The Cellist by Daniel Silva
21Zurich–Valley of Jezreel
A Gulfstream G550 of astounding comfort and murky registry departed Zurich’s Kloten Airport shortly before midnight. Eli Lavon reclined his seat and slept, but Gabriel plugged the flash drive into his laptop and with the cabin lights dimmed reread the dossier.
It was an impressive piece of digital detective work, all the more remarkable for the fact it was produced largely with open sources. An Instagram photo here, a name from a Swiss business registry there, real estate transactions, a few nuggets of gold unearthed from the Panama Papers, Moscow vehicle registrations, Russian passport records. When laid out in proper sequence—and viewed in proper context—the data had produced a name. Someone close to the Russian president. Someone from his inner circle. The secret guardian of his unfathomable wealth. The intelligence services of the West had been searching for this man for a very long time. Mark Preston, with documents provided by a gifted young cellist who worked for the world’s dirtiest bank, had found him.
The skies above Tel Aviv were blue-black with the approaching dawn when the G550 touched down at Ben Gurion Airport. Two SUVs waited on the tarmac. Lavon headed to his apartment in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem; Gabriel, to the safe house in the Valley of Jezreel. After placing his clothing in a plastic rubbish bag, he padded soundlessly upstairs and slipped into bed next to Chiara.
“Well?” she asked quietly.
“Well what?”
“What in God’s name was Sarah Bancroft doing in Viktor Orlov’s house?”
“She found a lost Artemisia in Julian’s storeroom. Viktor agreed to buy it.”
“Is it really an Artemisia?”
“Apparently so.”
“Any good?”
“She says it needs work.”
“That makes two of us,” whispered Chiara.
Gabriel removed her silken nightgown. At times like these, he thought, there was comfort in familiar routines.
Afterward, he plunged into a dreamless sleep and woke to find his half of the bed ablaze with the sunlight pouring through the unshaded window. The air in the room was still and heavy and perfumed with the scent of earth and bovine excrement. It was the smell of the valley. As a child, Gabriel had always hated it. He much preferred the pine-scented air of Jerusalem. Or the smell of Rome, he thought suddenly, on a chill autumn evening. Bitter coffee and garlic frying in olive oil, woodsmoke and dead leaves.
He reached for his phone and was surprised to see it was nearly one in the afternoon. Chiara had left a caffe latte on the bedside table. He drank it quickly and went into the bathroom to commence his morning labors before the looking glass. Then he dressed in his usual attire, a trim-fitting charcoal gray suit and a white shirt, and headed downstairs.
Chiara, in leggings and a sleeveless pullover, was seated before her laptop at the kitchen table. Her riotous hair was wound into a bun, and a few stray tendrils lay along the damp skin of her neck. Her caramel-colored eyes were narrowed with irritation.
“I thought you were banned from Twitter,” said Gabriel.
“I’m helping my father with an article he’s writing for Il Gazzettino.”
Chiara’s father was the chief rabbi of Venice and a historian of the Holocaust in Italy. On the rare occasions he wrote for the popular press, it was usually to issue a warning.
“What’s the topic?” asked Gabriel cautiously.
“QAnon.”
“The conspiracy theory?”
“QAnon isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s a toxic, extremist ideology that borrows heavily from anti-Semitic tropes such as the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And thanks to the pandemic, it has arrived in Western Europe.”
“You forgot to mention that the FBI considers QAnon a domestic terrorism threat.”
She removed a document from the printer. It was a copy of an internal FBI memo from the bureau’s Phoenix field office warning of QAnon’s rise. “People are going to die because of this lunacy.”
“I agree. But don’t spend too much time down the rabbit hole, Chiara. You might not find your way out again.”
“Who do you suppose he is?”
“Q?”
She nodded.
“I’m Q.”
“Are you really?” She regarded Gabriel for a moment through her reading glasses. “I’m suddenly feeling quite cheap.”
“Why?”
“I allowed you to have your way with me, and now you’re fleeing the scene of the crime.”
“If I recall, you were the one who initiated the activity.” He took down a mug from the cupboard and poured coffee from the thermos flask. “Where are the children?”
“I haven’t a clue, but I’m sure I’ll hear about it later.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, Gabriel. These past few months have been wonderful for them. A part of me is sorry we can’t stay longer.”
“Why are we leaving?”
“Because the children start school next month. Remember?”
“I have a feeling they won’t be in school long.”
“Don’t say that.”
“A rise in infection rates is inevitable, Chiara. The prime minister will have no choice but to shut down the country again.”
“For how long?”
“Until next spring, I’d say. But once we get a sufficient percentage of the population vaccinated, life will return almost to normal. I’m confident we’ll get there much faster than the rest of the developed world.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I’m the director-general of the Office. I know things.”
“Do you know who killed Viktor Orlov?”
“I tried to tell you last night, but I was too busy having my way with you.” Gabriel fished the flash drive from his pocket.
“What is that?”
“A portable storage device with a terabyte of memory.”
Chiara rolled her eyes. “Where did you get it?”
“A woman who works for the Zurich office of RhineBank. It contains a dossier written by an open-source investigative journalist named Mark Preston.”
“And the subject of the dossier?”
“A Russian billionaire living on the shores of Lake Geneva.”
“How nice. Does the billionaire have a name?”
“Arkady Akimov.”
“Never heard of him.”
“That’s probably not an accident.”
“How does he make his money?”
“He owns an oil trading firm called NevaNeft, among other things. NevaNeft purchases Russian oil at a steep discount and delivers it to clients in Western Europe at a windfall profit.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Preston is convinced that Arkady is the one who’s holding the bulk of the Russian president’s personal fortune.”
“Oh, dear.”
“I’m afraid it gets better.”
“How is that possible?”
“Many of Arkady’s employees are former Russian intelligence officers. Interestingly enough, they all seem to work for the same small subsidiary of his company.”
“Doing what?”
“Preston wasn’t able to determine that, but I know someone who might be able to help.” He paused, then added, “And so can you.”
“How?”
“By printing the dossier.” Gabriel inserted the flash drive into Chiara’s computer. “The password is the Haydn Group. The letter G is capitalized.”