Daniel Silva GABRIEL ALLON Novels 1-4 (156 page)

“And you granted that absolution?”

“I granted him peace of mind, Monsieur Duran. I heard his confessions, I ordered penance. Within the confines of Catholic belief, I prepared his soul to meet Christ. But do I, a simple priest from a rural parish, really possess the power to absolve such sins? Even I’m not sure about that.”

“May I ask you about some of the things you discussed?” Gabriel asked tentatively. He knew he was on shaky theological ground, and the answer was what he expected.

“Many of my discussions with Herr Krebs were conducted under the seal of confession. The rest were conducted under the seal of friendship. It would not be proper for me to relate the nature of those conversations to you now.”

“But he’s been dead for twenty years.”

“Even the dead have a right to privacy.”

Gabriel heard the voice of his mother, the opening line of her testimony:
I will not tell all the things I saw. I cannot. I owe this much to the dead.

“It might help me determine whether this man is my uncle.”

Father Morales gave a disarming smile. “I’m a simple country priest, Monsieur Duran, but I’m not a complete fool. I also know my parishioners very well. Do you really believe you’re the first person to come here pretending to be looking for a lost relative? I’m quite certain that Otto Krebs could not possibly be your uncle. I’m less certain that you’re really René Duran from Montreal. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He turned to leave. Gabriel touched his arm.

“Will you at least show me his grave?”

The priest sighed, then looked up at the stained-glass windows. They had turned to black.

“It’s dark,” he said. “Give me a moment.”

He crossed the altar and disappeared into the vestry. A moment later he emerged wearing a tan windbreaker and carrying a large flashlight. He led them out a side portal, then along a gravel walkway between the church and the rectory. At the end of the path was a lych-gate. Father Morales lifted the latch, then switched on the flashlight and led the way into the cemetery. Gabriel walked at the priest’s side along a narrow footpath overgrown with weeds. Chiara was a step behind.

“Did you celebrate his funeral mass, Father Morales?”

“Yes, of course. In fact, I had to see to the arrangements myself. There was no one else to do it.”

A cat slipped out from behind a grave marker and paused on the footpath in front of them, its eyes reflecting like yellow beacons in the glow of the priest’s flashlight. Father Morales hissed, and the cat vanished into the tall grass.

They drew nearer the trees at the bottom of the cemetery. The priest turned left and led them through knee-deep grass. Here the path was too narrow to walk side by side, so they moved single file, with Chiara holding Gabriel’s hand for support.

Father Morales, nearing the end of a row of gravestones, stopped walking and shone his flashlight down at a 45-degree angle. The beam fell upon a simple head-stone bearing the name OTTO KREBS. It listed the year of his birth as 1913 and the year of his death as 1983. Above the name, beneath a small oval of scratched and weathered glass, was a photograph.

GABRIEL CROUCHED AND, brushing away a layer of powdery dust, examined the face. Evidently it had been taken some years before his death, because the man it depicted was middle-aged, perhaps in his late forties. Gabriel was certain of only one thing. It was not the face of Erich Radek.

“I assume it’s not your
uncle,
Monsieur Duran?”

“Are you certain the photograph is of him?”

“Yes, of course. I found it myself, in a strongbox containing a few of his private things.”

“I don’t suppose you’d allow me to see his things?”

“I no longer have them. And even if I did—”

Father Morales, leaving the thought unfinished, handed Gabriel the flashlight. “I’ll leave you alone now. I can find my way without the light. If you would be so kind as to leave it at the rectory door on your way out. It was a pleasure meeting you, Monsieur Duran.”

With that, he turned and vanished among the gravestones.

Gabriel looked up at Chiara. “It should be Radek’s picture. Radek went to Rome and obtained a Red Cross passport in the name of Otto Krebs. Krebs went to Damascus in 1948, then emigrated to Argentina in 1963. Krebs registered with the Argentine police in this district. This
should
be Radek.”

“Meaning?”

“Someone else went to Rome posing as Radek.” Gabriel pointed at the photograph on the gravestone. “It was this man. This is the Austrian who went to the Anima seeking help from Bishop Hudal. Radek was somewhere else, probably still hiding in Europe. Why else would he go to such lengths? He wanted people to believe he was long gone. And in the event someone ever went looking for him, they would follow the trail from Rome to Damascus to Argentina and then find the wrong man—Otto Krebs, a lowly hotel worker who’d scraped together enough money to buy a few acres along the Chilean border.”

“You still have one major problem,” Chiara said. “You can’t
prove
Ludwig Vogel is really Erich Radek.”

“One step at a time,” Gabriel said. “Making a man disappear is not so simple. Radek would have needed help. Someone else has to know about this.”

“Yes, but is he still alive?”

Gabriel stood and looked in the direction of the church. The bell tower appeared in silhouette. Then he noticed a figure walking toward them through the gravestones. For a moment he thought it was Father Morales; then, as the figure drew nearer, he could see that it was a different man. The priest was thin and small. This man was squat and powerfully built, with a quick, rolling gait that propelled him smoothly down the hill among the grave markers.

Gabriel raised the flashlight and shone it toward him. He glimpsed the face briefly before the man shielded it behind a large hand: bald, bespectacled, thick eyebrows of gray and black.

Gabriel heard a noise behind him. He turned and shone the flashlight toward the woods along the perimeter of the cemetery. Two men in dark clothing were coming out of the trees at a run, compact submachine guns in their hands.

Gabriel trained the beam once again on the man coming down through the headstones and saw that he was drawing a weapon from the inside of his jacket. Then, suddenly, the gunman stopped walking. His eyes were fixed not on Gabriel and Chiara but on the two men coming out of the trees. He stood motionless for no more than a second—then abruptly he put the gun away, turned, and ran in the other direction.

By the time Gabriel turned again, the two men with the submachine guns were a few feet away and coming hard on the run. The first collided with Gabriel, driving him down into the hard soil of the graveyard. Chiara managed to shield her face as the second gunman knocked her to the ground, too. Gabriel felt a gloved hand clamp across his mouth, then the hot breath of his attacker in his ear.

“Relax, Allon. You’re among friends.” He spoke English with an American accent. “Don’t make this difficult for us.”

Gabriel pulled the hand off his mouth and looked into his attacker’s eyes. “Who are you?”

“Think of us as your guardian angels. That man walking toward you was a professional assassin, and he was about to kill you both.”

“And what are you going to do with us?”

The gunmen pulled Gabriel and Chiara to their feet and led them out of the cemetery into the trees.

PART THREE

The River of Ashes

27

PUERTO BLEST, ARGENTINA

T
HE FOREST FELL away sharply from the edge of the cemetery into the void of a blackened ravine. They clambered down the steep slope, picking their way through the trees. The evening was moonless, the darkness absolute. They walked single file, one American in front, followed by Gabriel and Chiara, another American at the back. The Americans wore night-vision goggles. They moved, in Gabriel’s opinion, like elite soldiers.

They came to a small, well-concealed encampment: black tent, black sleeping bags, no sign of a fire or stove for cooking. Gabriel wondered how long they’d been here, watching the cemetery. Not long, judging from the growth on their cheeks. Forty-eight hours, maybe less.

The Americans started packing up. Gabriel tried for a second time to determine who they were and whom they worked for. He was met by weary smiles and stony silence.

It took them a matter of minutes to break down the camp and obliterate any last trace of their presence. Gabriel volunteered to shoulder one of the packs. The Americans refused.

They started walking again. Ten minutes later, they were standing at the bottom of the ravine in a rocky stream bed. A vehicle awaited them, concealed beneath a camouflage tarpaulin and pine branches. It was an old Rover with a spare tire mounted on the hood and jerry cans of extra fuel on the back.

The Americans chose the seating arrangements, Chiara in front, Gabriel in back, with a gun aimed at his stomach in the event he suddenly lost faith in the intentions of his rescuers. They lurched along the streambed for a few miles, splashing through the shallow water, before turning onto a dirt track. Several miles farther on, they came to the highway leading out of Puerto Blest. The American turned right, toward the Andes.

“You’re heading toward Chile,” Gabriel pointed out.

The Americans laughed.

Ten minutes later, the border: one guard, shivering in a brick blockhouse. The Rover shot across the frontier without slowing and headed down the Andes toward the Pacific.

AT THE NORTHERN END of the Gulf of Ancud lies Porto Montt, a resort town and cruise-ship port of call. Just outside the town is an airport with a runway long enough to accommodate a Gulfstream G500 executive jet. It was waiting on the tarmac, engines whining, when the Rover arrived. A gray-haired American stood in the doorway. He welcomed Gabriel and Chiara aboard and introduced himself with little conviction as “Mr. Alexander.” Gabriel, before settling himself into a comfortable leather seat, asked where they were going. “We’re going home, Mr. Allon. I suggest you and your friend try to get some rest. It’s a long flight.”

THE CLOCKMAKER DIALED the number in Vienna from his hotel room in Bariloche.

“Are they dead?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“What happened?”

“To be perfectly honest,” said the Clockmaker, “I don’t have a fucking clue.”

28

THE PLAINS, VIRGINIA

T
HE SAFE HOUSE is located in a corner of the Virginia horse country where wealth and privilege meet the hard reality of rural southern life. It is reached by way of a twisting, rolling roadway lined with tumbledown barns and clapboard bungalows with broken cars in the yards. There is a gate; it warns that the property is private, but omits the fact that, technically speaking, it is a government facility. The drive is gravel and nearly a mile in length. To the right is a thick wood; to the left, a pasture surrounded by a split-rail fence. The fence caused something of a scandal among the local craftsmen when the “owner” hired an outside firm to handle the construction. Two bay horses reside in the pasture. According to Agency wits, they are subjected, like all other employees, to annual polygraphs to make certain they haven’t gone over to the other side, whatever side that might be.

The Colonial-style house is located at the top of the property and surrounded by towering shade trees. It has a copper roof and a double porch. The furnishings are rustic and comfortable, inviting cooperation and camaraderie. Delegations from friendly services have stayed there. So have men who have betrayed their country. The last was an Iraqi who helped Saddam try to build a nuclear bomb. His wife was hoping for an apartment in the famous Watergate and complained bitterly throughout her stay. His sons set fire to the barn. Management was pleased to see them leave.

On that afternoon, new snowfall covered the pasture. The landscape, drained of all color by the heavily tinted windows of the hulking Suburban, appeared to Gabriel as a charcoal sketch. Alexander, reclining in the front seat with his eyes closed, came suddenly awake. He yawned elaborately and squinted at his wristwatch, then frowned when he realized it was set to the wrong time.

It was Chiara, seated at Gabriel’s side, who noticed the bald, sentinellike figure standing at the balustrade on the upper porch. Gabriel leaned across the back seat and peered up at him. Shamron raised his hand and held it aloft for a moment before turning and disappearing into the house.

He greeted them in the entrance hall. Standing at his side, dressed in corduroy trousers and a cardigan sweater, was a slight man with a halo of gray curls and a gray mustache. His brown eyes were tranquil, his handshake cool and brief. He seemed a college professor, or perhaps a clinical psychologist. He was neither. Indeed, he was the deputy director for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his name was Adrian Carter. He did not look pleased, but then, given the current state of global affairs, he rarely did.

They greeted each other carefully, as men of the secret world are prone to do. They used real names, since they were all known to each other and the use of work names would have lent a farcical air to the affair. Carter’s serene gaze settled briefly on Chiara, as though she were an uninvited guest for whom an extra place would have to be set. He made no attempt to suppress his frown.