The Defector

Internet and in some of the more sensational scandal sheets, it would continue to generate copy for weeks. The wonderful thing about conspiracies is that a clever reporter can usually find a way to link any two events no matter how disparate. But none of the reporters who investigated Grigori’s mysterious death ever attempted to link it to the newly discovered mass graves in Vladimirskaya Oblast. Nor did they posit a connection between the Russian defector and the heart-broken couple who by then had taken refuge in a quiet little apartment on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem. The names Gabriel Allon and Chiara Zolli were not a factor in the story. And they never would be.

    THEY HAD recovered from operational trauma before, but never at the same time and never from wounds so deep. Their physical injuries healed quickly. The others refused to mend. They huddled behind locked doors, watched over by men with guns. Unable to tolerate more than a few seconds of separation, they followed each other from room to room. Their lovemaking was ravenous, as if each encounter might be the last, and rare was the moment they were not touching. Their sleep was torn by nightmares. They dreamed of watching each other die. They dreamed of the cell beneath the dacha in the woods. They dreamed of the thousands who were murdered there and the thousands who lay beneath the birch trees in graves with no markers. And, of course, they dreamed of Ivan. Indeed, it was Ivan whom Gabriel saw most. Ivan roamed Gabriel’s subconscious at all hours, dressed in his fine English clothing, carrying his Makarov pistol. Sometimes he was accompanied by Yekaterina and his bodyguards. Usually he was alone. Always he was pointing his gun in Gabriel’s face.
    Enjoy watching your wife die, Allon . . .
    Chiara was not eager to speak of her ordeal, and Gabriel did not press her. As the child of a woman who had survived the horrors of the Birkenau death camp, he knew Chiara was suffering an acute form of guilt— survivor’s guilt, which is its own special kind of hell. Chiara had lived and Grigori had died. And he had died because he had stepped in front of a bullet meant for her. This was the image Chiara saw most in her dreams: Grigori, battered and barely able to move, summoning the strength to place himself in front of Ivan’s gun. Chiara had been baptized in Grigori’s blood. And she was alive because of Grigori’s sacrifice.
    The rest of it came out in bits and pieces and sometimes at the oddest moments. Over dinner one evening, she described in detail for Gabriel the moment of her capture and the deaths of Lior and Motti. Two days later, while doing the dishes, she recounted what it was like to spend all those hours in the dark. And how once each day, just for a few moments, the sun would set fire to the snowbank outside the tiny window. And finally, while folding laundry one afternoon, she tearfully confessed that she had lied to Gabriel about the pregnancy. She was eight weeks gone at the time of the abduction and lost the child in Ivan’s cell. “It was the drugs,” she explained. “They killed my child. They killed your child.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me the truth? I would never have gone after Grigori.”
    “I was afraid you would be mad at me.”
    “For what?”
    “For getting pregnant.”
    Gabriel collapsed into Chiara’s lap, tears flowing down his face. They were tears of guilt but also tears of rage. Though Ivan did not know it, he had managed to kill Gabriel’s child. His unborn child but his child nonetheless.
    “Who gave you the shots?” he asked.
    “It was the woman. I see her death every night. It’s the one memory I don’t run from.” She wiped away his tears. “I need you to make me three promises, Gabriel.”
    “Anything.”
    “Promise me we’ll have a baby.”
    “I promise.”
    “Promise me we’ll never be apart.”
    “Never.”
    “And promise me you’ll kill them all.”
    The next day, these two human wrecks presented themselves at King Saul Boulevard. Along with Mikhail, they were subjected to rigorous physical and psychological evaluations. Uzi Navot reviewed the results that evening. Afterward, he telephoned Shamron at his home in Tiberias.
    “How bad?” Shamron asked.
    “Very.”
    “When will he be ready to work again?”
    “It’s going to be a while.”
    “How long, Uzi?”
    “Maybe never.”
    “And Mikhail?”
    “He’s a mess, Ari. They’re all a mess.”
    Shamron fell silent. “The