Moscow Rules

intervals of five minutes and made their way separately through security and passport control. Uzi Navot came last, hat pulled low over his eyes, raincoat drenched. He walked the length of the terminal twice, searching for watchers, before finally making his way to Gate A23. Lavon and Yaakov were gazing nervously out at the tarmac. Between them was an empty seat. Navot lowered himself into it and rested his attaché case on his knees. He stared hard at Chiara for a moment, like a middle-aged traveler admiring a beautiful younger woman.
     
     
    “How’s she doing?”
     
     
    Lavon answered. “How do you think she’s doing?”
     
     
    “She has no one to blame but her husband.”
     
     
    “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time for recriminations later.” Lavon checked the departure board. “How much longer do you think Shamron is going to hold the plane?”
     
     
    “As long as he thinks he can.”
     
     
    “By my estimate, she’s been in the hands of Arkady Medvedev for two hours now. How long do you think it took him to tear her bag apart, Uzi? How long did it take him to find Ivan’s disks and Gabriel’s electronic toys?”
     
     
    Navot typed a brief message on his BlackBerry. Two minutes later, the status window in the departure monitor changed from DELAYED to NOW BOARDING. One hundred eighty-seven weary passengers began to applaud. Three anxious men stared gloomily through the window at the shimmering tarmac.
     
     
    “Don’t worry, Uzi. You did the right thing.”
     
     
    “Just don’t ever tell Chiara. She’ll never forgive me.” Navot shook his head slowly. “It’s never a good idea to bring spouses into the field. You’d think Gabriel would have learned that by now.”
     
     
    There was a time in Moscow, not long ago, when a man sitting alone in a parked car would have come under immediate suspicion. But that was no longer the case. These days, sitting in parked cars, or cars stuck in traffic, was what Muscovites did.
     
     
    Gabriel was on the northern edge of Bolotnaya Square, next to a billboard plastered with a dour portrait of the Russian president. He did not know whether the spot was legal or illegal. He did not care. He cared only that he could see the entrance of the House on the Embankment. He left the engine running and the radio on. It sounded to Gabriel like a news analysis program of some kind: long cuts of taped remarks by the Russian president interspersed with commentary by a panel of journalists and experts. Their words were surely laudatory, for the Kremlin tolerated no other kind. Forward as one! as the president liked to say. And keep your criticism to yourself.
     
     
    Twenty minutes into his vigil, a pair of underfed Militia officers rounded the corner, tunics glistening. Gabriel turned up the radio and nodded cordially. For a moment, he feared they might be contemplatinga shakedown. Instead, they frowned at his old Volga, as if to say he wasn’t worth their time on a rainy night. Next came a man with lank, dark hair, and an open bottle of Baltika beer in his hand. He shuffled over to Gabriel’s window and opened his coat, revealing a veritable pharmacy underneath. Gabriel motioned for him to move on, then flicked the wipers and focused his gaze on the building. Specifically, on the lights burning in the ninth-floor apartment overlooking the Kremlin.
     
     
    They went dark at 7:48 P.M. The woman who emerged from the building soon after had no handbag hanging over her left shoulder. Indeed, she had no handbag at all. She was walking more swiftly than normal; Luka Osipov, bodyguard turned captor, held one arm while a colleague held another. Arkady Medvedev walked a few steps behind, head lowered against the rain, eyes up and on the move.
     
     
    A Mercedes waited at the curb. The seating arrangements had clearly been determined in advance, for the boarding process was accomplished with admirable speed and efficiency: Elena in the backseat, wedged between bodyguards; Arkady Medvedev in the front passenger seat, a mobile phone now pressed to his ear. The car crept to the end of Serafimovicha Street, then disappeared in a black blur. Gabriel counted to five and slipped the Volga into gear. Forward as one.
     

 
    62
     
     
    MOSCOW
     
     
    They roared southward out of the city on a road that bore Lenin’s name and was lined with monuments to Lenin’s folly. Apartment blocks— endless apartments blocks. The biggest apartment blocks Gabriel had ever