Moscow Rules (33 page)

had been murdered because of me. Eventually, as time went by, I was able to convince myself it had

never actually happened. There
were
no missiles, I told myself. There was no delegation of warlords who

had come to my home to buy weapons from my husband. There was no secret plan to divert a portion of

the consignment to the terrorists of al-Qaeda. In fact, there were no terrorists at all. It had all been a bad

dream. A misunderstanding of some sort. A hoax. Then I got a telephone call from my friend Alistair

Leach about a painting by Mary Cassatt. And here I am.”

On the other side of the ravine, the child was still wailing. “Won’t
someone
help that poor thing?”

She looked at Gabriel. “Do you have children, Mr. Allon?”

He hesitated, then answered truthfully. “I had a son,” he said quietly. “A terrorist put a bomb in my

car. He was angry at me because I killed his brother. It exploded while my wife and son were inside.”

“And your wife?”

“She survived.” He gazed silently across the gorge for a moment. “It might have been better if she

hadn’t. It took me a few seconds to get her out of the car. She was burned very badly in the fire.”

“My God, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t-”

“It’s all right, Elena. It was a long time ago.”

“Did it happen in Israel?”

“No, not in Israel. It was in Vienna. Not far from the cathedral.”

On the other side of the ravine, the child fell silent. Gabriel seemed not to notice, for all his

considerable concentration was now focused on the task of opening a bottle of rosé. He filled a single

glass and handed it to Elena.

“Drink some. It’s important you have wine on your breath when you go home. Ivan will expect that.”

She raised the glass to her lips and watched the pine trees moving in the faint breeze.

“How did this happen? How did we end up together in this place, you and I?”

“You were brought here by a telephone you shouldn’t have answered. I was brought here by Boris

Ostrovsky. I was the reason he went to Rome. He was trying to tell me about Ivan. He died in my arms

before he could deliver his message. That’s why I had to go to Moscow to meet with Olga.”

“Were you with her when the assassins tried to kill her?”

He nodded his head.

“How were you able to escape that stairwell without being killed?”

“Perhaps another time, Elena. Drink some of your wine. You need to be a bit tipsy when you go

home.”

She obeyed, then asked, “So, in the words of Lenin, glorious agent of the Revolution and father of the

Soviet Union, what is to be done? What are we going to do about the missiles my husband has placed in

the hands of murderers?”

“You’ve given us a tremendous amount of information. If we’re lucky-
very
lucky-we might be able

to find them before the terrorists are able to carry out an attack. It will be difficult, but we’ll try.”

“Try? What do you mean? You
have
to stop them.”

“It’s not that easy, Elena. There’s so much we don’t know. Which country in Africa was your

husband dealing with? Have the missiles been shipped? Have they already reached the hands of the

terrorists? Is it already too late?”

His questions had been rhetorical but Elena reacted as though they had been directed toward her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I feel like such a fool.”

“Whatever for?”

“I thought that by simply telling you about the deal, you would have enough information to find the

weapons before they could be used. But what have I accomplished? Two people are dead. My friend is a

prisoner in her Moscow apartment. And my husband’s missiles are still out there somewhere.”

“I didn’t say it was impossible, Elena. Only that it was going to be difficult.”

“What else do you need?”

“A paper trail would help.”

“What does that mean?”

“End-user certificates. Invoices. Shipping records. Transit documents. Banking records. Wire

transfers. Anything we can lay our hands on to track the sale or the flow of the merchandise.”

She was silent for a moment. Her voice, when finally she spoke, was barely audible over the sound

of the wind moving in the treetops.

“I think I know where that information might be,” she said.

Gabriel looked at her. “Where, Elena?”

“In Moscow.”

“Is it somewhere we can get to it?”

“Not you. I would have to do it for you. And I would have to do it alone.”

My husband is a devout Stalinist. It is not something he generally acknowledges, even in Russia.”

Elena drank a bit of the rosé, then held it up to the fading sunlight to examine the color.

“His love of Stalin has influenced his real estate purchases. Zhukovka, the area where we now live

outside Moscow, was actually a restricted dacha village once, reserved for only the most senior Party

officials and a few special scientists and musicians. Ivan’s father was never senior enough in rank to earn

a dacha in Zhukovka, and Ivan was always deeply resentful of this. After the fall of the Soviet Union,

when it became possible for anyone with enough money to acquire property there, he bought a plot of land

that had been owned by Stalin’s daughter. He also bought a large apartment in the House on the

Embankment. He uses it as a pied-à-terre and keeps a private office there. I also assume he uses it as a

place to take his lovers. I’ve been only a few times. It’s filled with ghosts, that building. The residents say

that if you listen carefully at night, you can still hear the screaming.”

She looked at Gabriel for a moment in silence.

“Do you know the building I’m talking about, Mr. Allon? The House on the Embankment?”

“The big building on Serafimovicha Street with the Mercedes-Benz star on top. It was built for the

most senior members of the
nomenklatura
in the early thirties. During the Great Terror, Stalin turned it

into a house of horror.”

“You’ve obviously done your homework.” She peered into the wineglass. “Stalin murdered nearly

eight hundred residents of that building, including the man who lived in my husband’s apartment. He was

a senior official in the Foreign Ministry. Stalin’s henchmen suspected him of being a spy for the Germans,

and for that he was taken to the killing fields of Butovo and shot. No one really knows how many of

Stalin’s victims are buried out there. A few years ago, the government turned the property over to the

Orthodox Church, and they’ve been carefully searching for the remains ever since. There is no sadder

place in Russia than Butovo, Mr. Allon. Widows and orphans filing past the trenches, wondering where

their husbands and fathers might lie. We mourn Stalin’s victims in Butovo while men like my husband pay

millions for their flats in the House on the Embankment. Only in Russia.”

“Where’s the flat?”

“On the ninth floor, overlooking the Kremlin. He and Arkady keep a guard on duty there twenty-four

hours a day. The doors to Ivan’s office have a wood veneer, but underneath they’re bombproof steel.

There’s a keypad entrance with a biometric fingerprint scanner. Only three people have the code and

fingerprint clearance: Ivan, Arkady, and me. Inside the office is a password-protected computer. There’s

also another vault, same keypad and biometric scanner, same password and procedure. All my husband’s

secrets are in that vault. They’re stored on disks with KGB encryption software.”

“Are you allowed to enter his office?”

“Under normal circumstances, only when I’m with Ivan. But, in an emergency, I can enter alone.”

“What kind of an emergency?”

“The kind that could happen if Ivan ever fell out of favor with the men who sit across the river in the

Kremlin. Under such a scenario, he always assumed that he and Arkady would be arrested together. It

would then be up to me, he said, to make certain the files hidden in that vault never fell into the wrong

hands.”

“Are you supposed to remove them?”

She shook her head. “The interior of the vault is lined with explosives. Ivan showed me where the

detonator button was hidden and taught me how to arm and fire it. He assured me the explosives had been

carefully calibrated: just enough to destroy the contents of the safe without causing any other damage.”

“What’s the password?”

“He uses the numeric version of Stalin’s birthday: December 21, 1879. But the password alone is

useless. You need my thumb as well. And don’t think about trying to create something that will fool the

scanner. The guard will never open the door to someone he doesn’t recognize. I’m the only one who can

get inside that apartment, and I’m the only one who can get inside the vault.”

Gabriel stood and walked to the low stone parapet at the edge of the terrace. “There’s no way for

you to take those disks without Ivan’s finding out. And if he does, he’ll kill you-just the way he killed

Aleksandr Lubin and Boris Ostrovsky.”

“He won’t be able to kill me if he can’t find me. And he won’t be able to find me if you and your

friends do a good job of hiding me away.” She paused for a moment to allow her words to have their full

impact. “And the children, of course. You would have to think of some way to get my children away from

Ivan.”

Gabriel turned slowly around. “Do you understand what you’re saying?”

“I believe that during the Cold War we referred to such operations as defections.”

“Your life as you know it will be over, Elena. You’ll lose the houses. You’ll lose the money. You’ll

lose your Cassatts. No more winters in Courchevel. No more summers in Saint-Tropez. No more endless

shopping excursions in Knightsbridge. You’ll never be able to set foot in Russia again. And you’ll spend

the rest of your life hiding from Ivan. Think carefully, Elena. Are you really willing to give up everything

in order to help us?”’

“What am I giving up, exactly? I’m married to a man who has sold a cache of missiles to al-Qaeda

and has killed two journalists in order to keep it a secret. A man who holds me in such contempt that he

thinks nothing of bringing his mistress into my home. My life is a lie. All I have are my children. I’ll get

you those disks and defect to the West. All you have to do is get my children away from Ivan. Just

promise me that nothing will happen to them.”

She reached out and took hold of his wrist. His skin was ablaze, as though he were suffering from a

fever.

“Surely a man who can forge a painting by Mary Cassatt, or arrange a meeting like this, can think of

some way of getting my children away from their father.”

“You were able to see through my forgery.”

“That’s because I’m good.”

“You’ll have to be more than good to fool Ivan. You’ll have to be perfect. And if you’re not, you

could end up dead.”

“I’m a Leningrad girl. I grew up in a Party family. I know how to beat them at their own game. I

know the rules.” She squeezed his wrist and looked directly into his eyes. “You just have to think of some

way to get me back to Moscow that won’t make Ivan suspicious.”

“And then we have to get you out again.
And
get the children.”

“That, too.”

He added more wine to her glass and sat down next to her.

“I hear your mother hasn’t been well.”

“How did you hear that?”

“Because we’ve been listening to your telephone conversations.
All
of them.”

“She had a dizzy spell last week. She’s been begging me to come to see her.”

“Perhaps you should. After all, it seems to me a woman in your position might actually want to spend

some time with your mother, given everything your husband has put you through.”

“Yes, I think I might.”

“Can your mother be trusted?”

“She absolutely loathes Ivan. Nothing would make her happier than for me to leave him.”

“She’s in Moscow now?”

Elena nodded. “We brought her there after my father died. Ivan bought her a lovely apartment in a

new building on the Kutuzovsky Prospekt, which she resents terribly.”

Gabriel placed a hand thoughtfully against his chin and tilted his head slightly to one side.

“I’m going to need a letter. It will have to be in your own hand. It will also have to contain enough

personal information about you and your family to let your mother know for certain that you wrote it.”

“And then?”

“Mikhail is going to take you home to your husband. And you’re going to do your best to forget this

conversation ever happened.”

At that same moment, in a darkened operations room at King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv, Ari

Shamron removed a pair of headphones and cast a lethal glance at Uzi Navot.

“Tell me something, Uzi. When did I authorize a defection?”

“I’m not sure you ever did, boss.”

“Send the lad a message. Tell him to be in Paris by tomorrow night. Tell him I’d like a word.”

46 THE MASSIF DES MAURES, FRANCE

What did you think of him?"”

The voice had spoken to her in Russian. Elena turned around quickly and saw Mikhail standing in the

open French doors, hands in his pockets, sunglasses propped on his forehead.

“He’s remarkable,” she said. “Where did he go?”

Mikhail acted as though he had not heard the question.

“You can trust him, Elena. You can trust him with your life. And with the lives of your children.” He