THE NAME Aaron Davis of the White House Office of Presidential Advance was unfamiliar to them. Their orders, however, were unambiguous. They were to pick him up during the Shannon refueling stop and get him into Moscow without a hitch. And don’t try to talk to him during the flight. He’s not the talkative sort. They didn’t ask why. They were Secret Service.

They were never told his real name or the country of his birth. They never knew that their mysterious passenger was a legend, or that he had spent the previous forty-eight hours in London engaged in advance work of quite another kind, shuttling between Grosvenor Square and the Israeli Embassy in Kensington. Though he was visibly fatigued and on edge, all those who encountered Gabriel during this period would later remember his extraordinary composure. Not once did he lose his temper, they said. Not once did he show the strain. His team, physically worn after two weeks in the field, responded with lightning speed to his calm but relentless pressure. Just twelve hours after the call to Elena Kharkov, half were on the ground in Moscow, credentials around their necks, covers intact. The rest joined them later that night, including the chief of Special Ops, Uzi Navot. No other service in the world would have put so senior a man on the ground in so hostile a land. But then no other service was quite like the Office.

Shamron remained at Gabriel’s side for all but a few hours, when he returned to Paris to hold the hand of Sergei Korovin. Ivan was getting nervous. Ivan was dubious about the entire thing. Ivan didn’t understand why he had to wait until Friday to get his children back. “He wants to do it now,” Korovin said. “He wants it over and done with.” Shamron did not tell his old friend that he already knew this-or that the NSA had been kind enough to share the original recording, along with a transcript. Instead, he assured the Russian there was no need to worry. Elena just needed some time to prepare the children, and herself, for the pending separation. “Surely even a monster like Ivan can understand how difficult this is going to be on her.” As for the schedule, Shamron made it clear there would be no changes: 2 p.m. at Andrews, 9 a.m. at Konakovo, 9 a.m. at the Israeli Embassy in Moscow. No Ivan, no children. No Chiara, no safe place for any Russian intelligence officer on earth. “And don’t forget, Sergei-we want Grigori back, too.”

Though he tried not to show it, the meeting in Paris left Shamron deeply shaken. Gabriel’s gambit had clearly thrown Ivan off balance. But it had also made him suspicious of a trap. Gabriel’s opening would be brief, a few minutes, no more. They would have to move swiftly and decisively. These were the words Shamron spoke to Gabriel late Wednesday night as they sat together in the back of a CIA car on the rain-lashed tarmac of Shannon Airport.

Gabriel’s bag was on the seat between them, his eyes focused on the massive C-17 Globemaster that would soon deliver him to Moscow. Shamron was smoking-despite the fact that the CIA driver had asked him repeatedly not to-and running through the entire operation one more time. Gabriel, though exhausted, listened patiently. The briefing was more for Shamron’s benefit than his. The Memuneh would spend the next forty-eight hours watching helplessly from the CIA annex. This was his last chance to whisper directly into Gabriel’s ear, and he took it without apology. And Gabriel indulged him because he needed to hear the sound of the Old Man’s voice one more time before getting on that plane. He drew courage from the voice. Faith. It made him believe the operation might actually work, even though everything else told him it was doomed to failure.

“Once you get them into the car, don’t stop. Kill anyone you need to kill. And I mean anyone. We’ll clean up the mess later. We always do.”

Just then, there was a knock at the window. It was the CIA escort, saying the plane was ready. Gabriel kissed Shamron’s cheek and told him not to smoke too much. Then he climbed out of the car and headed toward the C-17 through the rain.

FOR NOW, he was an American, even if he couldn’t quite speak like one. He carried an American suitcase filled with American clothes. An American cell phone filled with American numbers. An American BlackBerry filled with American e-mails. He also carried a second PDA with features not available on ordinary models, but that belonged to someone else. A boy from the Valley of Jezreel. A boy who would have been an artist if not for a band of Palestinian terrorists known as Black September. Tonight, that boy did not exist. He was a painting lost to time. He was now Aaron Davis of the White House Office of Presidential Advance, and he had a pocketful of credentials to prove it. He thought American thoughts, dreamed American dreams. He was an American, even if he couldn’t quite speak like one. And even if he couldn’t quite walk like one, either.

As it turned out, there was not one presidential limousine on the plane but two, along with a trio of armored SUVs. The chief of the Secret Service detail was a woman; she escorted Gabriel to a seat near the center of the aircraft and gave him a parka to wear against the sharp cold. Much to his surprise, he was able to get a bit of badly needed sleep, though one agent would later note that he seemed to stir at the precise instant the plane crossed into Russian airspace. He woke with a start fifteen minutes before landing, and as the plane descended toward Sheremetyevo he thought of Chiara. How had she returned to Russia? Had she been bound and gagged? Had she been conscious? Had she been drugged? As the wheels touched down, he forced such questions from his mind. There was no Chiara, he told himself. There was no Ivan. There was only Aaron Davis, servant of the American president, dreamer of American dreams, who was now just minutes away from his first encounter with Russian authorities.

They were waiting on the darkened tarmac, stamping their feet against the bitter cold, as Gabriel and the Secret Service detail filed down the rear cargo ramp. Standing next to the Russian delegation was a pair of officials from the U.S. Embassy, one of whom was an undeclared CIA officer with diplomatic cover. The Russians greeted Gabriel with warm handshakes and smiles, then gave his passport a cursory glance before stamping it. In return, Gabriel gave each a small token of American goodwill: White House cuff links. Five minutes later, he was seated in the back of an embassy car, speeding down Leningradsky Prospekt toward the city center.

Size has always mattered to the Russians, and to spend any time there is to discover nearly everything is the biggest: the biggest country, the biggest bell, the biggest swimming pool. If the Leningradsky was not the biggest street in the world, it was certainly among the ugliest-a hodgepodge of crumbling apartment houses and Stalinist monstrosities, lit by countless neon signs and piss-yellow streetlamps. Capitalism and Communism had collided violently on the prospekt, and the result was an urban nightmare. The G-8 banners the Russians had so carefully hung looked more like warning flags of the fate that awaited them all if they didn’t put their financial houses in order.

Gabriel felt his stomach tighten by degrees as the car drew closer to the Kremlin. As they passed Dinamo Stadium, the CIA man handed him a satellite photograph of the dacha in the birch forest. There were three Range Rovers instead of two, and four men were clearly visible outside. Once again, Gabriel’s eye was drawn to the parallel depressions in the woods near the house. It appeared there had been a change since the last pass. At the end of one depression was a dark patch, as if the snow cover had recently been disturbed.