Moscow Rules by Daniel Silva Read Free Book Online

waiting when he arrived. And so was Eli Lavon.
    I thought you were supposed to be on your honeymoon.”
    "Shamron had other ideas.”
    "You need to learn how to set boundaries.”
    "I could build a Separation Fence and it still wouldn’t stop him.”
    Eli Lavon smiled and pushed a few strands of wispy hair from his forehead. Despite the warmth of
    the Roman afternoon, he was wearing a cardigan sweater beneath his crumpled tweed jacket and an ascot
    at his throat. Even Gabriel, who had known Lavon for more than thirty years, sometimes found it difficult
    to believe that the brilliant, bookish little archaeologist was actually the finest street surveillance artist
    the Office had ever produced. His ties to the Office, like Gabriel’s, were tenuous at best. He still lectured
    at the Academy-indeed, no Office recruit ever made it into the field without first spending a few days at
    Lavon’s legendary feet-but these days his primary work address was Jerusalem’s Hebrew University,
    where he taught biblical archaeology and regularly took part in digs around the country.
    Their close bond had been formed many years earlier during OperationWrath of God, the secret
    Israeli intelligence operation to hunt down and kill the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics
    massacre. In the Hebrew-based lexicon of the team, Gabriel was known as an aleph . Armed with a.22
    caliber Beretta pistol, he had personally assassinated six of the Black September terrorists responsible
    for Munich, including a man named Wadal Abdel Zwaiter, whom he had killed in the foyer of an
    apartment building a few miles from where they were seated now. Lavon was an ayin -a tracker and
    surveillance specialist. They had spent three years stalking their prey across Western Europe, killing both
    at night and in broad daylight, living in fear that, at any moment, they would be arrested by European
    police and charged as murderers. When they finally returned home, Gabriel’s temples were the color of
    ash and his face was that of a man twenty years his senior. Lavon, who had been exposed to the terrorists
    for long periods of time with no backup, suffered from innumerable stress disorders, including a
    notoriously fickle stomach. Gabriel winced inwardly as Lavon took a very large bite of the fish. He knew
    the little watcher would pay for it later.
    “Uzi tells me you’re working in the Judean Desert. I hope it wasn’t something too important.”
    “Only one of the most significant archaeological expeditions in Israel in the last twenty years. We’ve
    gone back into the Cave of Letters. But instead of being there with my colleagues, sifting through the relics
    of our ancient past, I’m in Rome with you.” Lavon’s brown eyes flickered around the piazza. “But, then,
    we have a bit of history here ourselves, don’t we, Gabriel? In a way, this is where it began for the two of
    us.”
    “It began in Munich , Eli, not Rome.”
    “I can still smell that damn fig wine he was carrying when you shot him. Do you remember the wine,
    Gabriel?”
    “I remember, Eli.”
    “Even now, the smell of figs turns my stomach.” Lavon took a bite of the fish. “We’re not going to
    kill anyone today, are we, Gabriel?”
    “Not today, Eli. Today, we just talk.”
    “You have a picture?”
    Gabriel removed the photograph from his shirt pocket and placed it on the table. Lavon shoved on a
    pair of smudged half-moon reading glasses and scrutinized the image carefully.
    “These Russians all look the same to me.”
    “I’m sure they feel the same way about you.”
    “I know exactly how they feel about me. Russians made the lives of my ancestors so miserable that
    they chose to live beside a malarial swamp in Palestine instead. They supported the creation of Israel to
    begin with, but in the sixties they threw in their lot with those who were sworn to destroy us. The
    Russians like to portray themselves as allies of the West in the war against international terrorism, but