began with an apology for the last-minute nature of the offer and concluded with promises of first-class air travel, luxury hotel accommodations, and gourmet Italian cuisine. If Ms. Bulganova chose to attend-and it was NITA’s fervent hope that she would-an information packet, airline tickets, and a welcoming gift would follow. The e-mail neglected to say that the aforementioned materials were already in Moscow and would be delivered by a courier company that did not exist. Nor did it mention the fact that Ms. Bulganova would remain under surveillance to make certain she was not being followed by agents of Ivan Kharkov. It made only one request: that she RSVP as quickly as possible so that other arrangements could be made should she be unable to attend.
Fortunately, such a contingency would not prove necessary, for exactly seven hours and twelve minutes after the e-mail was sent, a reply arrived from Moscow. At Villa Teresa, the celebration was boisterous but brief. Irina Bulganova was coming to Italy. And they had much work to do.
IN EVERY OPERATION, Shamron was fond of saying, there is a choke point. Navigate it successfully, and the operation can sail easily into open waters. Stray off course, even by a few degrees, and it can become stranded on the shoals or, worse still, smash to pieces on the rocks. For this operation, the choke point was none other than Irina herself. As of that moment, they still did not know whether she was heaven-sent or whether she might bring the devil to their doorstep. Handle her well, and the operation might go down as one of the team’s finest. Make one mistake, and there was a chance she might get them all killed.
They rehearsed as if their lives depended on it. Mikhail’s Russian was superior to Eli Lavon’s, and so it was Mikhail, despite his youth, who would serve as lead inquisitor. Lavon, blessed with a kindly face and unthreatening demeanor, would play the role of benefactor and sage. The only variable, of course, was Irina herself. Olga helped them to prepare for any contingency. At Gabriel’s direction, she was terrified one minute, belligerent the next. She cursed them like dogs, collapsed in tears, took a vow of silence, and once flew at them in a blind rage. By the final night, Mikhail and Lavon were confident they were prepared for whatever version of Irina they might encounter. All they needed now was the star of the show.
But was she Ivan’s pawn or Ivan’s victim? It was the question that had troubled them from the beginning, and it was foremost in their thoughts throughout the last long night of waiting. Gabriel made it clear he believed in Irina, but Gabriel was the first to admit his faith had to be viewed through the prism of his well-known fondness for Russian women. The women, he said over and over, were Russia’s only hope. Other members of the team, Yaakov in particular, took a far less optimistic view of what lay ahead. Yaakov had seen mankind at its worst and feared they were about to admit one of Ivan’s agents into their midst. The fact she was still alive, he argued, was proof of her perfidy. “If Irina was good, Ivan would have killed her,” he said. “That’s what Ivan does.”
With the help of their assets in Moscow and King Saul Boulevard, they kept careful watch over Irina’s final preparations, searching for evidence of treachery. On the evening before her departure they monitored a pair of telephone calls, one to a childhood friend, the other to her mother. They heard her alarm go off at the ungodly hour of 2:30 a.m. and heard it go off again ten minutes later while she was in the shower. And at five minutes past three, they caught a flash of her temper when she called the limousine company to say her car hadn’t arrived. Mikhail, who listened to a recording of the call over the secure link, refused to translate it for the rest of the team. Unless Irina was an award-winning actress, he said, her anger was real.
As it turned out, the car was only fifteen minutes late, something of a coup for late January, and she arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport at 3:45. Shmuel Peled, a field hand from Moscow Station, caught a glimpse of her as she emerged from the car in an angry blur and headed into the terminal. Her plane, Austrian Airlines Flight 606, departed on time and arrived at Vienna’s Schwechat at 6:47 a.m. local time. Dina, who had flown to the Austrian capital the previous day, was waiting when Irina emerged from the Jet-way. They walked to the departure gate, separated by a generous gap, and settled into their seats in the third row of the first-class cabin-Irina in 3C along the aisle, Dina in 3A against the window. Upon touching down in Milan, she sent a message to Gabriel. The star had arrived. The show was about to begin.
When the aircraft doors opened, Irina was once more in motion, headed toward passport control at a parade- ground clip, her chin at a defiant angle. Like most Russians, she dreaded encounters with men in uniform and presented her travel documents as if braced for combat. After being admitted to Italy without delay, she made her way toward the arrivals hall, where Chiara was holding a sign that read: NITA WELCOMES IRINA BULGANOVA, GALAXY TRAVEL. Lior and Motti, Chiara’s ever-present bodyguards, were loitering at a nearby information kiosk, eyes fixed on their quarry.
No one seemed to take notice of Dina as she headed outside to the passenger pickup area where Gabriel was standing at the door of a rented luxury minibus, dressed in the black suit of a chauffeur and wearing wraparound sunglasses. Two cars back, Yaakov was seated behind the wheel of a Lancia sedan, pretending to read the sports pages of Corriere della Sera. Dina climbed into the front passenger seat and watched as Irina boarded the minibus. Gabriel, after quickly scanning her bags for tracking beacons, loaded them into the luggage hold.
The drive was ninety minutes in length. They had rehearsed it several times and by that morning could have done it in their sleep. From the airport, they headed northeast through a series of small towns and villages to the city of Como. Had the Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni been their true destination, they would have split the inverted Y of the lake and headed straight to Bellagio. Instead, they followed the westernmost shoreline to Tremezzo and stopped at a private dock. A boat waited, Lior at the wheel, Motti at the stern. It bore Chiara and Irina slowly across the flat waters of the inlet to the large tawny-orange villa standing at the end of its own peninsula. In the grand entrance foyer was a man with eyes the color of glacial ice and a fine-boned, bloodless face. “Welcome to Italy,” he said to Irina in perfect Russian. “May I see your passport, please?”
25
THERE IS an audio recording of what transpired next. It is one minute and twelve seconds in length and resides to this day in the archives of King Saul Boulevard, where it is considered required listening for its lessons in tradecraft and, in no small measure, for its pure entertainment value. Gabriel had warned them about Irina’s temper, but nothing could have prepared them for the ferocity of her response. Eli Lavon, the biblical archaeologist, would later describe it as one of the epic battles in the history of the Jewish people.
Gabriel was not present for it. At that moment he was coming across the inlet by boat and listening to the proceedings over a miniature earpiece. Hearing a sound he took to be the shattering of a crystal vase, he hurried into the villa and poked his head into the dining room. By then, the skirmish was over, and a temporary cessation of hostilities had been declared. Irina was seated along one side of the rectangular table, breathing heavily from exertion, with Yaakov and Rimona each holding one arm. Yossi was standing to one side, with his shirt torn and four parallel scratch marks along the back of one hand. Dina stood next to him, her left cheek aflame, as if it had been recently slapped, which it had. Mikhail was positioned directly across from Irina, his face expressionless. Lavon was at his side, a better angel, staring down at his tiny hands as though he had found the whole sorry spectacle deeply embarrassing.
Gabriel slipped quietly into the library where Olga Sukhova, former crusading journalist, now a member in good standing of the team, was seated before a video monitor, headphones over her ears. Gabriel sat next to her and slipped on a second pair of headphones, then looked at the video screen. Mikhail was now slowly turning through the pages of Irina’s passport with a bureaucratic insolence. He placed the passport on the table and stared at Irina for a moment before finally speaking again in Russian. Gabriel uncovered one ear and listened to Olga’s translation as the interrogation commenced.
“You are Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, born in Moscow in December 1965?”
“That is correct.”
“Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Nikolaevich Bulganov, of the Russian Federal Security Service?”
“That is correct.”
“Irina Iosifovna Bulganova, traitor and spy for enemies of the Russian Federation?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
