“It looks like a very pretty flight attendant is taking her clothes off in my hotel room.”
“I have to get some rest. And so do you,” she added as she removed her blouse. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Gabriel, but you look terrible. Sleep for an hour or two. You’ll feel better.”
“I couldn’t possibly sleep now.”
“What are you going to do? Stand in that window all day and worry yourself to death?”
“That was my plan.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for that when you become chief. Come to bed,” she said. “I promise not to hurt you.”
Gabriel relented, slipped out of his shoes and jeans, and crawled into bed next to her. Her body felt feverish. Her lips, when kissed, tasted of honey. She ran her fingertip along the line of his nose.
“Chiara . . .”
“What is it, darling?” she asked, kissing him again.
“I’m on duty.”
“You’re always on duty. And you’re going to remain on duty for the rest of your life.”
She kissed him again. His lips. His neck. His chest.
“I suppose she was right all along,” she said.
“Who?” murmured Gabriel.
“The old woman from Corsica. She said you would know the truth when Madeline was dead. In a way, she died that morning in France. And now you know the truth.”
“The old woman was wrong about one thing, though. She warned me not to go to the city of heretics. She said I would die there.”
Chiara stopped kissing him and looked directly into his eyes. “I thought you told me that she said you would be safe.”
“I did.”
“So you lied to me.”
“I’m sorry, Chiara. I shouldn’t have.”
She kissed him again. “I knew you were lying all along,” she said.
“Really?”
“I always know when you’re lying, Gabriel.”
“But I’m a professional.”
“Not when it comes to me.” She pulled his shirt over his head and sat astride his hips. “It’s still a possibility, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“That you could die in the city of heretics.”
“She was referring to Moscow. I think I’m safe now.”
“Actually,” she said, running her hands over his stomach, “you’re in grave danger.”
“I’m sensing that.”
She took him into the tender warmth of her body. He was no longer in Russia, he thought. He was in the room in Venice where he made love to her for the first time, in a bed of white linen. He was safe. And so was she.
“Maybe she won’t come,” Chiara said afterward, as Gabriel was drifting toward sleep.
“She’ll come,” he said. “And then we’ll take her home.”
“I want to go home, too.”
“Soon,” he said.
“Is it ever going to get light out?”
“No, Chiara. Not today.”
57
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA They had done it a dozen times before, on a dozen secret battlefields, and so a few minutes over a street map in Gabriel’s room at the Astoria was all it took to put their plan in place—the route, the static posts, the fallbacks, the parachutes. Gabriel referred to it as Moscow Center’s last chance. They were going to troll her through the streets of St. Petersburg one final time to make sure she was clean. And then they were going to reel her in and make her disappear. Again.
And so it was that, shortly after two on that lightless afternoon in St. Petersburg, six officers of Israel’s secret intelligence service slipped from the Astoria Hotel and made their way past the dreamlike churches and palaces to their holding points. Eli Lavon had the farthest to travel, for it was Lavon who was waiting outside Madeline’s apartment house when she emerged at 2:52 p.m.—the precise time that Gabriel had told her to appear if it was her intention to defect. She crossed the Palace Bridge on foot, strode through the Embankment entrance of the Hermitage Museum, and then went directly to the Monet Room, where she was seated on her usual bench at seven minutes past three. Lavon joined her two minutes later. “So far so good,” he said quietly in English. “Now listen carefully and do exactly as I say.”