“Only temporarily,” answered Gabriel. “And only in the minds of his controllers at Moscow Center.”
It was late, a few minutes after ten in the evening, and the prime minister’s office was in semidarkness. “They’re not fools,” he said. “Eventually, they’re going to figure out he’s alive and well and in your hands.”
“Eventually,” agreed Gabriel.
“How long will it take?”
“Three or four days, a week at the outside.”
“What happens then?”
“That depends on how many secrets he has rattling around in his head.”
The prime minister regarded Gabriel in silence for a moment. On the wall behind his desk, the portrait of Theodor Herzl did the same. “The Russians aren’t likely to take this lying down. They’re liable to retaliate.”
“How much worse can it get?”
“A lot worse. Especially if it’s directed at you.”
“They’ve tried to kill me before. Several times, actually.”
“One of these days, they might succeed.” The prime minister picked up the single-page document Gabriel had brought from King Saul Boulevard. “This represents a lot of valuable resources. I’m not prepared to let this run indefinitely.”
“It won’t. In fact, once I get my hands around Sergei Morosov’s neck, I suspect it will be over very quickly.”
“How quickly?”
“Three or four days.” Gabriel shrugged. “A week at the outside.”
The prime minister signed the authorization and slid it across the desk. “Remember Shamron’s Eleventh Commandment,” he said. “Don’t get caught.”
The next day was a Thursday—an ordinary Thursday throughout much of the world, with a typical allotment of murder, mayhem, and human misery—but inside King Saul Boulevard, no one would ever speak of it again without first uttering the wordblack. For it was on Black Thursday that the Office went on war footing. The prime minister had made it clear Gabriel was playing on borrowed time, and he resolved not to waste a minute of it. A week from Friday, he decreed, the shade would be drawn in the window of a Vienna apartment. And the following Tuesday evening, a phone would ring in the same apartment, and a caller would ask for one of four women: Trudi, Anna, Sophie, or Sabine. Trudi was Linz, Anna was Munich, Sophie was Berlin, and Sabine was Strasbourg, capital of the Alsace region of France. The Office would have no say in choosing the venue; it was Sergei Morosov’s party. Or, as Gabriel put it coldly, it was Sergei’s going-away party.
Trudi, Anna, Sophie, Sabine: four safe flats, four cities. Gabriel ordered Yaakov Rossman, his chief of Special Operations, to plan for Sergei Morosov’s abduction from all four sites. “Out of the question. Not possible, Gabriel, really. We’re stretched to the breaking point already chasing Sergei around Frankfurt and keeping an eye on Werner Schwarz in Vienna. The watchers are doubled over. They’re folding like deck chairs.” Yaakov then did precisely as Gabriel asked, though for operational reasons he stated a clear preference for Sabine. “She’s lovely, she’s the girl of our dreams. Friendly country, lots of bolt-holes. Get me Sabine, and I’ll get you Sergei Morosov, gift-wrapped with a bow on top.”
“I’d rather have him bruised and a little bloody.”
“I can do that, too. But get me Sabine. And don’t forget the body,” said Yaakov over his shoulder as he sulked out Gabriel’s door. “We need the body. Otherwise, the Russians won’t believe a word of it.”
Black Thursday was followed by Black Friday, and Black Friday by a black weekend. And by the time the sun rose on Black Monday, King Saul Boulevard was at war with itself. Banking and Identity were in open rebellion, Travel and Housekeeping were secretly plotting a coup, and Yaakov and Eli Lavon were barely speaking. It fell to Uzi Navot to play the role of in-house referee and peacemaker because more often than not Gabriel was one of the combatants.
There was little mystery as to the source of his dark mood. It was Ivan who drove him. Ivan Borisovich Kharkov, international arms dealer, friend of the Russian president, and Gabriel’s personal bête noire. Ivan had taken a child from Chiara’s womb, and in a frozen birch forest outside Moscow he had placed a gun to the side of her head.Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon... One never forgot a sight like that, and surely one never forgave. Ivan was the warning shot the rest of the world missed. Ivan was proof that Russia was once more reverting to type.
On the Wednesday of that terrible week, Gabriel slipped from King Saul Boulevard and rode in his motorcade across the West Bank to Amman, where he met with Fareed Barakat, the Anglophile chief of Jordanian intelligence. After an hour of small talk, Gabriel politely requested use of one of the king’s many Gulfstream jets for an operation involving a certain gentleman of Russian persuasion. And Barakat readily agreed, for he loathed the Russians almost as much as Gabriel did. The Butcher of Damascus and his Russian backers had driven several hundred thousand Syrian refugees across the border into Jordan. Fareed Barakat was anxious to return the favor.
“But you won’t make a mess in the cabin, will you? I’ll never hear the end of it. His Majesty is very particular about his planes and his motorcycles.”
Gabriel used the aircraft to fly to London, where he briefed Graham Seymour on the current state of the operation. Then he popped into Paris to have a quiet word with Paul Rousseau, the professorial chief of the Alpha Group, an elite counterterrorism unit of the DGSI. Its officers were skilled practitioners in the art of deception, and Paul Rousseau was their undisputed leader and lodestar. Gabriel met him in a safe flat in the twentieth arrondissement. He spent most of the time batting away the smoke of Rousseau’s pipe.
“I wasn’t able to find an exact fit,” the Frenchman said as he handed Gabriel a photograph, “but this one should do.”
“Nationality?”
“The police were never able to determine that.”
“How long has he been—”
“Four months,” said Rousseau. “He’s a bit ripe but not offensive.”
