Page 70 of The Collector
“Which one are you, Magnus?”
“I’ll let you be the judge.” He swallowed the last of his vodka. “What now, Allon?”
36
Berlin–Langley
Later that morning, two citizens of Denmark informed coworkers and loved ones that they would be extending their stay in Berlin for a period of forty-eight hours. One was the CEO of the country’s largest producer of oil and natural gas; the other juggled four part-time jobs in the small town of Vissenbjerg. Both were untruthful as to the reason for the change in their travel plans, and neither disclosed their present whereabouts—a stately villa on the Branitzer Platz, in the Berlin neighborhood known as Westend.
The man responsible for their confinement, the recently retired Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon, slipped out of the safe house shortly before dawn and took a taxi to Brandenburg Airport. Some twelve and a half hours later, he was in the hands of a CIA reception committee at Dulles International. It was approaching 6:00 p.m. when they escorted him through the iconic entrance of the Agency’s Original Headquarters Building. Upstairs on the seventh floor, the director regarded him warily for a long moment, as though trying to decide whether he was real or a clever new piece of Israeli technology.
“What on earth are you doing here?” he asked at last.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“My president didn’t give me much of a choice. What’s your excuse?”
“You’ll know in a minute.”
The director glanced at his watch. “I’m supposed to meet my wife for dinner in McLean at seven thirty. Is there any chance I’m going to make it?”
“No,” said Gabriel. “No chance whatsoever.”
With his tousled hair, outdated mustache, and underpowered voice, Adrian Carter did not look like the world’s most powerful intelligence officer. Indeed, he might have been mistaken for a therapist who passed his days listening to confessions of affairs and inadequacies—or a professor from a minor liberal arts college in New England, the sort who championed noble causes and was a constant thorn in the side of his dean. His unthreatening appearance, like his flair for languages, had been a valuable asset throughout his long career, both in the field and at Langley. Adversaries and allies alike tended to underestimate Carter, a blunder that Gabriel had never made.
They had worked together for the first time on a joint operation targeting a billionaire Saudi terrorist financier named Zizi al-Bakari. So successful was their collaboration that several return engagements would follow. Gabriel had willingly served as a clandestine auxiliary branch of the Agency, carrying out operations that, for political or diplomatic reasons, Carter could not undertake himself. Along the way, they managed to become the closest of friends. No one was more pleased by Adrian Carter’s long-overdue ascent to the director’s office than Gabriel. He only wished it had happened sooner. His five-year term as chief of the Office would have been much less contentious.
On that evening, however, Gabriel arrived at CIA headquarters as a private citizen with a most remarkable story to tell, a story that began when he agreed to undertake a quiet search for the world’s most famous missing painting and ended, the previous evening, with the alarming debriefing of a Russian asset code-named the Collector. Adrian Carter, a man who was not easily surprised, sat spellbound throughout.
“Where is Larsen now?” he asked at the conclusion of Gabriel’s presentation.
“Still in Berlin.”
“And he’s had no contact with the SVR?”
“Not unless he’s telepathic.”
“What about the Johansen woman?”
It seemed to Gabriel a peculiar line of inquiry, but he answered Carter’s question nevertheless. The Johansen woman, he said, was under lock and key in Berlin as well.
“What are you planning to do with her?” asked Carter.
“I made a promise I intend to keep.”
“No Italian police?”
Gabriel nodded.
“And Larsen?”
“Magnus will soon be a Danish problem.” Gabriel paused, then added, “And yours, I imagine.”
Carter did not take issue with the statement. “The question is,” he said, “do you believe him?”
“He admitted to purchasing a quantity of South African highly enriched uranium at the behest of his masters in Moscow. It’s not something a Danish energy executive would say in jest.”
Carter made a church steeple of his fingertips and pressed it thoughtfully to his lips. “When the International Atomic Energy Agency certified that South Africa had given up its weapons, itexplicitly said it had no reason to suspect that the inventory of fissile material was incomplete.”
