Daniel Silva - The Rembrandt Affair

"Did Martin like it?"

"At the time, I didn't have a clue."

"No phone calls?"

"Radio silence." She paused. "I confess I was disappointed when I didn't hear from him. I was curious to know what he thought of the article. Finally, two weeks after publication, he called again."

"What did he want?"

"He said he wanted to celebrate the fact that he was the first businessman to survive the slashing pen of Zoe Reed. He invited me to dinner. He even suggested I bring a date."

"You accepted?"

"Instantly. But I didn't bring a date. Martin and I had dinner here in London at L'Autre Pied. Afterward, I let him take me back to his hotel. And then..." Her voice trailed off. "Then I let him take me to bed."

"No qualms about journalistic ethics? No guilt about sleeping with a married man?"

"Of course I had qualms. In fact, I swore to myself it would never happen again."

"But it did."

"The very next afternoon."

"You began seeing him regularly after that?"

She nodded.

"Where?"

"Anywhere but London. My face is far too recognizable here. We always met somewhere on the Continent, usually in Paris, sometimes in Geneva, and occasionally at his chalet in Gstaad."

"How do you communicate?"

"The normal way, Mr. Allon. Martin's communications are very secure."

"For good reason," Gabriel said. "Any plans to see him in the future?"

"After what you've just told me?" Zoe laughed. "Actually, I'm supposed to see him in Paris four days from now. A week after that, I'm scheduled to go to Geneva. That's actually a work trip—Martin's annual Christmas gala at Villa Elma. Each year three hundred very rich, very lucky people are allowed to spend a few hours inside Martin's inner sanctum. The price of admission is a hundred-thousand-euro contribution to his One World foundation. Even then, he has to turn away hundreds of people each year. I go for free, of course. Martin enjoys bringing me to Villa Elma." She paused, then added, "I'm not sure Monique feels the same way."

"She knows about you?"

"I've always thought she must suspect something. Martin and Monique pretend to have the perfect relationship, but in reality their marriage is a sham. They reside under the same roof but for the most part lead completely separate lives."

"Has he ever discussed the possibility of leaving her for you?"

"Surely you're not as old-fashioned as that, Mr. Allon." She frowned. "Being around Martin Landesmann is very exciting. Martin makes me happy. And when it's over..."

"He'll go back to his life, and you'll go back to yours?"

"Isn't that the way it always works?"

"I suppose," said Gabriel. "But it might not be so easy for you."

"Why would you say that?"

"Because you're in love with him."

Zoe's cheeks turned vermilion. "Is it that obvious?" she asked quietly.

"I'm afraid so."

"And you still want to use me?"

"Use you? No, Zoe, I have no intention of using you. But I would be honored if you would agree to join our endeavor as a full partner. I promise it will be the experience of a lifetime. And you'll see things no other British reporter has seen before."

"Perhaps now might be a good time to tell me exactly what it is you want me to do, Mr. Allon."

"I need you to see Martin Landesmann at his apartment in Paris one more time. And I need you to do me a favor while you're there."

IT WAS a few minutes after midnight when the Jaguar limousine bearing Zoe Reed and Graham Seymour eased away from the curb outside the Highgate safe house. Gabriel departed five minutes later, accompanied by Nigel Whitcombe. They headed south through the quiet streets of London, Whitcombe chattering with edgy excitement, Gabriel emitting little more than the occasional murmur of agreement. He climbed out of the car at Marble Arch and made his way on foot to an Office safe flat overlooking Hyde Park on Bayswater Road. Ari Shamron was waiting anxiously at the dining-room table, wreathed in a fog of cigarette smoke.

"Well?" he asked.

"We have our agent in place."

"How long do we have to get her ready?"

"Three days."

Shamron smiled. "Then I suggest you get busy."

It was an alarmingly short period of time, even for an intelligence service used to working under the pressure of a ticking clock. They would have just three days to turn a British investigative reporter into a professional spy. Three days to prepare her. Three days to train her in the basics of tradecraft. And three days to teach her how to perform a pair of critical procedures—one involving Martin Landesmann's secure mobile phone, a Nokia N900, the other involving his Sony VAIO Z Series notebook computer.

Their task was made even more difficult by Gabriel's decision to leave Zoe's work schedule unchanged, a step he took to avoid any disruption in her daily routine. It meant the team would have her for only a few hours each evening, and only after she had already put in an exhausting day at the office. Graham Seymour quietly voiced doubts as to whether she would be ready, as did the Americans, who were now following the affair closely. But Gabriel held firm. Zoe had a date with Martin in Paris in three days. Break that date, and Martin might become suspicious. Send her into Martin's bed too many times with her head filled with secrets, and she might end up like Rafael Bloch.

For his classroom, Gabriel chose the familiar surroundings of the Highgate safe house, though by the time Zoe arrived for her first session it no longer bore any resemblance to a private London club. Its walls were covered with maps, photographs, and diagrams, and its rooms were occupied by a large group of Israelis who seemed more like harried graduate students than accomplished intelligence operatives. They greeted the new arrival as though they had been expecting her for a long time, then crowded around the dining-room table for a quick takeaway curry. The warmth displayed by Gabriel's team was genuine, even if the names they hid behind were not. Zoe gravitated naturally toward the tweedy, Oxbridge-educated Yossi, though she was clearly intrigued by an attractive woman with long dark hair who referred to herself as Rachel.

The enormous operational constraints forced Gabriel to dispense with normal methods of training and design a true crash course in the basics of espionage. It began immediately after dinner when Zoe was placed on a conveyor belt of sorts that whisked her from room to room, briefing to briefing. They trained her in the basics of countersurveillance and impersonal communication. They taught her how to move in public and how to conceal emotion and fear. And they even gave her a few lessons in self-defense. "She's naturally aggressive," Rimona told Gabriel, a bag of frozen peas pressed to her swollen eye. "And she has a wicked left elbow."

She was a gifted pupil, but then they had expected nothing less. By the end of the first night, the team unanimously declared her an amazingly quick study—high praise, given the quality of past recruits. Blessed with the skills of an elite reporter, she was able to store, sort, and retrieve vast amounts of information with remarkable speed. Even Dina, who carried a database of terrorism in her brain, was impressed by Zoe's power of recall. "She's used to working under a deadline," Dina said. "The harder we push, the better she reacts."

Her final stop each night was the small upstairs study. There, alone with Gabriel, she would repeatedly rehearse the procedures that were the central purpose for her recruitment. If successful, Gabriel promised, Martin's world would be an open book. One mistake, he cautioned, and she would sink the entire operation and place herself in grave danger. She was to assume that the wolf was just outside the door waiting to catch her in the ultimate act of betrayal. To defeat him would require speed and near silence. Speed came easily; silence proved far more elusive. It was finally achieved late on the second night, when a recording of the session revealed nothing audible to the human ear.