Daniel Silva - The defector

Two days later, Viktor Orlov was quietly awarded his first British passport during a small reception at 10 Downing Street. He was also granted a private tour of Buckingham Palace, led by the queen herself. He took many photographs of Her Majesty’s private apartments and gave them to his decorator. Delivery trucks were soon spotted in Cheyne Walk, and passersby were sometimes able to catch a glimpse of Viktor working in his study. Apparently, he had finally decided it was safe to throw open his curtains and enjoy his magnificent view of the Thames.

The second story also originated in Moscow, but, unlike the first, it seemed to leave the Russian president at a loss for words. It concerned a discovery in a birch forest in Vladimirskaya Oblast: several mass graves filled with victims of Stalin’s Great Terror. Preliminary estimates placed the number of bodies at some seventy thousand souls. The Russian president dismissed the find as “of little significance” and resisted calls for him to pay a visit. Such a gesture would have been politically tricky, since Stalin, dead for more than a half century, was still among the most popular figures in the country. He reluctantly agreed to order a review of KGB and NKVD archives and granted the Russian Orthodox Church permission to construct a small memorial at the site-subject to Kremlin approval, of course. “But let’s leave the breast-beating to the Germans,” he said during his one and only comment. “After all, we must remember that Koba carried out these repressions to help prepare the country for the coming war against the fascists.” All those present were chilled by the detached manner in which the president spoke of mass murder. Also, by the fact he referred to Stalin by his old Party nom de guerre, Koba. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the killing ground were never revealed, nor was the owner of the property ever identified. “It is for his own protection,” insisted a Kremlin spokesman. “History can be a dangerous thing.”

The third story broke not in Moscow but in the Russian city sometimes referred to as London. This, too, was a story of death-not the death of thousands but of one. It seemed the body of Grigori Bulganov, the FSB defector and very public dissident, had been discovered on a deserted Thames dock, the victim of an apparent suicide. Scotland Yard and the Home Office took shelter behind claims of national security and released scant details about the case. However, they did acknowledge that Grigori was a somewhat troubled soul who had not adjusted well to a life in exile. As evidence, they pointed out that he had been trying to rekindle his relationship with his former wife-though they neglected to mention that same former wife was by then living in the United Kingdom under a new name and government protection. Also revealed was the somewhat curious fact that Grigori had failed to appear recently for the finals of the Central London Chess Club championship, a match he was expected to win easily. Simon Finch, Grigori’s opponent, surfaced briefly in the press to defend his decision to accept the title by forfeit. He then used the exposure to publicize his latest cause, which was the abolition of land mines. Buckley & Hobbes, Grigori’s publisher, announced that Olga Sukhova, Grigori’s friend and fellow dissident, had graciously agreed to complete Killer in the Kremlin . She appeared briefly at Grigori’s burial in Highgate Cemetery before being escorted away by several armed security men and whisked back into hiding.

Many in the British press, including reporters who had dealt with Grigori, dismissed the government’s claim of suicide as hog-wash. Without any other facts, however, they were left only to speculate, which they did without hesitation. Clearly, they said, Grigori had enemies in Moscow who wished him dead. And clearly, they insisted, one of those enemies must have killed him. The Financial Times pointed out that Grigori was quite close to Viktor Orlov and suggested the defector’s death might somehow be tied to the Ruzoil affair. For his part, Viktor referred to his dead countryman as a “true Russian patriot” and established a freedom fund in his name.

And there the story died, at least as far as the mainstream press was concerned. But on the Internet and in some of the more sensational scandal sheets, it would continue to generate copy for weeks. The wonderful thing about conspiracies is that a clever reporter can usually find a way to link any two events no matter how disparate. But none of the reporters who investigated Grigori’s mysterious death ever attempted to link it to the newly discovered mass graves in Vladimirskaya Oblast. Nor did they posit a connection between the Russian defector and the heart-broken couple who by then had taken refuge in a quiet little apartment on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem. The names Gabriel Allon and Chiara Zolli were not a factor in the story. And they never would be.

THEY HAD recovered from operational trauma before, but never at the same time and never from wounds so deep. Their physical injuries healed quickly. The others refused to mend. They huddled behind locked doors, watched over by men with guns. Unable to tolerate more than a few seconds of separation, they followed each other from room to room. Their lovemaking was ravenous, as if each encounter might be the last, and rare was the moment they were not touching. Their sleep was torn by nightmares. They dreamed of watching each other die. They dreamed of the cell beneath the dacha in the woods. They dreamed of the thousands who were murdered there and the thousands who lay beneath the birch trees in graves with no markers. And, of course, they dreamed of Ivan. Indeed, it was Ivan whom Gabriel saw most. Ivan roamed Gabriel’s subconscious at all hours, dressed in his fine English clothing, carrying his Makarov pistol. Sometimes he was accompanied by Yekaterina and his bodyguards. Usually he was alone. Always he was pointing his gun in Gabriel’s face.

Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon…

Chiara was not eager to speak of her ordeal, and Gabriel did not press her. As the child of a woman who had survived the horrors of the Birkenau death camp, he knew Chiara was suffering an acute form of guilt- survivor’s guilt, which is its own special kind of hell. Chiara had lived and Grigori had died. And he had died because he had stepped in front of a bullet meant for her. This was the image Chiara saw most in her dreams: Grigori, battered and barely able to move, summoning the strength to place himself in front of Ivan’s gun. Chiara had been baptized in Grigori’s blood. And she was alive because of Grigori’s sacrifice.

The rest of it came out in bits and pieces and sometimes at the oddest moments. Over dinner one evening, she described in detail for Gabriel the moment of her capture and the deaths of Lior and Motti. Two days later, while doing the dishes, she recounted what it was like to spend all those hours in the dark. And how once each day, just for a few moments, the sun would set fire to the snowbank outside the tiny window. And finally, while folding laundry one afternoon, she tearfully confessed that she had lied to Gabriel about the pregnancy. She was eight weeks gone at the time of the abduction and lost the child in Ivan’s cell. “It was the drugs,” she explained. “They killed my child. They killed your child.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth? I would never have gone after Grigori.”

“I was afraid you would be mad at me.”

“For what?”

“For getting pregnant.”

Gabriel collapsed into Chiara’s lap, tears flowing down his face. They were tears of guilt but also tears of rage. Though Ivan did not know it, he had managed to kill Gabriel’s child. His unborn child but his child nonetheless.