“Several.”

“Where is she now?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“With Petrov, I take it?”

Gabriel nodded.

“I’d like her back. As for Petrov, I’d like him, too-when you’re finished with him, of course. He might be able to help us close a couple of outstanding cases.”

Carter returned to the satellite photo. “It seems to me you have two options. Option number one: go to the Kremlin, give the Russians the evidence of Ivan’s involvement, and ask them to intervene.”

It was Shamron who answered. “The Russians have made it abundantly clear they have no intention of helping us. Besides, going to the Kremlin is the same as going to Ivan. If we raise this matter with the Russian president-”

“-the Russian president will tell Ivan,” Gabriel interjected. “And Ivan will respond by killing Grigori and my wife.”

Carter nodded in agreement. “I suppose that leaves option two: going into Russia and bringing them out yourself. Frankly, the president and I anticipated that would be your choice. And he’s prepared to offer a substantial amount of help.”

Shamron spoke two words: “Kachol v’lavan.”

Carter gave a faint smile. “Forgive me, Ari. I speak nearly as many languages as you, but I’m afraid Hebrew isn’t one of them.”

“Kachol v’lavan,” Gabriel repeated. “It means ‘blue and white,’ the colors of the Israeli flag. But for dinosaurs like Ari, it means much more. It means we do things for ourselves, and we don’t rely on others to help us with problems of our own making.”

“But this problem really isn’t of your own making. You went after Ivan because we asked you to. The president feels we bear some responsibility for what’s happened. And the president believes in taking care of his friends.”

“What kind of help is the president offering?”

“For understandable reasons, we won’t be able to help you execute the actual rescue. Since the United States and Russia still have several thousand nuclear missiles pointed at each other, it might not be wise for us to be shooting at each other on Russian soil. But we can help in other ways. For starters, we can get you into the country in a way that doesn’t land you back in the cellars of Lubyanka.”

“And?”

“We can get you out again. Along with the hostages, of course.”

“How?”

Carter dealt an American passport onto the table. It was burgandy colored rather than blue and stamped with the word OFFICIAL.

“It’s one step below a diplomatic passport. You won’t have complete immunity, but it will definitely make the Russians think twice before laying a finger on you.”

Gabriel opened the cover. For now, the information page contained no photograph, only a name: AARON DAVIS.

“What does Mr. Davis do?”

“He works for the White House Office of Presidential Advance. As you probably know, the president will be in Moscow on Thursday and Friday for the emergency G-8 summit. Most of the White House advance team is already on the ground. I’ve arranged for a late addition to the team.”

“Aaron Davis?”

Carter nodded.

“How’s he going in?”

“The car plane.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s the unofficial name of the C-17 Globemaster that brings the presidential limousine. It also carries a large detail of Secret Service agents. Aaron Davis will board the plane during a refueling stop in Shannon, Ireland. Six hours after that, he’ll land at Sheremetyevo Airport. A U.S. Embassy vehicle will then take him to the Hotel Metropol.”

“And the escape hatch?”

“Same route, opposite direction. On Friday evening, after the final session of the summit, the Russian president will be hosting a gala dinner. The president is scheduled to return to Washington at the conclusion, along with the rest of his delegation and the traveling White House press corps. The buses depart the Metropol at 10 p.m. sharp. They’ll go straight onto the tarmac at Sheremetyevo and board the planes. We’ll have false passports for Chiara and Grigori just in case. But in reality, the Russians probably won’t be checking passports.”

“When will I arrive in Moscow?”

“The car plane is due to land at Sheremetyevo a few minutes after 4 a.m. Thursday. By my calculation, that leaves you forty-two hours on the ground in Russia. All you have to do is find some way of getting Chiara and Grigori out of that dacha and back to the Metropol by 10 p.m. Friday.”

“Without being arrested or killed by Ivan’s army of thugs.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help with that. You also have a more immediate problem. Ivan’s emissary is expecting a reply to his demands tomorrow afternoon in Paris. Unless you can convince him to push back the deadline by several days…”

Carter didn’t have the nerve to finish the thought. Gabriel did it for him.

“This entire conversation is academic.”

“I’m afraid that’s correct.”

Gabriel stared at the satellite photo of the dacha in the trees. Then at the time zone clocks arrayed along the wall. Then he closed his eyes. And he saw it all.

IT APPEARED to him as a cycle of vast paintings, oil on canvas, rendered by the hand of Tintoretto. The paintings lined the nave of a small church in Venice and were darkened by yellowed varnish. Gabriel, in his thoughts, drifted slowly past them now with Chiara at his side, her breast pressing against his elbow, her long hair brushing the side of his neck. Even with Carter’s help, getting her and Grigori out of the dacha alive would be an operational and logistical nightmare. Ivan would be playing on his home turf. All the advantages would be his. Unless Gabriel could somehow turn the tables. By way of deception…

Gabriel had to get Ivan to let down his guard. He had to keep Ivan occupied at the time of the raid. And, more pressing, he had to convince Ivan not to kill Chiara and Grigori for another four days. In order to do that, he needed one more thing from Adrian Carter. Not one, actually, but two.

He blinked away the vision of Venice and gazed once again at the photograph of the dacha in the trees. Yes, he thought again, he needed two more things from Adrian Carter, but they were not Carter’s to give. Only a mother could surrender them. And so, with Carter’s blessing, he entered an unoccupied office in the far corner of the annex and quietly closed the door. He dialed the isolated compound in the Adirondack Mountains. And he asked Elena Kharkov if he could borrow the only two things in the world she had left.

IN THE AFTERMATH, during the inevitable postmortem and deconstruction that follows an affair of this magnitude, there was spirited debate over who among its far-flung cast of characters bore the most responsibility for its outcome. One participant was not asked for an opinion and would surely not have ventured one if he had been. He was a man of few words, a man who stood a lonely post. His name was Rami, and his job was to keep watch over a national treasure, the Memuneh. Rami had been at the Old Man’s side for the better part of twenty years. He was Shamron’s other son, the one who stayed at home while Gabriel and Navot were running around the world playing the hero. He was the one who snuck the Old Man cigarettes and kept his Zippo filled with lighter fluid. The one who sat up nights on the terrace in Tiberias, listening to the Old Man’s stories for the thousandth time and pretending it was still the first. And he was the one who was walking exactly twenty paces behind the Old Man’s back, at four the following afternoon, as he entered the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris.

Shamron found Sergei Korovin where he said he would be, seated ramrod straight on a wooden bench near the Jeu de Paume. He was wearing a heavy woolen scarf beneath his overcoat and smoking the stub of a cigarette that left no doubt about his nationality. As Shamron sat down, Korovin raised his left arm slowly and pondered his wristwatch.