Gabriel stared at the passport photograph and ran a hand absently over his chin. It had been four days since he’d shaved last. He already had a good start on the beard.
“I need to get a message to Chiara. I need to tell her I won’t be coming back to Umbria anytime soon.”
“She already knows,” Shamron said. “If you want, we can bring her here to Jerusalem.”
Gabriel closed the passport and shook his head. “Someone needs to keep an eye on the Poussin. Let her stay in Italy until I get back.”
He looked up and saw Navot gazing dubiously at him through his spindly modern eyeglasses.
“What’s your problem, Uzi?”
“Don’t tell me the great Gabriel Allon is afraid to let his beautiful young wife see him with a gray beard.”
“Thirty pounds,” said Gabriel. “Thirty pounds.”
12 ST. PETERSBURG
Pulkovo 2, St. Petersburg’s aging international airport, had thus far been spared the wrecking ball of progress. The cracked tarmac was dotted with forlorn-looking Soviet-era planes that seemed no longer capable of flight, and the structure itself looked more like a factory complex or prison than a hub of modern air travel. Gabriel entered the terminal under the bleary-eyed gaze of a boy militiaman and was pointed toward passport control by an information hostess who seemed annoyed by his presence. After being formally admitted into Russia with only a slight delay, he made his way to baggage claim, where he waited the statutory hour for his luggage. Lifting the bag from the clattering carousel, he noticed the zipper was halfway open. He extended the handle and made his way to the men’s room, where he was nearly overcome by a cloud of cigarette smoke. Though smoking was strictly forbidden throughout the terminal, Russians apparently did not feel the ban extended to the toilets.
A watcher was standing outside when Gabriel emerged; they walked together to the arrivals hall, where Gabriel was accosted by a large Russian woman wearing a red shirt with UNESCO across her ample breast. She adhered a name tag to his lapel and directed him to a bus waiting outside in the traffic circle. The interior, already crowded with delegates, looked like a miniature version of the General Assembly. Gabriel nodded to a pair of Saudis as he climbed aboard and received only a blank stare in return. He found an unoccupied seat near the rear of the coach, next to a sullen Norwegian who wasted little time before launching into a quiet tirade about Israel ’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. Gabriel listened patiently to the diplomat’s remarks, then offered a few carefully rendered counterpoints. By the time the bus was rolling up the traffic-choked Moskovsky Prospekt toward the heart of the city, the Norwegian declared he now had a better understanding of the Israeli predicament. They exchanged cards and promised to continue the discussion over dinner the next time Natan Golani was in Oslo.
A Cuban zealot on the other side of the aisle attempted to continue the debate but was mercifully interrupted by the Russian woman in the red UNESCO shirt, who was now standing at the front of the bus, microphone in hand, playing the role of tour guide. Without the slightest trace of irony in her amplified voice, she pointed out the landmarks along the wide boulevard: the soaring statue of Lenin, with his hand extended, as though he were forever attempting to hail a cab; the stirring monuments to the Great Patriotic War; the towering temples of Soviet central planning and control. She ignored the dilapidated office buildings, the Brezhnev-era apartment blocks collapsing under their own weight, and the storefront shops now brimming with consumer goods the Soviet state could never provide. These were the relics of the grand folly the Soviets had attempted to foist on the rest of the world. Now, in the minds of the New Russians, the murderous crimes of the Bolsheviks were but a way station on the road to an era of Russian greatness. The gulags, the cruelty, the untold millions who were starved to death or “repressed”-they were only unpleasant details. No one had ever been called to account for his actions. No one was ever punished for his sins.
The prolonged ugliness of the Moskovsky Prospekt finally gave way to the imported European elegance of the city center. First stop was the Astoria Hotel, headquarters of First World delegations. Luggage in hand, Natan Golani filed into the ornate lobby along with his new comrades in culture and joined the lengthy queue at the check-in counter. Though capitalism had taken Russia by storm, the concept of customer service had not. Gabriel stood in line for twenty minutes before finally being processed with Soviet warmth by a flaxen-haired woman who made no attempt to conceal her loathing of him. Refusing an indifferent offer of assistance from a bellman, he carried his own bags to his room. He didn’t bother searching it; he was playing by the Moscow Rules now. Assume every room is bugged and every telephone call monitored. Assume every person you encounter is under opposition control. And don’t look back. You are never completely alone.
And so Natan Golani attached his laptop computer to the complimentary high-speed data port and read his e-mail, knowing full well that the spies of the FSB were reading it, too. And he called his ersatz wife in Tel Aviv and listened dutifully while she complained about her ersatz mother, knowing full well the FSB was enduring the same tedious monologue. And having dispensed with his affairs, both personal and professional, he changed into casual clothing and plunged into the soft Leningrad evening. He dined surprisingly well at an Italian restaurant next door at the Angleterre and later was tailed by two FSB watchers, whom he nicknamed Igor and Natasha, as he strolled the Neva embankment through the endless dusk of the white nights. In Palace Square, he paused to gaze at a wedding party drinking champagne at the foot of the Alexander Column, and for a moment he allowed himselfto think that perhaps it was better to forget the past after all. Then he turned away and started back to the Astoria, with Igor and Natasha trailing silently after him through the midnight sun.
The following morning Natan Golani threw himself into the business of the conference with the determination of a man with much to accomplish in very little time. He was seated at his assigned place in the grand hall of the Marble Palace when the conference commenced and remained there, translation headphones in place, long after many of the other delegates wisely decided that the real business of the gathering was being conducted in the bars of the Western hotels. He did the working lunches and made the rounds of the afternoon cocktail receptions. He did the endless dinners and never once bowed out of the evening entertainment. He spoke French to the French, German to the Germans, Italian to the Italians, and passable Spanish to the many delegations from Latin America. He rubbed shoulders with the Saudis and the Syrians and even managed a polite conversation with an Iranian about the madness of Holocaust denial. He reached an agreement, in principle, for an Israeli chamber orchestra to tour sub-Saharan Africa and arranged for a group of Maori drummers from New Zealand to visit Israel. He could be combative and conciliatory in the span of a few moments. He spoke of new solutions to old problems. He said Israel was determined to build bridges rather than fences. All that was needed, he said to anyone who would listen, was a man of courage on the other side.
He mounted the dais in the grand hall of the Marble Palace at the end of the second day’s session and, as Uzi Navot had forecast, many of the delegates immediately walked out. Those who remained found the speech quite unlike anything they had ever heard from an Israeli representative before. The chief of UNESCO declared it “a clarion call for a new paradigm in the Middle East.” The French delegate referred to Monsieur Golani as “a true man of culture and the arts.” Everyone in attendance agreed that a new wind seemed to be blowing from the Judean Hills.