Moscow Rules

Chiara making her way slowly down the aisle. Dressed in a flattering blue El Al uniform, she was sternly reminding passengers to straighten their seat backs and stow their tray tables. Mikhail swallowed the last of his beer and absently handed her the empty bottle.
     
     
    “The service on this flight was dreadful, don’t you think?”
     
     
    “Even by El Al standards,” Gabriel agreed.
     
     
    “I think we should institute a training program immediately.”
     
     
    “Now, that’s the kind of thinking that’s going to get you a job in the executive suite of King Saul Boulevard.”
     
     
    “Maybe I should volunteer to teach it.”
     
     
    “And work with our girls? You’d be safer going back to Gaza and chasing Hamas terrorists.”
     
     
    Gabriel leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes.
     
     
    “You sure you’re all right, Gabriel?”
     
     
    “Just a touch of Lubyanka hangover.”
     
     
    “Who could blame you?” Mikhail was silent for a moment. “The KGB kept my father there for six months when I was a kid. Did I ever tell you that?”
     
     
    He hadn’t, but Gabriel had read Mikhail’s personnel file.
     
     
    “After six months in Lubyanka, they declared my father mentally ill and sent him away to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. It was all a sham, of course. No one ever got better in a Soviet psychiatric hospital—the hospitals were just another arm of the gulag. My father was lucky, though. Eventually, he got out, and we were able to come to Israel. But he was never the same after being locked away in that asylum.”
     
     
    Just then the cabin shuddered with the impact of a hard landing. From the depths of economy class arose a desultory patter of applause. It was a tradition for flights landing in Israel, and, for the first time, Gabriel was tempted to join in. Instead, he sat silently while the plane taxied toward the terminal and, unlike the rest of his fellow countrymen, waited until the SEAT BELT sign was extinguished before rising to his feet and collecting his bag from the overhead bin.
     
     
    Chiara was now standing at the cabin door. She anonymously bade Gabriel a pleasant evening and warned him to watch his step as he followed Mikhail and the two other security agents down the stairs of the Jetway. Upon reaching the tarmac, Mikhail and the others turned to the right and filed into the motorized lounges, along with the rest of the passengers. Gabriel headed in the opposite direction, toward the waiting Peugeot limousine, and climbed into the backseat. Shamron examined the dark reddish blue bruise along Gabriel’s cheek.
     
     
    “I suppose you don’t look too bad for someone who survived Lubyanka. How was it?”
     
     
    “The rooms were on the small side, but the furnishings were quite lovely.”
     
     
    “Perhaps it would have been better if you’d found some other way of dealing with those Chechens besides killing them.”
     
     
    “I considered shooting the guns out of their hands, Ari, but that sort of thing really only works in the movies.”
     
     
    “I’m glad to see you emerged from your ordeal with your fatalistic sense of humor intact. A team of debriefers is waiting for you at King Saul Boulevard. I’m afraid you have a long night ahead of you.”
     
     
    “I’d rather go back to Lubyanka than face the debriefers tonight.”
     
     
    Shamron gave Gabriel a paternalistic pat on the shoulder.
     
     
    “I’ll take you home, Gabriel. We’ll talk on the way.”
     

 
    21
     
     
    JERUSALEM
     
     
    They still had much ground to cover when they arrived at Gabriel’s apartment in Narkiss Street. Despite the fact it was after midnight, Shamron invited himself upstairs for coffee. Gabriel hesitated before inserting his key into the lock.
     
     
    “Go ahead,” Shamron said calmly. “We’ve already swept it.”
     
     
    “I think I like fighting Arab terrorists better than Russians.”
     
     
    “Unfortunately, we don’t always have the luxury of choosing our enemies.”
     
     
    Gabriel entered the apartment first and switched on the lights. Everything was exactly as he had left it a week earlier, including the half-drunk cup of coffee he had left in the kitchen sink on the way out the door. He poured the now-moldy remnants down the drain, then spooned coffee into the French press and placed a kettle of water on the stove to boil. When he went into the sitting room, he found Shamron with a cigarette between his