Daniel Silva - The defector

Carter didn’t have the nerve to finish the thought. Gabriel did it for him.

“This entire conversation is academic.”

“I’m afraid that’s correct.”

Gabriel stared at the satellite photo of the dacha in the trees. Then at the time zone clocks arrayed along the wall. Then he closed his eyes. And he saw it all.

IT APPEARED to him as a cycle of vast paintings, oil on canvas, rendered by the hand of Tintoretto. The paintings lined the nave of a small church in Venice and were darkened by yellowed varnish. Gabriel, in his thoughts, drifted slowly past them now with Chiara at his side, her breast pressing against his elbow, her long hair brushing the side of his neck. Even with Carter’s help, getting her and Grigori out of the dacha alive would be an operational and logistical nightmare. Ivan would be playing on his home turf. All the advantages would be his. Unless Gabriel could somehow turn the tables. By way of deception…

Gabriel had to get Ivan to let down his guard. He had to keep Ivan occupied at the time of the raid. And, more pressing, he had to convince Ivan not to kill Chiara and Grigori for another four days. In order to do that, he needed one more thing from Adrian Carter. Not one, actually, but two.

He blinked away the vision of Venice and gazed once again at the photograph of the dacha in the trees. Yes, he thought again, he needed two more things from Adrian Carter, but they were not Carter’s to give. Only a mother could surrender them. And so, with Carter’s blessing, he entered an unoccupied office in the far corner of the annex and quietly closed the door. He dialed the isolated compound in the Adirondack Mountains. And he asked Elena Kharkov if he could borrow the only two things in the world she had left.

IN THE AFTERMATH, during the inevitable postmortem and deconstruction that follows an affair of this magnitude, there was spirited debate over who among its far-flung cast of characters bore the most responsibility for its outcome. One participant was not asked for an opinion and would surely not have ventured one if he had been. He was a man of few words, a man who stood a lonely post. His name was Rami, and his job was to keep watch over a national treasure, the Memuneh. Rami had been at the Old Man’s side for the better part of twenty years. He was Shamron’s other son, the one who stayed at home while Gabriel and Navot were running around the world playing the hero. He was the one who snuck the Old Man cigarettes and kept his Zippo filled with lighter fluid. The one who sat up nights on the terrace in Tiberias, listening to the Old Man’s stories for the thousandth time and pretending it was still the first. And he was the one who was walking exactly twenty paces behind the Old Man’s back, at four the following afternoon, as he entered the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris.

Shamron found Sergei Korovin where he said he would be, seated ramrod straight on a wooden bench near the Jeu de Paume. He was wearing a heavy woolen scarf beneath his overcoat and smoking the stub of a cigarette that left no doubt about his nationality. As Shamron sat down, Korovin raised his left arm slowly and pondered his wristwatch.

“You’re two minutes late, Ari. That’s not like you.”

“The walk took me longer than expected.”

“Bullshit.” Korovin lowered his arm. “You should know that patience isn’t one of Ivan’s strong suits. That’s why he was never selected to work in the First Chief Directorate. He was deemed too impetuous for pure espionage. We had to assign him to the Fifth, where his temper could be put to good use.”

“Breaking heads, you mean?”

Korovin gave a noncommittal shrug. “Someone had to do it.”

“He must have been a great disappointment to his father.”

“Ivan? He was an only child. He was… indulged.”

“It shows.”

Shamron removed a silver case from the pocket of his overcoat and took his time lighting a cigarette. Korovin, annoyed, gave his wristwatch another distracted glance.

“Perhaps I should have made something clear to you, Ari. This deadline was more than hypothetical. Ivan is expecting to hear from me. If he doesn’t, chances are your agent will turn up somewhere with a bullet in the back of her head.”

“That would be rather foolish, Sergei. You see, if Ivan kills my agent, he’ll lose his only chance of getting his children back.”

Korovin’s head turned sharply in Shamron’s direction. “What are you saying, Ari? Are you telling me the Americans have agreed to return Ivan’s children to Russia?”

“No, Sergei, not the Americans. It was Elena’s decision. As you might expect, it’s torn her to pieces, but she wants no more blood shed because of her husband.” Shamron paused. “And she also knows her children well enough to realize that they’ll leave Russia the moment they’re old enough and come back to her.”

Age seemed to have taken a toll on Korovin’s ability to dissemble. He exhaled a cloud of smoke into the Parisian dusk and did a very poor job of concealing his surprise at the development.

“What’s wrong, Sergei? You told me Ivan wanted his children.” Shamron watched the Russian carefully. “It makes me think your offer wasn’t a serious one.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ari. I’m just stunned you were actually able to pull it off.”

“I thought you learned a long time ago never to underestimate me.”

The gardens were receding into the gathering darkness. Shamron glanced around, then settled his gaze on Korovin.

“Are we alone, Sergei?”

“We’re alone.”

“Anyone listening?”

“No one.”

“You’re sure?”

“No one would dare. I might be old, but I’m still Korovin.”

“And I’m still Shamron. So listen carefully, because I’m not going to say this twice. On Thursday afternoon at two o’clock Washington time, the Russian ambassador to the United States is to present himself at the main gate of Andrews Air Force Base. He will be met there by base security and a team of officers from the CIA and the State Department. They will take him to a VIP lounge, where he will be allowed to spend a few minutes with Anna and Nikolai Kharkov.” Shamron paused. “Are you with me, Sergei?”

“Two p.m. Thursday, Andrews Air Force Base.”

“When the meeting is over, the children will be placed aboard a C-32, the military’s version of a Boeing 757. It will land in Russia at precisely nine a.m. Friday morning. The Americans want to use the airfield outside Konakovo. Do you know the one I’m talking about, Sergei? It’s the old air base that was converted to civilian use when your air force couldn’t figure out how to fly planes anymore.”

Korovin lit another of his Russian cigarettes and slowly waved out the match. “Nine o’clock. The airfield outside Konakovo.”

“Elena doesn’t want the children walking off the plane into the arms of some stranger. She insists Ivan come to the airport and greet them. If Ivan isn’t there, the children don’t get off that plane. Are we clear on that, Sergei?”

“No Ivan, no children.”

“At 9:05, the aircraft will be parked with its doors opened. If my agent is standing outside the entrance of the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, the children will walk off that plane. If she’s not there, the crew will fire up those engines and take off again. And don’t get any ideas about playing rough with that aircraft. It’s American soil. And at 9 a.m. on Friday morning, the American president will be sitting down with the Russian president and the other Group of Eight leaders for a working breakfast at the Kremlin. We wouldn’t want anything to spoil the mood, would we, Sergei?”