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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Moscow
Rules by Daniel Silva |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Thugs Daniel
Silva’s latest novel, Moscow
Rules, provides over 400 thrilling pages for readers. Israeli spy Gabriel
Allon’s latest mission takes him to Russia, where thugs rule. With his
trademark confidence, Allon does what he has to do, despite the interruption
to his honeymoon and his preference to be someplace else. Here’s an excerpt, from
the beginning of Chapter 3, pp. 20-22: Few Italian cities handle the
crush of summer tourists more gracefully than Assisi. The packaged pilgrims
arrive in midmorning and shuffle politely through the sacred streets until
dusk, when they are herded once more onto air-conditioned coaches and whisked
back to their discount hotels in Rome. Propped against the western ramparts
of the city, the restorer watched a group of overfed German stragglers tramp
wearily through the stone archway of the Porto Nuova. Then he walked over to
a newspaper kiosk and bought a day-old copy of the International Herald
Tribune. The purchase, like his visit to Assisi, was professional in
nature. The Herald Tribune meant his tail was clean. Had he purchased La
RepubbIica, or any other Italian-language paper, it would have signified
that he had been followed by agents of the Italian security service, and the
meeting would have been called off. He tucked the newspaper beneath
his arm, with the banner facing out, and walked along the Corso Mazzini to
the Piazza del Commune. At the edge of a fountain sat a girl in faded blue
jeans and a gauzy cotton top. She pushed her sunglasses onto her forehead
and peered across the square toward the entrance of
the Via Portica. The restorer dropped the paper into a rubbish bin and set
off down the narrow street. The
restaurant where he had been instructed to come was about a hundred yards
from the Basilica di San Francesco. He told the hostess he was meeting a man
called Monsieur Laffont and was immediately shown onto a narrow terrace with
sweeping views of the Tiber River valley. At the end of the terrace, reached
by a flight of narrow stone steps, was a small patio with a single private
table. Potted geraniums stood along the edge of the balustrade and overhead
stretched a canopy of flowering vines. Seated before an open bottle of white
wine was a man with cropped strawberry blond hair and the heavy shoulders of
a wrestler. Laffont was only a work name. His real name was Uzi Navot, and he
held a senior post in the secret intelligence service of the State of Israel.
He was also one of the few people in the world who knew that the Italian art
restorer known as Alessio Vianelli was actually an Israeli from the Valley of
Jezreel named Gabriel Allon. "Nice
table," said Gabriel as he took his seat. "It's
one of the fringe benefits of this life. We know all the best tables in all
the best restaurants in Europe." Gabriel
poured himself a glass of wine and nodded slowly. They did know all the best
restaurants, but they also knew all the dreary airport lounges, all the
stinking rail platforms, and all the moth-eaten transit hotels. The
supposedly glamorous life of an Israeli intelligence agent was actually one
of near-constant travel and mind-numbing boredom broken by brief interludes
of sheer terror. Gabriel Allon had endured more such interludes than most
agents. By association, so had Uzi Navot. "I
used to bring one of my sources here," Navot said. 'A Syrian who worked
for the state-run pharmaceutical company. His job was to secure supplies of
chemicals and equipment from European manufacturers. That was just a cover,
of course. He was really working on behalf of Syria's chemical and biological
weapons program. We met here twice. I'd give him a suitcase filled with money
and three bottles of this delicious Umbrian sauvignon blanc and he'd tell me
the regime's darkest secrets. Headquarters used to complain bitterly about
the size of the checks." Navot smiled and shook his head slowly.
"Those idiots in the Banking section would hand me a briefcase
containing a hundred thousand dollars without a second thought, but if I
exceeded my meal allowance by so much as a shekel, the heavens would open up.
Such is the life of an accountant at King Saul Boulevard." King
Saul Boulevard was the longtime address of Israel's foreign intelligence
service. The service had a long name that had very little to do with the true
nature of its work. Men like Gabriel and Uzi Navot referred to it as
"the Office" and nothing else. "Is
he still on the payroll?" "The
Syrian?" Navot, playing the role of Monsieur Laffont, pulled his lips
into a Parisian frown. "I'm afraid he had something of a mishap a few
years back." "What
happened?" Gabriel asked cautiously. He knew that when individuals
associated with the Office had mishaps, it was usually fatal. "A
team of Syrian counterintelligence agents photographed him entering a bank in
Geneva. He was arrested at the airport in Damascus the next day and taken to
the Palestine Branch." The Palestine Branch was the name of Syria's main
interrogation center. "They tortured him viciously for a month. When
they'd wrung everything out of him they could, they put a bullet in his head
and threw his body in an unmarked grave." Gabriel
looked down toward the other tables. The girl from the piazza was now seated
alone near the entrance. Her menu was open but her eyes were slowly scanning
the other patrons. An oversize handbag lay at her feet with the zipper open.
Inside the bag, Gabriel knew, was a loaded gun. Readers
of the seven earlier Allon novels will certainly want to feast on Moscow
Rules. First time readers could easily start here and find reading
pleasure. Steve
Hopkins, September 20, 2008 |
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Go to Executive Times Archives |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Moscow Rules.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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