard Ring, in a stately old eighteenth-c
entury house that looked as though it had been imported from Renaissance Italy. Beyond its pretty French doors ran three lanes of traffic; and beyond the traffic was a small square where Napoleon’s soldiers had once pitched their tents and burned the lime trees for warmth. Muscovites hurried home along the gravel footpaths, and a few brave mothers sat on the benches in the lamplight, watching their overbundled children playing on the snow-whitened lawns. Mordecai and Rimona sat silently among them, Mordecai watching the entrance of Café Pushkin, Rimona the children. Keller and Yossi had found a parking space fifty yards short of the restaurant. Yaakov and Oded, also in a Land Rover, were fifty yards beyond it.

  The dinner had been called for eight, but owing to the heavier than normal traffic in Moscow that evening, Lazarev and Mikhail did not arrive until twelve minutes past. Mordecai made a note of the time, as did the teams in the Land Rovers. So did Gabriel, who quickly flashed a message to the Op Center at King Saul Boulevard. The message was unnecessary, of course, because Navot and Shamron were closely monitoring the live audio feed from Mikhail’s phone. Therefore, they heard his heavy footfalls over the unpolished floorboards in Pushkin’s entrance. And the rattle of the old elevator that bore him to the second floor. And the round of throaty Russian applause that greeted him as he entered the private room that had been set aside for his coronation.

  A place had been reserved for Mikhail at the head of the table, with Lazarev to his right and Pavel Zhirov, Volgatek’s chief of security, to his left. Zhirov alone seemed to take no joy in the acquisition of Viktor Orlov’s protégé. Throughout the evening, he wore the blank expression of an experienced gambler who was losing badly at roulette. His gaze, narrow and dark, never strayed long from Mikhail’s face. He seemed to be calculating his losses and deciding whether he had the stomach for another turn of the wheel.

  If Zhirov’s brooding presence made Mikhail uneasy, he gave no sign of it. Indeed, all those who listened in on Mikhail’s performance that evening would describe it as one of the finest they had ever heard. He was the Nicholas Avedon whom they had all fallen in love with from afar. The witty Nicholas. The edgy Nicholas. The smarter than everyone else in the room Nicholas—save for Gennady Lazarev, who was perhaps smarter than anyone else in the world. As the evening wore on, he spoke less English and more Russian, until he stopped speaking English altogether. He was one of them now. He was Nicolai Avdonin. A Volgatek man. A man of Russia’s future. A man of Russia’s past.