MOSCOW RULES

The violent death of a journalist leads agent turned art restorer Gabrial Allon to Russia. Here he finds that in terms of spycraft, the stakes are the higest they've ever been. He's playing by Moscow rules now. It is not the grim city of Soviet times, but a modern Moscow, awash in oil wealth and bulletproof Bentleys. A Moscow where a new generation of Stalinists is plotting to reclaim an empire lost and to challenge the global dominance of the old enemy, the United States. One such man is Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel who built a global investment empire on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Hidden within that empire is a lucrative and deadly business. Kharkov is an arms dealer - and he is about to deliver Russia's most sophisticated weapons to al-Qaeda. Unless Allon can learn the time and place of the delivery, the world will see the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11 - and the clock is ticking fast. Filled with rich prose and breathtaking turns of plot, Moscow Rules is at once superior entertainment and a searing cautionary tale about the new threats rising to the East - and Silva's finest novel yet.