The defector

77

SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE

APPROPRIATELY ENOUGH, the boat was called Mischief: one hundred seventy-eight feet of American-built, Bahamian-registered luxury, owned and operated by one Maxim Simonov, better known as Mad Maxim, king of Russia’s lucrative nickel industry, friend and playmate of the Russian president, and former guest at Villa Soleil, Ivan Kharkov’s now-vacant palace by the sea in Saint-Tropez. Though Maxim owned a villa worth twenty million dollars on Spain’s Costa del Sol, he preferred the privacy and mobility of his yacht. He’d toured the North African coast in June and had spent July island-hopping through Greece. On the final leg of the excursion, he had ordered his crew to make a brief detour to the Turkish coast, and there, on the morning of August the ninth, he had taken aboard two more passengers: a sturdy-looking man called Alexei Budanov and his ravishing young wife, Zoya. Though childless, the couple had vast quantities of luggage-so much, in fact, they required a second stateroom just for storage. Mad Maxim seemed not to mind. His friends had endured a horrible year. And Mad Maxim, a generous soul if ever there was, had taken it upon himself to see they at least had a proper summer holiday.

The host had earned his nickname not through his business acumen but through his leisure activities. His parties were notoriously wild affairs that seldom ended without violence or arrests. Indeed, several years earlier, Maxim was briefly detained after allegedly importing a planeload of Russian prostitutes to entertain guests at his chateau outside Paris. The French police later agreed to drop all charges after the billionaire managed to convince them the girls were simply part of a modern-dance troupe. The outrageous but somewhat comical affair did nothing to harm Maxim’s standing at home. In fact, the Moscow papers hailed him as the perfect example of the New Russian. Mad Maxim had money and he was not afraid to flaunt it, even if it meant getting into a scrape every now and again with the French police.

The pace of his partying did not slow at sea. If anything, freed from the constraints of meddlesome authorities and complaining neighbors, it reached new levels of intensity. That summer had already produced many notable evenings of debauchery, but new heights were achieved with the arrival of Alexei and Zoya Budanov. Looked after by a crew of thirty, the entourage spent the voyage eating, drinking, and fornicating their way across the Mediterranean, before finally arriving in the fabled Old Port of Saint-Tropez on the afternoon of August the twentieth. Though exhausted and deeply hungover from the previous evening’s adventures, the passengers immediately boarded Mischief ’s dinghies and headed for shore. All but the man known as Alexei Budanov, who remained on the aft deck, hands resting on the railing, staring at Saint-Tropez as if it were his forbidden city. And though Mr. Budanov did not know it, he was already being watched by a man standing at the base of the lighthouse at the end of the Quai d’Estienne d’Orves.

The man wore khaki shorts, a white pullover, a bucket hat, and wraparound sunglasses. Several months earlier, in a birch forest outside Moscow, Mr. Budanov had tried to kill his wife. Now the man planned to kill Mr. Budanov. But, for that, he needed one thing. He needed him to leave the ship. He was confident Mr. Budanov would not stay there long. The Russian was addicted to money, women, and Saint-Tropez. The French resort had been the backdrop for his downfall, and it would be the setting for his death. The man of medium height and build was sure of this. He simply had to be patient. He had to let Mr. Budanov come to him. And then he would put him down.

FORTUNATELY, he would not have to wait alone. He had eight associates to keep him company. Under different names and speaking different languages, they had spent most of the summer on a tour of Europe quite unlike any other. This would be the last stop on their itinerary. Then it would be over.

They lived together under one roof, in a villa located in the hills above the city. It had pale blue shutters and a large swimming pool with views of the distant sea. They spent little time in the pool, just enough to deceive the neighbors. Indeed, most of their time was spent on the streets of Saint-Tropez, watching, shadowing, listening. A friend at the CIA made their task easier by sending transcripts and recordings of all telephone calls made from the yacht or by its passengers. The intercepts gave them advance warning whenever Mad Maxim or a member of his party was coming to town. They knew ahead of time where they planned to have lunch each day, where they planned to have dinner, and which exclusive nightclub they planned to wreck sometime after midnight. The intercepts also allowed them to hear the voice of Alexei Budanov himself. Nearly all his calls were to Moscow. Not once did he identify himself or utter his own name.

Nor did he set foot off the Mischief. Even when the others dined at Le Grand Joseph, his favorite lunch spot, he remained a prisoner of the yacht. And the man of medium height and build passed the time a short distance away, at the foot of his lighthouse. To help fill the empty hours, he dreamed of making love to his wife. And he restored imaginary paintings. And he remembered in vivid detail the nightmare in the birch forest. For the most part, though, he kept his eyes focused on the yacht. And he waited. Always the waiting… Waiting for a plane or a train. Waiting for a source. Waiting for the sun to rise after a night of killing. And waiting for Ivan Kharkov to finally make his return to Saint-Tropez.

Late in the afternoon of the twenty-ninth, while watching Mischief’s dinghies returning to the mother ship, Gabriel received a call on his secure cell phone. The voice he heard was Eli Lavon’s.

“You’d better get up here right away.”

IN THE end, it was not American technology that would be Ivan’s undoing but Israeli cunning. While walking along the Chemin des Conquettes, a residential street south of Saint-Tropez’s bustling centre ville, Lavon had noticed a new sign on the door of the restaurant known as Villa Romana. Written in English, French, and Russian, it stated that, regrettably, the famous Saint-Tropez eatery and party spot would be closed two nights hence for a private affair. Posing as a paparazzi in search of movie stars, Lavon had tossed a bit of money around the waitstaff to see if he could learn the identity of the individual who had booked the establishment. From one despondent bartender he learned it was going to be an all-Russian affair. A busboy confided it was going to be a blowout-his word, a blowout. And finally, from the stunning hostess, he was able to obtain the name of the man who would be throwing the party and footing the bill: Mad Maxim Simonov, the nickel king of Russia. “No movie stars,” the girl said. “Just drunk Russians and their girlfriends. Every year they celebrate the last night of the season. It should be a night to remember.” It would be, Lavon thought. A very memorable night, indeed.

GABRIEL PLACED a wager, one he was confident would pay handsomely. He wagered that Ivan Kharkov could not possibly come all the way to the Cote d’Azur and resist the gravitational pull of Villa Romana, a restaurant where he had once had a regular table. He would take reasonable precautions, perhaps even wear a crude disguise of some sort, but he would come. And Gabriel would be waiting. Whether he pulled the trigger would be contingent on two factors. He would shed no innocent blood, other than that of armed bodyguards, and he would not sink to Ivan’s level by killing him in front of his young wife. Lavon came up with a plan of action. They called it fun with phones.

It was a night to remember, and, just as Gabriel predicted, Ivan was unable to resist attending the party. The techno-pop music was deafening, the women were barely clad, and the champagne flowed like a swollen river. Ivan kept a low profile, though he wore no disguise since not one of the invited guests would have dared to report his presence. As for the possibility he might have been in any physical danger, this, too, seemed to have been discounted. The two bodyguards that Mad Maxim had brought along for protection were standing like doormen outside Villa Romana’s entrance. And if either one of them so much as twitched, they would die there at two a.m. Two a.m., because Ivan’s defenses would be weakened by fatigue and alcohol. Two a.m., because that is the hour the Chemin des Conquettes finally goes quiet on a warm summer night. Two a.m., because that is when Ivan would receive the telephone call that would draw him into the street. The call that would signal that the end was finally near.

For their staging point, Gabriel and Mikhail chose the edge of a small playground at the northern end of the Chemin des Conquettes. They did this because they thought it was just and because the entrance of Villa Romana was only fifty yards away. They sat astride their motorbikes in a dark patch between the streetlamps and listened to the voices in their miniature earpieces. No one gave them a second look. Sitting idly on a motorbike at two in the