grandchildren again?”
“It might take some time. But, yes, you’ll be able to see them again.”
“Time? How much time? Look at me, Elena. Time is not something I have in abundance.”
“I’ve left some money in the bottom drawer of your dresser. It’s all the money I have in the world right now.”
“Then I can’t take it.”
“Trust me, Mama. You have to take that money.”
Her mother looked down and tried to eat, but now she, too, had lost her appetite. And so they sat there for a long time, clutching each other’s hands across the table, faces wet with tears. Finally, her mother picked up the letter and touched it to the flame. Elena gazed at the television and saw Russia ’s new tsar accepting the adulation of the masses.
Against all his considered judgment and in violation of all operational doctrine, written and unwritten, Gabriel did not immediately return to his room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Instead, he wandered farther south, to the colony of apartment houses looming over October Square, and made his way to the building known to the locals as the House of Dogs. It had no view of the Moscow River or the Kremlin-only of its identical neighbor, and of a parking lot filled with shabby little cars, and of the Garden Ring, a euphemism if there ever was one, which thundered night and day on its northern flank. A biting wind was blowing out of the north, a reminder that the Russian “summer” had come and gone and that soon it would be winter again. The poet in him thought it appropriate. Perhaps there never had been a summer at all, he thought. Perhaps it had been an illusion, like the dream of Russian democracy.
In the small courtyard outside Entrance C, it appeared that the babushkas and the skateboard punks had declared a cessation of hostilities. Six skinny Militia boys were milling about in the doorway itself, watched over by two plainclothes FSB toughs in leather jackets. The Western reporters who had gathered at the building after the attempt on Olga Sukhova’s life had given up their vigil or, more likely, had been chased away. Indeed, there was no evidence of support for Olga’s cause, other than two desperate words, written in red spray paint, on the side of the building: FREE OLGA! A local wit had crossed out the word FREE and replaced it with FUCK
Gabriel walked around the enormous building and, as expected, found security men standing watch at the other five entrances as well. Hiking north along the Leninsky Prospekt, he ran through the operation one final time. It was perfect, he thought. With one glaring exception. When Ivan Kharkov discovered his family and his secret papers had been stolen, he was going to take it out on someone. And that someone was likely to be Olga Sukhova.
56 SAINT-TROPEZ, MOSCOW
The undoing of Ivan Borisovich Kharkov, real estate developer, venture capitalist, and international arms trafficker, began with a phone call. It was placed to his Saint-Tropez residence by one Francois Boisson, regional director of the Direction Generale de l’Aviation Civile, the French aviation authority. It appeared, said Monsieur Boisson, that there was a rather serious problem regarding recent flights by Monsieur Kharkov’s airplane- problems, the director said ominously, that could not be discussed over the telephone. He then instructed Monsieur Kharkov to appear at Nice airport at one that afternoon to answer a few simple questions. If Monsieur Kharkov chose not to appear, his plane would be confiscated and held for a period of at least ninety days. After an anti- French tirade lasting precisely one minute and thirty-seven seconds, Ivan promised to come at the appointed hour. Monsieur Boisson said he looked forward to the meeting and rang off.
Elena Kharkov learned of her husband’s predicament when she telephoned Villa Soleil to wish Ivan and the children a pleasant morning. Confronted with Ivan’s rage, she made a few soothing comments and assured him it had to be a misunderstanding of some sort. She then had a brief conversation with Sonia, during which she instructed the nanny to take the children to the beach. When Sonia asked whether Elena needed to speak to Ivan again, Elena hesitated, then said that, yes, she did need to speak to him. When Ivan came back on the line, she told him that she loved him very much and was looking forward to seeing him that night. But Ivan was still carrying on about his airplane and the incompetence of the French. Elena murmured,
Gabriel was a man of unnatural patience, but now, during the final tedious hours before their assault on Ivan’s vault of secrets, his patience abandoned him. It was fear, he thought. The kind of fear only Moscow can produce. The fear that someone was always watching. Always listening. The fear that he might find himself in Lubyanka once again and that this time he might not come out alive. The fear that others might join him there and suffer the same fate.
He attempted to suppress his fear with activity. He walked streets he loathed, ordered an elaborate lunch he barely touched, and, in the glittering GUM shopping mall near Red Square, purchased souvenirs he would leave behind. He performed these tasks alone; apparently, the FSB had no interest in Martin Stonehill, naturalized American citizen of Hamburg, Germany.
Finally, at 2:30 P.M., he returned to his room at the Ritz-Carlton and dressed for combat. His only weapons were a miniature radio and a PDA. At precisely 3:03 P.M., he boarded an elevator and rode down to the lobby. He paused briefly at the concierge’s desk to collect a handful of brochures and maps, then came whirling out the revolving door into Tverskaya Street. After walking a half block, he stopped and thrust his hand toward the street, as if hailing a taxi. A silver Volga sedan immediately pulled to the curb. Gabriel climbed inside and closed the door.
“Let’s hope so.”
Gabriel looked at his watch as the car shot forward:
Elena Kharkov slipped quietly into the guest bedroom and began to pack. The mere act of folding her clothing and placing it into her bag did much to calm her raw nerves and so she performed this chore with far more care than was warranted. At 3:20, she dialed the number of Sonia’s mobile phone. Receiving no answer, she was nearly overcome by a wave of panic. She dialed the number a second time- slowly, deliberately-and this time Sonia answered after three rings. In the most placid voice Elena could summon, she informed Sonia the children had had enough sun and that it was time to leave the beach. Sonia offered mild protest-the children, she said, were the happiest they had been in many days-but Elena insisted. When the call was over, she switched on the device that looked like an ordinary MP3 player and placed it in the outer compartment of her overnight bag. Then she dialed Sonia’s number again. This time, the call wouldn’t go through.
She finished packing and slipped into her mother’s bedroom. The money was where she had left it, in the bottom of the dresser, concealed beneath a heavy woolen sweater. She closed the drawer silently and went into the sitting room. Her mother looked at Elena and attempted to smile. They had nothing more to say-they had said it all last night-and no more tears to cry.
“You’ll have some tea before you leave?”
“No, Mama. There isn’t time.”
“Go, then,” she said. “And may the angel of the Lord be looking over your shoulder.”
A bodyguard, a former Alpha Group operative named Luka Osipo, was waiting for Elena outside in the corridor. He carried her suitcase downstairs and placed it in the trunk of a waiting limousine. As the car pulled away from the curb, Elena announced calmly that she needed to make a brief stop at the House on the Embankment to collect some papers from her husband’s office. “I’ll just be a moment or two,” she said. “We’ll still have plenty of time to get to Sheremetyevo in time for my flight.”
As Elena Kharkov’s limousine sped along the Kutuzovsky Prospekt, a second car was following carefully after it. Behind the wheel was a man named Anton Ulyanov. A former government surveillance specialist, he now worked for Arkady Medvedev, chief of Ivan Kharkov’s private security service. Ulyanov had performed countless jobs for
