They had cleared the outer ring five minutes after leaving Lubyanka and were now streaking eastward, using the M7 as a rough guide. Milchenko knew the towns well-Bezmenkovo, Chudinka, Obukhovo-and his mood darkened with each mile they moved beyond Moscow. Russia as viewed from the air was not much better than Russia on the ground. Look at it, Milchenko thought. It didn’t happen overnight. It took centuries of tsars, general secretaries, and presidents to produce a wreck like this, and now it was Milchenko’s job to hide its dirty secrets.
He keyed open his microphone and asked for an estimated arrival time. Fifteen minutes, came the reply. Twenty at most.
Twenty at most… But what would he find when he got there? And what would he take away? The president had made his wishes clear.
“It is imperative the Israelis leave there alive. But if Ivan needs to shed a little blood, give him your friend, Bulganov. He’s a dog. Let him die a dog’s death.”
But what if Ivan didn’t wish to surrender his Jews?
Milchenko stared morosely out the window. The towns were getting farther and farther apart now. More fields of snow. More birch trees.
70
THE DEAD were stacked like cordwood at the edge of the trees, several with neat bullet holes in their foreheads, the rest bloody messes. Ivan paid them no heed as he stepped through the ruined entrance and made his way to the side of the dacha. Gabriel, Chiara, Grigori, and Mikhail followed, hands still trussed at their backs, a bodyguard holding each arm. They were made to stand against the exterior wall, Gabriel at one end, Mikhail at the other. The snow was knee-deep and more was falling. Ivan paced slowly in it, a large Makarov pistol in his hand. The fact his costly trousers and shoes were being ruined seemed to be the only dark spot on what was an otherwise festive occasion.
Ivan’s hero, Stalin, liked to toy with his victims. The doomed were showered with special privileges, comforted with promotions and with promises of new opportunities to serve their master and the Motherland. Ivan made no such pretense of compassion, no efforts to deceive the soon-to-be dead. Ivan was Fifth Directorate. A breaker of bones, a smasher of heads. After making one final pass before his prisoners, he selected his first victim.
“Did you enjoy the time you spent with my wife?” he asked Mikhail in Russian.
“Former wife,” replied Mikhail in the same language. “And, yes, I enjoyed my time with her very much. She’s a remarkable woman. You should have treated her better.”
“Is that why you took her from me?”
“I didn’t have to take her. She staggered into our arms.”
Mikhail never saw the blow coming. A backhand, low at the start, high at the finish. Somehow he managed to stay on his feet. Ivan’s guards, who were standing in a semicircle in the snow, found it amusing. Chiara closed her eyes and began to shake with fear. Gabriel pressed his shoulder lightly against hers. In Hebrew, he murmured, “Try to stay calm. Mikhail’s doing the right thing.”
“He’s just making him angrier.”
“Exactly, my love. Exactly.”
Ivan was now rubbing the back of his hand, as if to show he had feelings, too. “I trusted you, Mikhail. I allowed you into my home. You betrayed me.”
“It was just business, Ivan.”
“Really? Just business? Elena told me about that shitty little villa in the hills above Saint-Tropez. She told me about the lunch you had waiting. And the wine. Bandol rose. Elena’s favorite.”
“Very cold. Just the way she likes it.”
Another backhand, hard enough to send Mikhail crashing into the side of the dacha. With his hands still bound, he was unable to stand on his own. Ivan seized the front of his parka and lifted him effortlessly to his feet.
“She told me about the shitty little room where you made love. She even told me about the Monet prints hanging on the wall. Funny, don’t you think? Elena had two
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I was too busy looking at your wife.”
This time, it was a sledgehammer fist. It opened another gash on Mikhail’s face, an inch beneath the left eye. As the guards hauled him to his feet, Chiara pleaded with Ivan to stop. Ivan ignored her. Ivan was just getting started.
“Elena said you were a perfect gentleman. That you made love twice. That you wanted to make love a third time, but Elena said no. She had to be going. She had to get home to her children. Do you remember it now, Mikhail?”
“I remember, Ivan.”
“These were lies, were they not? You concocted this story of a romantic encounter in order to deceive me. You never made love to my wife in that villa. You debriefed her about my operation. Then you plotted her defection and the theft of my children.”
“No, Ivan.”
“No, what?”
“The lunch was waiting. So was the rose. Bandol. Elena’s favorite. We made love twice. Unlike you, I was a perfect gentleman.”
The knee came up. Mikhail went down. He stayed down.
Now it was Gabriel’s turn.
IVAN’S MEN had not bothered to remove Gabriel’s watch. It was strapped to his left wrist, and the wrist was pinned to his kidney. In his mind, though, he could picture the digital numbers advancing. At last check it had been 9:11:07. Time had stopped with the collision, and it had started again with Ivan’s arrival from Konakovo. Gabriel and Shamron had chosen the old airfield for a reason: to create space between Ivan and the dacha. To create time in the event something went wrong. Gabriel reckoned at least an hour had elapsed between the time of their capture and the time of Ivan’s arrival. He knew Shamron had not spent that hour planning a funeral. Now Gabriel and Mikhail had to help their own cause by giving Shamron one thing:
“You were a fool to come back to Russia, Allon. I knew you would, but you were a fool regardless.”
“Why didn’t you just kill me in Italy and be done with it?”
“Because there are certain things a man does himself. And thanks to you, I can’t go to Italy. I can’t go anywhere.”
“You don’t like Russia, Ivan?”
“I love Russia.” A terse smile. “Especially from a distance.”
“So I suppose the demand for your children was a lie-just like your agreement to return my wife unharmed.”
“I believe ‘safe and sound’ were the words Korovin and Shamron used in Paris. And no, Allon, it was not a lie. I do want my children back.” He glanced at Chiara. “I calculated that kidnapping your wife gave me at least an outside chance of getting them.”
“You knew Elena and the children were living in America?”
“Let us say I strongly suspected that was the case.”
