Russian poison.”
Gabriel tried to sit up, but his kidney began to throb again. He closed his eyes and waited for the
pain to subside. Mikhail, a nervous flier by nature, was now drumming on his tray table with his fingertip.
“You’re giving me a headache, Mikhail.”
Mikhail’s finger went still. “Did you manage to get any rest?”
“Not much.”
“You should have watched your step on those KGB stairs.”
“It’s called the FSB now, Mikhail. Haven’t you read the papers lately? The KGB doesn’t exist
anymore.”
“Where did you ever get that idea? They were KGB when I was growing up in Moscow and they’re
KGB now.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes. A reception team will be
waiting for you on the tarmac. After you finish delivering your report, you can sleep for a month.”
“Unless my report makes that impossible.”
“Bad?”
“Something tells me you’ll know soon enough, Mikhail.”
An electronic ping sounded over the cabin’s audio system. Mikhail looked up at the flashing SEAT
BELT sign and tapped Gabriel on the forearm.“You’d better buckle up. You wouldn’t want the flight
attendant to get angry with you.”
Gabriel followed Mikhail’s gaze and saw Chiara making her way slowly down the aisle. Dressed in
a flattering blue El Al uniform, she was sternly reminding passengers to straighten their seat backs and
stow their tray tables. Mikhail swallowed the last of his beer and absently handed her the empty bottle.
“The service on this flight was dreadful, don’t you think?”
“Even by El Al standards,” Gabriel agreed.
“I think we should institute a training program immediately.”
“Now, that’s the kind of thinking that’s going to get you a job in the executive suite of King Saul
Boulevard.”
“Maybe I should volunteer to teach it.”
“And work with our girls? You’d be safer going back to Gaza and chasing Hamas terrorists.”
Gabriel leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
“You sure you’re all right, Gabriel?”
“Just a touch of Lubyanka hangover.”
“Who could blame you?” Mikhail was silent for a moment. “The KGB kept my father there for six
months when I was a kid. Did I ever tell you that?”
He hadn’t, but Gabriel had read Mikhail’s personnel file.
“After six months in Lubyanka, they declared my father mentally ill and sent him away to a
psychiatric hospital for treatment. It was all a sham, of course. No one ever got better in a Soviet
psychiatric hospital-the hospitals were just another arm of the gulag. My father was lucky, though.
Eventually, he got out, and we were able to come to Israel. But he was never the same after being locked
away in that asylum.”
Just then the cabin shuddered with the impact of a hard landing. From the depths of economy class
arose a desultory patter of applause. It was a tradition for flights landing in Israel, and, for the first time,
Gabriel was tempted to join in. Instead, he sat silently while the plane taxied toward the terminal and,
unlike the rest of his fellow countrymen, waited until the SEAT BELT sign was extinguished before rising
to his feet and collecting his bag from the overhead bin.
Chiara was now standing at the cabin door. She anonymously bade Gabriel a pleasant evening and
warned him to watch his step as he followed Mikhail and the two other security agents down the stairs of
the Jetway. Upon reaching the tarmac, Mikhail and the others turned to the right and filed into the
motorized lounges, along with the rest of the passengers. Gabriel headed in the opposite direction, toward
the waiting Peugeot limousine, and climbed into the backseat. Shamron examined the dark reddish blue
bruise along Gabriel’s cheek.
“I suppose you don’t look
too
bad for someone who survived Lubyanka. How was it?”
“The rooms were on the small side, but the furnishings were quite lovely.”
“Perhaps it would have been better if you’d found some other way of dealing with those Chechens
besides killing them.”
“I considered shooting the guns out of their hands, Ari, but that sort of thing really only works in the
movies.”
“I’m glad to see you emerged from your ordeal with your fatalistic sense of humor intact. A team of
debriefers is waiting for you at King Saul Boulevard. I’m afraid you have a long night ahead of you.”
“I’d rather go back to Lubyanka than face the debriefers tonight.”
Shamron gave Gabriel a paternalistic pat on the shoulder.
“I’ll take you home, Gabriel. We’ll talk on the way.”
21 JERUSALEM
They still had much ground to cover when they arrived at Gabriel’s apartment in Narkiss Street.
Despite the fact it was after midnight, Shamron invited himself upstairs for coffee. Gabriel hesitated
before inserting his key into the lock.
“Go ahead,” Shamron said calmly. “We’ve already swept it.”
“I think I like fighting Arab terrorists better than Russians.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t always have the luxury of choosing our enemies.”
Gabriel entered the apartment first and switched on the lights. Everything was exactly as he had left
it a week earlier, including the half-drunk cup of coffee he had left in the kitchen sink on the way out the
door. He poured the now-moldy remnants down the drain, then spooned coffee into the French press and
placed a kettle of water on the stove to boil. When he went into the sitting room, he found Shamron with a
cigarette between his lips and a cocked lighter poised before it. “You don’t get to take up smoking again
just because I got thrown into Lubyanka. Besides, if Chiara smells smoke in here when she comes home
I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“So you’ll blame it on me.”
“I blame everything on you. The impact has been diluted by overuse. ”
Shamron extinguished the lighter and laid the cigarette on the coffee table, where it would be easily
accessible for a sneak attack at a moment when Gabriel’s back was turned.
“I should have left you in Russia,” Shamron muttered.
“How
did
you get me out?”
“When it became clear to our ambassador and Moscow Station chief that the FSB had no intention of
respecting your diplomatic passport, we decided to go on offense. Shin Bet regularly monitors the
movements of Russian Embassy employees. As it turned out, four of them were drinking heavily in the bar
of the Sheraton Hotel.”
“How surprising.”
“A mile from the hotel, they were pulled over for what appeared to be a routine traffic stop. It
wasn’t, of course.”
“So you kidnapped four Russian diplomats and held them hostage in order to coerce them into
releasing me.”
“We Israelites invented tit for tat. Besides, they weren’t just diplomats. Two of them were known
intelligence officers of the SVR.”
When the KGB was disbanded and reorganized, the directorate that conducted espionage activities
abroad became a separate agency known as the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR. Like the FSB, the
SVR was merely KGB with a new name and a pretty wrapper.
“When we received confirmation from the Ukrainians that you’d made it safely across the border, we
released them from custody. They’ve been quietly recalled to Moscow for consultations. With a bit of
luck, they’ll stay there forever.”
The teakettle screamed. Gabriel went into the kitchen and removed it from the stove, then switched
on the television while he saw to the coffee. It was tuned to the BBC; a gray-haired reporter was standing
before the domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral bellowing about the possible motives behind the attempt on
Olga Sukhova’s life. None of his theories were even remotely close to the truth, but they were delivered
with an authority that only a British accent can bestow. Shamron, who was now standing at Gabriel’s
shoulder, seemed to find the report vaguely amusing. He viewed the news media only as a source of
entertainment or as a weapon to be wielded against his enemies.
“As you can see, the Russians are being rather circumspect about exactly what transpired inside that
apartment building. They’ve acknowledged Olga was the target of an attack, but they’ve released few
other details about the incident. Nothing about the identity of the gunmen. Nothing about the man who
saved her life.”
“Where is she now?”
“Back in her apartment, surrounded by private security guards and brave Western reporters like our
friend from the BBC. She’s as safe as one can be in Russia, which is to say not terribly safe at all.
Eventually, she might want to consider a new life in the West.” His eyes settled on Gabriel. “Is she as
good as she appears or is it possible she’s something else entirely?”
“Are you asking whether she’s been turned by the FSB and was blowing smoke in my face?”
“That is precisely what I’m asking.”
“She’s golden, Ari. She’s a gift from the intelligence gods.”
“I’m just wondering why she asked you to take her home. I’m wondering whether it’s possible she
led you into that stairwell to be killed.”
“Or maybe that wasn’t Olga Sukhova at all. Maybe it was Ivan Kharkov in a clever disguise.”
“I’m paid to think dark thoughts, Gabriel. And so are you.”
“I saw her reaction to the shooting. She’s the real thing, Ari. And she agreed to help us at great risk
to herself. Remember, I was allowed to leave. Olga is still in Moscow. If the Kremlin wants her dead,
they’ll kill her. And there’s nothing those security guards and brave reporters can do to protect her.”
They sat down at the kitchen table. The BBC had moved on from Russia and was now showing
footage of a fatal bomb blast in a Baghdad market. Gabriel aimed the remote at the screen and, frowning,
pressed the MUTE button. Shamron fiddled with the French press for a moment before appealing to
Gabriel for assistance. He occupied his spare time by restoring antique radios and clocks yet even the
most basic kitchen appliances were beyond his capabilities. Coffeemakers, blenders, toasters: these items
were a mystery to him. Gilah often joked that her husband, if left to his own devices, would find a way to
starve to death in a house filled with food.
“How much do we have on Ivan Kharkov?” Gabriel asked.
“Plenty,” said Shamron. “Ivan’s been active in Lebanon for years. He makes regular deliveries to
Hezbollah, but he also sells weapons to the more radical Palestinian and Islamist factions operating
inside the refugee camps.”
“What kind of weapons?”
"The usual. Grenades, mortars, RPGs, AK-47s-and bullets, of course.
Lots
of bullets. But during our
war with Hezbollah, the Kharkov network arranged for a special shipment of armor-piercing antitank
weapons. We lost several tank crews because of them. We dispatched the foreign minister to Moscow to
protest, all to no avail, of course.”
“Which means Ivan Kharkov has an established track record of selling weapons directly to terrorist
organizations.”
“Without question. RPGs and AK-47s we can deal with. But our friend Ivan has the connections to
lay his hands on the most dangerous weapons in the world. Chemical. Biological. Even nuclear weapons
aren’t out of the question. We know that agents of al-Qaeda have been scouring the remnants of the old
Soviet Union for years looking for nuclear material or even a fully functioning nuclear device. Maybe
they’ve finally found someone willing to sell it to them.”
Shamron spooned sugar into his coffee and stirred it slowly. “The Americans might have better
insight into the situation. They’ve been watching Ivan closely for years.” He gave a sardonic smile. “The
Americans love to monitor problems but do nothing about them.”
“They’ll have to do something about him now.”
Shamron nodded in agreement. “It’s my recommendation we dump this in their lap as soon as
possible and wash our hands of the affair. I want you to go to Washington and see your friend Adrian
Carter. Tell him everything you learned in Moscow. Give them Elena Kharkov. Then get on the next plane
to Umbria and finish your honeymoon. And don’t ever accuse me of failing to live up to my word again.”
Gabriel stared at the silent television but made no response.
“You disagree with my recommendation?” Shamron asked.
“What do you think Adrian Carter and the Americans are going to do with this information?”
“I suspect they’ll go cap in hand to the Kremlin and plead with the Russian president to block the
sale.”
“And he’ll tell the Americans that Ivan is a legitimate businessman with no ties to the illegal
international arms trade. He’ll dismiss the intelligence as an anti-Russian slur spread by Jewish
provocateurs who are conspiring to keep Russia backward and weak.” Gabriel shook his head slowly.
“Going to the Russians and appealing for help is the last thing we should be doing. We should regard the
Russian president and his intelligence services as adversaries and act accordingly.”
“So what exactly are you suggesting?”
“That we have a quiet word with Elena Kharkov and see if she knows more than she told Olga