“Are you finished, Professor?”
Lavon slipped the photo into the breast pocket of his jacket. Gabriel ordered two plates of spaghetti con carciofi and briefed Lavon on the assignment as they ate the last of the fish.
“And if he’s clean when he gets to Tre Scalini?” Lavon asked. “What happens then?”
“I want you to have a go at him in that fluent Russian of yours. Back him into a corner and see if he breaks.”
“And if he insists on talking to you?”
“Then you tell him to visit one more Roman tourist attraction.”
“Which one?”
Lavon, after hearing Gabriel’s answer, picked at the corner of his napkin in silence for a moment. “It certainly meets your requirements for a public place, Gabriel. But I doubt that your friend His Holiness will be pleased if he ever finds out you used his church for a clandestine meeting.”
“It’s a basilica, Eli. And His Holiness will never know a thing.”
“Unless something goes wrong.”
“It’s my honeymoon. What could go wrong?”
The waiter appeared with the two plates of pasta. Lavon glanced at his wristwatch.
“Are you sure we have time for lunch?”
“Eat your pasta, Eli. You have a long walk ahead of you.”
7 ROME
They finished their lunch at a slightly un-Roman pace and departed the ghetto aboard the Piaggio scooter. Gabriel dropped Lavon near the Excelsior and rode to the Piazza di Spagna, where he took a window table at Caffè Greco. He appeared to be engrossed in his copy of La Repubblica as Boris Ostrovsky came strolling along the Via Condotti. Lavon was trailing fifty yards behind. He was still wearing his ascot, which meant he had seen no sign of surveillance.
Gabriel finished his coffee while checking Lavon’s tail, then paid the check and rode to the Trevi Fountain. He was standing near the figure of Neptune ’s rearing seahorse when Ostrovsky shouldered his way through the crowd of tourists and stood along the balustrade. The Russian was old enough to have endured the hardships of “developed Socialism” and seemed genuinely offended by the sight of rich Westerners hurling money into a work of art commissioned by the papacy. He dipped his handkerchief into the water and used it to dab the perspiration from his forehead. Then, reluctantly, he dug a single coin from his pocket and flung it into the fountain before turning and walking away. Gabriel glimpsed Lavon as he started after him. He was still wearing his ascot.
The third stop on the itinerary was a slightly shorter walk, but the portly Russian appeared footsore and weary by the time he finally labored up the front steps of the Pantheon. Gabriel was standing at the tomb of Raphael. He watched Ostrovsky stroll once around the interior of the rotunda, then stepped outside onto the portico, where Lavon was leaning against a column.
“What do you think?”
“I think we’d better get him into a chair at Tre Scalini before he passes out.”
“Is there anyone following him?”
Lavon shook his head. “Clean as a whistle.”
Just then Ostrovsky emerged from the rotunda and headed down the steps toward the Piazza Navona. Lavon gave him a generous head start before setting out after him. Gabriel climbed aboard the Piaggio and headed to the Vatican.
It had been a Roman racetrack once. Indeed, the baroque structures along its elliptical perimeter were built upon the ruins of ancient grandstands. There were no more chariot races and sporting contests in the Piazza Navona, only a never-ending carnival-like atmosphere that made it one of the most popular and crowded squares in all of Rome. For his observation post, Eli Lavon had chosen the Fontana de Moro, where he was pretending to watch a cellist performing Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G Major. In reality, his gaze was focused on Boris Ostrovsky, who was settling into a table, fifty yards away, at Tre Scalini. The Russian ordered only a small bottle of mineral water, which the white-jacketed waiter took an eternity to deliver. Lavon took one final look around the square, then walked over and sat down in the empty seat.
“You really should order something more than water, Boris. It’s bad manners.”
Lavon had spoken in rapid Russian. Ostrovsky responded in the same language.
“I’m a Russian journalist. I don’t take beverages in public unless they come with a cap on them.”
He regarded Lavon and frowned, as though he had decided the small man in the crumpled tweed jacket could not possibly be the legendary Israeli agent whom he had read about in the newspapers.
“Who are you?”
“None of your business.”
Another frown. “I did everything I was told to do. Now, where is he?”
“Who?”
“The man I want to speak with. The man called Allon.”
“What makes you think we would ever let you anywhere near him? No one summons Gabriel Allon. It’s always the other way around.”
A waiter sauntered over to the table; Lavon, in respectable Italian, ordered two coffees and a plate of tartufo. Then he looked again at Ostrovsky. The Russian was perspiring freely now and glancing nervously around the piazza. The front of his shirt was damp and beneath each arm was a dark blossom of sweat.
“Something bothering you, Boris?”
“Something is always bothering me. It’s how I stay alive.”
“Who are you afraid of?”
“The siloviki,” he said.
“The siloviki? I’m afraid my Russian isn’t that good, Boris.”
“Your Russian is very good, my friend, and I’m a bit surprised you haven’t heard the word before. It’s how we refer to the former KGB men who are now running my country. They do not take kindly to dissent, and that’s putting it mildly. If you cross them, they will kill you. They kill in Moscow. They kill in London. And they wouldn’t hesitate to kill here”-Ostrovsky looked around the lively piazza-“in the historic center of Rome.”
“Relax, Boris. You’re clean. No one followed you here.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re good at what we do.”
“They’re better, my friend. They’ve had a lot of practice. They’ve been at it since the Revolution.”
“All the more reason why you’re not going anywhere near the man you wish to speak to. Give me the message, Boris, and I’ll give it to Allon. It’s much safer that way for everyone. It’s the way we do things.”
“The message I have to deliver is of the utmost gravity. I speak to him and only him.”
The waiter appeared with the coffee and chocolate. Lavon waited until he was gone before speaking again.
“I am a good friend of the man in question. I’ve known him for a long time. If you give me the message, you can be sure it will reach his ears.”
“I meet with Allon or I go back to Moscow in the morning and meet with no one at all. The choice is yours.” Greeted by silence, the Russian pushed his chair away from the table and stood. “I risked my life coming here. Many of my fellow journalists have been murdered for far less.”
“Sit down,” Lavon said calmly. “You’re making a scene.”