The English Girl: A Novel (34 page)

62

CORSICA

T
hree days later the don invited Gabriel to drop by his office for a chat. It was not truly an invitation, for invitations can be politely declined. It was a Shamronian commandment, chiseled into stone, inviolable.

“How about lunch?” asked Gabriel, knowing that Orsati was likely to be in a good mood then.

“Fine,” answered the don. Then he added ominously, “But perhaps it would be better if you came alone.”

Gabriel left the villa shortly after noon. The goat allowed him to pass without a confrontation, for it recognized him as an associate of the beautiful Italian woman. The guards outside Don Orsati’s estate allowed him to pass, too, for the don had left word that the Israelite was expected. He found the don in his large office, hunched over his ledger books.

“How’s business?” asked Gabriel.

“Never better,” replied Orsati. “I have more orders than I can possibly fill.”

Whether the don was speaking of blood or oil, he did not say. Instead, he led Gabriel to a dining room where a table had been laid with a Corsican feast. With its whitewashed walls and simple furnishings, the room reminded Gabriel of the pope’s private dining room in the Apostolic Palace. There was even a heavy wooden crucifix on the wall behind the chair reserved for the don.

“Does it bother you?” asked Orsati.

“Not at all,” replied Gabriel.

“Christopher tells me you know your way around Catholic churches.”

“What else did he tell you?”

Orsati frowned but said nothing more as he filled Gabriel’s plate with food and his glass with wine.

“The villa is to your liking?” he asked finally.

“It’s perfect, Don Orsati.”

“And your wife is happy here?”

“Very.”

“How long do you plan to stay?”

“As long as you’ll have me.”

The don was curiously silent.

“Have I worn out my welcome already, Don Orsati?”

“You can stay here on the island as long as you like.” The don paused, then added, “So long as you don’t involve yourself in matters that affect my business.”

“You’re obviously referring to Keller.”

“Obviously.”

“I meant no disrespect, Don Orsati. I was just—”

“Meddling in affairs that don’t concern you.”

The don’s mobile phone buzzed softly. He ignored it.

“Did I not help you when you first came to the island looking for the English girl?”

“You did,” said Gabriel.

“And did I not give you Keller free of charge to help you find her?”

“I couldn’t have done it without him.”

“And did I not overlook the fact that I was never offered any of the ransom money you surely recovered?”

“The money is in the bank account of the Russian president.”

“So you say.”

“Don Orsati . . .”

The don waved his hand dismissively.

“Is that what this is about? Money?’

“No,” the don admitted. “It’s about Keller.”

A gust of wind beat against the French doors leading to Don Orsati’s garden. It was the libeccio, a wind from the southeast. Usually, it brought rain in winter, but for now the sky was clear.

“Here on Corsica,” the don said after a moment’s silence, “our traditions are very old. For example, a young man would never dream of proposing marriage to a woman without first asking her father for permission. Do you see my point, Gabriel?”

“I believe I do, Don Orsati.”

“You should have spoken to me before talking to Christopher about going back to England.”

“It was a mistake on my part.”

Orsati’s expression softened. Outside the libeccio overturned a table and chair in the don’s garden. He shouted something at the ceiling in the Corsican dialect, and a few seconds later a mustachioed man with a shotgun slung over his shoulder came scampering into the garden to put it back in order.

“You don’t know what your friend Christopher was like when he arrived here after leaving Iraq,” Orsati was saying. “He was a mess. I gave him a home. A family. A woman.”

“And then you gave him a job,” said Gabriel. “Many jobs.”

“He’s very good at it.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Better than you.”

“Who said that?”

The don smiled. A silence fell between them, which Gabriel allowed to linger while he chose his next words with great care.

“It’s not a proper way for a man like Christopher to earn a living,” he said at last.

“People in glass houses, Allon.”

“I never realized that was a Corsican proverb.”

“All things wise come from Corsica.” The don pushed his plate away and rested his heavy forearms on the tabletop. “There’s something you don’t seem to understand,” he said. “Christopher is more than just my best
taddunaghiu
. I love him like a son. And if he ever left . . .” The don’s voice trailed off. “I would be heartbroken.”

“His real father thinks he’s dead.”

“There was no other way.”

“How would you feel if the roles were reversed?”

Orsati had no answer. He changed the subject.

“Do you really think this friend of yours from British intelligence would be interested in bringing Christopher back to England?”

“He’d be a fool not to.”

“But he might say no,” the don pointed out. “And by raising the matter with him, you might endanger Christopher’s position here on Corsica.”

“I’ll do it in a way that poses no threat to him.”

“He is a man of trust, this friend of yours?”

“I’d trust him with my life. In fact,” said Gabriel, “I’ve done it many times before.”

The don exhaled heavily in resignation. He was about to give Gabriel’s unusual proposition his blessing when his mobile phone rang again. This time he answered it. He listened in silence for a moment, spoke a few words in Italian, and then returned the phone to the tabletop.

“Who was that?” asked Gabriel.

“Your wife,” replied the don.

“Is something wrong?”

“She wants to take a walk into the village.”

Gabriel started to rise.

“Stay and finish your lunch,” said Orsati. “I’ll send a couple of my boys to keep an eye on her.”

Gabriel sat down again. The libeccio was wreaking havoc in Orsati’s garden. The don watched it sadly for a moment.

“I’m still glad we didn’t kill you, Allon.”

“I can assure you, Don Orsati, the feeling is mutual.”

T
he wind chased Chiara down the narrow track, past the shuttered houses and the cats, and finally to the main square, where it swirled in the arcades and vandalized the display tables of the shopkeepers. She went to the market and filled her straw basket with a few things for dinner. Then she took a table at one of the cafés and ordered a coffee. In the center of the square, a few old men were playing
boules
amid tiny cyclones of dust, and on the steps of the church an old woman in black was handing a slip of blue paper to a young boy. The boy had long, curly hair and was very pretty. Looking at him, Chiara smiled sadly. She imagined that Gabriel’s son Dani might have looked like the boy if he had lived to be ten years of age.

The woman descended the church steps and disappeared through the doorway of a crooked little house. Then the boy started across the square with the slip of blue paper in his hand. Much to Chiara’s surprise, he entered the café where she was seated and placed the paper on her table without a word. She waited until the boy was gone before reading the single line.
I must see you at once . . .

T
he old
signadora
was waiting in the door of her house when Chiara arrived. She smiled, touched Chiara’s cheek softly, and then drew her inside.

“Do you know who I am?” the old woman asked.

“I have a good idea,” answered Chiara.

“Your husband mentioned me?”

Chiara nodded.

“I warned him not to go to the city of heretics,” the
signadora
said, “but he didn’t listen. He’s lucky to be alive.”

“He’s hard to kill.”

“Perhaps he is an angel after all.” The old woman touched Chiara’s face again. “And you went, too, didn’t you?”

“Who told you I went to Russia?”

“You went without telling your husband,” the
signadora
went on, as though she hadn’t heard the question. “You were together for a few hours in a hotel room in the city of night. Do you remember?”

The old woman smiled. Her hand was still touching Chiara’s face. It moved to her hair.

“Shall I go on?” she asked.

“I don’t believe you can see the past.”

“Your husband was married to another woman before you,” the old woman said, as if to prove Chiara wrong. “There was a child. A fire. The child died but the wife lived. She lives still.”

Chiara drew away sharply.

“You were in love with him for a long time,” the old woman continued, “but he wouldn’t marry you because he was grieving. He sent you away once, but he came back to you in a city of water.”

“How do you know that?”

“He painted a picture of you wrapped in white bedding.”

“It was a sketch,” said Chiara.

The old woman shrugged, as if to say it made no difference. Then she nodded toward her table, where a plate of water and a vessel of olive oil stood next to a pair of burning candles.

“Won’t you sit down?” she asked.

“I’d rather not.”

“Please,” said the old woman. “It will only take a moment or two. Then I’ll know for certain.”

“Know what?”

“Please,” she said again.

Chiara sat down. The old woman sat opposite.

“Dip your forefinger in the oil, my child. And then allow three drops to fall into the water.”

Chiara reluctantly did as she was told. The oil, upon striking the surface of the water, gathered into a single drop. The old woman gasped, and a tear spilled onto her powdery white cheek.

“What do you see?” asked Chiara.

The old woman held Chiara’s hand. “Your husband is waiting for you at the villa,” she said. “Go home and tell him he’s going to be a father again.”

“Boy or girl?”

The old woman smiled and said, “One of each.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

T
he English Girl
is a work of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The version of
Susanna and the Elders
by Jacopo Bassano that appears in the novel does not exist. If it did, it would look a great deal like the one that hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Reims. There is indeed a small limestone apartment house on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem—several, in fact—but an Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon does not actually reside there. The headquarters of the Israeli secret service are no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv; I have chosen to keep the headquarters of my fictitious service there in part because I have always liked the name of the street. The bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946 is historical fact, though Arthur Seymour, the father of my fictitious MI5 officer Graham Seymour, did not actually witness it. There is no exhibit at the Israel Museum featuring the pillars of Solomon’s Temple of Jerusalem, for no ruins from the Temple have ever been discovered.

There is in fact a restaurant called Les Palmiers on the Quai Adolphe Landry in Calvi, but, to the best of my knowledge, it has never been used as a rendezvous point for two Russian spies. The Orsati Olive Oil Company was invented by the author, as was the friendly-fire incident that led Christopher Keller, who first appeared in
The English Assassin
, to desert the Special Air Service and become a Corsican-based professional killer. Those familiar with the island and its rich traditions will know that I have given my fictitious
signadora
powers that most of her colleagues do not profess to have.

The Russian energy company known as Volgatek Oil & Gas does not exist. Nor is there a trade group called the International Association of Petroleum Producers, though there are many just like it. I tinkered with the times of El Al’s flights between Tel Aviv and St. Petersburg to meet the needs of my operation. Those brave souls who visit St. Petersburg in the depths of winter should not attempt to scale the glorious dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, for it is closed in cold weather. For the record, I am quite fond of the Café Nero on London’s Bridge Street. Deepest apologies to the Hotel Metropol, the Astoria Hotel, and the Ritz-Carlton for running intelligence operations from their premises, but I’m sure I was not the first.

I did my utmost to describe the atmosphere inside 10 Downing Street accurately, though I admit that, unlike Gabriel Allon, I have never set foot beyond the security barrier along Whitehall. When creating Jeremy Fallon, my fictitious chief of staff, I gave him the broad authority that Prime Minister Tony Blair gave to his real chief of staff, Jonathan Powell. I am quite confident that, had the brilliant and scrupulous Powell been at the side of Jonathan Lancaster, the entire sordid affair portrayed in
The English Girl
would not have occurred.

The increased spying on the part of Russia’s intelligence services against Western targets has been well documented. The KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky recently told the
Guardian
newspaper that the size of the SVR’s London
rezidentura
has reached Cold War levels. Gordievsky is in a unique position to make such a claim because he worked for the KGB in London from 1982 to 1985. Furthermore, he is not alone in his assessment; MI5 has come to the same conclusion. “It is a matter of some disappointment to me,” said MI5 Director General Jonathan Evans, “that I still have to devote significant amounts of equipment, money, and staff to countering this threat. They are resources which I would far rather devote to countering the threat from international terrorism.”

While London is clearly an important hub of Russian intelligence activity, the United States remains the primary focus of Moscow Center. The FBI provided ample proof of this fact in June 2010, when it arrested ten Russian spies who had been living in the United States under non-official illegal cover for several years. Fearful of jeopardizing its much-touted “reset” in relations with the Kremlin, the Obama administration quickly agreed to return all the spies to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange, the largest between the United States and Russia since the Cold War. The most notorious of the Russian spies was Anna Chapman, a comely femme fatale who lived in London for several years before settling in New York as a real estate agent and party girl. Since returning to Russia, Chapman has hosted a television program, written a newspaper column, and posed for a magazine cover in French lingerie. She was also appointed to the guiding council of the Young Guard of United Russia, a pro-Kremlin organization affiliated with the country’s ruling party. Critics of the Young Guard often refer to it darkly as the “Putin Youth.”

Much of Russia’s spying against the United States is industrial and economic in nature. The reasons are painfully obvious. Nearly a quarter of a century after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia remains largely an economic basket case, heavily dependent on raw materials and, of course, oil and gas. President Vladimir Putin has made no secret of what energy means to the new Russia. Indeed, the Kremlin spelled it out clearly in a 2003 strategy paper that declared the “role of the country in the global energy markets largely determines its geopolitical influence.” Wisely, the Kremlin has softened its language when talking about the importance of Russia’s energy sector, but the goals remain the same. Stripped of its empire and militarily feeble, Russia now intends to wield power on the world stage with oil and gas rather than nuclear weapons and Marxist-Leninist ideology. What’s more, the Kremlin’s state-owned energy giants are no longer content to operate only within the boundaries of Russia, where production of oil and gas has leveled off. They are now acquiring both “upstream” and “downstream” assets as part of their stratagem to become truly global energy players. In short, the Russian Federation is attempting to become a Eurasian Saudi Arabia.

Gazprom, the state-owned Russian behemoth, is the world’s largest gas company, and its revenues are the source of much of the Kremlin’s annual federal budget. Several former Soviet Republics receive
all
their natural gas from Russia, as does tiny Finland. Austria receives more than 80 percent of its gas from Russia; Germany, about 40 percent. While advances in drilling technology are bringing more gas to the international marketplace, the pipelines linking Europe and Russia will help to ensure Gazprom’s dominant position for years to come. Its many European customers should bear in mind that Gazprom operated as an instrument of political repression in 2001, when it purchased NTV, Russia’s only independent national broadcast outlet and a harsh critic of Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party. NTV’s editorial outlook is now reliably pro-Kremlin.

After a brief stint as prime minister, Putin was elected to a third term as Russia’s president in March 2012. A former officer of the KGB, he is now in a position to rule until at least 2024, longer than Leonid Brezhnev and nearly as long as Joseph Stalin. Needless to say, not all Russians support Putin’s dictatorial hold on power, but increasingly the voices of opposition are being silenced, sometimes harshly. In November 2009, Sergei Magnitsky, a Moscow lawyer and accountant who accused tax officials and police officers of embezzlement, died suddenly in a Russian jail at the age of thirty-seven, provoking international condemnation and sanctions from the United States. Now it appears the Kremlin has set its sights on Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent dissident and a leader of the protest movement that swept the country after Putin’s return to the presidency. At the time of this writing, Navalny is awaiting trial on embezzlement charges—charges he and his legion of supporters have denounced as politically motivated. If convicted, he faces the prospect of spending ten years in prison, where he would be no threat to Putin and his fellow
siloviki
in the Kremlin.

All too often, a prison sentence of any length in the new Russia of Vladimir Putin is tantamount to a death sentence. According to Russian officials, 4,121 people died in custody in 2012 alone, though pro-democracy advocates say the actual figure is likely far higher. Which might help to explain why Alexander Dolmatov, a Russian pro-democracy activist, chose to take his own life in a Rotterdam detention center in January 2013. Fearing arrest and prosecution in Russia, Dolmatov had fled to the Netherlands in search of political asylum; and when his application was denied, he hanged himself in his cell. The Dutch government has said the denial of asylum had nothing to do with Dolmatov’s suicide. His friends from the opposition movement believe otherwise.

Magnitsky, Navalny, Dolmatov: their names are known in the West. But there are many others who already languish in Russian prison cells because they dared to carry a sign, or write an Internet blog, critical of Vladimir Putin. In Russia, the steady descent into authoritarianism continues. And the Kremlin’s oil and gas giants are footing the bill.