“There is no such man.” Arkady smiled. “He’s Mr. Nobody.”
Isabel squeezed the stem of her champagne glass so tightly she was surprised it didn’t snap. Arkady appeared not to notice; his gaze was fixed on the television.
“And you’re mistaken about one other matter as well,” he said after a moment. “Ludmilla Sorova is my colleague. You, Isabel, are something else entirely.”
The host of the CNBC program upon which Martin appeared was none other than Zoe Reed. The topic concerned rumors swirling about Wall Street that Global Vision Investments was considering several deals in the United States, including in the distressed commercial real estate sector, which the firm had avoided in the past. Martin was as elusive as ever. Yes, he acknowledged, he had several irons in the American fire. Most were in the forward-looking energy and technology sectors where he had traditionally been active, but commercial real estate was not out of the question. GVI expected a sharppost-pandemic rebound in the United States once a sufficient percentage of the population had been vaccinated. The perception that the pandemic would forever change the nature of work was mistaken. Americans, declared Martin, would soon be returning to their offices.
“But that doesn’t mean we can go back to our old ways. We have to make our places of work greener, smarter, and much more energy efficient. Remember, Zoe, there’s no vaccine for a rising sea level.”
“Is it true you’re looking at a high-rise in downtown Chicago?”
“We’re looking at a number of different projects.”
“And what about America’s current political turmoil? Are you at all concerned about the stability of the market?”
“America’s democratic institutions,” said Martin diplomatically, “are strong enough to withstand the current challenge.”
The interview left little doubt as to Martin’s intentions. It was only a matter of when and where and how much. The wait for an answer was not long—five days, in fact—though the asset in question came as something of a surprise. Isabel obtained the necessary signatures at NevaNeft headquarters and forwarded copies of the documents to the rented villa in Champel. Kremlin Inc. was now the proud owner of a sixty-story office-and-condominium tower on Miami’s Brickell Avenue, which meant that Gabriel was now the proud owner of Arkady Akimov. The time had finally come to take on an additional partner—a partner with the financial firepower to turn Arkady’s empire to ashes. He had one small piece of unrelated business to attend to at King Saul Boulevard first.
43
Tel Aviv–Langley, Virginia
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh claimed to be nothing more than a lowly professor of physics at Imam Hussein University in downtown Tehran. In point of fact, he was a senior official in the Iranian Ministry of Defense, a career officer of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the leader of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Four of its top scientists had died violently at the hands of Office assassins. But Fakhrizadeh, who lived in a walled compound and was surrounded always by a large detail of bodyguards, had survived several attempts on his life. His run of good fortune ended, however, on the last Friday of November 2020, on a road near the town of Absard. The operation, months in the planning, unfolded with the precision of a Haydn string quartet. By nightfall, the entire twelve-memberOffice hit team had slipped out of the country, and the leading light of Iran’s nuclear program was lying in his coffin, wrapped in a burial shroud.
Gabriel presided over Fakhrizadeh’s assassination from the ops center at King Saul Boulevard. Among the first phone calls he received in the aftermath was from CIA director Morris Payne—hardly surprising, for Gabriel had neglected to inform Langley the hit was imminent. After offering his grudging congratulations, Payne wondered whether Gabriel was free to come to Washington for an operational postmortem. Payne had a hole in his schedule on Monday. The hole, he said, had Gabriel’s name on it.
“Tuesday would be better, Morris.”
“In that case,” replied Payne, “I’ll see you Monday morning at ten.”
In truth, Gabriel was anxious to make the trip, for it was long overdue. He spent the weekend with Chiara and the children in Jerusalem and, late Sunday evening, boarded his plane for the twelve-hour flight to Washington. An Agency reception committee met him on the tarmac of Dulles Airport and drove him to Langley. Morris Payne, never one to stand on ceremony, received Gabriel in his seventh-floor office rather than the gleaming white lobby. Big and bluff with a face like an Easter Island statue, Payne was West Point, Ivy League law, private enterprise, and a deeply conservative former member of Congress from one of the Dakotas. A devout Christian, he possessed a volcanic temper and a remarkable mastery of profanity, which he displayed for Gabriel while berating him over the Fakhrizadeh assassination. In Payne’s version of events, Gabriel hadcommitted a betrayal of biblical proportions by failing to warn him in advance of the operation. Eager to resolve the matter, Gabriel admitted wrongdoing and asked for absolution.
Payne’s anger eventually subsided. They were, after all, close allies who had accomplished much together during the president’s four years in office. Payne was one of the so-called adults in the room who had attempted to constrain the president’s worst impulses. Unlike the other grown-ups—the decorated generals and the experienced foreign policy hands—he had managed to stay in the president’s good graces, mainly through constant flattery of his fragile ego. There was talk he intended to take up the president’s populist mantle and make a run for the White House in the next election cycle. For now, he was the leader of an agency his boss loathed. Each day, he dutifully signed off on the intelligence to be included in the President’s Daily Brief. He admitted to Gabriel that he carefully curated the material to keep America’s most sensitive secrets out of the hands of the commander in chief.
“Has he noticed?”
“He hasn’t even bothered to read the PDB in months. For all intents and purposes, the national security apparatus of the world’s most powerful nation is on autopilot.”
“How much longer does he intend to contest the results of the elections?”
“I’m afraid it’s a fight to the death. It’s the only way he knows how to play the game. Just ask his ex-wives.” Payne glanced at his watch. “The chief of the Persia House would like to join us, if you don’t mind.”
“In a minute, Morris. There’s something I need to discusswith you in private first. It concerns an operation we launched after Viktor Orlov’s assassination in London.”
“How did you get mixed up in the Orlov business?”
“It’s a long story, Morris.”
“Where is this operation of yours taking place?”
“Geneva.”
With his expression, Payne made it clear that Geneva, a city of culture and international diplomacy, was not to his liking. “The target?” he asked.
“Arkady Akimov. He runs a company called—”
“I know who Arkady Akimov is.”
