The Other Woman

“I’ve been expecting your call.”

“I really hate to be predictable.”

“A drawback in your line of work,” said Werner Schwarz. “I suppose Vienna is in your travel plans.”

“Tomorrow, actually.”

“The day after would be better.”

“I have time considerations, Werner.”

“We can’t meet in Vienna. My service is on edge.”

“Mine, too.”

“I can only imagine. How about that little wine garden in the Woods? You remember it, don’t you?”

“With considerable fondness.”

“And who will I be dining with?”

“A Monsieur Laffont.” Vincent Laffont was one of Navot’s old cover identities. He was a freelance travel writer of Breton descent who lived out of a suitcase.

“I look forward to seeing him again. Vincent was always one of my favorites,” said Werner Schwarz, and rang off.

Navot, as was his habit, arrived at the restaurant thirty minutes early, bearing a decorative box from Demel, the famous Viennese chocolatier. He had eaten most of the treats during the drive and in their place tucked five thousand euros in cash. The owner of the restaurant, a small man shaped like a Russian nesting doll, remembered him. And Navot, playing the role of Monsieur Laffont, regaled him with stories of his latest travels before settling in a quiet corner of the timbered dining room. He ordered a bottle of Grüner Veltliner, confident it would not be the last. Only three other tables were occupied, and all three parties were in the last throes of their luncheon. Soon the place would be deserted. Navot always liked a bit of ambient noise when he was doing his spying, but Werner preferred to betray his country unobserved.

He arrived at the stroke of three, dressed for the office in a dark suit and overcoat. His appearance had changed since Navot had seen him last, and not necessarily for the better. A bit thicker and grayer, a few more broken blood vessels across his cheeks. His eyes brightened as Navot filled two glasses with wine. Then the usual disappointment returned. Werner Schwarz wore it like a loud necktie. Navot had spotted it during one of his fishing trips to Vienna, and with a bit of money and pillow talk he had reeled Werner into his net. From his post inside the BVT, Austria’s capable internal security service, he had kept Navot well informed about matters of interest to the State of Israel. Navot had been forced to relinquish control of Werner during his tenure as chief. For several years they had had no contact other than the odd clandestine Christmas card and the regular cash deposits in Werner’s Zurich bank account.

“A little something for Lotte,” said Navot as he handed Werner the box.

“You shouldn’t have.”

“It was the least I could do. I know you’re a busy man.”

“Me? I have access but no real responsibility. I sit in meetings and bide my time.”

“How much longer?”

“Maybe two years.”

“We won’t forget you, Werner. You’ve been good to us.”

The Austrian waved his hand dismissively. “I’m not some girl you picked up in a bar. Once I retire, you’ll struggle to remember my name.”

Navot didn’t bother with a denial.

“And what about you, Monsieur Laffont? Still in the game, I see.”

“For a few more rounds, at least.”

“Your service treated you shabbily. You deserved better.”

“I had a good run.”

“Only to be cast aside for Allon.” In a confessional murmur, Werner Schwarz asked, “Did he really think he could get away with killing an SVR officer in the middle of Vienna?”

“We had nothing to do with it.”

“Uzi, please.”

“You have to believe me, Werner. It wasn’t us.”

“We have evidence.”

“Like what?”

“One of the members of your hit team. The tall one,” Werner Schwarz persisted. “The one who looks like a cadaver. He helped Allon with that little problem at the Stadttempel a few years ago, and Allon was foolish enough to send him back to Vienna to take care of the Russian. You would have never made a mistake like that, Uzi. You were always very cautious.”

Navot ignored Werner’s flattery. “Our officers were present that night,” he admitted, “but not for the reason you think. The Russian was working for us. He was in the process of defecting when he was killed.”

Werner Schwarz smiled. “How long did it take you and Allon to come up with that one?”

“You didn’t actually see the assassination, did you, Werner?”

“There were no cameras at that end of the street, which is why you chose it. The ballistics evidence proves conclusively the operative on the motorcycle was the one who pulled the trigger.” Werner Schwarz paused, then added, “My condolences, by the way.”

“None necessary. He wasn’t ours.”

“He’s sitting on a slab in the central morgue. Do you really intend to leave him there?”

“He’s of no concern to us. Do with him what you please.”

“Oh, we are.”

The proprietor appeared and took their order as the last of the three luncheon parties made their way noisily toward the door. Beyond the windows of the dining room the Vienna Woods were beginning to darken. It was the quiet time, the time Werner Schwarz liked best. Navot filled his wineglass. Then, with no warning or explanation, he spoke a name.

Werner Schwarz raised an eyebrow. “What about him?”

“Know him?”

“Only by reputation.”

“And what’s that?”

“A fine officer who serves his country’s interests here in Vienna professionally and in accordance with our wishes.”

“Which means he makes no attempt to target the Austrian government.”

“Or our citizenry. Therefore, we let him go about his work unmolested. For the most part,” Werner Schwarz added.

“You keep an eye on him?”

“When resources permit. We’re a small service.”

“And?”

“He’s very good at his job. But in my experience, they usually are. Deception seems to come naturally to them.”

“No crimes or misdemeanors? No personal vices?”

“The occasional affair,” said Werner Schwarz.

“Anyone in particular?”

“He got himself involved with the wife of an American consular officer a couple of years ago. It caused quite a row.”

“How was it handled?”

“The American consular officer was transferred to Copenhagen, and the wife went back to Virginia.”

“Anything else?”

“He’s been taking a lot of flights to Bern, which is interesting because Bern isn’t part of his territory.”

“You think he’s got a new girl there?”

“Or maybe something else. As you know, our authority stops at the Swiss border.” The first course arrived, a chicken liver terrine for Navot and for Werner Schwarz the smoked duck breast. “Am I allowed to ask why you’re so interested in this man?”

“It’s a housekeeping matter. Nothing more.”

“Is it connected to the Russian?”

“Why would you ask such a thing?”

“The timing, that’s all.”

“Two birds with one stone,” explained Navot airily.

“It’s not so easily done.” Werner Schwarz dabbed his lips with a starched napkin. “Which brings us back to the man lying in the central morgue. How long do you intend to carry on this pretense he isn’t yours?”

“Do you really think,” said Navot evenly, “that Gabriel Allon would allow you to bury a Jew in an unmarked grave in Vienna?”

“I’ll grant you that’s not Allon’s style. Not after what he’s been through in this city. But the man in the morgue isn’t Jewish. At least not ethnically Jewish.”

“How do you know?”

“When the Bundespolizei couldn’t identify him, they ordered a test of his DNA.”

“And?”

“Not a trace of the Ashkenazi gene. Nor does he have the DNA markers of a Sephardic Jew. No Arabian, North African, or Spanish blood. Not a single drop.”

“So what is he?”

“He’s Russian. One hundred percent.”

“Imagine that,” said Navot.

11

ANDALUSIA, SPAIN

The villa clung to the edge of a great crag in the hills of Andalusia. The precariousness of its perch appealed to the woman; it seemed it might lose its grip on the rock at any moment and fall away. There were nights, awake in bed, when she imagined herself tumbling into the abyss, with her keepsakes and her books and her cats swirling about her in a ragged tornado of memory. She wondered how long she might lie dead on the valley floor, entombed in the debris of her solitary existence, before anyone noticed. Would the authorities give her a decent burial? Would they notify her child? She had left a few carefully concealed clues concerning the child’s identity in her personal effects, and in the beginnings of a memoir. Thus far, she had managed only eleven pages, handwritten in pencil, each page marked by the brown ring of her coffee mug. She had a title, though, which she regarded as a notable achievement, as titles were always so difficult. She called it The Other Woman.

The scant eleven pages, the sum total of her labors, she regarded less charitably, for her days were nothing if not a vast empty quarter of time. What’s more, she was a journalist, at least she had masqueraded as one in her youth. Perhaps it was the topic that blocked her path forward. Writing about the lives of others— the dictator, the freedom fighter, the man who sells olives and spice in the souk—had for her been a relatively straightforward process. The subject spoke, his words were weighed against the available facts—yes, his words, because in those days women were of no consequence—and a few hundred words would spill onto the page, hopefully with enough flair and insight as to warrant a small payment from a faraway editor in London or Paris or New York. But writing about oneself, well, that was an altogether different matter. It was like attempting to recall the details of an auto accident on a darkened road. She’d had one once, with him, in the mountains near Beirut. He’d been drunk, as usual, and abusive, which was not like him. She supposed he had a right to be angry; she had finally worked up the nerve to tell him about the baby. Even now, she wondered whether he had been trying to kill her. He’d killed a good many others. Hundreds, in fact. She knew that now. But not then.

She worked, or pretended to work, in the mornings, in the shadowed alcove beneath the stairs. She had been sleeping less and rising earlier. She supposed it was yet another unwelcome consequence of growing old. On that morning she was more prolific than usual, an entire page of polished prose with scarcely a correction or revision. Still, she had yet to complete the first chapter. Or would she call it a prologue? She’d always been dubious about prologues; she regarded them as cheap devices wielded by lesser writers. In her case, however, a prologue was justified, for she was starting her story not at the beginning but in the middle, a stifling afternoon in August 1974 when a certain Comrade Lavrov—it was a pseudonym—brought her a letter from Moscow. It bore neither the name of the sender nor the date it was composed. Even so, she knew it was from him, the English journalist she had known in Beirut. The prose betrayed him.

It was half past eleven in the morning when she set down her pencil. She knew this because the tinny alarm on her Seiko wristwatch reminded her to take her next pill. It was her heart that ailed her. She swallowed the bitter little tablet with the cold dregs of her coffee and locked the manuscript—it was a pretentious word, admittedly, but she could think of no other—in the antique Victorian strongbox beneath her writing table. The next item on her busy daily schedule, her ritual bath, consumed all of forty minutes, followed by another half hour of careful grooming and dressing, after which she left the villa and set out through the fierce early-afternoon glare toward the center of the village.

The town was white as dried bone, famously white, and balanced atop the highest point of the incisor-like crag. One hundred and fourteen normal paces along the paseo brought her to the new hotel, and another two hundred and twenty-eight steps carried her across a patch of olive and scrub oak to the edge of the centre ville, which was how, privately, she referred to it, even now, even after all her years of splendid exile. It was a game she had played with her child long ago in Paris, the counting of steps. How many steps to cross the courtyard to the street? How many steps to span the Pont de la Concorde? How many steps until a child of ten disappeared from her mother’s sight? The answer was twenty-nine.

A graffiti artist had defiled the first sugar-cube dwelling with a Spanish-language obscenity. She thought his work rather decent, a hint of color, like a throw pillow, to break the monotony of white. She wound her way higher through the town to the Calle San Juan. The shopkeepers watched her disdainfully as she passed. They had many names for her, none flattering. They called her la loca, the crazy one, or la roja, a reference to the color of her politics, which she’d made no attempt to hide, contrary to the instructions of Comrade Lavrov. In fact, there were few shops in the village where she had not had an altercation of some sort, always over money. She regarded the shopkeepers as vulture capitalists, and they thought her, justifiably, a communist and a troublemaker, and an imported one at that.

The café where she preferred to take her midday meal was in a square near the town’s summit. There was a hexagonal islet with a handsome lamp at its center and on the eastern flank a church, ocher instead of white, another respite from the sameness. The café itself was a no-nonsense affair—plastic tables and chairs, plastic tablecloths of a peculiarly Scottish pattern—but three lovely orange trees, heavy with fruit, shaded the terrace. The waiter was a friendly young Moroccan from some godforsaken hamlet in the Rif Mountains. For all she knew, he was an ISIS fanatic who was plotting to slit her throat at the earliest opportunity, but he was one of the few people in the town who treated her kindly. They addressed one another in Arabic, she in the stilted classical Arabic she had learned in Beirut, he in the Maghrebi dialect of North Africa. He was generous with the ham and the sherry, despite the fact he disapproved of both.

“Did you see the news from Palestine today?” He placed a tortilla española before her. “The Zionists have closed the Temple Mount.”

“Outrageous. If the fools don’t open it soon, it will be the ruin of them.”

“Inshallah.”

“Yes,” she agreed as she sipped a pale Manzanilla. “Inshallah, indeed.”

Over coffee she scratched a few lines into her Moleskine notebook, memories of that August afternoon so long ago in Paris, impressions. Diligently, she tried to segregate what she knew then from what she knew now, to place herself, and the reader, in the moment, without the bias of time. When the bill appeared, she left twice the requested amount and went into the square. For some reason the church beckoned. She climbed its steps—there were four—and heaved on the studded wooden door. Cool air rushed out at her like an exhalation of breath. Instinctively, she stretched a hand toward the font and dipped the tips of her fingers into the holy water, but stopped before performing the ritual self-blessing. Surely, she thought, the earth would tremble and the curtain in the temple would tear itself in two.

The nave was in semidarkness and deserted. She took a few hesitant steps up the center aisle and inhaled the familiar scents of incense and candle smoke and beeswax. She’d always loved the smell of churches but thought the rest of it was for the birds. As usual, God on his Roman instrument of execution did not speak to her or stir her to rapture, but a statue of the Madonna and Child, hovering above a stand of votive candles, moved her quite unexpectedly to tears.

She shoved a few coins through the slot of the box and stumbled into the sunlight. It had turned cold without warning, the way it did in the mountains of Andalusia in winter. She hurried toward the base of the town, counting her steps, wondering why at her age it was harder to walk downhill than up. The little El Castillo supermarket had awakened from its siesta. From the orderly shelves she plucked a few items for her supper and carried them in a plastic sack across the wasteland of oak and olive, past the new hotel, and finally into the prison of her villa.

The cold followed her inside like a stray animal. She lit a fire in the grate and poured herself a whisky to take the chill out of her bones. The savor of smoke and charred wood made her think, involuntarily, of him. His kisses always tasted of whisky.

She carried the glass to her alcove beneath the stairs. Above the writing desk, books lined a single shelf. Her eyes moved left to right across the cracked and faded spines. Knightley, Seale, Boyle, Wright, Brown, Modin, Macintyre, Beeston … There was also a paperback edition of his dishonest memoir. Her name appeared in none of the volumes. She was his best-kept secret. No, she thought suddenly, his second best.

She opened the Victorian strongbox and removed a leatherbound scrapbook, so old it smelled only of dust. Inside, carefully pasted to its pages, was the meager ration of photographs, clippings, and letters Comrade Lavrov had allowed her to take from her old apartment in Paris—and a few more she had managed to keep without his knowledge. She had only eight yellowed snapshots of her child, the last one taken, clandestinely, on Jesus Lane in Cambridge. There were many more of him. The long boozy lunches at the St. Georges and the Normandie, the picnics in the hills, the drunken afternoons in the bathing hut at Khalde Beach. And then there were the photos she had taken in the privacy of her apartment when his defenses were down. They had never met in his large flat on the rue Kantari, only in hers. Somehow, Eleanor had never found them out. She supposed deception came naturally to them both. And to their offspring.

She returned the scrapbook to the Victorian strongbox and in the sitting room switched on her outmoded television. The evening news had just begun on La 1. After several minutes of the usual fare—a labor strike, a football riot, more unrest in neighboring Catalonia—there was a story about the assassination of a Russian agent in Vienna, and about the Israeli spymaster alleged to be responsible. She hated the Israeli, if for no other reason than the fact he existed, but at that moment she actually felt a bit sorry for him. The poor fool, she thought. He had no idea what he was up against.

12

BELGRAVIA, LONDON

Official protocol dictated that Gabriel inform “C,” the director-general of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, of his intention to visit London. He would be met by a reception committee at Heathrow Airport, shepherded around passport control, and whisked to Vauxhall Cross in a motorcade worthy of a prime minister, a president, or a potentate from some corner of an empire lost. Nearly everyone who mattered in official and secret London would know of his presence. In short, it would be a disaster.

Which explained why Gabriel flew to Paris on a false passport instead and then stole quietly into London on a midday Eurostar train. For his accommodations he chose the Grand Hotel Berkshire on the West Cromwell Road. He paid for a two-night stay in cash—it was that sort of place—and climbed the stairs to his room because the lift was out of order. It was that sort of place, too.

He hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the latch and engaged the safety bar before lifting the receiver of the room phone. It smelled of the last occupant’s aftershave. He started to dial but stopped himself. The call would be monitored by GCHQ, Britain’s signals intelligence service, and almost certainly by the American NSA, both of which knew the sound of his voice in multiple languages.

He replaced the receiver and opened a text-to-speech application on his mobile phone. After typing the message and selecting the language in which he wanted it read, he lifted the foul-smelling receiver a second time and dialed the number to completion.

A male voice answered, cool and distant, as though annoyed by an unwanted interruption. Gabriel held the speaker of the mobile to the mouthpiece of the room phone and pressed the PLAY icon. The software’s automated voice stressed all the wrong words and syllables but managed to convey his wishes. He wanted a word with “C” in private, far from Vauxhall Cross and without the knowledge of anyone else inside MI6. He could be reached at the Grand Hotel Berkshire, room 304. He did not have long to wait.

When the playback of the message was complete, Gabriel rang off and watched the rush-hour traffic hurtling along the road. Twenty minutes elapsed before the room phone finally rattled with an incoming call. The voice that spoke to Gabriel was human. “Fifty-six Eaton Square, seven o’clock. Business casual.” Then there was a click, and the call went dead.

Gabriel had expected to be sent to a dreary MI6 safe house in a place like Stockwell or Stepney or Maida Vale, and so the address in tony Belgravia came as something of a surprise. It corresponded to a large Georgian dwelling overlooking the square’s southwestern quadrant. The house, like its neighbors along the terrace, had a snow-white stucco exterior on the ground floor, with tan brick on the upper four. A light burned brightly between the pillars of the portico, and the bell push, when thumbed by Gabriel, produced a sonorous tolling within. While awaiting a response, he surveyed the other houses along the square. Most were darkened, evidence that one of London’s most sought-after addresses was the preserve of wealthy absentee owners from Arabia and China and, of course, Russia.

At last, there were footfalls, the crack of high heels on a marble floor. Then the door withdrew, revealing a tall woman of perhaps sixty-five, in fashionable black pants and a jacket with a pattern that looked like Gabriel’s palette after a long day’s work. She had resisted the siren’s song of plastic surgery or collagen implants and thus had retained an elegant, dignified beauty. Her right hand was holding the latch, her left a glass of white wine. Gabriel smiled. It promised to be an interesting evening.

She returned his smile. “My God, it’s really you.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Hurry inside before someone takes a shot at you or tries to blow you up. I’m Helen, by the way. Helen Seymour,” she added as the door closed with a solid thump. “Surely, Graham’s mentioned me.”

“He never stops talking about you.”

She made a face. “Graham warned me about your dark sense of humor.”

“I’ll do my best to keep it in check.”

“Please don’t. All our other friends are so bloody dull.” She led him along a checkerboard hall, to a vast kitchen that smelled wonderfully of chicken and rice and saffron. “I’m making paella. Graham said you wouldn’t mind.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The chorizo and the shellfish,” she explained. “He assured me you weren’t kosher.”

“I’m not, though I generally avoid the forbidden meats.”

“You can eat around them. That’s what the Arabs do when I make it for them.”

“They come often?” probed Gabriel.

Helen Seymour rolled her eyes.

“Anyone in particular?”

“That Jordanian chap was just here. The one who wears Savile Row suits and speaks like one of us.”

“Fareed Barakat.”

“He’s quite fond of himself. And you, too,” she added.

“We’re on the same side, Fareed and I.”

“And what side is that?”

“Stability.”

“There’s no such thing, my dear. Not anymore.”

Gabriel gave Helen Seymour the room-temperature bottle of Sancerre he had purchased from Sainsbury’s in Berkeley Street. She placed it directly in the freezer.

“I saw your picture in the Times the other day,” she said, closing the door. “Or was it the Telegraph?”

“Both, I’m afraid.”

“It wasn’t one of your better ones. Perhaps this will help.” She poured a large glass of Albariño. “Graham’s waiting for you upstairs. He says you two have something to discuss before dinner. I suppose it has to do with Vienna. I’m not allowed to know.”