Moscow Rules

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