The Cellist by Daniel Silva
50Courchevel, France
Isabel awoke with a feeling of paralysis, and with no memory of having slept. The bed on which she lay was unfamiliar, as was the darkened room that enclosed her. The alarm on her mobile phone was bleating—curious, for she did not recall setting it. The sound of two men speaking in Russian somewhere nearby only added to her confusion.
At length, she silenced the phone and raised it to her eyes. Evidently, it was 8:15 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. But where on earth was she? She entered her eight-digit password and tapped the weather icon, and the forecast for the French ski resort of Courchevel appeared on the screen. And then she remembered. She was to attend a party that evening at the home of a Russian oligarch who wanted her to serve as his chief concealer of looted wealth and, if she were amenable, his extramarital sexual partner. At some point during the evening—the precise timing had never been made clear—she would be invited to meet a very important figure from the Kremlin. A speaker of fluent German, he would address Isabel in her native language. She was authorized to wish him a pleasant New Year but was to make no other attempt to engage him in conversation. If she was anxious during the encounter, she was at liberty to tell him so.
He’s a serial killer. He’s used to people being nervous in his presence . . .
According to Isabel’s phone, a light snow was falling. Pulling away the blackout curtain from the window, she confirmed this to be true. Then she padded into the suite’s kitchenette and switched on the Nespresso. A double Diavolitto cleared the last cobwebs of sleep from her head but left her feeling jittery and unsettled.
The sensation abated in the shower. To avoid any last-minute indecision over her clothing, she had packed a single black Max Mara cocktail-length dress, which she accessorized with a diamond bracelet, a double strand of Mikimoto pearls, and her outrageously expensive Jaeger-LeCoultre Rendez-Vous wristwatch. She had brought along a protective face mask—black, to match her dress—but she consigned it to her clutch purse. The party, illegal under France’s strict national lockdown, would undoubtedly turn out to be a superspreader event. Isabel reckoned she would be lucky to survive the night.
At nine fifteen the phone on her bedside table fluttered and flashed with an incoming call. It was Ricardo, her car had arrived. She remained in the suite for another fifteen minutes, adding a final touch of decadence to her makeup, before heading down to the lobby. Philippe the concierge practically snapped to attention as she stepped from the lift.
Outside, Thierry the bellman held an umbrella above Isabel’s head as she slipped into the back of the waiting Mercedes. Much to her relief, the driver was a handsome Frenchman called Yannick and not another Russian. As the car rolled from the curb, he switched on the sound system. Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C Major, the beautiful second movement.
Isabel felt a stab of panic. “Did Monsieur Akimov tell you to play that?” she asked.
“Who, Madame?”
“Never mind.”
Isabel contemplated her reflection in the car window. She had been touched by the magic hand, she reassured herself. She was one of them now. She owned them.
Isabel’s driver was Yannick Fournier, thirty-three, a married father of two with no criminal record who supported the Olympique Lyonnais football team. His dispatcher had instructed him to remain in the Jardin Alpin section of Courchevel until such time as the client was ready to return to her hotel. While guiding the car along the rue de Bellecôte, he recited the number for his mobile phone, which the client stored in her own device. Eli Lavon, hunched over a computer in the chalet’s makeshift ops center, snapped her photograph with the phone’s camera before she returned it to her clutch purse.
“She looks nervous,” observed Gabriel.
“He would find it odd if she wasn’t.”
“Vladimir Vladimirovich?”
“Who else?”
A silence fell between them. There was only the music from the car’s sound system.
“Why is the driver playing Haydn?” asked Gabriel. “And why a cello concerto?”
“It’s a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in them, Eli. And neither do you.”
Lavon tapped a few keys on the laptop, and the icon for an audio file appeared on the screen. He opened it, adjusted the time code, and clicked play.
“Arkady has placed his hand on you. Soon you will be as rich as an oligarch.”
Lavon clicked pause. “Don’t lose your nerve now.”
“Maybe he’s toying with me.”
Lavon clicked play a second time.
“Look around you, Isabel. Do you see any other non-Russians here? You’re one of us now. Welcome to the party that never ends.”
Lavon paused the recording. “The words of Oksana Akimova would suggest your asset is in no danger.”
“Play the rest of it.”
Lavon tapped the trackpad.
“Enjoy it while it lasts.”
The winking blue light on the computer screen indicated that Isabel’s car had arrived at the checkpoint. A moment later came the sound of two men conversing in French. One was Isabel’s driver. The other was an officer of the French Service de la Protection.
“Name?”
“Isabel Brenner.”
“Open the trunk, please.”
The inspection was brief, ten seconds, no more. Then the lid closed with a thud. Gabriel watched as the winking blue light crept forward, into the temporary Russian zone of Courchevel. In a moment his asset would be at the mercy of the Kremlin’s praetorian guard. They were fanatically devoted to the man they served, he thought. Killers in nice suits.