Gaoyou 1: ROME

The call arrived at 11:42 p.m. Luigi Donati hesitated before answering. The number displayed on the screen of his telefonino belonged to Albanese. There was only one reason why he would ring at such an hour.

“Where are you, Excellency?”

“Outside the walls.”

“Ah, yes. It’s a Thursday, isn’t it?”

“Is there a problem?”

“Better not to say too much on the phone. One never knows who might be listening.”

The night into which Donati stepped was damp and cold. He was dressed in a black clerical suit and Roman collar, not the fuchsia-trimmed cassock and simar he wore around the office, which was how men of his ecclesiastical rank referred to the Apostolic Palace. An archbishop, Donati served as private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII. Tall and lean, with rich dark hair and movie-idol features, he had recently celebrated his sixty-third birthday. Age had done nothing to diminish his good looks. Vanity Fair magazine had recently christened him “Luscious Luigi.” The article had caused him no end of embarrassment inside the backbiting world of the Curia. Still, given Donati’s well-deserved reputation for ruthlessness, no one had dared to mention it to his face. No one but the Holy Father, who had teased him mercilessly.

Better not to say too much on the phone…

Donati had been preparing himself for this moment for a year or more, ever since the first mild heart attack, which he had concealed from the rest of the world and even much of the Curia. But why tonight of all nights?

The street was oddly quiet. Deathly quiet, thought Donati suddenly. It was a palazzo-lined avenue just off the Via Veneto, the sort of place a priest rarely set foot—especially a priest educated and trained by the Society of Jesus, the intellectually rigorous and sometimes rebellious order to which Donati belonged. His official Vatican car, with its SCV license plates, waited curbside. The driver was from the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the Vatican’s 130-member police force. He headed westward across Rome at an unhurried pace.

He doesn’t know…

On his mobile phone Donati scanned the websites of the leading Italian newspapers. They were in the dark. So were their colleagues in London and New York.

“Turn on the radio, Gianni.” “Music, Excellency?”

“News, please.”

It was more drivel from Saviano, another rant about how Arab and African immigrants were destroying the country, as if the Italians weren’t more than capable of making a fine mess of things themselves. Saviano had been badgering the Vatican for months about a private audience with the Holy Father. Donati, with no small amount of pleasure, had refused to grant it.

“That’s quite enough, Gianni.”

The radio went blessedly silent. Donati peered out the window of the luxury German-made sedan. It was no way for a Soldier of Christ to travel. He supposed this would be his final journey across Rome by chauffeured limousine. For nearly two decades he had served as something like the chief of staff of the Roman Catholic Church. It had been a tumultuous time—a terrorist attack on St. Peter’s, a scandal involving antiquities and the Vatican Museums, the scourge of priestly sexual abuse— and yet Donati had relished every minute of it. Now, in the blink of an eye, it was over. He was once again a mere priest. He had never felt more alone.

The car crossed the Tiber and turned onto the Via della Conciliazione, the broad boulevard Mussolini had carved through Rome’s slums. The floodlit dome of the basilica, restored to its original glory, loomed in the distance. They followed the curve of Bernini’s Colonnade to St. Anne’s Gate, where a Swiss Guard waved them onto the territory of the city-state. He was dressed in his night uniform: a blue tunic with a white schoolboy collar, knee-length socks, a black beret, a cape against the evening chill. His eyes were dry, his face untroubled.

He doesn’t know…

The car moved slowly up the Via Sant’Anna—past the barracks of the Swiss Guard, the church of St. Anne, the Vatican printing offices, and the Vatican Bank—before coming to a stop next to an archway leading to the San Damaso Courtyard. Donati crossed the courtyard on foot, boarded the most important lift in all of Christendom, and ascended to the third floor of the Apostolic Palace. He hurried along the loggia, a wall of glass on one side, a fresco on the other. A left turn brought him to the papal apartments.

Another Swiss Guard, this one in full dress uniform, stood straight as a ramrod outside the door. Donati walked past him without a word and went inside. Thursday, he was thinking. Why did it have to be a Thursday?

Eighteen years, thought Donati as he surveyed the Holy Father’s private study, and nothing had changed. Only the telephone. Donati had finally managed to convince the Holy Father to replace Wojtyla’s ancient rotary contraption with a modern multiline device. Otherwise, the room was exactly the way the Pole had left it. The same austere wooden desk. The same beige chair. The same worn Oriental rug. The same golden clock and crucifix. Even the blotter and pen set had belonged to Wojtyla the Great. For all the early promise of his papacy—the promise of a kinder, less repressive Church—Pietro Lucchesi had never fully escaped the long shadow of his predecessor.

Donati, by some instinct, marked the time on his wristwatch. It was 12:07 a.m. The Holy Father had retired to the study that evening at half past eight for ninety minutes of reading and writing. Ordinarily, Donati remained at his master’s side or just down the hall in his office. But because it was a Thursday, the one night of the week he had to himself, he had stayed only until nine o’clock.

Do me a favor before you leave, Luigi…

Lucchesi had asked Donati to open the heavy curtains covering the study’s window. It was the same window from which the Holy Father prayed the Angelus each Sunday at noon. Donati had complied with his master’s wishes. He had even opened the shutters so His Holiness could gaze upon St. Peter’s Square while he slaved over his curial paperwork. Now the curtains were tightly drawn. Donati moved them aside. The shutters were closed, too.

The desk was tidy, not Lucchesi’s usual clutter. There was a cup of tea, half empty, a spoon resting on the saucer, that had not been there when Donati departed. Several documents in manila folders were stacked neatly beneath the old retractable lamp. A report from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia regarding the financial fallout of the abuse scandal. Remarks for next Wednesday’s General Audience. The first draft of a homily for a forthcoming papal visit to Brazil. Notes for an encyclical on the subject of immigration that was sure to rile Saviano and his fellow travelers in the Italian far right.

One item, however, was missing.

You’ll see that he gets it, won’t you, Luigi?

Donati checked the wastebasket. It was empty. Not so much as a scrap of paper.

“Looking for something, Excellency?”

Donati glanced up and saw Cardinal Domenico Albanese eyeing him from the doorway. Albanese was a Calabrian by birth and by profession a creature of Curia. He held several senior positions in the Holy See, including president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and archivist and librarian of the Holy Roman Church. None of that, however, explained his presence in the papal apartments at seven minutes past midnight. Domenico Albanese was the camerlengo. It was his responsibility alone to issue the formal declaration that the throne of St. Peter was vacant.

“Where is he?” asked Donati.

“In the kingdom of heaven,” intoned the cardinal. “And the body?”

Had Albanese not heard the sacred calling, he might have moved slabs of marble for his living or hurled carcasses in a Calabrian abattoir. Donati followed him along a brief corridor, into the bedroom. Three more cardinals waited in the half-light: Marcel Gaubert, José Maria Navarro, and Angelo Francona. Gaubert was the secretary of state, effectively the prime minister and chief diplomat of the world’s smallest country. Navarro was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, defender against heresy. Francona, the oldest of the three, was the dean of the College of Cardinals. As such, he would preside over the next conclave.

It was Navarro, a Spaniard of noble stock, who addressed Donati first. Though he had lived and worked in Rome for nearly a quarter century, he still spoke Italian with a pronounced Castilian accent. “Luigi, I know how painful this must be for you. We were his faithful servants, but you were the one he loved the most.”

Cardinal Gaubert, a thin Parisian with a feline face, nodded profoundly at the Spaniard’s curial bromide, as did the three laymen standing in the shadow at the edge of the room: Dr. Octavio Gallo, the Holy Father’s personal physician; Lorenzo Vitale, chief of the Corpo della Gendarmeria; and Colonel Alois Metzler, commandant of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. Donati, it seemed, was the last to arrive. It was he, the private secretary, who should have summoned the senior princes of the Church to the bedside of the dead pope, not the camerlengo. Suddenly, he was racked by guilt.

But when Donati looked down at the figure stretched upon the bed, his guilt gave way to overwhelming grief. Lucchesi was still wearing his white soutane, though his slippers had been removed and his zucchetto was nowhere to be seen. Someone had placed the hands upon the chest. They were clutching his rosary. The eyes were closed, the jaw slack, but there was no evidence of pain on his face, nothing to suggest he had suffered. Indeed, Donati would not have been surprised if His Holiness woke suddenly and inquired about his evening.

He was still wearing his white soutane…

Donati had been the keeper of the Holy Father’s schedule from the first day of his pontificate. The evening routine rarely varied. Dinner from seven to eight thirty. Paperwork in the study from eight thirty until ten, followed by fifteen minutes of prayer and reflection in his private chapel. Typically, he was in bed by half past ten, usually with an English detective novel, his guilty pleasure. Devices and Desires by P. D. James lay on the bedside table beneath his reading glasses. Donati opened it to the page marked.

Forty-five minutes later Rickards was back at the scene of the murder…

Donati closed the book. The supreme pontiff, he reckoned, had been dead for nearly two hours, perhaps longer. Calmly, he asked, “Who found him? Not one of the household nuns, I hope.”

“It was me,” replied Cardinal Albanese.

“Where was he?”

“His Holiness departed this life from the chapel. I discovered him a few minutes after ten. As for the exact time of his passing…” The Calabrian shrugged his heavy shoulders. “I cannot say, Excellency.”

“Why wasn’t I contacted immediately?”

“I searched for you everywhere.”

“You should have called my mobile.”

“I did. Several times, in fact. There was no answer.”

The Calabrian, thought Donati, was being untruthful. “And what were you doing in the chapel, Eminence?”

“This is beginning to sound like an inquisition.” Albanese’s eyes moved briefly to Cardinal Navarro before settling once more on Donati. “His Holiness asked me to pray with him. I accepted his invitation.”

“He phoned you directly?”

“In my apartment,” said the camerlengo with a nod.

“At what time?”

Albanese lifted his eyes to the ceiling, as though trying to recall a minor detail that had slipped his mind. “Nine fifteen. Perhaps nine twenty. He asked me to come a few minutes after ten. When I arrived…”

Donati looked down at the man stretched lifeless upon the bed. “And how did he get here?”

“I carried him.”

“Alone?”

“His Holiness bore the weight of the Church on his shoulders,” said Albanese, “but in death he was light as a feather. Because I could not reach you, I summoned the secretary of state, who in turn rang Cardinals Navarro and Francona. I then called Dottore Gallo, who made the pronouncement. Death by a massive heart attack. His second, was it not? Or was it his third?”

Donati looked at the papal physician. “At what time did you make the declaration, Dottore Gallo?”

“Eleven ten, Excellency.”

Cardinal Albanese cleared his throat gently. “I’ve made a slight adjustment to the timeline in my official statement. If it is your wish, Luigi, I can say that you were the one who found him.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Donati dropped to his knees next to the bed. In life, the Holy Father had been elfin. Death had diminished him further. Donati remembered the day the conclave unexpectedly chose Lucchesi, the Patriarch of Venice, to be the two hundred and sixty-fifth supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In the Room of Tears he had chosen the smallest of the three ready-made cassocks. Even so, he had seemed like a small boy wearing his father’s shirt. As he stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s, his head was barely visible above the balustrade. The vaticanisti christened him Pietro the Improbable. Church hardliners had referred to him derisively as Pope Accidental.

After a moment Donati felt a hand on his shoulder. It was like lead. Therefore, it had to be Albanese’s.

“The ring, Excellency.”

It was once the responsibility of the camerlengo to destroy the dead pope’s Ring of the Fisherman in the presence of the College of Cardinals. But like the three taps to the papal forehead with a silver hammer, the practice had been done away with. Lucchesi’s ring, which he seldom wore, would merely be scored with two deep cuts in the sign of the cross. Other traditions, however, remained in place, such as the immediate locking and sealing of the papal apartments. Even Donati, Lucchesi’s only private secretary, would be barred from entering once the body was removed.

Still on his knees, Donati opened the drawer of the bedside table and grasped the heavy golden ring. He surrendered it to Cardinal Albanese, who placed it in a velvet pouch. Solemnly, he declared, “Sede vacante.”

The throne of St. Peter was now empty. Canon law dictated that Cardinal Albanese would serve as temporary caretaker of the Roman Catholic Church during the interregnum, which ended with the election of a new pope. Donati, a mere titular archbishop, would have no say in the matter. In fact, now that his master was gone, he was without portfolio or power, answerable only to the camerlengo.

“When do you intend to release the statement?” asked Donati.

“I was waiting for you to arrive.”

“Might I review it?”

“Time is of the essence. If we delay any longer…”

“Of course, Eminence.” Donati placed his hand atop Lucchesi’s. It was already cold. “I’d like to have a moment alone with him.”

“A moment,” said the camerlengo.

The room slowly emptied. Cardinal Albanese was the last to leave.

“Tell me something, Domenico.”

The camerlengo paused in the doorway. “Excellency?” “Who closed the curtains in the study?”

“The curtains?”

“They were open when I left at nine. The shutters, too.”

“I closed them, Excellency. I didn’t want anyone in the square to see lights burning in the apartments so late.”

“Yes, of course. That was wise of you, Domenico.”

The camerlengo went out, leaving the door open. Alone with his master, Donati fought back tears. There would be time for grieving later. He leaned close to Lucchesi’s ear and gently squeezed the cold hand. “Speak to me, old friend,” he whispered. “Tell me what really happened here tonight.”

“An irresistible thriller, built on the realpolitik of today’s Middle East but deepened by the universality of human tragedy.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“Sophisticated…As always, Silva delivers sharply drawn characters, a complex plot, and vivid backgrounds that add to the book’s realism…an excellent introduction for new readers.”
— Publishers Weekly

“It’s hard to fathom that Silva could ever top himself after last year’s The Other Woman, but he’s done just that.”
— The Real Book Spy

“Silva’s pages are splattered with intrigue and betrayal; his violent visuals are like a head-on collision… have your next reading selection queued up because this one will not be easily put down.”
— The Times of Israel 

“At times a brilliant novel tells us as much about the times we live in—and the struggles of the world, the global deceptions and tragedies—as well or better than journalism….Eye-opening and a joy to read.”
— Bob Woodward

“Features Silva’s trademark dark humor and unrivaled talent for unexpected plot twists and unforgettable characters. He once again weaves a presciently relevant story of politics and rivalries in our dangerous world.”
— Brooklyn Fans

“The New Girl weaves a masterful story…The book delivers and is authentic…Silva provides enough narrative to stimulate thought but at the same time, enough action to allow the reader to escape into a great summer adventure…It is a book meant to savor.”
— The Cipher Brief

Chapter 1: GENEVA

It was Beatrice Kenton who first questioned the identity of the new girl. She did so in the staff room, at a quarter past three, on a Friday in late November. The mood was festive and faintly rebellious, as was the case most Friday afternoons. It is a truism that no profession welcomes the end of the workweek with more anticipation than teachers—even teachers at elite institutions such as the International School of Geneva. The chatter was of plans for the weekend. Beatrice abstained, for she had none, a fact she did not wish to share with her colleagues. She was fifty-two, unmarried, and with no family to speak of other than a rich old aunt who granted her refuge each summer at her estate in Norfolk. Her weekend routine consisted of a trip to the Migros and a walk along the lakeshore for the sake of her waistline, which, like the universe, was ever expanding. First period Monday was an oasis in an otherwise Empty Quarter of solitude.

Founded by a long-dead organization of multilateralism, Geneva International catered to the children of the city’s diplomatic community. The middle school, where Beatrice taught reading and composition, educated students from more than a hundred different countries. The faculty was a similarly diverse lot. The head of personnel went to great effort to promote employee bonding—cocktail parties, potluck dinners, nature outings—but in the staff room the old tribalism tended to reassert itself. Germans kept with other Germans, French with French, Spanish with Spanish. On that Friday afternoon, Miss Kenton was the only British subject present other than Cecelia Halifax from the history department. Cecelia had wild black hair and predictable politics, which she insisted on sharing with Miss Kenton at every opportunity. Cecelia also divulged to Miss Kenton details of the torrid sexual affair she was having with Kurt Schröder, the Birkenstocked math genius from Hamburg who had given up a lucrative engineering career to teach multiplication and division to eleven-year-olds.

The staff room was on the ground floor of the eighteenth-century château that served as the administration building. Its leaded windows gazed across the forecourt, where presently Geneva International’s privileged young students were clambering into the backs of German-made luxury sedans with diplomatic license plates. Loquacious Cecelia Halifax had planted herself next to Beatrice. She was prattling on about a scandal in London, something involving MI6 and a Russian spy. Beatrice was scarcely listening. She was watching the new girl.

As usual, she was at the hindmost end of the daily exodus, a wispy child of twelve, already beautiful, with liquid brown eyes and hair the color of a raven’s wing. Much to Beatrice’s dismay, the school had no uniform, only a dress code, which several of the more freethinking students flouted with no official sanction. But not the new girl. She was covered from head to toe in expensive wool and plaid, the sort of stuff one saw at the Burberry boutique in Harrods. She carried a leather book bag rather than a nylon backpack. Her patent leather ballet slippers were glossy and bright. She was proper, the new girl, modest. But there was something else about her, thought Beatrice. She was cut from different cloth. She was regal. Yes, that was the word. Regal…

She had arrived two weeks into the autumn term—not ideal but not unheard of at an institution like Geneva International, where the parent body came and went like the waters of the Rhône. David Millar, the headmaster, had crammed her into Beatrice’s third period, which was already two pupils on the heavy side. The copy of the admissions file he gave her was gossamer, even by the school’s standards. It stated that the new girl’s name was Jihan Tantawi, that she was of Egyptian nationality, and that her father was a businessman rather than a diplomat. Her academic record was unexceptional. She was deemed bright but in no way gifted. “A bird ready to take flight,” wrote David in a sanguine margin note. Indeed, the only noteworthy aspect of the file was the paragraph reserved for the student’s “special needs.” It seemed privacy was of grave concern to the Tantawi family. Security, wrote David, was a high priority.

Hence the presence in the courtyard that afternoon— and every afternoon, for that matter—of Lucien Villard, the school’s capable head of security. Lucien was a French import, a veteran of the Service de la Protection, the National Police unit responsible for safeguarding visiting foreign dignitaries and senior French officials. His final posting had been at the Élysée Palace, where he had served on the personal detail of the president of the Republic. David Millar used Lucien’s impressive résumé as proof of the school’s commitment to safety. Jihan Tantawi was not the only student with security concerns.

But no one arrived and departed Geneva International quite like the new girl. The black Mercedes limousine into which  she slipped was fit for a head of state or potentate. Beatrice was no expert when it came to automobiles, but it looked to her as though the chassis was armor plated and the windows were bulletproof. Behind it was a second vehicle, a Range Rover, containing four unsmiling brutes in dark jackets.

“Who do you suppose she is?” wondered Beatrice as she watched the two vehicles turn into the street.

Cecelia Halifax was bewildered. “The Russian spy?”

“The new girl,” drawled Beatrice. Then she added dubiously, “Jihan.”

“They say her father owns half of Cairo.”

“Who says that?”

“Veronica.” Veronica Alvarez was a hot-tempered Spaniard from the art department and one of the least reliable sources of gossip on the faculty, second only to Cecelia herself. “She says the mother is related to the Egyptian president. His niece. Or maybe his cousin.”

Beatrice watched Lucien Villard crossing the forecourt. “Do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think someone is lying.”

* * * * *

And so it came to pass that Beatrice Kenton, a battle-scarred veteran of several lesser British public schools who had come to Geneva looking for romance and adventure and found neither, undertook a wholly private inquiry to determine the true identity of the new girl. She began by entering the name jihan tantawi in the little white box of her Internet browser’s default search engine. Several thousand results appeared on her screen, none corresponding to the beautiful twelve-year-old girl who came through her classroom door at the beginning of each third period, never so much as a minute late.

Next Beatrice searched the various social media sites but again found no trace of her student. It seemed the new girl was the only twelve-year-old on God’s green earth who did not lead a parallel life in cyberspace. Beatrice found this commendable, for she had witnessed firsthand the destructive emotional and developmental consequences of incessant texting, tweeting, and sharing of photographs. Regrettably, such behavior was not limited to children. Cecelia Halifax could scarcely go to the loo without posting an airbrushed photo of herself on Instagram.

The father, one Adnan Tantawi, was similarly anonymous in the cyber realm. Beatrice found a few references to a Tantawi Construction and a Tantawi Holdings and a Tantawi Development but nothing at all about the man himself. Jihan’s admissions file listed a chic address on the route de Lausanne. Beatrice walked by it on a Saturday afternoon. It was a few doors down from the home of the famous Swiss industrialist Martin Landesmann. Like all properties on that part of Lake Geneva, it was surrounded by high walls and watched over by security cameras. Beatrice peered through the bars of the gate and glimpsed a manicured green lawn stretching toward the portico of a magnificent Italianate villa. At once, a man came pounding toward her down the drive, one of the brutes from the Range Rover, no doubt. He made no effort to conceal the fact he had a gun beneath his jacket.

“Propriété privée!” he shouted in heavily accented French.

“Excusez-moi,” murmured Beatrice, and walked quickly away. The next phase of her inquiry commenced the following Monday morning, when she embarked on three days of close observation of her mysterious new student. She noted that Jihan, when called upon in class, was sometimes slow in responding. She noted, too, that Jihan had formed no friendships since her arrival at the school, and had made no attempt to do so. Beatrice also established, while purporting to lavish praise on a lackluster essay, that Jihan had only a passing familiarity with Egypt. She knew that Cairo was a large city and that a river ran through it, but little else. Her father, she said, was very rich. He built high-rise apartment houses and office towers. Because he was a friend of the Egyptian president, the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t like him, which was why they were living in Geneva.

“Sounds perfectly reasonable to me,” said Cecelia.

“It sounds,” answered Beatrice, “like something someone made up. I doubt she’s ever set foot in Cairo. In fact, I’m not sure she’s even Egyptian.”

Beatrice next focused her attention on the mother. She viewed her mainly through the tinted, bulletproof windows of the limousine, or on those rare occasions when she alighted from the car’s backseat to greet Jihan in the courtyard. She was fairer complected than Jihan and lighter haired—attractive, thought Beatrice, but not quite in Jihan’s league. Indeed, Beatrice was hard-pressed to find any familial resemblance whatsoever. There was a conspicuous coldness in their physical relationship. Not once did she witness a kiss or warm embrace. She also detected a distinct imbalance of power. It was Jihan, not the mother, who held the upper hand.

As November turned to December, and the winter break loomed, Beatrice conspired to arrange a meeting with the aloof mother of her mysterious pupil. The pretext was Jihan’s performance on an English spelling and vocabulary test—the bottom third of the class but much better than young Callahan, the son of an American foreign service officer and, purportedly, a native speaker of the language. Beatrice drafted an e-mail requesting a consultation at Mrs. Tantawi’s convenience and dispatched it to the address she found in the admissions file. When several days passed with no reply, she sent it again. At which point she received a mild rebuke from David Millar, the headmaster. It seemed Mrs. Tantawi wished to have no direct contact with Jihan’s teachers. Beatrice was to state her concerns in an e-mail to David, and David would address the matter with Mrs. Tantawi. Beatrice suspected he was aware of Jihan’s real identity, but she knew better than to raise the subject, even obliquely.  It was easier to pry secrets from a Swiss banker than Geneva International’s discreet headmaster.

Which left only Lucien Villard, the school’s French-born head of security. Beatrice called on him on a Friday afternoon during her free period. His office was in the basement of the château, next door to the broom closet occupied by the shifty little Russian who made the computers work. Lucien was lean and sturdy and more youthful-looking than his forty-eight years. Half the female members of the staff lusted after him, including Cecelia Halifax, who had made an unsuccessful run at Lucien before bedding her sandaled Teutonic math genius.

“I was wondering,” said Beatrice, leaning with feigned nonchalance against the frame of Lucien’s open door, “whether I might have a word with you about the new girl.”

Lucien regarded her coolly over his desk. “Jihan? Why?”

“Because I’m worried about her.”

Lucien placed a stack of papers atop the mobile phone that lay on his blotter. Beatrice couldn’t be sure, but she thought it was a different model than the one he usually carried. “It’s my job to worry about Jihan, Miss Kenton. Not yours.”

“It’s not her real name, is it?”

“Wherever did you get an idea like that?”

“I’m her teacher. Teachers see things.”

“Perhaps you didn’t read the note in Jihan’s file regarding loose talk and gossip. I would advise you to follow those instructions. Otherwise, I will be obliged to bring this matter to the attention of Monsieur Millar.”

“Forgive me, I meant no—”

Lucien held up a hand. “Don’t worry, Miss Kenton. It is entre nous.”

Two hours later, as the hatchlings of the global diplomatic elite waddled across the courtyard of the château, Beatrice was watching from the leaded window of the staff room. As usual, Jihan was among the last to leave. No, thought Beatrice, not Jihan. The new girl … She was skipping lightly across the cobbles and swinging her book bag, seemingly oblivious to the presence of Lucien Villard at her side. The woman was waiting next to the open door of the limousine. The new girl passed her with scarcely a glance and tumbled into the backseat. It was the last time Beatrice would ever see her.

Your previous two novels, The Black Widow and House of Spies, dealt with the rise and fall of ISIS. In fact, your wildly popular hero, Gabriel Allon, personally eliminated ISIS’s top terrorist. But in The Other Woman, Gabriel is matched against the Kremlin and Russian intelligence. Why Russia? And why now?

Given the events of the last few months—in Syria and the United Kingdom, and in our own domestic politics as well—I think it was almost preordained that this year’s Gabriel Allon novel deal with the subject of Russia. I am a student of Russian and Soviet history, and I love writing about this new cold war in which we find ourselves. Simply put, the Russians are wonderful fictional villains. And that’s because they’re villains in real life, too.

The first time you wrote about the new Russia was in Moscow Rules, a novel you released in 2008. I think it’s fair to say you were ahead of the curve in your dark depiction of Russia under Vladimir Putin. What did you see in the new Russia that the media and most of our politicians and diplomats missed?

I saw a man who, perhaps paradoxically, was building a fascist state and economy atop the rubble of the old communist Soviet Union. I also saw a man who was revanchist and paranoid at the same time, which is a profoundly dangerous combination. Mainly, I saw kleptomaniac who was more than willing to use murder as a tool of statecraft. The brave Russian journalists who dared to oppose Vladimir Putin were the first to die. They were the canaries in the coal mine.

Russia struck again, in the English cathedral town of Salisbury, while you were finishing The Other Woman. Something tells me you weren’t terribly surprised by the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal.

Actually, I wasn’t. The Russian intelligence services have long memories, and they never forget those who work with Russia’s adversaries against the motherland. I wrote about Putin’s determination to kill his political opponents outside Russia’s border in a novel called The Defector. But even I was stunned by the use of a military-grade nerve agent like Novichok. As a thriller writer, I’m permitted enormous license, but I would have never dreamed of using a weapon like that in a residential area. It boggles the mind. But this is the reality of the new Russia. Vladimir Putin doesn’t think the old rules and norms of international conduct apply to him, and he’s not going to abide by them. Look at the civil war in Syria. Putin’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, has repeatedly used chemical weapons against his own people, presumably with Moscow’s blessing, perhaps even with Moscow’s help.

What is Putin’s goal?

Simply put, it is the restoration of the old Russian-Soviet empire and destruction of the postwar global order. And the sooner we recognize that, the better. Putin is testing us to see whether we have the backbone to oppose him. He’s putting into practice Lenin’s infamous maxim: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” Thus far, Putin has encountered only mush.

What about the sanctions that the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union imposed on the Kremlin after the Skripal affair?

They were long overdue and a very good start, but I doubt they will be enough to deter Putin from his present course. Putin and Putinism are on the march. The strongman and the corporate state—by another name, fascism—are all the rage. Western-style democracy and the global institutions that created an unprecedented period of peace in Europe are suddenly out of vogue.

The opening sequence of The Other Woman reads like a scene from the darkest days of the Cold War. A defecting Russian spy is brutally assassinated in Vienna. But there’s a twist.

The defecting Russian spy is Gabriel Allon’s most important asset inside the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, and his killing is staged to make it appear as though Gabriel is responsible. It creates an international firestorm that threatens his hold on the Office and leaves him no choice but to embark on an investigation into what went wrong. The inquiry leads him to the door of his old friend Graham Seymour, the chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. Gabriel has some bad news for his old friend, that MI6 is harboring a Russian spy.

And Graham Seymour makes a fateful decision. He allows Gabriel to watch an MI6 officer to see if he’s in contact with the Russians.

Gabriel and Graham Seymour have an unusual relationship, to say the least. Graham allowed Gabriel to live for many years in the United Kingdom under an assumed identity, and they’ve worked together on several operations. They are as close as two spies from different services can possibly be.

Gabriel’s quest for the Russian spy takes him backward in time, to the twentieth century’s greatest act of treason. In 2016 you told the New York Times you had recently reread your entire collection of books on the Kim Philby affair in preparation for a forthcoming novel. Is it safe to assume The Other Woman was the novel you were referring to?

It is, actually. Kim Philby has been an obsession of mine for a very long time.

When did this Philby obsession start?

I suppose it began when I was twenty-two and I read My Silent War, Philby’s mendacious but utterly fascinating autobiography. It was written in Moscow under the watchful eye of the KGB, a few years after he defected. It’s quite a well-written book, which is hardly surprising given the fact Philby worked as a professional journalist for much of the time he was spying for the Soviet Union. I still can’t imagine how Philby betrayed his country the way he did, but he led one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. He was an active participant in the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War, and his circle of friends and colleagues included a rather noteworthy writer named Graham Greene. Unfortunately, he betrayed them all, and a good many brave people died as a result.

Much of The Other Woman is set in Washington, where Philby lived and worked—and spied—from 1949 to 1951.

He also drank a great deal while he was in Washington, as did many of the early pioneers of the CIA. They were all spectacular boozers. Philby and his family lived in a large brick house on Nebraska Avenue that still stands today. When I lived in Washington, I passed the house several times a day, usually when I was picking up or dropping off my children at school. I used to imagine what it must have been like in those days. The drunken parties, the treachery, Guy Burgess living in the basement . . . If only those walls could talk.

You write in The Other Woman that Philby buried his miniature KGB camera and film in the Maryland countryside in 1951, after Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to the Soviet Union. In fact, the buried loot plays an important role in the resolution of the story. First, is it true? And if so, is it still there?

It is indeed true that Philby buried his KGB paraphernalia that spring night in 1951, for the very simple reason he was afraid he was about to be exposed as a Soviet agent. Ben Macintyre, in his wonderful narrative history, A Spy Among Friends, wrote that Philby buried it in the woods along MacArthur Boulevard, near Old Angler’s Inn. In his own memoir, though, Philby was rather vague about the exact location. If I had to guess, the camera and film were probably unearthed during the construction of a new home without anyone noticing. But a part of me hopes it’s still out there somewhere.

Do you think there are any Russian moles inside MI6 or the CIA today?

If by the word “mole” you mean someone who penetrated MI6 or the CIA on orders from Moscow Center and burrowed his way into a position of power, I’d say the chances are remote. But that doesn’t mean the SVR hasn’t recruited assets inside the two most powerful intelligence services in the West. In fact, I’m quite confident they have.

Kim Philby spied out of his devotion to Marxism. What would motivate someone to spy for Vladimir Putin’s Russia?

Most spies betray their countries and their services for money. But some are forced into becoming spies through coerced recruiting methods. The Russians excel at burning and turning targets through so-called kompromat operations. The Russian intelligence operation in London and in Western Europe is truly massive. Security analysts estimate that two-thirds of the so-called diplomats stationed at a typical Russian embassy in Western Europe are actually intelligence officers. They’re not sitting around playing chess, they’re recruiting spies and running operations. For all of Putin’s bluster, Russia is economically and demographically weak. His intelligence services and cyberwarriors are important force multipliers.

This is the eighteenth novel in which Gabriel has appeared, and he’s a perennial #1 New York Times bestseller. But I read recently that you never intended for him to be a continuing character.

That’s true. Gabriel Allon was supposed to appear in one book and one book only, and then sail off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again. And now, seventeen additional books later, his story has come full circle. The morose, grieving man we first encountered in The Kill Artist has a new family and is the chief of the Israeli intelligence service. Obviously, I never imagined it would turn out this way.

How do you explain Gabriel’s popularity and longevity?

I think his essential appeal lies in the two very different sides of his character. He’s not just a brilliant intelligence operative, he’s one of the world’s finest art restorers as well. That combination of character attributes has allowed me to craft my stories in a way that makes them very different from most spy novels. As a result, I have many readers who might not typically pick up a novel of espionage. And I have Gabriel Allon to thank for that.

The Other Woman has wonderful settings, including Vienna, Strasbourg, Seville, and a quaint cottage in the English countryside that British intelligence uses as a safe house. Do you visit all the places you write about?

I typically try to spend as much time as possible in the places where my characters live and work. I’ve been inside the headquarters of the CIA and the KGB, I’ve ridden in the president’s limousine, and I’ve held a Leonardo in my hands at the Vatican. That said, some of my favorite scenes have been set in places where I’ve never set foot. The climax of Portrait of a Spy, for example, was set in the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, where I’ve never been. A significant portion of The Black Widow took place in ISIS-controlled Syria and Iraq. Needless to say, I did not spend much time in the caliphate of the Islamic State.

What about Lock 10 on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, the setting for the climax of The Other Woman?

I took my wife there one afternoon by the exact route Gabriel uses in the novel. On the banks of the Potomac, next to an overturned rowboat and a large tree, I physically choreographed the final sequence of moves to produce the ending I wanted. The people watching me from the towpath of the canal probably thought I was either out of my mind or a practitioner of a new form of tai chi.

Can we talk a little about your writing process?

The word process implies something orderly and methodical. About the only thing procedural about my work is that once I start a book, I write every day, seven days a week, until it is done. When I’m approaching my deadline, I become a virtual hermit. I sometimes write twelve or fourteen hours a day.

Do you outline a book before you start writing?

I’ve tried outlining but it really doesn’t work for me. I find it much easier to simply carry the story and characters around in my head. I have three or four other books mentally blocked out as well, but much to my wife’s dismay I haven’t bothered to write them down.

The Other Woman is an enormously complex web of treachery and betrayal that reaches deep into history for its source material. Are you telling us you wrote it without an outline?

Yes. But that’s not to say that I didn’t have a pretty good idea of where I was going and how I intended to get there. I typically make adjustments as I press forward, rather like a painter applying a layer of obliterating paint and reworking a portion of the canvas. For better or worse, the revisions continue to the very end. I’ve been known to make changes to a book on the day it’s supposed to go to the printer.

You have other strange habits as well.

So I’m told.

You write in pencil on yellow legal pads.

I used to think it was odd, but I’ve discovered that many writers still do, including Nelson DeMille. I like the quiet and the pace of writing in longhand, and I rarely have to make revisions. Oftentimes, I can pick up one of my old legal pads—yes, I keep them all—and find pages and pages of finished copy with no edits.

I hear you’re picky about your pencils.

The Mirado Black Warrior by Paper Mate. I use the number 2. It’s an excellent pencil. Lately, I’ve rediscovered the joys of a good Dixon Ticonderoga.

And your legal pad?

The Signa by Staples. The paper is very smooth. It doesn’t wear down my pencils as quickly.

I assume you don’t turn in your books that way.

No, I’m not completely crazy. They’re typed into Microsoft Word, one chapter per file. My wife is my primary editor, and I employ two of my oldest friends as proofreaders. We are all quite maniacal about typographical errors. When one slips into the book, I’m always mortified.

“Another jewel in the bedazzling crown of a spy-fiction master.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Excellent…Readers will be enthralled by both the history and the up-to-the-minute plot that Silva spins with such finesse.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Silva’s work is always riveting..Gripping…will satisfy the author’s fans while it will also appeal to those who appreciate past masters of the genre like John le Carré and Graham Greene.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“It’s spy versus spy in Daniel Silva’s latest heart-pounding thriller, which is perhaps his most enthralling novel to date. Twists, turns, and nonstop action fill every page…Daniel Silva at his best…puts him firmly alongside le Carré and Forsyth as one of the greatest spy novelists of all time.”
—The Real Book Spy

PROLOGUE     |     MOSCOW: 1974

The car was a Zil limousine, long and black, with pleated curtains in the rear windows. It sped from Sheremetyevo Airport into the center of Moscow, along a lane reserved for members of the Politburo and the Central Committee. Night had fallen by the time they reached their destination, a square named for a Russian writer, in an old section of the city known as Patriarch’s Ponds. They walked along narrow unlit streets, the child and the two men in gray suits, until they came to an oratory surrounded by Muscovy plane trees. The apartment house was on the opposite side of an alley. They passed through a wooden doorway and squeezed into a lift, which deposited them onto a darkened foyer. A flight of stairs awaited. The child, out of habit, counted the steps. There were fifteen. On the landing was another door. This one was padded leather. A well-dressed man stood there, drink in hand. Something about the ruined face seemed familiar. Smiling, he spoke a single word in Russian. It would be many years before the child understood what the word meant.

* * * * * * * *

Part One: Night Train to Vienna

Chapter 1: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

None of it would have come to pass—not the desperate quest for the traitor, not the strained alliances nor the needless deaths—were it not for poor Heathcliff. He was their tragic figure, their broken promise. In the end, he would prove to be yet another feather in Gabriel’s cap. That said, Gabriel would have preferred that Heathcliff were still on his side of the ledger. Assets like Heathcliff did not come along every day, sometimes only once in a career, rarely twice. Such was the nature of espionage, Gabriel would lament. Such was life itself.

It was not his true name, Heathcliff; it had been generated at random, or so his handlers claimed, by computer. The program deliberately chose a code name that bore no resemblance to the asset’s real name, nationality, or line of work. In this regard, it had succeeded. The man to whom Heathcliff’s name had been attached was neither a foundling nor a hopeless romantic. Nor was he bitter or vengeful or violent in nature. In truth, he had nothing in common with Brontë’s Heathcliff other than his dark complexion, for his mother was from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The same republic, she was proud to point out, as Comrade Stalin, whose portrait still hung in the sitting room of her Moscow apartment.

Heathcliff spoke and read English fluently, however, and was fond of the Victorian novel. In fact, he had flirted with the idea of studying English literature before coming to his senses and enrolling at the Moscow Institute for Foreign Languages, regarded as the second-most prestigious university in the Soviet Union. His faculty adviser was a talent-spotter for the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and upon graduation Heathcliff was invited to enter the SVR’s academy. His mother, drunk with joy, placed flowers and fresh fruit at the foot of Comrade Stalin’s portrait. “He is watching you,” she said. “One day you will be a man to be reckoned with. A man to be feared.” In his mother’s eyes, there was no finer thing for a man to be.

It was the ambition of most cadets to serve abroad in a rezidentura, an SVR station, where they would recruit and run enemy spies. It took a certain type of officer to perform such work. He had to be brash, confident, talkative, quick on his feet, a natural seducer. Heathcliff, unfortunately, was blessed with none of these qualities. Nor did he possess the physical attributes required for some of the SVR’s more unsavory tasks. What he had was a facility for languages—he spoke fluent German and Dutch as well as English—and a memory that even by the SVR’s high standards was deemed to be exceptional. He was given a choice, a rarity in the hierarchical world of the SVR. He could work at Moscow Center as a translator or serve in the field as a courier. He chose the latter, thus sealing his fate.

It was not glamorous work, but vital. With his four languages and a briefcase full of false passports, he roamed the world in service of the motherland, a clandestine delivery boy, a secret postman. He cleaned out dead drops, stuffed cash into safe-deposit boxes, and on occasion even rubbed shoulders with an actual paid agent of Moscow Center. There were vastly more sophisticated means of transmitting intelligence these days, it was true. But the SVR, for all its technical prowess—or, perhaps, because of it— was innately distrustful of computers and mobile phones, preferring the old ways to the new.

Consequently, Heathcliff was a man constantly on the move. It was not uncommon for him to spend three hundred nights a year outside Russia. The work left him unsuited for marriage or even a serious relationship. The SVR provided him with female comfort when he was in Moscow—beautiful young girls who under normal circumstances would never look at him twice—but when traveling he was prone to bouts of intense loneliness.

It was during one such episode, in a hotel bar in Hamburg, that he met his Catherine. She was drinking white wine at a table in the corner, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, light-brown hair, suntanned arms and legs. Heathcliff was under orders to avoid such women while traveling. Invariably, they were hostile intelligence officers or prostitutes in their employ. But Catherine did not look the part. And when she glanced at Heathcliff over her mobile phone and smiled, he felt a jolt of electricity that surged from his heart straight to his groin.

“Care to join me?” she asked. “I do hate to drink alone.”

Her name was not Catherine, it was Astrid. At least that was the name she had whispered into his ear while running a fingernail lightly along the inside of his thigh. She was Dutch, which meant Heathcliff, who was posing as a Russian businessman, was able to address her in her native language. After several drinks together, she invited herself to Heathcliff’s room, where he felt safe. He woke the next morning with a profound hangover, which was unusual for him, and with no memory of engaging in the act of love. By then, Astrid was showered and wrapped in a toweling robe. In the light of day, her remarkable beauty was plain to see.

“Free tonight?” she asked. “I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

He had no answer.

“You’ll take me on a proper date, though. A nice dinner. Maybe a disco afterward.”

“And then?”

She opened her robe, revealing a pair of beautifully formed breasts. Try as he might, Heathcliff could not recall caressing them.

They traded phone numbers, another forbidden act, and parted company. Heathcliff had two errands to run in Hamburg that day that required several hours of “dry cleaning” to make certain he was not under surveillance. As he was completing his second task—the routine emptying of a dead-letter box—he received a text message with the name of a trendy restaurant near the port. He arrived at the appointed hour to find a radiant Astrid already seated at their table, behind an open bottle of hideously expensive Montrachet. Heathcliff frowned; he would have to pay for the wine out of his own pocket. Moscow Center monitored his expenses carefully and berated him when he exceeded his allowance.

Astrid seemed to sense his unease. “Don’t worry, it’s my treat.”

“I thought I was supposed to take you out on a proper date.”

“Did I really say that?”

It was at that instant Heathcliff understood he had made a terrible mistake. His instincts told him to turn and run, but he knew it was no use; his bed was made. And so he stayed at the restaurant and dined with the woman who had betrayed him. Their conversation was stilted and strained—the stuff of a bad television drama—and when the check came, it was Astrid who paid. In cash, of course.

Outside, a car was waiting. Heathcliff raised no objections when Astrid quietly instructed him to climb into the backseat. Nor did he protest when the car headed in the opposite direction from his hotel. The driver was quite obviously a professional; he spoke not a word while undertaking several textbook maneuvers designed to shake surveillance. Astrid passed the time sending and receiving text messages. To Heathcliff she said nothing at all.

“Did we ever—”

“Make love?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She stared out the window.

“Good,” he said. “It’s better that way.”

When they finally stopped, it was at a small cottage by the sea. Inside, a man was waiting. He addressed Heathcliff in German-accented English. Said his name was Marcus. Said he worked for a Western intelligence service. Didn’t specify which one. Then he displayed for Heathcliff several highly sensitive documents Astrid had copied from his locked attaché case the previous evening while he was incapacitated by the drugs she had given him. Heathcliff was going to continue to supply such documents, said Marcus, and much more. Otherwise, Marcus and his colleagues were going to use the material they had in their possession to deceive Moscow Center into believing Heathcliff was a spy.

Unlike his namesake, Heathcliff was neither bitter nor vengeful. He returned to Moscow a half million dollars richer and awaited his next assignment. The SVR delivered a beautiful young girl to his apartment in the Sparrow Hills. He nearly fainted with fear when she introduced herself as Ekaterina. He made her an omelet and sent her away, untouched.

* * * * * * * * * *

The life expectancy for a man in Heathcliff’s position was not long. The penalty for betrayal was death. But not a quick death, an unspeakable death. Like all those who worked for the SVR, Heathcliff had heard the stories. The stories of grown men begging for a bullet to end their suffering. Eventually, it would come, the Russian way, in the nape of the neck. The SVR referred to it as vyshaya mera: the highest measure of punishment. Heathcliff resolved never to allow himself to fall into their hands. From Marcus he obtained a suicide ampule. One bite was all it would take. Ten seconds, then it would be over.

Marcus also gave Heathcliff a secure communications device that allowed him to transmit reports via satellite with encrypted microbursts. Heathcliff used it rarely, preferring instead to brief Marcus in person during his trips abroad. Whenever possible, he allowed Marcus to photograph the contents of his attaché case, but mainly they talked. Heathcliff was a man of no importance, but he worked for important men, and transported their secrets. Moreover, he knew the locations of Russian dead drops around the world, which he carried around in his prodigious memory. Heathcliff was careful not to divulge too much, too quickly—for his own sake, and for the sake of his rapidly growing bank account. He doled out his secrets piecemeal, so as to increase their value. A half million became a million within a year. Then two. And then three.

Heathcliff’s conscience remained untroubled—he was a man without ideology or politics—but fear stalked him day and night. The fear that Moscow Center knew of his treachery and was watching his every move. The fear he had passed along one secret too many, or that one of the Center’s spies in the West would eventually betray him. On numerous occasions he pleaded with Marcus to bring him in from the cold. But Marcus, sometimes with a bit of soothing balm, sometimes with a crack of the whip, refused. Heathcliff was to continue his spying until such time as his life was truly in danger. Only then would he be allowed to defect. He was justifiably dubious about Marcus’s ability to judge the precise moment the sword was about to fall, but he had no choice but to continue. Marcus had blackmailed him into doing his bidding. And Marcus was going to wring every last secret out of him before releasing him from his bond.

But not all secrets are created equal. Some are mundane, workaday, and can be passed with little or no threat to the messenger. Others, however, are far too dangerous to betray. Heathcliff eventually found such a secret in a dead-letter box, in faraway Montreal. The letter box was actually an empty fat, used by a Russian illegal operating under deep cover in the United States. The illegal had concealed a memory stick in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. Heathcliff had been ordered to collect it and carry it back to Moscow Center, thus evading the mighty American National Security Agency. Before leaving the apartment, he inserted the flash drive into his laptop and found it unlocked and its contents unencrypted. Heathcliff read the documents freely. They were from several different American intelligence services, all with the highest possible level of classification.

Heathcliff didn’t dare copy the documents. Instead, he committed every detail to his flawless memory and returned to Moscow Center, where he handed over the flash drive to his control officer, along with a sternly worded rebuke of the illegal’s failure to secure it properly. The control officer, who was called Volkov, promised to address the matter. Then he offered Heathcliff a low-stress junket to friendly Budapest as recompense. “Consider it   an all-expenses-paid holiday, courtesy of Moscow Center. Don’t take this the wrong way, Konstantin, but you look as though you could use some time off.”

That evening, Heathcliff used the secure communications device to inform Marcus that he had uncovered a secret of such import he had no choice but to defect. Much to his surprise, Marcus did not object. He instructed Heathcliff to dispose of the device in a way it could never be found. Heathcliff smashed it to pieces and dropped the remains down an open sewer. Even the bloodhounds of the SVR’s security directorate, he reasoned, wouldn’t look there.

A week later, after paying a final visit to his mother in her rabbit’s hutch of an apartment, with its brooding portrait of an ever-watchful Comrade Stalin, Heathcliff left Russia for the last time. He arrived in Budapest in late afternoon, as snow fell gently upon the city, and took a taxi to the InterContinental Hotel. His room overlooked the Danube. He double-locked the door and engaged the safety bar. Then he sat down at the desk and waited for his mobile phone to ring. Next to it was Marcus’s suicide ampule. One bite was all it would take. Ten seconds. Then it would be over.

“A tense, thrilling adventure…. With Silva’s novels you find yourself being educated as well as being entertained…. Silva is that rarity of rarities, a writer whose stories just keep getting better.”
—Huffington Post

“An irresistible thriller…. The phrase ‘#1 New York Times best-selling author’ gets bandied about a lot (Which list? For how long?), but in Silva’s case, it means exactly what it says.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Written by one of our greatest living spy novelists, House of Spies gives us protagonist Gabriel Allon in his 17th adventure. The novel features Silva’s taut and compelling dialogue and keen insight into the human psyche.”
—Dallas Morning News

“Riveting…. Silva’s writing has lost none of its elegance. He provides readers with just enough real-world geopolitics to make sense of his narrative, and his depictions of the different styles of the world’s diverse intelligence services is fascinating as always.… Another chilling glimpse inside global terror networks from a gifted storyteller.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“One of Silva’s most entertaining books…. It’s uncanny how Daniel Silva keeps doing this. The opening chapters… feel like they were ripped from the headlines…. But when Silva created the scenario in his book, the headlines hadn’t been written yet.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Outstanding…. Readers will eagerly await the next installment in this deeply fulfilling series.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review