“I suppose I did the best I could. Still, I wish I’d been able to pin you down on a few more specifics. The Anna Rolfe affair, for example. Your first Swiss adventure. Or was it the Hamidi assassination? It’s hard to keep them all straight.” Greeted by silence, Bittel sailed on. “I was lucky enough to see Anna perform with Martha Argerich a few weeks before the lockdown. An evening of Brahms and Schumann sonatas. She still plays with the same fire. And Argerich...” He held up his hands. “Well, what else can one say?”
“Which Brahms?”
“I believe it was the G Major.”
“She always adored it.”
“She’s living here in Switzerland again, in her father’s old villa on the Zürichberg.”
“You don’t say.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Anna?” Gabriel glanced at Christopher, who was watching the Sunday-afternoon traffic flowing along the A6, a half smile on his face. “It’s been an age.”
Bittel returned to the matter at hand. “We’re not the only ones who will suffer if there’s a scandal. The British have enormous exposure to RhineBank, as do the Americans.”
“If it’s handled properly, there won’t be a scandal. But if RhineBank has broken the law, it should be punished accordingly.”
“What do I say to RhineBank’s regulators?”
“Nothing at all.”
Bittel was appalled. “That’s not the way we do things here in Switzerland. We follow the rules.”
“Unless it suits you not to. And then you flout the rules as readily as the rest of us. We’re not policemen or regulators, Bittel. We’re in the business of stealing other people’s secrets.”
“Recruit Isabel Brenner as an agent? Is that what you’re saying?”
“How else are we going to find out the name of the high-profile Russian who’s been looting state assets and stashing them here in the West?”
“I’m not sure I want to know his name.”
“In that case, let me handle it.”
Bittel exhaled heavily. “Why do I know I’m going to regret this?”
Gabriel didn’t bother to offer his Swiss colleague assurances to the contrary. Intelligence operations, like life, were invariably full of regrets. Especially when they involved the Russians.
“What do you need from us?” asked Bittel at last.
“I’d like you to stay out of my way.”
“Surely we can providesomeassistance. Physical surveillance, for example.”
Gabriel nodded toward Christopher. “Mr. Marlowe will handle the surveillance, at least for now. But with your approval, I’d like to add another operative to our team.”
“Only one?”
Gabriel smiled. “One is all I need.”
16
Zurich
Eli Lavon arrived at Zurich’s Kloten Airport late the following afternoon. He wore a cardigan sweater beneath his crumpled tweed jacket and an ascot at his throat. His hair was wispy and unkempt; the features of his face were bland and easily forgotten. The immigration authorities who met his aircraft on the tarmac did not bother to inspect his passport. Nor did they check his two large pieces of aluminum-sided luggage, which were crammed with sophisticated surveillance and communications gear.
An attendant at ExecuJet, one of the airport’s two fixed-base operators, placed the bags into the back of the BMW X5 waiting outside. Lavon slid into the front passenger seat and frowned. “Shouldn’t you have a bodyguard or two?”
