Daniel Silva - The defector

“How is your wife?”

“She’s well, Leah.”

“Is she pretty?”

“She’s very pretty.”

“Are you taking good care of her?”

His eyes filled with tears. “I’m trying my best.”

She looked away. “Look at the snow, Gabriel. Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes, Leah, it’s beautiful.”

“The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. Snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain on Tel Aviv.” She looked at him again. “Make sure Dani is buckled into his seat tightly. The streets are slippery.”

“He’s fine, Leah.”

“Give me a kiss.”

Gabriel pressed his lips against her scarred cheek.

Leah whispered, “One last kiss.”

THERE EXISTS in Tel Aviv and its suburbs a constellation of Office safe flats known as jump sites. They are places where, by doctrine and tradition, operatives spend their final night before departing Israel for missions abroad. Neither Gabriel nor any member of his team bothered to go to their assigned site that night. There wasn’t time. In fact, they worked straight through the night and were so late arriving at Ben-Gurion that El Al officials had to slip them through the usual gauntlet of security procedures. In another break with tradition, the entire team traveled aboard the same aircraft: El Al Flight 315 to London. Only Gabriel had a role to play that evening; he separated from the others at Heathrow and made his way to Cheyne Walk in Chelsea. A few minutes after six, he rounded the corner into Cheyne Gardens and rapped his knuckle twice on the back of an unmarked black van. Graham Seymour opened the door and beckoned him inside. The target was in place. The sword was ready. The night raid was about to begin.

IT WAS said of Viktor Orlov that he divided people into two categories: those willing to be used and those too stupid to realize they were being used. There were some who would have added a third: those willing to let Viktor steal their money. He made no secret of the fact he was a predator and a robber baron. Indeed, he wore these labels proudly, along with his ten-thousand-dollar Italian suits and his trademark striped shirts, specially made by a man in Hong Kong. The dramatic collapse of Communism had presented Orlov with the opportunity to earn a great deal of money in a brief period of time, and he had taken it. Orlov rarely apologized for anything, least of all the manner in which he had become rich. “Had I been born an Englishman, my money might have come to me cleanly,” he told a British interviewer shortly after taking up residence in London. “But I was born a Russian. And I earned a Russian fortune.”

Blessed with a natural facility for numbers, Orlov had been working as a physicist in the Soviet nuclear weapons program when the empire finally collapsed. While most of his colleagues continued to work without pay, Orlov decided to go into business and soon earned a small fortune importing computers, appliances, and other Western goods for the nascent Russian market. But his true riches would come later, after he acquired Russia’s largest steel company and Ruzoil, the Siberian oil giant. Fortune magazine declared Viktor Orlov Russia’s richest man and one of the world’s most influential businessmen. Not bad for a former government physicist who once had to share a communal apartment with two other Soviet families.

In the rough-and-tumble world of Russia’s robber baron capitalism, a fortune like Orlov’s could also be a dangerous thing. Quickly made, it could vanish in the blink of an eye. And it could make the holder and his family targets of envy and, sometimes, violence. Orlov had survived at least three attempts on his life and was rumored to have ordered several men killed in retaliation. But the greatest threat to his fortune would come not from those who wished to kill him but from the Kremlin. The current Russian president believed men like Orlov had stolen the country’s most valuable assets, and it was his intention to steal them back. Shortly after taking control, he summoned Orlov to the Kremlin and demanded two things: his steel company and Ruzoil. “And keep your nose out of politics,” he added. “Otherwise, I’m going to cut it off.” Orlov agreed to relinquish his steel interests but not his oil company. The president was not amused. He immediately ordered his prosecutors to open a fraud-and-bribery investigation, and within a week a warrant was issued for Orlov’s arrest. Orlov wisely fled to London. The target of a Russian extradition request, he still maintained nominal control of his shares in Ruzoil, now valued at twelve billion dollars. But they remained legally icebound, beyond the reach of both Orlov and the man who wanted them back, the Russian president.

Early in Orlov’s exile, the press had hung on his every word. A reliable source of incendiary copy about Kremlin skullduggery, he could fill a room with reporters with an hour’s notice. But the British press had tired of Viktor, just as the British people had grown weary of Russians in general. Few cared what he had to say anymore, and fewer still had the time or patience to sit through one of his lengthy tirades against his archrival, the Russian president. And so it came as no surprise to Gabriel and his team when Orlov readily accepted a request for an interview from one Olga Sukhova, former crusading reporter from Moskovskaya Gazeta, now an exile herself. Due to concerns over her security, she asked to see Orlov in his home and at night. Orlov, a bachelor and relentless womanizer, suggested she come at seven. “And please come alone,” he added before ringing off.

She did indeed come at seven, though she was hardly alone. A maid took her coat and escorted her to the second-floor study, where Orlov greeted her lavishly in Russian. Gabriel and Graham Seymour, headphones over their ears, listened to the simultaneous translation.

“It’s so lovely to see you again after all these years, Olga. Can I get you some tea or something stronger?”

TEA WOULD be fine, thank you.”

Orlov could not conceal his disappointment. No doubt he had been hoping to impress Olga with a bottle or two of the Château Pétrus he drank like tap water. He ordered tea and savories from the maid, then watched with obvious satisfaction as Olga pretended to admire the vast office. It was rumored Orlov had been so impressed by his first visit to Buckingham Palace he had instructed his army of interior decorators to re-create its atmosphere at Cheyne Walk. The room, which was three times the size of Olga’s old Moscow apartment, had reportedly been inspired by the queen’s private study.

As Olga endured a tedious tour, she could not help but reflect upon how different her life was from Viktor’s. Freed from Communism’s yoke, Viktor had gone in search of money while Olga had set out to find truth. She had spent the better part of her career investigating the misdeeds of men like Viktor Orlov and believed such men bore much of the blame for the death of freedom and democracy in her country. Orlov’s greed had helped to create the unique set of circumstances that had allowed the Kremlin to return the country to the authoritarianism of the past. Indeed, were it not for men like Viktor Orlov, the Russian president might still be a low-level functionary in the St. Petersburg city government. Instead, he ruled the world’s largest country with an iron fist and was thought to be one of Europe ’s richest men. Richer, even, than Orlov himself.

The tea arrived. They sat on opposite ends of the long brocade couch, facing a window hung with rich floor-to-ceiling drapery. It might have been possible to see Chelsea Embankment and the Thames had the curtains not been tightly drawn as a precaution against snipers-ironic, since Orlov had spent several million pounds acquiring one of London’s best views. He was wearing a dark blue suit and a shirt with stripes the color of cranberries. One arm was flung along the back of the couch toward Olga, revealing a diamond-and-gold wristwatch of inestimable worth. The other lay along the armrest. He was twirling his spectacles restlessly. Veteran Orlov watchers would have recognized the tic. Orlov was perpetually in motion, even when he was sitting still.