The Cellist by Daniel Silva

17Erlenbach, Switzerland

Christoph Bittel suggested that Gabriel run his operation from one of the NDB’s existing safe houses. Not surprisingly, Gabriel politely declined. The safe houses, he reckoned, were littered with high-quality microphones and cameras—electronics being one aspect of the trade at which the Swiss excelled. Housekeeping found a lakefront dwelling in the Zurich suburb of Erlenbach last occupied by an executive from Goldman Sachs. Gabriel paid the yearlong lease in full and then quickly dissolved the shell corporation through which the transaction had been carried out, thus depriving his newfound Swiss allies of any means of penetrating his global network of covert finances.

He settled into the villa late Monday afternoon along with the other two members of his nascent operational team. And at 8:15 a.m. on Tuesday, they committed their first criminal offense on Swiss soil. The primary perpetrator was Christopher Keller, who slipped unobserved into Isabel Brenner’s apartment as she was walking toward the tram stop in the Römerhofplatz. While inside, he copied the contents of her laptop, compromised her Wi-Fi network, planted a pair of audio transmitters, and conducted a swift and minimally invasive search of her possessions. Her medicine cabinet contained no evidence of illness or physical maladies, save for an empty bottle of sleeping tablets. Her clothing and undergarments were tasteful and restrained, nothing suggesting a dark side, and the many serious works of literature lining her shelves suggested she preferred to do her reading in English rather than her native German. The compact discs stacked atop her British-made audio system were predominantly classical, along with a few jazz masterworks by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett. In the sitting room, next to a music stand, was a fiberglass cello case.

“Did it contain an actual cello?” asked Gabriel.

“I didn’t look,” admitted Christopher.

“Why not?”

“Because one rarely keeps a cello case as a decorative piece. One keeps a cello case to store and transport one’s cello.”

“Maybe it belongs to her boyfriend.”

“There is no boyfriend. At least not one who spends any time in her apartment.”

The laptop yielded the number for Isabel’s mobile phone. And at half past one, while lunching with a colleague at a café near the office, she succumbed to a malware attack by Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence service. Within minutes, the phone’s operating system began uploading eighteen months’ worth of emails, text messages, calendar entries, GPS location data, telephone metadata, credit card information, and her Internet browsing history. In addition, the malware seized control of the camera and microphone, turning the device into a full-time video and audio transmitter. Which meant that everywhere Isabel went, Gabriel and his team went with her. In the lexicon of electronic surveillance, they owned her.

The tidiness of Isabel’s digital life reinforced the impression Christopher Keller had formed during his brief visit to her apartment, that she was a person of enormous intelligence and talent, with no vices or moral shortcomings. The same could not be said, however, of the financial services firm for which she worked. Indeed, the documents taken from Isabel’s devices painted a portrait of a bank where the normal rules did not apply, where the prevailing culture was one of profit at any price, and where traders were expected to produce otherworldly returns on investment, even as their risky wagers pushed the bank to the brink of insolvency.

To serve as an ethical and legal watchdog in such an institution was a daily high-wire act, as evidenced by the email Isabel dispatched to Karl Zimmer, chief of RhineBank-Zurich, regarding a series of wire transfers carried out by the wealth management department. In all, more than $500 million had moved from banks in Latvia to RhineBank accounts in the United States. The Latvian banks, she pointed out, were known to be the first financial port of call for much of the dirty money flowing out of Russia. Nevertheless, the Zurich wealth managers had accepted the funds without performing even a modicum of due diligence. To conceal the origin of the money from American regulators, who were well aware of the Russia–Latvia connection, they stripped the country coding from the wire transfers.

“Isabel was concerned it demonstrated a clear consciousness of guilt,” explained Lavon. “I have to say, she seemed much less concerned about the legality of the transfers. It was more like a friendly warning from a loyal member of the team.”

“And how did Herr Zimmer react?” asked Gabriel.

“He suggested they discuss the matter offline. His word, not mine.”

“What was the date?”

“The seventeenth of February. Ten days later, during her lunch hour, she walked to an athletics field in District Three. The one with the red artificial running track,” added Lavon. “Her location data matches up with all the other drops as well, with the exception of the package that killed Viktor.”

“Any other interesting travel?”

“She went to the United Kingdom in mid-June and again in late July. In fact, she was there two days before Viktor was murdered.”

“London is a global financial capital,” Gabriel pointed out.

“Which makes it all the more surprising that she never set foot in RhineBank’s London office.”

“Where did she go?”

“I’m not sure. She switched off her phone for several hours on both visits.”

“How long did she stay?”

“A single night.”

“Hotel?”

“The Sofitel at Heathrow. She paid the bill with her personal credit card. Her airfare, too. On both trips she caught the first flight back to Zurich and was in the office by nine a.m.”

Isabel’s telephone, like her apartment, contained no evidence of a fiancé or a long-term romantic partner, male or female. But that evening, after boarding a Number 8 in the Paradeplatz, she arranged to have drinks on Friday with someone called Tobias. When her streetcar reached the Römerhofplatz, she picked up a few things at the Coop market and, followed by Christopher Keller, headed up the slope of the Zürichberg to her apartment. Shortly after her arrival, the two concealed microphones captured the sound of Bach’s Cello Suite in D Minor. Several minutes elapsed before Gabriel and Lavon realized they were not listening to a recording.

“Her tone is . . .”

“Intoxicating,” said Gabriel.

“And she doesn’t seem to be using sheet music.”

“Obviously, she doesn’t need it.”

“In that case,” said Lavon, “I have another question for her.”

“What’s that?”

“Why would a woman who plays the cello like that work for the world’s dirtiest bank?”

“I’ll be sure to ask her.”

“When?”

“As soon as I’m certain she’s not a Russian in a clever disguise.”

“She might not walk like a Russian,” said Lavon as Isabel began the suite’s second movement. “But she certainly plays the cello like one.”

In all, Isabel Brenner’s home computer surrendered some thirty thousand internal RhineBank documents and more than a hundred thousand emails from her corporate account. It was far too much material for Lavon to review on his own. He needed the help of an experienced financial investigator who was well versed in the wicked ways of the Kremlin’s kleptocrats. Fortunately, Gabriel knew just such a person. She was an investigative reporter from a crusading Moscow weekly that regularly exposed the misdeeds of Russia’s rich and powerful. Perhaps more important, she had been in regular if anonymous contact with Isabel Brenner for several months.

The reporter in question arrived at the safe house on Wednesday afternoon and joined Eli Lavon’s excavation of the RhineBank documents, leaving Christopher to shoulder the burden of Isabel’s surveillance alone. He followed her to work each morning and home again each evening. Most nights she practiced the cello for at least an hour before making herself something to eat and phoning her mother in Germany. She never raised the topic of her work at RhineBank. Nor did she discuss it with the small circle of friends with whom she was in regular contact. There was nothing in her communications to suggest she was an asset or officer of Russian or German intelligence. Christopher saw no evidence that anyone else was watching her.

On Thursday she had a post-work drink with a female colleague at Bar au Lac on the Talstrasse. Returning home, she practiced the cello without pause for three hours. Afterward, she watched a report on Swiss television regarding a missing Russian journalist named Nina Antonova. It seemed her colleagues at the Moskovskaya Gazeta had not heard from her since the previous Wednesday, when she flew from Zurich to London for a meeting with the magazine’s murdered owner. The Gazeta’s editor in chief had asked the British government for help in locating her. Perhaps not surprisingly, he had not made a similar request of the Kremlin.

Isabel passed a restless night and the following morning left her apartment twenty minutes later than usual. After dropping her bag in her office, she headed upstairs to the top-floor conference room for a mandatory company-wide call with the Council of Ten, the firm’s executive steering committee. She lunched alone and upon returning to the office had a testy exchange with Lothar Brandt, the head of the wealth management department. Evidently, Brandt was burning up the wires with suspect transfers. Isabel advised him to reconsider several of the larger transactions. Otherwise, he risked setting off automatic tripwires in New York and Washington. Brandt in turn advised Isabel to perform a sexual act upon herself before expelling her from his office.

The bitterness of the exchange was still evident on her face when she emerged from RhineBank at six fifteen. Christopher followed her aboard a Number 8 in the Paradeplatz, as did Nina Antonova, who claimed the seat next to her. As the streetcar lurched forward, Nina handed her a single sheet of paper. Six words, sans serif typeface, approximately twenty-point in scale.

I know who killed Viktor Orlov.

Isabel addressed Nina in German, with her eyes downcast. “I hope you sued the person who did that to your hair.”

Nina reclaimed the sheet of paper.

“I risked my life giving you those documents. Why didn’t you publish a story?”

“Viktor said it was too dangerous.”

“Am I responsible for his death?”

“No, Isabel. I am.”

“Why?”

“I’ll let my friend explain. He’d like to have a word with you tonight. Which means you’re going to have to break your date with Tobias.”

“How do you know I was meeting him?”

Nina glanced at Isabel’s phone. “Tell him you had a work emergency. Trust me, you won’t regret it.”

Isabel sent the text message, then switched off the phone without waiting for a reply. “It wasn’t a date. It was only drinks.”

“I can’t remember how many times I told myself the same thing.”

Isabel squeezed Nina’s hand. “I thought you were dead.”

“So did I,” said Nina.