The Defector

needs to make sure he has an accident.”
    “We’ll see.”
    It was dark when they arrived in Narkiss Street. Gabriel could tell by the abundance of bodyguards they had a visitor waiting upstairs in the apartment. Uzi Navot was seated in the living room. He had a dossier. He had names. Eleven names. All former KGB. All living well in Western Europe on Ivan’s money. Navot left the folder with Gabriel and said he would wait to hear from him. Gabriel allowed Chiara to make the decision.
    “Kill them all,” she said.
    “It’s going to take time.”
    “Take as much time as you need.”
    “You won’t be able to come.”
    “I know.”
    “You’ll go to Tiberias. Gilah will look after you.”

    THEY CONVENED the next morning in Room 456C of King Saul Boulevard: Yaakov and Yossi, Dina and Rimona, Oded and Mordecai, Mikhail and Eli Lavon. Gabriel arrived last and tacked eleven photographs to the bulletin board at the front of the room. Eleven photographs of eleven Russians. Eleven Russians who would not survive the summer. The meeting did not take long. The order of death was established, the assignments were made. Travel saw to the flights, Identity to the passports and visas. Housekeeping opened many doors. Banking gave them a blank check.
    They left Tel Aviv in waves, traveled in pairs, and reconvened two weeks later in Barcelona. There, on a quiet street in the Gothic Quarter, Gabriel and Mikhail killed the man who had been walking behind Grigori on Harrow Road the evening of his abduction. For his sins he was shot at close range with .22 caliber Berettas. As he lay dying in the gutter, Gabriel whispered two words into his ear.
    For Grigori . . .
    A week later, in the Bairro Alto of Lisbon, he whispered the same two words to the woman who had been walking toward Grigori, the woman who had carried no umbrella and had been hatless in the rain. Two weeks after that, in Biarritz, it was the turn of her partner, the man who had been walking next to her on Westbourne Terrace Road Bridge. He heard the two words while taking a midnight stroll along La Grande Plage. They were spoken to his back. When he turned, he saw Gabriel and Mikhail, arms extended, guns in their hands.
    For Grigori . . .
    After that, news of the killings began to circulate among those still to die. To prevent the survivors from fleeing to Russia, the Office planted false stories that it was Ivan, not the Israelis, who was responsible. Ivan had launched a Great Terror , according to the rumors. Ivan was pruning the forest. Anyone foolish enough to set foot in Russia would be killed the Russian way, with great pain and extreme violence . And so the guilty stayed in the West, close to ground, below radar. Or so they thought. But one by one they were targeted. And one by one they died.
    The driver of the Mercedes that took Irina to her “reunion” with Grigori was killed in Amsterdam in the arms of a prostitute. The driver of the van that carried Grigori on the first leg of his journey back to Russia was killed while leaving a pub in Copenhagen. The two flunkies sent to kill Olga Sukhova in Oxford were next. One died in Munich, the other in Prague.
    It was then Sergei Korovin made a frantic attempt to intervene. “The SVR and FSB are getting itchy,” Korovin told Shamron. “If this continues, who knows where it might lead?” In a page taken from Ivan’s playbook, Shamron professed ignorance. Then he warned Korovin that the Russian services had better watch their step. Otherwise, they were next. By that evening, Office stations across Europe detected a notable increase in security around Russian embassies and known Russian intelligence officers. It was unnecessary, of course. Gabriel and his team had no interest in targeting the innocent. Only the guilty.
    At that point, just four names remained. Four operatives who had carried out the abduction of Chiara in Umbria. Four operatives who had Office blood on their hands. They knew they were being stalked and tried not to remain in one place long. Fear made them sloppy. Fear made them easy pickings. They were killed in a series of lightning-strike operations: Warsaw, Budapest, Athens, Istanbul. While dying, they heard four words instead of two.
    For Lior and Motti .
    By then it was nearly August. It was time to go home again.

75
    TIBERIAS, ISRAEL
    BUT WHAT of Ivan? For many weeks after the nightmare in the birch forest outside Moscow, he stayed out of sight. There were rumors he had been arrested.