The Defector (41 page)

Gabriel looked beyond Chiara’s shoulder and saw a mound of fresh earth, covered by a dusting of snow. He told her he loved her. Then he closed his eyes. He was hearing things again.

Helicopters.

72

VLADIMIRSKAYA OBLAST, RUSSIA

COLONEL LEONID Milchenko could finally see the property: four frozen streams meeting in a frozen marsh, a small dacha with a hole blown in the front door, a line of people walking slowly through a birch forest.

He opened the mic on his headset.

“Do you see them?”

The pilot’s helmet moved up and down rapidly.

“How close can you get?”

“Edge of the marsh.”

“That’s at least three hundred meters away.”

“That’s as close as I can put this thing down, Colonel.”

“What about the Alphas?”

“Fast rope insertion. Right into the trees.”

“Nobody dies.”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Nobody dies . . .

Who was he kidding? This was Russia. Someone always died.

. . .

TEN MORE paces through the snow. Then Ivan heard the helicopters, too. He stopped. Cocked his head, doglike. Shot a glance at Rudenko. Started walking again.

Time . . . Precious time . . .

NAVOT’S MESSAGE flashed across the screens of the annex.

HELICOPTERS INBOUND . . .

Carter covered his telephone and looked at Shamron.

“The FSB team confirms a line of people walking into the trees. It looks as if they’re alive, Ari!”

“They won’t be for long. When will those Alpha Group forces be on the ground?”

“Ninety seconds.”

Shamron closed his eyes.

Two turns to the right, two turns to the left . . .

THE BURIAL pit opened before them, a wound in the flesh of Mother Russia. The ashen sky wept snow as they filed slowly toward it, accompanied by the thumping of distant rotors. Big rotors , thought Gabriel. Big enough to make the forest shake. Big enough to make Ivan’s men restless. Ivan, too. Suddenly he was shouting at Grigori in Russian, exhorting him to walk faster to his death. But Gabriel, in his thoughts, was pleading for Grigori to slow his pace. To stumble. To do anything possible to allow the helicopters time to arrive.

Just then, the first swept in at treetop level, leaving a temporary blizzard in its wake. Ivan was briefly lost in the whiteout. When he reemerged, his face was contorted with rage. He shoved Grigori toward the edge of the pit and began screaming at his guards in Russian. Most were no longer paying attention. A few of his mutinous legion were watching the helicopter settling at the edge of the marshland. The others had their eyes on the western sky, where two more helicopters had appeared.

Four bodyguards remained loyal to Ivan. At his command they placed the condemned in a line at the edge of the pit, heels against the edge, for Ivan had decreed that all were to be shot in the face. Gabriel was placed at one end, Mikhail at the other, Chiara and Grigori in the center. At first Grigori was positioned next to Gabriel, but apparently that wouldn’t do. In a burst of rapid Russian, his gun flailing wildly, Ivan ordered the guards to quickly move Grigori and place Chiara at Gabriel’s side.

As the exchange was being made, two more helicopters thundered in from the west. Unlike the first, they did not streak past but hovered directly overhead. Ropes uncoiled from their bellies, and in an instant black-suited special forces were descending rapidly through the trees. Gabriel heard the sound of weapons dropping into the snow and saw arms raising in surrender. And he glimpsed two men in overcoats running awkwardly toward them through the trees. And he saw Oleg Rudenko trying desperately to remove the Makarov from Ivan’s grasp. But Ivan would not relinquish it. Ivan wanted his blood.

Ivan gave his security chief a single mighty shove in the chest that sent him tumbling into the snow. Then he pointed the Makarov directly into Gabriel’s face. He did not pull the trigger. Instead, he smiled and said, “Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon.”

The Makarov moved to the right. Gabriel hurled himself toward Ivan but could not reach him before the gun exploded with a deafening roar. As he toppled face-first into the snow, two Alpha Group men immediately leapt onto his back and pinned him to the frozen ground. For several agonizing seconds, he struggled to free himself, but the Russians refused to allow him to move or to lift his head. “My wife!” he shouted at them. “Did he kill my wife?” Whether they answered, he did not know. The gunshot had robbed him of the ability to hear. He was aware only of a titanic physical struggle taking place near his shoulder. Then, a moment later, he glimpsed Ivan being led away through the trees.

Only then did the Russians help Gabriel to rise. Twisting his head quickly around, he saw Chiara weeping over a fallen body. It was Grigori. Gabriel dropped to his knees and tried to console her, but she seemed unaware of his presence. “They never killed her,” she was screaming. “Irina is alive, Grigori! Irina is alive!”

PART FIVE

The Reckoning

73

JERUSALEM

IN THE DAYS following the conclusion of the G-8 summit in Moscow, three seemingly unconnected news stories broke in quick succession. The first concerned Russia’s uncertain future; the second, its dark past. The last managed to touch upon both, and ultimately would prove to be the most controversial. But then, that was to be expected, grumbled a few of the old hands at British intelligence, since the subject of the story was none other than Grigori Bulganov.

The first story unfolded exactly one week after the summit and had for its backdrop the Russian economy—more to the point, its all-important energy industry. Because it was good news, at least from Moscow’s point of view, the Russian president chose to make the announcement himself. He did so in a Kremlin news conference, flanked by several of his most senior aides, all veterans of the KGB. In a terse statement, delivered with his trademark glare, the president announced that Viktor Orlov, the dissident former oligarch now residing in London, had finally been brought to heel. All of Orlov’s shares in Ruzoil, the Siberian oil giant, were to be immediately placed under the control of Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned oil-and-gas monopoly. In exchange, said the president, Russian authorities had agreed to drop all criminal charges against Orlov and withdraw their request for his extradition.

In London, Downing Street hailed the Russian president’s gesture as “statesmanlike,” while Russia hands at the Foreign Ministry and the policy institutes openly wondered whether a new wind might be blowing from the East. Viktor Orlov found such speculation hopelessly naïve, but the reporters who attended his hastily called London news conference did walk away with the sense that Viktor was not long for the fight. His decision to surrender Ruzoil, he said, was based on a realistic assessment of the facts. The Kremlin was now controlled by men who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted. When fighting such men, he conceded, victory was not possible, only death. Or perhaps something worse than death. Viktor promised not to be silenced, then promptly announced he had nothing further to say.

Two days later, Viktor Orlov was quietly awarded his first British passport during a small reception at 10 Downing Street. He was also granted a private tour of Buckingham Palace, led by the queen herself. He took many photographs of Her Majesty’s private apartments and gave them to his decorator. Delivery trucks were soon spotted in Cheyne Walk, and passersby were sometimes able to catch a glimpse of Viktor working in his study. Apparently, he had finally decided it was safe to throw open his curtains and enjoy his magnificent view of the Thames.

The second story also originated in Moscow, but, unlike the first, it seemed to leave the Russian president at a loss for words. It concerned a discovery in a birch forest in Vladimirskaya Oblast: several mass graves filled with victims of Stalin’s Great Terror. Preliminary estimates placed the number of bodies at some seventy thousand souls. The Russian president dismissed the find as “of little significance” and resisted calls for him to pay a visit. Such a gesture would have been politically tricky, since Stalin, dead for more than a half century, was still among the most popular figures in the country. He reluctantly agreed to order a review of KGB and NKVD archives and granted the Russian Orthodox Church permission to construct a small memorial at the site—subject to Kremlin approval, of course. “But let’s leave the breast-beating to the Germans,” he said during his one and only comment. “After all, we must remember that Koba carried out these repressions to help prepare the country for the coming war against the fascists.” All those present were chilled by the detached manner in which the president spoke of mass murder. Also, by the fact he referred to Stalin by his old Party nom de guerre, Koba. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the killing ground were never revealed, nor was the owner of the property ever identified. “It is for his own protection,” insisted a Kremlin spokesman. “History can be a dangerous thing.”

The third story broke not in Moscow but in the Russian city sometimes referred to as London. This, too, was a story of death—not the death of thousands but of one. It seemed the body of Grigori Bulganov, the FSB defector and very public dissident, had been discovered on a deserted Thames dock, the victim of an apparent suicide. Scotland Yard and the Home Office took shelter behind claims of national security and released scant details about the case. However, they did acknowledge that Grigori was a somewhat troubled soul who had not adjusted well to a life in exile. As evidence, they pointed out that he had been trying to rekindle his relationship with his former wife—though they neglected to mention that same former wife was by then living in the United Kingdom under a new name and government protection. Also revealed was the somewhat curious fact that Grigori had failed to appear recently for the finals of the Central London Chess Club championship, a match he was expected to win easily. Simon Finch, Grigori’s opponent, surfaced briefly in the press to defend his decision to accept the title by forfeit. He then used the exposure to publicize his latest cause, which was the abolition of land mines. Buckley & Hobbes, Grigori’s publisher, announced that Olga Sukhova, Grigori’s friend and fellow dissident, had graciously agreed to complete Killer in the Kremlin. She appeared briefly at Grigori’s burial in Highgate Cemetery before being escorted away by several armed security men and whisked back into hiding.

Many in the British press, including reporters who had dealt with Grigori, dismissed the government’s claim of suicide as hog-wash. Without any other facts, however, they were left only to speculate, which they did without hesitation. Clearly, they said, Grigori had enemies in Moscow who wished him dead. And clearly, they insisted, one of those enemies must have killed him. The Financial Times pointed out that Grigori was quite close to Viktor Orlov and suggested the defector’s death might somehow be tied to the Ruzoil affair. For his part, Viktor referred to his dead countryman as a “true Russian patriot” and established a freedom fund in his name.

And there the story died, at least as far as the mainstream press was concerned. But on the Internet and in some of the more sensational scandal sheets, it would continue to generate copy for weeks. The wonderful thing about conspiracies is that a clever reporter can usually find a way to link any two events no matter how disparate. But none of the reporters who investigated Grigori’s mysterious death ever attempted to link it to the newly discovered mass graves in Vladimirskaya Oblast. Nor did they posit a connection between the Russian defector and the heart-broken couple who by then had taken refuge in a quiet little apartment on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem. The names Gabriel Allon and Chiara Zolli were not a factor in the story. And they never would be.

THEY HAD recovered from operational trauma before, but never at the same time and never from wounds so deep. Their physical injuries healed quickly. The others refused to mend. They huddled behind locked doors, watched over by men with guns. Unable to tolerate more than a few seconds of separation, they followed each other from room to room. Their lovemaking was ravenous, as if each encounter might be the last, and rare was the moment they were not touching. Their sleep was torn by nightmares. They dreamed of watching each other die. They dreamed of the cell beneath the dacha in the woods. They dreamed of the thousands who were murdered there and the thousands who lay beneath the birch trees in graves with no markers. And, of course, they dreamed of Ivan. Indeed, it was Ivan whom Gabriel saw most. Ivan roamed Gabriel’s subconscious at all hours, dressed in his fine English clothing, carrying his Makarov pistol. Sometimes he was accompanied by Yekaterina and his bodyguards. Usually he was alone. Always he was pointing his gun in Gabriel’s face.

Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon . . .

Chiara was not eager to speak of her ordeal, and Gabriel did not press her. As the child of a woman who had survived the horrors of the Birkenau death camp, he knew Chiara was suffering an acute form of guilt—survivor’s guilt, which is its own special kind of hell. Chiara had lived and Grigori had died. And he had died because he had stepped in front of a bullet meant for her. This was the image Chiara saw most in her dreams: Grigori, battered and barely able to move, summoning the strength to place himself in front of Ivan’s gun. Chiara had been baptized in Grigori’s blood. And she was alive because of Grigori’s sacrifice.

The rest of it came out in bits and pieces and sometimes at the oddest moments. Over dinner one evening, she described in detail for Gabriel the moment of her capture and the deaths of Lior and Motti. Two days later, while doing the dishes, she recounted what it was like to spend all those hours in the dark. And how once each day, just for a few moments, the sun would set fire to the snowbank outside the tiny window. And finally, while folding laundry one afternoon, she tearfully confessed that she had lied to Gabriel about the pregnancy. She was eight weeks gone at the time of the abduction and lost the child in Ivan’s cell. “It was the drugs,” she explained. “They killed my child. They killed your child.”