Moscow Rules

a line for unwanted foreigners, and by the time he was finally admitted into the country Elena was gone. Outside the terminal, he joined another endless line, this one for a taxi. He eventually climbed into the back of a rattling Lada, driven by a juvenile in mirrored sunglasses. Uzi Navot climbed into the car behind him.
     
     
    “Where are you going?” asked Gabriel’s driver.
     
     
    “Ritz-Carlton Hotel.”
     
     
    “Your first time in Moscow?”
     
     
    “Yes.”
     
     
    “Some music?”
     
     
    “No, I have a terrible headache.”
     
     
    “How about a girl instead?”
     
     
    “The hotel would be just fine, thank you.”
     
     
    “Suit yourself.”
     
     
    “How old are you?”
     
     
    “Fifteen.”
     
     
    “Are you sure you can drive?”
     
     
    “No problem.”
     
     
    “Is this car actually going to make it to the Ritz?”
     
     
    “No problem.”
     
     
    “It’s getting dark out. Are you sure you need those sunglasses?”
     
     
    “They make me look like I have money. Everyone with money in Moscow wears sunglasses at night.”
     
     
    “I’ll try to remember that.”
     
     
    “It’s true.”
     
     
    “Can this car go any faster? I’d like to get to the Ritz sometime tonight.”
     
     
    "No problem.”
     
     
    Word of Gabriel and Elena’s arrival in Moscow reached the operations center in Grosvenor Square at 6:19 P.M. local time. Graham Seymour stood up from his chair and rubbed the kinks out of his lower back.
     
     
    “Nothing more to be done from here tonight. What say we adjourn to the Grill Room of the Dorchester for a celebratory supper? My service is buying.”
     
     
    “I don’t believe in mid-operation celebrations,” Shamron said. “Especially when I have three of my best operatives on the ground in Moscow and three more on the way.”
     
     
    Carter placed a hand on Shamron’s shoulder. “Come on, Ari. There’s nothing you can do now except sit there all night and worry yourself to death.”
     
     
    “Which is exactly what I intend to do.”
     
     
    Carter frowned and looked at Graham Seymour. “We can’t leave him here alone. He’s barely housebroken.”
     
     
    “How would you feel about Indian takeaway?”
     
     
    “Tell them to take it easy on the spices. My stomach isn’t what it used to be.”
     

 
    55
     
     
    MOSCOW
     
     
    With just one week remaining until election day, there was no escaping the face of the Russian president. It hung from every signpost and government building in the city center. It stared from the front pages of every Kremlin-friendly newspaper and flashed across the newscasts of the Kremlin-controlled television networks. It was carried aloft by roving bands of Unity Party Youth and floated godlike over the city on the side of a hot-air balloon. The president himself acted as though he were waging a real election campaign rather than a carefully scripted folly. He spent the morning campaigning in a Potemkin village in the countryside before returning to Moscow for a massive afternoon rally at Dinamo Stadium. It was, according to Radio Moscow, the largest political rally in modern Russian history.
     
     
    The Kremlin had allowed two other candidates the privilege of contesting the election, but most Russians could not recall their names, and even the foreign press had long ago stopped covering them. The Coalition for a Free Russia, the only real organized opposition force in the country, had no candidate but plenty of courage. As the president was addressing the throng in Dinamo Stadium, they gathered in Arbat Square for a counterrally. By the time the police and their plainclothes helpers had finished with them, one hundred members of Free Russia were in custody and another hundred were in the hospital. Evidence of the bloody melee was still strewn about the square late that afternoon as Gabriel, dressed in a dark corduroy flat cap and Barbour raincoat, headed down the Boulevard Ring toward the river.
     
     
    The Cathedral of Christ the Savior rose before him, its five golden onion domes dull against the heavy gray sky. The original cathedral had been dynamited by Kaganovich in 1931 on orders from Stalin, supposedly because it blocked the view from the windows of his Kremlin apartment. In its place the Bolsheviks had attempted to erect a massive government skyscraper called the Palace of Soviets, but the riverside soil proved unsuitable for such a building and the construction site flooded