The defector

exile. As evidence, they pointed out that he had been trying to rekindle his relationship with his former wife-though they neglected to mention that same former wife was by then living in the United Kingdom under a new name and government protection. Also revealed was the somewhat curious fact that Grigori had failed to appear recently for the finals of the Central London Chess Club championship, a match he was expected to win easily. Simon Finch, Grigori’s opponent, surfaced briefly in the press to defend his decision to accept the title by forfeit. He then used the exposure to publicize his latest cause, which was the abolition of land mines. Buckley & Hobbes, Grigori’s publisher, announced that Olga Sukhova, Grigori’s friend and fellow dissident, had graciously agreed to complete Killer in the Kremlin. She appeared briefly at Grigori’s burial in Highgate Cemetery before being escorted away by several armed security men and whisked back into hiding.

Many in the British press, including reporters who had dealt with Grigori, dismissed the government’s claim of suicide as hog-wash. Without any other facts, however, they were left only to speculate, which they did without hesitation. Clearly, they said, Grigori had enemies in Moscow who wished him dead. And clearly, they insisted, one of those enemies must have killed him. The Financial Times pointed out that Grigori was quite close to Viktor Orlov and suggested the defector’s death might somehow be tied to the Ruzoil affair. For his part, Viktor referred to his dead countryman as a “true Russian patriot” and established a freedom fund in his name.

And there the story died, at least as far as the mainstream press was concerned. But on the Internet and in some of the more sensational scandal sheets, it would continue to generate copy for weeks. The wonderful thing about conspiracies is that a clever reporter can usually find a way to link any two events no matter how disparate. But none of the reporters who investigated Grigori’s mysterious death ever attempted to link it to the newly discovered mass graves in Vladimirskaya Oblast. Nor did they posit a connection between the Russian defector and the heart-broken couple who by then had taken refuge in a quiet little apartment on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem. The names Gabriel Allon and Chiara Zolli were not a factor in the story. And they never would be.

THEY HAD recovered from operational trauma before, but never at the same time and never from wounds so deep. Their physical injuries healed quickly. The others refused to mend. They huddled behind locked doors, watched over by men with guns. Unable to tolerate more than a few seconds of separation, they followed each other from room to room. Their lovemaking was ravenous, as if each encounter might be the last, and rare was the moment they were not touching. Their sleep was torn by nightmares. They dreamed of watching each other die. They dreamed of the cell beneath the dacha in the woods. They dreamed of the thousands who were murdered there and the thousands who lay beneath the birch trees in graves with no markers. And, of course, they dreamed of Ivan. Indeed, it was Ivan whom Gabriel saw most. Ivan roamed Gabriel’s subconscious at all hours, dressed in his fine English clothing, carrying his Makarov pistol. Sometimes he was accompanied by Yekaterina and his bodyguards. Usually he was alone. Always he was pointing his gun in Gabriel’s face.

Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon…

Chiara was not eager to speak of her ordeal, and Gabriel did not press her. As the child of a woman who had survived the horrors of the Birkenau death camp, he knew Chiara was suffering an acute form of guilt- survivor’s guilt, which is its own special kind of hell. Chiara had lived and Grigori had died. And he had died because he had stepped in front of a bullet meant for her. This was the image Chiara saw most in her dreams: Grigori, battered and barely able to move, summoning the strength to place himself in front of Ivan’s gun. Chiara had been baptized in Grigori’s blood. And she was alive because of Grigori’s sacrifice.

The rest of it came out in bits and pieces and sometimes at the oddest moments. Over dinner one evening, she described in detail for Gabriel the moment of her capture and the deaths of Lior and Motti. Two days later, while doing the dishes, she recounted what it was like to spend all those hours in the dark. And how once each day, just for a few moments, the sun would set fire to the snowbank outside the tiny window. And finally, while folding laundry one afternoon, she tearfully confessed that she had lied to Gabriel about the pregnancy. She was eight weeks gone at the time of the abduction and lost the child in Ivan’s cell. “It was the drugs,” she explained. “They killed my child. They killed your child.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth? I would never have gone after Grigori.”

“I was afraid you would be mad at me.”

“For what?”

“For getting pregnant.”

Gabriel collapsed into Chiara’s lap, tears flowing down his face. They were tears of guilt but also tears of rage. Though Ivan did not know it, he had managed to kill Gabriel’s child. His unborn child but his child nonetheless.

“Who gave you the shots?” he asked.

“It was the woman. I see her death every night. It’s the one memory I don’t run from.” She wiped away his tears. “I need you to make me three promises, Gabriel.”

“Anything.”

“Promise me we’ll have a baby.”

“I promise.”

“Promise me we’ll never be apart.”

“Never.”

“And promise me you’ll kill them all.”

The next day, these two human wrecks presented themselves at King Saul Boulevard. Along with Mikhail, they were subjected to rigorous physical and psychological evaluations. Uzi Navot reviewed the results that evening. Afterward, he telephoned Shamron at his home in Tiberias.

“How bad?” Shamron asked.

“Very.”

“When will he be ready to work again?”

“It’s going to be a while.”

“How long, Uzi?”

“Maybe never.”

“And Mikhail?”

“He’s a mess, Ari. They’re all a mess.”

Shamron fell silent. “The worst thing we can do is let him sit around. He needs to get back on the horse.”

“I take it you have an idea?”

“How’s the interrogation of Petrov coming along?”

“He’s putting up a good fight.”

“Go down to the Negev, Uzi. Light a fire under the interrogators.”

“What do you want?”

“I want the names. All of them.”

74

JERUSALEM

BY THEN it was late March. The cold winter rains had come and gone, and the spring weather was warm and fine. At the suggestion of the doctors, they tried to get out of the apartment at least once a day. They reveled in the mundane: a trip to the bustling Makhane Yehuda Market, a stroll through the narrow streets of the Old City, a quiet lunch in one of their favorite restaurants. At Shamron’s insistence, they were accompanied always by a pair of bodyguards, young boys with cropped hair and sunglasses who reminded them both too much of Lior and Motti. Chiara said she wanted to visit the memorial north of Tel Aviv. Seeing the bodyguards’ names engraved in stone left her so distraught Gabriel had to practically carry her back to the car. Two days later, on the Mount of Olives, it was his turn to collapse in grief. Lior and Motti had been buried only a few yards from his son.

Gabriel felt an unusually strong desire to spend time with Leah, and Chiara, unable to bear his absence, had no choice but to go with him. They would sit with Leah for hours in the garden of the hospital and listen patiently while