Page 126 of The Cellist

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said by way of greeting.

“Sorry, Morris. I’ve been crushed with work.”

“Is that any way to treat a friend?”

“Are you, Morris?”

“In a few short days you will realize I was the best friend you ever had.”

“Actually, I think I’m on fairly good footing with the new administration.”

“I’ll say. There’s a nasty rumor going around that you’re attending the inauguration as a guest of the president.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I was given a heads-up by the Secret Service. They also told me about this so-called threat from a Russian asset called Rebel. Needless to say, I should have heard about Rebel from you.”

“I didn’t want anything to be lost in translation.”

“Translate this,” snapped Payne. “Rebel is total bullshit. Rebel is a fantasy you’ve created to ingratiate yourself with the new crowd and get an invite to the inauguration.”

“If anyone should be attending the inauguration, it’s your boss.”

“It’s better he left town. The country needs to move on. And if you ever repeat that, I’ll denounce you from the highest mountaintop. Which is exactly where I’m headed.”

“When are you leaving Langley?”

“As soon as you tell me what really happened in France on New Year’s Eve.”

“Someone called the Russian president from a secure phone in Washington and told him that I had placed an agent close to Arkady Akimov.”

Payne said nothing.

“Who knew about my operation, Morris?”

“The people who needed to know.”

“Was the president one of them?”

“If he was,” said Payne before hanging up the phone, “he didn’t hear it from me.”

Gabriel pulled on an overcoat and a scarf and headed downstairs. Masked, he walked through the frigid, sunlit morning to Capitol Hill. Agent Emily Barnes of the United States Secret Service, an athletic-looking woman in her mid-thirties with freckled cheeks, met him at the edge of the red zone.

She handed him a set of credentials. “Are you armed?”

“No. Are you?”

She patted the side of her heavy jacket. “A SIG Sauer P229.”

Gabriel hung the credentials around his neck and followed the agent to a checkpoint, where he was thoroughly searched. Inside the red zone, they made their way to the East Front of the Capitol. The outgoing vice president, no longer speaking to the man he served faithfully for four years, was just arriving.

Agent Barnes led Gabriel through a doorway that gave on to the ground floor of the Capitol’s North Wing. “What did you think of our Beer Hall Putsch?” she asked.

“It made me sick to my stomach.”

“How about the guy with the Auschwitz hoodie?”

“I wish he had been walking down a street in Tel Aviv wearing that shirt instead of through the halls of the Capitol.”