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The following morning Natan Golani threw himself into the business of the conference with the determination of a man with much to accomplish in very little time. He was seated at his assigned place in the grand hall of the Marble Palace when the conference commenced and remained there, translation headphones in place, long after many of the other delegates wisely decided that the real business of the gathering was being conducted in the bars of the Western hotels. He did the working lunches and made the rounds of the afternoon cocktail receptions. He did the endless dinners and never once bowed out of the evening entertainment. He spoke French to the French, German to the Germans, Italian to the Italians, and passable Spanish to the many delegations from Latin America. He rubbed shoulders with the Saudis and the Syrians and even managed a polite conversation with an Iranian about the madness of Holocaust denial. He reached an agreement, in principle, for an Israeli chamber orchestra to tour sub-Saharan Africa and arranged for a group of Maori drummers from New Zealand to visit Israel. He could be combative and conciliatory in the span of a few moments. He spoke of new solutions to old problems. He said Israel was determined to build bridges rather than fences. All that was needed, he said to anyone who would listen, was a man of courage on the other side.

He mounted the dais in the grand hall of the Marble Palace at the end of the second day’s session and, as Uzi Navot had forecast, many of the delegates immediately walked out. Those who remained found the speech quite unlike anything they had ever heard from an Israeli representative before. The chief of UNESCO declared it “a clarion call for a new paradigm in the Middle East.” The French delegate referred to Monsieur Golani as “a true man of culture and the arts.” Everyone in attendance agreed that a new wind seemed to be blowing from the Judean Hills.

There was no such wind blowing, however, from the headquarters of the FSB. Their break-in artists searched his hotel room each time he left, and their watchers followed him wherever he went. During the final gala at the Mariinsky Theatre, an attractive female agent flirted shamelessly with him and invited him back to her apartment for an evening of sexual compromise. He politely declined and left the Mariinsky with no company other than Igor and Natasha, who were by now too bored to even bother concealing their presence.

It being his final night in St. Petersburg, he decided to climb the winding steps to the top of St. Isaac’s golden dome. The parapet was empty except for a pair of German girls, who were standing at the balustrade, gazing out at the sweeping view of the city. One of the girls handed him a camera and posed dramatically while he snapped her picture. She then thanked him profusely and told him that Olga Sukhova had agreed to attend the embassy dinner. When he returned to his hotel room, he found the message light winking on his telephone. It was the Israeli ambassador, insisting that he come to Moscow. “You have to see the place to believe it, Natan! Billionaires, dirty bankers, and gangsters, all swimming in a sea of oil, caviar, and vodka! We’re having a dinner party Thursday night-just a few brave souls who’ve had the chutzpah to challenge the regime. And don’t think about trying to say no, because I’ve already arranged it with your minister.”

He erased the message, then dialed Tel Aviv and informed his ersatz wife that he would be staying in Russia longer than expected. She berated him for several minutes, then slammed down the phone in disgust. Gabriel held the receiver to his ear a moment longer and imagined the FSB listeners having a good laugh at his expense.

13 MOSCOW

On Moscow ’s Tverskaya Street, the flashy foreign cars of the newly rich jockeyed for position with the boxy Ladas and Zhigulis of the still deprived. The Kremlin’s Trinity Tower was nearly lost in a gauzy shroud of exhaust fumes, its famous red star looking sadly like just another advertisement for an imported luxury good. In the bar of the Savoy Hotel, the sharp boys and their bodyguards were drinking cold beer instead of vodka. Their black Bentleys and Range Rovers waited just outside the entrance, engines running for a quick getaway. Conservation of fuel was hardly a priority in Russia these days. Petrol, like nearly everything else, was in plentiful supply.

At 7:30 P.M., Gabriel came down to the lobby dressed in a dark suit and diplomatic silver tie. Stepping from the entrance, he scanned the faces behind the wheels of the parked cars before heading down the hill to the Teatralnyy Prospekt. Atop a low hill loomed the hulking yellow fortress of Lubyanka, headquarters of the FSB. In its shadow was a row of exclusive Western designer boutiques worthy of Rodeo Drive or Madison Avenue. Gabriel could not help but marvel at the striking juxtaposition, even if it was only a bit of pantomime for the pair of watchers who had left the comfort of their air-conditioned car and were now trailing him on foot.

He consulted a hotel street map-needlessly, because his route was well planned in advance-and made his way to a large open-air esplanade at the foot of the Kremlin walls. Passing a row of kiosks selling everything from Soviet hockey jerseys to busts of the murderers Lenin and Stalin, he turned to the left and entered Red Square. The last of the day’s pilgrims stood outside the entrance of Lenin’s Tomb, sipping Coca-Cola and fanning themselves with tourist brochures and guides to Moscow nightlife. He wondered what drew them here. Was it misplaced faith? Nostalgia for a simpler time? Or did they come merely for morbid reasons? To judge for themselves whether the figure beneath the glass was real or more worthy of a wax museum?

He crossed the square toward the candy-cane domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral, then followed the eastern wall of the Kremlin down to the Moscow River. On the opposite bank, at Serafimovicha Street 2, stood the infamous House on the Embankment, the colossal apartment block built by Stalin in 1931 as an exclusive residence for the most elite members of the nomenklatura. During the height of the Great Terror, 766 residents, or one-third of its total population, had been murdered, and those “privileged” enough to reside in the house lived in constant fear of the knock at the door. Despite its bloody history, many of the old Soviet elite and their children still lived in the building, and flats now sold for millions of dollars. Little of the exterior had changed except for the roof, which was now crowned by a Stalin-sized revolving advertisement for Mercedes-Benz. The Nazis may have failed in their bid to capture Moscow, but now, sixty years after the war, the flag of German industrial might flew proudly from one of the city’s most prestigious landmarks.

Gabriel gave his map another pointless glance as he set out across the Moskvoretsky Bridge. Crimson-and-black banners of the ruling Russian Unity Party hung from the lampposts, swaying drunkenly in the warm breeze. At the opposite end of the bridge, the Russian president smiled disagreeably at Gabriel from a billboard three stories in height. He was scheduled to face the Russian “electorate,” such that it was, for the fourth time at the end of the summer. There was little suspense about the outcome; the president had long ago purged Russia of dangerous democratic tendencies, and the officially sanctioned opposition parties were now little more than useful idiots. The smiling man on the billboard was the new tsar in everything but name-and one with imperial ambitions at that.

On the other side of the river lay the pleasant quarter known as Zamoskvoreche. Spared the architectural terror of Stalin’s replanning, the district had retained some of the atmosphere of nineteenth-century Moscow. Gabriel walked past flaking imperial houses and onion-domed churches until he came to the walled compound at Bolshaya Ordynka 56. The plaque at the gate read EMBASSY OF ISRAEL in English, Russian, and Hebrew. Gabriel held his credentials up to the fish-eye lens of the camera and heard the electronic dead-bolt locks immediately snap open. As he stepped into the compound, he glanced over his shoulder and saw a man in a car across the street raise a camera and blatantly snap a photograph. Apparently, the FSB knew about the ambassador’s dinner party and intended to intimidate the guests as they arrived and departed.