The Other Woman Read online

  The van was a Chevrolet Express Cargo, owned by a Northern Virginia–based contracting company, which was in turn owned by a Ukrainian-born asset of Moscow Center. The plan was to drive south on I-95 to Florence, South Carolina, where they would acquire a second clean vehicle for the rest of the trip to South Florida. Moscow Center had access to numerous safe properties in the Miami area, including the dump in Hialeah where they would spend the next six days—six days being the length of time it would take the Russian-flag container vessel Archangel to reach the Florida Straits. Petrov, who had served in the Russian navy before joining the SVR, would handle the trip out in a fifty-foot sport fishing boat.

  They were well provisioned for the journey, and heavily armed. Petrov had two weapons in his possession—a Tokarev and a Makarov—and Rebecca Manning still had her SIG Sauer. It was lying on the floor of the cargo hold, next to a phone she had borrowed from Zelenko. She was seated with her back against the driver’s side panel, her legs stretched before her, still dressed for the office in her dark pantsuit and Burberry mackintosh. Eva was similarly situated on the opposite side of the hold, but slightly to the rear. They had spoken little since leaving the parking garage. Rebecca had thanked Eva for her skill and bravery and promised to sing her praises to Sasha when they arrived in Moscow. Eva did not believe a word of it.

  The shortest route to I-95 was down Wisconsin Avenue. Rebecca, however, gave Petrov, who was driving, a different route.

  “It would be better if we—”

  “I’m the one who decides what’s best,” said Rebecca, cutting him off. And Petrov did not argue further, because long ago Rebecca had been granted Russian citizenship and was a colonel in the SVR, which meant she outranked him.

  He turned onto Forty-Second Street and followed it through Tenleytown. Eva noticed Rebecca’s peculiar interest in the large, tan colonial house that stood on the corner of Nebraska Avenue. They passed the Department of Homeland Security and the campus of American University. Then Petrov made a left onto Chain Bridge Road, which ran along the edge of Battery Kemble Park to MacArthur Boulevard. Through the windshield, Eva glimpsed the awning of Brussels Midi restaurant as they headed west toward Maryland.

  “That’s where I worked,” she said.

  “Yes, I know,” said Rebecca disdainfully. “You were a cocktail waitress.”

  “Hostess,” Eva corrected her.

  “Same thing.” Rebecca picked up the gun and laid it on her thigh. “Just because we’re going to spend the next two or three weeks traveling together doesn’t mean we’re going to be having long heart-to-heart conversations. You performed your job well, and for that I am grateful. But as far as I’m concerned, you are a cocktail waitress, and nothing more.”

  She was also, thought Eva, entirely expendable. She stared out the windshield, Rebecca stared at the phone. She was following their progress on the map. They were approaching the turnoff for the westbound Clara Barton Parkway, the route to the Beltway and I-95, but Rebecca instructed Petrov to continue straight. There was a small shopping center in the village of Glen Echo. She said she wanted to pick up a few things for the drive.

  Petrov again started to object but stopped himself. He continued straight, past an Irish pub and the old Glen Echo amusement park, to the intersection of MacArthur Boulevard and Goldsboro Road. There was an Exxon station, a 7-Eleven, a pharmacy, a dry cleaner, a pizza and sub shop, and a True Value hardware store. Much to the surprise of Petrov, Zelenko, and Eva Fernandes, it was the hardware store Rebecca Manning entered.

  She did so at 10:27 a.m., according to a store surveillance camera, just as a Ford Fusion passed the shopping center at a high rate of speed, headed west. Inside, there was only the driver, a man of late middle age, short black hair, gray at the temples. He had a gun, an Israeli-made Barak .45, but no bodyguard. The FBI and CIA did not know his whereabouts, and neither did the intelligence service he led. In fact, at that moment, he was entirely alone.

  79

  Cabin John, Maryland

  Just west of Wilson Boulevard is the historic Union Arch Bridge. Completed in 1864 and built of Massachusetts granite and sandstone from the nearby Seneca Quarry, it is part of the Washington Aqueduct, a twelve-mile pipeline that feeds water from the Great Falls to the American capital. The bridge’s roadbed is wide enough only for a single lane, and there are lights at either end to regulate the flow of traffic, which meant Gabriel had to endure a wait of nearly four minutes before he was allowed to pass.

  On the opposite side of the bridge was a green athletic field and a community center and a pleasant colony of clapboard cottages set amid trees displaying the first eruptions of spring leaf. Gabriel continued west, passing beneath the Capital Beltway, until once again a traffic signal halted his progress. At length, he turned left and headed down the slope of a long gentle hill to the Clara Barton Parkway.

  The road was what the British referred to as a dual carriageway, two lanes in either direction, separated by parkland. Gabriel was in the eastbound lane, headed back toward Washington. It was not a mistake on his part; he was now closer to the Potomac River and the historic Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which stretched 184 miles from Georgetown to Cumberland, Maryland. The canal had seventy-four locks, several of which lay along the Clara Barton Parkway, including Lock 10, where there was a small car park. On a typical weekend, the lot might be jammed with the cars of hikers and picnickers. But at 10:39 a.m. on a Thursday morning, when the rest of Washington was preparing for another day of political combat, it was deserted.

  Gabriel climbed out of the Ford and crossed an old wooden bridge spanning the canal. A footpath, muddy with recent rains, led through a stand of maple and poplar to the bank of the river. Swainson Island lay just offshore, across a narrow channel of dark, swiftly flowing water. An overturned boat, wooden, Park Service green in color, slept beneath an enormous sycamore.

  On the opposite side of the tree, away from the erosive effects of the water moving through the channel, were three large rocks, a tiny Stonehenge. Gabriel prodded one with the toe of his brogue and found it firmly embedded in the soil.

  He went back to the footpath and waited. The river flowed at his feet, the parkway at his back. Fewer than five minutes elapsed before he heard an engine die in the car park, followed by the sound of three doors opening and closing in rapid succession. Peering over his shoulder, he saw four people, two women, two men, crossing the footbridge spanning the canal. One of the women was wearing a business suit; the other, brightly colored athletic wear. The larger of the two men was carrying a shovel. Better to dig a grave that way, thought Gabriel.

  He turned away and watched the black water moving through the channel. In the right pocket of his leather jacket was his Office BlackBerry. It was of no use to him. Only the gun at the small of his back could save him now. It was a Barak .45-caliber. A man-stopper. But in a pinch, he thought, it would stop a woman, too.

  80

  Capital Beltway, Virginia

  On the way to Dulles Airport, Mikhail Abramov rang King Saul Boulevard and informed the Operations Desk that he had left the chief of the Office at the Chesapeake Street command post in a dark and unpredictable mood, with only a single bodyguard for protection. The desk promptly rang the bodyguard, and the bodyguard admitted he had allowed the chief to leave the command post alone, in a rented Ford Focus. Where was he going? The bodyguard couldn’t say. Was he in possession of his Office BlackBerry? As far as the bodyguard knew, he was. Did he have a gun? Again, the bodyguard wasn’t sure, so the desk called Mikhail and put the question to him. Yes, said Mikhail, he did have a gun. A big one, in fact.

  It did not take the Operations Desk long to locate the chief’s phone moving in a southwesterly direction along Nebraska Avenue. Minutes later, the phone was headed out of town on MacArthur Boulevard. After crossing the Beltway, it made a peculiar change of course and started back toward Washington along a largely parallel road, the name of which had no resonance in Tel Aviv. It appeared to the t
echnician the chief was lost. Or worse. He rang the phone several times. None of the calls received an answer.

  It was at this point that Uzi Navot, who had largely been a distant spectator to that morning’s events, intervened. He, too, rang the chief’s phone and, like the technician, was ignored. He then rang Mikhail and inquired as to his whereabouts. Mikhail replied that he and Eli Lavon were approaching Dulles. They were running late for their flight to Toronto.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to make other arrangements,” said Navot.

  “Where is he?” asked Mikhail.

  “Lock Ten. Down by the river.”

  81

  Cabin John, Maryland

  They were speaking in Russian, quiet and clipped. Gabriel, who had no ear for Slavic languages, could only wonder what they were saying. He supposed they were debating how to proceed now that they were no longer alone. Rebecca Manning’s voice was readily discernible from Eva’s; her accent was a casserole of British and French. In Eva’s voice, Gabriel heard only fear.

  At length, he turned slowly to acknowledge the newcomers’ presence. He smiled carefully, he nodded his head once. And he calculated how long it would take to get the gun into firing position. In the time it takes a mere mortal to clap his hands . . . That was what Ari Shamron used to say. But that was with a Beretta .22, not the lumbering Barak. And that was when Gabriel was young.

  None of the four returned his greeting. Rebecca was leading the way down the footpath, faintly comic in her pantsuit and pumps and mackintosh coat, which was pulling at one side, owing to the presence of a heavy object in the pocket. A step behind her was Eva, and behind Eva were the two men. Both looked capable of violence. The one with the shovel in his hands was Gabriel’s natural ally; he would have to drop it in order to draw his weapon. The smaller one would be quick, and Rebecca had already demonstrated her proficiency with a gun in Georgetown. Gabriel reckoned he had only a slight chance of surviving the next few seconds. Or perhaps they wouldn’t kill him after all. Perhaps they would load him into the back of the van and take him to Moscow and put him on trial for crimes against the Tsar and his kleptomaniacal comrades in the Kremlin.

  In the time it takes a mere mortal to clap his hands . . .

  But that was a long time ago, when he was the prince of fire, the angel of vengeance. Better to nod and walk away and hope they didn’t recognize him. Better to leave with his honor and his body intact. He had a wife at home, and children. He had a service to run and a country to protect. And he had Kim Philby’s daughter coming toward him along a footpath through the trees. He had found her out and tricked her into betraying herself. And now she was walking straight into his arms. No, he thought, he would see it through to its end. He was going to leave here with Rebecca Manning and take her back to London on Graham Seymour’s airplane.

  In the time it takes a mere mortal to clap his hands . . .

  In her high-heeled pumps, Rebecca was teetering down the path. She slipped and nearly toppled, and as she regained her footing her eyes met Gabriel’s. “Not appropriately dressed,” she drawled in her borrowed upper-class British accent. “Should have brought my Wellies.”

  She stumbled to a stop, Kim Philby’s daughter, Sasha’s endeavor, not ten feet from the spot where Gabriel stood. He broadened his smile and in French said, “I thought it would be you.”

  Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “I beg your pardon?” she said in English, but Gabriel responded in French, Rebecca’s first language. The language of her mother.

  “It was what your father said to Nicholas Elliott in Beirut. And it was what your mother said to me in Spain the night we found her. She sends her best, by the way. She’s sorry it turned out this way.”

  Rebecca murmured something in Russian. Something Gabriel couldn’t understand. Something that made the smaller of the two men reach for his gun. Gabriel drew first and shot the man twice in the face, the way Konstantin Kirov had been shot in Vienna. The bigger one had dropped the shovel and was struggling to wrench a gun from his hip holster. Gabriel shot him, too. Twice. Through the heart.

  Fewer than three seconds had elapsed, but in that brief time Rebecca Manning had managed to draw her SIG Sauer and grab a handful of Eva’s hair. They were alone now, just the three of them, down by the river, near Swainson Island, at the base of an enormous sycamore. Not entirely alone, thought Gabriel. In the car park a man was climbing out of a very old automobile, clutching a paper sack . . .

  82

  Cabin John, Maryland

  “How do you know about this place?”

  “Your mother told me that, too.”

  “Was she the one who betrayed me?”

  “A long time ago,” said Gabriel.

  He was staring directly into Rebecca’s wild blue eyes, down the barrel of the smoking Barak. In the quiet of the trees, the four gunshots had sounded like cannon fire, but as yet no cars had stopped along the parkway to investigate. Rebecca was still holding Eva by the hair. She had pulled her close to her body and was screwing the muzzle of the SIG Sauer into the side of her neck, just below the hinge of her jaw.

  “Go ahead and kill her,” said Gabriel calmly. “Another dead SVR agent matters nothing to me. And it will give me an excuse to kill you, too.”

  Fortunately, he spoke these words in French, a language Eva did not comprehend.

  “She used to be an SVR agent,” said Rebecca. “Now she’s yours.”

  “If you say so.”

  “She was working for you when she went into the coffee shop.”

  “If that were true, why did she help you escape?”

  “I didn’t give her much of a choice, Allon.”

  Gabriel’s smile was genuine. “You’re the closest thing to royalty we have in our business, Rebecca. I’m flattered you know my name.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “You have your father’s eyes,” said Gabriel, “but your mother’s mouth.”

  “How did you find her?”

  “It wasn’t hard, actually. She was Sasha’s one mistake. He should have brought her to Moscow a long time ago.”

  “Kim wouldn’t allow it.”

  “Is that what you called him?”

  She ignored the question. “He was remarried to Rufina,” she explained. “He didn’t want to make a mess of his personal life yet again by having an old flame living in the neighborhood.”

  “So he left her in the hills of Andalusia,” said Gabriel contemptuously. “Alone in the world.”

  “It wasn’t so bad there.”

  “You knew where she was?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you never tried to see her?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Because Sasha wouldn’t allow it? Or because it would have been too painful?”

  “Painful for whom?”

  “You, of course. She was your mother.”

  “I have nothing but scorn for her.”

  “Do you really?”

  “She gave me away rather easily, didn’t she? And she never once tried to contact me or see me.”

  “She did once, actually.”

  The blue eyes brightened, childlike. “When?”

  “When you were at Trinity College. She snapped a photo of you walking along Jesus Lane. You were next to the redbrick wall.”

  “And she kept it?”

  “It was all she had.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “I can show it to you, if you like. I have your birth certificate, too. Your real birth certificate. The one from Saint George Hospital in Beirut that listed the name of your real father.”

  “I never cared for the name Manning. I much prefer Philby.”

  “He did a terrible thing to you, Rebecca. He had no right to steal your life and brainwash you into fighting his old wars.”

  “No one brainwashed anyone. I adored Kim. Everything I did, I did for him.”

  “And now it’s over. Drop the gun,” said Gabriel, “and let me take you
home.”

  “Moscow is my home,” she declared. “Therefore, I propose a trade. I will give you back your agent, and you will grant me safe conduct to the Russian Federation.”

  “Sorry, Rebecca, but that’s a deal I can’t accept.”

  “In that case, I suppose your agent and I are going to die here together.”

  “Not if I kill you first.”

  She gave him a bitter, superior smile. It was Philby’s smile. “You haven’t got it in you to kill a woman, Allon. Otherwise, you would have done it already.”

  It was true. Rebecca was several inches taller than Eva and standing behind her on the steeply sloped path. The top of her head was exposed, the shot was there for the taking. The river was flowing at his heels. Slowly, the gun extended, he moved up the path, along the edge of the trees. Rebecca pivoted with him, keeping her gun against Eva’s neck.

  Her eyes moved briefly to the base of the sycamore. “I’m surprised it’s still alive.”

  “They live for two and a half centuries or so. It was probably here when the British burned the White House.”

  “I did my best to finish the job.” Another glance toward the tree. “Do you think it’s still there? The camera that stole a thousand American secrets?”

  “Why did you come for it?”

  “For sentimental reasons. You see, I have nothing of his. When he died, Rufina and his real children and grandchildren took all his possessions. But the child of the other woman . . . she got nothing at all.”

  “Put the gun down, Rebecca, and we’ll dig it out together. And then we’ll go to London.”

  “Can you imagine the scandal? It will make the Third Man affair seem like—” She twisted Eva’s hair harder. “Perhaps it’s better if the story ends here, down by the river, at the base of an enormous sycamore.”