Moscow Rules

of the checks.” Navot smiled and shook his head slowly. “Those idiots in the Banking section would hand me a briefcase containing a hundred thousand dollars without a second thought, but if I exceeded my meal allowance by so much as a shekel, the heavens would open up. Such is the life of an accountant at King Saul Boulevard.”
     
     
    King Saul Boulevard was the longtime address of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. The service had a long name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Men like Gabriel and Uzi Navot referred to it as “the Office” and nothing else.
     
     
    “Is he still on the payroll?”
     
     
    “The Syrian?” Navot, playing the role of Monsieur Laffont, pulled his lips into a Parisian frown. “I’m afraid he had something of a mishap a few years back.”
     
     
    “What happened?” Gabriel asked cautiously. He knew that when individuals associated with the Office had mishaps, it was usually fatal.
     
     
    “A team of Syrian counterintelligence agents photographed him entering a bank in Geneva. He was arrested at the airport in Damascus the next day and taken to the Palestine Branch.” The Palestine Branch was the name of Syria’s main interrogation center. “They tortured him viciously for a month. When they’d wrung everything out of him they could, they put a bullet in his head and threw his body in an unmarked grave.”
     
     
    Gabriel looked down toward the other tables. The girl from the piazza was now seated alone near the entrance. Her menu was open but her eyes were slowly scanning the other patrons. An oversize handbag lay at her feet with the zipper open. Inside the bag, Gabriel knew, was a loaded gun.
     
     
    “Who’s the bat leveyha ?”
     
     
    “Tamara,” said Navot. “She’s new.”
     
     
    “She’s also very pretty.”
     
     
    “Yes,” said Navot, as though he’d never noticed that before.
     
     
    “You could have selected someone who was over thirty.”
     
     
    “She was the only girl available on short notice.”
     
     
    “Just make sure you behave yourself, Monsieur Laffont.”
     
     
    “The days of torrid affairs with my female escort officers are officially over.” Navot removed his spectacles and laid them on the table. They were highly fashionable and far too small for his large face. “Bella has decided it’s time we finally get married.”
     
     
    “So that explains the new eyeglasses. You’re the chief of Special Ops now, Uzi. You really should be able to choose your own glasses.”
     
     
    Special Ops, in the words of the celebrated Israeli spymaster Ari Shamron, was “the dark side of a dark service.” They were the ones who did the jobs no one else wanted, or dared, to do. They were executioners and kidnappers, buggers and blackmailers; men of intellect and ingenuity with a criminal streak wider than the criminals themselves; multi-linguists and chameleons who were at home in the finest hotels and salons in Europe or the worst back alleys of Beirut and Baghdad.
     
     
    “I thought Bella had grown weary of you,” Gabriel said. “I thought you two were in the final throes.”
     
     
    “Your wedding to Chiara managed to rekindle her belief in love. At the moment, we are in tense negotiations over the time and place.” Navot frowned. “I’m confident it will be easier to reach agreement with the Palestinians over the final status of Jerusalem than it will be for Bella and me to come to terms over wedding plans.”
     
     
    Gabriel raised his wineglass a few inches from the white tablecloth and murmured, “ Mazel tov , Uzi.”
     
     
    “That’s easy for you to say,” Navot said gloomily. “You see, Gabriel, you’ve set the bar rather high for the rest of us. Imagine, a surprise wedding, perfectly planned and executed—the dress, the food, even the place settings, exactly what Chiara wanted. And now you’re spending your honeymoon at an isolated villa in Umbria restoring a painting for the pope. How’s a mere mortal like me ever supposed to live up to that?”
     
     
    “I had help.” Gabriel smiled. “Special Ops really did do a lovely job with the arrangements, didn’t they?”
     
     
    “If our enemies ever find out Special Ops planned a wedding, our vaunted reputation will be ruined.”
     
     
    A waiter mounted the steps and started up toward the table. Navot stilled him with a small movement of his hand and added wine to Gabriel’s glass.
     
     
    “The Old Man