“Mikhail is going to take you home to your husband. And you’re going to do your best to forget this conversation ever happened.”
At that same moment, in a darkened operations room at King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv, Ari Shamron removed a pair of headphones and cast a lethal glance at Uzi Navot.
“Tell me something, Uzi. When did I authorize a defection?”
“I’m not sure you ever did, boss.”
“Send the lad a message. Tell him to be in Paris by tomorrow night. Tell him I’d like a word.”
46 THE MASSIF DES MAURES, FRANCE
What did you think of him?'”
The voice had spoken to her in Russian. Elena turned around quickly and saw Mikhail standing in the open French doors, hands in his pockets, sunglasses propped on his forehead.
“He’s remarkable,” she said. “Where did he go?”
Mikhail acted as though he had not heard the question.
“You can trust him, Elena. You can trust him with your life. And with the lives of your children.” He held out his hand. “I need to show you a few things before we leave.”
Elena followed him back into the villa. In her absence, the rustic wooden table had been laid with a lovers’ banquet. Mikhail’s voice, when he spoke, had a bedroom intimacy.
“We had lunch, Elena. It was waiting on the table just like this when we arrived. Remember it, Elena. Remember exactly how it looked.”
“When did we eat? Before or after?”
“Before,” he said with a slight smile of admiration. “You were nervous at first. You weren’t sure you wanted to go through with it. We relaxed. We ate some good food. We drank some good wine. The rose did the trick.” He lifted the bottle from the ice bucket. “It’s from Bandol. Very cold. Just the way you like it.” He poured a glass and held it out to her. “Drink a bit more, Elena. It’s important you have wine on your breath when you go home.”
She accepted the glass and raised it to her lips.
“There’s something else you need to see,” Mikhail said. “Come with me, please.”
He led her into the larger of the villa’s two bedrooms and instructed her to sit on the unmade bed. At his command, she took a mental photograph of the room’s contents. The chipped dresser. The wicker rocking chair. The threadbare curtains over the single window. The pair of faded Monet prints tacked up on either side of the bathroom door.
“I was a perfect gentleman. I was everything you could have hoped for and more. I was unselfish. I saw to your every need. We made love twice. I wanted to make love a third time, but it was getting late and you were tired.”
“I hope I didn’t disappoint you.”
“On the contrary.”
He stepped into the bathroom and switched on the light, then motioned for her. There was scarcely enough room for the two of them. Their shoulders brushed as he spoke.
“You showered when we were done. That’s why you don’t smell like you’ve been making love. Please do it now, Elena. We need to get you home to your husband.”
“Do what now?”
“Take a shower, of course.”
“A real shower?”
“Yes.”
“But we haven’t
“Of course we have. Two times, in fact. I wanted to do it a third time, but it was getting late. Get in the shower, Elena. Wet your hair a little. Smudge your makeup. Scrub your face hard so you look like you’ve been kissed. And use soap. It’s important you go home smelling of strange soap.”
Mikhail opened the taps and slipped silently out of the room. Elena removed her clothing and stepped naked into the water.
47 SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE
It was the part of the day that Jean-Luc liked best: the truce between lunch and dinner, when he treated himself to a pastis and calmly prepared the battle plan for the evening. Running his eye down the reservation sheet, he could see it was going to be an arduous night: an American rapper with an entourage of ten, a disgraced French politician and his new child bride, an oil sheikh from one of the emirates- Dubai or Abu Dhabi, Jean-Luc could never remember-and a shady Italian businessman who had gone to ground in Saint-Tropez because he was under indictment in Milan. For the moment, though, the dining room of Grand Joseph was a tranquil sea of linen, crystal, and silver, undisturbed, except for the pair of Spanish waifs drinking quietly at the far end of the bar. And the red Audi convertible parked directly outside the entrance, in violation of a long-standing city ordinance, not to mention countless edicts handed down by Joseph himself.
Jean-Luc drank from his glass of pastis and took a closer look at the two occupants of the car. The man behind the wheel was in his early thirties and was wearing an obligatory pair of Italian sunglasses. He was attractive in a vaguely Slavic way and appeared quite pleased with himself. Next to him was a woman, several years older but no less attractive. Her dark hair was done up in a haphazard bun. Her dress looked slept in. Lovers, concluded Jean-Luc. No doubt about it. What’s more, he was certain he’d seen them in the restaurant quite recently. The names would come to him eventually. They always did. Jean-Luc had that kind of memory.
The couple talked for a moment longer before finally giving each other a kiss that put to rest any lingering doubt over how they had spent their afternoon. It was the final kiss, apparently, for a moment later the woman was standing alone on the sunlit cobbles of the square and the Audi was speeding off like a getaway car leaving the scene of a crime. The woman watched it disappear around the corner, then turned and headed toward Joseph’s entrance. It was then Jean-Luc realized that she was none other than Elena Kharkov, wife of Ivan Kharkov, Russian oligarch and party boy. But where were her bodyguards? And why was her hair mussed and her dress wrinkled? And why in God’s name was she kissing another man in a red Audi in the middle of the Place de l’Hotel de Ville?
She entered a moment later, her hips swinging a little more jauntily than usual, her handbag dangling from her left shoulder.
“Can I get you anything, Elena?” Jean-Luc asked.
“A bit of Sancerre would be nice. And a cigarette if you have one.”
“I can do the Sancerre but not the cigarette. It’s the new law. No more smoking in France.”
“What’s the world coming to, Jean-Luc?”
“Hard to say.” He scrutinized her over his pastis. “You all right, Elena?”
“Never better. But I could really use that wine.”
Jean-Luc spilled a generous measure of Sancerre into a glass, twice the usual pour, and placed it on the bar in front of her. She was raising it to her lips when two black Mercedes sedans screeched to a stop in the square. She glanced over her shoulder, frowned, and dropped a twenty on the bar.
“Thanks anyway, Jean-Luc.”
“It’s on the house, Elena.”
She rose to her feet and swung her bag over her shoulder, then blew him a kiss and headed defiantly toward
