Moscow Rules (47 page)

to be a new guard in the apartment. He might even have a helper or two. In the old days, the neighbors

were used to the sound of a little late-night gunfire, but not now. If we have to do any shooting, it could

get ugly quickly.”

“You’re still a colonel in the FSB, Grigori. And FSB colonels take shit from no one.”

“I don’t want to be an FSB colonel anymore. I want to be one of the good guys.”

“You will be,” Gabriel said. “The moment you present yourself at the Ukrainian border and declare

your desire to defect.”

Bulganov lowered his eyes from the mirror and stared straight down the Leninsky Prospekt. “I

already am a good guy,” he said quietly. “I just play for a very bad team.”

69 BOLOTNAYA SQUARE, MOSCOW

The Russian president frowned in disapproval as Gabriel, Elena, and Grigori Bulganov hurried

across the street toward the House on the Embankment. Bulganov placed his FSB identification on the

reception desk and quietly threatened to cut off the porter’s hand if he touched the telephone.

“We were never here. Do you understand me?”

The terrified porter nodded. Bulganov returned his ID to his coat pocket and walked over to the

private elevator, where Gabriel and Elena had already boarded a car. As the doors closed, the two men

drew their Makarovs and chambered their first rounds.

The elevator was old and slow; the journey to the ninth floor seemed to last an eternity. When the

doors finally opened, Elena was pressed into one corner, with Gabriel and Bulganov, guns leveled in

firing positions, shielding her body. Their precaution proved unnecessary, however, because the

vestibule, like the entrance hall of the apartment, was empty. It seemed Arkady Medvedev’s highly trained

security guard had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room while watching a bit of pornography on

Ivan’s large-screen television. Gabriel woke the guard by inserting the barrel of the Makarov into his ear.

“If you are a good dog, you will live to see the sunrise. If you are a bad dog, I’m going to make a

terrible mess on Ivan’s couch. Which is it going to be? Good dog or bad dog?”

“Good,” said the guard.

“Wise choice. Let’s go.”

Gabriel marched the guard into Ivan’s fortified office, where Elena was already in the process of

opening the interior vault. Her handbag was where Medvedev had left it. The disks were still inside.

Bulganov ordered the guard into the vault and closed the steel door. Elena pressed the button behind

volume 2 of
Anna Karenina
and the bookshelves slid shut. Inside, the guard began shouting in Russian,

his muffled voice barely audible.

“Maybe we should give him some water,” Bulganov said.

“He’ll be fine for a few hours.” Gabriel looked at Elena. “Is there anything else you need?”

She shook her head. Gabriel and Bulganov led the way back to the elevator, Makarovs leveled

before them. The porter was still frozen in place behind the reception desk. Bulganov gave him one final

reminder to keep his mouth shut, then led Gabriel and Elena out to the car.

“With a bit of luck, we can be across the border before dawn,” Bulganov said as he shoved his key

into the ignition. “Unless you have any more errands you’d like to run.”

“I do, actually. I need you to make one final arrest while you’re still an FSB officer.”

“Who?”

Gabriel told him.

“It’s out of the question. There’s no way I can get past all that security.”

“You’re still a colonel in the FSB, Grigori. And FSB colonels take shit from no one.”

70 MOSCOW

An Orion’s Belt of lights burned on the north side of the House of Dogs; red lamps blinked in the

transmission towers high atop the roof. Gabriel sat behind the wheel of Colonel Grigori Bulganov’s

official car. Elena sat beside him, with Colonel Grigori Bulganov’s mobile phone in her hand. The

colonel was not present. He was on the eleventh floor, arresting Olga Sukhova, crusading journalist from

the formerly crusading
Moskovsky Gazeta.

“Do you think she’ll come?” Elena asked.

“She’ll come,” said Gabriel. “She has no other choice. She knows that if she ever sets foot outside

that apartment, your husband will kill her.”

Elena reached out and touched the bandage on Gabriel’s right eye. “I did the best I could. It needs

stitches. Probably more. I think that beast managed to break something.”

“I’m sure he regretted his actions when he saw the gun in my hand.”

“I don’t think he ever saw your gun.” She touched his hand. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“May I make a confession?”

“Of course.”

“I’m glad you killed them. I know that must sound terrible coming from the wife of a murderer, but

I’m glad you killed them the way you did. Especially Arkady.”

“I should have waited until you were gone. I’m sorry for that, Elena.”

“Will it ever go away?”

“The memory? No, it will never go away.”

She looked at the mobile phone, and checked the strength of the signal.

“So is your name really Gabriel or was that a deception, too?”

“It’s my real name.”

Elena smiled.

“Is there something humorous about my name?”

“No, it’s a beautiful name. I was just thinking about the last words my mother said to me before I left

her this afternoon: ‘May the angel of the Lord be looking over your shoulder.’ I suppose she was right

after all.”

“We can pick her up on the way out of town if you like.”

“My mother? The last thing you want to do is drive to Ukraine with my mother in the backseat.

Besides, there’s no need to bring her out right away. Not even Ivan would harm an old woman.” She

scrutinized him in silence for a moment. “So are you, in fact, the angel of the Lord?”

“Do I look like the angel of the Lord?”

“I suppose not.” She glanced up at the façade of the building. “Is it true you don’t know where my

children are?”

He shook his head. “I was lying to Arkady. I know where they are.”

“Tell me.”

“Not yet. I’ll tell you when we’re safely over the border.”

“Look!” She pointed up at the building. “A light just came on. Does that mean she let him into the

apartment?”

“Probably.”

She looked at the mobile phone. “Ring, damn it.
Ring.”

“Relax, Elena. It’s three o’clock in the morning and an FSB colonel is telling her to pack a bag. Give

her a moment to digest what’s happening. ”

“Do you think she’ll come?”

“She’ll come.”

Gabriel took the phone from her grasp and asked how she knew the Cassatt was a forgery.

“It was the hands.”

“What about the hands?”

“The brushstrokes were too impasto.”

“Sarah told me the same thing.”

“You should have listened to her.”

Just then the phone rang. Gabriel handed it to Elena.

“Da?”
she said, then: “
Da, da.
”

She looked at Gabriel.

“Flash the lights, Gabriel. She wants you to flash the headlights.”

Gabriel flicked the headlamps twice. Elena spoke a few more words in Russian. The eleventh-floor

window went dark.

PART FOUR. THE HARVEST

71 VILLADEIFIORI, UMBRIA

The
vendemmia,
the annual harvest of the wine grapes, commenced at the Villa dei Fiori on the final

Saturday in September. It coincided with the unwelcome news that the restorer was planning to return to

Umbria. Count Gasparri briefly considered making the drive from Rome to inform the staff in person. In

the end, he decided a quick telephone call to Margherita would suffice.

“When is he scheduled to arrive?” she asked, her voice heavy with dread.

“This is unclear.”

“But of course. Will he be alone or accompanied by Francesca?”

“This is also unclear.”

“Should we assume he’ll be working again?”

“That is the hope,” Gasparri said. “But my friends at the Vatican tell me he’s been in some sort of

accident. I wouldn’t expect him to be in a terribly good mood.”

“How will we tell the difference?”

“Be kind to him, Margherita. Apparently, the poor man’s been through quite an ordeal.”

And with that the line went dead. Margherita hung up the phone and headed out to the vineyards.

The poor man’s been through quite an ordeal…

Yes,
she thought.
And now he’s going to take it out on us.

The ‟return,” as it became known to the staff, occurred late that same evening. Carlos, who lived in

a stone cottage on a hill above the pasture, spotted the little Passat wagon as it turned through the gate and

started down the gravel road toward the villa with its headlamps doused. He quickly telephoned Isabella,

who was standing on the veranda of her residence near the stables as the blacked-out car flashed by in a

cloud of dust. Her observation, though brief, yielded two critical pieces of information: the car definitely

contained not one but
two
people-the restorer and the woman they knew as Francesca-and the woman was

driving. Strong circumstantial evidence, she told Carlos, that the restorer had indeed suffered an accident

of some sort.

The last member of the staff to see the couple that night was Margherita, who watched them cross the

courtyard from her static post above the chapel. Like all housekeepers, Margherita was a natural watcher-

and, like any good watcher, she took note of small details. She found it odd, to say the least, that the

woman was leading the way. She also thought she could detect something different about the restorer’s

movements. Something vaguely hesitant in his step. She saw him once more, when he appeared in the

upstairs window and gazed in her direction over the courtyard. There was no soldierly nod this time; in

fact, he gave no indication that he was even aware of her presence. He just peered into the gloom, as if

searching for an adversary that he knew was there but could not see.

The shutters closed with a thump and the restorer disappeared from sight. Margherita remained

frozen in her window for a long time after, haunted by the image she had just seen. A man in a moonlit

window with a heavy bandage over his right eye.

Unfortunately, Count Gasparri’s predictions about the restorer’s mood turned out to be accurate.

Unlike in summer, when he had been predictably aloof, his moods now fluctuated between chilling

silences and flashes of alarming temper. Francesca, while apologetic, offered few clues about how he had

sustained the injury, stating only that he had suffered “a mishap” while working abroad. Naturally, the

staff was left to speculate as to what had actually happened. Their theories ranged from the absurd to the

mundane. They were certain of one thing: the injury had left the restorer dangerously on edge, as Anna

discovered one morning when she approached him from behind while he was struggling to read the

newspaper. His sudden movement gave her such a start that she vowed never to go near him again.

Margherita took to singing as she went about her chores, which only seemed to annoy him more.

At first, he did not venture beyond the Etruscan walls of the garden. There, he would spend

afternoons beneath the shade of the trellis, drinking his Orvieto wine and reading until his eye became too

fatigued to continue. Sometimes, when it was warm, he would wander down to the pool and wade

carefully into the shallow end, making certain to keep his bandaged eye above water. Other times, he

would lie on his back on the chaise and toss a tennis ball into the air, for hours on end, as if testing his

vision and reactions. Each time he returned to the villa, he would pause in the drawing room and stare at

the empty studio. Margherita took note of the fact that he would not stand in his usual spot, directly before

the easels, but several paces away. “It’s as if he’s trying to imagine himself working again,” she told

Anna. “The poor man isn’t at all sure he’ll ever lay his hands on another painting.”

He soon felt strong enough to resume his walks. In the beginning, they were not long, nor were they

conducted at a rapid pace. He wore wraparound sunglasses to cover his eyes and a cotton bucket hat