Sergei the interrogator was standing next to a black van, dressed in a fresh gray suit. He opened the rear doors, and, with a few terse words in Russian, ordered the handlers to put Gabriel inside. His hands were freed briefly, only to be restrained again a few seconds later to a steel loop in the ceiling. Then the doors closed with a deafening thud and the van lurched forward over the cobblestones.
Where now? he thought. Exile or death?
He was alone again. He reckoned it was before midnight because Moscow ’s traffic was still moving at a fever pitch. He heard no sirens to indicate they were under escort, and the driver appeared to be obeying traffic rules, such as they were. At one long stop, he heard the sound of laughter, and he thought of Solzhenitsyn. The vans… That was how the KGB had moved the inhabitants of the Gulag Archipelago-at night, in ordinary-looking vans, invisible to the souls around them, trapped in a parallel world of the damned.
Sheremetyevo 2 Airport lay north of the city center, a journey of about forty-five minutes when the traffic was at its most reasonable. Gabriel had allowed himself to hope it was their destination, but that hope dissolved after an hour in the back of the van. The quality of the roads, deplorable even in Moscow, deteriorated by degrees the farther they moved away from Lubyanka. Each pothole sent shock waves of pain through his bruised body, and he had to cling to the steel loop to avoid being thrown from his bench. It was impossible to guess in which direction they were traveling. He could not tell whether they were heading west, toward civilization and enlightenment, or east, into the cruel heart of the Russian interior. Twice the van stopped and twice Gabriel could hear Russian voices raised in anger. He supposed even an unmarked FSB van had trouble moving through the countryside without being shaken down by banditi and traffic cops looking for bribes.
The third time the van stopped, the doors swung open and a handler entered the compartment. He unlocked the handcuffs and motioned for Gabriel to get out. A car had pulled up behind them; the interrogator was standing in the glow of the parking lamps, stroking his little beard as though deciding on a suitable place to carry out an execution. Then Gabriel noticed his suitcase lying in a puddle of mud, next to the ziplock bag containing his possessions. The interrogator nudged the bag toward Gabriel with the toe of his shoe and pointed toward a smudge of yellow light on the horizon.
“The Ukrainian border. They’re expecting you.”
“Where’s Olga?”
“I suggest you get moving before we change our minds, Mr. Allon. And don’t come back to Russia again. If you do, we will kill you. And we won’t rely on a pair of Chechen idiots to do the job for us.”
Gabriel collected his belongings and started toward the border. He waited for the crack of a pistol and the bullet in his spine, but he heard nothing but the sound of the cars turning around and starting back to Moscow. With their headlights gone, the heavy darkness swallowed him. He kept his eyes focused on the yellow light and walked on. And, for a moment, Olga was walking beside him. Her life is now in your hands, she reminded him. Ivan kills anyone who gets in his way. And if he ever finds out his own wife was my source, he won’t hesitate to kill her, too.
PART TWO. THE RECRUITMENT
20 BEN-GURION AIRPORT, ISRAEL
Wake up, Mr. Golani. You’re almost home.”
Gabriel opened his eyes slowly and gazed out the window of the first-class cabin. The lights of the Coastal Plain lay in a glittering arc along the edge of the Mediterranean, like a strand of jewels painted by the hand of Van Dyck.
He turned his head a few degrees and looked at the man who had awakened him. He was twenty years younger than Gabriel, with eyes the color of granite and a fine-boned, bloodless face. The diplomatic passport in his blazer pocket identified him as Baruch Goldstein of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His real name was Mikhail Abramov. Bodyguard jobs were not exactly Mikhail’s specialty. A former member of the Sayeret Metkal special forces, he had joined the Office after assassinating the top terrorist masterminds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He had one other attribute that had made him the perfect candidate to escort Gabriel out of Eastern Europe and back to Israel. Mikhail had been born in Moscow to a pair of dissident scientists and spoke fluent Russian.
They had been traveling together for the better part of a day. After crossing the border, Gabriel had surrendered himself to a waiting team of Ukrainian SBU officers. The SBU men had taken him to Kiev and handed him over to Mikhail and two other Office security men. From Kiev, they had driven to Warsaw and boarded the El Al flight. Even on the plane, Shamron had taken no chances with Gabriel’s safety. Half of the first-class cabin crew were Office agents, and, before takeoff, the entire aircraft had been carefully searched for radioactive material and other toxins. Gabriel’s food and drink had been kept in a separate sealed container. The meal had been prepared by Shamron’s wife, Gilah. “It’s the Office version of glatt kosher,” Mikhail had said. “Sanctified under Jewish law and guaranteed to be free of Russian poison.”
Gabriel tried to sit up, but his kidney began to throb again. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to subside. Mikhail, a nervous flier by nature, was now drumming on his tray table with his fingertip.
“You’re giving me a headache, Mikhail.”
Mikhail’s finger went still. “Did you manage to get any rest?”
“Not much.”
“You should have watched your step on those KGB stairs.”
“It’s called the FSB now, Mikhail. Haven’t you read the papers lately? The KGB doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Where did you ever get that idea? They were KGB when I was growing up in Moscow and they’re KGB now.” He glanced at his watch. “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes. A reception team will be waiting for you on the tarmac. After you finish delivering your report, you can sleep for a month.”
“Unless my report makes that impossible.”
“Bad?”
“Something tells me you’ll know soon enough, Mikhail.”
An electronic ping sounded over the cabin’s audio system. Mikhail looked up at the flashing SEAT BELT sign and tapped Gabriel on the forearm.“You’d better buckle up. You wouldn’t want the flight attendant to get angry with you.”
Gabriel followed Mikhail’s gaze and saw Chiara making her way slowly down the aisle. Dressed in a flattering blue El Al uniform, she was sternly reminding passengers to straighten their seat backs and stow their tray tables. Mikhail swallowed the last of his beer and absently handed her the empty bottle.
“The service on this flight was dreadful, don’t you think?”
“Even by El Al standards,” Gabriel agreed.
“I think we should institute a training program immediately.”
“Now, that’s the kind of thinking that’s going to get you a job in the executive suite of King Saul Boulevard.”
“Maybe I should volunteer to teach it.”
“And work with our girls? You’d be safer going back to Gaza and chasing Hamas terrorists.”
Gabriel leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
“You sure you’re all right, Gabriel?”
“Just a touch of Lubyanka hangover.”
“Who could blame you?” Mikhail was silent for a moment. “The KGB kept my father there for six months when I was a kid. Did I ever tell you that?”
He hadn’t, but Gabriel had read Mikhail’s personnel file.
“After six months in Lubyanka, they declared my father mentally ill and sent him away to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. It was all a sham, of course. No one ever got better in a Soviet psychiatric hospital-the hospitals were just another arm of the gulag. My father was lucky, though. Eventually, he got out, and we were able to come to Israel. But he was never the same after being locked away in that asylum.”