MOSCOW RULES: The death of a journalist leads Gabriel Allon to Russia, where he finds that, in terms of spycraft, even he has something to learn. He’s playing by Moscow rules now.

It’s not the grim Moscow of Soviet times but a new Moscow, where power resides once more behind the walls of the Kremlin and critics are ruthlessly silenced. A Moscow where new Stalinists are plotting to reclaim an empire lost and challenge the dominance of its U.S. enemy.

Ivan Kharkov, a former KGB colonel, 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.

THE DEFECTOR: Six months after Moscow Rules, Allon has resumed his honeymoon with wife, Chiara. But his world is again thrown into turmoil with news from London. Former Russian intelligence officer Grigori Bulganov, who saved Allon’s life in Moscow, has vanished. British intelligence thinks he was a double agent all along, but Allon knows better. He also knows he made a promise.

In the days to come, Allon and his team of operatives find themselves in a deadly duel with the ruthless Ivan Kharkov. It will take Allon from a quiet mews in London to the snowbound forests of Russia. Faced with losing the one thing he holds most dear, Allon will be tested in ways he never imagined possible. And his life will never be the same.