The Cellist

by Daniel Silva

  The agent stepped away, got on his radio, and after a few minutes determined to his satisfaction that the Israeli with gray temples and unusually green eyes was to be admitted to the grounds without further delay. Gabriel accepted his passport and advanced to the next Secret Service checkpoint, where he was directed into the president-elect’s circular drive.

  Jordan Saunders, elegantly attired and impeccably groomed, waited outside the entrance of the large colonial-style home. In twenty years, Saunders would look like the archetypal diplomat, the sort who wore waistcoats, drank tea with his breakfast, and lived grandly in Georgetown. For now, at least, he might have been mistaken for one of the interns.

  Gabriel handed Saunders the bag from Dunkin’ Donuts. “A peace offering.”

  “Have you been vaccinated?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  They walked around the side of the house to the rear garden. Through the black boughs of trees, Gabriel glimpsed a small, frozen lake.

  “Wait here,” said Saunders, and entered the house.

  Five minutes elapsed before he reappeared. At his side was the next president of the United States. Unlike the previous Democratic president, he had not emerged from obscurity to dazzle a nation with his oratory and good looks. Indeed, Gabriel could scarcely recall a time when he was not a part of American political life. Twice before he had sought the presidency, and twice he had failed. Now, in the twilight of his life, he had been called upon to heal a sick and divided nation—a difficult task for a leader in his prime, harder still for one who had been slowed by age. Regrettably, he and Gabriel had that affliction in common.

  He approached Gabriel warily. He wore slim-fitting wool trousers, a zippered sweater, and a smart-looking car-length coat. Like his young national security aide, he was double-masked.

  “This meeting never happened. Are we clear, Director Allon?”

  “We are, Mr. President-elect.”

  He glanced at the file folder in Gabriel’s hand. “What is this all about?”

  “Your inauguration, sir. I believe you should consider moving it inside, with very few guests.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because if you don’t,” said Gabriel, “you might have the shortest presidency in American history.”

  62

  Wilmington, Delaware

  Gabriel began his briefing not with the document he had brought from Tel Aviv but with the operation that had produced it—the operation against Arkady Akimov and the private intelligence unit hidden within his Geneva-based company. The president-elect’s knowledge of the unfolding scandal involving NevaNeft and the Russian leader’s personal finances was limited to what his staff had culled from the media. His daily intelligence briefings, which he had only belatedly begun to receive, had contained no mention of the story.

  “Did Langley know about your operation?” he asked.

  “Not until late in the game.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the current administration showed little interest in operating against the Russians.”

  “How diplomatic of you, Director Allon. Try again.”

  “I didn’t brief the Agency because I was afraid the president would tell his friend in the Kremlin. Unfortunately, I learned early on that he was not to be trusted with sensitive information. My counterpart at MI6 was also extremely careful about the intelligence he let him see. For that matter, so was the director of the CIA.”

  “Are you suggesting he’s a Russian asset?”

  “That’s a question for your intelligence chiefs.”

  “I’m not asking them. I’m asking you.”

  “Assets come in all shapes and sizes. And some assets don’t realize they’re assets. Oftentimes, they’re the best kind.”

  They were seated at Covid-safe intervals around a wrought-iron table on the patio. Only Gabriel, the briefer, was maskless. A glance at his wristwatch established he had used four of his allotted ten minutes. He opened the file folder and removed the translation of the document found on Felix Belov’s computer.

  “The Haydn Group’s main weapon was dirty Russian money, which it used it to fund anti-establishment parties and to corrupt prominent Western businessmen and politicians. But the Haydn Group also possessed a sophisticated information warfare unit similar to the Internet Research Agency.”

  “The St. Petersburg company that meddled in the 2016 election.”

  “Exactly. Our analysis of the Haydn Group’s computers revealed that early last summer, their fake Twitter accounts began to amplify the president’s false claims the election was going to be stolen from him. But more ominously, the Haydn Group also began planning for the future.” Gabriel held up the document. “A future in which their preferred candidate lost the election and you were about to enter the White House.”

  “What do you have there, Director Allon?”

  “A memorandum written by a top operative of the Haydn Group named Felix Belov. It details a plot to deliver a catastrophic blow to American democracy by covertly encouraging an attack on your inauguration. The beauty of the plot, at least from Russia’s point of view, is that it will be carried out by an American citizen.”

  “Who?”

  “An asset known as Rebel. Evidently, one of the Haydn Group’s cyberwarriors encountered Rebel on an 8kun message board. Rebel is a far-right extremist who supports the imposition of white nationalist, authoritarian rule in the United States, by violence if necessary. Rebel is also an official of the US government who will have access to the inauguration ceremony.”

  “How?”

  “Needless to say, the document doesn’t say where Rebel works. The Haydn Group communicated with him anonymously. Rebel has no idea that the texts and direct messages he’s been receiving were sent by a private Russian intelligence company.”

  “Are you sure Rebel is a man?”

  “I was using the male pronoun for the sake of brevity. The document doesn’t specify Rebel’s gender.”

  “May I see it?” asked Jordan Saunders.

  Gabriel handed over the document.

  Saunders switched on his phone’s flashlight. “Do you know whether the plot is active?”

  “No,” admitted Gabriel. “In fact, for all we know, Arkady Akimov dropped that document in his shredder five minutes after it landed on his desk. But if I were in your position, I would assume that he showed it to his friend in the Grand Kremlin Palace, and that his friend gave it the green light.”

  “There’s no way the Russian president would approve something so reckless,” said Saunders.

  “Viktor Orlov might disagree.”

  The future national security adviser looked down at the document. “Where’s the man who wrote this?”

  “He had an unfortunate accident in the French Alps on New Year’s Eve.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “He was shot twice at close range.” Gabriel frowned. “And I’d feel better if you threw that phone of yours in the lake.”

  “The lake is frozen, and the phone is secure.”

  “Not as secure as you think.” Gabriel turned to the president-elect. “Is there any chance you might reconsider—”

  “None,” the president-elect interjected. “It is essential that I take my oath on the West Front of the Capitol, especially in light of what happened there on January sixth. Besides, the security next Wednesday will be unprecedented. There’s no way anything is going to happen.”

  “Will you at least make sure the Secret Service is told about what we discovered?”

  “Jordan will see to it.”

  Gabriel rose. “In that case, I won’t take up any more of your time.”

  The president-elect pointed toward Gabriel’s chair. “Sit down.”

  He did as he was told.

  “Who shot Felix Belov?”

  “A young woman who penetrated Arkady Akimov’s operation.”

  “Israeli?”

  “German, actually.”


  “A professional?”

  “She plays the cello.”

  “Any good?”

  “Not bad,” said Gabriel.

  The president-elect smiled. “What are you doing on Wednesday?”

  “I was planning to watch your inauguration with my wife and children.”

  “Would you like to attend the ceremony as my guest?”

  “I would be honored, Mr. President-elect.”

  “Excellent.” He nodded toward his national security adviser. “Jordan will make the arrangements.”

  But Saunders appeared not to hear him; he was still reading Felix Belov’s memo. He didn’t look like an intern any longer, thought Gabriel. He looked like a very nervous young man.

  63

  Capitol Hill, Washington

  Rebel, the Russian asset who did not know she was a Russian asset, awoke the next day at six fifteen. The bedroom of her tiny basement apartment near Lincoln Park was in its usual morning disarray. She opened the blackout shade, and a bit of gray light seeped through the opaque safety glass of the room’s only window. A pair of women’s Nikes hurried along the sidewalk of Kentucky Avenue, followed a few seconds later by a well-dressed terrier. This was the view of the nation’s capital to which Rebel was entitled for the sum of $1,500 a month, lower extremities and canines, the occasional rat for a change of pace.

  Life was different in the small town in southeastern Indiana where Rebel maintained her primary residence. A hundred and fifty thousand bought you a nice house, and for two fifty you could have a couple of acres. The median income was a bit above thirty thousand, with a third of its residents living below the poverty line. There was an old distillery in town, but otherwise there weren’t many jobs, only a bit of retail-and-restaurant work along High Street or, for a lucky few, a job as a teller at United Commercial. A lot of the town was wasted most of the time—eighty percent had prescriptions for painkillers—and crime was the one growth industry. At the height of the opioid crisis, Rebel’s Indiana county, population fifty thousand, sent more people to prison in a single year than did San Francisco.

  It was understandable, then, that folks in Rebel’s town were angry. The educated urban elites—the Wall Street bankers, the Connecticut hedge fund managers, the Silicon Valley software engineers, the ones who went to Ivy League schools and made millions pushing buttons—were prospering as never before while the people in Rebel’s hometown were falling farther and farther behind. The elites bought their clothes at Rag & Bone, the folks in Rebel’s town at Dollar General. On summer weekends they took their kids to the Water World splash park, except at the end of the month, when almost everyone was broke.

  Thanks to the enigmatic Internet postings of a former government official known only as Q, Rebel now knew the reason for her town’s plight. It was the cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking, liberal pedophiles who controlled the financial system, Hollywood, and the media. The cabal raped and sodomized children, drank their blood, and ate their flesh in order to extract the life-extending chemical adrenochrome. Q was the prophet, but the president was a divine being sent by God to destroy the cabal and save the children. His battle would culminate in the Storm, when he would declare martial law and begin arresting and executing his enemies. Only then would an age of salvation and enlightenment known as the Great Awakening begin.

  Rebel, one of Q’s earliest adherents, was now regarded as an expert in the field—a Qologist, as she referred to herself on social media, where she had a half-million followers. Her pages were pseudonymous; no one knew she was a follower of Q. She called herself the Q Bitch. The beautiful blond woman in the profile picture looked nothing like her.

  There were many followers of Q who were disappointed that the Storm did not begin after the insurrection at the Capitol—or, as Q Bitch referred to it, the Qsurrection. They were disappointed, too, by Q’s long silence. He had made only a single drop during the final two months of 2020, and none in the new year. But Rebel had kept faith with Q, mainly because Q had kept faith with her. For much of the last year, they had been in direct communication using the encrypted message service Telegram. Q had warned Rebel not to publish what he was saying, or to tell anyone that she was in contact with him. She had followed his instructions to the letter, if only because she feared he might vanish. She was Q’s dirty little secret.

  Some of their conversations were quite lengthy, hours long, late at night, Rebel in her bed, Q in hiding. Sometimes he divulged a great secret about the cabal that he had not shared with his other followers, but usually they made small talk or flirted. At Q’s request, Rebel had sent several nude photos. Q had not reciprocated. Prophets did not send pictures of their private parts over the Internet.

  In mid-November, after the fake news declared that the president had lost the election, their conversations turned serious, dark. Q wondered whether Rebel was prepared to engage in violence to bring about the Storm. Rebel assured Q that she was. And what if her act of violence resulted in her arrest? Was she prepared to face temporary imprisonment until the Storm had passed and the cabal had been punished? Was she prepared to trust the plan? Yes, she answered. She would do anything to save the children.

  It was then, in late December, that Q revealed to Rebel that she was the chosen one—the one who would commit the act that would bring about the Storm. She was not surprised by the nature of Q’s order; it was the only way to prevent the cabal from seizing control of the White House. Nor was she surprised she had been selected. She was uniquely positioned to carry it out. She was the only one.

  Q had ordered Rebel to make no changes in her life that might raise a red flag. With the exception of the handwritten letter explaining her actions, she had maintained strict operational security. It was lying on her nightstand, the letter, beneath her compact Glock 32 .357.

  In the apartment’s galley kitchen, she started the Krups and skimmed a few patriot message boards while waiting for the coffee to brew. She was wearing her favorite nightshirt, a football jersey bearing the number 17—Q being the seventeenth letter of the alphabet. The patriot threads on Reddit were pretty tame, but on some of the hard-core sites there were posts about attacks on government buildings and the coming civil war. Rebel added an incendiary post of her own—anonymously, of course—and then tossed out a few thoughts on her Q Bitch account, which met with a quick response from her Q-starved followers. Finally, she switched to her real-name account and railed against the incoming administration’s plan to rejoin the Paris climate accord. Within the first minute, she received more than a thousand likes, retweets, and quotes. The adulation was like a drug.

  She carried a cup of coffee into her bedroom and dressed for the gym. It seemed a prosaic thing to do, given the fact she had been chosen to bring about the Great Awakening, but Q had been adamant about keeping to her usual schedule. She worked out religiously for two hours each morning, one hour of cardio followed by an hour of resistance, and then showered and changed for work in her office. Even a mild case of Covid, which she had hidden from her colleagues, hadn’t disrupted her routine. A variation now would be noted by her staff. Besides, she needed to clear her head. She was spinning again, hearing voices.

  Trust the plan . . .

  Her phone pinged with a message. The tone told her it was Telegram, and Telegram meant that it was Q. He wanted to know whether she had a minute to talk. Breathless, she typed a response.

  For you, my love, I have all the time in the world.

  Are you alone?

  She told him she was.

  The plan has changed.

  How?

  He explained.

  Are you sure?

  Trust the plan.

  With that, Q was gone. Rebel dropped her phone and the Glock 32 into the gym bag and went into the frigid morning. She headed up Kentucky Avenue to Lincoln Park, then made a left at East Capitol. The voices were whispering in her ear. Trust the plan, they were saying. Enjoy the show.

  64

  Washingto
n

  The outgoing president left the White House for the final time at 8:17 a.m. the following morning, making him the only chief executive in more than a century and a half not to attend the inauguration of his successor. The Washington he left behind was an armed camp, with twenty-five thousand National Guard troops deployed around the city, the most since the Civil War. A sealed red zone stretched from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial, and from I-395 to Massachusetts Avenue. The green zone, restricted to residents and employees of local businesses, was even larger. Bridges were closed, downtown Metro stops shuttered. Miles of seven-foot non-scalable fencing, in some places reinforced with concrete barriers and strung with razor wire, gave the city the appearance of a giant prison.

  As the president departed Joint Base Andrews, the president-elect arrived for mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. Gabriel, in his room at the nearby Madison Hotel, heard the sirens of the massive motorcade as it moved through the empty streets. His phone rang a few minutes after nine, as he was finishing dressing. It was Morris Payne calling from Langley.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Sorry, Morris. I’ve been crushed with work.”

  “Is that any way to treat a friend?”

  “Are you, Morris?”

  “In a few short days you will realize I was the best friend you ever had.”

  “Actually, I think I’m on fairly good footing with the new administration.”

  “I’ll say. There’s a nasty rumor going around that you’re attending the inauguration as a guest of the president.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “I was given a heads-up by the Secret Service. They also told me about this so-called threat from a Russian asset called Rebel. Needless to say, I should have heard about Rebel from you.”

  “I didn’t want anything to be lost in translation.”

  “Translate this,” snapped Payne. “Rebel is total bullshit. Rebel is a fantasy you’ve created to ingratiate yourself with the new crowd and get an invite to the inauguration.”