Free Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva

paper.
     
     
    “What’s this?”
     
     
    “A message from Shamron.”
     
     
    “What does it say?”
     
     
    “It says your honeymoon is now officially over.”
     

 
    10
     
     
    BEN-GURION AIRPORT, ISRAEL
     
     
    There is a VIP reception room at Ben-Gurion Airport that few people know and where even fewer have set foot. Reached by an unmarked door near passport control, it has walls of Jerusalem limestone, furnishings of black leather, and a permanent odor of burnt coffee and male tension. When Gabriel entered the room the following evening, he found it occupied by a single man. He had settled himself at the edge of his chair, with his legs slightly splayed and his large hands resting atop an olive-wood cane, like a traveler on a rail platform resigned to a long wait. He was dressed, as always, in a pair of pressed khaki trousers and a white oxford cloth shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His head was bullet-shaped and bald, except for a monkish fringe of white hair. His ugly wire-framed spectacles magnified a pair of blue eyes that were no longer clear.
     
     
    “How long have you been sitting there?” Gabriel asked.
     
     
    “Since the day you returned to Italy,” replied Ari Shamron.
     
     
    Gabriel regarded him carefully.
     
     
    “Why are you looking at me like that?”
     
     
    “I’m just wondering why you’re not smoking.”
     
     
    “Gilah told me I have to quit—or else .”
     
     
    “That’s never stopped you before.”
     
     
    “This time she means it.”
     
     
    Gabriel kissed Shamron on the top of the head. “Why didn’t you just let someone from Transport pick me up?”
     
     
    “I was in the neighborhood.”
     
     
    “You live in Tiberias! You’re retired now, Ari. You should be spending time with Gilah to make up for all those years when you were never around.”
     
     
    “I’m never going to retire!” Shamron thumped the arm of his chair for emphasis. “As for Gilah, she was the one who suggested I come here to wait for you. She told me to get out of the house for a few hours. She said I was underfoot.”
     
     
    Shamron closed his hooded eyes for a moment and gave a ghost of a smile. His loved ones, like his power and influence, had slowly slipped through his fingers. His son was a brigadier general in the IDF’s Northern Command and used almost any excuse to avoid spending time with his famous father, as did his daughter, who had finally returned to Israel after spending years abroad. Only Gilah, his long-suffering wife, remained faithfully by his side, but now that Shamron had no formal role in the affairs of state, even Gilah, a woman of infinite patience, found his constant presence a burden. His real family were men like Gabriel, Navot, and Lavon—men whom he had recruited and trained, men who operated by a creed, even spoke a language, written by him. They were the secret guardians of the State, and Ari Shamron was their overbearing, tyrannical father.
     
     
    “I made a foolish wager a long time ago,” Shamron said. “I devoted my life to building and protecting this country and I assumed that my wife and children would forgive my sins of absence and neglect. I was wrong, of course.”
     
     
    “And now you want to inflict the same outcome on my life.”
     
     
    “You’re referring to the fact I’ve interrupted your honeymoon?”
     
     
    “I am.”
     
     
    “Your wife is still on the Office payroll. She understands the demands of your work. Besides, you’ve been gone for over a month.”
     
     
    “We agreed my stay in Italy would be indefinite.”
     
     
    “ We agreed to no such thing, Gabriel. You issued a demand and at the time I was in no position to turn it down—not after what you’d just gone through in London.” Shamron squeezed his deeply lined face into a heavy frown. “Do you know what I did for my honeymoon?”
     
     
    “Of course I know what you did for your honeymoon. The whole country knows what you