The Cellist by Daniel Silva
65Washington
Twelve interminable minutes elapsed before the first ambulance was able to make its way through the military checkpoints. The EMTs were confronted with two gunshot victims, one female, the other male. The female, a compact woman wearing a woolen overcoat, had been shot twice in the back and was unresponsive. The male, moderate height and build, perhaps early sixties, was bleeding heavily from a cavernous through-and-through wound a few centimeters beneath his left clavicle. He was no longer conscious. He had a pulse, but barely.
He was still alive when the ambulance reached George Washington University Hospital, but he died in the level-one trauma center at 2:47 p.m. Resuscitated, he died a second time while undergoing surgery, but once again doctors were able to restart his heart. Shortly after six that evening, he was stable enough to be moved to the critical care unit. The hospital listed his condition as grave, which was optimistic. He was alive, but barely.
The doctors were not told the name of the patient whose life they were desperately trying to save, but the phalanx of Secret Service agents and Metropolitan Police officers standing watch outside the trauma center’s doors suggested he was a man of some importance. So, too, did the arrival of several officials from the Israeli Embassy, including the ambassador. He confirmed that the patient was a senior official of the Israeli government involved in security and intelligence. It was essential, he said, that his identity, even his presence in the hospital, remain a secret—and that he survive.
“Please,” begged the ambassador, his eyes damp with tears, “do not let this man die. Not like this.”
The comment was a reference to the identity of the woman who was allegedly responsible for the patient’s grave condition: Michelle Lambert Wright, a four-term Republican congresswoman from Indiana. According to the FBI, which had assumed responsibility for the investigation, Congresswoman Wright had followed the Israeli from the East Plaza of the Capitol to the corner of New Jersey and Louisiana Avenues, where, after a brief conversation, she shot him once with her personal .357 Glock firearm before being shot twice herself. The FBI did not identify the person who killed the congresswoman, only that the individual was an agent of the Secret Service.
At the request of the Israeli government, the FBI also withheld the name of the senior Israeli official who was lying close to death in the critical care unit. But late that evening the Washington Post identified him as Gabriel Allon, the director-general of Israel’s vaunted secret intelligence service. The Post also revealed the contents of two troubling manifestos, discovered in the dead congresswoman’s Capitol Hill apartment, that suggested she was a mentally unstable adherent of the sprawling conspiracy theory known as QAnon. The first manifesto detailed her motives for assassinating the forty-sixth president of the United States on the day of his inauguration. An updated manifesto, composed the day before the ceremony, explained why she had targeted Allon instead.
The White House press secretary revealed additional shocking details during an extraordinary briefing the following afternoon. Allon, she said, had traveled to Delaware on Monday, January 18, to warn the then president-elect about a threat to his life on Inauguration Day. The plot, according to Allon, was Russian in origin and involved a figure inside the US government who held extremist views. Subsequent forensic examination of Congresswoman Wright’s phones and computers revealed that she had been in contact with someone claiming to be the shadowy Q. He had ordered the congresswoman to assassinate the new president in order to unleash the prophesized Storm and bring about the Great Awakening. But on the morning of Tuesday, January 19, he had given her a new assignment.
It was not surprising, given America’s fractured politics, that the revelations only served to widen the partisan divide. A far-right Republican congressman from Florida dismissed the so-called manifestos as clever forgeries planted by operatives of the “deep state.” His colleague from Ohio went further, suggesting that it was Congresswoman Wright, not Gabriel Allon, who had been targeted for assassination. When confronted with closed-circuit video showing the congresswoman clearly shooting Allon first, the Ohioan held his shaky ground. The video, he declared, was a deep-state fake, too.
The battle on cable news and online was even more fierce, as rival networks and purveyors of opinion waged a holy war over the terrible incident that had stained Inauguration Day in blood. There was talk of violence in the streets, of civil war and secession, even another attack on the Capitol. Those who remained faithful to the discredited prophecies of QAnon saw evidence that the forecast Storm was brewing, with one noted Q influencer predicting it would begin the instant of Allon’s death. But those who had clawed their way out of the rabbit hole and back to reality saw something more dangerous—proof that QAnon, once dismissed as a harmless conspiracy theory, had turned lethal. They called on the remaining community of believers to switch off their social media accounts and seek professional help before it was too late.
Nearly lost in the rancor was the fact that Gabriel Allon, by inadvertently making himself the target of the Russian assassination plot, might well have saved the republic. Unconscious and on numerous means of life support, he was oblivious to the events swirling around him. Finally, three interminable days after the shooting, he opened his eyes for the first time. When asked by his doctors if he knew where he was and what had happened, he indicated that he did. He was alive, but barely.
The CIA gave Chiara and the children the run of an old safe house on N Street in Georgetown. Barred from the hospital by Covid restrictions, they anxiously awaited each update on Gabriel’s condition. Forty-eight hours after regaining consciousness, he showed signs of marked improvement. And when another two days passed with no further complications, the doctors expressed guarded confidence the worst was behind him. That evening Chiara traveled from Georgetown to Foggy Bottom in an embassy car, just to be nearer to him. When told of her proximity, he smiled for the first time.
They spoke briefly by video call the following morning. Chiara told Gabriel that he looked wonderful, which wasn’t at all true. Drawn and gaunt, his face etched with pain, he looked positively dreadful, scarcely like himself. Nevertheless, the doctors assured her he was continuing to make good progress. The .357 round, they explained, had left a tunnel of destruction in its wake—torn blood vessels, soft tissue damage, shattered bones. His recovery, they warned, would be lengthy and difficult.
As if to prove them wrong, he rose from his bed and took a few hesitant steps along the corridor. He walked a little farther the following day, and by the end of the week he was able to make a complete circuit of the critical care unit. This earned him the privilege of a room with a window overlooking Twenty-Third Street. Chiara and the children waved to him from the sidewalk, watched over by a team of embassy security guards in khaki vests.
The new president telephoned that evening. He said he had been receiving daily updates and was pleased by Gabriel’s progress. He asked whether there was anything he could do.
“Impose crushing sanctions on Russia,” answered Gabriel.
“I’m announcing them tomorrow along with the seizure of several billion dollars’ worth of looted assets hidden here in the United States. We’ll hit them with another round of sanctions once the intelligence community determines to their satisfaction that the Kremlin was behind the attempt on your life.”
“Better mine than yours, Mr. President. I only hope you can forgive me for ruining your inauguration by getting myself shot.”
He allowed himself to be debriefed by a team from Langley and submitted to a video interview with the FBI. Agent Emily Barnes of the Secret Service, who was on administrative leave pending an internal review of her actions, rang him from her apartment in Arlington.
“Sorry, Director Allon. I should have put her on the ground the instant she raised that gun.”
“Why were you even there?”
“She walked right past me at the Capitol. We’re trained to spot people who are contemplating an act of violence. She might as well have been wearing a neon sign. When she followed you down the hill to New Jersey Avenue, I knew you were in trouble, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“She was a member of Congress.”
The following morning, he walked five full circuits of the floor, which earned him a rousing ovation from the nursing staff. For his reward, he was poked and prodded by the doctors, who signed the papers authorizing his release. The bill for his care was astronomical. The president insisted on paying. It was, he said, the least he could do.
For the first time in three weeks, Gabriel dressed himself in proper clothing. Downstairs, a CIA security man helped him into the backseat of an armored SUV. The driver took him on a final tour of the snow-covered city—the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the corner of New Jersey and Louisiana Avenues. The sidewalk was stained with blood, his or hers, Gabriel could not tell. He stood there for a moment, hoping to hear his mother’s voice, but she was lost to him once more.
Their last stop was the old redbrick safe house on N Street in Georgetown. During the drive to Dulles Airport, Chiara rested her head on Gabriel’s shoulder and wept. At times like these, he thought, there was comfort in familiar routines.