Shamron smiled. “I don’t believe so.”
He was perched atop a tall stool at his worktable, dressed in neatly pressed khaki trousers and an oxford-cloth shirt. Before him was a Philco rosewood radio. There was no sign of his old olive-wood cane, only an aluminum walker that shone coldly in the glare of his work lamp. With a tremulous right hand—the same hand he had clamped over the mouth of Adolf Eichmann on a darkened street in Argentina—he reached for his packet of Maltepe cigarettes.
“Don’t even think about it, Ari.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because you don’t want to spend your final days on earth attached to a ventilator.”
“I resigned myself to such a fate a long time ago, my son.” Shamron extracted a cigarette from the packet and ignited it with his old Zippo lighter. “Will you at least take off that mask? You look like one of my doctors.”
“It’s for your own good.”
“My doctors tell me the same thing every time they impaleme with something sharp.” He squinted at the radio’s exposed innards through a cloud of smoke. “What brings you all the way to Tiberias?”
“You, Abba.”
“I might be old, but I’m not senile.”
“I needed to have a word with Sergei Morosov.”
“About our old friend Viktor Orlov?”
Gabriel nodded.
“I assume Viktor’s death had something to do with money.”
“Wherever did you get an idea like that?”
“The luxury villa you acquired on the shore of Lake Zurich.” Shamron frowned. “A steal at a mere forty thousand Swiss francs a month. Last evening, when you should have been celebrating Shabbat with your wife and children, you were given a dossier by a young woman who works at the Zurich office of RhineBank, home of the so-called Russian Laundromat. The dossier in question was prepared by a British investigator with an impressive track record when it comes to revealing Russian secrets. It suggests that a businessman named Arkady Akimov is the primary keeper of the Russian president’s immense wealth.”
“Have you placed a transmitter in the Nahalal safe house?”
“A mole,” replied Shamron. “Apparently, several of Arkady’s employees are former SVR and GRU officers. They work for a subsidiary of his oil trading firm known as the Haydn Group. The British investigator was unable to determine the nature of the unit’s work.”
“Active measures directed against the West.”
“A page from the old Soviet playbook,” said Shamron.
“They’re nothing if not consistent.”
“Is it your intention to put Arkady Akimov out of business?”
“With extreme prejudice. RhineBank, too.”
“Given the firm’s deplorable history, nothing would make me happier. But an operation of that scale will consume the final precious months of your term.” Shamron paused. “Unless, of course, you’re planning to stay for a second.”
“I learned how to walk and chew gum a long time ago. As for a second term, it hasn’t been offered.”
“And if it were?”
“I have other plans.”
“Haaretzseems to think you’d make a fine prime minister.”
“Can you imagine?”
“I can, actually. But there’s a rumor going around that you plan to take your retirement in a palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice.” Shamron glared at Gabriel with reproach. “I know it was Chiara’s idea, but you could have put your foot down.”
