Daniel Silva - The defector

“I know things, too, Allon. I know you were there in Vienna that night. I know you watched the car explode. I know you tried to pull your wife and son out of the flames. Do you remember what your son looked like when you finally pulled him from the fire? From what I hear, it wasn’t good.”

Another futile lunge. Another fall into the snow. Again the guards let him lie there, face burning with cold. And with rage.

Time… Precious time…

They lifted him upright again. This time, Ivan didn’t bother removing the snow.

“But let us return to the topic of betrayal, Allon. How were you able to discover where I was keeping Grigori and your wife?”

“Anton Petrov told me.”

Ivan’s face reddened. “And how did you get to Petrov?”

“Vladimir Chernov.”

The eyes narrowed. “And Chernov?”

“You were betrayed again, Ivan-betrayed by someone you thought was a friend.”

The blow landed in Gabriel’s abdomen. Unprepared for it, he doubled over, thus leaving himself exposed to Ivan’s knee. It sent him to the snow again, this time at Chiara’s feet. She gazed down at him, her face a mask of terror and grief. Ivan spat and squatted at Gabriel’s side.

“Don’t pass out on me just yet, Allon, because I have one more question. Would you like to watch your wife die? Or would you prefer to die in front of your wife?”

“Let her go, Ivan.”

“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, wife for wife.”

He looked at his bodyguards.

“Put this garbage on his feet.”

NAVOT WAS the first to spot the helicopter. It was coming from the direction of Moscow, flying dangerously fast a couple hundred feet above the ground. Ninety seconds later, two more just like it flashed overhead.

“Go back, Oded.”

“What about our orders?”

“To hell with our orders. Go back!”

TIME…

Time was slipping away from them. It stole silently through the forest, birch tree to birch tree. Time was now their enemy. Gabriel knew he had to seize hold of it. And for that he needed Ivan’s help. Keep him talking , he thought. Bad things happen when Ivan stops talking.

For now, Ivan was wordlessly leading the procession of death along a snowy forest path, one massive hand wrapped around Chiara’s arm. Flanked by bodyguards, Gabriel, Mikhail, and Grigori followed.

Keep him talking…

“What caused the depressions in the forest, Ivan?”

“Why are you so damn interested in those depressions?”

“They remind me of something.”

“I’m not surprised. How did you find them?”

“Satellites. They show up nicely from space. Very straight. Very even.”

“They’re old, but the men who dug them did a good job. They used a bulldozer. It’s still here if you’d like to have a look. It stopped working years ago.”

“So how do you open up the earth now, Ivan?”

“Same method, new machine. It’s American. Say what you want about the Americans, they still make a damn good bulldozer.”

“What’s in the pits, Ivan?”

“You’re a smart boy, Allon. You seem to know a bit about our history. You tell me.”

“I assume they’re mass graves from the Great Terror.”

“Great Terror? This is a Western slur invented by Koba’s enemies.”

Koba was Stalin’s Party name. Koba was Ivan’s hero.

“What would you call the systematic torture and murder of three-quarters of a million people, Ivan?”

Ivan appeared to give the matter serious consideration. “I believe I would call it a long overdue pruning of the forest. The Party had been in power for nearly twenty years. There was a great deal of deadwood that needed to be cleared away. And you know what happens when wood is chopped, Allon.”

“Splinters must fall.”

“That’s right. Splinters must fall.”

Ivan translated a portion of the exchange for his Russian-speaking bodyguards. They laughed. Ivan laughed, too.

Keep him talking…

“How did this place work, Ivan?”

“You’ll find out in a minute or two.”

“When was it in operation? ’Thirty-six? ’Thirty-seven?”

Ivan stopped walking. So did everyone else.

“It was ’thirty-seven-the summer of ’thirty-seven, to be precise. It was the time of the troikas. Do you know about the troikas, Allon?”

Gabriel did. He paid the information out slowly, deliberately. “Stalin was getting annoyed at the slow pace of the killings. He wanted to speed things up, so he created a new way of putting the accused on trial: the troikas. One Party member, one NKVD officer, and a public prosecutor. It wasn’t necessary for the accused to be present during his trial. Most were sentenced without ever knowing they were even under investigation. Most trials lasted ten minutes. Some less.”

“And appeals were not permitted,” Ivan added with a smile. “They won’t be permitted now, either.”

He nodded to the pair of bodyguards who were holding Grigori upright. The procession began moving again.

Keep him talking. Bad things happen when Ivan stops talking.

“I suppose the killing took place inside the dacha. That’s why it has a cellar with a special room in it-a room with a drain in the center of the floor. And that’s why the track is winding instead of straight. Stalin’s henchmen wouldn’t have wanted the neighbors to know what was going on here.”

“And they never did. The condemned were always picked up after midnight and brought here in black cars. They were taken straight into the dacha and given a good beating to make them easy to handle. Then it was down to the cellar. Seven grams of lead in the nape of the neck.”

“And then?”

“They were thrown into carts and brought out here to the graves.”

“Who’s buried out here, Ivan?”

“By the summer of ’thirty-seven, most of the heavy cutting had already been done. Koba just had to clear away the brush.”

“The brush?”

“Mensheviks. Anarchists. Old Bolsheviks who’d been associated with Lenin. A few priests, kulaks, and aristocrats for good measure. Anyone Koba thought could possibly pose a threat was liquidated. Then their families were liquidated, too. There’s a real revolutionary stew buried beneath these woods, Allon. They all sleep together. Some nights, you can almost hear them arguing about politics. And the best part is, no one even knows they’re here.”

“Because you bought the land after the fall of the Soviet Union to make sure the dead stayed buried?”

Ivan stopped walking. “Actually, I was asked to buy the land.”

“By whom?”

“My father, of course.”

Ivan had answered without hesitation. Annoyed by Gabriel’s inquiries at first, he now actually seemed to be enjoying the exchange. Gabriel reckoned it must be easy to unburden one’s secrets to a man who would soon be dead. He tried to frame another question that would keep Ivan talking, but it wasn’t necessary. Ivan resumed his lecture without further prompting.

“When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was a dangerous time for the KGB. There was talk about throwing open the archives. Airing dirty laundry. Naming names. The old guard was horrified. They didn’t want the KGB dragged through the mud of history. But they had other motivations for keeping the secrets, too. You see, Allon, they weren’t planning to stay out of power for long. Even then, they were plotting their comeback. They succeeded, of course. The KGB, by another name, is once again running Russia.”

“And you preside over the last mass grave of the Great Terror.”

“The last? Hardly. You can’t put a shovel in the soil of Russia without hitting bone. But this one is quite large. Apparently, there are seventy thousand souls buried beneath these trees. Seventy thousand. If it ever became public…” His voice trailed off, as if he were momentarily at a loss for words. “Let us say it might cause considerable embarrassment inside the Kremlin.”