Under the relentless glare of the media, cracks soon appeared in the official account. Eventually, Downing Street acknowledged that the order came directly from the prime minister himself, though it said little regarding the PM’s motives. A respected investigative reporter from theGuardiansuggested that Dragunov had been released in exchange for a hostage after first being subjected to a harsh interrogation. Stella McEwan’s cautious statement, that no officer of the Metropolitan Police Service had mistreated the oligarch, left open the possibility that someone else had.
Nearly forgotten amid the swirl of controversy was Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. According to Al Arabiya, the Saudi state broadcaster, he died nine days after his return from London, at 4:37 in the morning. Among those at his bedside was his beloved nephew, Prince Khalid bin Mohammed.
But why had the Russians poisoned the crown prince in the first place? Was the Kremlin not actively courting new friends in the Arab world? Was Russia not in the process of replacing the retreating Americans as the region’s dominant power? From Riyadh, there was only silence. From Moscow, denials and misdirection. The rented television experts speculated. The investigative reporters burrowed and sifted. None strayed remotely close to the truth.
There were clues everywhere, however—in a consulate in Istanbul, at a private school in Geneva, and in a field in southwest France. But like the trail of radiation, the evidence was invisible to the naked eye. One journalist knew much more than most, but for reasons she did not share with her colleagues, she chose to remain silent.
On the evening the Kremlin belatedly announced the death of Konstantin Dragunov, she emerged from her office in Berlin and, as was her custom, scanned the street in both directions before making her way to a café on Friedrichstrasse near the old Checkpoint Charlie. They were following her, she was certain of it. One day they would come for her. And she would be ready.
There was one final trail of radiation, the existence of which would never be revealed. It stretched from London City Airport, to a beach café in the Netherlands, to an apartment in Jerusalem, and to the top floor of an anonymous office block in Tel Aviv. It was, declared Uzi Navot, yet another milestone in Gabriel’s already-distinguished tenure as chief. He was the only director-general to have killed in the field, and the only one to have been injured in a bombing. Now he had earned the dubious distinction of being the first to have been contaminated by radiation, Russian or otherwise. Navot jokingly bemoaned his rival’s good fortune. “Perhaps,” he told Gabriel upon his return to King Saul Boulevard, “you should quit while you’re ahead.”
“I’ve tried. Several times, in fact.”
Someone had plastered a yellow sign on the door of his office that readcaution radiation area, and at the first meeting of his senior staff, Yossi Gavish presented him with a ceremonial Geiger counter and a hazmat suit stitched with his name. It was the extent of their celebration. By any objective measure, the operation had been an overwhelming success. Gabriel had brilliantly baited his rival into a colossal blunder. In doing so, he had managed to simultaneously check Russia’s rising influence in the Middle East and eliminate the Kremlin’s puppet in Riyadh. The Saudi throne was once again within Khalid’s grasp. All he had to do was convince his father and the Allegiance Council to grant him a second chance. If Khalid were successful, his debt to Gabriel would be enormous. Together they could change the Middle East. The possibilities for Israel—and for Gabriel and the Office—were endless.
His first priority, however, was Iran. That evening he spent several hours at Kaplan Street briefing the prime minister on the contents of the secret Iranian nuclear archives. And the evening after that he was standing just off camera when the prime minister disclosed those findings in a prime-time news conference broadcast live around the world. Three days later he instructed Uzi Navot to give a sanitized briefing about the Iran operation to the reporters fromHaaretzand theNew York Times. The message of the stories was unmistakable. Gabriel had reached into the heart of Tehran and stolen the regime’s most precious secrets. And if the Iranians ever dared to restart their nuclear weapons program, he would be back.
And yet for all his successes, Reema rarely left his thoughts. During the heat of the operation against the Russians, he had been granted a brief respite. But now that he had returned to King Saul Boulevard, Reema gave him no peace. In dreams she appeared in her misshapen toggle coat and her patent leather shoes. Sometimes she bore an uncanny resemblance to Nadia al-Bakari, but in one terrible dream she appeared as Gabriel’s son Daniel. The setting was not a remote field in France, but a snowy square in Vienna. The child in the toggle coat and patent leather shoes, the girl with a young boy’s face, was trying to start the engine of a Mercedes. “Isn’t it beautiful?” the child remarked as the bomb exploded. Then, as the flames consumed her, she looked at Gabriel and said, “One last kiss...”
The next evening, over a quiet dinner of fettuccine and mushrooms at the little café-style table in the kitchen, he described for Chiara precisely what had transpired in the field in southwest France. The Russian woman’s voice on the phone, the gunshot through the car’s rear window, Khalid gathering up Reema’s limbs by the harsh white light of the headlamps. The bomb, said Gabriel, had been meant for him. He had punished the men responsible, beaten them in a great game of deception that would change the course of history in the Middle East. And yet Reema was gone forever. What’s more, her abduction and brutal murder had not yet been made public. It was almost as if she had never existed.
“Then perhaps,” said Chiara, “you should do something about that.”
“How?”
She laid her hand on Gabriel’s.
“I don’t have time,” he protested.
“I’ve seen how fast you can work when you set your mind to it.”
Gabriel considered the idea. “I suppose I could ask Ephraim to let me use the restoration lab at the museum.”
“No,” said Chiara. “You’ll work here in the apartment.”
“With the children?”
“Of course.” She smiled. “It’s time for them to see the real Gabriel Allon.”
As always, he prepared his own canvas—180 by 120 centimeters, oak stretcher, Italian linen. For his ground he used the formula he first learned in Venice from the master restorer Umberto Conti. His palette was Veronese’s, with a touch of Titian.
He had seen Reema only once, under conditions that, try as he might, he could not forget. He had also seen the photograph the Russians had taken of her while she was in captivity in the Basque Country in Spain. It, too, was engraved in Gabriel’s memory. She had been tired and thin, her hair had been a mess. But the photo showed her regal bone structure and, more important, her character. For better or worse, Reema bint Khalid was her father’s daughter.
He established his makeshift studio in the sitting room, near the terrace. As was his habit, he was protective of his workspace. The children were given strict instructions not to touch his supplies. As a precaution, however, he always left one of his Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes at a precise angle on his trolley so he could tell if there had been an intruder, which was invariably the case. For the most part, there were no mishaps, though on one occasion he returned from King Saul Boulevard to find several fingerprints in the lower left corner of the canvas. Forensic analysis determined they were Irene’s.
He worked when he could, an hour or so in the morning, a few minutes in the evening after dinner. The children rarely left his side. He made no preparatory sketches or underdrawing. Nevertheless, his draftsmanship was flawless. He posed Reema as he had posed Nadia, on a couch of white against a background of Caravaggesque black. The arrangement of her limbs was childlike, but Gabriel aged her slightly—sixteen or seventeen instead of twelve—so Khalid might have her a little longer.
Gradually, as she came to life on the canvas, she took leave of Gabriel’s dreams. During her last appearance she handed him a letter for her father. Gabriel added it to the painting. Afterward, he stood for a long time before the canvas, right hand to his chin, left hand supporting his right elbow, head tilted slightly down, so lost in thought he was unaware that Chiara was standing at his side.
“Is it finished, Signor Delvecchio?”
“No,” he said, wiping the paint from his brush. “Not quite.”
81
Langley–New York
CIA director Morris Payne called Gabriel on the dedicated secure line that afternoon and asked him to come to Washington. It wasn’t quite a summons, but it wasn’t an open-ended invitation, either. After pretending to consult his calendar, Gabriel said he could come the following Tuesday at the earliest.
