by Daniel Silva
Eli Lavon smiled and pushed a few strands of wispy hair from his forehead. Despite the warmth of the Roman afternoon, he was wearing a cardigan sweater beneath his crumpled tweed jacket and an ascot at his throat. Even Gabriel, who had known Lavon for more than thirty years, sometimes found it difficult to believe that the brilliant, bookish little archaeologist was actually the finest street surveillance artist the Office had ever produced. His ties to the Office, like Gabriel’s, were tenuous at best. He still lectured at the Academy—indeed, no Office recruit ever made it into the field without first spending a few days at Lavon’s legendary feet—but these days his primary work address was Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, where he taught biblical archaeology and regularly took part in digs around the country.
Their close bond had been formed many years earlier during OperationWrath of God, the secret Israeli intelligence operation to hunt down and kill the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. In the Hebrew-based lexicon of the team, Gabriel was known as an aleph. Armed with a .22 caliber Beretta pistol, he had personally assassinated six of the Black September terrorists responsible for Munich, including a man named Wadal Abdel Zwaiter, whom he had killed in the foyer of an apartment building a few miles from where they were seated now. Lavon was an ayin—a tracker and surveillance specialist. They had spent three years stalking their prey across Western Europe, killing both at night and in broad daylight, living in fear that, at any moment, they would be arrested by European police and charged as murderers. When they finally returned home, Gabriel’s temples were the color of ash and his face was that of a man twenty years his senior. Lavon, who had been exposed to the terrorists for long periods of time with no backup, suffered from innumerable stress disorders, including a notoriously fickle stomach. Gabriel winced inwardly as Lavon took a very large bite of the fish. He knew the little watcher would pay for it later.
“Uzi tells me you’re working in the Judean Desert. I hope it wasn’t something too important.”
“Only one of the most significant archaeological expeditions in Israel in the last twenty years. We’ve gone back into the Cave of Letters. But instead of being there with my colleagues, sifting through the relics of our ancient past, I’m in Rome with you.” Lavon’s brown eyes flickered around the piazza. “But, then, we have a bit of history here ourselves, don’t we, Gabriel? In a way, this is where it began for the two of us.”
“It began in Munich, Eli, not Rome.”
“I can still smell that damn fig wine he was carrying when you shot him. Do you remember the wine, Gabriel?”
“I remember, Eli.”
“Even now, the smell of figs turns my stomach.” Lavon took a bite of the fish. “We’re not going to kill anyone today, are we, Gabriel?”
“Not today, Eli. Today, we just talk.”
“You have a picture?”
Gabriel removed the photograph from his shirt pocket and placed it on the table. Lavon shoved on a pair of smudged half-moon reading glasses and scrutinized the image carefully.
“These Russians all look the same to me.”
“I’m sure they feel the same way about you.”
“I know exactly how they feel about me. Russians made the lives of my ancestors so miserable that they chose to live beside a malarial swamp in Palestine instead. They supported the creation of Israel to begin with, but in the sixties they threw in their lot with those who were sworn to destroy us. The Russians like to portray themselves as allies of the West in the war against international terrorism, but we should never forget they helped to create international terrorism in the first place. They encouraged leftist terror groups across Western Europe in the seventies and eighties, and, of course, they were the patron saints of the PLO. They gave Arafat and his killers all the weapons and explosives they wanted, along with freedom of movement behind the Iron Curtain. Don’t forget, Gabriel, the attack on our athletes in Munich was directed from East Berlin.”
“Are you finished, Professor?”
Lavon slipped the photo into the breast pocket of his jacket. Gabriel ordered two plates of spaghetti con carciofi and briefed Lavon on the assignment as they ate the last of the fish.
“And if he’s clean when he gets to Tre Scalini?” Lavon asked. “What happens then?”
“I want you to have a go at him in that fluent Russian of yours. Back him into a corner and see if he breaks.”
“And if he insists on talking to you?”
“Then you tell him to visit one more Roman tourist attraction.”
“Which one?”
Lavon, after hearing Gabriel’s answer, picked at the corner of his napkin in silence for a moment. “It certainly meets your requirements for a public place, Gabriel. But I doubt that your friend His Holiness will be pleased if he ever finds out you used his church for a clandestine meeting.”
“It’s a basilica, Eli. And His Holiness will never know a thing.”
“Unless something goes wrong.”
“It’s my honeymoon. What could go wrong?”
The waiter appeared with the two plates of pasta. Lavon glanced at his wristwatch.
“Are you sure we have time for lunch?”
“Eat your pasta, Eli. You have a long walk ahead of you.”
7
ROME
They finished their lunch at a slightly un-Roman pace and departed the ghetto aboard the Piaggio scooter. Gabriel dropped Lavon near the Excelsior and rode to the Piazza di Spagna, where he took a window table at Caffè Greco. He appeared to be engrossed in his copy of La Repubblica as Boris Ostrovsky came strolling along the Via Condotti. Lavon was trailing fifty yards behind. He was still wearing his ascot, which meant he had seen no sign of surveillance.
Gabriel finished his coffee while checking Lavon’s tail, then paid the check and rode to the Trevi Fountain. He was standing near the figure of Neptune’s rearing seahorse when Ostrovsky shouldered his way through the crowd of tourists and stood along the balustrade. The Russian was old enough to have endured the hardships of “developed Socialism” and seemed genuinely offended by the sight of rich Westerners hurling money into a work of art commissioned by the papacy. He dipped his handkerchief into the water and used it to dab the perspiration from his forehead. Then, reluctantly, he dug a single coin from his pocket and flung it into the fountain before turning and walking away. Gabriel glimpsed Lavon as he started after him. He was still wearing his ascot.
The third stop on the itinerary was a slightly shorter walk, but the portly Russian appeared footsore and weary by the time he finally labored up the front steps of the Pantheon. Gabriel was standing at the tomb of Raphael. He watched Ostrovsky stroll once around the interior of the rotunda, then stepped outside onto the portico, where Lavon was leaning against a column.
“What do you think?”
“I think we’d better get him into a chair at Tre Scalini before he passes out.”
“Is there anyone following him?”
Lavon shook his head. “Clean as a whistle.”
Just then Ostrovsky emerged from the rotunda and headed down the steps toward the Piazza Navona. Lavon gave him a generous head start before setting out after him. Gabriel climbed aboard the Piaggio and headed to the Vatican.
It had been a Roman racetrack once. Indeed, the baroque structures along its elliptical perimeter were built upon the ruins of ancient grandstands. There were no more chariot races and sporting contests in the Piazza Navona, only a never-ending carnival-like atmosphere that made it one of the most popular and crowded squares in all of Rome. For his observation post, Eli Lavon had chosen the Fontana de Moro, where he was pretending to watch a cellist performing Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G Major. In reality, his gaze was focused on Boris Ostrovsky, who was settling into a table, fifty yards away, at Tre Scalini. The Russian ordered only a small bottle of mineral water, which the white-jacketed waiter took an eternity to deliver. Lavon took one final look around the square, then walked over and sat down in the empty seat.
&nbs
p; “You really should order something more than water, Boris. It’s bad manners.”
Lavon had spoken in rapid Russian. Ostrovsky responded in the same language.
“I’m a Russian journalist. I don’t take beverages in public unless they come with a cap on them.”
He regarded Lavon and frowned, as though he had decided the small man in the crumpled tweed jacket could not possibly be the legendary Israeli agent whom he had read about in the newspapers.
“Who are you?”
“None of your business.”
Another frown. “I did everything I was told to do. Now, where is he?”
“Who?”
“The man I want to speak with. The man called Allon.”
“What makes you think we would ever let you anywhere near him? No one summons Gabriel Allon. It’s always the other way around.”
A waiter sauntered over to the table; Lavon, in respectable Italian, ordered two coffees and a plate of tartufo. Then he looked again at Ostrovsky. The Russian was perspiring freely now and glancing nervously around the piazza. The front of his shirt was damp and beneath each arm was a dark blossom of sweat.
“Something bothering you, Boris?”
“Something is always bothering me. It’s how I stay alive.”
“Who are you afraid of?”
“The siloviki,” he said.
“The siloviki? I’m afraid my Russian isn’t that good, Boris.”
“Your Russian is very good, my friend, and I’m a bit surprised you haven’t heard the word before. It’s how we refer to the former KGB men who are now running my country. They do not take kindly to dissent, and that’s putting it mildly. If you cross them, they will kill you. They kill in Moscow. They kill in London. And they wouldn’t hesitate to kill here”—Ostrovsky looked around the lively piazza—“in the historic center of Rome.”
“Relax, Boris. You’re clean. No one followed you here.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re good at what we do.”
“They’re better, my friend. They’ve had a lot of practice. They’ve been at it since the Revolution.”
“All the more reason why you’re not going anywhere near the man you wish to speak to. Give me the message, Boris, and I’ll give it to Allon. It’s much safer that way for everyone. It’s the way we do things.”
“The message I have to deliver is of the utmost gravity. I speak to him and only him.”
The waiter appeared with the coffee and chocolate. Lavon waited until he was gone before speaking again.
“I am a good friend of the man in question. I’ve known him for a long time. If you give me the message, you can be sure it will reach his ears.”
“I meet with Allon or I go back to Moscow in the morning and meet with no one at all. The choice is yours.” Greeted by silence, the Russian pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “I risked my life coming here. Many of my fellow journalists have been murdered for far less.”
“Sit down,” Lavon said calmly. “You’re making a scene.”
Ostrovsky remained standing.
“I said sit down, Boris.”
This time, Ostrovsky obeyed. He was a Russian. He was used to taking orders.
“Is this your first time in Rome?” Lavon asked.
Ostrovsky nodded his head.
“Allow me to give you some advice on your next destination.”
Lavon leaned forward across the table, as did Ostrovsky. Two minutes later, the Russian journalist was on his feet again, this time heading eastward across the piazza toward the Tiber. Lavon remained at Tre Scalini long enough to make a brief call on his mobile phone. Then he paid the check and started after him.
At the heart of St. Peter’s Square, flanked by Bernini’s colossal Tuscan Colonnade, stands the Egyptian Obelisk. Brought to Rome from Egypt by Emperor Caligula in the year 37, it was moved to its current location in 1586 and raised in a monumental feat of engineering involving one hundred forty horses and forty-seven winches. To protect the Obelisk from terrorists and other modern threats, it is now surrounded by a circle of stubby brown barriers of reinforced concrete. Gabriel sat atop one, wraparound sunglasses in place, as Boris Ostrovsky appeared at the outer edge of the piazza. He watched the Russian’s approach, then turned and headed toward the row of magnetometers located near the front of the Basilica. After enduring a brief wait, he passed through them without so much as a ping and started up the sunlit steps toward the Portico.
Of the Basilica’s five doors, only the Filarete Door was open. Gabriel allowed himself to be swallowed up by a large band of cheerful Polish pilgrims and was propelled by them into the Atrium. He paused there to exchange his wraparound sunglasses for a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, then struck out up the center of the vast nave. He was standing before the Papal Altar as Boris Ostrovsky came in from the Portico.
The Russian walked over to the Chapel of the Pietà. After spending just thirty seconds pretending to marvel at Michelangelo’s masterpiece, he continued up the right side of the nave and paused again, this time before the Monument to Pope Pius XII. Because of the statue’s position, the Russian was temporarily shielded from Gabriel’s view. Gabriel looked toward the opposite side of the nave and saw Lavon standing near the entrance of the Vatican Grottoes. Their eyes met briefly; Lavon nodded once. Gabriel took one final look at the soaring Dome, then set off toward the spot where the Russian was waiting for him.
The sculpture of Pius XII is a curious one. The right hand is raised in blessing, but the head is turned a few degrees to the right, a somewhat defensive pose that makes it appear as if the wartime pontiff is attempting to ward off a blow. Even more curious, however, was the scene Gabriel encountered as he entered the enclave where the statue is located. Boris Ostrovsky was on his knees before the pedestal, with his face lifted sharply toward the ceiling and his hands raised to his neck. A few feet away, three African nuns were conversing softly in French, as though there was nothing unusual about the sight of a man kneeling in fervent veneration before the statue of so great a pope.
Gabriel slipped past the nuns and moved quickly to Ostrovsky’s side. His eyes were bulging and frozen in terror, and his hands were locked around his own throat, as though he were attempting to strangle himself. He wasn’t, of course; he was only trying to breathe. Ostrovsky’s affliction wasn’t natural. In fact, Gabriel was quite certain the Russian had been poisoned. Somehow, somewhere, an assassin had managed to get to him, despite all their precautions.
Gabriel eased Ostrovsky to the floor and spoke quietly into his ear while attempting to pry loose his hands. The nuns gathered round and began to pray, along with a crowd of curious bystanders. Within thirty seconds, the first officers of the Vigilanza, the Vatican’s police force, arrived to investigate. By then, Gabriel was no longer there. He was walking calmly down the steps of the Basilica, with his sunglasses on his face and Eli Lavon at his side. “He was clean,” Lavon was saying. “I’m telling you, Gabriel, he was clean.”
8
VATICAN CITY
It took just one hour for the death in St. Peter’s to reach the airwaves of Italy and another hour for the first report to appear in a roundup of European news on the BBC. By eight o’clock, the corpse had a name; by nine, an occupation.
At 9:30 P.M. Rome time, global interest in Ostrovsky’s death increased dramatically when a spokesman for the Vatican Press Office issued a terse statement suggesting the Russian journalist appeared to have died as a result of foul play. The announcement ignited a frenzy of activity in newsrooms around the world, it being an otherwise rather slow day, and by midnight there were satellite broadcast trucks lining the Via della Conciliazione from the Tiber to St. Peter’s Square. Experts were brought in to analyze every possible angle, real or imagined: experts on the police and security forces of the Vatican; experts on the perils facing Russian journalists; experts on the Basilica itself, which had been sealed off and declared a crime scene. An American cable channel even inter
viewed the author of a book about Pius XII, before whose statue Ostrovsky had died. The scholar was engaged in idle speculation about a possible link between the dead Russian journalist and the controversial pope as Gabriel parked his motorbike on a quiet side street near the Vatican walls and made his way toward St. Anne’s Gate.
