“It’s lovely.”
“You should come stay with us at Villa Soleil. We have a guesthouse. Actually, we have three guesthouses, but who’s counting?”
“It’s only money,” Ivan said with the dismissive tone of a man who has far too much of it. He tried to pour more vodka into Mikhail’s glass, but Mikhail covered it with his hand.
“I’ve had quite enough, thanks. Two’s my limit.”
Ivan acted as though he had not heard him and doled out a third. The interrogation resumed.
“I assume you live in Washington, too?”
“A few blocks from the Capitol.”
“Do you and Sarah live together?”
“No, Mr. Kharkov. We only work together.”
“And where is that?”
“At the Dillard Center for Democracy. It’s a nonprofit group that attempts to promote democracy around the world. Sarah runs our sub-Saharan Africa initiative. I do the computers.”
“I believe I’ve heard of this organization. You poked your nose into the affairs of Russia a few years ago.”
“We have a very active program in Eastern Europe,” Sarah said. “But our Russia initiative was closed down by your president. He wasn’t terribly fond of us.”
“He was right to close you down. Why is it you Americans feel the need to push democracy down the throats of the rest of the world?”
“You don’t believe in democracy, Mr. Kharkov?”
“Democracy is fine for those who wish to be democratic, Sarah. But there are some countries that simply don’t want democracy. And there are others where the ground has not been sufficiently fertilized for democracy to take root. Iraq is a fine example. You went into Iraq in the name of establishing a democracy in the heart of the Muslim world, a noble goal, but the people were not ready for it.”
“And Russia?” she asked.
“We
“Your system allows for no viable opposition, and, without a viable opposition, there can be no democracy.”
“Perhaps not your kind of democracy. But it is a democracy that works for Russia. And Russia must be allowed to manage its own affairs without the rest of the world looking over our shoulder and criticizing our every move. Would you rather we return to the chaos of the nineties, when Yeltsin placed our future in the hands of American economic and political advisers? Is this what you and your friends wish to inflict on us?”
Elena cautiously suggested a change of subject. “Ivan has many friends in the Russian government,” she explained. “He takes it rather personally when they’re criticized.”
“I meant no disrespect, Mr. Kharkov. And I think you raise interesting points.”
“But not valid ones?”
“It is my hope, and the hope of the Dillard Center, that Russia should one day be a
“The day of Russian democracy has already arrived, Sarah. But my wife is correct, as usual. We should change the subject.” He looked at Mikhail. “Why did your family leave Russia?”
“My father felt we would have more opportunities in America than Moscow.”
“Your father was a dissident?”
“Actually, he was a member of the Party. He was a teacher.”
“And did he find his opportunities?”
“He taught high school mathematics in New York. That’s where I grew up.”
“A schoolteacher? He went all the way to America to become a schoolteacher? What kind of man forsakes his own country to teach school in another? You should undo your father’s folly by coming back to Russia. You wouldn’t recognize Moscow. We need talented people like you to help build our country’s future. Perhaps I could find a position for you in my own organization.”
“I’m quite happy where I am, but thank you for the offer.”
“But you haven’t heard it yet.”
Ivan smiled. It was as pleasant as a sudden crack in a frozen lake. Once again, Elena offered apologia.
“You’ll have to forgive my husband’s reaction. He isn’t used to people saying no to him.” Then to Ivan: “You can try again tomorrow, darling. Sarah and Michael are coming to the villa for the afternoon.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “I’ll send a car to collect you from your hotel.”
“We have a car,” Mikhail countered. “I’m sure we can find our way.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll send a proper car to collect you.”
Ivan opened his menu and insisted everyone else do the same. Then he leaned close to Sarah, so that his chest was pressing against her bare shoulder.
“Have the lobster-and-mango spring rolls to start,” he said. “I promise, your life will never be the same again.”
39 GASSIN, FRANCE
At the old stone villa outside Gassin, dinner that evening had been a hasty affair: baguettes and cheese, a green salad, roasted chickens from the local charcuterie. Their ransacked bones lay scattered over the outdoor table like carrion, along with a heel of bread and three empty bottles of mineral water. At one end of the table lay a tourist brochure advertising deep-sea fishing trips in a sea now empty of fish. It might have looked like ordinary refuse were it not for the brief message, hastily scribbled over a photograph of a young boy holding a tuna twice his size. It had been written by Mikhail and passed to Yaakov, in a classic maneuver, in the Place Carnot. Gabriel was gazing at it now as if trying to rewrite it through the sheer force of his will. Eli Lavon was gazing at Gabriel, his chin resting in his palm, like a grandmaster pleading with a lesser opponent to either move or capitulate.
“Maybe it’s the travel arrangements that bother me most,” Lavon said finally in an attempt to prod Gabriel into action. “Maybe I’m not comfortable with the fact that Ivan won’t let them come in their own car.”
“Maybe he’s just a control freak.” Gabriel’s tone was ambivalent, as if he were expressing a possible explanation rather than a firmly held opinion. “Maybe he doesn’t want strange cars on his property. Strange cars can contain strange electronic equipment. Sometimes, strange cars can even contain bombs.”
“Or maybe he wants to take them on a surveillance detection run before he lets them onto the property. Or maybe he’ll just skip the professional niceties and kill them immediately instead.”
“He’s not going to kill them, Eli.”
“Of course not,” said Lavon sarcastically. “Ivan wouldn’t lay a finger on them. After all, it’s not as if he didn’t kill a meddlesome reporter in broad daylight in St. Peter’s Basilica.” He held up a single sheet of paper, a printout of an NSA intercept. “Five minutes after Ivan left that restaurant, he was on the phone to Arkady Medvedev, the chief of his private security service, telling him to run a background check on Mikhail’s father and the Dillard Center.”
“And when he does, he’ll find that Mikhail’s father was indeed a teacher who immigrated to America in the early nineties. And he’ll find that the Dillard Center occupies a small suite of offices on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington.”
“Ivan knows about cover stories, and he certainly knows about CIA front organizations. The KGB was far better at it than Langley ever was. The Russians had a network of fronts all around the globe, some of them run by Ivan’s father, no doubt. Ivan drank KGB tradecraft with his mother’s milk. It’s in his DNA.”
“If Ivan had qualms about Sarah and Mikhail, he wouldn’t let them come close to him. He’d push them away. And he’d make it clear to Elena that they were strictly off-limits.”
