Moscow Rules

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