They ran her across the Palace Square, beneath the Triumphal Arch, and up the Nevsky Prospekt. She had a coffee and a slice of Russian cake at the Literary Café, strolled the Roman colonnade of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, and did a bit of shopping at Zara. At each point along the route, she passed a member of the team. And each member reported that there was no sign of the opposition.
Leaving Zara, she headed to the Moyka River and made her way along the Venetian walkways to the sprawl of St. Isaac’s Square, where Dina waited, a mobile phone pressed to her right ear. Had she been holding the phone to her left ear, it would have been a signal to Madeline to keep walking. The right meant it was safe for her to enter the lobby of the Hotel Astoria, which she did at 3:48 p.m. Eli Lavon joined her in the elevator and rode with her to the third floor. Madeline stared at the snow on her boots. Lavon stared at the ornate ceiling. When the doors rattled open, he held out his hand formally and said, “After you.” Madeline slipped past him without a word and headed toward the room at the end of the hall. The door opened as she approached. Gabriel drew her inside.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Where am I going?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
The update flashed across the status screens in the Op Center at King Saul Boulevard two minutes later. Uzi Navot stared at it for a moment, almost in disbelief. Then he looked at Shamron.
“They’ve actually done it, Ari. They’ve got her.”
“That’s good,” replied Shamron joylessly. “Now let’s see if they can keep her.”
He lit another cigarette.
Two turns to the right, two turns to the left . . .
They blackened her hair and her eyebrows and added the color of the Mediterranean to her Baltic cheeks. Mordecai took her photograph and inserted it into the passport she would use to exit the country. For now, she was Ilana Shavit. She had been born in October 1985 and lived in the Tel Aviv suburb of Rishon LeZion, which happened to be one of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine. Before joining El Al, she had served in the IDF. She was married but childless. Her brother had been killed in the most recent Lebanon war. Her sister had been murdered by a Hamas suicide bomber during the Second Intifada. This was not an invented life, Gabriel told her. This was an Israeli life. And for a few hours it would be Madeline’s.
If there was a chink in her armor, it was her inability to speak more than a few hastily learned words of Hebrew. This weakness was alleviated to some degree by the fact that her English contained no trace of a Russian accent, and by the fact that cockpit and cabin crews cleared passport control in a group. It was likely to be a pro forma affair, little more than a glance at the photograph and a wave of the hand. Gabriel was confident that Madeline would resist the natural impulse to respond to a question spoken in Russian. She had been doing it her entire life. She had to tell one more lie, give one last performance. And then she would be free of them forever.
And so, a few minutes after 5:00 p.m., the girls removed the last of Madeline’s Russian clothing, dressed her in her crisp El Al uniform, and coiffed her newly black hair. Then they presented her to Gabriel, who studied her for a long moment as though she were a painting upon an easel.
“What is your name?” he asked tersely.
“Ilana Shavit.”
“When were you born?”
“October 12, 1985.”
“Where do you live?”
“Rishon LeZion.”
“What does that mean in Hebrew?”
“First to Zion.”
“What was your brother’s name?”
“Moshe.”
“Where was he killed?”
“Lebanon.”
“What was your sister’s name?”
“Dalia.”
“Where was she killed?”
“The Dolphinarium discotheque.”
“How many others were killed that day?”
“Twenty.”
“What is your name?”
“Ilana Shavit.”
“Where do you live?”
“Rishon LeZion.”
“What street in Rishon LeZion?”
“Sokolow.”
Gabriel had no more questions. He placed one hand to his chin and tilted his head to one side.
“Well?” she asked.
“Five minutes,” he said. “Then we leave.”
Eli Lavon was drinking coffee in the paneled gloom of the lobby. Gabriel sat down next to him.
“I’ve got a funny feeling,” said Lavon.
“How funny?”
“Two outside the door, two in the bar, and one hanging around the concierge desk.”
“Could be anything,” said Gabriel.
“Could be,” Lavon agreed uncertainly.
“They might be watching a guest of the hotel.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Another guest, Eli.”
Lavon said nothing.
“Are you sure she was clean when we brought her in?”
“As a whistle.”
“Then she’s clean now,” said Gabriel.
“So why is the lobby filled with FSB officers?”
“Could be anything.”
“Could be,” Lavon repeated.
Gabriel looked out the window at the El Al van idling outside the hotel’s entrance.
“What are we going to do?” asked Lavon.
“We’re going to leave as planned.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“Not a chance.”
Lavon sipped his coffee. “Good call,” he said.