“He’s not a mobster or a rapist, is he, Pavel?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“Send him up, then.”

“He’s on his way.”

“Wait, Pavel.”

“What’s wrong?”

She looked down at her shabby old housecoat.

“Ask him to wait five minutes. Then send him up.”

She hung up the phone. Flowers and chocolates… He might look like a pile of discarded laundry, but apparently he was still a gentleman.

She went into the kitchen and looked for something suitable to serve. There were no pastries or cakes in the pantry, only a tin of English tea biscuits, a souvenir from her last dreadful trip to London to see Elena. She arranged a dozen biscuits neatly on a plate and laid the plate on the sitting-room table. In the bedroom, she quickly exchanged her housecoat for a summery frock. Standing before the mirror, she coaxed her brittle gray hair into appropriate condition and stared sadly at her face. There was nothing to be done about that. Too many years, she thought. Too much heartache.

She was leaving her room when she heard the ping of the bell. Opening the door, she was greeted by the sight of an odd-looking little man in his early sixties, with a head of wispy hair and the small, quick eyes of a terrier. His clothing, as advertised, was rumpled, but appeared to have been chosen with considerable care. There was something old-fashioned about him. Something bygone. He looked as though he could have stepped from an old black-and-white movie, she thought, or from a St. Petersburg coffeehouse during the days of revolution. His manners were as dated as his appearance. His Russian, though fluent, sounded as if it had not been used in many years. He certainly wasn’t a Muscovite; in fact, she doubted whether he was a Russian at all. If someone were to put her on the spot, she would have said he was a Jew. Not that she had anything against the Jews. It was possible she was a little Jewish herself.

“I do hope I’m not catching you at an inconvenient time,” he said.

“I was just watching television. The president was making an important speech.”

“Oh, really? What was he talking about?”

“I’m not sure. They’re all the same.”

The visitor handed her the flowers and the chocolates. “I took the liberty. I know how you adore truffles.”

“How did you know that?”

“Elena told me, of course. Elena has told me a great deal about you.”

“How do you know my daughter?”

“I’m a friend, Mrs. Federov. A trusted friend.”

“She sent you here?”

“That’s correct.”

“For what reason?”

“To discuss something important with you.” He lowered his voice. “Something concerning the well-being of Elena and the children.”

“Are they in some sort of danger?”

“It would really be better if we spoke in private, Mrs. Federov. The matter is of the utmost sensitivity.”

She regarded him suspiciously for a long moment before finally stepping to one side. He moved past her without a sound, his footsteps silent on the tiled hall. Like he was floating, she thought with a shiver as she chained the door. Like a ghost.

51 GENEVA

It is said that travelers who approach Geneva by train from Zurich are frequently so overcome by its beauty that they hurl their return tickets out the window and vow never to leave again. Arriving by car from Paris, and in the middle of a lifeless August night, Gabriel felt no such compulsion. He had always found Geneva to be a charming yet intensely boring city. Once a place of Calvinistic fervor, finance was the city’s only religion now, and the bankers and moneymen were its new priests and archbishops.

His hotel, the Métropole, was near the lake, just across the street from the Jardin Anglais. The night manager, a diminutive man of immaculate dress and expressionless features, handed over an electronic key and informed him that his wife had already checked in and was upstairs awaiting his arrival. He found her seated in a wingback chair in the window, with her long legs propped on the sill and her gaze focused on the Jet d’Eau, the towering water fountain in the center of the lake. Her El Al uniform, crisp and starched, hung from the rod in the closet. Candlelight reflected softly in the silver-domed warmers of a room service table set for two. Gabriel lifted a bottle of frigid Chasselas from the ice bucket and poured himself a glass.

“I expected you an hour ago.”

“The traffic leaving Paris was miserable. What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken Kiev,” she said without a trace of irony in her voice. Her eyes were still trained on the fountain, which was now red from the colored spotlights. “The butter’s probably congealed by now.”

Gabriel placed his hand atop one of the warmers. “It’s fine. Can I pour you some wine?”

“I shouldn’t. I have a four o’clock call. I’m working the morning flight from Geneva to Ben-Gurion, then the afternoon flight from Ben-Gurion to Moscow.” She looked at him for the first time. “You know, I think it’s possible El Al flight attendants might actually get less sleep than Office agents.”

“No one gets less sleep than an Office agent.” He poured her a glass of the wine. “Have a little. They say it’s good for the heart.”

She accepted the glass and raised it in Gabriel’s direction. “Happy anniversary, darling. We were married five months ago today.” She took a drink of the wine. “So much for our honeymoon in Italy.”

“Five months isn’t really an anniversary, Chiara.”

“Of course it is, you dolt.”

She looked out at the fountain again.

“Are you angry with me because I’m late for dinner, Chiara, or is something else bothering you?”

“I’m angry with you because I don’t feel like going to Moscow tomorrow.”

“Then don’t go.”

She shot an annoyed look at him, then turned her gaze toward the lake again.

“Ari gave you numerous opportunities to extricate yourself from this affair, but you chose to press on. Usually, it’s the other way around. Usually, Shamron’s the one doing the pushing and you’re the one digging in your heels. Why now, Gabriel? After everything you’ve been through, after all the fighting and the killing, why would you prefer to do a job like this rather than hide out in a secluded villa in Umbria with me?”

“It’s not fair to put it in those terms, Chiara.”

“Of course it is. You told me it was going to be a simple job. You were going to meet with a Russian journalist in Rome, listen to what he had to say, and that was going to be the end of it.”

“It would have been the end of it, if he hadn’t been murdered.”

“So you’re doing this for Boris Ostrovsky? You’re risking your life, and Elena’s, because you feel guilty over his death?”

“I’m doing this because we need to find those missiles.”

“You’re doing this, Gabriel, because you want to destroy Ivan.”

“Of course I want to destroy Ivan.”

“Well, at least you’re being honest. Just make sure you don’t destroy yourself in the process. If you take his wife and children, he’s going to pursue them to the ends of the earth. And us, too. If we’re very lucky, this operation might be over in forty-eight hours. But your war with Ivan will just be getting started.”

“We should eat, Chiara. After all, it’s our anniversary.”

She looked at her wristwatch. “It’s too late to eat. That butter will go straight to my hips.”

“I was planning a similar maneuver myself.”

“Promises, promises.” She drank some more of the wine. “Did you enjoy working with Sarah again?”

“You’re not going to start that again, are you?”

“Let the record show, your honor, that the witness refused to answer the question.”

“Yes, Chiara, I did enjoy working with Sarah again. She performed her job admirably and with great professionalism.”

“And does she still adore you?”