“Meet the man who painted your Cassatt, Elena. I am about to commit the grave professional sin of telling you his real name, which is Gabriel Allon. He wants you to know it, because he admires you deeply and does not wish to lie to you. You are in the presence of royalty, Elena-at least as far as the inhabitants of our world are concerned. I’ll leave you to your business.”
Mikhail withdrew. Gabriel looked at Elena in silence for a moment, then, with a glance, invited her to sit. He retook his seat on the opposite side of the table and folded his hands before him. They were dark and smooth, with slender, articulate fingers. The hands of a musician, thought Elena. The hands of an artist.
“I would like to begin by thanking you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For having the courage to come forward.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We’re here because of you, Elena. We’re here because you summoned us.”
“But I didn’t summon you. I didn’t summon anyone.”
“Of course you did. You summoned us with Olga Sukhova. And with Aleksandr Lubin. And with Boris Ostrovsky. Whether you realized it or not, Elena, you sent them to us. But you only gave them a part of the story. Now you have to tell us the rest.”
There was something in his accent she could not quite place. He was a polyglot, she decided. A man without roots. A man who had lived many places. A man with many names.
“Who do you work for?”
“I am employed by a small agency answerable only to the prime minister of the State of Israel. But there are other countries involved as well. Your husband’s actions have caused an international crisis. And the response to this crisis has been international as well.”
“Is Sarah an Israeli, too?”
“Only in spirit. Sarah is an American. She works for the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“And Mikhail?”
“As you can probably tell by Mikhail’s perfect Russian, he was born in Moscow. He left when he was a young boy and moved to Israel. He left Russia because of men like your husband. And now your husband is planning to sell very dangerous weapons to people who are sworn to destroy us.’
“How much do you know?”
“Very little, unfortunately. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have upended your life by bringing you here today. We only know that your husband has entered into a deal with the Devil. He’s killed two people to keep that deal a secret. And others will surely die as well, unless you help us.” He reached out and took her by the hand. “Will you help us, Elena?”
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to finish what you started when you arranged to meet with your old friend Olga Sukhova. I want you to tell me the rest of the story.”
Five miles due east of Saint-Tropez, the rocky headland known as the Pointe de l’Ay juts defiantly into the Mediterranean Sea. At the base of the point lies a small beach of fine sand, often overlooked because it is absent any boutiques, clubs, or restaurants. The girl with shoulder-length dark hair and scars on her leg had taken great care in choosing her spot, selecting an isolated patch of sand near the rocks with an unobstructed view out to sea. There, shielded from the sun by a parasol, she had passed a pleasant if solitary afternoon, now sipping from a plastic bottle of mineral water, now delving into the pages of a worn paperback novel, now peering out to sea through a pair of miniature Zeiss binoculars toward the enormous private motor yacht called October adrift on the calm waters some three miles offshore.
At 3:15, she noticed something in the ship’s movements that made her sit up a bit straighter. She watched it another moment to make certain her initial impression was correct, then lowered the glasses and removed a BlackBerry PDA from her canvas beach bag. The message was brief; the transmission, lightning fast. Two minutes later, after complying with a request for confirmation, she placed the device back into her beach bag and peered out to sea again. The yacht had completed its turn and was now making for Saint-Tropez like a frigate steaming toward battle. Party’s over a bit early, the girl thought as she traded the glasses for her paperback novel. And on such a lovely day.
44 THE MASSIF DES MAURES, FRANCE
Elena began by setting the scene, as much for her own benefit as for his. It was autumn, she said. November. Mid-November, she added for the sake of clarity. She and Ivan were staying at their country dacha north of Moscow, a palace of pine and glass built atop the remains of a smaller dacha that had been given to Ivan’s father by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. It was snowing heavily. A good Russian snow, like falling ash from a volcanic eruption.
“Ivan received a phone call late in the evening. After hanging up, he told me some business associates would be coming to the house in a few hours for an important meeting. He didn’t identify these business associates and I knew far better than to ask. For the rest of the evening, he was on edge. Anxious. Pacing. Cursing the Russian weather. I knew the signs. I’d seen my husband in moods like this before. Ivan always gets very excited before a big dance.”
“Dance?”
“Forgive me, Mr. Allon. Dance is one of the code words he and his men use when discussing arms transactions. ‘We have to make final arrangements for the dance.’ ‘We have to book a hall for the dance.’ ‘We have to hire a band for the dance.’ ‘How many chairs will we need for the dance?’ ‘How many bottles of vodka?’ ‘How much caviar?’ ‘How many loaves of black bread?’ I’m not sure who they think they’re deceiving with this nonsense but it certainly isn’t me.”
“And did Ivan’s visitors actually come that evening?”
“Technically, it was the next morning. Two-thirty in the morning, to be exact.”
“You saw them?”
“Yes, I saw them.”
“Describe the scene for me. Carefully, Elena. The smallest details can be important.”
“There were eight of them in all, plus a team of Ivan’s bodyguards. Arkady Medvedev was there as well. Arkady is the chief of my husband’s personal security service. The bodyguards have a joke about Arkady. They say Arkady is Ivan on his worst day.”
“Where was the delegation from?”
“They were from Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa.” She managed a smile. “Sarah’s area of expertise.”
“Which country?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Did you meet them?”
“I’m never allowed to meet them.”
“Had you ever seen any of them before?”
“No, just different versions of them. They’re all the same, really. They speak different languages. They fly different flags. They fight for different causes. But in the end they’re all the same.”
“Where were you while they were in the dacha?”
“Upstairs in our bedroom.”
“Were you ever able to hear their voices?”
“Sometimes. Their leader was a giant of a man. He was a baritone. His voice made the walls vibrate. He had a laugh like thunder.”
“You’re a linguist, Elena. If they spoke another European language, what would it be?”
“French. Most definitely French. It had that lilt, you know?”
They drank first, she said. There was always drinking involved when Ivan was planning a dance. By the time the hard bargaining began, the guests were well lubricated, and Ivan made no effort to control the volume of their voices, especially the voice of their baritone leader. Elena began to hear words and terms she recognized: AKs. RPGs. Mortars. Specific types of ammunition. Helicopter gunships. Tanks.
“Before long they were arguing about money. The prices of specific weapons and systems. Commissions. Bribes. Shipping and handling. I knew enough about my husband’s business dealings to realize they were discussing a major arms deal-most likely with an African nation that was under international embargo. You see, Mr. Allon, these are the men who come to my husband, men who cannot purchase arms legally on the open market. That’s why Ivan is so successful. He fills a very specific need. And that’s why the poorest nations on earth pay vastly inflated prices for the weaponry they use to slaughter each other.”