PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF ALEC NEVALA-LEE
CITY OF EXILES
“Alec Nevala-Lee creates a dazzlingly detailed and authentic world of intrigue, weaving a harrowing tale that will enthrall readers with an undercurrent of political ambiguity that evokes le Carré and an intricate, continent-crossing plot reminiscent of The Day of the Jackal. Delivering a complex mix of espionage, European politics, Old Testament riddles, and Cold War mysteries, Nevala-Lee is clearly emerging as one of the most elegant new voices in suspense literature.”
—David Heinzmann, author of Throwaway Girl
THE ICON THIEF
“Alec Nevala-Lee comes roaring out of the gate with a novel that’s as thrilling as it is thought-provoking, as unexpected as it is erudite. The Icon Thief is a wild ride through a fascinating and morally complex world, a puzzle Duchamp himself would have applauded. Bravo.”
—national bestselling author Jesse Kellerman
“Alec Nevala-Lee is no debut author; he must have been a thriller writer in some past life. This one has everything: great writing, great characters, great story, great bad guy, and a religious conspiracy to boot. The Icon Thief is smart, sophisticated, and has enough fast-paced action to keep anyone up past midnight. I’m jealous.”
—New York Times bestselling author Paul Christopher
“Twists and turns aplenty lift this thriller above the rest. From the brutal thugs of the Russian Mafia to the affected inhabitants of the American art world, this book introduces a cast of believable and intriguing characters. Add a story line where almost nothing is as it first appears, and where the plot turns around on itself to reveal startling contradictions, and the result is a book that grips and holds the reader like a vise. I devoured it in a single sitting.”
—national bestselling author James Becker
Also by Alec Nevala-Lee
The Icon Thief
CITY
OF
EXILES
ALEC NEVALA-LEE
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, December 2012
Copyright © Alec Nevala-Lee, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
PROLOGUE
I: NOVEMBER 28–DECEMBER 14, 2010
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
II: DECEMBER 14–21, 2010
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
III
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
Special Preview of Eternal Empire
I do not talk in details—people who knew them are all dead now because they were vocal, they were open. I am quiet. There is only one man who is vocal and he may be in trouble: [former] world chess champion [Garry] Kasparov. He has been very outspoken in his attacks on Putin and I believe that he is probably next on the list.
—Former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, quoted in Foreign Policy, July 25, 2007
“The unacknowledged legislators of the world” describes the secret police, not the poets.
—W. H. Auden
PROLOGUE
And it came to pass by the way at the inn, that the Lord met Moses, and sought to kill him.
—Exodus 4:24
Manuel was watching the man with the books. For most of the past week, he had waited outside this man’s home and office, studying his habits and quiet routine, and by now, he thought, he had come to know him rather well. All the same, he still had trouble believing that this was the person he was supposed to kill.
Tonight, his target was dining at a restaurant near La Plaza de los Naranjos. Watching from the van across the street, Manuel could see the man in question, whom he generally thought of as the translator, seated at a table with his books and a glass of red wine. Next to him sat an attractive young woman, her head bowed over a book of her own, following along intently as the translator pointed to the page.
The van was parked before a whitewashed hotel. Behind the wheel, looking out at the restaurant, sat a pale, thin man in his twenties. Manuel did not know his name. “It would be easier to do it here.
”
Manuel shook his head. “No. Your employers may not have to live with these people, but I do. Are we clear?”
The pale man lifted the flap of his jacket, revealing the grip of a pistol. “We’re clear.”
“Good. And don’t forget this.” Opening the bag at his feet, Manuel pulled out a sawn-off shotgun, uncovering it just enough for the younger man to see. “Bring this to the Calle Lobatas. And when you get there—”
A few minutes later, the translator left the restaurant. Every night, as the other tables cleared, he spent an hour tutoring this girl, a waitress, in English. When the lesson was over, he accompanied her to the door, where they parted ways with a smile. As the translator headed off, the girl looked after him for a moment, then turned aside. Reading her dark eyes with ease, Manuel reflected that if he had been in the translator’s place, he long since would have taken to walking her home.
From the glove compartment, Manuel removed a pint of rum in a paper bag, which he slid into his pocket as he climbed out of the van. Closing the door behind him, he waited as the pale man started the engine and pulled away. Once the van had rounded the corner, Manuel headed after the translator on foot. Under his coat, resting against the bottle, was his gun.
Manuel followed the translator into the labyrinth of streets to the north of the plaza, careful to keep well back. He was good at this sort of work, if somewhat slower than in his prime. As a young man, he had survived many bloody years in Marbella, but now he was almost fifty, the world had changed, and he was taking orders from a stranger less than half his age.
Beyond the plaza, the winding streets grew narrow, the balconies to either side heavy with flowers. Up ahead, the translator, little more than a shadow in the darkness, moved quickly along the sidewalk. He was a slender man of medium height, his age hard to determine. As usual, he was neatly but unremarkably dressed, his brown suit simply cut, a leather satchel slung across one shoulder. His face was intelligent but nondescript, the kind that was easy to forget.
And then there were his books. Manuel knew that he worked as a translator for a firm on the Calle Ricardo Soriano, and could often be seen with books in both English and Spanish, as well as a third, unfamiliar language, perhaps Hebrew. Yet for all his close observation of the translator’s unassuming life, he still had no idea why anyone would want this man dead.
Caught up in these thoughts, Manuel belatedly noticed that the translator had turned onto a different street than usual. He quickened his pace. If the target was taking another route home, it would upset his plans. For a second, he considered calling his partner, then decided to wait and see where the other man was going. From his pocket, he withdrew the rum, which would allow him to pose as a drunk, if necessary. Taking a careful swig, he spat it out, then continued into the night.
A short time later, some distance away, the pale man was waiting on the Calle Lobatas, in a doorway across from the villa where the translator lived. In his right hand, well out of sight, he held his pistol, and he had stashed the shotgun nearby, tucking it into one of the heavy planters that lined the sidewalk.
As he lurked in the shadows, waiting for the translator to appear, he was startled by a noise at his side. His cell phone was ringing. Cursing softly, he pulled the phone from his pocket and checked the display. It was Manuel. Turning away from the street, he answered. “What is it?”
There was no response. He was about to speak again when he felt something cold and hard press against his back. A voice came in his ear: “You should always turn the volume down.”
The pale man did not move. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man behind him close the phone he was holding, put it away, and take something else from his pocket. It was Manuel’s pint of rum. He tossed the bottle to the ground, where it shattered to pieces on the curb.
As the pale man closed his eyes, the other man took away his pistol and phone, then checked him for weapons. At last, he withdrew the gun. “Take a step forward and turn around.”
The pale man obeyed. When he turned, he found himself facing the translator, who was holding Manuel’s pistol. He had removed his shoes and was standing in stocking feet. In his other hand, he held the phone. “If I were to check the call history, what would I find?”
“Nada,” the pale man said. “We wouldn’t be stupid enough to carry our real phones.”
The translator seemed to grant this point. He slid the phone into his pocket. “Where are you from?”
“London,” the pale man said. “But it doesn’t matter. I could be from anywhere.”
“I know.” The translator raised the gun. “You were in a red van. Where is it?”
“Around the corner.” The pale man jerked his head. “If you want it, it’s yours.”
“First, we’re going for a ride.” As he spoke, the translator reached over with his free hand and undid the flap of his satchel. The pale man watched with interest as the translator slid the pistol into the bag, still holding it, then motioned for him to go first. “Hands away from your body.”
The pale man turned obligingly, his hands raised, and stepped onto the pavement, his eyes scanning the deserted street. Across from him stood the villa. The van was parked around the corner, just out of sight.
And up ahead, a few steps in the same direction, was the planter with the gun inside.
He went slowly forward. The planter was directly in front of him. As he walked on, straining to hear the translator’s faint footsteps, his eyes remained fixed on that cluster of flowers. A single quick movement forward and down, and the gun would be in his hands. It would be easy.
Another step. Now the planter was within reach. It seemed to fill his entire field of vision. And he was just about to walk past it when, from overhead, there came the sound of a shutter being drawn back.
Behind him, the translator looked up at the woman who had appeared at the window of the villa. The pale man saw his chance. Falling to his knees, as if he had stumbled at the curb, he found himself at eye level with the planter. His hand plunged into the flowers and closed at once on the shotgun’s grip.
The translator had no time to draw his own gun. As the pale man brought the shotgun around in a flurry of leaves, shouting, the translator simply raised the hand in his satchel and fired, blowing a hole in the bottom of the bag.
Silence. The pale man looked down at the wound in his chest, the gun tumbling from his fingers. For a second, he seemed inclined to retrieve it, but evidently decided that it wasn’t worth the effort, and fell back against the whitewashed wall. Then he slid to the ground.
Coming forward, the translator kicked the shotgun away, then reached down and tore open the dying man’s shirt, revealing a gout of arterial blood, which came in waves with each slowing heartbeat.
He looked into the pale man’s face. His voice was a whisper. “Tell me who sent you.”
The pale man only stared back. A moment later, the flow of blood slackened, then ceased altogether.
From above, voices were rising. Ignoring them, the translator checked the dead man’s pockets, finding nothing but a set of keys, which he took. Then he parted the man’s shirt more carefully. On the pale chest, through the blood, he could make out a tattoo. It had been etched in white ink, the lines raised, and depicted a bird, perhaps an eagle, with a pair of outstretched wings.
The translator studied the tattoo, memorizing it, then pulled the shirt shut again. From overhead, he heard more voices. He pocketed the keys, then headed up the block, leaving the pale man lying among the flowers.
Rounding the corner, the translator, whose name in another life had been Ilya Severin, and in darker times the Scythian, moved quickly through the shadows. He was angry with himself. At first, Marbella had seemed safe, but he should have known that it was still too close to home. He had grown careless. And it would not be enough to simply vanish once more.
<
br /> He looked back over his shoulder at the villa, thinking of the shelves of books he had collected over the past two years. It was a shame to leave them behind. The books were a part of him, in ways that few others would ever understand, and now he would never see them again.
But even as he disappeared into the darkness, he knew that there would be others.
I
NOVEMBER 28–DECEMBER 14, 2010
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning.
—James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes.
—Susan Sontag, On Photography
1
“This isn’t working,” Renata said, glaring through the camera viewfinder. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m not convinced by this.”
The models reclining on the stage said nothing. One was wearing a diaphanous Dior gown, the other nearly nude, both with wet hair and skin so pale that it photographed as almost translucent. If it weren’t for the second girl’s eyes, which had been darkened with charcoal shadow into deep raccoon rings, even Lasse Karvonen, who was very good with faces, would have had trouble telling them apart.
Karvonen was seated at a wheeled cart at one edge of the studio, his laptop covered with a plastic shade. The stage itself, set against a gray backdrop, was lit bright and hot, and the fans only pushed the air around without making the room any cooler. Music droned from a stereo on the wall: Rave on down through time and space, down through the corridors—
Renata thumbed the shutter release lever a few more times, as if taking out her frustration on the mechanism itself, then stormed over to the laptop, almost twisting herself up in the tether that snaked between the camera and the computer. Stylists and assistants scattered out of the way. Karvonen was aware of their eyes on his face, pleading silently with him to make it stop.
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