C?te d’Azur, France
“I think I’ll go into the village a little later.”
“Whatever for?”
“It’s market day. You know how much I love the market.”
“Ah, yes, wonderful.”
“Can you come?”
“Can’t, unfortunately. I have a few calls to make.”
“Fine.”
Ten days had elapsed since Mikhail and Natalie—otherwise known as Dmitri and Sophie Antonov—had settled into their new home on the Baie de Cavalaire, and already it seemed they were bored. It was not operational boredom, it was marital in nature. Gabriel had declared that the Antonovs’ would not be an entirely blissful union. Few marriages were perfect, he argued, and the marriage between a Russian criminal and a Frenchwoman of dubious personal provenance would not be without its rough patches. He had also decreed that they were to maintain their cover identities at all times, even when they were safely behind the twelve-foot walls of Villa Soleil. Thus the frigid exchange over breakfast. It was conducted in English, as Dmitri Antonov’s French was atrocious and his wife’s Russian was nonexistent. The household staff, all officers of Paul Rousseau’s Alpha Group, addressed only Madame Sophie. Monsieur Antonov they generally avoided. They thought him rude and coarse, and he regarded them, with some justification, as the worst domestic servants in all of Provence. Gabriel shared his opinion. Privately, he had urged Rousseau to knock them quickly into shape. Otherwise, they risked sinking the entire operation.
Mikhail and Natalie were seated like characters in a film, at a table on the broad colonnaded terrace overlooking the pool. It was the spot where they had taken their breakfast each of the nine preceding mornings, for Monsieur Antonov preferred it above all others. He had started his day with a vigorous thirty-minute swim in the pool. Now he wore a snowy white toweling robe against his pale skin. Natalie’s eye was drawn to the rivulet of water running through the chiseled creek bed of his abdominal muscles toward the waistband of his bathing suit. Quickly, she looked away. Madame Sophie, she reminded herself, was annoyed with Monsieur Antonov. He could not worm his way back into her good graces with a petty display of physical beauty.
She poured a cup of strong black coffee from the silver pot and added a generous measure of steamed milk. In doing so she looked undeniably French. Next she plucked a Gitane from its packet and lit it. The cigarettes, like her churlish demeanor, were purely for the sake of her cover. A physician who had seen firsthand the terrible effects of tobacco on the human body, she was a devout nonsmoker. The first inhalation clawed at the back of her throat, but with a sip of the coffee she managed to suppress the urge to cough. It was very nearly perfect, the coffee; only in the south of France, she thought, did it taste like this. The morning was clear and fine, with a soft wind that moved in the line of cypress pines marking the boundary between Villa Soleil and its neighbor. Wavelets flecked the Baie de Cavalaire, across which Natalie could make out the faint lines of the villa owned by Jean-Luc Martel, hotelier, restaurateur, clothier, jeweler, and international dealer of illicit narcotics.
“Croissant?” she asked.
“Pardon?” Mikhail was reading something on a tablet computer with great intensity and could not be bothered to lift his gaze to meet hers.
“I asked whether you wanted another croissant.”
“No.”
“How about lunch?”
“Now?”
“In Saint-Tropez. You can meet me there.”
“I’ll try. What time?”
“Lunchtime, darling. The time people usually eat lunch.”
He swiped a forefinger across the surface of the tablet but said nothing. Natalie stabbed out her cigarette and in the manner of Sophie Antonov stood abruptly. Then she leaned down and put her mouth close to Mikhail’s ear.
“You seem to be enjoying this too much,” she whispered in Hebrew. “I wouldn’t get used to it if I were you.”
She entered the villa and padded barefoot through its many cavernous rooms until she came to the base of the grand main staircase. Her accommodations, she thought, were far better than the ones she had endured in her first operation—the drab flat in the Paris banlieue of Aubervilliers, her squalid little room in an ISIS dormitory in Raqqa, the desert training camp outside Palmyra, the chamber in the house in Mosul where she had nursed Saladin back to health.
You are my Maimonides . . .
In the bedroom, the satin sheets were still in disarray. Evidently, the Alpha Group maids had not found time in their busy schedule to put the room in order. Natalie smiled guiltily. This was the one room in the house where she and Mikhail made no attempt to conceal their true feelings for one another. Strictly speaking, their actions the previous evening had been a violation of Office regulations, which forbade intimate relations between operatives in the field. It was famously one of the least enforced rules in the entire service. Indeed, the current chief and his wife were known to have disregarded the rule on numerous occasions. Besides, thought Natalie as she straightened the sheets, their lovemaking was for the sake of their cover. Even quarreling spouses were not immune to the dark pull of desire.
The walk-in closet was overflowing with designer clothing, shoes, and accessories, all paid for by the murderous ruler of Syria. Only the best for Madame Sophie. From a drawer she removed a pair of Lycra leggings and a sports bra. Her Nike trainers were on the shoe rack, next to a pair of Bruno Magli pumps. Dressed, she walked down a cool marble hall to the fitness room and stepped onto the treadmill. She hated running indoors but had no other option. Madame Sophie was not permitted to run outside. Madame Sophie had security issues. So, too, did Natalie Mizrahi.
She slipped on a pair of headphones and set out at an easy jog, but with each kilometer she increased the speed of the belt until she was clipping along at a brisk pace. Her breathing remained controlled and steady; the many weeks she had spent at the farm in Nahalal had left her in peak fitness. She finished with a final sprint and spent thirty minutes lifting weights before returning to the bedroom to shower and dress. White capri pants, a snug-fitting stretch pullover that flattered her breasts and slender waist, gold flat-soled sandals. Standing before the mirror, she thought again of the last operation, the hijab and pious clothing of Dr. Leila Hadawi. Leila, she thought, would not have approved of Sophie Antonov. In that, she and Natalie were in complete agreement.
She stepped onto the balcony and peered down toward the terrace where Mikhail was stretched on a chaise longue, exposing his colorless skin to the morning rays of the sun. In ten days his pallor had not changed. He seemed to be incapable of tanning.
“Sure you won’t join me?” she called down.