The English Girl: A Novel Page 36

  And so, a few minutes after 5:00 p.m., the girls removed the last of Madeline’s Russian clothing, dressed her in her crisp El Al uniform, and coiffed her newly black hair. Then they presented her to Gabriel, who studied her for a long moment as though she were a painting upon an easel.

  “What is your name?” he asked tersely.

  “Ilana Shavit.”

  “When were you born?”

  “October 12, 1985.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Rishon LeZion.”

  “What does that mean in Hebrew?”

  “First to Zion.”

  “What was your brother’s name?”

  “Moshe.”

  “Where was he killed?”

  “Lebanon.”

  “What was your sister’s name?”

  “Dalia.”

  “Where was she killed?”

  “The Dolphinarium discotheque.”

  “How many others were killed that day?”

  “Twenty.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Ilana Shavit.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Rishon LeZion.”

  “What street in Rishon LeZion?”

  “Sokolow.”

  Gabriel had no more questions. He placed one hand to his chin and tilted his head to one side.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Five minutes,” he said. “Then we leave.”

  Eli Lavon was drinking coffee in the paneled gloom of the lobby. Gabriel sat down next to him.

  “I’ve got a funny feeling,” said Lavon.

  “How funny?”

  “Two outside the door, two in the bar, and one hanging around the concierge desk.”

  “Could be anything,” said Gabriel.

  “Could be,” Lavon agreed uncertainly.

  “They might be watching a guest of the hotel.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “Another guest, Eli.”

  Lavon said nothing.

  “Are you sure she was clean when we brought her in?”

  “As a whistle.”

  “Then she’s clean now,” said Gabriel.

  “So why is the lobby filled with FSB officers?”

  “Could be anything.”

  “Could be,” Lavon repeated.

  Gabriel looked out the window at the El Al van idling outside the hotel’s entrance.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Lavon.

  “We’re going to leave as planned.”

  “Are you going to tell her?”

  “Not a chance.”

  Lavon sipped his coffee. “Good call,” he said.

  It would be three long minutes before the first members of the El Al cabin crew emerged from the elevators into the lobby. Two trim young women, they were both in fact employed by Israel’s national carrier, which was not true of the four women and two men who followed, all of whom were veteran Office field agents. Next came the captain and the flight engineer, followed a moment later by a heavily disguised version of Mikhail, who was posing as the first officer. The FSB man at the concierge desk had turned his head and was staring unabashedly at the backside of one of the ersatz flight attendants. Watching the scene from across the lobby, Gabriel permitted himself a brief smile. If the FSB man had time to check out the Israeli talent, chances were good he wasn’t looking for a missing Russian illegal.

  Finally, at 5:10 p.m., Chiara and Madeline appeared, trailing their smart El Al rolling suitcases behind them. Chiara was recounting a story about a recent flight in rapid Hebrew, and Madeline was laughing as though it was the most amusing thing she had heard in a long time. The other members of the crew absorbed them into their midst. Then, together, they headed outside and climbed into the waiting van. The doors closed. And then they were gone.

  “What do you think?” asked Gabriel.

  “I think she’s very good,” replied Eli Lavon.

  “Are we clean?”

  “As a whistle.”

  Gabriel rose without another word, collected his overnight bag, and headed outside, into the eternal night.

  A taxi was waiting outside the hotel; it bore him down one last prospekt. Past a hulking statue of Lenin leading his people into seventy years of stagnation and murder. Past the monuments to a war no one could remember. Past mile after mile of ruined apartment houses. And, finally, to the international terminal at Pulkovo Airport. He checked in for the flight to Tel Aviv, slipped effortlessly through passport control as Jonathan Albright of Markham Capital Services, and then made his way to El Al’s heavily fortified departure gate. The Russians claimed the barriers were for the safety of the Israel-bound passengers. Even so, Gabriel had the uncomfortable feeling he was entering Europe’s last ghetto.

  He settled into an empty seat in the corner of the lounge, near a large family of haredim. No one was speaking Russian, only Hebrew. Were it not for his disguise, they surely would have recognized him. But now he sat among them as a stranger, their secret servant, their invisible guardian angel. Soon he would be the chief of their vaunted intelligence service. Or would he? Surely, he thought, this would be a fine way to end a career. He had obtained proof that an oil company owned and operated by Russian intelligence had destabilized the government of the United Kingdom in order to gain access to North Sea oil—all at the behest of the Russian president himself. There would be no more resets after this, he thought. No more happy talk about Russia as a friend of the West. He would prove once and for all that the former members of the KGB who now ran Russia were ruthless, authoritarian, and not to be trusted—that they were to be marginalized and contained, just like in the old days of the Cold War.

  But it would be meaningless, he thought, if he lost the girl. He glanced at his wristwatch, then looked up in time to see Yossi and Rimona entering the departure lounge. Next came Mordecai and Oded. Then Yaakov and Dina. Then, lastly, Eli Lavon, looking as though he had wandered into the airport by mistake. He roamed the lounge for a moment, inspecting each empty chair with the diligence of a man who lived in fear of germs, before settling opposite Gabriel. They stared past one another without speaking, two sentinels on a night watch without end. There was nothing to do now but wait. The waiting, thought Gabriel. Always the waiting. Waiting for a source. Waiting for the sun to rise after a night of killing. And waiting for his wife to carry a dead girl back to the land of the living.

  He looked at his watch again, then at Lavon.

  “Where are they?” he asked.

  Lavon delivered his response to his open newspaper. “They’ve already cleared passport control,” he said. “The customs boys are just having a peek inside their luggage.”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Tell me there’s no problem with the luggage.”

  “The luggage is fine.”

  “So why are they searching it?”

  “Maybe they’re bored. Or maybe they just like touching ladies’ underwear. They’re Russians, for God’s sake.”

  “How long, Eli?”

  “Two minutes. Maybe less.”

  Lavon’s two minutes passed with no sign of them. Then a third. And then an interminable fourth. Gabriel stared at his watch, and at the filthy carpet, and at the child next to him—anything but the entrance of the departure lounge. And then, finally, he glimpsed them from the corner of his eye, a flash of blue and white, like the waving of a banner. Mikhail was walking at the side of the captain, and Madeline was next to Chiara. She was smiling nervously and seemed to be holding Chiara’s arm for support. Or was it the other way around? Gabriel couldn’t be sure. He watched them turn in unison toward the gate and disappear down the Jetway. Then he looked at Lavon.

  “I told you everything would be fine,” he said.

  “You were never worried?”

  “Terrified beyond description.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Lavon didn’t answer. He just sat there reading hi
s newspaper until the flight was called. Then he rose to his feet and followed Gabriel onto the plane. One last check for opposition surveillance, just to be certain.

  They had given her a seat in the third row next to the window. She was peering out at the dark oily apron of Pulkovo, her last glimpse of a Russia she never knew. In her blue-and-white uniform, she looked curiously like an English schoolgirl. She glanced at Gabriel as he slid into the seat next to her but quickly turned away. Gabriel fired off one last message to King Saul Boulevard on his secure BlackBerry. Then he watched his wife preparing the cabin for takeoff. As the aircraft thundered down the runway, Madeline’s eyes glistened; and as the wheels rose from Russian soil, a tear broke onto her cheek. She reached out for Gabriel’s hand and held it tightly.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said in her prim English accent.

  “Then don’t,” he answered.

  “How long is the flight?”

  “Five hours.”

  “Will it be warm in Israel?”

  “Only in the south.”

  “Will you take me there?”

  “I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

  Chiara appeared and handed them each a glass of champagne. Gabriel raised his glass toward Madeline in a silent toast and then placed it on the center console without drinking any.

  “You don’t like champagne?” she asked.

  “It gives me a terrible headache.”

  “Me, too.”

  She drank some of the champagne and stared out her window at the darkness below.

  “How did you find me down there?” she asked.

  “It’s not important.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me who you are?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  PART THREE

  THE

  SCANDAL

  58

  LONDON–JERUSALEM

  The next morning Britain went to the polls. Jonathan Lancaster cast his ballot early, accompanied by his wife, Diana, and their three photogenic children, before returning to Downing Street to await the verdict of the voters. The day held little suspense; a final election-eve survey predicted Lancaster’s Party would almost certainly increase the size of its parliamentary majority by several seats. By midafternoon Whitehall was swirling with rumors of an electoral massacre, and by early evening the champagne was flowing at the Party’s Millbank headquarters. Even so, Lancaster appeared curiously somber when he strode onto the stage at the Royal Festival Hall to deliver his victory speech. Among the political reporters who took note of his serious demeanor was Samantha Cooke of the Daily Telegraph. The prime minister, she wrote, looked like a man who knew his second term would not go as well as his first. But then, she added, second terms rarely did.

  Lancaster’s troubles began later that week when he undertook the traditional reshuffling of his Cabinet and personal staff. As widely predicted, Jeremy Fallon, now member of Parliament from Bristol, was appointed chancellor of the exchequer, which meant that Lancaster’s brain and puppet master would be his Downing Street neighbor as well. The man whom the press had once characterized as a deputy prime minister in name only now appeared to all of Whitehall like a prime minister in waiting. Fallon quickly gathered up the remaining members of his old Downing Street staff—at least, those who could still stand to work for him—and used his influence inside Party headquarters to fill key political positions with loyalists. The stage was now set, wrote Samantha Cooke, for a power struggle of Shakespearean proportions. Soon, she said, Fallon would be knocking on the door of Number Ten and asking for the keys. Jeremy Fallon had created Lancaster. And surely, she predicted, Fallon would try to destroy Lancaster as well.

  At no point during the post-election political maneuverings did Madeline Hart’s name appear in the press, not even when the Party chairman decided the time had come to fill her vacant post. A headquarters underling saw to the morbid chore of removing the last of her things from her old cubicle. There wasn’t much left—a few dusty files, her calendar, her pens and paper clips, the dog-eared copy of Pride and Prejudice she used to read whenever she had a spare moment or two. The underling delivered the items to the Party chairman, who in turn prevailed upon his secretary to quietly dispose of them with as much dignity as possible. And thus the final traces of an unfinished life were expunged from Party headquarters. Madeline Hart was finally gone. Or so they thought.

  At first it seemed she had traded one form of captivity for another. This time the apartment that served as her prison cell overlooked not the river Neva in St. Petersburg but the Mediterranean Sea in Netanya. The building’s management had been told she was convalescing after a long illness. It wasn’t far from the truth.

  For a week she did not set foot beyond the flat’s walls. Her days lacked any discernible routine. She slept late, she watched the sea, she reread her favorite novels, all under the watchful gaze of an Office security team. A doctor came once each day to check on her. On the seventh day, when asked whether she had any ailments, she answered that she was suffering from terminal boredom.

  “Better to die from boredom than from a Russian poison,” the doctor quipped.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” she replied in her English drawl.

  The doctor promised to appeal the conditions of her confinement to higher authority; and on the eighth day of her stay, higher authority allowed her to take a brief walk on the cold, windswept stretch of sand that lay beneath her terrace. The day after that she was allowed to walk a little farther. And on the tenth day she trekked nearly to Tel Aviv before her minders placed her gently in the back of an Office car and ran her back to the flat. Entering, she found an exact copy of The Pond at Montgeron hanging on the wall in the sitting room—exact except for the signature of the artist who had painted it. He rang her a few minutes later and introduced himself properly for the first time.

  “The Gabriel Allon?” she asked.

  “I’m afraid so,” he answered.

  “And who was the woman who helped me onto the plane?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  Gabriel and Chiara arrived in Netanya at noon the following day, after Madeline had returned from her morning walk along the beach. They took her to Caesarea for lunch and a stroll through the Roman and Crusader ruins; then they headed farther up the coast, nearly to Lebanon, to wander the sea caves at Rosh HaNikra. From there, they moved eastward along the tense border, past the IDF listening posts and the small towns that had been depopulated by the last war with Hezbollah, until they arrived in Kiryat Shmona. Gabriel had booked two rooms at the guesthouse of an old kibbutz. Madeline’s had a fine view of the Upper Galilee. An Office security guard spent the night outside her door, and another sat outside the room’s garden terrace.

  The next morning, after taking breakfast in the kibbutz’s communal dining hall, they drove into the Golan Heights. The IDF was expecting them; a young colonel took them to a spot along the Syrian border where it was possible to hear the regime’s forces shelling rebel positions. Afterward, they paid a brief visit to the Nimrod Fortress, the ancient Crusader bastion overlooking the flatlands of the Galilee, before making their way to the ancient Jewish city of Safed. They ate lunch in the artists’ quarter, at the home of a woman named Tziona Levin. Though Gabriel referred to Tziona as his doda, his aunt, she was actually the closest thing he had to a sibling. She didn’t seem at all surprised when he appeared on her doorstep accompanied by a beautiful young woman whom the entire world believed to be dead. She knew that Gabriel had a habit of returning to Israel with lost objects.

  “How’s your work?” she asked over coffee in her sunlit garden.

  “Never better,” replied Gabriel, with a glance at Madeline.

  “I was talking about your art, Gabriel.”

  “I just finished restoring a lovely Bassano.”

  “You should be focused on your own work,” she said reproachfully.

  “I am,” he responded vaguely, an
d Tziona let it drop. When they had finished their coffee, she took them into her studio to see her newest paintings. Then, at Gabriel’s request, she unlocked her storage room. Inside were hundreds of paintings and sketches by Gabriel’s mother, including several works depicting a tall man wearing the uniform of the SS.

  “I thought I told you to burn these,” Gabriel said.

  “You did,” Tziona admitted, “but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Who is he?” asked Madeline, staring at the paintings.

  “His name was Erich Radek,” Gabriel answered. “He ran a secret Nazi program called Aktion 1005. Its goal was to conceal all evidence that the Holocaust had taken place.”

  “Why did your mother paint him?”

  “He nearly killed her on the death march from Auschwitz in January 1945.”

  Madeline raised one eyebrow quizzically. “Wasn’t Radek the one who was captured in Vienna a few years ago and brought to Israel for trial?”

  “For the record,” replied Gabriel, “Erich Radek volunteered to come to Israel.”

  “Yes,” said Madeline dubiously. “And I was kidnapped by French criminals from Marseilles.”

  The next day they drove to Eilat. The Office had rented a large private villa not far from the Jordanian border. Madeline passed her days lying next to the swimming pool, reading and rereading a stack of classic English novels. Gabriel realized that she was preparing herself to return to the country that wasn’t truly hers. She was no one, he thought. She was not quite a real person. And, not for the first time, he wondered whether she might be better off living in Israel than in the United Kingdom. It was a question he put to her on the final night of their stay in the south. They were seated atop an outcropping of rock in the Negev, watching the sun sinking into the badlands of the Sinai.

  “It’s tempting,” she said.

  “But?”

  “It’s not my home,” she answered. “It would be like Russia. I’d be a stranger here.”