The Defector

Uzi.”
    “Not strong enough to stop Russian poison.”
    “Just don’t shake hands with him. And remember, you won’t be alone. The instant you let Petrov into the vault, Sarah will signal us and we’ll enter the bank. When you open the door again to let Petrov out, he’ll be confronted by several men.”
    “Where do we take him?”
    “Out the back door and into the van. We’ll hit him with a little something to keep him comfortable during the drive.”
    Navot made a show of examining his clothing. Like Gabriel, he was wearing a sweater and a leather coat.
    “I need something a little more presentable.” He ran his hand over his chin. “I could also use a shave.”
    “You can go shopping here on the Bahnhofstrasse. But hurry, Uzi. I wouldn’t want you to be late for your first day of work.”

    THE OLD hands like to say that the life of an Office field agent is one of constant travel and mind-numbing boredom, broken by interludes of sheer terror. And then there is the waiting. Waiting for a plane or a train. Waiting for a source. Waiting for the sun to rise after a night of killing. And waiting for a Russian assassin to collect five million dollars from a safe-deposit box in Zurich. For Gabriel, the waiting was made worse by the images that flashed through his thoughts like paintings in a gallery. The images robbed him of his natural patience. They made him restless. They made him terrified. And they stripped him of the emotional coldness that Shamron had found so appealing when Gabriel was a boy of twenty-two. Don’t hate them , Shamron had said of the Black September terrorists. Just kill them, so they can’t kill again . Gabriel had obeyed. He tried to obey now but could not. He hated Ivan. He hated Ivan as he had never hated before.
    The interminable day of watching was not without its lighter moments. They were supplied almost exclusively by the pair of transmitters Navot planted inside Becker & Puhl within minutes of his arrival. The team listened while Miss Irene Moore, an attractive young American sent by a Zurich temp agency, fetched Herr Becker’s coffee. And took Herr Becker’s dictation. And answered Herr Becker’s telephone. And accepted Herr Becker’s many compliments about her appearance. And deftly declined an invitation to dine with Herr Becker at a restaurant overlooking the Zürichsee. And they listened, too, while Herr Becker and Oskar Lange spent several uncomfortable moments getting reacquainted. And while Herr Becker instructed Herr Lange on the intricacies of opening and closing a vault. And, in late afternoon, they heard Herr Becker berating Herr Lange for failing to open the vault quickly enough when Mr. al-Hamdali of Jeddah wanted access to his safe-deposit box. Unwilling to let a good opportunity go to waste, they instructed Miss Moore to copy the contents of Mr. al-Hamdali’s file. Then, for good measure, they snapped several photographs of the same Mr. al-Hamdali as he exited the bank.
    Thirty minutes later, Becker & Puhl drew its shades and switched off its lights. The security guard and secretary bade Herr Becker good night and went their separate ways, Herr Lange heading left toward the Barengasse, Miss Moore right toward the Bleicherweg. Gabriel, who was with Lavon in a parked car, didn’t bother to hide his disappointment. “We’ll come back tomorrow,” Lavon said, doing his best to console him. “And the day after if we have to.” But Lavon, like Gabriel, knew their time was limited. Ivan had given them just seventy-two hours. It was time enough for just one more day in Zurich.
    Gabriel instructed the team to return to their hotel rooms and rest. Though desperately in need of sleep himself, he neglected to heed his own advice and instead slipped quietly into the back of a surveillance van parked along the Talstrasse. There he spent the night alone, his gaze fixed on the entrance of Becker & Puhl, waiting for Ivan’s assassin. Ivan’s brother from the KGB. Ivan’s old friend from Moscow in the nineties, the bad old days when there was no law and nothing to prevent Ivan from killing his way to the top. A man like that might know where Ivan liked to do his blood work. Who knows? A man like that might have killed there himself.
    A few minutes before nine the next morning, Sarah and Navot arrived for work. Yossi relieved Gabriel in the van, and it all started again. The watching. The waiting. Always the waiting . . . Shortly after four that afternoon,