Moscow Rules

hand on you while you were on Russian soil. Ivan wasn’t happy, but the top floor finally came around to my way of thinking. I put you in the van and got you to the border before they could change their minds. You came very close to dying that night, Allon—closer than you’ll ever realize.”
     
     
    “Where’s the dossier now?”
     
     
    “Most of it’s up here,” he said, tapping the side of his forehead. “Whatever documentation we could copy was scanned and stored in e-mail accounts outside the country.”
     
     
    “How did you end up in that warehouse tonight?”
     
     
    “I’ve been plying my trade on both sides of the street.”
     
     
    “You’re on Ivan’s payroll?”
     
     
    Bulganov nodded. “It made it much easier to gather information about the FSB’s shady dealings if I actually took part in some myself. It also gave me protection. The real rotten elements thought I was one of them. I know a great deal about Ivan’s operation. Who knows? Maybe we know enough together to track down those missiles— without going back into the House on the Embankment. Even I get the creeps going into the place. It’s haunted, you know. They say Stalin roams the halls at night knocking on doors.”
     
     
    “I’m not leaving Russia without Ivan’s disks.”
     
     
    “You don’t know if there’s anything on them. You also don’t know if they’re even still in the apartment.”
     
     
    Elena intervened. “I saw Arkady put my handbag in the vault before we left.”
     
     
    “That was a long time ago. Ivan could have ordered someone to move them.”
     
     
    “He couldn’t have. Only three people in the world can access that vault: Ivan, Arkady, and me. Logically, the disks have to be there.”
     
     
    “But getting them is going to cost valuable time. It also might mean another dead body. There’s going to be a new guard in the apartment. He might even have a helper or two. In the old days, the neighbors were used to the sound of a little late-night gunfire, but not now. If we have to do any shooting, it could get ugly quickly.”
     
     
    “You’re still a colonel in the FSB, Grigori. And FSB colonels take shit from no one.”
     
     
    “I don’t want to be an FSB colonel anymore. I want to be one of the good guys.”
     
     
    “You will be,” Gabriel said. “The moment you present yourself at the Ukrainian border and declare your desire to defect.”
     
     
    Bulganov lowered his eyes from the mirror and stared straight down the Leninsky Prospekt. “I already am a good guy,” he said quietly. “I just play for a very bad team.”
     

 
    69
     
     
    BOLOTNAYA SQUARE, MOSCOW
     
     
    The Russian president frowned in disapproval as Gabriel, Elena, and Grigori Bulganov hurried across the street toward the House on the Embankment. Bulganov placed his FSB identification on the reception desk and quietly threatened to cut off the porter’s hand if he touched the telephone.
     
     
    “We were never here. Do you understand me?”
     
     
    The terrified porter nodded. Bulganov returned his ID to his coat pocket and walked over to the private elevator, where Gabriel and Elena had already boarded a car. As the doors closed, the two men drew their Makarovs and chambered their first rounds.
     
     
    The elevator was old and slow; the journey to the ninth floor seemed to last an eternity. When the doors finally opened, Elena was pressed into one corner, with Gabriel and Bulganov, guns leveled in firing positions, shielding her body. Their precaution proved unnecessary, however, because the vestibule, like the entrance hall of the apartment, was empty. It seemed Arkady Medvedev’s highly trained security guard had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room while watching a bit of pornography on Ivan’s large-screen television. Gabriel woke the guard by inserting the barrel of the Makarov into his ear.
     
     
    “If you are a good dog, you will live to see the sunrise. If you are a bad dog, I’m going to make a terrible mess on Ivan’s couch. Which is it going to be? Good dog or bad dog?”
     
     
    “Good,” said the guard.
     
     
    “Wise choice. Let’s go.”
     
     
    Gabriel marched the guard into Ivan’s fortified office, where Elena was already in the process of opening the interior vault. Her handbag was where Medvedev had left it. The disks were still inside. Bulganov ordered the guard into the vault and closed the steel door. Elena pressed the button behind