Moscow Rules

French to keep the guest list short. They had not. The chief of the DST, the French internal security service, was there, along with his counterpart from the more glamorous DGSE, the French foreign intelligence service. There was a senior man from the Police Nationale and his overlord from the Ministry of the Interior. There was a mysterious figure from military intelligence and, in a troubling sign that politics might play a role in French decision making, there was the president’s national security adviser, who had to be dragged to the gathering against his will from his château in the Loire Valley. And then there were the nameless bureaucrats, functionaries, factotums, note-takers, and food tasters who came and went with hushed abandon. Each one, Carter knew, represented a potential leak. He recalled Gabriel’s warnings about an ever-widening circle of knowledge and wondered how long they had until Ivan learned of the plot against him.
     
     
    The setting was intensely formal, the furnishings preposterously French. The talks themselves were conducted in a vast mirrored dining room, at a table the size of an aircraft carrier. Carter sat alone on one flank, behind a little brass nameplate that read THOMAS APPLEBY, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION—a mere formality since he was known to the French and was held by them in considerable regard despite the many sins of his service. The opening notes were cordial, as Carter anticipated they would be. He raised a glass of rather good French wine to the renewal of Franco-American cooperation. He endured a rather tedious briefing about what Paris knew of Ivan’s activities in the former French colonies of sub-Saharan Africa. And he suffered through a rather odious lecture by the national security adviser over the failure of Washington to do anything about Ivan until now. He was tempted to lash back—tempted to chastise his newfound allies for pouring their own weapons into the most combustible corners of the planet—but he knew discretion was the better part of valor. And so he nodded at the appropriate times and conceded the appropriate points, all the while waiting for his opportunity to seize the initiative.
     
     
    It came after dinner, when they retired to the cool of the garden for coffee and the inevitable cigarette. There were moments at any such gathering when the participants ceased to be citizens of their own land and instead banded together as only brothers of the secret world can do. This, Carter knew, was one of those moments. And so with only the faint murmur of distant traffic to disturb the stately silence, he quietly placed Gabriel’s demands before them—though Gabriel’s name, like Ivan’s and Elena’s, was not uttered in the insecurity of the open air. The French were appalled, of course, and insulted, which is the role the French play best. Carter cajoled and Carter pleaded. Carter flattered and Carter appealed to their better angels. And last, Carter played Gabriel’s trump card. It worked, just as Gabriel had known it would, and by dawn they had a draft agreement ready for signature. They called it the Treaty of Paris. Adrian Carter would later think of it as one of his finest hours.
     

 
    36
     
     
    SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE
     
     
    The village of Saint-Tropez lies at the far western end of the Côte d’Azur, at the base of the French département known as the Var. It was nothing but a sleepy fishing port when, in 1956, it was the setting for a film called And God Created Woman, starring Brigitte Bardot. Nearly overnight, Saint-Tropez became one of the most popular resorts in the world, an exclusive playground for the fashionable, the elite, and other assorted euro millionaires. Though it had fallen from grace in the eighties and nineties, it had seen a revival of late. The actors and rock stars had returned, along with the models and the rich playboys who pursued them. Even Bardot herself had started coming back again. Much to the horror of the French and longtime habitués, it had also been discovered by newly rich invaders from the East: the Russians.
     
     
    The town itself is surprisingly small. Its two primary features are the Old Port, which in summer is filled with luxury yachts instead of fishing boats, and the Place Carnot, a large, dusty esplanade that once each week hosts a bustling outdoor market and where local men still pass summer days playing pétanque and drinking pastis. The streets betweenthe port and the square