by Daniel Silva
He was a whisper in a half-lit chapel, a loose thread at the hem of a discarded garment. They ran the photographs through the computers. And when the computers failed to find a match, they searched for him the old-fashioned way, with shoe leather and envelopes filled with money—American money, of course, for in the nether regions of the espionage world, dollars remained the reserve currency. MI6’s man in Caracas could find no trace of him. Nor could he find any hint of an Anglo-Irish mother with a poetic heart, or of a Spanish-businessman father. The address on his passport turned out to be a derelict lot in a Caracas slum; his last known phone number was long deceased. A paid asset inside the Venezuelan secret police said he’d heard a rumor about a link to Castro, but a source close to Cuban intelligence murmured something about the Colombian cartels. “Maybe once,” said an incorruptible policeman in Bogotá, “but he parted company with the drug lords a long time ago. The last thing I heard, he was living in Panama with one of Noriega’s former mistresses. He had several million stashed in a dirty Panamanian bank and a beach condo on the Playa Farallón.” The former mistress denied all knowledge of him, and the manager of the bank in question, after accepting a bribe of ten thousand dollars, could find no record of any accounts bearing his name. As for the beach condo in Farallón, a neighbor could recall little of his appearance, only his voice. “He spoke with a peculiar accent,” he said. “It sounded as though he was from Australia. Or was it South Africa?”
Graham Seymour monitored the search for the elusive suspect from the comfort of his office, the finest office in all spydom, with its English garden of an atrium, its enormous mahogany desk used by all the chiefs who had come before him, its towering windows overlooking the river Thames, and its stately old grandfather clock constructed by none other than Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming, the first “C” of the British Secret Service. The splendor of his surroundings made Seymour restless. In his distant past, he had been a field man of some repute—not for MI6 but for MI5, Britain’s less glamorous internal security service, where he had served with distinction before making the short journey from Thames House to Vauxhall Cross. There were some in MI6 who resented the appointment of an outsider, but most saw “the crossing,” as it became known in the trade, as a sort of homecoming. Seymour’s father had been a legendary MI6 officer, a deceiver of the Nazis, a shaper of events in the Middle East. And now his son, in the prime of life, sat behind the desk before which Seymour the Elder had stood, cap in hand.
With power, however, there often comes a feeling of helplessness, and Seymour, the espiocrat, the boardroom spy, soon fell victim to it. As the search ground futilely on, and as pressure from Downing Street and the palace mounted, his mood grew brittle. He kept a photo of the target on his desk, next to the Victorian inkwell and the Parker fountain pen he used to mark his documents with his personal cipher. Something about the face was familiar. Seymour suspected that somewhere—on another battlefield, in another land—their paths had crossed. It didn’t matter that the service databases said it wasn’t so. Seymour trusted his own memory over the memory of any government computer.
And so, as the field hands chased down false leads and dug dry wells, Seymour conducted a search of his own from his gilded cage atop Vauxhall Cross. He began by scouring his prodigious memory, and when it failed him, he requested access to a stack of his old MI5 case files and searched those, too. Again he found no trace of his quarry. Finally, on the morning of the tenth day, the console telephone on Seymour’s desk purred sedately. The distinctive ringtone told him the caller was Uzi Navot, the chief of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. Seymour hesitated, then cautiously lifted the receiver to his ear. As usual, the Israeli spymaster didn’t bother with an exchange of pleasantries.
“I think we might have found the man you’re looking for.”
“Who is he?”
“An old friend.”
“Of yours or ours?”
“Yours,” said the Israeli. “We don’t have any friends.”
“Can you tell me his name?”
“Not on the phone.”
“How soon can you be in London?”
The line went dead.
4
VAUXHALL CROSS, LONDON
UZI NAVOT ARRIVED AT Vauxhall Cross shortly before eleven that evening and was fired into the executive suite in a pneumatic tube of an elevator. He wore a gray suit that fit him tightly through his massive shoulders, a white shirt that lay open against his thick neck, and rimless spectacles that pinched the bridge of his pugilist’s nose. At first glance, few assumed Navot to be an Israeli or even a Jew, a trait that had served him well during his career. Once upon a time he had been a katsa, the term used by his service to describe undercover field operatives. Armed with an array of languages and a pile of false passports, Navot had penetrated terror networks and recruited a chain of spies and informants scattered around the world. In London he had been known as Clyde Bridges, the European marketing director for an obscure business software firm. He had run several successful operations on British soil at a time when it was Seymour’s responsibility to prevent such activity. Seymour held no grudge, for such was the nature of relationships between spies: adversaries one day, allies the next.
A frequent visitor to Vauxhall Cross, Navot did not remark on the beauty of Seymour’s grand office. Nor did he engage in the usual round of professional gossip that preceded most encounters between inhabitants of the secret world. Seymour knew the reason for the Israeli’s taciturn mood. Navot’s first term as chief was nearing its end, and his prime minister had asked him to step aside for another man, a legendary officer with whom Seymour had worked on numerous occasions. There was talk that the legend had struck a deal to retain Navot’s services. It was unorthodox, allowing one’s predecessor to remain on the premises, but the legend rarely concerned himself with adherence to orthodoxy. His willingness to take chances was his greatest strength—and sometimes, thought Seymour, his undoing.
Dangling from Navot’s powerful right hand was a stainless-steel attaché case with combination locks. From it he removed a slender file folder, which he placed on the mahogany desk. Inside was a document, one page in length; the Israelis prided themselves on the brevity of their cables. Seymour read the subject line. Then he glanced at the photograph lying next to his inkwell and swore softly. On the opposite side of the imposing desk, Uzi Navot permitted himself a brief smile. It wasn’t often that one succeeded in telling the director-general of MI6 something he didn’t already know.
“Who’s the source of the information?” asked Seymour.
“It’s possible he was an Iranian,” replied Navot vaguely.
“Does MI6 have regular access to his product?”
“No,” answered Navot. “He’s ours exclusively.”
MI6, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence had worked closely for more than a decade to delay the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon. The three services had operated jointly against the Iranian nuclear supply chain and shared vast amounts of technical data and intelligence. It was agreed that the Israelis had the best human sources in Tehran, and, much to the annoyance of the Americans and the British, they protected them jealously. Judging from the wording of the report, Seymour suspected that Navot’s spy worked for VEVAK, the Iranian intelligence service. VEVAK sources were notoriously difficult to handle. Sometimes the information they traded for Western cash was genuine. And sometimes it was in the service of taqiyya, the Persian practice of displaying one intention while harboring another.
“Do you believe him?” asked Seymour.
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Navot paused, then added, “And something tells me you believe him, too.”
When Seymour offered no reply, Navot drew a second document from his attaché case and laid it on the desktop next to the first. “It’s a copy of a report we sent to MI6 three years ago,” he explained. “We knew about his connection to the Iranians back then. We also knew he was working with Hezbollah, Hamas, al
-Qaeda, and anyone else who would have him.” Navot added, “Your friend isn’t terribly discriminating about the company he keeps.”
“It was before my time,” Seymour intoned.
“But now it’s your problem.” Navot pointed toward a passage near the end of the document. “As you can see, we proposed an operation to take him out of circulation. We even volunteered to do the job. And how do you suppose your predecessor responded to our generous offer?”
“Obviously, he turned it down.”
“With extreme prejudice. In fact, he told us in no uncertain terms that we weren’t to lay a finger on him. He was afraid it would open a Pandora’s box.” Navot shook his head slowly. “And now here we are.”
The room was silent except for the ticking of C’s old grandfather clock. Finally, Navot asked quietly, “Where were you that day, Graham?”
“What day?”
“The fifteenth of August, nineteen ninety-eight.”
“The day of the bombing?”
Navot nodded.
“You know damn well where I was,” Seymour answered. “I was at Five.”
“You were the head of counterterrorism.”
“Yes.”
“Which meant it was your responsibility.”
Seymour said nothing.
“What happened, Graham? How did he get through?”
“Mistakes were made. Bad mistakes. Bad enough to ruin careers, even today.” Seymour gathered up the two documents and returned them to Navot. “Did your Iranian source tell you why he did it?”
“It’s possible he’s returned to the old fight. It’s also possible he was acting at the behest of others. Either way, he needs to be dealt with, sooner rather than later.”
Seymour made no response.
“Our offer still stands, Graham.”
“What offer is that?”
“We’ll take care of him,” Navot answered. “And then we’ll bury him in a hole so deep that none of the old problems will ever make it to the surface.”
Seymour lapsed into a contemplative silence. “There’s only one person I would trust with a job like this,” he said at last.
“That might be difficult.”
“The pregnancy?”
Navot nodded.
“When is she due?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified.”
Seymour managed a brief smile. “Do you suppose he might be persuaded to take the assignment?”
“Anything’s possible,” replied Navot noncommittally. “I’d be happy to make the approach on your behalf.”
“No,” said Seymour. “I’ll do it.”
“There is one other problem,” said Navot after a moment.
“Only one?”
“He doesn’t know much about that part of the world.”
“I know someone who can serve as his guide.”
“He won’t work with someone he doesn’t know.”
“Actually, they’re very well acquainted.”
“Is he MI6?”
“No,” replied Seymour. “Not yet.”
5
FIUMICINO AIRPORT, ROME
WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE my flight is delayed?” asked Chiara.
“It could be a mechanical problem,” replied Gabriel.
“It could be,” she repeated without conviction.
They were seated in a quiet corner of a first-class departure lounge. It didn’t matter the city, thought Gabriel, they were all the same. Unread newspapers, tepid bottles of suspect pinot grigio, CNN International playing silently on a large flat-panel television. By his own calculation, Gabriel had spent one-third of his career in places like this. Unlike his wife, he was extraordinarily good at waiting.
“Go ask that pretty girl at the information desk why my flight hasn’t been called,” she said.
“I don’t want to talk to the pretty girl at the information desk.”
“Why not?”
“Because she doesn’t know anything, and she’ll simply tell me something she thinks I want to hear.”
“Why must you always be so fatalistic?”
“It prevents me from being disappointed later.”
Chiara smiled and closed her eyes; Gabriel looked at the television. A British reporter in a helmet and flak jacket was talking about the latest airstrike on Gaza. Gabriel wondered why CNN had become so enamored with British reporters. He supposed it was the accent. The news always sounded more authoritative when delivered with a British accent, even if not a word of it was true.
“What’s he saying?” asked Chiara.
“Do you really want to know?”
“It’ll help pass the time.”
Gabriel squinted to read the closed captioning. “He says an Israeli warplane attacked a school where several hundred Palestinians were sheltering from the fighting. He says at least fifteen people were killed and several dozen more seriously wounded.”
“How many were women and children?”
“All of them, apparently.”
“Was the school the real target of the air raid?”
Gabriel typed a brief message into his BlackBerry and fired it securely to King Saul Boulevard, the headquarters of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. It had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Employees referred to it as the Office and nothing else.
“The real target,” he said, his eyes on the BlackBerry, “was a house across the street.”
“Who lives in the house?”
“Muhammad Sarkis.”
“The Muhammad Sarkis?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Is Muhammad still among the living?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What about the school?”
“It wasn’t hit. The only casualties were Sarkis and members of his family.”
“Maybe someone should tell that reporter the truth.”
“What good would it do?”
“More fatalism,” said Chiara.
“No disappointment.”
“Please find out why my flight is delayed.”
Gabriel typed another message into his BlackBerry. A moment later came the response.
“One of the Hamas rockets landed close to Ben-Gurion.”
“How close?” asked Chiara.
“Too close for comfort.”
“Do you think the pretty girl at the information desk knows my destination is under rocket fire?”
Gabriel was silent.
“Are you sure you want to go through with it?” asked Chiara.
“With what?”
“Don’t make me say it aloud.”
“Are you asking whether I still want to be the chief at a time like this?”
She nodded.
“At a time like this,” he said, watching the images of combat and explosions flickering on the screen, “I wish I could go to Gaza and fight alongside our boys.”
“I thought you hated the army.”
“I did.”
She tilted her head toward him and opened her eyes. They were the color of caramel and flecked with gold. Time had left no marks on her beautiful face. Were it not for her swollen abdomen and the band of gold on her finger, she might have been the same young girl he had first encountered a lifetime ago, in the ancient ghetto of Venice.
“Fitting, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“That the children of Gabriel Allon should be born in a time of war.”
“With a bit of luck, the war will be over by the time they’re born.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” Chiara glanced at the departure board. The status box for Flight 386 to Tel Aviv read delayed. “If my plane doesn’t leave soon, they’re going to be born here in Italy.”
“Not a chance.”
“What would be so wrong with that?”
“We had a plan. And we’re sticking to the plan.”
“Actually,” she said archly, “the plan was for us to
return to Israel together.”
“True,” said Gabriel, smiling. “But events intervened.”
“They usually do.”
Seventy-two hours earlier, in an ordinary parish church near Lake Como, Gabriel and Chiara had discovered one of the world’s most famous stolen paintings: Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. The badly damaged canvas was now at the Vatican, where it was awaiting restoration. It was Gabriel’s intention to conduct the early stages himself. Such was his unique combination of talents. He was an art restorer, he was a master spy and assassin, a legend who had overseen some of the greatest operations in the history of Israeli intelligence. Soon he would be a father again, and then he would be the chief. They didn’t write stories about chiefs, he thought. They wrote stories about the men whom chiefs sent into the field to do their dirty work.
“I don’t know why you’re being so stubborn about that painting,” Chiara said.
“I found it, I want to restore it.”
“Actually, we found it. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s no possible way you can finish it before the children are born.”
“It doesn’t matter whether I can finish it or not. I just want to—”
“Leave your mark on it?”
He nodded slowly. “It might be the last painting I ever get to restore. Besides, I owe it to him.”
“Who?”
He didn’t answer; he was reading the closed captioning on the television.
“What’s he talking about now?” Chiara asked.
“The princess.”
“What about her?”
“It seems the explosion that sank the boat was an accident.”
“Do you believe it?”
“No.”
“So why would they say something like that?”
“I suppose they want to give themselves time and space.”
“For what?”
“To find the man they’re looking for.”
Chiara closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder. Her dark hair, with its shimmering auburn and chestnut highlights, smelled richly of vanilla. Gabriel kissed her hair softly and inhaled its scent. Suddenly, he didn’t want her to get on the airplane alone.
