“They’re trying to steal more than that. They’ve got your children, too. It’s part of some elaborate operation against you. And it’s not just going on there in France. Something’s happening here in Moscow, too.”
Ivan made no response. Arkady Medvedev knew it was a dangerous sign. When Ivan was merely angry, he swore violently. But when he was mad enough to kill, he went dead silent. He finally instructed his chief of security to tell him everything he knew. Medvedev did so in a form of colloquial Russian that was nearly indecipherable to a Western ear.
“Where is she now, Arkady?”
“Still in the apartment.”
“Who put her up to this?”
“She claims she did it on her own.”
“She’s lying. I need to know what I’m up against. And quickly.”
“You need to get out of France.”
“With no plane and no passport?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Throw a party, Arkady. Somewhere outside the city. See if anyone shows up without an invitation.”
“And if they do?”
“Give them a message from me. Let them know that if they fuck with Ivan Kharkov, Ivan Kharkov is going to fuck with them.”
61 SHEREMETYEVO 2 AIRPORT, MOSCOW
They arrived at intervals of five minutes and made their way separately through security and passport control. Uzi Navot came last, hat pulled low over his eyes, raincoat drenched. He walked the length of the terminal twice, searching for watchers, before finally making his way to Gate A23. Lavon and Yaakov were gazing nervously out at the tarmac. Between them was an empty seat. Navot lowered himself into it and rested his attaché case on his knees. He stared hard at Chiara for a moment, like a middle-aged traveler admiring a beautiful younger woman.
“How’s she doing?”
Lavon answered. “How do you think she’s doing?”
“She has no one to blame but her husband.”
“I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time for recriminations later.” Lavon checked the departure board. “How much longer do you think Shamron is going to hold the plane?”
“As long as he thinks he can.”
“By my estimate, she’s been in the hands of Arkady Medvedev for two hours now. How long do you think it took him to tear her bag apart, Uzi? How long did it take him to find Ivan’s disks and Gabriel’s electronic toys?”
Navot typed a brief message on his BlackBerry. Two minutes later, the status window in the departure monitor changed from DELAYED to NOW BOARDING. One hundred eighty-seven weary passengers began to applaud. Three anxious men stared gloomily through the window at the shimmering tarmac.
“Don’t worry, Uzi. You did the right thing.”
“Just don’t ever tell Chiara. She’ll never forgive me.” Navot shook his head slowly. “It’s never a good idea to bring spouses into the field. You’d think Gabriel would have learned that by now.”
There was a time in Moscow, not long ago, when a man sitting alone in a parked car would have come under immediate suspicion. But that was no longer the case. These days, sitting in parked cars, or cars stuck in traffic, was what Muscovites did.
Gabriel was on the northern edge of Bolotnaya Square, next to a billboard plastered with a dour portrait of the Russian president. He did not know whether the spot was legal or illegal. He did not care. He cared only that he could see the entrance of the House on the Embankment. He left the engine running and the radio on. It sounded to Gabriel like a news analysis program of some kind: long cuts of taped remarks by the Russian president interspersed with commentary by a panel of journalists and experts. Their words were surely laudatory, for the Kremlin tolerated no other kind. Forward as one! as the president liked to say. And keep your criticism to yourself.
Twenty minutes into his vigil, a pair of underfed Militia officers rounded the corner, tunics glistening. Gabriel turned up the radio and nodded cordially. For a moment, he feared they might be contemplatinga shakedown. Instead, they frowned at his old Volga, as if to say he wasn’t worth their time on a rainy night. Next came a man with lank, dark hair, and an open bottle of Baltika beer in his hand. He shuffled over to Gabriel’s window and opened his coat, revealing a veritable pharmacy underneath. Gabriel motioned for him to move on, then flicked the wipers and focused his gaze on the building. Specifically, on the lights burning in the ninth-floor apartment overlooking the Kremlin.
They went dark at 7:48 P.M. The woman who emerged from the building soon after had no handbag hanging over her left shoulder. Indeed, she had no handbag at all. She was walking more swiftly than normal; Luka Osipov, bodyguard turned captor, held one arm while a colleague held another. Arkady Medvedev walked a few steps behind, head lowered against the rain, eyes up and on the move.
A Mercedes waited at the curb. The seating arrangements had clearly been determined in advance, for the boarding process was accomplished with admirable speed and efficiency: Elena in the backseat, wedged between bodyguards; Arkady Medvedev in the front passenger seat, a mobile phone now pressed to his ear. The car crept to the end of Serafimovicha Street, then disappeared in a black blur. Gabriel counted to five and slipped the Volga into gear. Forward as one.
62 MOSCOW
They roared southward out of the city on a road that bore Lenin’s name and was lined with monuments to Lenin’s folly. Apartment blocks-endless apartments blocks. The biggest apartment blocks Gabriel had ever seen. It was as if the masters of the Communist Party, in their infinite wisdom, had decided to uproot the entire population of the world’s biggest country and resettle it here, along a few wretched miles of the Leninsky Prospekt. And to think that by the end of September it would be covered beneath a blanket of snow and ice.
At that hour, the Leninsky was two different roads: inbound lanes clogged with Muscovites returning from the weekend at their dachas, outbound lanes filled with giant trucks thundering out of the capital toward the distant corners of the empire. The trucks were both his allies and enemies. One moment, they granted Gabriel a place to hide. The next, they obscured his view. Shmuel Peled had been right about the Volga-it did run decently for a twenty-year-old piece of Soviet-made junk-but it was no match for the finest automobile Bavaria had to offer. The Volga topped out at about eighty-five, and did so with much protest and pulling to the left. Its little wipers were altogether useless against the heavy rain and road spray, and the defroster fan was little more than a warm exhalation of breath against the glass. In order to see, Gabriel had to lower both front windows to create a cross draft. Each passing truck hurled water against the left side of his face.
The rain tapered, and a few rays of weak sunlight peered through a slit in the clouds near the horizon. Gabriel kept his foot pressed to the floor and his eyes fastened to the taillights of the Mercedes. His thoughts, however, were focused on the scene he had just witnessed at the House on the Embankment. How had he managed it? How had Arkady convinced her to walk into the car without a fight? Was it with a threat or a promise? With the truth or a lie, or some combination of both? And why were they now hurtling down the Leninsky Prospekt, into the yawning chasm of the Russian countryside?
Gabriel was pondering that final question when he felt the first impact on his rear bumper: a car, much bigger and faster than his own, headlights doused. He responded by pressing the accelerator to the floor but the Volga had nothing more to give. The car behind gave him one more tap, almost as a warning, then moved in swiftly for the kill.
What followed was the classic maneuver that every good traffic policeman knows. The aggressor initiates contact with the victim, right front bumper to left rear bumper. The aggressor then accelerates hard and the victim is sent spinning out of control. The impact of such a tactic is magnified substantially when there is a sharp imbalance in the weight and power of the two vehicles-for example, when one is an S-Class Mercedes-Benz and the other is a rattletrap old Volga already being pushed to the breaking point. How many times Gabriel’s car actually rotated, he would never know. He only knew that, when it was over, the car was resting on its side in a field of mud at the edge of a pine forest and he was bleeding heavily from the nose.