Moscow Rules

hand on you.”
     
     
    “No, Pyotr, you should not have placed your hand on me. Wait until Ivan finds out about this!”
     
     
    She set out down the hallway toward the office. The bodyguard followed.
     
     
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Kharkov, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to enter the office unless your husband is with you.”
     
     
    “Except in the event of an emergency.”
     
     
    “That’s correct.”
     
     
    “And I’m telling you this is an emergency. Go back to your post, you fool. I can’t punch in the code with you looking over my shoulder.”
     
     
    “If there is an emergency, Mrs. Kharkov, why wasn’t I notified by Arkady Medvedev?”
     
     
    “You might find this difficult to believe, Pyotr, but my husband does not tell Arkady everything. He asked me to collect some important papers from his office and bring them to France. Now, ask yourself something, Pyotr: How do you think Ivan is going to react if I miss my plane because of this?”
     
     
    The bodyguard held his ground. “I’m just doing my job, Mrs. Kharkov. And my instructions are very simple. No one is allowed to enter that office without clearance from Mr. Kharkov or Arkady Medvedev. And that includes you.”
     
     
    Elena looked toward the ceiling and sighed in exasperation. “Then I suppose you’ll just have to call Arkady and tell him that I’m here.” She pointed to the telephone resting on a small decorative table. “Call him, Pyotr. But do it quickly. Because if I miss my flight to France, I’m going to tell Ivan to cut out your tongue.”
     
     
    The guard turned his back to Elena and snatched up the receiver. A few seconds later, he reached down, brow furrowed, and rattled the switch several times.
     
     
    “Something wrong, Pyotr?”
     
     
    “The phone doesn’t seem to be working.”
     
     
    “That’s odd. Try my cell phone.”
     
     
    The guard placed the receiver back in the cradle and turned around, only to find Elena with her arm extended and a spray bottle in her hand. The spray bottle that Gabriel had given her on the plane. She squeezed the button once, sending a cloud of atomized liquid directly into his face. The guard struggled for several seconds to maintain his balance and for an instant Elena feared the sedative hadn’t worked. Then he fell to the floor with a heavy thud, toppling the table in the process. Elena stared at him anxiously as he lay sprawled on the floor. Then she sprayed his face a second time.
     
     
    That’s what you get for touching me, she thought. Swine.
     
     
    Nine floors beneath her, a fat man in a gray fedora entered the foyer for the private elevators, quietly cursing his mobile phone. He looked at Luka Osipov with an expression of mild frustration and shrugged his lumpy shoulders.
     
     
    “The damn thing was working a minute ago, but when I got near the building it stopped. Perhaps it’s the ghost of Stalin. My neighbor claims to have seen him wandering the halls at night. I’ve never had the misfortune of meeting him.”
     
     
    The elevator doors opened; the tubby Russian disappeared inside. Luka Osipov walked over to the lobby windows and gazed into the street. At least two other people—a woman walking along the sidewalk and a taxi driver standing next to his car—were having obvious difficulty with their cell phones. The damn thing was working a minute ago, but when I got near the building it stopped . . . Though Comrade Stalin was a man of great power, Luka Osipov doubted whether his ghost had anything to do with the sudden interruption in cellular communications. He suspected it was something far more tangible. Something like a signal jammer.
     
     
    He tried his mobile one more time without success, then walked over to the porter’s desk and asked to use his landline telephone. After ascertaining that Osipov intended to make a local call, the porter turned the instrument around and told the bodyguard to make it quick. The admonition was unnecessary. The phone wasn’t working.
     
     
    “It’s dead,” Osipov said.
     
     
    “It was working a minute ago.”
     
     
    “Have you received any complaints from anyone in the building about trouble with their phones?”
     
     
    “No, nothing.”
     
     
    Luka left the porter’s desk and stepped outside. By the time he reached the limousine, the driver had his window down. Luka poked his head through the opening and told the man in the passenger seat to go inside and stand guard in the