The English Girl: A Novel (Gabriel Allon) Page 33

  When Zhirov made no response, Mikhail thumbed back the hammer of the weapon. Keller was now standing at Zhirov’s window.

  “Tell him, Pavel.”

  The traffic light turned green. Somewhere a car horn sounded. Then another.

  “Tell him!” Mikhail barked in Russian.

  Zhirov glanced into the rearview mirror, met the driver’s gaze, and nodded once. The driver slipped the car into park and placed his hands atop the wheel.

  “Tell him to get out of the car and do exactly as he’s told.”

  Another glance into the mirror, another nod of the head. The driver responded by opening the door and climbing slowly out. Yaakov waited there to take possession of him. After murmuring a few words into the driver’s ear, he led him to the Land Rover, shoved him into the backseat, and slid in after him. By then, Keller had taken the driver’s place behind the wheel of the Mercedes. When the Land Rover moved off, he slipped the car into gear and followed after it. Mikhail still had the Makarov to Zhirov’s ribs.

  “Who are you?” Zhirov asked.

  “I’m Nicholas Avedon,” Mikhail answered.

  “Who are you?” Zhirov repeated.

  “I’m your worst nightmare,” said Mikhail. “And if you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to kill you.”

  In the Op Center at King Saul Boulevard, the lights of the team were moving vertically up the video map of Moscow—all but one, which was motionless on Teatralny Prospekt, just down the hill from Lubyanka Square. There were no celebrations, no congratulations on a job well done. The setting wouldn’t allow it. Moscow had a way of fighting back.

  “Thirty seconds from start to finish,” Navot said, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Not bad.”

  “Thirty-three,” said Shamron. “But who’s counting?”

  “You were.”

  Shamron gave a faint smile; he had been counting. In fact, he had been counting his entire life. The number of family members lost to the fires of the Holocaust. The number of countrymen lost to the bullets and the bombs. The number of times he had cheated death.

  “How far is it to the safe house?”

  “One hundred and forty-seven miles from the Outer Ring.”

  “What’s the weather forecast?”

  “Horrendous,” replied Navot, “but they can handle it.”

  Shamron said nothing more. Navot stared at the lights moving across Moscow.

  “Thirty seconds,” he repeated. “Not bad.”

  “Thirty-three,” said Shamron. “And let’s hope no one else was watching.”

  Though Shamron did not know it, those were the same thoughts running through the head of the man standing in the window of his fourth-floor room at the Hotel Metropol. He was gazing down the curve of Teatralny Prospekt, toward the yellow fortress looming over Lubyanka Square. He wondered whether he would be able to detect some sort of reaction—lights coming on in the upper floors, cars careening out of the garage—but decided it was unlikely. Lubyanka had always been good at hiding her emotions, just as Russia had always been good at hiding her dead.

  He turned away from the window, switched off his computer, and stuffed it into the side pocket of his overnight bag. Then he rode the elevator down to the lobby, accompanied by a pair of prostitutes, seventeen going on forty-five. Outside a Volvo SUV idled at the curb, watched over by a miserable-looking valet. He gave the valet a large tip, climbed behind the wheel, and drove away. Twenty minutes later, having rounded the walls of the Kremlin, he joined the river of steel and light flowing north out of Moscow. In the Op Center at King Saul Boulevard, however, he was but a single red light, an angel of vengeance alone in the city of heretics.

  51

  TVER OBLAST, RUSSIA

  It was once the dacha of a powerful man—a member of the Central Committee, maybe even the Politburo. No one could say for certain, for in the chaotic days after the collapse all had been lost. State-owned factories had remained shuttered because no one could find the keys; government computers had slept because no one could remember the codes. Russia had stumbled into the brave new millennium without a map or a memory. There were some who said it had no memory still, though now its amnesia was deliberate.

  For several years, the forgotten dacha sat empty and derelict, until a newly well-to-do Moscow developer named Bloch acquired it for a song and rebuilt it from the ground up. Eventually, like many of Russia’s early rich, Bloch ran afoul of the new crowd in the Kremlin and decided to leave the country while he still could. He settled in Israel, in part because he thought he might be a little bit Jewish, but mainly because no other country would have him. Over time, he sold off his Russian assets, but not the dacha in Tver Oblast. He gave that to Ari Shamron and told him to use it in good health.

  It stood by a lake with no name and was reached by a road that appeared on no map. It was not truly a road, more like a groove that had been beaten into the birch forest long before anyone had ever heard of a place called Russia. The dacha’s original gate remained, as did the old Soviet NO TRESPASSING sign that Bloch, a child of the Stalinist era, had been too terrified to remove. It flashed briefly through Gabriel’s headlamps as he came bumping up the snowbound drive. Then the dacha appeared, heavy and timbered, with a peaked roof and broad porches all around. Parked outside were several vehicles, including an S-Class Mercedes owned by Volgatek Oil & Gas. As Gabriel climbed out of the Volvo SUV, a cigarette flared in the darkness.

  “Welcome to Shangri-La,” said Christopher Keller. He was wearing a heavy down parka and holding a Makarov pistol.

  “How’s the perimeter?” asked Gabriel.

  “Cold as hell, but clean.”

  “How long can you stay out here?”

  Keller smiled. “I’m Regiment, luv.”

  Gabriel slipped past Keller and entered the dacha. The rest of the team were scattered in various states of repose across the rustic furnishings in the great room. Mikhail was still dressed for dinner at Café Pushkin. He was soaking his right hand in a bowl of ice water.

  “What happened?” Gabriel asked.

  “I bumped it.”

  “Against what?”

  “Another man’s face.”

  Gabriel asked to see the hand. It was badly swollen, and three of the knuckles had no skin.

  “How many times did you bump it?” asked Gabriel.

  “Once or twice. Or maybe it was more like ten or twelve.”

  “How’s the face?”

  “See for yourself.”

  “Where is he?”

  Mikhail pointed toward the floor.

  Among the dacha’s many luxury features was a nuclear fallout shelter. It had once contained a year’s worth of food, water, and supplies. Now it contained two men. Both were heavily trussed in duct tape: hands, feet, knees, mouths, eyes. Even so, it was obvious that the face of the elder man had suffered significant damage as a result of repeated collisions against Mikhail’s dangerous right hand. He was propped against one wall, with his legs stretched before him across the floor. Upon hearing the opening of the door, his head began to swivel from side to side, a radar dish in search of an invading aircraft. Gabriel crouched before him and tore away the duct tape covering the eyes, taking part of one brow with it, which left him with an expression of permanent surprise. There was a deep gash on one cheek and dried blood around the nostrils of his now-crooked nose. Gabriel smiled and removed the duct tape from the mouth.

  “Hello, Pavel,” he said. “Or should I call you Paul?”

  Zhirov said nothing. Gabriel scrutinized the broken nose.

  “That must hurt,” he said. “But these things happen in a place like Russia.”

 
; “I look forward to returning the favor, Allon.”

  “So you do recognize me.”

  “Of course,” Zhirov said a little too confidently. “We’ve been watching you since the moment you set foot in Russia.”

  “Who’s we?” asked Gabriel. “Volgatek? The SVR? The FSB? Or shall we just put aside the niceties and call you the KGB, which is exactly what you are.”

  “You’re dead, Allon—you and all your people. You’ll never leave Russia alive.”

  Gabriel’s smile was still firmly in place. “I’ve always found it best not to make hollow threats, Pavel.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Then perhaps you should drop the pretense that you knew I was in Moscow, or that you knew Nicholas Avedon was my creation. You would have never made a move against him tonight without FSB backup if you’d known he was my agent.”

  “Who says I didn’t have backup?”

  “I do.”

  “You’re wrong, Allon. But then you have a long history of being wrong. The FSB is just waiting to make sure they’ve identified all the members of your team. You’ve got a few hours at most. Then you’ll be the one sitting in a cell with a broken nose.”

  “Then I suppose we should get started.”

  “On what?”

  “Your confession,” said Gabriel. “You’re going to tell the world how you kidnapped an English girl named Madeline Hart so Volgatek Oil and Gas could gain access to the North Sea.”

  Zhirov feigned surprise. “The English girl? Is that what this is about?”

  Gabriel shook his head slowly, as if disappointed by Zhirov’s response. “Come on, Pavel,” he said. “Surely you can do better than that. You plucked her from the coast road near Calvi a few hours after having lunch with her at Les Palmiers. A Marseilles lowlife named Marcel Lacroix took you to the mainland, where you handed her over to another Marseilles lowlife named René Brossard for safekeeping. Then, after collecting ten million euros in ransom from the British prime minister, you left her in the back of a car on the beach at Audresselles and lit a match.”

  “Not bad, Allon.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t all that difficult. You left plenty of clues to follow. But that was your intention. You wanted Madeline’s kidnapping and murder to appear to be the work of French criminals. But you made one mistake, Pavel. You should have listened when I warned you not to harm her. I told you exactly what would happen if you did. I told you that I would find you. I also told you that I would kill you.”

  “So why haven’t you? Why put your people at risk by kidnapping me and bringing me here?”

  “We didn’t kidnap you, Pavel. We captured you. And we brought you here because, in spite of your current circumstances, this is your lucky day. I’m going to give you something that doesn’t come along often in our business. I’m going to give you a second chance.”

  “What do I have to do for this second chance?”

  “Answer a few questions, tie up a few loose ends.”

  “That’s all?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “And then?”

  “You’ll be free to go.”

  “Go where?” asked Zhirov seriously.

  “Back to Volgatek. Back to the SVR. Back to the rock you crawled out from under.”

  Zhirov managed a condescending smile. “And what do you think will happen to me when I return to Yasenevo after answering your questions and tying up your loose ends?”

  “I suppose you’ll be given vysshaya mera,” Gabriel said. “The highest measure of punishment.”

  Zhirov gave a nod of admiration. “You know a great deal about my service,” he said.

  “Not by choice,” replied Gabriel. “And to be perfectly honest with you, Pavel, I couldn’t care less what your service does to you.”

  “You should,” said Zhirov through the same condescending grin. “You see, Allon, what you are offering me is a choice between death and death.”

  “I’m offering you a chance to see one more Russian sunrise, Pavel. And don’t worry,” Gabriel added. “I’ll make sure you have plenty of time in a nice quiet place to think up a good story to tell your masters at the SVR. Something tells me you’ll be all right in the end.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then I’m going to personally put a bullet in the back of your neck for killing Madeline.”

  “I need some time to think.”

  Gabriel reapplied the duct tape to Zhirov’s eyes and mouth.

  “You have five minutes.”

  As it turned out, ten minutes would elapse before Mikhail, Yaakov, and Oded carried Zhirov from the fallout shelter to the dining room, where they secured him tightly to a heavy chair. Gabriel was seated opposite; behind him stood Yossi, his eyes fixed on the display screen of a tripod-mounted video camera. After making a small adjustment to the angle of the shot, Yossi nodded to Mikhail, who ripped the tape from Zhirov’s eyes and mouth. The Russian blinked rapidly several times. Then his eyes swept slowly around the room, recording every face, every detail, before finally settling on the photograph in Gabriel’s hands. It showed Zhirov, looking very different than he did now, having lunch with Madeline Hart at Les Palmiers in Calvi.

  “How did you meet her?” asked Gabriel.

  “Meet who?” replied Zhirov.

  Gabriel laid the photograph upon the table and told Yossi to shut off the camera.

  They cut him away from the chair, tied a length of rope to his wrists, and carried him outside, to the shore of the lake. A dock stretched fifty feet into the darkness; and at the end was a patch of water that had yet to freeze. Zhirov entered it gracelessly, as a heavily bound man is prone to do when hurled by three angry men.

  “Do you know the survival time for water like that?” asked Keller.

  “He’ll start to lose feeling and dexterity in two minutes. And there’s a good chance he’ll be unconscious in about fifteen.”

  “If he doesn’t drown first.”

  “There’s always that,” said Gabriel.

  Keller watched the thrashing figure in silence for a moment. “How will you know when he’s had enough?” he asked finally.

  “When he starts to sink.”

  “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”

  “These things happen in a place like Russia.”

  52

  TVER OBLAST, RUSSIA

  Two minutes in the lake was all it took. After that, there were no more protestations of innocence, no more threats that the FSB would soon be riding to his rescue. Resigned to his fate, he became a model prisoner. He made only one request, that they do something about his appearance. Like most spies, he had spent his career avoiding cameras, and he didn’t want to make his star turn looking like the loser of a prizefight.

  There is a truism about the intelligence trade: contrary to popular belief, most spies like to talk, especially when confronted with a situation that renders their career unsalvageable. At that point, they spill their secrets in a torrent, if only to prove to themselves that they had been more than simply a cog in the covert machine, that they had been important, even if they were not.

  Therefore, it came as no surprise to Gabriel that Pavel Zhirov, after recovering from his plunge into the lake, was suddenly in a talkative mood. Dressed in dry clothing, warmed by sweetened tea and a bit of brandy, he began his account not with Madeline Hart but with himself. He had been a child of the nomenklatura, the Communist elite of the Soviet Union. His father had been a senior official at the Soviet Foreign Ministry under Andrei Gromyko, which meant that Zhirov had attended special schools reserved for the children of the elite and had been allowed to shop in special Party stores that contained luxury goods most Soviet citizens could only dream of. And then there was the almost unheard-of luxury of foreign travel. Zhirov had spent much of his childhood outside the Soviet
Union—mainly in the Soviet vassal states of Eastern Europe, which was his father’s area of expertise, though he did spend six months in New York once when his father was working at the United Nations. He hated New York because, as a loyal child of the Party, he had been bred and educated to hate it. “We didn’t see the wealth and greed of the United States as something to be emulated,” he said. “We saw it as something we could use against the Americans to destroy them.”

  Despite the fact he was an indifferent and oftentimes disruptive student, Zhirov won admission to the prestigious Moscow Institute of Foreign Languages. Upon graduation, it was assumed he would go to work at the Foreign Ministry. Instead, a recruiter from the Committee for State Security, better known as the KGB, came calling at the Zhirovs’ apartment in Moscow. The recruiter said the KGB had been watching Pavel since he was a child and believed he possessed all the attributes of a perfect spy.

  “I was incredibly flattered,” Zhirov admitted. “It was 1975. Ford and Brezhnev were making nice in Helsinki, but behind the facade of détente the contest between East and West, capitalism and socialism, was still raging. And I was going to be a part of it.”

  But first, he added quickly, he had to attend another institute: the Red Banner Institute, the KGB’s Moscow training center. There he learned the basics of KGB tradecraft. Mainly, though, he learned how to recruit spies, which, for the KGB, was an excruciatingly slow, tightly controlled process lasting a year or more. His training complete, he was assigned to the Fifth Department of the First Chief Directorate and posted to Brussels. Several other Western European postings followed, until it became clear to Zhirov’s superiors at Moscow Center that he had a flair for the darker side of the trade. He was transferred to Department S, the unit that oversaw Soviet agents living “illegally” abroad. Later, he worked for Department V, the KGB division that handled mokriye dela.

  “Wet affairs,” said Gabriel.

  Zhirov nodded. “I wasn’t a trigger man like you, Allon. I was an organizer and planner.”

  “Did you ever run any false flag operations when you were at Department V?”