Moscow Rules (36 page)

“We’ll need the approval of the prime minister,” Shamron said.

“The prime minister will do whatever you tell him to do,” said Gabriel. “He always does.”

“And God help us all if we create another scandal for him.” Shamron’s gaze flickered from Navot to

Gabriel and back again. “Would you boys like to handle this yourselves or would you like adult

supervision? I’ve actually done this a time or two.”

“We’d love your help,” Navot said. “But are you sure Gilah won’t mind?”

“Gilah?” Shamron shrugged his shoulders. “I think Gilah could use a few days to herself. You might

find this hard to believe, but I’m not the easiest person to live with.”

Gabriel and Navot immediately began to laugh. Adrian Carter bit hard on the stem of his pipe in a

bid to stifle the impulse to join them, but after a few seconds he was doubled over as well. “Enjoy

yourselves at my expense,” Shamron murmured. “But one day you’ll be old, too.”

49 PARIS

The serious planning began the following morning when Adrian Carter returned to the gated

government guesthouse off the Avenue Victor Hugo. As Carter anticipated, the negotiations went

smoothly, and by that evening the DST, the French internal security service, had taken formal control of

the Kharkov watch. Gabriel’s troops, exhausted after nearly two weeks of constant duty, immediately

departed for Paris -all but Dina Sarid, who remained at the villa in Gassin to serve as Gabriel’s eyes and

ears in the south.

It soon became clear to the DST, and to nearly everyone else in Saint-Tropez for that matter, that a

pall had descended over the Villa Soleil. There were no more parties by the vast swimming pool, no

more drunken day trips aboard
October,
and the name “ Kharkov ” did not grace the reservation sheets of

Saint-Tropez’s exclusive restaurants. Indeed, for the first three days of the French watch Ivan and Elena

were not seen at all. Only the children, Anna and Nikolai, ventured beyond the villa’s walls, once to

attend a carnival on the outskirts of town and a second time to visit Pampelonne Beach, where they spent

two miserable hours in the company of Sonia and their sunburned Russian bodyguards before demanding

to be taken home again.

Because the DST was operating on home soil, they were highly attuned to the gossip swirling

through the bars and cafés. According to one rumor, Ivan was planning to put the villa up for sale and then

put to sea to heal his wounded pride. According to another, he was planning to subject Elena to a Russian

divorce and leave her begging for kopeks in the Moscow Metro. There was a rumor he had beaten her

black-and-blue. A rumor he’d drugged her and shipped her off to Siberia. There was even a rumor he had

killed her with his bare hands and dumped her body high in the Maritime Alps. All such speculation was

put to rest, however, when Elena was spotted strolling along the rue Gambetta at sunset, absent any signs

of physical or emotional trauma. Ivan did not accompany her, though a large contingent of bodyguards did.

One DST watcher described the security detail as “presidential” in size and intensity.

At the little apartment in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris, the events in the south were taken as

confirmation that the phase of the operation known as “the small lie to cover the big lie” had worked to

perfection. Unbeknownst to the neighbors, the flat was by then a beehive of hushed activity. There were

surveillance photos and watch reports taped to the walls, a large-scale map of Moscow with flags and

stickpins and routes marked in red, and a grease board covered in Gabriel’s stylish left-handed Hebrew

script. Early in the preparation, Shamron seemed content to play the role of éminence grise. But as time

drew short, and his patience thin, he began to assert himself in ways that might have bred resentment in

men other than Gabriel and Uzi Navot. They were like sons to Shamron and were therefore accustomed to

his bellicose outbursts. They listened when other officers might have covered their ears and took advice

others might have discarded for no reason other than pride. But more than anything, thought Adrian Carter,

they seemed to cherish the opportunity to be in the field one more time with the legend. So did Carter

himself.

For the most part, they remained prisoners of the flat, but once each day Gabriel would take Shamron

outside to walk the footpaths of the Bois de Boulogne. By then, the cruelest heat of the summer had

passed, and those August afternoons in Paris were soft and fine. Gabriel pleaded with Shamron not to

smoke, but to no avail. Nor could he convince him to relinquish, even for a few moments, his obsession

with every detail of the operation. Alone in the park, he would say things to Gabriel he dared not say in

front of Navot or the other members of the team. His nagging concerns. His unanswered questions and

unresolved doubts. Even his fears. On their final outing together, Shamron was moody and distracted. In

the Bagatelle Gardens, he spoke words Gabriel had never heard the night before an operation, words

warning of the possibility of failure.

“You must prepare yourself for the prospect she won’t come out of that building. Give her the

allotted time, plus a five-minute grace period. But if she doesn’t come out, it means she’s been caught.

And if she’s caught, you can be sure Arkady Medvedev and his goons will start looking for accomplices.

If, heaven forbid, she falls into their hands, there’s nothing we can do for her. Don’t even think about

going into that building after her. Your first responsibility is to yourself and your team.”

Gabriel walked in silence, hands in the pockets of his jeans, eyes on the move. Shamron talked on,

his voice like the beating of distant drums. “Ivan and his allies in the FSB let you walk out of Russia alive

once, but you can be sure it won’t happen again. Play by the Moscow Rules, and don’t forget the Eleventh

Commandment. Thou shalt not get caught, Gabriel, even if it means leaving Elena Kharkov behind. If she

doesn’t come out of that building in time, you have to leave. Do you understand me?”

“I understand.”

Shamron stopped walking and seized Gabriel’s face in both hands with unexpected force. “I

destroyed your life once, Gabriel, and I won’t allow it to happen again. If something goes wrong, get to

the airport and get on that plane.”

They walked back to the apartment in silence through the fading late-afternoon light. Gabriel glanced

at his wristwatch. It was nearly five o’clock. The operation was about to commence. And not even

Shamron could stop it now.

50 MOSCOW

It was a few minutes after seven in Moscow when the house telephone in Svetlana Federov’s

apartment on the Kutuzovsky Prospekt rattled softly. She was seated in her living room at the time,

watching yet another televised speech by the Russian president, and was pleased by the interruption. She

silenced him with the click of a button on her remote-
God, if it were only that easy
-and slowly lifted the

receiver to her ear. The voice on the other end of the line was instantly familiar: Pavel, the loathsome

evening concierge. It seemed she had a visitor. “A
gentleman
caller,” added Pavel, his voice full of

insinuation.

“Does he have a name?”

“Calls himself Feliks.”

“Russian?”

“If he is, he hasn’t lived here in a long time.”

“What does he want?”

“Says he has a message. Says he’s a friend of your daughter.”

I don’t have a daughter,
she thought spitefully.
The woman I used to call my daughter has left me

to die alone in Moscow while she cavorts around Europe with her oligarch husband.
She was being

overly dramatic, of course, but at her age she was entitled.

“What’s he look like?”

“A pile of old clothes. But he has flowers and chocolates. Godiva chocolates, Svetlana. Your

favorite.”

“He’s not a mobster or a rapist, is he, Pavel?”

“I shouldn’t think so.”

“Send him up, then.”

“He’s on his way.”

“Wait,
Pavel.”

“What’s wrong?”

She looked down at her shabby old housecoat.

“Ask him to wait five minutes. Then send him up.”

She hung up the phone.
Flowers and chocolates…
He might look like a pile of discarded laundry,

but apparently he was still a gentleman.

She went into the kitchen and looked for something suitable to serve. There were no pastries or

cakes in the pantry, only a tin of English tea biscuits, a souvenir from her last dreadful trip to London to

see Elena. She arranged a dozen biscuits neatly on a plate and laid the plate on the sitting-room table. In

the bedroom, she quickly exchanged her housecoat for a summery frock. Standing before the mirror, she

coaxed her brittle gray hair into appropriate condition and stared sadly at her face. There was nothing to

be done about that.
Too many years,
she thought.
Too much heartache.

She was leaving her room when she heard the ping of the bell. Opening the door, she was greeted by

the sight of an odd-looking little man in his early sixties, with a head of wispy hair and the small, quick

eyes of a terrier. His clothing, as advertised, was rumpled, but appeared to have been chosen with

considerable care. There was something old-fashioned about him. Something bygone. He looked as

though he could have stepped from an old black-and-white movie, she thought, or from a St. Petersburg

coffeehouse during the days of revolution. His manners were as dated as his appearance. His Russian,

though fluent, sounded as if it had not been used in many years. He certainly wasn’t a Muscovite; in fact,

she doubted whether he was a Russian at all. If someone were to put her on the spot, she would have said

he was a Jew. Not that she had anything against the Jews. It was possible she was a little Jewish herself.

“I do hope I’m not catching you at an inconvenient time,” he said.

“I was just watching television. The president was making an important speech.”

“Oh, really? What was he talking about?”

“I’m not sure. They’re all the same.”

The visitor handed her the flowers and the chocolates. “I took the liberty. I know how you adore

truffles.”

“How did you know that?”

“Elena told me, of course. Elena has told me a great deal about you.”

“How do you know my daughter?”

“I’m a friend, Mrs. Federov. A trusted friend.”

“She sent you here?”

“That’s correct.”

“For what reason?”

“To discuss something important with you.” He lowered his voice. “Something concerning the well-

being of Elena and the children.”

“Are they in some sort of danger?”

“It would really be better if we spoke in private, Mrs. Federov. The matter is of the utmost

sensitivity.”

She regarded him suspiciously for a long moment before finally stepping to one side. He moved past

her without a sound, his footsteps silent on the tiled hall.
Like he was floating,
she thought with a shiver

as she chained the door.
Like a ghost.

51 GENEVA

It is said that travelers who approach Geneva by train from Zurich are frequently so overcome by its

beauty that they hurl their return tickets out the window and vow never to leave again. Arriving by car

from Paris, and in the middle of a lifeless August night, Gabriel felt no such compulsion. He had always

found Geneva to be a charming yet intensely boring city. Once a place of Calvinistic fervor, finance was

the city’s only religion now, and the bankers and moneymen were its new priests and archbishops.

His hotel, the Métropole, was near the lake, just across the street from the Jardin Anglais. The night

manager, a diminutive man of immaculate dress and expressionless features, handed over an electronic

key and informed him that his wife had already checked in and was upstairs awaiting his arrival. He

found her seated in a wingback chair in the window, with her long legs propped on the sill and her gaze

focused on the Jet d’Eau, the towering water fountain in the center of the lake. Her El Al uniform, crisp

and starched, hung from the rod in the closet. Candlelight reflected softly in the silver-domed warmers of

a room service table set for two. Gabriel lifted a bottle of frigid Chasselas from the ice bucket and poured

himself a glass.

“I expected you an hour ago.”

“The traffic leaving Paris was miserable. What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken Kiev,” she said without a trace of irony in her voice. Her eyes were still trained on the

fountain, which was now red from the colored spotlights. “The butter’s probably congealed by now.”

Gabriel placed his hand atop one of the warmers. “It’s fine. Can I pour you some wine?”

“I shouldn’t. I have a four o’clock call. I’m working the morning flight from Geneva to Ben-Gurion,

then the afternoon flight from Ben-Gurion to Moscow.” She looked at him for the first time. “You know, I

think it’s possible El Al flight attendants might actually get less sleep than Office agents.”