The English Girl: A Novel

stay on in some capacity, it was Gabriel Allon. After all, Lavon said, if Gabriel could make peace with Christopher Keller, he could reach an accommodation with Navot.
    All talk of Gabriel’s future plans ended whenever Chiara entered the room. At first, she tried to work alongside the others, but the endless talk of Russia quickly darkened her mood. She was alive only because the members of the team had once risked their lives to save her. Now, as they struggled against the deadline, she assumed the role of their caretaker. Despite the tension inside the house, she made certain the atmosphere remained familial. Each evening they sat down to a lavish meal and, at Chiara’s insistence, spoke of anything except the operation—books they had read, films they had seen, the future of their troubled country. Then, after an hour or so, Gabriel and Navot would rise restlessly to their feet, and the work would start up again. Chiara happily saw to the dishes each night. Alone at the basin, she sang softly to herself to drown out the sound of the conversation in the next room. Later, she would confess to Gabriel that the mere sound of a Russian word produced a hollow aching in her abdomen.
    The man at the center of the operation remained happily oblivious to the team’s efforts, or so it seemed to anyone who encountered Nicholas Avedon after his return to London. His demeanor was of a man who no longer cared to conceal the fact he was going places others could only dream about. Orlov doted on his protégé as though he were the son he’d never had, and with each passing day seemed to grow more dependent upon him. The pronoun we entered Orlov’s vocabulary for the first time when talking about his business, a change in tone that did not go unnoticed in the City. He informed the staff that he would be spending much of January at an undisclosed location in the Caribbean. “I need a nice long break,” he said. “And now that I have Nicholas, I can finally take one.”
    With Orlov seemingly in retreat, word spread through financial circles that Nicholas Avedon was now the man to see at VOI. Most suitors had to wait a week or more for a chance to sit at his feet. But when he received a call from a Jonathan Albright of something called Markham Capital Advisers, he agreed to a meeting without delay. It took place in his office overlooking Hanover Square, though the topic had nothing to do with business or investing. At the conclusion of the meeting, he placed a call to a number in Moscow that lasted three minutes and was satisfactory in outcome. Then he walked Mr. Albright to the elevators with the contented air of a man who could do no wrong. “I’ll run it past Viktor,” he said loudly enough for everyone in close proximity to hear. “But it sounds to me as if all systems are go.”
    T hat night, a car appeared outside Mikhail’s apartment house in Maida Vale. Later, Graham Seymour would identify the man who emerged from it as a courier from the SVR’s generously staffed London rezidentura . The man took possession of Mikhail’s false passport and carried it back to the Russian Embassy in Kensington Gardens. One hour later, when he returned it, the passport had been stamped with a hastily issued Russian visa. Tucked inside was a boarding pass for a British Airways flight to Moscow, leaving Heathrow at ten the following morning.
    Mikhail slipped the ticket and passport into his briefcase. Then he rang Orlov at Cheyne Walk to say he needed a few days off. “Sorry, Viktor,” he said, “but I’m burnt to a crisp. And, please, no phone calls or e-mails. I’m going off the grid.”
    “For how long?”
    “Wednesday. Thursday at the latest.”
    “Take the week.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “I promise not to make a mess of things while you’re gone.”
    “Thanks, Viktor. You’re a dream.”
    Mikhail tried to sleep that night, but it was no good; he had never been able to sleep the night before an operation. And so shortly after four the next morning, he rose from his bed and clothed himself in the armor of Nicholas Avedon, aka Nicolai Avdonin. A car appeared outside his door at six; it ferried him to Heathrow where he passed effortlessly through security, with Christopher Keller and Dina Sarid watching his back. As he entered the departure gate, he saw a heavily altered version of Gabriel reading a copy of the Economist with what appeared to be inordinate interest. Mikhail walked past him without a glance and