by Daniel Silva
Finally, Sasha dispatched the traitor Kirov on the errand that would result in his decision to defect. By all appearances, it was a routine assignment. The traitor Kirov was instructed to clean out a dead-letter box in Montreal and return the contents to Moscow Center. The dead-letter box was actually an apartment, used by a Brazilian citizen, a woman, living permanently in the promised land of the United States. But the woman was not Brazilian at all. She was a Russian illegal operating under deep cover in Washington.
“Doing what?”
“Sasha never divulged her assignment to me.”
“And if you were to hazard a guess?”
“I’d say the Russian illegal was servicing a mole.”
“Because officers from the local rezidentura are under constant FBI surveillance, making it impossible for them to run a high-level asset.”
“Difficult,” suggested Sergei Morosov, “but not impossible.”
“Did Sasha ever tell you the name of this Russian illegal operating in Washington?”
“Sasha? Don’t be silly.”
“Her cover occupation?”
“No.”
Gabriel asked what had been left in the apartment.
“A memory stick,” replied Sergei Morosov. “It was hidden beneath the kitchen sink. I placed it there myself.”
“What did it contain?”
“Forgeries.”
“Of what?”
“Documents of the highest possible classification.”
“American?”
“Yes.”
“CIA?”
“NSA as well,” said Sergei Morosov, nodding. “Sasha instructed me to leave the memory stick unlocked so Kirov would see the contents.”
“How did you know he would look at them?”
“No SVR fieldman would ever transport an unlocked, unencrypted flash drive across international borders. They always check to make certain.”
“What if he hadn’t returned to Moscow?” asked Gabriel. “What if he had walked straight into our arms?”
“It was the one errand where he was watched. If he had made a break for the other side, he would have been shipped back to Moscow in a box.”
But that wasn’t necessary, Sergei Morosov continued, because the traitor Kirov returned to Moscow on his own. At which point he faced a painful dilemma. The documents he had seen were too dangerous to share with his Israeli handlers. If Moscow Center ever learned they had gone astray, Kirov would instantly fall under suspicion. Defection, therefore, was his only option.
The rest of Sasha’s conspiracy unfolded precisely as planned. The traitor Kirov traveled to Budapest and then to Vienna, where Gabriel Allon, the chief of Israeli intelligence and an implacable enemy of the Russian Federation, waited in a safe flat. An assassin waited, too, one of Moscow Center’s very best. His death on the Brünnerstrasse was the evening’s only false note. Otherwise, the performance was pitch perfect. The traitor Kirov had been granted the undignified death he so richly deserved. And the enemy Allon would soon embark on an investigation, guided at every step by the hidden hand of Sasha, that would identify Alistair Hughes as Moscow Center’s mole inside British intelligence.
“How did you know we’d targeted him?” asked Gabriel.
“We saw Eli Lavon and your friend Christopher Keller move into an observation flat on the Barichgasse. And our watchers saw your watchers following Alistair around Vienna. On Sasha’s orders, we pared our teams to the bone to minimize the risk of detection.”
“But not in Bern,” said Gabriel. “That boy-girl team you sent into the Schweizerhof were rather hard to miss. So was Dmitri Sokolov.”
“A protégé of Sasha’s.”
“I suppose Sasha deliberately chose Dmitri so there would be no confusion.”
“He does cut quite a dashing figure on the Geneva party circuit.”
“What was in the envelope?”
“You tell me.”
Photographs, said Gabriel, of Alistair Hughes entering and leaving Privatklinik Schloss.
“Kompromat.”
“I don’t suppose there was a chance Alistair was going to leave Bern alive.”
“None whatsoever. But even we were surprised when he came running helter-skelter out of the hotel.”
“Who was driving the car?”
Sergei Morosov hesitated, then said, “I was.”
“And what if Alistair hadn’t presented you with such an easy opportunity to kill him?”
“We had the plane.”
“Plane?”
“The return flight to Vienna. While we were watching Alistair, we figured out how to get a bomb on board. Bern Airport isn’t exactly Heathrow or Ben Gurion.”
“You would have killed all those innocent people in order to kill one man?”
“When making an omelet . . .”
“I doubt the civilized world would see it that way,” said Gabriel. “Especially when they heard it directly from the mouth of a senior KGB officer.”
“We’re called the SVR now, Allon. And we had a deal.”
“Indeed, we did. You were supposed to tell me everything in exchange for your life. Unfortunately, you haven’t lived up to your end of the bargain.”
Sergei Morosov managed a smile. “The name of the mole? Is that what you want?”
Gabriel smiled in return.
“Do you really think,” asked Sergei Morosov, his tone belittling, “that the great Sasha would tell me such a thing? Only a tiny cadre of officers at Moscow Center know the mole’s identity.”
“What about the woman?” asked Gabriel. “The illegal who poses as a Brazilian national?”
“You can be sure she and the mole never meet face-to-face.”
Gabriel asked for the address of the dead drop in Montreal. Sergei Morosov replied that the information was obsolete. Sasha had shut it down and set up a new drop.
“Where?”
Sergei Morosov was silent.
“Would you like me to have the technicians play back the part of your interrogation where you admit to killing MI6’s Vienna Head of Station?”
The dead drop, said Sergei Morosov, was located at 6822 rue Saint-Denis.
“Apartment or house?”
“Neither. The dead drop is a Ford Explorer. Dark gray. The illegal leaves the memory stick in the glove box, and one of Sasha’s couriers brings it back to Moscow Center.”
“Old school,” said Gabriel.
“Sasha prefers the old ways to the new.”
Gabriel smiled. “We have that in common, Sasha and I.”
39
Upper Galilee, Israel
There was one final piece of business to attend to. It was the question that Gabriel, many hours earlier, had allowed to fall by the wayside. It was nothing serious, he told himself, a housekeeping matter, a bit of dust that had to be swept into the pan before Sergei Morosov could be allowed to get a few hours of sleep. This was the lie Gabriel told himself. This was his internal cover story.
In truth, he had thought of almost nothing else all through the long night. That was the gift of a master interrogator, the ability to hold a single unanswered question in reserve while probing elsewhere. In the process, Gabriel had unearthed a mountain of valuable intelligence, not least of which was the location of a dead drop in Montreal used by a Russian illegal operating in Washington. A Russian illegal whose primary task was to service a long-term agent of penetration operating at the pinnacle of the Anglo-American intelligence establishment. Sasha’s one and only asset. Sasha’s life’s work. Sasha’s endeavor. In the jargon of the trade, a mole.
The dead drop alone was worth the cost and risk of Sergei Morosov’s abduction. But who was the legendary figure who had assisted Sasha in creating the mole in the first place? Gabriel posed the question again now, as an afterthought, while preparing to take his leave.
“I told you, Allon, the rumors never addressed this.”
“I heard you the first time, Sergei. But who was it? Was he one man or
two? Was he a team of officers? Was he a woman?” Then, after a long pause, “Was he even a Russian?”
And this time, perhaps because he was too exhausted to lie, or perhaps because he knew it would be pointless, Sergei Morosov answered truthfully.
“No, Allon, he wasn’t a Russian. Russian in his sympathies, yes. Russian in his historical outlook, surely. But he remained English to the core, even after he came to us. He ate English mustard and marmalade, drank scotch whisky by the barrel, and followed the cricket scores religiously in the Times.”
Because these words were spoken in German, the two guards standing at Gabriel’s back did not react. Neither did Mikhail, who was sprawled drowsily to Sergei Morosov’s right, looking as though he were the one who had spent the night under interrogation. Gabriel made no reaction, either, other than to slow the pace with which he was gathering up his notes.
“Sasha told you this?” he asked quietly, so as not to break the spell.
“Not Sasha.” Sergei Morosov shook his head vigorously. “It was in one of his files.”
“Which file?”
“An old one.”
“From the days when the KGB was known as the NKVD?”
“You were listening, after all.”
“To every word.”
“Sasha left it on his desk one evening.”
“And you had a look?”
“It was against Sasha’s rules, but, yes, I had a look when he ran up to the main building to have a word with the boss.”
“What would have happened if he’d seen you?”
“He would have assumed I was a spy.”
“And had you shot,” said Gabriel.
“Sasha? He would have shot me himself.”
“Why did you take the risk?”
“I couldn’t resist. Files like that are the sacred texts of our service. The Torah,” he added for Gabriel’s benefit. “Even a man like me, a man whose mother worked for Andropov, is rarely allowed to see such documents.”
“And when you opened the file? What did you see?”
“A name.”
“His name?”
“No,” answered Sergei Morosov. “The name was Otto. It was the code name of an NKVD operative. The file concerned a meeting Otto conducted in Regent’s Park in London.”
“When?”
“In June,” said Sergei Morosov. “June 1934.”
Otto, Regent’s Park, June 1934 . . . It was perhaps the most famous and fateful meeting in the history of espionage.
“You saw the actual file?” asked Gabriel.
“It was like reading the original copy of the Ten Commandments. I could barely see the page, I was so blinded by excitement.”
“Were there other files?”
Yes, said Sergei Morosov, there were many others, including several written in laborious Russian by Sasha’s legendary helper, the man who was Russian in his sympathies but English to his core. One concerned a woman he had known in Beirut, where he had worked for several years as a journalist beginning in 1956.
“Who was she?”
“A journalist, too. More important, she was a committed communist.”
“What was the nature of their relationship?”
“It wasn’t professional, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“She was his lover?”
“One of many,” said Sergei Morosov. “But she was different.”
“How so?”
“There was a child.”
The rapid pace of Gabriel’s questions stirred Mikhail from his reverie.
“What was the woman’s name?” asked Gabriel.
“The file didn’t say.”
“Nationality?”
“No.”
“What about the child? Was it a boy or a girl?”
“Please, Allon, I’ve had enough for one night. Let me get some sleep, and we’ll start over in the morning.”
But it was morning already, late morning in fact, and there was no time for sleep. Gabriel squeezed harder, and Sergei Morosov, drunk with fatigue, described the contents of the last file he had dared to open that night before the great Sasha returned to the dacha.
“It was a private assessment written by the Englishman in the early 1970s predicting the collapse of communism.”
“Heretical stuff,” interjected Gabriel.
“No Soviet citizen, not even my father, would have dared to write such a thing.”
“The Englishman was free to say what others could not?”
“Not publicly, but internally he could speak his mind.”
“Why would he write such a document?”
“He was afraid that if communism collapsed, the Soviet Union would no longer serve as a beacon for those in the West who believed capitalism to be unjust.”
“The useful idiots.”
“Admittedly, one of the few times Comrade Lenin should have chosen his words more carefully.”
The Englishman, Sergei Morosov went on, certainly didn’t consider himself to be a useful idiot or even a traitor. He regarded himself first and foremost as an officer of the KGB. And he was afraid that if communism failed in the one country where it was applied, few Westerners from the upper reaches of their societies would imitate his path of secret allegiance to Moscow, leaving the KGB no choice but to rely on paid and coerced assets. But if the KGB wanted a true agent of penetration in the heart of Western intelligence—a mole who burrowed into a position of influence and spied for reasons of conscience rather than money—it would have to create one out of whole cloth.
This, said Sergei Morosov, was the true nature of Sasha’s endeavor—to create the perfect spy, with the help of the greatest traitor of them all. This was why Konstantin Kirov had been given the highest measure of punishment in Vienna. And it was why Alistair Hughes, whose only crime was mental illness, had been murdered in the Bahnhofplatz in Bern.
There was a child . . .
Yes, thought Gabriel, that would explain everything.
40
Wormwood Cottage, Dartmoor
Wormwood Cottage was set upon a swell in the moorland and fashioned of Devon stone that had darkened with time. Behind it, across a broken courtyard, was a converted barn with offices and living quarters for the staff. When the facility was unoccupied, a single caretaker called Parish kept a lonely watch over it. But when guests were present—in the lexicon of the cottage, they were referred to as “company”—the staff could number as many as ten, including a security detail. Much depended on the nature of the guest and the men from whom he was hiding. A “friendly” might be given the run of the place. But for a man with many enemies, a hunted man, Wormwood Cottage could be turned into the most secure MI6 safe house in all of Britain.
The man who appeared at the cottage early the following afternoon fell into the second category, though Parish received only a few minutes’ warning of his pending arrival. It came not through the usual channels at Vauxhall Cross but from Nigel Whitcombe, the chief’s boyish personal assistant and general factotum. Whitcombe had cut his teeth at Five, a sin for which Parish, who was old service, had granted him no absolution.
“And how long will he be staying with us this time?” Parish asked dryly.
“To be determined,” answered Whitcombe down the encrypted line.
“How many in his party?”
“He’ll be alone.”
“Bodyguards?”
“No.”
“And what do we do if he wants to take one of his forced marches across the moor? He does love to walk, you know. Last time he was here, he trekked halfway to Penzance without telling anyone.”
“Leave a gun with the Wellies. He can look after himself.”
“And will he be having guests?”
“Just one.”
“Name?”
“Third letter of the alphabet.”
“What time should I expect him?”
“Unclear.”
“And our company?”
“Look out your
window.”
Parish did as he was told and glimpsed an unmarked van bumping along the rutted drive. It stopped in the cottage’s gravel forecourt, and a single figure alighted from the back. Five-foot-nothing, bright green eyes, short dark hair, gray at the temples. The last time Parish had seen him was the night the esteemed Telegraph newspaper reported that he was dead. In fact, Parish was the one who had brought him the printout of the story from the Telegraph’s Web site. Company were not permitted the use of phones or computers. Cottage rules.
“Parish!” called out the green-eyed man with surprising cheer. “I was hoping you’d be here.”
“Things change slowly down here on the moor.”
“And thank heaven for that.” He surrendered his mobile without Parish having to ask. “You’ll take good care of it, won’t you? I wouldn’t want anyone to get their hands on it.”
With that, the green-eyed man smiled unexpectedly and entered the cottage as though he were returning home from a long absence. When Parish saw him next he was striking out into the moorland, with the collar of his Barbour coat around his ears and the weight of the world on his shoulders. What was it this time? Given his track record, it could be almost anything. Something about his grim expression told Parish that Wormwood Cottage would once again be the setting of a great undertaking. And though Parish did not know it, he was entirely and absolutely correct.
He followed a hedgerowed track down to the hamlet of Postbridge, a collection of farm buildings at the intersection of two roads. There he headed west toward the faint warmth of the sun, which was already hovering just above the empty horizon. He wondered, only half in jest, whether he was following the course Sasha had plotted for him. Or was it Sasha’s legendary accomplice? The Englishman who followed the cricket scores religiously in the Times, even after he had committed the final act of betrayal. The Englishman who helped Sasha prepare and then insert a mole into the heart of Western intelligence, an agent motivated by a personal devotion to him. The Englishman had lived for a time in the Beirut of old, the Beirut where one heard French while strolling the Corniche. He had known a young woman there, there was a child. Find the woman, thought Gabriel, and he might very well find the child.
