The Cellist, Page 2

  For his generosity, Orlov received a British passport and a private meeting with the Queen at Buckingham Palace. He then embarked on an ambitious effort to rebuild his lost fortune, this time under the watchful eye of British regulatory officials, who monitored his every trade and investment. His empire now included such venerable London newspapers as the Independent, the Evening Standard, and the Financial Journal. He had also acquired a controlling interest in the Russian investigative weekly Moskovskaya Gazeta. With Orlov’s financial support, the magazine was once again Russia’s most prominent independent news organization and a thorn in the side of the men in the Kremlin.

  As a consequence, Orlov lived each day with the knowledge that the formidable intelligence services of the Russian Federation were plotting to kill him. His new Mercedes-Maybach limousine was equipped with security features normally reserved for the state cars of presidents and prime ministers, and his home in Chelsea’s historic Cheyne Walk was one of the most heavily defended in London. A black Range Rover idled curbside, headlamps doused. Inside were four bodyguards, all former commandos from the elite Special Air Service employed by a discreet private security firm based in Mayfair. The one behind the wheel raised a hand in acknowledgment as Sarah alighted from the back of the taxi. Evidently, she was expected.

  Number 43 was tall and narrow and covered in wisteria. Like its neighbors, it was set back from the street, behind a wrought-iron fence. Sarah hurried up the garden walk beneath the meager shelter offered by her compact umbrella. The bell push produced a resonant tolling within, but no response. Sarah pressed the button a second time, with the same result.

  Typically, a maid would have answered the door. But Viktor, a notorious germophobe even before the pandemic, had slashed the hours of his household staff to reduce his odds of contracting the virus. A lifelong bachelor, he spent most evenings in his study on the third floor, sometimes alone, often with inappropriately young female company. The curtains were aglow with lamplight. Sarah reckoned he was on a call. At least, she hoped he was.

  She rang the bell a third time and, receiving no answer, laid her forefinger on the biometric reader next to the door. Viktor had added her fingerprint to the system, no doubt with the hope their relationship might continue after the sale of the painting was complete. An electronic chirp informed Sarah that the scan had been accepted. She entered her personal passcode—it was identical to the one she used at the gallery—and the deadbolts snapped open at once.

  She lowered her umbrella, twisted the doorknob, and went inside. The silence was absolute. She called Viktor’s name but there was no reply. Crossing the entrance hall, she mounted the grand staircase and climbed to the third floor. The door of Viktor’s study was ajar. She knocked. No answer.

  Calling Viktor’s name, she entered the room. It was an exact replica of the Queen’s private study in her apartment at Buckingham Palace—all except for the high-definition video wall that flickered with financial newscasts and market data from around the world. Viktor was seated behind his desk, his face tilted toward the ceiling, as though he were deep in thought.

  When Sarah approached the desk, he made no movement. Before him was the receiver from his landline telephone, a half-drunk glass of red wine, and a stack of documents. His mouth and chin were covered in white foam, and there was vomit on the front of his striped dress shirt. Sarah saw no evidence of respiration.

  “Oh, Viktor. Dear God.”

  While at the CIA, Sarah had worked cases involving weapons of mass destruction. She recognized the symptoms. Viktor had been exposed to a nerve agent.

  In all likelihood, so had Sarah.

  She rushed from the room, her hand to her mouth, and hurried down the staircase. The wrought-iron gate, the bell push, the biometric scanner, the keypad: any one of them could have been contaminated. Nerve agents were extremely fast acting. She would know in a minute or two.

  Sarah touched one final surface, the knob on Viktor’s leaden front door. Outside, she lifted her face to the falling rain and waited for the first telltale rush of nausea. One of the bodyguards clambered from the Range Rover, but Sarah warned him to approach no closer. Then she dug her phone from her handbag and dialed a number from her preferred contacts. The call went straight to voice mail. As usual, she thought, her lack of timing was impeccable.

  “Forgive me, my love,” she said calmly. “But I’m afraid I might be dying.”

  3

  London

  Among the many unanswered questions surrounding the events of that evening was the identity of the man who telephoned the emergency line of the Metropolitan Police. An automatic recording of the call revealed that he spoke English with a heavy French accent. Linguistics experts would later determine he was in all likelihood a southerner, though one suggested he was probably from the island of Corsica. When asked to state his name, he abruptly severed the connection. The number of his mobile device, which left no metadata in its wake, could never be established.

  The first units arrived at the scene—43 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, one of London’s poshest addresses—just four minutes later. There they were greeted by a most remarkable sight. A woman was standing on the walkway of the elegant brick town house, a few paces from the open front door. In her right hand was a mobile phone. With her left she was furiously scrubbing her face, which was lifted toward the drenching rain. Four sturdily built men in dark suits were observing her from the opposite side of the wrought-iron fence, as though she were a madwoman.

  When one of the officers tried to approach her, she shouted at him to stop. She then explained that the owner of the home, the Russian-born financier and publisher Viktor Orlov, had been murdered with a nerve agent, quite probably of Russian origin. The woman was convinced she had been exposed to the toxin as well, hence her appearance and behavior. Her accent was American, her command of the lexicon of chemical weaponry was thorough. The officers surmised she had a background in security matters, an opinion reinforced by her refusal to identify herself or explain why she had come to Mr. Orlov’s home that evening.

  Seven additional minutes elapsed before the first green-suited CBRN teams entered the home. Upstairs in the study they found the Russian billionaire seated at his desk, pupils contracted, saliva on his chin, vomit on his shirt—all signs of exposure to a nerve agent. Medical personnel made no attempt at resuscitation. It appeared Orlov had been dead for an hour or more, probably as a result of asphyxia or cardiac arrest brought on by a loss of control of the body’s respiratory muscles. Preliminary testing of the room found contamination on the desktop, the stem of the wineglass, and the receiver of the phone. There was no evidence of contamination on any other surface, including the front door, the bell push, or the biometric scanner.

  Which suggested to investigators that the nerve agent had been introduced directly into Orlov’s study by an intruder or visitor. The billionaire’s security team told police that he had received two callers that evening, both women. One was the American who discovered the body. The other was a Russian—at least, that was the assumption of the security detail. The woman did not identify herself, and Orlov did not supply them with a name. Neither of which was unusual, they explained. Orlov was secretive by nature, especially when it came to his private life. He greeted the woman warmly at the front door—all smiles and Russian-style kisses—and escorted her upstairs to the study, where he drew the curtains. She stayed for approximately fifteen minutes and saw herself out, also not unusual where Orlov was concerned.

  It was approaching ten p.m. when the senior officer at the scene reported his initial findings to New Scotland Yard. The shift supervisor rang Met commissioner Stella McEwan, and McEwan in turn contacted the home secretary, who alerted Downing Street. The call was unnecessary, for Prime Minister Lancaster was already aware of the unfolding crisis; he had been briefed fifteen minutes earlier by Graham Seymour, the director-general of MI6. The prime minister had reacted to the news with justifiable fury. For the second time in just eightee
n months, it appeared the Russians had carried out an assassination in the heart of London using a weapon of mass destruction. The two attacks had at least one element in common: the name of the woman who discovered Orlov’s body.

  “What in God’s name was she doing in Viktor’s house?”

  “An art transaction,” explained Seymour.

  “Are we sure that’s all?”

  “Prime Minister?”

  “She’s not working for Allon again, is she?”

  Seymour assured Lancaster she was not.

  “Where is she now?”

  “St. Thomas’ Hospital.”

  “Was she exposed?”

  “We’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, it is imperative we keep her name out of the press.”

  Because it was a domestic incident, Seymour’s rivals at MI5 assumed primary responsibility for the investigation. They focused their inquiry on the first of Orlov’s two female callers. With the help of London’s CCTV cameras, the Metropolitan Police had already determined that she presented herself at Orlov’s home by taxi at 6:19 p.m. Additional review of CCTV video established that she had boarded the same taxi forty minutes earlier at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, having arrived on a British Airways flight from Zurich. Border Force identified her as Nina Antonova, forty-two years old, a citizen of the Russian Federation residing in Switzerland.

  Because the United Kingdom no longer required arriving passengers to fill out paper landing cards, her occupation was not readily apparent. A simple Internet search, however, revealed that a Nina Antonova worked as an investigative reporter for Moskovskaya Gazeta, the anti-Kremlin weekly owned by none other than Viktor Orlov. She had fled Russia in 2014 after surviving an attempt on her life. From her outpost in Zurich, she had exposed numerous examples of corruption involving members of the Russian president’s inner circle. A self-described dissident, she appeared regularly on Swiss television as a commentator on Russian affairs.

  It was not the curriculum vitae of a typical Moscow Center assassin. Still, given the Kremlin’s track record, it was hardly out of the question. Certainly, an interview with police was warranted, the sooner the better. According to the CCTV cameras, she left Orlov’s residence at 6:35 p.m. and made her way on foot to the Cadogan Hotel in Sloane Street. Yes, confirmed the desk clerk, a Nina Antonova had checked in earlier that evening. No, she was not presently in her room. She left the hotel at seven fifteen, apparently for a dinner engagement, and had not yet returned.

  Hotel security cameras had recorded her departure. Her expression grave, she had ducked into the back of a taxi, which had been summoned by a raincoated valet. The car delivered her not to a restaurant but to Heathrow Airport, where at 9:45 p.m. she boarded a British Airways flight to Amsterdam. A call to her mobile phone—the Met obtained a number from the hotel registration form—went unanswered. At which point, Nina Antonova became the primary suspect in the murder of the Russian-born financier and newspaper publisher Viktor Orlov.

  In one final humiliation, it was Samantha Cooke of the rival Telegraph who broke the story of Orlov’s assassination, though her account contained few specifics. Prime Minister Lancaster, during an appearance before reporters outside Number Ten the following morning, confirmed that the billionaire had been killed with an as yet unidentified chemical toxin, almost certainly of Russian manufacture. He made no mention of the documents discovered on Orlov’s desk, or of the two women who had called on him the night of his murder. One appeared to have vanished without a trace. The other was resting comfortably in St. Thomas’ Hospital. For that, if nothing else, the prime minister was profoundly grateful.

  She was soaked to the skin when she arrived, and shivering with cold. The critical care staff were not told her name or occupation, only her nationality and her approximate age. They removed her sodden clothing, placed it in a crimson biohazard bag, and gave her a gown and mask to wear. Her pupils were responsive, her nasal passages were clear. Her heart rate and respiration were both elevated. Was she nauseated? She wasn’t. Headache? A touch, she admitted, but it was probably the martini she’d drunk earlier that evening. She didn’t say where.

  Her condition suggested she had survived exposure to the nerve agent unharmed. Nevertheless, in order to safeguard against the possibility of a delayed onset of symptoms, she was prescribed atropine and pralidoxime chloride, both of which were administered intravenously. The atropine dried her mouth and blurred her vision, but otherwise she had no serious side effects.

  After four additional hours of observation, she was wheeled to a room on an upper floor with a view of the Thames. It was nearly four a.m. before she drifted off to sleep. Her thrashing gave the night nurses a scare—muscle twitches were a symptom of nerve agent poisoning—but it was only a nightmare, the poor lamb. Two uniformed Metropolitan Police officers kept watch outside her door, along with a man in a dark suit and a radio earpiece. Later, hospital administration would deny a contagion-like staff rumor that the officer was from the branch of the Met responsible for protecting the royal family and the prime minister.

  It was nearly ten a.m. when the woman awoke. After taking a light breakfast of coffee and toast, she was subjected to yet another examination. Pupils responsive, nasal passages clear. Heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure all normal. It appeared, said the doctor, she was out of the proverbial woods.

  “Does that mean I can leave?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “Late afternoon at the earliest.”

  She was clearly disappointed, but she accepted her fate without so much as a word of protest. The nurses did their best to make her comfortable, though all attempts to engage her in conversation beyond the topic of her condition were deftly rebuffed. Oh, she was polite to a fault, but guarded and distant. She spent much of the day watching the television news coverage of the Russian billionaire’s assassination. Apparently, she was involved somehow, but it seemed that Downing Street was determined to keep her role a secret. The staff had been warned not to breathe a word about her to the press.

  Shortly after five p.m. she received a call on her room phone. It was Number Ten on the line—the prime minister himself, according to one of the operators, who swore she heard his voice. A few minutes after the conversation ended, a boyish-looking man with the demeanor of a country parson appeared with a change of clothing and a bag of toiletries. He wrote something illegible in the visitors’ logbook and waited with the police officers in the corridor while the woman showered and dressed. After a final examination, which she passed with flying colors, the doctors consented to her release. The boyish-looking man promptly took possession of the form and instructed the senior nurse to delete the woman’s file from the computer system. A moment later, both file and woman were gone.

  4

  St. Thomas’ Hospital, Lambeth

  A silver Bentley Continental waited outside the hospital’s main entrance, the driver leaning indifferently against the hood. He wore a Burberry Camden car coat atop a single-breasted suit by Richard Anderson of Savile Row. His hair was sun-bleached, his eyes were bright blue. Sarah lowered her mask and kissed his mouth, which seemed permanently fixed in an ironic smile.

  “Do you really think this is wise?” asked Christopher.

  “Very.” She dragged the tip of her forefinger across the notch in his sturdy chin. His skin was taut and dark. The years he had spent living in the mountains of Corsica had left him with the complexion of a Mediterranean. “You look good enough to eat.”

  “They didn’t feed you in there?”

  “I didn’t have much of an appetite. Not after seeing Viktor like that. But let’s talk about something a bit more pleasant.”

  “Like what?”

  “All the wicked things I’m going to do to you when we get home.”

  Sarah bit his bottom lip and slid into the Bentley’s passenger seat. Shortly after moving to London, she had suggested that Christopher might want to sell the car and purchase something
a bit less ostentatious—a Volvo, for example, preferably an estate model. Now, caressed by quilted leather, she wondered how she could have ever been so foolish. One of her favorite standards flowed from the silken audio system. She accompanied Chet Baker as they crossed Westminster Bridge.

  I fell in love just once, and then it had to be with you . . .

  The rush-hour traffic was anemic. On the opposite bank of the Thames, construction scaffolding had rendered the Elizabeth Tower invisible, altering London’s skyline. Even the famous clockface was veiled. Nothing was right in the world, thought Sarah. Things had fallen apart.

  Everything happens to me . . .

  “I never knew you had such a beautiful voice,” said Christopher.

  “I thought spies were supposed to be good liars.”

  “I’m an intelligence officer. The spies are the people we seduce into betraying their countries.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that I have the world’s worst singing voice.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “It’s true, actually. When I was in the first grade at Brearley, my teacher wrote a lengthy treatise on my report card about my inability to carry a tune.”

  “You know what they say about teachers.”

  “Miss Hopper,” said Sarah spitefully. “Fortunately, my father was transferred to London the next year. He enrolled me at the American School in St. John’s Wood, and I was able to put the entire episode behind me.” She gazed out her window at the deserted pavements of Birdcage Walk. “My mother and I used to take the longest walks when we lived in London. That’s when we were still speaking to one another.”

  Christopher’s Marlboros were resting on the center console beneath his gold Dunhill lighter. Sarah hesitated, then plucked one from the packet.