“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Are you sure you can drive?”

“No problem.”

“Is this car actually going to make it to the Ritz?”

“No problem.”

“It’s getting dark out. Are you sure you need those sunglasses?”

“They make me look like I have money. Everyone with money in Moscow wears sunglasses at night.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

“It’s true.”

“Can this car go any faster? I’d like to get to the Ritz sometime tonight.”

"No problem.”

Word of Gabriel and Elena’s arrival in Moscow reached the operations center in Grosvenor Square at 6:19 P.M. local time. Graham Seymour stood up from his chair and rubbed the kinks out of his lower back.

“Nothing more to be done from here tonight. What say we adjourn to the Grill Room of the Dorchester for a celebratory supper? My service is buying.”

“I don’t believe in mid-operation celebrations,” Shamron said. “Especially when I have three of my best operatives on the ground in Moscow and three more on the way.”

Carter placed a hand on Shamron’s shoulder. “Come on, Ari. There’s nothing you can do now except sit there all night and worry yourself to death.”

“Which is exactly what I intend to do.”

Carter frowned and looked at Graham Seymour. “We can’t leave him here alone. He’s barely housebroken.”

“How would you feel about Indian takeaway?”

“Tell them to take it easy on the spices. My stomach isn’t what it used to be.”

55 MOSCOW

With just one week remaining until election day, there was no escaping the face of the Russian president. It hung from every signpost and government building in the city center. It stared from the front pages of every Kremlin-friendly newspaper and flashed across the newscasts of the Kremlin-controlled television networks. It was carried aloft by roving bands of Unity Party Youth and floated godlike over the city on the side of a hot-air balloon. The president himself acted as though he were waging a real election campaign rather than a carefully scripted folly. He spent the morning campaigning in a Potemkin village in the countryside before returning to Moscow for a massive afternoon rally at Dinamo Stadium. It was, according to Radio Moscow, the largest political rally in modern Russian history.

The Kremlin had allowed two other candidates the privilege of contesting the election, but most Russians could not recall their names, and even the foreign press had long ago stopped covering them. The Coalition for a Free Russia, the only real organized opposition force in the country, had no candidate but plenty of courage. As the president was addressing the throng in Dinamo Stadium, they gathered in Arbat Square for a counterrally. By the time the police and their plainclothes helpers had finished with them, one hundred members of Free Russia were in custody and another hundred were in the hospital. Evidence of the bloody melee was still strewn about the square late that afternoon as Gabriel, dressed in a dark corduroy flat cap and Barbour raincoat, headed down the Boulevard Ring toward the river.

The Cathedral of Christ the Savior rose before him, its five golden onion domes dull against the heavy gray sky. The original cathedral had been dynamited by Kaganovich in 1931 on orders from Stalin, supposedly because it blocked the view from the windows of his Kremlin apartment. In its place the Bolsheviks had attempted to erect a massive government skyscraper called the Palace of Soviets, but the riverside soil proved unsuitable for such a building and the construction site flooded repeatedly. Eventually, Stalin and his engineers surrendered to the inevitable and turned the land into a public swimming pool-the world’s largest, of course.

Rebuilt after the fall of communism at enormous public expense, the cathedral was now one of Moscow ’s most popular tourist attractions. Gabriel decided to skip it and made his way directly to the river instead. Three men were standing separately along the embankment, gazing across the water toward a vast apartment building with a Mercedes-Benz star revolving slowly atop the roof. Gabriel walked past them without a word. One by one, the men turned and followed after him.

Upon closer inspection, it was not a single building but three: a massive trapezium facing the riverfront, with two L-shaped appendages running several hundred yards inland. On the opposite side of Serafimovicha Street was a melancholy patch of brown grass and wilted trees known as Bolotnaya Square. Gabriel was seated on a nearby bench next to a fountain when Uzi Navot, Yaakov Rossman, and Eli Lavon came over the bridge. Navot sat next to him, while Lavon and Yaakov went to the edge of the fountain. Lavon was chattering away in Russian like a movie extra in a cocktail party scene. Yaakov was looking at the ground and smoking a cigarette.

“When did Yaakov take up smoking again?” asked Gabriel.

“Last night. He’s nervous.”

“He’s spent his career operating in the West Bank and Gaza and he’s nervous being in Moscow?”

“You’re damn right he’s nervous being in Moscow. And you would be, too, if you had any sense.”

“How’s our local station chief?”

“He looks a little better than Yaakov, but not much. Let’s just say he’ll be quite happy when we get on that plane tomorrow night and get out of town.”

“How many cars was he able to come up with?”

“Four, just like you wanted-three old Ladas and a Volga.”

“Please tell me they run, Uzi. The last thing we need is for the cars to break down tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry, Gabriel. They run just fine.”

“Where did he get them?”

“The station picked up a small fleet of old Soviet cars and trucks for a song after the fall of communism and put them on ice. All the papers are in order.”

“And the drivers?”

“Four field hands from Moscow Station. They all speak Russian.”

“What time do we start leaving the hotel?”

“I go first at two-fifty. Eli goes five minutes after that. Then Yaakov five minutes later. You’re the last to leave.”

“It’s not much time, Uzi.”

“It’s plenty of time. If we get here too early, we might attract unwanted attention. And that’s the last thing we want.”

Gabriel didn’t argue. Instead, he peppered Navot with a series of questions about cell phone jammers, watch assignments, and, finally, the situation at the apartment house on the Kutuzovsky Prospekt where Elena was now staying with her mother. Navot’s answer did not surprise him.

“Arkady Medvedev has placed the building under round-the-clock surveillance.”

“How’s he doing it?”

“Nothing too technical. Just a man in a car outside in the street.”

“How often is he changing the watcher?”

“Every four hours.”

“Does he change the car or just the man?”

“Just the man. The car stays in place.”

Gabriel adjusted his tinted eyeglasses. His gray wig was making his scalp itch terribly. Navot was rubbing a sore patch above his elbow. He always seemed to develop some small physical malady whenever he was anxious about an operation.

“We should assume that Arkady has instructed the watchers to follow Elena wherever she goes, including tomorrow afternoon when she leaves for the airport. If the watcher sees her making an unannounced detour to the House on the Embankment, he’ll tell Arkady. And Arkady is bound to be suspicious. Do you see my point, Gabriel?”

“Yes, Uzi,” Gabriel said pedantically. “I believe I do. We have to make sure the watcher doesn’t follow her tomorrow or all our work could go up in flames in a Moscow minute.”

“I suppose we could kill him.”

“A minor traffic accident should suffice.”

“Shall I tell the station chief that we need another Lada?”

“What kind of car are the watchers using?”

"An S-Class Mercedes.”

“That’s not really a fair fight, is it?”