The Other Woman

The novel opens with a 1974 prologue in which a child arrives at an apartment in Moscow's Patriarch's Ponds neighborhood, greeted by a well-dressed man with a ruined face. The child's identity will not become clear until much later.

The story begins with Konstantin Kirov, an SVR (Russian Foreign Intelligence Service) courier code-named Heathcliff, awaiting extraction in Budapest. Years earlier, Kirov was blackmailed into spying for the West after a woman drugged him in Hamburg and copied classified documents from his briefcase. His decision to defect stems from a discovery in a Montreal dead-letter box: a memory stick containing highly classified American intelligence documents too dangerous to hold.

Gabriel Allon, chief of Israel's secret intelligence service (known as "the Office"), travels to Vienna to debrief Kirov before handing him to MI6. Gabriel waits in a safe flat while Eli Lavon, head of the Office's surveillance division, monitors Kirov through hidden cameras. As Kirov approaches the building, a motorcyclist shoots him twice in the head, killing him instantly, then flees and dies in a crash. Russian media floods the Internet with photographs of Gabriel leaving the building, blaming Israel.

The fallout is severe. Governments worldwide condemn Israel. Gabriel orders an inquiry led by Office officers Yossi Gavish and Rimona Stern, along with analyst Dina Sarid. Polygraphs clear all Office personnel, pointing the leak toward MI6. Gabriel suspects Alistair Hughes, MI6's Vienna Head of Station, who knew the safe flat's address. Gabriel's deputy, Uzi Navot, meets with Werner Schwarz, a paid agent inside Austria's BVT (internal security service), who reveals Hughes has been making unauthorized trips to Bern.

Meanwhile, in a hilltop village in Andalusia, an elderly Frenchwoman known locally as la loca ("the crazy one") lives in solitary exile, writing a memoir about a famous English journalist she loved in 1960s Beirut, a man with blue eyes and a stammer. Her scrapbook includes snapshots of a child. Shortly after the assassination, an SVR officer visits with a counterfeit letter and offers her a trip to Russia. She refuses.

Gabriel flies to London and confronts Graham Seymour, director-general of MI6, accusing Hughes of spying for Russia. Seymour pushes back, citing a prior case: Vladimir Gribkov, an SVR officer who tried to defect with intelligence about a Russian mole but was recalled to Moscow before MI6 could act. Gabriel proposes placing Hughes under Office surveillance, since Hughes would recognize MI6's own techniques. Seymour reluctantly agrees, with Christopher Keller, a former assassin now serving MI6, joining the team.

Over two weeks of surveillance, they find no evidence of Russian contact but discover Hughes has bipolar disorder and is secretly taking medication without MI6's knowledge. When Hughes makes an unauthorized trip to Bern, Gabriel's team watches through hacked hotel cameras as Dmitri Sokolov, a known SVR officer, approaches Hughes and slides an envelope beneath his newspaper. Hughes burns the contents, rushes from the hotel, and is struck and killed by a car.

Gabriel learns from Swiss intelligence that Hughes was seeing a psychiatrist in Bern for his bipolar disorder. He presents his conclusion to Seymour: Hughes was a patient, not a spy. Moscow Center, the SVR's headquarters, knew about Hughes's illness and used Sokolov to create the appearance of espionage. The scheme, from Kirov's assassination to Hughes's murder, was designed to protect the real mole by making the hunt end with Hughes's death. Seymour publicly denies any mole but privately asks Gabriel to find the real one.

Navot confronts Werner Schwarz, who confesses he has worked for Moscow for five years, handled by SVR officer Sergei Morosov. Werner admits Morosov warned him about the Vienna assassination and told him to plant the tip about Hughes's Swiss trips in Navot's ear. Navot coerces Werner back into exclusive service under threat of exposure.

Gabriel abducts Morosov from a safe flat in Strasbourg, stages his death in a car crash, and flies him to Israel. Under interrogation, Morosov reveals "Sasha," a master officer at Moscow Center who has spent decades running a single mole at the pinnacle of Western intelligence. Sasha orchestrated Kirov's assassination after discovering Kirov's treachery and planting the bait memory stick to trigger the defection. Morosov discloses that Sasha was assisted by a legendary Englishman. In Sasha's private files, Morosov glimpsed the original NKVD (Soviet secret police) document recording the 1934 recruitment of Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent. Among the files was one about a journalist Philby knew in Beirut and their child. Morosov also identifies the dead drop: a Ford Explorer on the rue Saint-Denis in Montreal.

Gabriel and Seymour search eight boxes of files kept by Seymour's late father, Arthur Seymour, who served in Beirut during the early 1960s monitoring Philby. In a telegram after Philby's 1963 defection, Arthur names the mistress as Charlotte Bettencourt and notes she is pregnant. Gabriel traces Charlotte to Zahara and questions her in Seville. Charlotte recounts her affair with Philby and reveals that in 1974, a man calling himself Sasha began taking her child to Moscow for summer visits. Sasha orchestrated a sham marriage to an Englishman named Robert Manning and a staged divorce that severed Charlotte from her daughter, Rebecca. The child entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1981 and joined MI6. Charlotte also discloses that Philby once confided he had buried a miniature KGB camera and film near Swainson Island on the Potomac River in Maryland.

Seymour confirms the woman is Rebecca Manning, his Washington Head of Station and chosen successor. He demands proof of espionage, not merely parentage. Gabriel proposes seizing the Montreal dead drop and hacking the SVR's communications network to catch Rebecca transmitting. In Washington, Gabriel's operative Mikhail Abramov recruits Eva Fernandes, a Russian "illegal" (a deep-cover spy living under a false identity). Eva has been posing as a Brazilian hostess at a Washington restaurant and receiving Rebecca's encrypted intelligence. She agrees to cooperate in exchange for sanctuary.

Seymour baits the trap by visiting Rebecca and revealing Britain plans to sever ties with Russia. Rebecca composes a classified report and prepares to transmit it at a Starbucks the next morning. With Gabriel's team watching, she prepares to transmit but receives a one-word text: "Run." She deletes her report, takes Eva hostage at gunpoint, and flees, shooting Keller in the clavicle during the pursuit.

Rebecca calls the Russian Embassy from a pay phone, triggering an SVR exfiltration. Two operatives pick up Rebecca and Eva. Knowing from Charlotte that Philby buried his KGB camera near Swainson Island on the Potomac, Gabriel drives to the spot, guessing Rebecca will stop there before fleeing to Moscow. Rebecca arrives with the operatives to recover the camera. Gabriel kills both; Rebecca seizes Eva as a shield. Eva fights back but is shot and killed. Gabriel subdues Rebecca in the river as Mikhail and Lavon arrive.

The scandal erupts publicly, devastating CIA-MI6 relations. Gabriel suspects Seymour sent the "Run" text, preferring Rebecca escape to Moscow rather than face trial, just as MI6 let Philby flee in 1963. Held at a remote Scottish manor, Rebecca confirms she betrayed Kirov, manipulated Hughes, and served as Sasha's lifelong agent out of devotion to her father. Six weeks later, she is exchanged for 12 Western intelligence assets on a Polish airfield and flown to Moscow. In the final scene, Gabriel meets Charlotte in a village church in Zahara, tells her Rebecca asked about her, and leaves Charlotte alone with the scent of incense and candles, which she associates with forgiveness.