Page 61 of The Other Woman

“But not in Bern,” said Gabriel. “That boy-girl team you sent into the Schweizerhof were rather hard to miss. So was Dmitri Sokolov.”

“A protégé of Sasha’s.”

“I suppose Sasha deliberately chose Dmitri so there would be no confusion.”

“He does cut quite a dashing figure on the Geneva party circuit.”

“What was in the envelope?”

“You tell me.”

Photographs, said Gabriel, of Alistair Hughes entering and leaving Privatklinik Schloss.

“Kompromat.”

“I don’t suppose there was a chance Alistair was going to leave Bern alive.”

“None whatsoever. But even we were surprised when he came running helter-skelter out of the hotel.”

“Who was driving the car?”

Sergei Morosov hesitated, then said, “I was.”

“And what if Alistair hadn’t presented you with such an easy opportunity to kill him?”

“We had the plane.”

“Plane?”

“The return flight to Vienna. While we were watching Alistair, we figured out how to get a bomb on board. Bern Airport isn’t exactly Heathrow or Ben Gurion.”

“You would have killed all those innocent people in order to kill one man?”

“When making an omelet...”

“I doubt the civilized world would see it that way,” said Gabriel. “Especially when they heard it directly from the mouth of a senior KGB officer.”

“We’re called the SVR now, Allon. And we had a deal.”

“Indeed, we did. You were supposed to tell me everything in exchange for your life. Unfortunately, you haven’t lived up to your end of the bargain.”

Sergei Morosov managed a smile. “The name of the mole? Is that what you want?”

Gabriel smiled in return.

“Do you really think,” asked Sergei Morosov, his tone belittling, “that the great Sasha would tell me such a thing? Only a tiny cadre of officers at Moscow Center know the mole’s identity.”

“What about the woman?” asked Gabriel. “The illegal who poses as a Brazilian national?”

“You can be sure she and the mole never meet face-to-face.”

Gabriel asked for the address of the dead drop in Montreal. Sergei Morosov replied that the information was obsolete. Sasha had shut it down and set up a new drop.

“Where?”

Sergei Morosov was silent.

“Would you like me to have the technicians play back the part of your interrogation where you admit to killing MI6’s Vienna Head of Station?”