“How close were you able to get to the dacha?”

“Close enough to see that Ivan makes two poor bastards stand outside all the time. And close enough to plant a wireless camera.”

“How’s the signal?”

“Not bad. We’ll be fine as long as we don’t get six feet of snow tonight. We can see the front door, which means we can see if anyone’s coming or going.”

“Who’s monitoring the shot?”

“Shmuel and a girl from Moscow Station.”

“Where are they?”

“Holed up in a crummy little hotel in the nearest town. They’re pretending to be lovers. Apparently, the girl’s husband likes to knock her around. Shmuel wants to take her away and start a new life. You know the story, Gabriel.”

“The satellite photos show guards behind the house.”

“We saw them, too. They keep at least three men back there at all times. They’re static, spaced about a hundred yards apart. With night-vision goggles, we had no trouble seeing them. In daylight”-Navot shrugged his heavy shoulders-“they’ll go down like targets in a shooting gallery. We’ll just have to go in while it’s still dark, and try not to freeze to death before nine o’clock.”

They had passed St. Basil’s and were nearing the southeast corner of the Kremlin. Directly before them was the Moscow River, frozen and covered by gray-white snow. Navot nudged Gabriel to the right and led him along the embankment. The wind was now at their backs. After they passed a pair of bored-looking Moscow militiamen, Gabriel asked whether Navot had seen anything at the dacha to warrant a change in plan. Navot shook his head.

“What about the guns?”

“The weapons room at the embassy has everything. Just tell me what you want.”

“A Beretta 92 and a Mini-Uzi, both with suppressors.”

“You sure the Mini will do?”

“It’s going to be tight inside the dacha.”

They passed another pair of militiamen. To their right, floating above the red walls of the ancient citadel, was the ornate yellow-and-white façade of the Great Kremlin Palace, where the G-8 summit was now under way.

“What’s the status of the Range Rover?”

“We took delivery of it last night.”

“Black?”

“Of course. Ivan’s boys only drive black Range Rovers.”

“Where did you get it?”

“A dealership in north Moscow. Shamron’s going to blow a gasket when he sees the price tag.”

“License plates?”

“Taken care of.”

“How long is the drive from the Metropol?”

“In a normal country, it would be two and a half hours tops. Here… Mikhail wants to pick you up at 2 a.m., just to make sure there are no problems.”

They had reached the southwestern corner of the Kremlin. On the other side of the river stood a colossal gray apartment building crowned by a revolving Mercedes-Benz star. Known as the House on the Embankment, it had been built by Stalin in 1931 as a palace of Soviet privilege for the most elite members of the nomenklatura. During the Great Terror, he had turned it into a house of horrors. Nearly eight hundred people, one-third of the building’s residents, had been hauled out of their beds and murdered at one of the killing sites that ringed Moscow. Their punishment was virtually always the same: a night of beatings, a bullet in the back of the head, a hasty burial in a mass grave. Despite its blood-soaked history, the House on the Embankment was now considered one of Moscow’s most exclusive addresses. Ivan Kharkov owned a luxury apartment on the ninth floor. It was among his most prized possessions.

Gabriel looked at Navot and noticed he was staring at the sad little park across the street from the apartment building: Bolot naya Square, scene of perhaps the most famous argument in Office history.

“I should have broken your arm that night. None of this would have happened if I’d dragged you into the car and pulled you out of Moscow with the rest of the team.”

“That’s true, Uzi. None of it would have happened. We would have never found Ivan’s missiles. And Elena Kharkov would be dead.”

Navot ignored the remark. “I can’t believe we’re back here. I swore to myself I would never set foot in this town again.” He glanced at Gabriel. “Why in God’s name would Ivan want to keep an apartment in a place like that? It’s haunted, that building. You can almost hear the screaming.”

“Elena once told me that her husband was a devout Stalinist. Ivan’s house in Zhukovka was built on a plot of land once owned by Stalin’s daughter. And when he was looking for a pied-à-terre near the Kremlin, he bought the flat in the House on the Embankment. The original owner of Ivan’s apartment was a senior man in the Foreign Ministry. Stalin’s henchmen suspected him of being a spy for the Germans. They took him to Butovo and put a bullet in the back of his head. Apparently, Ivan loves to tell the story.”

Navot shook his head slowly. “Some people go for nice kitchens and good views. But when Ivan is looking at a place, he demands a bloody past.”

“He’s unique, our Ivan.”

“Maybe that explains why he bought several hundred acres of worthless birch forests and swampland outside Moscow.”

Yes, thought Gabriel. Maybe it did. He looked back down the Kremlin Embankment and saw Eli Lavon approaching, briefcase still in his right hand. As Lavon walked past, he gave Gabriel a little jab in the small of the back. It meant the meeting had gone on long enough. Navot removed his glove and extended his hand.

“Go back to the Metropol. Keep your head down. And try not to worry. We’ll get her back.”

Gabriel shook Navot’s hand, then turned and headed back toward Resurrection Gate.

THOUGH NAVOT did not know it, Gabriel disobeyed the order to return to his room at the Hotel Metropol and made his way to Tverskaya Street instead. Pausing outside the office building at No. 6, he stared at the posters in the window of Galaxy Travel. One showed a Russian couple sharing a champagne lunch along the ski slopes of Courchevel; the other, a pair of Russian nymphs tanning themselves on the beaches of the Côte d’Azur. The irony seemed lost on Irina Bulganova, former wife of the defector Grigori Bulganov, who was seated primly at her desk, telephone to her ear. There were many things Gabriel wanted to tell her but couldn’t. Not yet. And so he stood there alone, watching her through the frosted glass. Reality is a state of mind, he thought. Reality can be whatever you want it to be.

IF GABRIEL earned high marks for his grace under pressure during the final hours before the operation, the same, unfortunately, could not be said of Ari Shamron. Upon his return to London, he made a base camp for himself inside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington and used it to launch raids on targets stretching from Tel Aviv to Langley. The officers on the Ops Desk at King Saul Boulevard grew so weary of Shamron’s outbursts, they drew lots to determine who would have the misfortune of taking his calls. Only Adrian Carter managed not to lose patience with him. As a grounded fieldman himself, he knew the feeling of utter helplessness Shamron was experiencing. The extraction plan was Gabriel’s; Shamron could only operate the levers and pull the strings. And even then, he was heavily dependent on Carter and the Agency. It violated Shamron’s core faith in the principles of kachol v’lavan. Left to his own devices, the Old Man would have walked into Ivan’s dacha in the woods and done the job himself. And only a fool would have bet against him. “He’s done things none of us can imagine,” Carter said in Shamron’s defense. “And he’s got the scars to prove it.”

At 6 p.m. that evening, Shamron headed to the American Embassy in Mayfair for the opening act. A young CIA officer, a fresh-faced girl who looked as though she had just finished her junior year abroad, greeted him in Upper Brook Street. She escorted him past the Marine Guard, then into a secure elevator that bore him downward into the bowels of the annex. Adrian Carter and Graham Seymour were already there, seated on the top deck of the amphitheater-shaped Ops Center. Shamron took a seat at Carter’s right and looked at one of the large screens at the front of the room. It showed two aircraft sitting on a tarmac outside Washington, D.C. Both belonged to the 89th Airlift Wing based at Andrews Air Force Base. Both were fueled and ready for departure.