“No one gets less sleep than an Office agent.” He poured her a glass of the wine. “Have a little. They
say it’s good for the heart.”
She accepted the glass and raised it in Gabriel’s direction. “Happy anniversary, darling. We were
married five months ago today.” She took a drink of the wine. “So much for our honeymoon in Italy.”
“Five months isn’t really an anniversary, Chiara.”
“Of course it is, you dolt.”
She looked out at the fountain again.
“Are you angry with me because I’m late for dinner, Chiara, or is something else bothering you?”
“I’m angry with you because I don’t feel like going to Moscow tomorrow.”
“Then don’t go.”
She shot an annoyed look at him, then turned her gaze toward the lake again.
“Ari gave you numerous opportunities to extricate yourself from this affair, but you chose to press
on. Usually, it’s the other way around. Usually, Shamron’s the one doing the pushing and you’re the one
digging in your heels. Why now, Gabriel? After everything you’ve been through, after all the fighting and
the killing, why would you prefer to do a job like this rather than hide out in a secluded villa in Umbria
with me?”
“It’s not fair to put it in those terms, Chiara.”
“Of course it is. You told me it was going to be a simple job. You were going to meet with a Russian
journalist in Rome, listen to what he had to say, and that was going to be the end of it.”
“It would have been the end of it, if he hadn’t been murdered.”
“So you’re doing this for Boris Ostrovsky? You’re risking your life, and Elena’s, because you feel
guilty over his death?”
“I’m doing this because we need to find those missiles.”
“You’re
doing
this, Gabriel, because you want to destroy Ivan.”
“Of course I want to destroy Ivan.”
“Well, at least you’re being honest. Just make sure you don’t destroy yourself in the process. If you
take his wife and children, he’s going to pursue them to the ends of the earth. And us, too. If we’re very
lucky, this operation might be over in forty-eight hours. But your war with Ivan will just be getting
started.”
“We should eat, Chiara. After all, it’s our anniversary.”
She looked at her wristwatch. “It’s too late to eat. That butter will go straight to my hips.”
“I was planning a similar maneuver myself.”
“Promises, promises.” She drank some more of the wine. “Did you enjoy working with Sarah
again?”
“You’re not going to start that again, are you?”
“Let the record show, your honor, that the witness refused to answer the question.”
“Yes, Chiara, I did enjoy working with Sarah again. She performed her job admirably and with great
professionalism.”
“And does she still adore you?”
“Sarah knows I’m unavailable. And the only person she adores more than me is you.”
“So you admit it?”
“Admit what?”
“That she adores you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Yes, Sarah had feelings for me once, feelings that surfaced in the middle of a
very dangerous operation. I don’t happen to share those feelings because I’m quite madly in love with
you. I proved that to you, I
hope,
by marrying you-in spectacular fashion, I might add. If memory serves,
Sarah was in attendance.”
“She was probably hoping you were going to leave me stranded at the chuppah.”
“Chiara.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her mouth. Her lips were cool and tasted of the
Chasselas. “This will all be over in forty-eight hours. Then we can go back to Italy, and no one, not even
Ivan, will be able to find us there.”
“No one but Shamron.” She kissed him again. “I thought you were planning a maneuver that had
something to do with my hips.”
“You have a very long day tomorrow.”
“Put the table outside in the hall, Gabriel. I can’t make love in a room that smells like Chicken
Kiev.”
Afterward, she slept in his arms, her body restless, her mind troubled by dreams. Gabriel did not
sleep; Gabriel never slept the night before an operation. At 3:59, he called the front desk to say a wake-up
call would not be necessary, and gently woke Chiara with kisses on the back of her neck. She made love
to him one final time, pleading with him throughout to send someone else to Moscow in his place. At five
o’clock, she left the room in her crisp El Al uniform and headed downstairs to the lobby, where Rimona
and Yaakov were waiting along with the rest of the crew. Gabriel watched from his window as they
climbed into a shuttle bus for the ride to the airport and remained there long after they had gone. His gaze
was focused on the storm clouds gathering over the distant mountain peaks. His thoughts, however, were
elsewhere. He was thinking of an old woman in a Moscow apartment reaching for a telephone, with Eli
Lavon, the man she knew only as Feliks, calmly reminding her of her lines.
52 VILLA SOLEIL, FRANCE
They had arrived at an uneasy truce. It had taken seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours of screaming.
Seventy-two hours of threats of malicious divorce. Seventy-two hours of on-and-off interrogation. Like
all those who have been betrayed, he demanded to be told the details. She had resisted at first, but under
Ivan’s withering assault she had eventually surrendered. She paid the information out slowly, inch by
inch. The drive into the hills. The lunch that had been waiting on the table. The wine. The little bedroom
with its tacky Monet prints. Her baptismal shower. Ivan had demanded to know how many times they had
made love. “Twice,” she confessed. “He wanted to do it a third time but I told him I had to be going.”
Mikhail’s predictions had proven accurate; Ivan’s rage, while immense, had subsided quickly once
he realized he had brought the mess upon himself. He sent a team of bodyguards to Cannes to eject
Yekatarina from her suite at the Carlton Hotel, then began to deluge Elena with apologies, promises,
diamonds, and gold. Elena appeared to accept the acts of contrition and made several of her own. The
matter was now closed, they declared jointly over dinner at Villa Romana. Life could resume as normal.
Many of Ivan’s gestures were surely hollow. Many others were not. He spent less time talking on his
mobile phone and more time with the children. He kept his Russian friends at bay and canceled a large
birthday party he had been planning to throw for a business associate whom Elena did not like. He
brought her coffee each morning and read the papers in bed instead of rushing into his office to work. And
when her mother called that morning at seven o’clock, he did not grimace the way he usually did but
handed Elena the phone with genuine concern on his face. The conversation that followed was brief.
Elena hung up the phone and looked at Ivan in distress.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
"She’s very sick again, darling. She needs me to come right away.”
In Moscow, Svetlana Federov gently returned the receiver to its cradle and looked at the man she
knew as Feliks.
"She says she’ll be here later this evening.”
"And Ivan?”
“He wanted to come with her, but Elena convinced him to stay in France with the children. He was
kind enough to let her borrow his airplane.”
“Did she happen to say what time she was departing?”
“She’s leaving Nice airport at eleven o’clock, provided there are no problems with the plane, of
course.”
He smiled and withdrew a small device from the breast pocket of his rumpled jacket. It had a tiny
screen and lots of buttons, like a miniature typewriter. Svetlana Federov had seen such devices before.
She did not know what they were called, only that they were usually carried by the sort of men she did not
like. He typed something rapidly with his agile little thumbs and returned the device to his pocket. Then
he looked at his watch.
“Knowing your son-in-law, he’ll have you and your building under surveillance within the hour. Do
you remember what you’re supposed to say if anyone asks about me?”
“I’m to tell them that you were a con artist-a thief who had come to swindle an old woman out of her
money.”
“There really are a lot of unscrupulous characters in the world.”
“Yes,” she said. “One can never be too careful.”
In the aftermath of the most recent terrorist attacks in London, many improvements in security and
operational capabilities had been made to the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, some the public
could see, many others they could not. Among those that fell into the second category was a sparkling new
operations center, located in a bunkerlike annex beneath the square itself. At precisely 6:04 A.M. London
time, Eli Lavon’s message was handed to Adrian Carter with funereal silence by a young CIA factotum.
Carter, after reading it, handed it to Shamron, who in turn handed it to Graham Seymour. “Looks like
we’re on,” said Seymour. “I suppose you’d better cue the Frogs.”
Carter activated a secure line to Paris with the press of a button and brought the receiver to his ear.
“Bonjour,
gentlemen. The ball is now heading toward your side of the court. Do try to enjoy yourselves.”
This time there was no indecision in her grooming. Elena bathed hastily, expended little effort on her
hair and makeup, and dressed in a rather simple but comfortable Chanel pantsuit. She put on more jewelry
than she might otherwise have worn on such an occasion and slipped several more expensive pieces into
her handbag. Finally, she placed two additional changes of clothing in an overnight bag and took several
thousand dollars’ worth of euros and rubles from the wall safe. She knew that Ivan would not find this
suspicious; Ivan always encouraged her to carry a substantial amount of cash when traveling alone.
She took a final look around the room and started downstairs with as much detachment as she could
summon. Sonia and the children had gathered to see her off; she held the children for longer than she
should have and ordered them with mock sternness to behave for their father. Ivan was not a witness to
their farewell; he was standing outside in the drive, scowling impatiently at his wristwatch. Elena kissed
each child one final time, then climbed into the back of the Mercedes with Ivan. She glanced once over
her shoulder as the car shot forward and saw the children weeping hysterically. Then the car passed
through the security gate and they disappeared from sight.
Word of Ivan and Elena Kharkov’s departure from Villa Soleil arrived at the operations room in
London at 7:13 A.M. local time. Gabriel was informed of the development five minutes later. One hour
after receiving the message, he informed the front desk that he was checking out of his room and that his
stay, while far too brief, had been lovely. His rented Renault was waiting for him by the time he stepped
outside. He climbed behind the wheel and headed for the airport.
53 NICE, FRANCE
Ivan was preoccupied during the drive, and for that Elena was grateful. He passed the journey
alternately talking on his mobile or staring silently out his window, his thick fingers drumming on the
center console. Because they were moving against the morning beach traffic, they proceeded without
delay: around the Golfe de Saint-Tropez to Saint-Maxime, inland on the D25 to the
autoroute,
then
eastward on the
autoroute
toward Nice. As they sped through the northern fringes of Cannes, Elena found
herself thinking about Ivan and Yekatarina making love in their suite at the Carlton. Ivan must have been
thinking the same thing, because he took hold of her hand and said he was sorry for everything that had
happened. Elena heard herself say she was sorry, too. Then she looked out her window at the hills rising
toward the Alps and began counting the minutes until she would be free of him.
The exit for the Côte d’Azur International Airport appeared fifteen minutes later. By then, Ivan had
received another phone call and was engaged in a heated conversation with an associate in London. He
was still on the phone, five minutes later, as they walked into the air-conditioned office of Riviera Flight
Services, the airport’s fixed base operator. Standing behind the pristine white counter was a man in his
mid-thirties with receding blond hair. He wore navy blue trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt with
epaulets. Ivan kept him waiting another two minutes while he concluded the call to London. “ Kharkov,”
he said finally. “Leaving for Moscow at eleven.”
The young man hoisted a bureaucrat’s troubled smile. “That’s not going to be possible, Monsieur
Kharkov. I’m afraid there’s a rather serious problem with your aircraft.”
Elena dug a fingernail into her palm and looked down at her shoes.
"What sort of problem?” asked Ivan.
"A paperwork problem,” answered the young man. “Your crew has been unable to produce two very
important documents: an RVSM authorization letter and a Stage Three certificate. The DGAC will not
allow your plane to depart without them.”
The DGAC was the Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile, the French equivalent of the Federal