The Cellist by Daniel Silva
43Tel Aviv–Langley, Virginia
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh claimed to be nothing more than a lowly professor of physics at Imam Hussein University in downtown Tehran. In point of fact, he was a senior official in the Iranian Ministry of Defense, a career officer of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the leader of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Four of its top scientists had died violently at the hands of Office assassins. But Fakhrizadeh, who lived in a walled compound and was surrounded always by a large detail of bodyguards, had survived several attempts on his life. His run of good fortune ended, however, on the last Friday of November 2020, on a road near the town of Absard. The operation, months in the planning, unfolded with the precision of a Haydn string quartet. By nightfall, the entire twelve-member Office hit team had slipped out of the country, and the leading light of Iran’s nuclear program was lying in his coffin, wrapped in a burial shroud.
Gabriel presided over Fakhrizadeh’s assassination from the ops center at King Saul Boulevard. Among the first phone calls he received in the aftermath was from CIA director Morris Payne—hardly surprising, for Gabriel had neglected to inform Langley the hit was imminent. After offering his grudging congratulations, Payne wondered whether Gabriel was free to come to Washington for an operational postmortem. Payne had a hole in his schedule on Monday. The hole, he said, had Gabriel’s name on it.
“Tuesday would be better, Morris.”
“In that case,” replied Payne, “I’ll see you Monday morning at ten.”
In truth, Gabriel was anxious to make the trip, for it was long overdue. He spent the weekend with Chiara and the children in Jerusalem and, late Sunday evening, boarded his plane for the twelve-hour flight to Washington. An Agency reception committee met him on the tarmac of Dulles Airport and drove him to Langley. Morris Payne, never one to stand on ceremony, received Gabriel in his seventh-floor office rather than the gleaming white lobby. Big and bluff with a face like an Easter Island statue, Payne was West Point, Ivy League law, private enterprise, and a deeply conservative former member of Congress from one of the Dakotas. A devout Christian, he possessed a volcanic temper and a remarkable mastery of profanity, which he displayed for Gabriel while berating him over the Fakhrizadeh assassination. In Payne’s version of events, Gabriel had committed a betrayal of biblical proportions by failing to warn him in advance of the operation. Eager to resolve the matter, Gabriel admitted wrongdoing and asked for absolution.
Payne’s anger eventually subsided. They were, after all, close allies who had accomplished much together during the president’s four years in office. Payne was one of the so-called adults in the room who had attempted to constrain the president’s worst impulses. Unlike the other grown-ups—the decorated generals and the experienced foreign policy hands—he had managed to stay in the president’s good graces, mainly through constant flattery of his fragile ego. There was talk he intended to take up the president’s populist mantle and make a run for the White House in the next election cycle. For now, he was the leader of an agency his boss loathed. Each day, he dutifully signed off on the intelligence to be included in the President’s Daily Brief. He admitted to Gabriel that he carefully curated the material to keep America’s most sensitive secrets out of the hands of the commander in chief.
“Has he noticed?”
“He hasn’t even bothered to read the PDB in months. For all intents and purposes, the national security apparatus of the world’s most powerful nation is on autopilot.”
“How much longer does he intend to contest the results of the elections?”
“I’m afraid it’s a fight to the death. It’s the only way he knows how to play the game. Just ask his ex-wives.” Payne glanced at his watch. “The chief of the Persia House would like to join us, if you don’t mind.”
“In a minute, Morris. There’s something I need to discuss with you in private first. It concerns an operation we launched after Viktor Orlov’s assassination in London.”
“How did you get mixed up in the Orlov business?”
“It’s a long story, Morris.”
“Where is this operation of yours taking place?”
“Geneva.”
With his expression, Payne made it clear that Geneva, a city of culture and international diplomacy, was not to his liking. “The target?” he asked.
“Arkady Akimov. He runs a company called—”
“I know who Arkady Akimov is.”
“Did you know that he’s smuggling the Tsar’s money out of Russia and hiding it in the West? Or that he’s running a private intelligence service known as the Haydn Group from his office in the Place du Port?”
“We’ve heard rumors to that effect.”
“Why haven’t you done anything about it?”
“Because the president is allergic to operations against Russian financial interests. He turns purple if I even mention the word Russia.”
“Which is why I didn’t invite you to the party, Morris.”
“So why are you telling me about this now?”
“Thirteen ninety-five Brickell Avenue. It’s a sixty-story tower in Miami’s financial district.”
“What about it?”
“Arkady and I bought it last week with money looted from Russia’s Federal Treasury.” Gabriel smiled. “It was a steal at four hundred million.”
“Which firms are handling the mirror trades?” asked Payne when Gabriel had finished the briefing.
“Actually, only one financial institution is involved.”
“American?”
“German.”
“RhineBank?”
“How did you guess?”
“You are aware of the fact,” said Payne carefully, “that RhineBank is the president’s primary lender.”
“I’m not interested in the president’s finances, Morris. I just want you to quietly ask the Treasury Department and the Fed to turn a blind eye to my activities for the moment.”
“You neglected to mention the name of the Geneva-based private equity firm you’re using.”
“Global Vision Investments.”
“Saint Martin Landesmann? That tree-hugging leftist?”
“That’s one way of describing him.”
“I hear he’s in the democracy business now.”
“He got into it at my suggestion. I created the Global Alliance for Democracy in order to place Martin on the Haydn Group’s radar.”
Morris Payne smiled in spite of himself. “Not bad, Gabriel. But what is the goal of this operation?”
“Once Arkady and I complete our shopping spree, I will ask the United States to seize the assets we purchased with looted Russian funds and freeze Arkady’s bank accounts worldwide. Given the pro-Russian sympathies of your boss, this reckoning will necessarily have to wait until after the inauguration.”
“What makes you think the new crowd will go for it?”
“Come on, Morris. Really.”
“And the British?” asked Payne.
“Downing Street will target Arkady’s assets in the United Kingdom, and simultaneously the Swiss authorities will shut down his operation in Geneva and expel his workforce, including the employees of the Haydn Group. Arkady will have no choice but to return to Moscow.”
“If you’re right about the Haydn Group, their computers are the intelligence equivalent of the Holy Grail.”
“I’ve already laid claim to them.”
“Who gets the money?”
“Anyone but the Tsar.”
“If we seize it, the blowback from Moscow will be intense.”
“That money is a weapon of mass destruction, Morris. He’s using it to weaken the West from within. The West’s internal political divisions are real, but the Russians have been fanning the flames. They’re good at this game. They’ve been playing it for more than a century. But now they have a new weapon at their disposal. The supremacy of the dollar gives the United States the power to disarm them. You must act.”
“Not me. I’m out of here on January twentieth at noon.” Payne paused, then added, “If I survive that long.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Apparently, I haven’t shown sufficient loyalty in the aftermath of the election.”
“What did he want you to do?”
“Next subject,” said Payne.
“The mirror trades.”
“I’ll talk to Treasury and the Fed.”
“Quietly, Morris.”
“The Agency knows how to keep a secret.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” said Gabriel. “Do you remember that code-word operation I was running in Syria against the Islamic State? The one your boss described in great detail to the Russian foreign minister in the Oval Office?”
“I turned purple,” said Payne.
“That makes two of us, Morris.”