Page 57 of The Other Woman

“No.”

“And Lubyanka?” wondered Sergei Morosov.

Again, Gabriel acknowledged what was already well known among Russian intelligence officers of a certain age and rank, that some years ago he had been arrested in Moscow and interrogated, violently, in the cellars of Lubyanka.

“But you’ve never been to Yasenevo, have you?” asked Sergei Morosov.

“No, never.”

“Too bad. You might have liked it.”

“I doubt it.”

“Oh, they’ll let almost anyone into Lubyanka these days,” Sergei Morosov went on. “It’s something of a tourist attraction. But Yasenevo is special. Yasenevo is—”

“Moscow Center.”

Sergei Morosov smiled. “Would it be possible to have a sheet of paper and something to write with?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to draw a map of the grounds to help you better visualize what came next.”

“I have a very good imagination.”

“So I hear.”

Yasenevo, Sergei Morosov resumed, is a world unto itself, a world of privilege and power, surrounded by miles of razor wire and patrolled at all hours by guards with vicious attack dogs. The main building is shaped like a giant cruciform. About a mile to the west, hidden in a dense forest, is a colony of twenty dachas reserved for senior officers. One dacha stands slightly alone and bears a small sign that readsinner-baltic research committee, a nonsensical title, even by SVR standards. It was to this dacha that Sergei Morosov was taken under armed escort. Inside, surrounded by thousands of books and piles of dusty old files—including several that bore the stamp of the NKVD, the precursor of the KGB—a man was waiting to see him.

“Describe him, please.”

“Winner of the Vladimir Lenin look-alike contest.”

“Age?”

“Old enough to remember Stalin and to have feared him.”

“Name?”

“Let’s call him Sasha.”

“Sasha what?”

“Sasha It Doesn’t Matter. Sasha is a ghost of a man. Sasha is a state of mind.”

“Had you ever met this state of mind before?”

No, said Sergei Morosov, he had never had the honor of being introduced to the great Sasha, but he had heard whispers about him for years.

“Whispers?”

“Loose talk. You know how spies are, Allon. They love to gossip.”

“What did they say about Sasha?”

“That he ran a single asset. That this asset had been his entire life’s work. That he had been assisted in this endeavor by a legendary figure in our business.”

“Who was this legendary figure?”