The Defector, Page 2

  Finch entered the storage cabinet and from a row of sagging shelves collected a board, a box of pieces, an analog tournament clock, and a score sheet. Coffee in one hand, match supplies carefully balanced in the other, he entered the vestry’s main room. It had walls the color of mustard and four grimy windows: three peering onto the pavements of Little Russell Street and a fourth squinting into the courtyard. On one wall, below a small crucifix, was the tournament bracket. One match remained to be played: S. FINCH VS. G. BULGANOV.

  Finch turned and surveyed the room. Six trestle tables had been erected for the evening’s play, one reserved for the championship, the rest for ordinary matches—“friendlies,” in the parlance of the club. A devout atheist, Finch chose the spot farthest from the crucifix and methodically prepared for the contest. He checked the tip of his pencil and wrote the date and the board number on the score sheet. He closed his eyes and saw the match as he hoped it would unfold. Then, fifteen minutes after taking his seat, he looked up at the clock: 6:42. Grigori was late. Odd, thought Finch. The Russian was never late.

  Finch began moving pieces in his mind—saw a king lying on its side in resignation, saw Grigori hanging his head in shame—and he watched the relentless march of the clock.

  6:45 . . . 6:51 . . . 6:58 . . .

  Where are you, Grigori? he thought. Where the hell are you?

  ULTIMATELY, Finch’s role would be minor and, in the opinion of all involved, mercifully brief. There were some who wanted to have a closer look at a few of his more deplorable political associations. There were others who refused to touch him, having rightly judged Finch to be a man who would relish nothing more than a good public spat with the security services. In the end, however, it would be determined his only crime was one of sports manship. Because at precisely 7:05 p.m.—the time recorded in his own hand on the official score sheet—he exercised his right to claim victory by forfeiture, thus becoming the first player in club history to win the championship without moving a single piece. It was a dubious honor, one the chess players of British intelligence would never quite forgive.

  Ari Shamron, the legendary Israeli spymaster, would later say that never before had so much blood flowed from so humble a beginning. But even Shamron, who was guilty of the occasional rhetorical flourish, knew the remark was far from accurate. For the events that followed had their true origins not in Grigori’s disappearance but in a feud of Shamron’s own making. Grigori, he would confide to his most devoted acolytes, was but a shot over our complacent bow. A signal fire on a distant watchtower. And the bait used to lure Gabriel into the open.

  By the following evening, the score sheet was in the possession of MI5, along with the entire tournament logbook. The Americans were informed of Grigori’s disappearance twenty-four hours later, but, for reasons never fully explained, British intelligence waited four long days before getting around to telling the Israelis. Shamron, who had fought in Israel’s war of independence and loathed the British to this day, found the delay predictable. Within minutes he was on the phone to Uzi Navot giving him marching orders. Navot reluctantly obeyed. It was what Navot did best.

  3

  UMBRIA , ITALY

  GUIDO RENI was a peculiar man, even for an artist. He was prone to bouts of anxiety, riddled with guilt over his repressed homosexuality, and so insecure about his talents he worked only behind the protective shroud of a mantle. He harbored an unusually intense devotion to the Virgin Mary but loathed women so thoroughly he would not allow them to touch his laundry. He believed witches were stalking him. His cheeks would flush with embarrassment at the mere sound of an obscenity.

  Had he followed his father’s advice, Reni would have played the harpsichord. Instead, at the age of nine, he entered the studio of the Flemish master Denys Calvaert and embarked on a career as a painter. His apprenticeship complete, he left his home in Bo logna in 1601 and traveled to Rome, where he quickly won a commission from the pope’s nephew to produce an altarpiece, Crucifixion of St. Peter, for the Church of San Paolo alle Tre Fon tane. At the request of his influential patron, Reni took his inspiration from a work hanging in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Its creator, a controversial and erratic painter known as Caravaggio, was not flattered by Reni’s imitation and vowed to kill him if it ever happened again.

  Before beginning work on Reni’s panel, the restorer had gone to Rome to view the Caravaggio again. Reni had obviously borrowed from his competitor—most strikingly, his technique of using chiaroscuro to infuse his figures with life and lift them dramatically from the background—but there were many differences between the paintings, too. Where Caravaggio had placed the inverted cross diagonally through the scene, Reni positioned it vertically and in the center. Where Caravaggio had shown the agonized face of Peter, Reni deftly concealed it. What struck the restorer most was Reni’s depiction of Peter’s hands. In Caravaggio’s altarpiece, they were already fastened to the cross. But in Reni’s portrayal, the hands were free, with the right stretched toward the apex. Was Peter reaching toward the nail about to be driven into his feet? Or was he pleading with God to be delivered from so terrible a death?

  The restorer had been working on the painting for more than a month. Having removed the yellowed varnish, he was now engaged in the final and most important part of the restoration: retouching those portions damaged by time and stress. The altarpiece had suffered substantial losses in the four centuries since Reni had painted it—indeed, the midrestoration photos had sent the owners into a blue period of hysteria and recrimination. Under normal circumstances, the restorer might have spared them the shock of seeing the painting stripped to its true state, but these were hardly normal circumstances. The Reni was now in the possession of the Vatican. Because the restorer was considered one of the finest in the world—and because he was a personal friend of the pope and his powerful private secretary—he was allowed to work for the Holy See on a freelance basis and to select his own assignments. He was even permitted to conduct his restorations not in the Vatican’s state-of-the-art conservation lab but at a secluded estate in southern Umbria.

  Known as Villa dei Fiori, it lay fifty miles north of Rome, on a plateau between the Tiber and Nera rivers. There was a large cattle operation and an equestrian center that bred some of the finest jumpers in all of Italy. There were pigs no one ate, goats kept solely for entertainment value, and, in summer, fields filled with sunflowers. The villa itself stood at the end of a long gravel drive lined with towering umbrella pine. In the eleventh century it had been a monastery. There was still a small chapel and the remains of an oven where the monks had baked their daily bread. At the base of the house was a large swimming pool and a trellised garden where rosemary and lavender grew along walls of Etruscan stone. Everywhere there were dogs: a quartet of hounds that roamed the pastures, devouring fox and rabbit, and a pair of neurotic terriers that patrolled the perimeter of the stables with the fervor of holy warriors.

  Though the villa was owned by a faded Italian nobleman named Count Gasparri, its day-to-day operations were overseen by a staff of four: Margherita, the young housekeeper; Anna, the gifted cook; Isabella, the ethereal half Swede who tended to the horses; and Carlos, an Argentine cowboy who tended the cattle, the crops, and the small vineyard. The restorer and the staff existed in something resembling a cold peace. They had been told he was an Italian named Alessio Vianelli, the son of an Italian diplomat who had lived abroad for much of his life. The restorer’s name was not Alessio Vianelli, nor was he the son of a diplomat, or even an Italian. His real name was Gabriel Allon, and he came from the Valley of Jezreel in Israel.

  He was below average in height, perhaps five-eight, and had the spare physique of a cyclist. His face was high at the forehead and narrow at the chin, and his long bony nose looked as though it had been carved from wood. His eyes were a shocking shade of emerald green; his short dark hair was shot with gray at the temples. Entirely ambidextrous, he could paint equally well with either hand. At the moment, he
was using his left. Glancing at his wristwatch, he saw it was nearly midnight. He debated whether to continue working. One more hour, he reckoned, and the background would be complete. Better to finish it now. The director of the Vatican Picture Gallery was keen to have the Reni on exhibit again by Holy Week, the annual springtime siege of pilgrims and tourists. Gabriel had pledged to do his utmost to meet the deadline but had made no firm promises. He was a perfectionist who viewed each assignment as a defense of his reputation. Known for the lightness of his touch, he believed a restorer should be a passing spirit, that he should come and go leaving no trace, only a painting returned to its original glory, the damage of the centuries undone.

  His studio occupied what should have been the villa’s formal sitting room. Emptied of its furnishings, it contained nothing now but his supplies, a pair of powerful halogen lamps, and a small portable stereo. La Bohème issued from its speakers, the volume lowered to the level of a whisper. He was a man with many enemies, and, unlike Guido Reni, they were not figments of his imagination. It was why he listened to his music softly—and why he always carried a loaded Beretta 9mm pistol. The grip was stained with paint: a dab of Titian, a bit of Bellini, a drop of Ra phael and Veronese.

  Despite the hour, he worked with energy and focus and managed to complete his work as the final notes of the opera faded into silence. He cleaned his brushes and palette, then reduced the power on the lamps. In the half-light, the background receded into darkness and the four figures glowed softly. Standing before the painting, one hand pressed to his chin, head tilted to one side, he planned his next session. In the morning he would begin work on the uppermost henchman, a figure in a red cap holding a spike in one hand and a mallet in the other. He felt a certain grim kinship with the executioner. In other lifetimes, concealed by other names, he had performed a similar service for his masters in Tel Aviv.

  He switched off the lamps and climbed the stone steps to his room. The bed was empty; Chiara, his wife, had been in Venice for the last three days visiting her parents. They had endured long separations because of work, but this was the first of their own choosing. A loner by nature and obsessive in his work habits, Gabriel had expected her brief absence would be easy to bear. In truth, he had been miserable without her. He took a peculiar comfort in these feelings. It was normal for a happily married man to miss his wife. For Gabriel Allon—a child of Holocaust survivors, a gifted artist and restorer, an assassin and spy—life had been anything but normal.

  He sat down on Chiara’s side of the bed and picked through the stack of reading material on her nightstand. Fashion magazines, journals on interior design, Italian editions of popular American murder mysteries, a book on child rearing—intriguing, he thought, since they were childless and, as far as he knew, weren’t expecting one. Chiara had begun carefully to broach the topic. Gabriel feared it would soon become a point of contention in their marriage. The decision to remarry had been torturous enough. The idea of having another child, even with a woman he loved as much as Chiara, was for the moment incomprehensible. His only son had been killed by a terrorist bomb in Vienna and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Leah, his first wife, had survived the explosion and resided now in a psychiatric hospital atop Mount Herzl, locked in a prison of memory and a body ravaged by fire. It was because of Gabriel’s work that his loved ones had suffered this fate. He had vowed he would never bring into the world another child who could be targeted by his enemies.

  He slipped off his sandals and crossed the stone floor to the writing desk. An icon shaped like an envelope winked at him from the screen of the laptop computer. The message had arrived several hours ago. Gabriel had been doing his best not to think about it because he knew it could have come from only one place. Ignoring it forever, however, was not an option. Better to get it over with. Reluctantly, he clicked on the icon, and a line of gibberish appeared on the screen. Typing a password into the proper window, the encryption melted away, leaving a few words in clear text:

  MALACHI REQUESTS MEETING. PRIORITY RESH.

  Gabriel frowned. Malachi was the code word for the chief of Special Operations. Priority Resh was reserved for time-sensitive situations, usually those involving questions of life and death. He hesitated, then typed in a reply. It took just ninety seconds for the response to arrive:

  MALACHI LOOKS FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.

  Gabriel switched off the computer and climbed into the empty bed. Malachi looks forward to seeing you . . . He doubted that was the case, since he and Malachi were not exactly on speaking terms. Closing his eyes, he saw a hand reaching toward an iron spike. He tapped a brush against his palette and painted until he drifted into sleep. Then he painted some more.

  4

  AMELIA , UMBRIA

  TO TRAVERSE the road from the Villa dei Fiori to the hill town of Amelia is to see Italy in all its ancient glory and, Gabriel thought sadly, all its modern distress. He had resided in Italy for much of his adult life and had witnessed the country’s slow but methodical march toward oblivion. Evidence of decay was all around: governing institutions rife with corruption and incompetence; an economy too feeble to provide enough work for the young; once-glorious coastlines fouled by pollution and sewage. Somehow, these facts escaped the notice of the world’s travel writers, who churned out countless words each year extolling the virtue and beauty of Italian life. As for the Italians themselves, they had responded to their deteriorating state of affairs by marrying late, if at all, and having fewer children. Italy’s birthrate was among the lowest in Western Europe, and more Italians were over the age of sixty than under twenty, a demographic milestone in human history. Italy was already a country of elderly people and was aging rapidly. If trends continued unabated, it would experience a decline in population not seen since the Great Plague.

  Amelia, the oldest of Umbria’s cities, had seen the last outbreak of Black Death and, in all likelihood, every one before it. Founded by Umbrian tribesmen long before the dawn of the Common Era, it had been conquered by Etruscans, Romans, Goths, and Lombards before finally being placed under the dominion of the popes. Its dun-colored walls were more than ten feet thick, and many of its ancient streets were navigable only on foot. Few Amelians sought refuge behind the safety of the walls any longer. Most resided in the new town, a graceless maze of drab apartment blocks and concrete shopping malls that spilled down the hill south of the city.

  Its main street, Via Rimembranze, was the place where most Amelians passed their ample amounts of free time. In late afternoon, they strolled the pavements and congregated on street corners, trading in gossip and watching the traffic heading down the valley toward Orvieto. The mysterious tenant from the Villa dei Fiori was among their favorite topics of conversation. An outsider who conducted his affairs politely but with an air of standoffish ness, he was the subject of substantial mistrust and no small amount of envy. Rumors about his presence at the villa were stoked by the fact that the staff refused to discuss the nature of his work. He’s involved in the arts, they would respond evasively under questioning. He prefers to be left alone. A few of the old women believed him to be an evil spirit who had to be cast out of Amelia before it was too late. Some of the younger ones were secretly in love with the emerald-eyed stranger and flirted with him shamelessly on those rare occasions when he ventured into town.

  Among his most ardent admirers was the girl who presided over the gleaming glass counter of Pasticceria Massimo. She wore the cateye spectacles of a librarian and a permanent smile of mild rebuke. Gabriel ordered a cappuccino and a selection of pastries and walked over to a table at the far end of the room. It was already occupied by a man with strawberry blond hair and the heavy shoulders of a wrestler. He was pretending to read a local newspaper—pretending, Gabriel knew, because Italian was not one of his languages.

  “Anything interesting, Uzi?” Gabriel asked in German.

  Uzi Navot glared at Gabriel for a few seconds before resuming his appraisal of the paper. “If I’m n
ot mistaken, there seems to be some sort of political crisis in Rome,” he responded in the same language.

  Gabriel sat in the empty seat. “The prime minister is involved in a rather messy financial scandal at the moment.”

  “Another one?”

  “Something to do with kickbacks on several large construction projects up north. Predictably, the opposition is demanding his resignation. He’s vowing to stay in office and fight it out.”

  “Maybe it would be better if the Church were still running the place.”

  “Are you proposing a reconstitution of the Papal States?”

  “Better a pope than a playboy prime minister with shoe-polish hair. He’s raised corruption to an art form.”

  “Our last prime minister had serious ethical shortcomings of his own.”

  “That’s true. But fortunately, he isn’t the one protecting the country from its enemies. That job still belongs to King Saul Boulevard.”