by Daniel Silva
“How lovely,” said Sarah.
Elena closed her menu and shot a glance at the bodyguards. “Yes,” she said. “Ivan can be very thoughtful when he wants to be.”
38
SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE
The "arrival,"” as it would become known in the lexicon of the operation, took place precisely forty-seven seconds after Elena laid her mobile phone upon the white tablecloth. Though Ivan had been standing just three hundred yards away at the moment he placed the call, he came by armored Mercedes rather than on foot, lest one of his enemies was lurking amid the sea of humanity shuffling listlessly along the quays of the Old Port. The car roared into the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville at high speed and stopped abruptly a few feet from Grand Joseph’s entrance. Ivan waited in the backseat another fifteen seconds, long enough to ignite a murmur of intense speculation inside the restaurant as to his identity, nationality, and profession. Then he emerged in an aggressive blur, like a prizefighter charging from his corner to finish off a hapless opponent. Once inside the restaurant, he paused again in the entranceway, this time to survey the room and to allow the room to survey him in return. He wore loose-fitting trousers of black linen and a shirt of luminous white cotton. His iron hair shone with a fresh coat of oil, and around his thick left wrist was a gold watch the size of a sundial. It glittered like plundered treasure as he strode over to the table.
He did not sit down immediately; instead, he stood for a moment at Elena’s back and placed his huge hands proprietarily around the base of her neck. The faces of Nikolai and Anna brightened with the unexpected appearance of their father, and Ivan’s face softened momentarily in response. He said something to them in Russian that made the children both burst into laughter and caused Mikhail to smile. Ivan appeared to make a mental note of this. Then his gaze flashed over the table like a searchlight over an open field, before coming to rest on Sarah. The last time Ivan had seen her, she had been cloaked in Gabriel’s dowdy clothing. Now she wore a thin peach-colored sundress that hung from her body in a way that created the impression of veiled nudity. Ivan admired her unabashedly, as though he were contemplating adding her to his collection. Sarah extended her hand, more as a defense mechanism than a sign of friendship, but Ivan ignored it and kissed her cheek instead. His sandpaper skin smelled of coconut butter and another woman.
“Saint-Tropez obviously agrees with you, Sarah. Is this your first time here?”
“Actually, I’ve been coming to Saint-Tropez since I was a little girl.”
“You have an uncle here, too?”
“Ivan!” snapped Elena.
“No uncles.” Sarah smiled. “Just a longtime love affair with the South of France.”
Ivan frowned. He didn’t like to be reminded of the fact that anyone, especially a young Western woman, had ever been anywhere or done anything before him.
“Why didn’t you mention you were coming here last month? We could have made arrangements to get together.”
“I didn’t realize you spent time here.”
“Really? It was in all the papers. My home used to be owned by a member of the British royal family. When I acquired it, the London papers went into something of a frenzy.”
“I somehow missed it.”
Once again, Sarah was struck by the flat quality of Ivan’s English. It was like being addressed by an announcer on the English-language service of Radio Moscow. He glanced at Mikhail, then looked at Sarah again.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?” he asked.
Mikhail rose and held out his hand. “My name is Michael Danilov. Sarah and I work together in Washington.”
Ivan took the proffered hand and gave it a bone-crushing squeeze. “Michael? What kind of name is that for a Russian?”
“The kind that makes me sound less like a boy from Moscow and more like an American.”
“To hell with the Americans,” Ivan declared.
“I’m afraid you’re in the presence of one.”
“Perhaps we can do something to change that. I assume your real name is Mikhail?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then Mikhail you shall be, at least for the remainder of the afternoon. ” He seized the arm of a passing waiter. “More wine for the women, please. And a bottle of vodka for me and my new friend, Mikhail.”
He enthroned himself on the luminous white banquette, with Sarah to his right and Mikhail directly opposite. With his left hand, he was pouring icy vodka into Mikhail’s glass as though it were truth serum. His right arm was flung along the back of the banquette. The fine cotton of his shirt was brushing against Sarah’s bare shoulders.
“So you and Sarah are friends?” he asked Mikhail.
“Yes, we are.”
“What kind of friends?”
Once again Elena objected to Ivan’s forwardness and once again Ivan ignored her. Mikhail stoically drained his glass of vodka and, with a sly Russian nod of the head, implied that he and Sarah were very good friends indeed.
“You came to Saint-Tropez together?” Ivan asked, refilling the empty glass.
“Yes.”
“You’re staying together?”
“We are,” Mikhail answered. Then Elena added helpfully: “At the Château de la Messardière.”
“You like it there? The staff is looking after you?”
“It’s lovely.”
“You should come stay with us at Villa Soleil. We have a guesthouse. Actually, we have three guesthouses, but who’s counting?”
You’re counting, Sarah thought, but she said politely: “That’s very kind of you to make such a generous offer, Mr. Kharkov, but we really couldn’t impose. Besides, we paid for our room in advance.”
“It’s only money,” Ivan said with the dismissive tone of a man who has far too much of it. He tried to pour more vodka into Mikhail’s glass, but Mikhail covered it with his hand.
“I’ve had quite enough, thanks. Two’s my limit.”
Ivan acted as though he had not heard him and doled out a third. The interrogation resumed.
“I assume you live in Washington, too?”
“A few blocks from the Capitol.”
“Do you and Sarah live together?”
“Ivan!”
“No, Mr. Kharkov. We only work together.”
“And where is that?”
“At the Dillard Center for Democracy. It’s a nonprofit group that attempts to promote democracy around the world. Sarah runs our sub-Saharan Africa initiative. I do the computers.”
“I believe I’ve heard of this organization. You poked your nose into the affairs of Russia a few years ago.”
“We have a very active program in Eastern Europe,” Sarah said. “But our Russia initiative was closed down by your president. He wasn’t terribly fond of us.”
“He was right to close you down. Why is it you Americans feel the need to push democracy down the throats of the rest of the world?”
“You don’t believe in democracy, Mr. Kharkov?”
“Democracy is fine for those who wish to be democratic, Sarah. But there are some countries that simply don’t want democracy. And there are others where the ground has not been sufficiently fertilized for democracy to take root. Iraq is a fine example. You went into Iraq in the name of establishing a democracy in the heart of the Muslim world, a noble goal, but the people were not ready for it.”
“And Russia?” she asked.
“We are a democracy, Sarah. Our parliament is elected. So is our president.”
“Your system allows for no viable opposition, and, without a viable opposition, there can be no democracy.”
“Perhaps not your kind of democracy. But it is a democracy that works for Russia. And Russia must be allowed to manage its own affairs without the rest of the world looking over our shoulder and criticizing our every move. Would you rather we return to the chaos of the nineties, when Yeltsin placed our future in the hands of American economic and political advisers? Is this what
you and your friends wish to inflict on us?”
Elena cautiously suggested a change of subject. “Ivan has many friends in the Russian government,” she explained. “He takes it rather personally when they’re criticized.”
“I meant no disrespect, Mr. Kharkov. And I think you raise interesting points.”
“But not valid ones?”
“It is my hope, and the hope of the Dillard Center, that Russia should one day be a true democracy rather than a managed one.”
“The day of Russian democracy has already arrived, Sarah. But my wife is correct, as usual. We should change the subject.” He looked at Mikhail. “Why did your family leave Russia?”
“My father felt we would have more opportunities in America than Moscow.”
“Your father was a dissident?”
“Actually, he was a member of the Party. He was a teacher.”
“And did he find his opportunities?”
“He taught high school mathematics in New York. That’s where I grew up.”
“A schoolteacher? He went all the way to America to become a schoolteacher? What kind of man forsakes his own country to teach school in another? You should undo your father’s folly by coming back to Russia. You wouldn’t recognize Moscow. We need talented people like you to help build our country’s future. Perhaps I could find a position for you in my own organization.”
“I’m quite happy where I am, but thank you for the offer.”
“But you haven’t heard it yet.”
Ivan smiled. It was as pleasant as a sudden crack in a frozen lake. Once again, Elena offered apologia.
“You’ll have to forgive my husband’s reaction. He isn’t used to people saying no to him.” Then to Ivan: “You can try again tomorrow, darling. Sarah and Michael are coming to the villa for the afternoon.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “I’ll send a car to collect you from your hotel.”
“We have a car,” Mikhail countered. “I’m sure we can find our way.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll send a proper car to collect you.”
Ivan opened his menu and insisted everyone else do the same. Then he leaned close to Sarah, so that his chest was pressing against her bare shoulder.
“Have the lobster-and-mango spring rolls to start,” he said. “I promise, your life will never be the same again.”
39
GASSIN, FRANCE
At the old stone villa outside Gassin, dinner that evening had been a hasty affair: baguettes and cheese, a green salad, roasted chickens from the local charcuterie. Their ransacked bones lay scattered over the outdoor table like carrion, along with a heel of bread and three empty bottles of mineral water. At one end of the table lay a tourist brochure advertising deep-sea fishing trips in a sea now empty of fish. It might have looked like ordinary refuse were it not for the brief message, hastily scribbled over a photograph of a young boy holding a tuna twice his size. It had been written by Mikhail and passed to Yaakov, in a classic maneuver, in the Place Carnot. Gabriel was gazing at it now as if trying to rewrite it through the sheer force of his will. Eli Lavon was gazing at Gabriel, his chin resting in his palm, like a grandmaster pleading with a lesser opponent to either move or capitulate.
“Maybe it’s the travel arrangements that bother me most,” Lavon said finally in an attempt to prod Gabriel into action. “Maybe I’m not comfortable with the fact that Ivan won’t let them come in their own car.”
“Maybe he’s just a control freak.” Gabriel’s tone was ambivalent, as if he were expressing a possible explanation rather than a firmly held opinion. “Maybe he doesn’t want strange cars on his property. Strange cars can contain strange electronic equipment. Sometimes, strange cars can even contain bombs.”
“Or maybe he wants to take them on a surveillance detection run before he lets them onto the property. Or maybe he’ll just skip the professional niceties and kill them immediately instead.”
“He’s not going to kill them, Eli.”
“Of course not,” said Lavon sarcastically. “Ivan wouldn’t lay a finger on them. After all, it’s not as if he didn’t kill a meddlesome reporter in broad daylight in St. Peter’s Basilica.” He held up a single sheet of paper, a printout of an NSA intercept. “Five minutes after Ivan left that restaurant, he was on the phone to Arkady Medvedev, the chief of his private security service, telling him to run a background check on Mikhail’s father and the Dillard Center.”
“And when he does, he’ll find that Mikhail’s father was indeed a teacher who immigrated to America in the early nineties. And he’ll find that the Dillard Center occupies a small suite of offices on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington.”
“Ivan knows about cover stories, and he certainly knows about CIA front organizations. The KGB was far better at it than Langley ever was. The Russians had a network of fronts all around the globe, some of them run by Ivan’s father, no doubt. Ivan drank KGB tradecraft with his mother’s milk. It’s in his DNA.”
“If Ivan had qualms about Sarah and Mikhail, he wouldn’t let them come close to him. He’d push them away. And he’d make it clear to Elena that they were strictly off-limits.”
“No, he wouldn’t. Ivan’s KGB. If he suspected Sarah and Mikhail weren’t kosher, he’d play it exactly like this. He’d put a team of watcherson them. He’d slip a bug in their hotel room to make sure they’re really who they say they are. And he’d invite them to lunch to try to find out how much they know about his network.”
Gabriel, with his silence, conceded the point.
“Cancel lunch,” said Lavon. “Arrange another bump.”
“If we cancel, Ivan will know something’s not right. And there’s no way he’ll believe that another chance encounter is only a coincidence. We’ve flirted long enough. Elena’s clearly interested. It’s time to start talking about consummating the relationship. And the only way we can talk is by going to lunch at Ivan’s house.”
Lavon picked up a chicken bone and searched it for a scrap of meat. “Do I need to remind you whom Sarah works for? And do I also need to remind you that Adrian Carter might not agree with your decision to send her in there tomorrow?”
“Sarah might work for Langley, but she belongs to us. And as for a decision about what to do, I haven’t made one yet.”
“What are you going to do, Gabriel?”
“I’m going to sit here for a while and think about it.”
Lavon tossed the bone onto the pile and placed his chin in his palm.
“I’ll help.”
40
SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE
Next day, the heat arrived. It came from the south on a scalding wind, fierce, dry, and filled with grit. The pedestrians who ventured into the centre ville clung to the false cool of the shadows, while on the coastline, from the Baie de Pampelonne down to Cap Cartaya, beachgoers huddled motionless beneath their parasols or sat simmering in the shallows. A few deranged souls stretched themselves prostrate upon the broiling sands; by late morning, they looked like casualties of a desert battle. At noon, the local radio reported that it was officially the hottest day ever recorded in Saint-Tropez. All agreed the Americans were to blame.
