His room was on the fourth floor, overlooking the ten lanes of Teatralny Prospekt. Gabriel assumed it was bugged and therefore made no effort to search it. Instead, he placed two phone calls to clients who were not really his clients and then hacked his way through the stack of e-mail that had piled up in his in-box during the flight from London. One of them was from a lawyer in New York and concerned the tax implications of a certain investment of dubious legality. Its true sender was Eli Lavon, who was staying in a room down the hall, and its true content was revealed when Gabriel keyed in the proper password. It seemed that Gennady Lazarev had taken his prospective new employee to the O2 Lounge at the Ritz for drinks and a nosh. Also in attendance were Dmitry Bershov, Pavel Zhirov, and four pieces of Russian eye candy. Surveillance photos to follow, courtesy of Yaakov and Dina, who were in a booth on the opposite side of the room.
Gabriel rekeyed the password, and the message returned to its original text. Then he slipped on a pair of headphones and patched into a secure feed of the audio from Mikhail’s mobile phone. He heard clinking glass, laughter, and the twitter of the Russian eye candy, which sounded inane, even in a language he could not comprehend. Then he heard the familiar voice of Gennady Lazarev murmuring a confidence into Mikhail’s ear. “Make sure you get some rest tonight,” he was saying. “We have big plans for you tomorrow.”
They remained in the lounge until eleven, when Mikhail repaired to his luxury suite at the Ritz with no company other than a raging headache. Despite Lazarev’s admonition, he did not sleep that night, for his thoughts were a swirl of operations past, strung together like a television newsreel of the century’s most catastrophic events. He craved activity, movement of any kind, but the surveillance cameras that were surely hidden within the room wouldn’t allow it. And so he lay tangled in the damp sheets of his bed with the stillness of a corpse until 7:00 a.m., when his wakeup call lifted him gratefully to his feet.
His coffee arrived a minute later, and he drank it while watching the morning business news from London. Afterward, he headed down to the health club, where he put in an impressive workout witnessed by a watcher from one of the Russian intelligence services. Returning to his room, he subjected himself to an ice-water shower to beat some life into his weary bones. Then he dressed in his finest gray chalk-stripe suit—the one Dina had chosen for him at Anthony Sinclair of Savile Row. He saw her in the breakfast room fifteen minutes later, staring into the eyes of Christopher Keller as if they held the secret to eternal happiness. A few tables away, Yossi was in the process of sending back his scrambled eggs. “I asked for them runny,” he was saying, “but these should have been served in a glass.” The remark bounced off the waiter like a pebble thrown at a freight train. “You want your eggs in a glass?” he asked.
At nine o’clock sharp, having read the morning papers and tidied up a few loose ends in London via e-mail, Mikhail made his way to the Ritz’s ultramodern lobby. Waiting there was the same Volgatek factotum who had plucked him from the passport control line at Sheremetyevo the previous evening. He was smiling with all the pleasantness of a broken window.
“I trust you slept well, Mr. Avedon?”
“Never better,” lied Mikhail cordially.
“Our office is very close. I hope you don’t mind walking.”
“Will we survive?”
“The chances are good, but there are no guarantees in Moscow this time of year.”
With that, the factotum turned and led Mikhail into Tverskaya Street. As he climbed the slope of the hill, leaning hard into the battering-ram wind, he realized that the anonymous lump of wool and fur walking two steps behind him was Eli Lavon. The lump escorted him silently to Volgatek’s front door, as if to remind Mikhail that he was not alone after all. Then it floated into the glare of the Moscow morning sun and was gone.
If there were any misunderstandings about Volgatek’s true mission, they were put to rest by the vast metal sculpture that stood in the lobby of its Tverskaya Street headquarters. It depicted the earth, with an outsize Russia in the dominant position, pumping life-giving energy to the four corners of the planet. Standing beneath it, a tiny smiling Atlas in a handmade Italian suit, was Gennady Lazarev. “Welcome to your new home,” he called out as his hand closed around Mikhail’s. “Or should I call it your real home?”
“One step at a time, Gennady.”
Lazarev squeezed Mikhail’s hand a little harder, as if to say he would not be denied, and then led him into a waiting executive elevator that shot them to the building’s uppermost floor. In the foyer was a sign that read WELCOME NICOLAI! Lazarev paused to admire it, as though he had put a great deal of effort into the wording, before conveying Mikhail into the large office that would be his to use whenever he was in town. It had a view of the Kremlin and came with a dangerously pretty secretary called Nina.
“What do you think?” asked Lazarev earnestly.
“Nice,” said Mikhail.