Moscow Rules (4 page)

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 sends his love.”

“I’m sure he does,” Gabriel said absently. “How is he?”

“He’s beginning to grumble.”

“What’s bothering him now?”

“Your security arrangements at the villa. He thinks they’re less than satisfactory.”

“Precisely five people know I’m in the country: the Italian prime minister, the chiefs of his

intelligence and security services, the pope, and the pope’s private secretary.”

“He still thinks the security is inadequate.” Navot hesitated. “And I’m afraid that, given recent

developments, I must concur.”

“What recent developments?”

Navot placed his big arms on the table and leaned forward a few inches. “We’re picking up some

rumblings from our sources in Egypt. It seems Sheikh Tayyib is rather upset with you for foiling his well-

laid plan to bring down the Mubarak government. He’s instructed all Sword of Allah operatives in

Europe and the Middle East to begin looking for you at once. Last week, a Sword agent crossed into Gaza

and asked Hamas to join in the search.”

“I take it our friends in Hamas agreed to help.”

“Without hesitation.” Navot’s next words were spoken not in French but in quiet Hebrew. “As you

might imagine, the Old Man is hearing these reports about the gathering threats to your life, and he is

fixated on one single thought: Why is Gabriel Allon, Israel ’s avenging angel and most capable secret

servant, sitting on a cattle ranch in the hills of Umbria restoring a painting for His Holiness Pope Paul the

Seventh?”

Gabriel looked out at the view. The sun was sinking toward the distant hills in the west and the first

lights were coming up on the valley floor. An image flashed in his memory: a man with a gun in his

outstretched hand, firing bullets into the face of a fallen terrorist, beneath the North Tower of Westminster

Abbey. It appeared to him in oil on canvas, as if painted by the hand of Caravaggio.

“The angel is on his honeymoon,” he said, his gaze still focused on the valley. “And the angel is in

no condition to work again.”

“We don’t get honeymoons, Gabriel-not proper ones, in any case. As for your physical condition,

God knows you went through hell at the hands of the Sword of Allah. No one would blame you if you left

the Office for good this time.”

“No one but Shamron, of course.”

Navot picked at the tablecloth but made no reply. It had been nearly a decade since Ari Shamron had

done his last tour as chief, yet he still meddled with the affairs of the Office as though it were his personal

fiefdom. For several years, he had done so from Kaplan Street in Jerusalem, where he had served as the

prime minister’s chief adviser on matters of security and counterterrorism. Now, aged and still recovering

from a terrorist attack on his official car, he pulled the levers of influence from his fortresslike villa

overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

“Shamron wants me locked in a cage in Jerusalem,” Gabriel said. “He thinks that if he can make my

life miserable enough, I’ll have no other choice but to take over control of the Office.”

“There are worse fates in life, Gabriel. A hundred men would give their right arm to be in your

position.” Navot lapsed into silence, then added, “Including me.”

“Play your cards carefully, Uzi, and someday the job will be yours.”

“That’s the way I got the job as chief of Special Ops-because you refused to take it. I’ve spent my

career living in your shadow, Gabriel. It’s not easy. It makes me feel like a consolation prize.”

“They don’t promote consolation prizes, Uzi. If they didn’t think you were worthy of the job, they

would have left you in the European post and found someone else.”

Navot seemed eager to change the subject. “Let’s have something to eat,” he suggested. “Otherwise,

the waiter might think we’re a couple of spies, talking business.”

“That’s it, Uzi? Surely you didn’t come all the way to Umbria just to tell me that people wanted me

dead.”

“Actually, we were wondering whether you might be willing to do us a favor.”

“What sort of favor?”

Navot opened his menu and frowned. “My God, look at all this pasta.”

“You don’t like pasta, Uzi?”

“I love pasta, but Bella says it makes me fat.”

He massaged the bridge of his nose and put on his new eyeglasses.

“How much weight do you have to lose before the wedding, Uzi?”

“Thirty pounds,” Navot said sullenly. “Thirty pounds.”

4 ASSISI, ITALY

They left the restaurant in darkness and joined a procession of brown-robed Capuchin friars filing

slowly along the narrow street toward the Basilica di San Francesco. A cool wind was chasing about the

vast forecourt. Uzi Navot lowered himself onto a stone bench and spoke of death.

“His name was Aleksandr Lubin. He worked for a magazine called
Moskovsky Gazeta
. He was

killed in a hotel room in Courchevel a few days after Christmas. At the time, the rest of the world didn’t

take much notice. As you may recall, its attention was focused on London, where the daughter of the

American ambassador had just been rescued from the clutches of the Sword of Allah.”

Gabriel sat down next to Navot and watched two boys playing football near the steps of the basilica.

“The
Gazeta
claimed that Lubin went to Courchevel on holiday, but the French police concluded

otherwise. They said he was there on an assignment. Unfortunately, there was nothing in his room to

indicate exactly what that assignment might be.”

“How did he die?”

“A single stab wound to the chest.”

“That’s not easily done.”

“Better yet, the killer managed to do it in a way that no one heard a thing. It’s a small hotel with poor

security. No one even remembered seeing him.”

“A professional?”

“So it would appear.”

“Russian journalists are dropping like flies these days, Uzi. What does this have to do with us?”

“Three days ago, our embassy in Rome received a phone call. It was from a man claiming to be

Boris Ostrovsky, the
Gazeta
’s editor in chief. He said he had an important message to pass along

regarding a grave threat to the security of the West and to the State of Israel. He said he wanted to meet

with someone from Israeli intelligence in order to explain the nature of this threat.”

“What is it?”

“We don’t know yet. You see, Ostrovsky wants to meet with a specific agent of Israeli intelligence, a

man who has made a habit of getting his picture in the paper saving the lives of important people.”

The flash of a camera illuminated the forecourt like lightning. Navot and Gabriel stood in unison and

started toward the basilica. Five minutes later, after descending a long flight of steps, they were seated in

the gloom of the Lower Church before the Tomb of St. Francis. Navot spoke in a whisper.

“We tried to explain to Ostrovsky that you weren’t free to take a meeting at the moment, but I’m

afraid he’s not the sort to take no for an answer.” He looked at the tomb. “Are the old boy’s bones really

in there?”

Gabriel shook his head. “The Church keeps the exact location of the remains a carefully guarded

secret because of relic hunters.”

Navot pondered this piece of information in silence for a moment, then continued with his briefing. “

King Saul Boulevard has determined that Boris Ostrovsky is a credible figure. And they’re eager to hear

what he has to say.”

“And they want
me
to meet with him?”

Navot gave a single nod of his big head.

“Let someone else do it, Uzi. I’m on my honeymoon, remember? Besides, it goes against every

convention of tradecraft. We don’t agree to the demands of walk-ins. We meet with whom we want under

circumstances of our choosing.”

“The assassin is lecturing the agent-runner about matters of tradecraft? ”

A nun in full habit materialized out of the gloom and pointed toward a sign that forbade talking in the

area surrounding the tomb. Gabriel apologized and led Navot into the nave, where a group of Americans

were listening intently to a lecture by a cassocked priest. No one appeared to notice the two Israeli spies

conversing softly before a stand of votive candles.

“I know it violates all our rules,” Navot resumed, “but we want to hear what Ostrovsky has to say.

Besides, we’re not going to give up control of the environment. You can still decide how and where

you’ll make the meeting.”

“Where is he staying?”

“He’s barricaded in a room at the Excelsior. He’ll be there until the day after tomorrow; then he’s

heading back to Russia. He’s made it clear he wants no contact from us in Moscow.”

Navot drew a photograph from the breast pocket of his blazer and handed it to Gabriel. It showed a

balding, overweight man in his early fifties with a florid face.

“We’ve given him a set of instructions for a surveillance detection run tomorrow afternoon. He’s

supposed to leave the hotel at one-thirty sharp and visit four destinations: the Spanish Steps, the Trevi

Fountain, the Pantheon, and the Piazza Navona. When he gets to Navona, he’s supposed to walk around

the piazza once, then take a table at Tre Scalini.”

“What happens when he gets to Tre Scalini?”

“If he’s under watch, we walk away.”

“And if he’s clean?”

“We’ll tell him where to go next.”

“And where’s that? A safe flat?”

Navot shook his head. “I don’t want him near any of our properties. I’d rather do it someplace

public-someplace where it will look like you’re just two strangers chatting.” He hesitated, then added,

“Someplace a man with a gun can’t follow.”

“Ever heard of the Moscow Rules, Uzi?”

“I live by them.”

“Perhaps you recall rule three: Assume everyone is potentially under opposition control. It’s quite

possible we’re going to a great deal of trouble to meet with a man who’s going to spoon-feed us a pile of

Russian shit.” Gabriel looked down at the photograph. “Are we sure this man is really Boris Ostrovsky?”

“Moscow Station says it’s him.”

Gabriel returned the photograph to the envelope and looked around the Lower Church. “In order to