He went back to the footpath and waited. The river flowed at his feet, the parkway at his back. Fewer than five minutes elapsed before he heard an engine die in the car park, followed by the sound of three doors opening and closing in rapid succession. Peering over his shoulder, he saw four people, two women, two men, crossing the footbridge spanning the canal. One of the women was wearing a business suit; the other, brightly colored athletic wear. The larger of the two men was carrying a shovel. Better to dig a grave that way, thought Gabriel.
He turned away and watched the black water moving through the channel. In the right pocket of his leather jacket was his Office BlackBerry. It was of no use to him. Only the gun at the small of his back could save him now. It was a Barak .45-caliber. A man-stopper. But in a pinch, he thought, it would stop a woman, too.
80
Capital Beltway, Virginia
On the way to Dulles Airport, Mikhail Abramov rang King Saul Boulevard and informed the Operations Desk that he had left the chief of the Office at the Chesapeake Street command post in a dark and unpredictable mood, with only a single bodyguard for protection. The desk promptly rang the bodyguard, and the bodyguard admitted he had allowed the chief to leave the command post alone, in a rented Ford Focus. Where was he going? The bodyguard couldn’t say. Was he in possession of his Office BlackBerry? As far as the bodyguard knew, he was. Did he have a gun? Again, the bodyguard wasn’t sure, so the desk called Mikhail and put the question to him. Yes, said Mikhail, he did have a gun. A big one, in fact.
It did not take the Operations Desk long to locate the chief’s phone moving in a southwesterly direction along Nebraska Avenue. Minutes later, the phone was headed out of town on MacArthur Boulevard. After crossing the Beltway, it made a peculiar change of course and started back toward Washington along a largely parallel road, the name of which had no resonance in Tel Aviv. It appeared to the technician the chief was lost. Or worse. He rang the phone several times. None of the calls received an answer.
It was at this point that Uzi Navot, who had largely been a distant spectator to that morning’s events, intervened. He, too, rang the chief’s phone and, like the technician, was ignored. He then rang Mikhail and inquired as to his whereabouts. Mikhail replied that he and Eli Lavon were approaching Dulles. They were running late for their flight to Toronto.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to make other arrangements,” said Navot.
“Where is he?” asked Mikhail.
“Lock Ten. Down by the river.”
81
Cabin John, Maryland
They were speaking in Russian, quiet and clipped. Gabriel, who had no ear for Slavic languages, could only wonder what they were saying. He supposed they were debating how to proceed now that they were no longer alone. Rebecca Manning’s voice was readily discernible from Eva’s; her accent was a casserole of British and French. In Eva’s voice, Gabriel heard only fear.
At length, he turned slowly to acknowledge the newcomers’ presence. He smiled carefully, he nodded his head once. And he calculated how long it would take to get the gun into firing position.In the time it takes a mere mortal to clap his hands... That was what Ari Shamron used to say. But that was with a Beretta .22, not the lumbering Barak. And that was when Gabriel was young.
None of the four returned his greeting. Rebecca was leading the way down the footpath, faintly comic in her pantsuit and pumps and mackintosh coat, which was pulling at one side, owing to the presence of a heavy object in the pocket. A step behind her was Eva, and behind Eva were the two men. Both looked capable of violence. The one with the shovel in his hands was Gabriel’s natural ally; he would have to drop it in order to draw his weapon. The smaller one would be quick, and Rebecca had already demonstrated her proficiency with a gun in Georgetown. Gabriel reckoned he had only a slight chance of surviving the next few seconds. Or perhaps they wouldn’t kill him after all. Perhaps they would load him into the back of the van and take him to Moscow and put him on trial for crimes against the Tsar and his kleptomaniacal comrades in the Kremlin.
In the time it takes a mere mortal to clap his hands...
But that was a long time ago, when he was the prince of fire, the angel of vengeance. Better to nod and walk away and hope they didn’t recognize him. Better to leave with his honor and his body intact. He had a wife at home, and children. He had a service to run and a country to protect. And he had Kim Philby’s daughter coming toward him along a footpath through the trees. He had found her out and tricked her into betraying herself. And now she was walking straight into his arms. No, he thought, he would see it through to its end. He was going to leave here with Rebecca Manning and take her back to London on Graham Seymour’s airplane.
In the time it takes a mere mortal to clap his hands...
In her high-heeled pumps, Rebecca was teetering down the path. She slipped and nearly toppled, and as she regained her footing her eyes met Gabriel’s. “Not appropriately dressed,” she drawled in her borrowed upper-class British accent. “Should have brought my Wellies.”
She stumbled to a stop, Kim Philby’s daughter, Sasha’s endeavor, not ten feet from the spot where Gabriel stood. He broadened his smile and in French said, “I thought it would be you.”
Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “I beg your pardon?” she said in English, but Gabriel responded in French, Rebecca’s first language. The language of her mother.
“It was what your father said to Nicholas Elliott in Beirut. And it was what your mother said to me in Spain the night we found her. She sends her best, by the way. She’s sorry it turned out this way.”
Rebecca murmured something in Russian. Something Gabriel couldn’t understand. Something that made the smaller of the two men reach for his gun. Gabriel drew first and shot the man twice in the face, the way Konstantin Kirov had been shot in Vienna. The bigger one had dropped the shovel and was struggling to wrench a gun from his hip holster. Gabriel shot him, too. Twice. Through the heart.
Fewer than three seconds had elapsed, but in that brief time Rebecca Manning had managed to draw her SIG Sauer and grab a handful of Eva’s hair. They were alone now, just the three of them, down by the river, near Swainson Island, at the base of an enormous sycamore. Not entirely alone, thought Gabriel. In the car park a man was climbing out of a very old automobile, clutching a paper sack...
82
Cabin John, Maryland
“How do you know about this place?”
“Your mother told me that, too.”
“Was she the one who betrayed me?”
“A long time ago,” said Gabriel.
