65 KALUZHSKAYA O BLAST, RUSSIA

She was secured to a straight-backed metal chair at the far end of the vast warehouse. Luka Osipov, her former bodyguard, was standing to one side, the bald giant on the other. Her blouse was torn, her cheeks aflame from repeated slaps. She stared at Gabriel’s damaged eye in horror, then lowered her gaze to the floor. Medvedev took a fistful of her dark hair. It was not the sort of gesture that suggested he intended to let her live.

“Before we begin, you should know that Mrs. Kharkov has been very cooperative this evening. She has given us a full and forthright accounting of her involvement in this sorry affair, beginning with the night she eavesdropped on my telephone conversation with her husband. She has admitted to us that the operation to steal Ivan’s secret papers was all her idea. She said you actually tried to talk her out of it.”

“She’s lying, Arkady. We forced her into it. We told her that her husband was going down and that if she didn’t cooperate with us she was going down, too.”

“That’s very chivalrous of you, Allon, but it’s not going to work.”

Medvedev tightened his grip on Elena’s hair. Elena’s face remained a stoic mask.

“Unfortunately,” Medvedev continued, “Mrs. Kharkov was unable to supply us with one critical piece of information: the location of her children. We were hoping you might tell us that now, so that Mrs. Kharkov might be spared additional unpleasantness. As you might expect, her husband is rather angry with her at the moment. He’s ordered us to do whatever’s necessary to get the answers we need.”

“I told you, Arkady, I don’t know where the children are. That information was kept from me.”

“In case you found yourself in a situation like this?”

Medvedev tossed a mobile phone toward Gabriel. It struck him in the chest and clattered to the floor.

“Call the French. Tell them to deliver the children to Ivan’s villa tonight, along with Ivan’s passport. Then tell them to release Ivan’s airplane. He’d like to return to Russia immediately.”

“Let her go,” Gabriel said. “Do whatever you want to me. But let Elena go.”

“So she can testify against her husband in a Western courtroom? So she can publicly bemoan how Russia is becoming an authoritarian state that once again poses a grave threat to global peace? That would not only be bad for the country but bad for business. You see, Mr. Kharkov’s friends in the Kremlin might find it annoying that he allowed such a situation to occur. And Mr. Kharkov tries very hard never to annoy his friends in the Kremlin.”

“I promise we won’t let her talk. She’ll raise her children and keep her mouth shut. She’s innocent.”

“Ivan doesn’t see it that way. Ivan sees her as a traitor. And you know what we do to traitors.” Medvedev held up his Stechkin for Gabriel to see, then placed the barrel against the back of Elena’s neck. “Seven grams of lead, as Stalin liked to say. That’s what Elena is going to get if you don’t order the French to let Ivan get on his plane tonight- with his children.”

“I’ll make that call when Elena is safely on the ground in the West.”

“She isn’t going anywhere.”

Elena lifted her gaze from the floor and stared directly at Gabriel.

“Don’t tell him a thing, Gabriel. They’re going to kill me regardless of what you do. I would rather those children be raised by anyone other than a monster like my husband.” She raised her eyes toward Medvedev. “You’d better pull the trigger, Arkady, because Ivan is never getting those children.”

Medvedev walked over to Gabriel and slammed the butt of the Stechkin into his right eye. Gabriel toppled sideways to the floor, blinded by excruciating pain. It was compounded when Medvedev buried an Italian loafer into Gabriel’s solar plexus. He was lining up a second kick when a distant voice intervened in Russian. The voice was familiar to Gabriel, he was sure of it, but in his agony he could not recall where he had heard it before. It came to him a moment later, when he was finally able to breathe again. He had heard the voice two months earlier, during his first trip to Moscow. He had heard the voice in Lubyanka.

66 KALUZHSKAYA O BLAST, RUSSIA

The two men had a brief but amicable debate, as if they were quarreling over whose turn it was to pay for lunch. Because it was in Russian, Gabriel could not understand it. Nor could he see their faces. He was still lying on his side, with his abdomen exposed to Arkady Medvedev’s size-eleven loafers.

When the conversation concluded, two pairs of hands lifted him to his feet. It was then he saw the face of the man he knew only as “Sergei. ” He looked much as he had that night in Lubyanka. The same gray suit. The same gray pallor. The same lawyerly eyes behind round spectacles. He was wearing a rather stylish raincoat. His little Lenin beard had recently been groomed.

“I thought I told you not to come back to Russia, Allon.”

“If you had been doing your job, I wouldn’t have had to.”

“And which job is that?”

“Preventing scum like Ivan from flooding the world with weapons and missiles.”

Sergei sighed heavily, as if to say this was the last way he had hoped to spend his evening. Then he took hold of Gabriel’s handcuffs and gave them a sharp jerk. If Gabriel had had any feeling left in his wrists, he was certain it would have hurt like hell.

They crossed the warehouse together, Sergei trailing a step behind, and exited through a door wide enough to accommodate Ivan’s freight trucks. It was raining again; three of Medvedev’s security men were sheltering beneath the eaves, talking quietly in Russian. A few feet away was an official FSB sedan. Sergei inserted Gabriel into the backseat and slammed the door.

He drove with a Makarov in one hand and the radio on. Another speech by the Russian president, of course. What else? It was a small road and it ran through a thick birch forest. Tucked amid the trees were dachas-not palaces like Ivan’s dacha but real Russian dachas. Some were the size of a quaint cottage; others were little more than tool-sheds. All were surrounded by little plots of cultivated land. Gabriel thought of Olga Sukhova, tending to her radishes.

I believe in my Russia, and I want no more acts of evil committed in my name…

He looked into the rearview mirror and saw the eyes of Lenin.

They were searching the road behind them.

“Are we being followed, Sergei?”

“It’s not Sergei. My name is Colonel Grigori Bulganov.”

“How do you do, Colonel Bulganov?”

“I do just fine, Allon. Now shut your mouth.”

Bulganov eased into a turnout and killed the engine. After warning Gabriel not to move, he climbed out and opened the trunk. He rummaged around the interior before coming over to Gabriel’s side of the car. When he opened the door, he was holding the Makarov in one hand and a pair of rusted bolt cutters in the other.

“What are you going to do? Cut me into little pieces?”

Bulganov placed the Makarov on top of the car. “Shut up and get out.”

Gabriel did as he was told. Bulganov spun him around, so that he was facing the car, and took hold of the handcuffs. Gabriel heard a single snap and his hands were free.

“Would you like to tell me what’s going on, Sergei?”

“I told you, Allon-it’s Grigori. Colonel Grigori Bulganov.” He held out the Makarov toward Gabriel. “I assume you know how to use one of these things?”

Gabriel took hold of the gun. “Any chance of getting these cuffs off my wrists?”

“Not without the key. Besides, you’ll need to be wearing them when we walk back into that warehouse. It’s the only way we’ll be able to get Elena out of there alive.” Bulganov treated Gabriel to one of his clever smiles. “You didn’t think I was actually going to let those monsters kill her, did you, Allon?”