Moscow Rules

through, after all the fighting and the killing, why would you prefer to do a job like this rather than hide out in a secluded villa in Umbria with me?”
     
     
    “It’s not fair to put it in those terms, Chiara.”
     
     
    “Of course it is. You told me it was going to be a simple job. You were going to meet with a Russian journalist in Rome, listen to what he had to say, and that was going to be the end of it.”
     
     
    “It would have been the end of it, if he hadn’t been murdered.”
     
     
    “So you’re doing this for Boris Ostrovsky? You’re risking your life, and Elena’s, because you feel guilty over his death?”
     
     
    “I’m doing this because we need to find those missiles.”
     
     
    “You’re doing this, Gabriel, because you want to destroy Ivan.”
     
     
    “Of course I want to destroy Ivan.”
     
     
    “Well, at least you’re being honest. Just make sure you don’t destroy yourself in the process. If you take his wife and children, he’s going to pursue them to the ends of the earth. And us, too. If we’re very lucky, this operation might be over in forty-eight hours. But your war with Ivan will just be getting started.”
     
     
    “We should eat, Chiara. After all, it’s our anniversary.”
     
     
    She looked at her wristwatch. “It’s too late to eat. That butter will go straight to my hips.”
     
     
    “I was planning a similar maneuver myself.”
     
     
    “Promises, promises.” She drank some more of the wine. “Did you enjoy working with Sarah again?”
     
     
    “You’re not going to start that again, are you?”
     
     
    “Let the record show, your honor, that the witness refused to answer the question.”
     
     
    “Yes, Chiara, I did enjoy working with Sarah again. She performed her job admirably and with great professionalism.”
     
     
    “And does she still adore you?”
     
     
    “Sarah knows I’m unavailable. And the only person she adores more than me is you.”
     
     
    “So you admit it?”
     
     
    “Admit what?”
     
     
    “That she adores you.”
     
     
    “Oh, for God’s sake. Yes, Sarah had feelings for me once, feelings that surfaced in the middle of a very dangerous operation. I don’t happen to share those feelings because I’m quite madly in love with you. I proved that to you, I hope, by marrying you—in spectacular fashion, I might add. If memory serves, Sarah was in attendance.”
     
     
    “She was probably hoping you were going to leave me stranded at the chuppah.”
     
     
    “Chiara.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her mouth. Her lips were cool and tasted of the Chasselas. “This will all be over in forty-eight hours. Then we can go back to Italy, and no one, not even Ivan, will be able to find us there.”
     
     
    “No one but Shamron.” She kissed him again. “I thought you were planning a maneuver that had something to do with my hips.”
     
     
    “You have a very long day tomorrow.”
     
     
    “Put the table outside in the hall, Gabriel. I can’t make love in a room that smells like Chicken Kiev.”
     
     
    Afterward, she slept in his arms, her body restless, her mind troubled by dreams. Gabriel did not sleep; Gabriel never slept the night before an operation. At 3:59, he called the front desk to say a wake-up call would not be necessary, and gently woke Chiara with kisses on the back of her neck. She made love to him one final time, pleading with him throughout to send someone else to Moscow in his place. At five o’clock, she left the room in her crisp El Al uniform and headed downstairs to the lobby, where Rimona and Yaakov were waiting along with the rest of the crew. Gabriel watched from his window as they climbed into a shuttle bus for the ride to the airport and remained there long after they had gone. His gaze was focused on the storm clouds gathering over the distant mountain peaks. His thoughts, however, were elsewhere. He was thinking of an old woman in a Moscow apartment reaching for a telephone, with Eli Lavon, the man she knew only as Feliks, calmly reminding her of her lines.
     

 
    52
     
     
    VILLA SOLEIL, FRANCE
     
     
    They had arrived at an uneasy truce. It had taken seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours of screaming. Seventy-two hours of threats of malicious divorce. Seventy-two hours of on-and-off interrogation. Like all those who have been betrayed, he demanded to be told the details. She had resisted at first, but under Ivan’s withering assault she had