Moscow Rules

trigger, Arkady, because Ivan is never getting those children.”
     
     
    Medvedev walked over to Gabriel and slammed the butt of the Stechkin into his right eye. Gabriel toppled sideways to the floor, blinded by excruciating pain. It was compounded when Medvedev buried an Italian loafer into Gabriel’s solar plexus. He was lining up a second kick when a distant voice intervened in Russian. The voice was familiar to Gabriel, he was sure of it, but in his agony he could not recall where he had heard it before. It came to him a moment later, when he was finally able to breathe again. He had heard the voice two months earlier, during his first trip to Moscow. He had heard the voice in Lubyanka.
     

 
    66
     
     
    KALUZHSKAYA O BLAST, RUSSIA
     
     
    The two men had a brief but amicable debate, as if they were quarreling over whose turn it was to pay for lunch. Because it was in Russian, Gabriel could not understand it. Nor could he see their faces. He was still lying on his side, with his abdomen exposed to Arkady Medvedev’s size-eleven loafers.
     
     
    When the conversation concluded, two pairs of hands lifted him to his feet. It was then he saw the face of the man he knew only as “Sergei. ” He looked much as he had that night in Lubyanka. The same gray suit. The same gray pallor. The same lawyerly eyes behind round spectacles. He was wearing a rather stylish raincoat. His little Lenin beard had recently been groomed.
     
     
    “I thought I told you not to come back to Russia, Allon.”
     
     
    “If you had been doing your job, I wouldn’t have had to.”
     
     
    “And which job is that?”
     
     
    “Preventing scum like Ivan from flooding the world with weapons and missiles.”
     
     
    Sergei sighed heavily, as if to say this was the last way he had hoped to spend his evening. Then he took hold of Gabriel’s handcuffs and gave them a sharp jerk. If Gabriel had had any feeling left in his wrists, he was certain it would have hurt like hell.
     
     
    They crossed the warehouse together, Sergei trailing a step behind, and exited through a door wide enough to accommodate Ivan’s freight trucks. It was raining again; three of Medvedev’s security men were sheltering beneath the eaves, talking quietly in Russian. A few feet away was an official FSB sedan. Sergei inserted Gabriel into the backseat and slammed the door.
     
     
    He drove with a Makarov in one hand and the radio on. Another speech by the Russian president, of course. What else? It was a small road and it ran through a thick birch forest. Tucked amid the trees were dachas—not palaces like Ivan’s dacha but real Russian dachas. Some were the size of a quaint cottage; others were little more than tool-sheds. All were surrounded by little plots of cultivated land. Gabriel thought of Olga Sukhova, tending to her radishes.
     
     
    I believe in my Russia, and I want no more acts of evil committed in my name . . .
     
     
    He looked into the rearview mirror and saw the eyes of Lenin.
     
     
    They were searching the road behind them.
     
     
    “Are we being followed, Sergei?”
     
     
    “It’s not Sergei. My name is Colonel Grigori Bulganov.”
     
     
    “How do you do, Colonel Bulganov?”
     
     
    “I do just fine, Allon. Now shut your mouth.”
     
     
    Bulganov eased into a turnout and killed the engine. After warning Gabriel not to move, he climbed out and opened the trunk. He rummaged around the interior before coming over to Gabriel’s side of the car. When he opened the door, he was holding the Makarov in one hand and a pair of rusted bolt cutters in the other.
     
     
    “What are you going to do? Cut me into little pieces?”
     
     
    Bulganov placed the Makarov on top of the car. “Shut up and get out.”
     
     
    Gabriel did as he was told. Bulganov spun him around, so that he was facing the car, and took hold of the handcuffs. Gabriel heard a single snap and his hands were free.
     
     
    “Would you like to tell me what’s going on, Sergei?”
     
     
    “I told you, Allon—it’s Grigori. Colonel Grigori Bulganov.” He held out the Makarov toward Gabriel. “I assume you know how to use one of these things?”
     
     
    Gabriel took hold of the gun. “Any chance of getting these cuffs off my wrists?”
     
     
    “Not without the key. Besides, you’ll need to be wearing them when we walk back into that warehouse. It’s the only way we’ll be able to get Elena out of there alive.” Bulganov treated Gabriel to one