“Not really.”

“We’d better make it an official car, then. Something that can take a punch. Tell the station chief we want to borrow the ambassador’s limo. Come to think of it, tell him we want the ambassador, too. He’s really quite good, you know.”

Elena Kharkov had left her mother’s apartment just one time that day, a fact that Arkady Medvedev and his watchers found neither alarming nor even the slightest bit noteworthy. The outing had been brief: a quick drive to a glittering new gourmet market up the street, where, accompanied by two of her bodyguards, she had purchased the ingredients for a summer borscht. She had spent the remainder of the afternoon in the kitchen with her mother, playfully bickering over recipes, the way they always had done when Elena was young.

By evening, the soup had chilled sufficiently to eat. Mother and daughter sat together at the dining-room table, a candle and a loaf of black bread between them, images of the president’s rally in Dinamo Stadium playing silently on the television in the next room. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since Elena’s arrival in Moscow, yet her mother had assiduously avoided any discussion of the reason behind the unorthodox visit. She broached the topic now for the first time, not with words but by gently laying Elena’s letter upon the table. Elena looked at it a moment, then resumed eating.

“You’re in trouble, my love.”

“No, Mama.”

“Who was the man you sent to deliver this letter?”

“He’s a friend. Someone who’s helping me.”

“Helping you with what?”

Elena was silent.

“You’re leaving your husband?”

“Yes, Mama, I’m leaving my husband.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“Badly.”

“Did he hit you?”

“No, never.”

“Is there another woman?”

Elena nodded, eyes on her food. “She’s just a child of nineteen. I’m sure Ivan will hurt her one day, too.”

“You should have never married him. I begged you not to marry him, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“I know.”

“He’s a monster. His father was a monster and he’s a monster.”

“I know.” Elena tried to eat some of the soup but had lost her appetite. “I’m sorry the children and I haven’t been spending more time with you the last few years. Ivan wouldn’t let us. It’s no excuse. I should have stood up to him.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Elena. I know more than you think I know.”

A tear spilled onto Elena’s cheek. She brushed it away before her mother could see it. “I’m very sorry for the way I’ve behaved toward you. I hope you can forgive me.”

“I forgive you, Elena. But I don’t understand why you came to Moscow like this.”

“I have to take care of some business before I leave Ivan. I have to protect myself and the children.”

“You’re not thinking about taking his money?”

“This has nothing to do with money.”

Her mother didn’t press the issue. She was a Party wife. She knew about secrets and walls.

“When are you planning to tell him?”

“Tomorrow night.” Elena paused, then added pointedly: “When I return to France.”

“Your husband isn’t the sort of man who takes bad news well.”

“No one knows that better than I do.”

“Where are you planning to go?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Will you stay in Europe or will you come home to Russia?”

“It might not be safe for me in Russia anymore.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I might have to take the children someplace where Ivan can’t find them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

The Party wife understood perfectly. “Am I ever going to see them again, Elena? Am I ever going to see my grandchildren again?”

“It might take some time. But, yes, you’ll be able to see them again.”

“Time? How much time? Look at me, Elena. Time is not something I have in abundance.”

“I’ve left some money in the bottom drawer of your dresser. It’s all the money I have in the world right now.”

“Then I can’t take it.”

“Trust me, Mama. You have to take that money.”

Her mother looked down and tried to eat, but now she, too, had lost her appetite. And so they sat there for a long time, clutching each other’s hands across the table, faces wet with tears. Finally, her mother picked up the letter and touched it to the flame. Elena gazed at the television and saw Russia ’s new tsar accepting the adulation of the masses. We cannot live as normal people, she thought. And we never will.

Against all his considered judgment and in violation of all operational doctrine, written and unwritten, Gabriel did not immediately return to his room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Instead, he wandered farther south, to the colony of apartment houses looming over October Square, and made his way to the building known to the locals as the House of Dogs. It had no view of the Moscow River or the Kremlin-only of its identical neighbor, and of a parking lot filled with shabby little cars, and of the Garden Ring, a euphemism if there ever was one, which thundered night and day on its northern flank. A biting wind was blowing out of the north, a reminder that the Russian “summer” had come and gone and that soon it would be winter again. The poet in him thought it appropriate. Perhaps there never had been a summer at all, he thought. Perhaps it had been an illusion, like the dream of Russian democracy.

In the small courtyard outside Entrance C, it appeared that the babushkas and the skateboard punks had declared a cessation of hostilities. Six skinny Militia boys were milling about in the doorway itself, watched over by two plainclothes FSB toughs in leather jackets. The Western reporters who had gathered at the building after the attempt on Olga Sukhova’s life had given up their vigil or, more likely, had been chased away. Indeed, there was no evidence of support for Olga’s cause, other than two desperate words, written in red spray paint, on the side of the building: FREE OLGA! A local wit had crossed out the word FREE and replaced it with FUCK. And who said the Russians didn’t have a sense of humor?

Gabriel walked around the enormous building and, as expected, found security men standing watch at the other five entrances as well. Hiking north along the Leninsky Prospekt, he ran through the operation one final time. It was perfect, he thought. With one glaring exception. When Ivan Kharkov discovered his family and his secret papers had been stolen, he was going to take it out on someone. And that someone was likely to be Olga Sukhova.

56 SAINT-TROPEZ, MOSCOW

The undoing of Ivan Borisovich Kharkov, real estate developer, venture capitalist, and international arms trafficker, began with a phone call. It was placed to his Saint-Tropez residence by one François Boisson, regional director of the Direction Générale de l’Aviation Civile, the French aviation authority. It appeared, said Monsieur Boisson, that there was a rather serious problem regarding recent flights by Monsieur Kharkov’s airplane-problems, the director said ominously, that could not be discussed over the telephone. He then instructed Monsieur Kharkov to appear at Nice airport at one that afternoon to answer a few simple questions. If Monsieur Kharkov chose not to appear, his plane would be confiscated and held for a period of at least ninety days. After an anti-French tirade lasting precisely one minute and thirty-seven seconds, Ivan promised to come at the appointed hour. Monsieur Boisson said he looked forward to the meeting and rang off.

Elena Kharkov learned of her husband’s predicament when she telephoned Villa Soleil to wish Ivan and the children a pleasant morning. Confronted with Ivan’s rage, she made a few soothing comments and assured him it had to be a misunderstanding of some sort. She then had a brief conversation with Sonia, during which she instructed the nanny to take the children to the beach. When Sonia asked whether Elena needed to speak to Ivan again, Elena hesitated, then said that, yes, she did need to speak to him. When Ivan came back on the line, she told him that she loved him very much and was looking forward to seeing him that night. But Ivan was still carrying on about his airplane and the incompetence of the French. Elena murmured, “Dos vidanya, Ivan,” and severed the connection.