The concierge put his teeth together and hissed contemptuously. Only a Russian could drink seven
vodkas in an hour and a half and still remain on his feet.
“What do you think?” asked Ricardo. “Mobster, spy, or hit man?”
It didn’t matter, thought Philippe gloomily. The walls of the Grand had been breached by a Russian.
Resistance
was now the order of the day. They retreated to their respective outposts, Ricardo to the grotto
of Reception, Philippe to his pulpit near the lift. Ten minutes later came the first call from Room 237.
Ricardo endured a Stalinesque tirade before murmuring a few soothing words and hanging up the phone.
He looked at Philippe and smiled.
“Monsieur Lubin was wondering when his bags might arrive.”
“I’ll see to it right away,” said Philippe, smothering a yawn.
“He was also wondering whether something could be done about the heat in his room. He says it’s
too warm, and the thermostat doesn’t seem to work.”
Philippe picked up his telephone and dialed Maintenance.
“Turn the heat up in Room 237,” he said. “Monsieur Lubin is cold.”
Had they witnessed the first few moments of Lubin’s stay, they would have felt certain in their belief
that a miscreant was in their midst. How else to explain that he removed all the drawers from the chest
and the bedside tables and unscrewed all the bulbs from the lamps and the light fixtures? Or that he
stripped bare the deluxe queen-size bed and pried the lid from the two-line message-center telephone? Or
that he poured a complimentary bottle of mineral water into the toilet and hurled a pair of chocolates by
Touvier of Geneva into the snow-filled street? Or that, having completed his rampage, he then returned
the room to the near-pristine state in which he had found it?
It was because of his profession that he took these rather drastic measures, but his profession was
not one of those suggested by Ricardo the receptionist. Aleksandr Viktorovich Lubin was neither a
mobster nor a spy, nor a hit man, only a practitioner of the most dangerous trade one could choose in the
brave New Russia: the trade of journalism. And not just any type of journalism:
independent
journalism.
His magazine,
Moskovsky Gazeta
, was one of the country’s last investigative weeklies and had been a
persistent stone in the shoe of the Kremlin. Its reporters and photographers were watched and harassed
constantly, not only by the secret police but by the private security services of the powerful oligarchs they
attempted to cover. Courchevel was now crawling with such men. Men who thought nothing of sprinkling
transmitters and poisons around hotel rooms. Men who operated by the creed of Stalin:
Death solves all
problems. No man, no problem
.
Confident the room had not been tampered with, Lubin again dialed the concierge to check on his
bags and was informed they would arrive “imminently.” Then, after throwing open the balcony doors to
the cold evening air, he settled himself at the writing desk and removed a file folder from his dog-eared
leather briefcase. It had been given to him the previous evening by Boris Ostrovsky, the
Gazeta
’s editor
in chief. Their meeting had taken place not in the
Gazeta
’s offices, which were assumed to be thoroughly
bugged, but on a bench in the Arbatskaya Metro station.
I’m only going to give you part of the picture
, Ostrovsky had said, handing Lubin the documents
with practiced indifference.
It’s for your own protection. Do you understand, Aleksandr?
Lubin had
understood perfectly. Ostrovsky was handing him an assignment that could get him killed.
He opened the file now and examined the photograph that lay atop the dossier. It showed a well-
dressed man with cropped dark hair and a prizefighter’s rugged face standing at the side of the Russian
president at a Kremlin reception. Attached to the photo was a thumb-nail biography-wholly unnecessary,
because Aleksandr Lubin, like every other journalist in Moscow, could recite the particulars of Ivan
Borisovich Kharkov’s remarkable career from memory.
Son of a senior KGB off icer… graduate of the
prestigious Moscow State University… boy wonder of the KGB’s Fifth Main Directorate…
As the
empire was crumbling, Kharkov had left the KGB and earned a fortune in banking during the anarchic
early years of Russian capitalism. He had invested wisely in energy, raw materials, and real estate, and
by the dawn of the millennium had joined Moscow ’s growing cadre of newly minted multimillionaires.
Among his many holdings was a shipping and air freight company with tentacles stretching across the
Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The true size of his financial empire was impossible for an outsider to
estimate. A relative newcomer to capitalism, Ivan Kharkov had mastered the art of the front company and
the corporate shell.
Lubin flipped to the next page of the dossier, a glossy magazine-qualityphotograph of “Château
Kharkov,” Ivan’s winter palace on the rue de Nogentil in Courchevel.
He spends the winter holiday there along with every other rich and famous Russian,
Ostrovsky
had said.
Watch your step around the house. Ivan’s goons are all former Spetsnaz and OMON. Do you
hear what I’m saying to you, Aleksandr? I don’t want you to end up like Irina Chernova
.
Irina Chernova was the famous journalist from the
Gazeta
’s main rival who had exposed one of
Kharkov ’s shadier investments. Two nights after the article appeared, she had been shot to death by a
pair of hired assassins in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. Ostrovsky, for reasons known
only to him, had included a photograph of her bullet-riddled body in the dossier. Now, as then, Lubin
turned it over quickly.
Ivan usually operates behind tightly closed doors. Courchevel is one of the few places where he
actually moves around in public. We want you to follow him, Aleksandr. We want to know who he’s
meeting with. Who he’s skiing with. Who he’s taking to lunch. Get pictures when you can, but never
approach him. And don’t tell anyone in town where you work. Ivan’s security boys can smell a
reporter a mile away.
Ostrovsky had then handed Lubin an envelope containing airline tickets, a rental car reservation, and
hotel accommodations.
Check in with the office every couple of days
, Ostrovsky had said.
And try to
have some fun, Aleksandr. Your colleagues are all very jealous. You get to go to Courchevel and party
with the rich and famous while we freeze to death in Moscow
.
On that note, Ostrovsky had risen to his feet and walked to the edge of the platform. Lubin had
slipped the dossier into his briefcase and immediately broken into a drenching sweat. He was sweating
again now.
The damn heat!
The furnace was still blazing away. He was starting to reach for the telephone
to lodge another complaint when finally he heard the knock. He covered the length of the short entrance
hall in two resentful strides and flung open the door without bothering to ask who was on the other side.
A
mistake,
he thought immediately, for standing in the semidarkness of the corridor was a man of medium
height, dressed in a dark ski jacket, a woolen cap, and mirrored goggles.
Lubin was wondering why anyone would wear goggles inside a hotel at night when the first blow
came, a vicious sideways chop that seemed to crush his windpipe. The second strike, a well-aimed kick
to the groin, caused his body to bend in half at the waist. He was able to emit no protest as the man
slipped into the room and closed the door soundlessly behind him. Nor was he able to resist when the
man forced him onto the bed and sat astride his hips. The knife that emerged from the inside of the ski
jacket was the type wielded by elite soldiers. It entered Lubin’s abdomen just below the ribs and plunged
upward toward his heart. As his chest cavity filled with blood, Lubin was forced to suffer the additional
indignity of watching his own death reflected in the mirrored lenses of his killer’s goggles. The assassin
released his grip on the knife and, with the weapon still lodged in Lubin’s chest, rose from the bed and
calmly collected the dossier. Aleksandr Lubin felt his heart beat a final time as his killer slipped silently
from the room.
The heat
, he was thinking.
The damn heat…
It was shortly after seven when Philippe finally collected Monsieur Lubin’s bags from storage and
loaded them onto the lift. Arriving at Room 237, he found the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the
latch. In accordance with the conventions of Plan B, he gave the door three thunderous knocks. Receiving
no reply, he drew his passkey from his pocket and entered, just far enough to see two size-twelve Russian
loafers hanging a few inches off the end the bed. He left the bags in the entrance hall and returned to the
lobby, where he delivered a report of his findings to Ricardo.
"Passed out drunk.”
The Spaniard glanced at his watch. “It’s early, even for a Russian. What now?”
“We’ll let him sleep it off. In the morning, when he’s good and hungover, we’ll initiate Phase Two.”
The Spaniard smiled. No guest had ever survived Phase Two. Phase Two was always fatal.
2 UMBRIA, ITALY
The Villa dei Fiori, a thousand-acre estate in the rolling hills between the Tiber and Nera rivers, had
been a possession of the Gasparri family since the days when Umbria was still ruled by the popes. There
was a large and lucrative cattle operation and an equestrian center that bred some of the finest jumpers in
all of Italy. There were pigs no one ate and a flock of goats kept solely for entertainment value. There
were khaki-colored fields of hay, hillsides ablaze with sunflowers, olive groves that produced some of
Umbria ’s best oil, and a small vineyard that contributed several hundred pounds of grapes each year to
the local cooperative. On the highest part of the land lay a swath of untamed woods where it was not safe
to walk because of the wild boar. Scattered round the estate were shrines to the Madonna, and, at an
intersection of three dusty gravel roads, stood an imposing wood-carved crucifix. Everywhere, there
were dogs: a quartet of hounds that roamed the pastures, devouring fox and rabbit, and a pair of neurotic
terriers that patrolled the perimeter of the stables with the fervor of holy warriors.
The villa itself stood at the southern edge of the property and was reached by a long gravel drive
lined with towering umbrella pine. In the eleventh century, it had been a monastery. There was still a
small chapel, and, in the walled interior courtyard, the remains of an oven where the brothers had baked
their daily bread. The doors to the courtyard were fashioned of heavy wood and iron and looked as
though they had been built to withstand pagan assault. At the base of the house was a large swimming
pool, and adjacent to the pool was a trellised garden where rosemary and lavender grew along walls of
Etruscan stone.
Count Gasparri, a faded Italian nobleman with close ties to the Vatican, did not rent the villa; nor did
he make a habit of lending it to friends and relatives, which was why the staff were surprised by the news
that they would be playing host to a long-term guest. “His name is Alessio Vianelli,” the count informed
Margherita, the housekeeper, by telephone from his office in Rome. “He’s working on a special project
for the Holy Father. You’re not to disturb him. You’re not to talk to him. But, most important, you are not
to tell a soul he’s there. As far as you’re concerned, this man is a nonperson. He does not exist.”
“And where shall I put this nonperson?” asked Margherita.
“In the master suite, overlooking the swimming pool. And remove everything from the drawing room,
including the paintings and the tapestries. He plans to use it as his work space.”
“Everything?”
“
Every
thing.”
“Will Anna be cooking for him?”
“I’ve offered her services, but, as yet, have received no answer.”
“Will he be having any guests?”
“It is not outside the realm of possibility.”
“What time should we expect him?”
“He refuses to say. He’s rather vague, our Signore Vianelli.”
As it turned out, he arrived in the dead of night-sometime after three, according to Margherita, who
was in her room above the chapel at the time and woke with the sound of his car. She glimpsed him
briefly as he stole across the courtyard in the moonlight, a dark-haired man, thin as a rail, with a duffel
bag in one hand and a Maglite torch in the other. He used the torch to read the note she had left at the
entrance of the villa, then slipped inside with the air of a thief stealing into his own home. A moment
later, a light came on in the master bedroom, and she could see him prowling restlessly about, as though
looking for a lost object. He appeared briefly in the window, and, for several tense seconds, they gazed at