AUTHOR’S NOTE
Moscow Rules is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Two Children on a Beach by Mary Cassatt does not exist and therefore could not have been forged. If it did, it would bear a striking resemblance to a picture called Children Playing on the Beach, which hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Visitors to the French ski resort of Courchevel will search in vain for the Hôtel Grand, for it, too, is an invention. Riviera Flight Services is fictitious, and I have tinkered with airline schedules to make them fit my story. The Novodevichy Cemetery is faithfully rendered, as is the House on the Embankment, though it is a slightly less sinister place now than I have made it out to be. The FSB is in fact the internal security service of the Russian Federation, and its multitude of sins have been widely reported. Deepest apologies to the director of the Impressionist and Modern Art department at Christie’s auction house in London. I am quite certain he is nothing like Alistair Leach. To the best of my knowledge, there is no CIA safe house on N Street in Georgetown.
Moskovsky Gazeta does not exist, though, sadly, the threat to Russian journalists is all too real. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, forty-seven reporters, editors, cameramen, and photographers have been killed in Russia since 1992, making it the third-deadliest country in the world in which to practice the craft of journalism, after Iraq and Algeria. Fourteen of those deaths occurred during the rule of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who undertook a systematic crack-down on press freedom and political dissent after coming to power in 1999. Virtually all the murders were contract killings, and few have been solved or prosecuted.
The most famous Russian reporter murdered during the rule of Vladimir Putin was Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in the elevator of her Moscow apartment house in October 2006. A vocal critic of the regime, Politkovskaya was about to publish a searing exposé detailing allegations of torture and kidnapping by the Russian military and security forces in Chechnya. Putin dismissed Anna Politkovskaya as a person of “marginal significance” and did not bother to attend her funeral. No one connected to the Kremlin did.
Six months after Politkovskaya’s murder, Ivan Safronov, a highly respected military affairs writer for the Kommersant newspaper, was found dead in the courtyard of his Moscow apartment building. Russian police claimed he committed suicide by jumping from a fifth-floor window, even though he resided on the third floor. While conducting research in Moscow, I learned Safronov had telephoned his wife on the way home to say he was stopping to buy some oranges, hardly the act of a suicidal man. The oranges were later found scattered in the stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors, along with Safronov’s cap. According to witnesses, Safronov was alive for several minutes after the fall and even attempted to stand. He would not survive the uncaring ineptitude of Moscow ’s ambulance service, which took thirty minutes to dispatch help. The “attendants” assumed Safronov had fallen from an open window in a drunken stupor. An autopsy found no trace of alcohol or drugs in his system.
If the brutal death of Ivan Safronov was an act of murder rather than suicide, then why was he killed and by whom? Like Anna Politkovskaya,Ivan Safronov had apparently uncovered information that Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin did not want the rest of the world to know: specifically, that Russia intended to sell advanced fighter jets and missiles to its two pariah allies in the Middle East, Iran and Syria. In order to provide the Kremlin with plausible deniability it played any part in the sale, the deal was reportedly set to be conducted through an arms dealer in Belarus. Safronov is said to have confirmed details of the sale during a trip to the Middle East in the days before his death.
The promiscuity of Russian arms sales in the Middle East has been well documented. So, too, have the activities of “private” Russian arms traffickers. One such man is Viktor Bout. Often referred to as “the merchant of death” and the world’s most notorious gunrunner, Bout is alleged to have sold weapons to a diverse set of clients that include the likes of Hezbollah, the Taliban, and even elements of al-Qaeda. In 2006, the U.S. Treasury Department seized some of Bout’s aircraft and froze his assets. In March 2008, as I was finishing this manuscript, he was arrested in a luxury Bangkok hotel in an American-led sting operation. He is accused of offering to sell millions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to the FARC rebels of Colombia, including advanced shoulder-launch antiaircraft missiles. At the time of this writing, he sits in a Thai jail cell, awaiting legal proceedings and possible extradition to the United States to face charges.
Finally, a note on the title. Many of us first became familiar with the term “Moscow Rules” when we read John le Carré’s classic novel of espionage, Smiley’s People. Though the brilliant Mr. le Carré invented much of the lexicon of his spies, the Moscow Rules were indeed a real set of Cold War operating principles and remain so today, even though the Cold War is supposedly a thing of the past. One can find written versions of the rules in various forms and in various places, though the CIA apparently has never gone to the trouble of actually placing them on paper. I am told by an officer in the Agency’s national clandestine service that the rule quoted in the epigraph of this novel is accurate and is drilled into American spies throughout their training. Unfortunately, the journalists of Russia are now forced to operate by a similar set of guidelines-at least the ones who dare to question the new masters of the Kremlin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel, like the previous books in the Gabriel Allon series, could not have been written without the assistance of David Bull, who truly is among the finest art restorers in the world. Usually, David advises me on how to clean paintings. This time, however, he taught me how a man as gifted as Gabriel might forge one in a hurry. The technique Gabriel used for creating craquelure is a highly abbreviated version of the method developed by Han van Meegeren, a Dutchman often described as the greatest forger in history.
I am indebted to several courageous Russian journalists in Moscow who generously shared with me some of their experiences. For obvious reasons, I cannot name them here, but I stand in awe of both their courage and their dedication to freedoms we in the West take for granted. Jim Maceda of NBC News was an invaluable resource, as was Jonathan, who took me to corners of the Old Arbat I would have never found on my own. My Russian guides in St. Petersburg and Moscow gave my family the trip of a lifetime, while Tanya showed me the soul of a Leningrad girl. A very special thanks to the FSB colonel who walked me through the corridors of Lubyanka. Also, to my driver in Moscow, who poetically said of the Russians: “We cannot live as normal people.” I did not realize it then but he gave me the spine of a novel.
Several Israeli and American intelligence officers spoke to me on background, and I thank them now in anonymity, which is how they would prefer it. A special thanks to J, who chose to serve his country in secret rather than use his brilliant mind to make money. We are all in his debt.
A very senior administration official generously briefed me on his own experiences dealing with the new Russia and encouraged me every step of the way. Former president George H. W. Bush, Mrs. Barbara Bush, and Jean Becker, their amazing chief of staff, offered much support and gave me an invaluable glimpse of what it is like to entertain a visiting head of state. Roger Cressey talked to me about real-life Russian arms dealers and explained how I might take down a portion of the Moscow telephone system. David Zara of Tradewind Aviation helped me steal an oligarch’s airplane. Deepest gratitude to the Astoria Hotel in St. Petersburg, the Savoy Hotel in Moscow, the Métropole Hotel in Geneva, the Hôtel les Grandes Alpes in Courchevel, and the Château de la Messardière in Saint-Tropez. Please forgive any complaints by my characters; they are a surly lot who travel far too much. Also, I am forever grateful to the staff of an isolated cattle farm in the hills of Umbria. They gave my family, and my characters, a glorious summer none of us will ever forget.