The Cellist by Daniel Silva
53Rue de Nogentil, Courchevel
He hauled Isabel to her feet and frog-marched her into a luxuriously appointed dressing room. There he hurled her into a ceramic wall before thrusting her head beneath the briny, scalding water of a Jacuzzi. For all she knew, he drowned her, for when she regained consciousness, she was sprawled across the tile floor, covered in her own vomit.
“What is your name?” asked a voice from above.
“Isabel Brenner.”
“Your real name.”
“It is my real name.”
“Who are you working for?”
“Global Vision Investments.”
He picked her up like a rag doll and forced her head beneath the water a second time. She was scarcely conscious when he finally lifted her face above the surface.
“What is your name?”
“Isabel. My name is Isabel.”
“Who are you working for?”
“I used to work for RhineBank. Now I work for Martin Landesmann.”
He gave her an openhanded blow that filled her mouth with blood and sent her tumbling to the floor.
“Why are you doing this?” she sobbed.
He shook her violently. “What is your name? Your real name.”
“Isabel,” she shouted. “My name is Isabel.”
He released her and left the dressing room—for how long, she did not know. A few minutes, an hour. When he returned, he was holding an enormous fixed-weight dumbbell. He waved it about effortlessly, as though it were fashioned of papier-mâché.
“Which hand would you like to keep?”
“Please,” begged Isabel.
“Right or left? It’s up to you.”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
“Yes, I know.” He seized her left hand. “This is the most important one, isn’t it?”
He pressed her palm to the limestone tile and placed a leaden foot atop her forearm. Isabel could feel her radius bending to the point of fracture. She pummeled his leg with her right hand, but it was no use. It was as if he were made of stone.
He raised the dumbbell above his head and aimed it toward Isabel’s splayed left hand.
“Don’t drop it,” she pleaded.
“Too late.” He raised the weight a few centimeters higher. “You might want to close your eyes.”
She looked away and saw Arkady standing in the doorway of the dressing room, a look of revulsion on his face. He spoke a few words icily in Russian, and the man Isabel knew as Fletcher Billingsley of Goldman Sachs lowered the weight and removed his foot from her forearm.
Arkady was now frowning at the droplets of Isabel’s blood on the tile floor, as though concerned about their adverse effect on the property’s resale value. He covered the blood with a plush white towel and poked at it with the toe of his shoe.
“You’ll never remove it that way,” said Isabel.
“Don’t worry, we’ll give it a thorough cleaning when you’re gone.”
She wiped the blood from her face and rubbed it into the cushion of a reclining lounge chair. “What about that?”
Arkady gave her a humorless smile. “He never liked that chair to begin with.”
“Who?”
Ignoring her question, he spoke a few additional words in Russian, and Isabel’s assailant withdrew.
“I don’t suppose his name is really Fletcher Billingsley.”
“Felix Belov.”
“Where did he learn his English?”
“His father was assigned to the SVR rezidentura in New York.”
“What does he do when he’s not beating up women?”
“He works for a small subsidiary of NevaNeft. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called the Haydn Group.”
Isabel sat upright and looked deliberately at the resplendent wood cabinetry and gold fittings of the dressing room. “No sauna or steam room?”
Arkady nodded toward a passageway.
“How much did you pay for the place?”
“I believe it was twenty-five million.”
“Anonymous purchase?”
“Is there any other kind?”
“Omega Holdings?”
“Tradewinds Capital.”
“What about the place in Féchy? Is that Tradewinds, too?”
“Harbinger Management.”
“And who owns Harbinger?”
Arkady said nothing.
“Does he own NevaNeft, too?”
“Most of it.”
“Is any of it actually yours?”
“Oksana, I suppose. At least, she used to be.” He scooped up the towel from the floor and used it to wipe Isabel’s blood from the edge of the Jacuzzi. Absently, he asked, “When did you begin working for him?”
“Martin?”
“Gabriel Allon.”
Isabel didn’t bother with a denial. “How long have you known?”
“I’m the one asking the questions. And I would advise you to answer them quickly and truthfully. Otherwise, I’ll ask Felix to finish the job he started on that hand of yours.”
“I went to work for him not long after you murdered Viktor Orlov.”
“Are you a professional intelligence officer?”
“Heavens, no.”
“Were you the one who gave those documents to Nina Antonova?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Is that why you were fired from the Russian Laundromat?”
“No,” she answered. “That was Gabriel’s doing.”
Arkady folded the bloody towel carefully. “The Global Alliance for Democracy?”
“Gabriel created it in order to put a target on Martin’s back.”
“The newly discovered Artemisia? The reception at the Kunsthaus? Anna Rolfe? It was all . . .” His voice trailed off. “What about Anil Kandar? Was he in on it, too?”
“Anil’s just a greedy bastard. RhineBank is going down, Arkady. And so are you. We had you the minute you signed the paperwork for that office building in Miami.”
“Then why did you come here tonight?”
“A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
From upstairs came a swell of rapturous applause. A moment later the Russian president began to speak. No doubt from the balustrade, thought Isabel. Thugs the world over loved nothing more than to look down on their vassals from a balcony.
Arkady made a face at something his master said. “He’s rather crude, our Volodya. But then again, he always was. He would be nothing if it wasn’t for me. I was the one who chose him. I was the one who facilitated his rise through the ranks of the Kremlin bureaucracy. And I was the one who made certain he won that first presidential election. And how does he repay me? By treating me the same way he did when I was a sickly little boy from Baskov Lane who wanted to be a pianist.”
“You should have followed your dreams, Arkady.”
“I tried.” He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “You’ve made a fool out of me.”
“I’m sure I wasn’t the first.”
“I trusted you.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen when I get back to Moscow? With a bit of luck, I will fall from a window. Backwards, of course. That’s how all Russian businessmen jump from windows these days. It’s a tradition in the brave new Russia that I helped to create. We never face forward when we jump. We only fall backwards.” Quietly, he added, “At least that way we don’t see the cobbles of the courtyard rushing up to greet us.”
“Perhaps there’s a deal to be made.”
“There is,” said Arkady. “But it is you who will have to come to terms.”
“What do you want?”
“I want you to deliver Gabriel Allon into my hands so that my oldest friend in the world doesn’t kill me.” He drew his phone from the breast pocket of his jacket. “How much do you want? A billion? Two billion? Name your price, Isabel.”
“Do you really think I would take your filthy money in order to save myself?”
“It’s not my money, it’s his. And why should you be any different from all the others who’ve taken it?” He seized a handful of Isabel’s hair, his face so contorted with desperation she scarcely recognized him. “What’s it going to be, Isabel? You have one minute.”
“Sorry, Arkady. No deal.”
“A very unwise decision on your part.” He released his grip on her hair. “Perhaps you’re not the shrewd, unprincipled businesswoman I imagined you to be.”
“You’ll only make it worse for yourself by killing me.”
“Who said anything about killing?” He stretched a hand toward her swollen cheek, but she recoiled from his touch. “Tell me something. Whose idea was it for you to play ‘Vocalise’ at the reception? Yours or Allon’s?”
“Mine,” she lied.
“You really did give a beautiful performance that night. It’s a shame no one will ever hear you play it again.” He returned the phone to the breast pocket of his jacket. “Happy New Year, Isabel.”