There is no recording of what happened next, for Gabriel would not allow it. In fact, he insisted the camera be entirely disconnected before he stepped once more into the somber quiet of the rue de Berne. There he dropped into the passenger seat of a Citroën that never quite came to a full stop. The man behind the wheel was Christian Bouchard, Paul Rousseau’s chamberlain and strong right hand. He looked like one of those characters in French films who always had affairs with women who smoked cigarettes after making love.
“Any problems?” asked Bouchard.
“My back is killing me,” answered Gabriel. “Otherwise, everything is fine.”
The airport was southwest of the city and bordered by farmland. By the time Gabriel and Christian Bouchard arrived, the Ford transit van was parked at the tail of a Gulfstream jet owned by the Jordanian monarch. Gabriel climbed the airstair and ducked into the cabin. The long duffel bag lay vertically on the floor. He tugged the zipper, exposing a red and swollen face, heavily bound with silver duct tape. The eyes were closed. They would remain closed for the duration of the flight. Or perhaps a bit longer, thought Gabriel, depending on the Russian’s metabolism. Generally speaking, Russians handled their sedatives about as well as they handled their vodka.
Gabriel closed the zipper and settled into one of the swivel seats for takeoff. The Russians weren’t fools, he thought. Eventually, they would piece together what had happened. He reckoned he had three or four days to find the mole at the pinnacle of the Anglo-American intelligence establishment. A week at the outside.
35
Upper Galilee, Israel
There are interrogation centers scattered throughout Israel. Some are in restricted areas of the Negev Desert, others are tucked away, unnoticed, in the middle of cities. And one lies just off a road with no name that runs between Rosh Pina, one of the oldest Jewish settlements in Israel, and the mountain hamlet of Amuka. The track that leads to it is dusty and rocky and fit for only Jeeps and SUVs. There is a fence topped with concertina wire and a guard shack staffed by tough-looking youths in khaki vests. Behind the fence is a small colony of bungalows and a single building of corrugated metal where the prisoners are kept. The guards are forbidden to disclose their place of work, even to their wives and parents. The site is as black as black can be. It is the absence of color and light.
Sergei Morosov knew none of this. In fact, he knew little if anything at all. Not his location or the time of day, and not the identity of his captors. He knew only that he was very cold, that he was hooded and secured to a metal chair in a state of semi-undress, and that he was being subjected to dangerously loud music. It was “Angel of Death” by the thrash metal band Slayer. Even the guards, who were a hard-bitten lot, felt a little sorry for him.
On the advice of Yaakov Rossman, an experienced interrogator, Gabriel allowed the stress-and-isolation phase of the proceedings to last thirty-six hours, which was longer than he preferred. The clock was already working against them. There were reports in the French media regarding a road accident near Strasbourg. The known facts were sparse—a BMW, a fiery crash, a single badly burned body, as yet unidentified, or so said the French authorities. It seemed Moscow Center knew full well the identity of the dead man, at least it thought it did, because a pair of hoods from the Berlinrezidenturapaid a visit to Sergei Morosov’s apartment in Frankfurt the evening after his disappearance. Gabriel knew this because the apartment was under Office surveillance. He feared the SVR’s next stop would be Sergei Morosov’s last known contact, a senior official from the Austrian security service named Werner Schwarz. For that reason, Werner Schwarz was under Office surveillance, too.
It was 12:17 p.m.—the time was carefully noted in the facility’s logbook—when the thrash metal music in the isolation chamber finally fell silent. The guards removed the bindings from Sergei Morosov’s hands and ankles and led him to a shower where, blindfolded and hooded, he was allowed to wash. Next they dressed him in a blue-and-white tracksuit and frog-marched him, still blindfolded, to the interrogation hut, where he was secured to another chair. Five more minutes elapsed before the hood and blindfold were removed. The Russian blinked several times while his eyes grew accustomed to the sudden light. Then he recoiled in fear and began to flail wildly against the restraints.
“Take care, Sergei,” said Gabriel calmly. “Otherwise, you’re liable to dislocate something. Besides, there’s no need to be afraid. Welcome to Israel. And, yes, we accept your offer to defect. We’d like to begin your debriefing as quickly as possible. The sooner we get started, the sooner you can begin your new life. We have a nice little place picked out for you in the Negev, somewhere your friends at Moscow Center will never find you.”
Gabriel said all this in German, and Sergei Morosov, when he ceased his thrashing, responded in the same language. “You’ll never get away with this, Allon.”
“Accepting a defecting SVR officer? It happens all the time. It’s how the game is played.”
“I made no offer to defect. You kidnapped me.” The Russian looked at the four windowless walls of the interrogation room, and at the two guards standing to his left, and at Mikhail, who was reclining to his right. Lastly, he looked at Gabriel and asked, “Am I really in Israel?”
“Where else would you be?”
“I rather thought I was in the hands of the British.”
“No such luck. That said, MI6 is anxious to have a word with you. Can’t blame them, really. After all, you murdered their Vienna Head of Station.”
“Alistair Hughes? The newspapers said it was an accident.”
“I would advise you,” cautioned Gabriel, “to choose another path.”
“And what path is that?”
“Cooperation. Tell us what we want to know, and you’ll be treated better than you deserve.”
“And if I refuse?”
Gabriel looked at Mikhail. “Recognize him, Sergei?”
“No,” lied Morosov badly. “We’ve never met.”
“That’s not what I asked. What I asked,” said Gabriel, “is whether you recognize him. He was in Vienna that night. Your assassin took four shots at him, but somehow all four missed. His marksmanship was a little better when it came to Kirov. Konstantin took two in the face, hollow point, so there could be no open casket at his funeral. Unless you start talking, my associate and I are going to return the favor. Oh, we won’t do the deed ourselves. We’re going to make a gift of you to some friends of ours across the border in Syria. They’ve suffered greatly at the hands of the Butcher of Damascus and his Russian benefactors, and they’d love nothing more than to get their hands on a real live SVR officer.”
The silence in the room was heavy. At last, Sergei Morosov said, “I had nothing to do with Kirov.”
“Of course you did, Sergei. You warned Werner Schwarz a few days before the assassination that there was going to be some unpleasantness in Vienna involving an SVR defector. You then instructed Werner to follow the Kremlin’s lead and point the finger of suspicion toward our service.”
“He’s a dead man. And so are you, Allon.”
Gabriel sailed on as though he hadn’t heard the remark. “You also instructed Werner to whisper a bit of gossip into my deputy’s ear regarding the private life of Alistair Hughes. Something about frequent trips across the border to Switzerland. You did this,” said Gabriel, “because you wanted to leave us with the impression Alistair was on your payroll. The goal of this operation was to protect therealspy, a mole at the pinnacle of the Anglo-American intelligence establishment.”
