Prince of Fire

30 PARIS

THE THIN RAIN THAT HAD GREETED GABRIEL upon his emergence from the Gare de Lyon had turned to a spring downpour. It was dark now, and for that he was grateful. He had parked in a quiet leafy street near the Place de Colombie and shut down the engine. Because of the darkness, and the drenching rain, he was confident no one could see into the car. He rubbed a porthole in the fogged front windshield and peered through it. The building that contained the safe flat was on the opposite side of the street and a few doors up. Gabriel knew the flat well. He knew it was apartment 4B and that the nameplate on the buzzer read Guzman in faded blue script. He also knew that there was no place to safely hide a key, which meant that it had to be opened in advance by someone from the Paris station. Usually such tasks were handled by a bodel, the Office terminology for local hires who do the spadework required to keep a foreign station running. But ten minutes later Gabriel was relieved to see the familiar figure of Uzi Navot, the Paris katsa, pounding past his window with his strawberry blond hair plastered to his large round skull and a key to the flat in his hand.

Navot entered the apartment building and a moment later lights came on in the fourth-floor window. Leah stirred. Gabriel turned and looked at her, and for an instant her gaze seemed to connect with his. He reached out and took what remained of her hand. The hard scar tissue, as always, made Gabriel feel violently cold. She’d been agitated during the drive. Now she seemed calm, the way she always looked when Gabriel visited her in the solarium. He peered through his porthole again, toward the window on the fourth floor.

“Is it you?”

Gabriel, startled by the sound of Leah’s voice, looked up sharply-too sharply, he feared, because her eyes seemed suddenly panicked.

“Yes, it’s me, Leah,” he said calmly. “It’s Gabriel.”

“Where are we?” Her voice was thin and dry, like the rustling of leaves. It was nothing like he remembered it. “This feels like Paris to me. Are we in Paris?”

“Yes, we’re in Paris.”

“That woman brought me here, didn’t she? My nurse. I tried to tell Dr. Avery-” She cut herself off in mid-sentence. “I want to go home.”

“I’m taking you home.”

“To the hospital?”

“To Israel.”

A flicker of a smile, a gentle squeeze of his hand. “Your skin is burning. Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine, Leah.”

She lapsed into silence and looked out the window.

“Look at the snow,” she said. “God, how I hate this city, but the snow makes it beautiful. The snow absolves Vienna of its sins.”

Gabriel searched his memory for the first time he’d heard those words and then remembered. They’d been walking from the restaurant to the car. Dani had been sitting atop his shoulders. The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. Snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain down on Tel Aviv.

“It’s beautiful,” he agreed, trying to prevent a note of despondency from creeping into his voice. “But we’re not in Vienna. We’re in Paris. Do you remember? The girl brought you to Paris.”

She was no longer listening to him. “Hurry, Gabriel,” she said. “I want to talk to my mother. I want to hear the sound of my mother’s voice.”

Please, Leah, he thought. Turn back. Don’t do this to yourself.

“We’ll call her right away,” he said.

“Make sure Dani is buckled into his seat tightly. The streets are slippery.”

He’s fine, Leah, Gabriel had said that night. Be careful driving home.

“I’ll be careful,” she said. “Give me a kiss.”

He leaned over and pressed his lips against Leah’s ruined cheek.

“One last kiss,” she whispered.

Then her eyes opened wide. Gabriel held her scarred hand and looked away.

MADAME TOUZET poked her head from her apartment as Martineau entered the foyer.

“Professor Martineau, thank God it’s you. I was worried to death. Were you there? Was it terrible?”

He had been a few hundred meters away from the station at the time of the explosion, he told her truthfully. And yes, it was terrible, though not as terrible as he had hoped. The station should have been demolished by the destructive force of three suitcase bombs. Obviously something had gone wrong.

“I’ve just made some chocolate. Will you sit with me and watch the television? I do hate to watch such a horrible business alone.”

“I’m afraid I’ve had a terribly long day, Madame Touzet. I’m going to turn in early.”

“A Paris landmark, in ruins. What’s next, Professor? Who could do such a thing?”

“Muslims, I suppose, although one never knows the motivations of someone who could commit an act as barbaric as this. I suspect we may never know the truth.”

“Do you think it might have been a conspiracy?”

“Drink your chocolate, Madame Touzet. If you need anything, I’ll be upstairs.”

“Good night, Professor Martineau.”

THE BODEL, a fawn-eyed Moroccan Jew from the Marais named Moshe, arrived at the safe flat an hour later. He carried two bags. One contained a change of clothing for Gabriel, the other groceries for the pantry. Gabriel went into the bedroom and stripped off the clothing the girl had given him in the house in Martigues, then stood for a long time beneath the showerhead and watched the blood of Khaled’s victims swirling down the drain. He changed into the fresh clothing and placed the old things into the bag. The living room, when he went out again, was in semidarkness. Leah was asleep on the couch. Gabriel adjusted the flowered quilt that covered her body, then went into the kitchen. Navot was standing in front of the stove, with a spatula in one hand and a tea cloth tucked into the waistband of his trousers. The bodel was sitting at the table, contemplating a glass of red wine. Gabriel handed him the bag of dirty clothing.

“Get rid of these things,” he said. “Someplace where no one’s going to find them.”

The bodel nodded, then slipped out of the safe flat. Gabriel took his place at the table and looked at Navot. The Paris katsa was a compact man, no taller than Gabriel, with a wrestler’s heavy shoulders and thick arms. Gabriel had always seen something of Shamron in Navot, and he suspected that Shamron did, too. They’d clashed in the past, Gabriel and Navot, but Gabriel had come to regard the younger officer as a thoroughly competent field man. They’d worked together most recently on the Radek case.

“There’s going to be a shit storm over this.” Navot handed Gabriel a glass of wine. “We might as well break out the hip-waders now.”

“How much warning did we give them?”

“The French? Two hours. The prime minister called Grey Poupon directly. Grey Poupon had a few choice words, then he raised the terror alert status to Level Red. You didn’t hear any of it?”

Gabriel told Navot about the disabled car radio. “The first time I sensed any increase in security was the moment I was walking into the station.” He swallowed some of the wine. “How much did the prime minister tell them?”

Navot relayed to Gabriel what details of the conversation he knew.

“How did they explain my presence in Marseilles?”

“They said you were looking for someone in connection with the Rome bombing.”

“Khaled?”

“I don’t think they went into specifics.”

“Something tells me we need to get our stories straight. Why did they wait so long to alert the French?”

“They were hoping you’d turn up, obviously. They also needed to make sure all the members of the Marseilles team had left French soil.”

“Had they?”

Navot nodded.

“I suppose we could consider ourselves lucky the prime minister went on the record with Élysée Palace.”

“Why is that?”

Gabriel told Navot about the three shaheeds. “We were at the same table in Cairo together. I’m sure someone made a very nice photograph of the occasion.”

“A setup?”

“Designed to make it look as though I was somehow involved in the conspiracy.”

Navot inclined his head in the direction of the living room. “Will she eat anything?”

“Let her sleep.”

Navot slid an omelet onto a plate and placed it in front of Gabriel.

“Specialty of the house: mushrooms, Gruyère, fresh herbs.”

“I haven’t eaten in thirty-six hours. When I’m finished with the eggs, I plan on eating the plate.”

Navot began breaking more eggs into his mixing bowl. His work was interrupted by the flashing red light atop the telephone. He snatched up the receiver, listened for a moment, then murmured a few words in Hebrew and rang off. Gabriel looked up from his food.

“What was that?”

“ King Saul Boulevard. The escape plan will be ready in an hour.”

AS IT TURNED OUT, they had only forty minutes to wait for the plan. It was transmitted to the safe flat by way of secure fax-three sheets of Hebrew text, composed in Naka, the field code of the Office. Navot, seated next to Gabriel at the kitchen table, handled the decryption.

“There’s an El Al charter on the ground in Warsaw right now,” Navot said.

“Polish Jews visiting the old country?”

“Actually, visiting the scene of the crime. It’s a packaged tour of the death camps.” Navot shook his head. He had been at Treblinka that night with Gabriel and Radek and had walked among the ashes at the side of the murderer. “Why anyone would want to go to such a place is beyond me.”

“When does the flight depart?”

“Tomorrow night. One of the passengers will be asked to volunteer for a rather special assignment-traveling home on a false Israeli passport from a different point of departure.”

“And Leah will take her place on the charter?”

“Exactly.”

“ Does King Saul Boulevard have a candidate?”

“Three, actually. They’re making the final decision now.”

“How will they explain Leah’s condition?”

“Illness.”

“How will we get her to Warsaw?”

“We?” Navot shook his head. “You’re going home by a different route: overland to Italy, then a nighttime pickup on the beach at Fiumicino. Apparently you’re familiar with that spot?”

Gabriel nodded. He knew the beach well. “So how does Leah get to Warsaw?”

“I’ll take her.” Navot saw the reluctance in Gabriel’s eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to your wife. I’ll accompany her home on the flight. Three doctors are on the tour. She’ll be in good hands.”

“And when she gets to Israel?”

“A team from the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital will be ready to receive her.”

Gabriel spent a moment thinking it over. He was in no position to raise objections to the plan.

“How will I get over the border?”

“Do you remember the Volkswagen van we used in the Radek affair?”

Gabriel did. It had a hidden compartment beneath the rear foldout bed. Radek, drugged and unconscious, had been concealed there when Chiara had driven him over the Austrian-Czech border.

“I brought it back to Paris after the operation,” Navot said. “It’s stored in a garage over in the seventeenth.”

“Did you delouse it?”

Navot laughed. “It’s clean,” he said. “More important, it’ll get you over the border and down to Fiumicino.”

“Who’s taking me to Italy?”

“Moshe can handle it.”

“Him? He’s a kid.”

“He knows how to handle himself,” Navot said. “Besides, who better than Moses to lead you home to the Promised Land?”

31 FIUMICINO, ITALY

“THERE’S THE SIGNAL. TWO SHORT FLASHES FOLLOWED by a long one.”

Moshe flicked the wipers and leaned forward over the wheel of the Volkswagen. Gabriel sat placidly in the passenger seat. He was tempted to tell the kid to relax but decided instead to let him enjoy the moment. Moshe’s previous assignments had involved stocking the pantries of safe flats and cleaning up the mess after the agents had left town. A midnight rendezvous on a rainswept Italian beach was going to be the highlight of his association with the Office.

“There it is again,” the bodel said. “Two short flashes-”

“-followed by a long one. I heard you the first time.” Gabriel clapped the kid on the back. “Sorry, it’s been a long couple of days. Thanks for the ride. Be careful on the way home, and use-”

“-a different border crossing,” he said. “I heard you the first four times.”

Gabriel climbed out of the van and crossed the carpark overlooking the beach, then he saddle-stepped a short stone wall and struck out across the sand to the water’s edge. He waited there, the waves lapping over his shoes, and watched the dinghy drawing closer. A moment later he was seated in the prow, with his back to Yaakov and his eyes on Fidelity.

“You shouldn’t have gone,” Yaakov shouted over the buzz of the outboard.

“If I’d stayed in Marseilles, I would have never got Leah back.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe Khaled would have played the game differently.”

Gabriel twisted his head round. “You’re right, Yaakov. He would have played it differently. First he would have killed Leah and left her body on some road in the south of England. Then he would have sent his three shaheeds into the Gare de Lyon and turned it into rubble.”

Yaakov backed off on the throttle. “That was the dumbest move I’ve ever seen,” Yaakov said, then, in a concessionary tone, he added: “And by far the bravest. They’d better pin a medal on you when we get back to King Saul Boulevard.”

“I fell into Khaled’s trap. They don’t pin medals on officers who walk into traps. They leave them in the desert to be picked over by the vultures and the scorpions.”

Yaakov brought the dinghy to the stern of Fidelity. Gabriel climbed out onto the swim platform and scaled the ladder up the aft deck. Dina awaited him there. She was wearing a heavy sweater, and the wind was tossing about her dark hair. She rushed forward and threw her arms around his neck.

“Her voice,” Gabriel said. “I want to hear the sound of her voice.”

DINA LOADED THE TAPE and pressed PLAY.

“What have you done to her? Where is she?”

“We have her, but I don’t know where she is.”

“Where is she? Answer me! Don’t speak to me in French. Speak to me in your real language. Speak to me in Arabic.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“So you can speak Arabic. Where is she? Answer me, or you’re going down.”

“If you kill me, you’ll destroy yourself-and your wife. I’m your only hope.”

Gabriel pressed STOP, then REWIND, then PLAY.

If you kill me, you’ll destroy yourself-and your wife. I’m your only hope.”

STOP . REWIND . PLAY .

“I’m your only hope.”

STOP .

He looked up at Dina. “Did you run it through the database?”

She nodded. “No match on file.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabriel said. “I have something better than her voice.”

“What’s that?”

“Her story.”

He told Dina how the girl’s story of pain and loss had virtually tumbled out of her during the final miles before Paris. How her family had come from Sumayriyya in the Western Galilee; how they had been driven out during Operation Ben-Ami and forced into exile in Lebanon.

“Sumayriyya? It was a small place, wasn’t it? A thousand people?”

“Eight hundred, according to the girl. She seemed to know her history.”

“Not everyone from Sumayriyya obeyed the orders to flee,” Dina said. “Some of them stayed behind.”

“And some of them managed to sneak back across the border before it was sealed. If her grandfather was truly a village elder, someone would remember him.”

“But even if we’re able to learn the girl’s name, what good will it do? She’s dead. How can she help us find Khaled?”

“She was in love with him.”

“She told you this?”

“I just know it.”

“How perceptive of you. What else do you know about this girl?”

“I remember how she looked,” he said. “I remember exactly how she looked.”

THE NOTEPAD of unlined paper she found on the flying bridge; the two ordinary lead pencils in the junk drawer of the galley. He settled himself on the couch and worked by the glow of a halogen reading lamp. Dina tried to peer over his shoulder, but he cast her a severe look and sent her out onto the windswept deck to wait until he had finished. She stood at the rail and watched the lights of the Italian coast growing faint on the horizon. Ten minutes later she returned to the salon and found Gabriel asleep on the couch. The portrait of the dead girl lay next to him. Dina switched off the lamp and let him sleep on.

THE ISRAELI FRIGATE appeared off Fidelity’s starboard side in the afternoon of the third day. Two hours after that, Gabriel, Yaakov, and Dina were touching down on the helipad of a secure air base north of Tel Aviv. An Office greeting party awaited them. They stood in a circle and looked ill at ease, like strangers at a funeral. Lev was not among them, but then Lev could never be bothered with something as commonplace as greeting agents returning from dangerous missions. Gabriel, as he stepped off the helicopter, was relieved to see the armored Peugeot turning through the gates and coming across the tarmac at high speed. Without a word he separated himself from the others and made for the car.

“Where are you going, Allon?” shouted one of Lev’s men.

“Home.”

“The boss wants to see you now.”

“Then maybe he should have canceled a meeting or two and come here to greet us personally. Tell Lev I’ll try to squeeze him in tomorrow morning. I have to move a couple of things around. Tell him that.”

The rear door of the Peugeot swung open, and Gabriel climbed inside. Shamron regarded him silently. He seemed to have aged noticeably during Gabriel’s absence. His next cigarette was lit by a hand that shook more than usual. As the car lurched forward, he placed a copy of Le Monde in Gabriel’s lap. Gabriel looked down and saw two pictures of himself-one in the Gare de Lyon, moments before the explosion, and the other at Mimi Ferrere’s nightclub in Cairo, seated with the three shaheeds.

“It’s all very speculative,” Shamron said, “and therefore more damaging as a result. The suggestion is that you were somehow involved in the plot to bomb the train station.”

“And what might my motivation be?”

“To discredit the Palestinians, of course. Khaled carried off quite a coup. He managed to bomb the Gare de Lyon and blame us for the deed.”

Gabriel read the first few paragraphs of the story. “He obviously has friends in high places-Egyptian and French intelligence to name two. The Mukhabarat was watching me from the moment I set foot in Cairo. They photographed me in the nightclub, and after the bombing they sent that photograph to the French DST. Khaled orchestrated the whole thing.”

“Unfortunately, there’s more to the story. David Quinnell was found murdered in his Cairo apartment yesterday morning. It’s safe to assume we’re going to be blamed for that, too.”

Gabriel handed the newspaper back to Shamron, who returned it to his briefcase. “The fallout has already begun. The foreign minister was supposed to visit Paris next week, but the invitation has been rescinded. There’s talk of a temporary break in relations and diplomatic expulsions. We’re going to have to come clean to avoid a major rupture in our relations with France and the rest of the European Community. I suppose that eventually we’ll be able to repair the damage, but only to a degree. After all, a majority of French still believe we were the ones who flew those planes into the World Trade Center. How will we ever convince them we had nothing to do with the Gare de Lyon bombing?”

“But you warned them before the bombing took place.”

“True, but the conspiratorialists will view that only as further evidence of our guilt. How did we know the bomb would explode at seven o’clock unless we were involved in the plot? We’ll have to open our books at some point, and that includes you.”

“Me?”

“The French would like to talk to you.”

“Tell them I’ll be at the Palais de Justice on Monday morning. Ask them to hold a room for me at the Crillon. I never have any luck getting a good room at the Crillon.”

Shamron laughed. “I’ll keep you away from the French, but Lev is another story.”

“Death by committee?”

Shamron nodded. “The inquiry will begin tomorrow. You’re the first witness. You should expect your testimony to take several days and that it will be extremely unpleasant.”

“I have better things to do besides sitting before Lev’s committee.”

“Such as?”

“Finding Khaled.”

“And how do you intend to do that?”

Gabriel told Shamron about the girl from Sumayriyya.

“Who else knows about this?”

“Only Dina.”

“Pursue it quietly,” Shamron said, “and for God’s sake, don’t leave a trail.”

“Arafat had a hand in this. He fed us Mahmoud Arwish and then killed him to cover his tracks. And now he’ll reap the public relations rewards of our alleged involvement in the Gare de Lyon plot.”

“He already is,” Shamron said. “The world’s media are lining up outside the Mukata waiting for their turn to interview him. We’re in no position to lay a finger on him.”

“So we do nothing and hold our breath every April eighteenth while we wait for the next embassy or synagogue to explode?” Gabriel shook his head. “No, Ari, I’m going to find him.”

“Try not to think of any of that now.” Shamron gave him a paternal pat on the shoulder. “Get some rest. Go see Leah. Then spend some time with Chiara.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said, “an evening with no complications would do me good.”

32 JERUSALEM

SHAMRON TOOK GABRIEL TO MOUNT HERZL. IT was beginning to get dark as he headed up the tree-lined walkway to the hospital’s entrance. Leah’s new doctor awaited him in the lobby. Rotund and bespectacled, he had the long beard of a rabbi and an unfailingly pleasant demeanor. He introduced himself as Mordecai Bar-Zvi, then took Gabriel by the arm and led him along a corridor of cool Jerusalem limestone. By gesture and intonation, he made it clear to Gabriel that he knew much about the patient’s rather unorthodox case history.

“I must say, it appears she came through it remarkably well.”

“Is she talking?”

“A little.”

“Does she know where she is?”

“Sometimes. I can say one thing for certain she’s very anxious to see you.” The doctor looked at Gabriel over the top of his smudged eyeglasses. “You seem surprised.”

“She went thirteen years without speaking to me.”

The doctor shrugged. “I doubt that will ever happen again.”

They came to a door. The doctor knocked once and led Gabriel inside. Leah was seated in an armchair in the window. She turned as Gabriel entered the room and smiled briefly. He kissed her cheek, then sat on the edge of the bed. She regarded him silently for a moment, then turned and looked out the window again. It was as if he were no longer there.

The doctor excused himself and closed the door as he left. Gabriel sat there with her, content to say nothing at all as the pine trees outside receded gently into the gathering darkness. He stayed for an hour, until a nurse entered the room and suggested it was time for Leah to get some sleep. When Gabriel stood, Leah’s head swiveled round.

“Where are you going?”

“They say you need to rest.”

“That’s all I ever do.”

Gabriel kissed her lips.

“One last-” She stopped herself. “You’ll come see me again tomorrow?”

“And the next day.”

She turned away and looked out the window.

THERE WERE NO TAXIS to be had on Mount Herzl, so he boarded a bus crowded with evening commuters. The seats were all taken; he stood in the open space at the center and felt forty pairs of eyes boring into him. On the Jaffa Road he stepped off and waited in a shelter for an eastbound bus. Then he thought better of it-he had survived one ride; a second seemed an invitation to disaster-so he set off on foot through a swirling night wind. He paused for a moment at the entrance of the Makhane Yehuda Market, then headed for Narkiss Street. Chiara must have heard his footfalls on the stairwell, because she was waiting for him on the landing outside their apartment. Her beauty, after the scars of Leah, seemed even more shocking. Gabriel, when he bent to kiss her, was offered only a cheek. Her newly washed hair smelled of vanilla.

She turned and went inside. Gabriel followed after her, then stopped suddenly. The apartment had been completely redecorated: new furniture, new carpets and fixtures, a fresh coat of paint. The table had been laid and candles lit. Their diminished length suggested they’d been burning for some time. Chiara, as she passed by the table, snuffed them out.

“It’s beautiful,” Gabriel said.

“I worked hard to finish it before you arrived. I wanted it to feel like a proper home. Where have you been?” She tried, with little success, to ask the question without a confrontational tone.

“You can’t be serious, Chiara.”

“Your helicopter landed three hours ago. And I know you didn’t go to King Saul Boulevard, because Lev’s office called here looking for you.” She paused. “You went to see her, didn’t you? You went to see Leah.”

“Of course I did.”

“It didn’t occur to you to come see me first?”

“She’s in a hospital. She doesn’t know where she is. She’s confused. She’s scared.”

“I suppose Leah and I have a lot in common after all.”

“Let’s not do this, Chiara.”

“Do what?”

He headed down the hallway to their bedroom. It too had been redecorated. On Gabriel’s nightstand were the papers that, when signed, would dissolve his marriage to Leah. Chiara had left a pen beside them. He glanced up and saw her standing in the doorway. She was staring at him, searching his eyes for evidence of his emotions-like a detective, he thought, observing a person of interest at the scene of the crime.

“What happened to your face?”

Gabriel told her about the beating he’d been given.

“Did it hurt?” She didn’t seem terribly concerned.

“Only a little.” He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his shoes. “How much did you know?”

“Shamron told me right away that the hit had gone wrong. He kept me updated throughout the day. The moment I heard you were safe was the happiest moment of my life.”

Gabriel took note of the fact that Chiara had not mentioned Leah.

“How is she?”

“Leah?”

Chiara closed her eyes and nodded. Gabriel quoted the prognosis of Dr. Bar-Zvi: Leah had come through it remarkably well. He removed his shirt. Chiara covered her mouth. His bruises, after three days at sea, had turned deep purple and black.

“It looks worse than it really is,” he said.

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Not yet.”

“Take off your clothes. I’ll run a hot bath for you. A good soak will do you good.”

She left the room. A few seconds later he heard water splashing against enamel. He undressed and went into the bathroom. Chiara examined his bruises again, then she ran her hand through his hair and looked at the roots.

“It’s long enough to cut now. I don’t want to make love to a gray-haired man tonight.”

“So cut it.”

He sat on the edge of the bath. As always Chiara sang to herself while she cut his hair, one of those silly Italian pop songs she loved so much. Gabriel, his head bowed, watched as the last silvered remnants of Herr Klemp fluttered to the floor. He thought of Cairo, and how he had been deceived, and the anger welled within him once more. Chiara switched off the shears.

“There, you look like yourself again. Black hair, gray at the temples. What was it Shamron used to say about your temples?”

“He called them smudges of ash,” Gabriel said. Smudges of ash on the prince of fire.

Chiara tested the temperature of the bath. Gabriel unwrapped the towel from his waist and slid into the water. It was too hot-Chiara always made it too hot-but after a few moments the pain began to retreat from his body. She sat with him for a time. She talked about the apartment and an evening she had spent with Gilah Shamron-anything but France. After a while she went into the bedroom and undressed. She sang softly to herself. Chiara always sang when she removed her clothing.

HER KISSES, usually so tender, pained his lips. She made love to him feverishly, as though trying to draw Leah’s venom from his bloodstream, and her fingertips left new bruises on his shoulders. “I thought you were dead,” she said. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“I was dead,” Gabriel said. “I was dead for a very long time.”

THE WALLS OF their bedroom in Venice had been hung with paintings. Chiara, in Gabriel’s absence, had hung them here. Some of the works had been painted by Gabriel’s grandfather, the noted German expressionist Viktor Frankel. His work had been declared “degenerate” by the Nazis in 1936. Impoverished, stripped of his ability to paint or even teach, he had been deported to Auschwitz in 1942 and gassed on arrival along with his wife. Gabriel’s mother, Irene, had been deported with them, but Mengele had assigned her to a work detail, and she’d managed to survive the women’s camp at Birkenau until it was evacuated in the face of the Russian advance. Some of her work hung here in Gabriel’s private gallery. Tormented by what she had seen in Birkenau, her paintings burned with an intensity unmatched by even her famous father. In Israel she had used the name Allon, which means oak tree in Hebrew, but she’d always signed her canvases Frankel to honor her father. Only now could Gabriel see the paintings for themselves instead of the broken woman who had produced them.

There was one work that bore no signature, a portrait of a young man, in the style of Egon Schiele. The artist was Leah, and the subject was Gabriel himself. It had been painted shortly after he returned to Israel with the blood of six Palestinian terrorists on his hands, and it was the only time he ever agreed to sit for her. He had never liked the painting, because it showed him as Leah saw him-a haunted young man, aged prematurely by the shadow of death. Chiara believed the painting to be a self-portrait.

She switched on the bedroom light and looked at the papers on the bedside table. Her examination was demonstrative in nature; she knew that Gabriel had not signed them.

“I’ll sign them in the morning,” he said.

She offered him the pen. “Sign them now.”

Gabriel switched off the light. “Actually, there’s something else I want to do now.”

Chiara took him into her body and wept silently through the act.

“You’re never going to sign them, are you?”

Gabriel tried to silence her with a kiss.

“You’re lying to me,” she said. “You’re using your body as a weapon of deception.”

33 JERUSALEM

HIS DAYS QUICKLY ACQUIRED SHAPE. IN THE MORNING he would wake early and sit in Chiara’s newly decorated kitchen with coffee and the newspapers. The stories about the Khaled affair depressed him. Ha’aretz christened the affair “Bunglegate,” and the Office lost its battle to keep Gabriel’s name out of print. In Paris the French press besieged the government and the Israeli ambassador for an explanation of the mysterious photographs that had appeared in Le Monde. The French foreign minister, a blow-dried former poet, threw gasoline on the fire by expressing his belief that “there may indeed have been an Israeli hand in the Holocaust of the Gare de Lyon.” The next day, Gabriel read with a heavy heart that a Kosher pizzeria on the rue des Rosiers had been vandalized. Then a gang of French boys attacked a young girl as she walked home from school and carved a swastika into her cheek. Chiara usually awakened an hour after Gabriel. She read of the events in France with more alarm than sadness. Once a day she phoned her mother in Venice to make certain her family was safe.

At eight Gabriel would leave Jerusalem and make the drive down the Bab al-Wad to King Saul Boulevard. The proceedings were held in the top-floor conference room so Lev would not have far to walk when he wished to pop in and observe them. Gabriel, of course, was the star witness. His conduct, from the moment he’d returned to Office discipline until his escape from the Gare de Lyon was reviewed in excruciating detail. Despite Shamron’s dire predictions, there was to be no bloodletting. The results of such investigations were usually preordained, and Gabriel could see from the outset that he was not going to be made the scapegoat. This was a collective mistake, the committee members seemed to be saying by the tone of their questions, a forgivable sin committed by an intelligence apparatus desperate to avoid another catastrophic loss of life. Still, at times the questions became pointed. Did Gabriel have no suspicions about the motivations of Mahmoud Arwish? Or the loyalty of David Quinnell? Would things not have gone differently if he’d listened to his teammates in Marseilles and turned back instead of going with the girl? At least then Khaled’s plan to destroy the credibility of the Office would not have succeeded. “You’re right,” Gabriel said, “and my wife would be dead, along with many more innocent people.”

One by one, the others were brought before the committee as well, first Yossi and Rimona, then Yaakov and lastly Dina, whose discoveries had fueled the investigation into Khaled in the first place. It pained Gabriel to see them in the dock. His career was over, but for the others the Khaled affair, as it had become known, would leave a black mark on their records that would never be expunged.

In the late afternoon, when the committee had adjourned, he would drive to Mount Herzl to spend time with Leah. Sometimes they would sit in her room; and sometimes, if there was still light, he would place her in a wheelchair and push her slowly round the grounds. She never failed to acknowledge his presence and usually managed to speak a few words to him. Her hallucinatory journeys to Vienna became less apparent, though he was never certain precisely what she was thinking.

“Where is Dani buried?” she asked once, as they sat beneath the canopy of a pine tree.

“The Mount of Olives.”

“Will you take me there sometime?”

“If your doctor says it’s all right.”

Once, Chiara accompanied him to the hospital. As they entered, she sat down in the lobby and told Gabriel to take his time.

“Would you like to meet her?” Chiara had never seen Leah.

“No,” she said, “I think it’s better if I wait here. Not for my sake, for hers.”

“She won’t know.”

“She’ll know, Gabriel. A woman always knows when a man’s in love with someone else.”

They never quarreled about Leah again. Their battle, from that point onward, was a black operation, a covert affair waged by long silences and remarks edged with double meaning. Chiara never entered their bed without first checking to see whether the papers had been signed. Her lovemaking was as confrontational as her silences. My body is intact, she seemed to be saying to him. I’m real, Leah is only a memory.

The apartment grew claustrophobic, so they took to eating out. Some evenings they walked over to Ben-Yehuda Street -or to Mona, a trendy restaurant that was actually located in the cellar of the old campus of the Bezalel Academy of Art. One evening they drove down Highway One to Abu Ghosh, one of the only Arab villages along the road to survive the expulsions of Plan Dalet. They ate hummus and grilled lamb in an outdoor restaurant in the village square, and for a few moments it was possible to imagine how different things might have been had Khaled’s grandfather not turned the road into a killing zone. Chiara marked the occasion by buying Gabriel an expensive bracelet from a village silversmith. The next evening, on King George Street, she bought him a silver watch to match. Keepsakes, she called them. Tokens by which to remember me.

When they returned home that night, there was a message on the answering machine. Gabriel pressed the playback button and heard the voice of Dina Sarid, telling him that she’d found someone who had been there the night Sumayriyya fell.

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, when the committee had adjourned, Gabriel drove to Sheinkin Street and collected Dina and Yaakov from an outdoor café. They drove north along the coast highway through dusty pink light, past Herzliyya and Netanya. A few miles beyond Caesarea, the slopes of Mount Carmel rose before them. They rounded the Bay of Haifa and headed for Akko. Gabriel, as he continued north toward Nahariyya, thought of Operation Ben-Ami-the night a column of Haganah came up this very road with orders to demolish the Arab villages of the Western Galilee. Just then he glimpsed a strange conical structure, stark and gleaming white, rising above the green blanket of an orange grove. The unusual building, Gabriel knew, was the children’s memorial at Yad Layeled, a museum of Holocaust remembrance at Kibbutz Lohamei Ha’Getaot. The settlement had been founded after the war by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Adjacent to the edge of the kibbutz, and barely visible in the tall wild grass, were the ruins of Sumayriyya.

He turned onto a local road and followed it inland. Dusk was fast approaching as they entered al-Makr. Gabriel stopped on the main street and, with the engine still running, entered a coffeehouse and asked the proprietor for directions to the house of Hamzah al-Samara. A moment of silence followed while the Arab appraised Gabriel coolly from the opposite side of the counter. Clearly he assumed the Jewish visitor to be a Shabak officer, an impression Gabriel made no effort to correct. The Arab led Gabriel back into the street and, with a series of points and gestures, showed him the way.

The house was the largest in the village. It seemed several generations of al-Samaras lived there, because there were a number of small children playing in the small dusty courtyard. Seated in the center was an old man. He wore a gray galabia and white kaffiyeh and was puffing on a water pipe. Gabriel and Yaakov stood at the open side of the courtyard and waited for permission to enter. Dina remained in the car; the old man, Gabriel knew, would never speak forthrightly in the presence of a bareheaded Jewess.

Al-Samara looked up and, with a desultory wave of his hand, beckoned them. He spoke a few words to the oldest of the children and a moment later two more chairs appeared. Then a woman came, a daughter perhaps, and brought three glasses of tea. All this before Gabriel had even explained to him the purpose of his visit. They sat in silence for a moment, sipping their tea and listening to the buzz of cicadas in the surrounding fields. A goat trotted into the courtyard and gently butted Gabriel’s ankle. A child, robed and barefoot, shooed the animal away. Time, it seemed, had stopped. Were it not for the electric lights coming on in the house, and the satellite dish atop the roof, Gabriel would have found it easy to imagine that Palestine was still ruled from Constantinople.

“Have I done something wrong?” the old man asked in Arabic. It was the first assumption of many Arabs when two tough-looking men from the government arrived uninvited at their door.

“No,” Gabriel said, “we just wanted to talk to you.”

“About what?”

The old man, hearing Gabriel’s answer, drew thoughtfully on his water pipe. He had hypnotic gray eyes and a neat mustache. His sandaled feet looked as though they had never seen a pumice stone.

“Where are you from?” he asked.

“The Valley of Jezreel,” Gabriel replied.

Al-Samara nodded slowly. “And before that?”

“My parents came from Germany.”

The gray eyes moved from Gabriel to Yaakov.

“And you?”

“Hadera.”

“And before?”

“ Russia.”

“Germans and Russians,” al-Samara said, shaking his head. “Were it not for Germans and Russians, I’d still be living in Sumayriyya, instead of here in al-Makr.”

“You were there the night the village fell?”

“Not exactly. I was walking in a field near the village.” He paused and added conspiratorially: “With a girl.”

“And when the raid started?”

“We hid in the fields and watched our families walking to the north toward Lebanon. We saw the Jewish sappers dynamiting our homes. We stayed in the field all the next day. When the darkness came again, we walked here to al-Makr. The rest of my family, my mother and father, my brothers and sisters, all ended up in Lebanon.”

“And the girl you were with that night?”

“She became my wife.” Another puff on the water pipe. “I’m an exile, too-an internal exile. I still have the deed to my father’s land in Sumayriyya, but I cannot go back to it. The Jews confiscated it and never bothered to compensate me for my loss. Imagine, a kibbutz built by Holocaust survivors on the ruins of an Arab village.”

Gabriel looked around at the large house. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

“I’m far better off than those who went into exile. It could have been like this for all of us if there’d never been a war. I don’t blame you for my loss. I blame the Arab leaders. If Haj Amin and the others had accepted the partition, the Western Galilee would have been part of Palestine. But they chose war, and when they lost the war, they cried that the Arabs had been victims. Arafat did the same thing at Camp David, yes? He walked away from another opportunity at partition. He started another war, and when the Jews fought back, he cried that he was the victim. When will we learn?”

The goat came back. This time al-Samara gave it a whack on the nose with the mouthpiece of his water pipe.

“Surely you didn’t come all the way here to listen to an old man’s story.”

“I’m looking for a family that came from your village, but I don’t know their name.”

“We all knew each other,” al-Samara said. “If we were to walk through the ruins of Sumayriyya right now, I could show you my house-and I could show you the house of my friend, and the houses of my cousins. Tell me something about this family, and I’ll tell you their name.”

He told the old man the things the girl had said during the final miles before Paris-that her grandfather had been a village elder, not a muktar but an important man, and that he’d owned forty dunams of land and a large flock of goats. He’d had at least one son. After the fall of Sumayriyya, they’d gone north, to Ein al-Hilweh in Lebanon. Al-Samara listened thoughtfully to Gabriel’s description but seemed perplexed. He called over his shoulder, into the house. A woman emerged, elderly like him, her head covered by a veil. She spoke directly to al-Samara, carefully avoiding the gaze of Gabriel and Yaakov.

“You’re certain it was forty dunams?” he asked. “Not thirty, or twenty, but forty?”

“That’s what I was told.”

He made a contemplative draw on his pipe. “You’re right,” he said. “That family ended up in Lebanon, in Ein al-Hilweh. Things got bad during the Lebanese civil war. The boys became fighters. They’re all dead, from what I hear.”

“Do you know their name?”

“They’re called al-Tamari. If you meet any of them, please give them my regards. Tell them I’ve been to their house. Don’t tell them about my villa in al-Makr, though. It will only break their hearts.”

34 TEL AVIV

“EIN AL-HILWEH? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING mind?”

It was early the following morning. Lev was seated at his empty glass desk, his coffee cup suspended midway between his saucer and his lips. Gabriel had managed to slip into the Office while Lev’s secretary was in the ladies’ room. The girl would pay dearly for the lapse in security when Gabriel was gone.

“Ein al-Hilweh is a no-go zone, period, end of discussion. It’s worse now than it was in eighty-two. A half-dozen Islamic terror organizations have set up shop there. It’s not a place for the faint of heart-or an Office agent whose picture has been splashed about the French press.”

“Well, someone has to go.”

“You’re not even sure the old man’s still alive.”

Gabriel frowned, then sat, uninvited, in one of the sleek leather chairs in front of Lev’s desk.

“But if he is alive, he can tell us where his daughter went after she left the camp.”

“He might,” Lev agreed, “or he might know nothing at all. Khaled certainly told the girl to deceive her family for security reasons. For all we really know, the entire story about Sumayriyya might be a lie.”

“She had no reason to lie to me,” Gabriel said. “She thought I was going to be killed.”

Lev spent a long moment pondering his coffee. “There’s a man in Beirut who might be able to help us with this. His name is Nabil Azouri.”

“What’s his story?”

“He’s Lebanese and Palestinian. He does a little of everything. Works as a stringer for a few Western news outlets. Owns a nightclub. Does the odd bit of arms dealing and has been known to move the odd shipment of hashish now and again. He also works for us, of course.”

“Sounds like a real pillar of his community.”

“He’s a shit,” Lev said. “Lebanese to the core. Lebanon incarnate. But he’s exactly the kind of person we need to walk into Ein al-Hilweh and talk to the girl’s father.”

“Why does he work for us?”

“For money, of course. Nabil likes money.”

“How do we talk to him?”

“We leave a message on the phone at his nightclub in Beirut and an airline ticket with the concierge of the Commodore Hotel. We rarely talk to Nabil on his turf.”

“Where does he go?”

“ Cyprus,” Lev said. “Nabil likes Cyprus, too.”

IT WOULD BE three days before Gabriel was ready to move. Travel saw to his arrangements. Larnaca is a popular Israeli tourist destination, and so it was not necessary to travel on a forged foreign passport. Traveling under his real name was not possible, though, so Travel issued him an Israeli document under the rather unexceptional name of Michael Neumann. The day before his departure, Operations let him spend an hour perusing Nabil Azouri’s file in a secure reading room. When he had finished, they gave him an envelope with ten thousand dollars in cash and wished him luck. The next morning, at seven, he boarded an El Al plane at Ben-Gurion Airport for the one-hour flight to Cyprus. Upon arriving he rented a car at the airport and drove a short distance up the coast to a resort called the Palm Beach Hotel. A message from King Saul Boulevard awaited him. Nabil Azouri was coming that afternoon. Gabriel spent the remainder of the morning in his room, then, a short time after one o’clock, he went down to the poolside restaurant for lunch. Azouri already had a table. A bottle of expensive French champagne, drunk below the label, lay chilling in a silver bucket.

He had dark curly hair, frosted with the first strands of gray, and a thick mustache. When he removed his sunglasses, Gabriel found himself gazing into a pair of large sleepy brown eyes. On his left wrist was the obligatory gold watch; on his right, several gold bracelets that chimed when he lifted his champagne glass to his lips. His cotton shirt was cream-colored, his poplin trousers wrinkled from the flight from Beirut. He lit an American cigarette with a gold lighter and listened to Gabriel’s proposition.

“Ein al-Hilweh? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Gabriel had anticipated this reaction. Azouri treated his relationship with Israeli intelligence as though it were just another one of his business enterprises. He was the bazaar merchant, the Office was the customer. Haggling over the price was part of the process. The Lebanese leaned forward and fixed Gabriel in his sleepy stare.

“Have you been down there lately? It’s like the Wild West, Khomeini style. It’s gone to hell since you boys pulled out. Men in black, praise be to Allah the most merciful. Outsiders don’t stand a chance. Fuck it, Mike. Have some champagne and forget about it.”

“You’re not an outsider, Nabil. You know everyone, you can go everywhere. That’s why we pay you so lucratively.”

“Tip money, Mike, that’s all I get from your outfit-cigarettes and champagne and a few bucks to waste on the girls.”

“You must have expensive taste in girls, Nabil, because I’ve seen your pay stubs. You’ve made a rather large sum of money from your relationship with my firm.”

Azouri raised his glass in Gabriel’s direction. “We’ve made good business together, Mike. I won’t deny that. I’d like to continue working for you. That’s why someone else needs to run down to Ein al-Hilweh for you. It’s too rich for my blood. Too dangerous.”

Azouri signaled the waiter and ordered another bottle of the French champagne. Refusing an offer of work wasn’t going to keep him from having a good meal on the Office tab. Gabriel tossed an envelope onto the table. Azouri eyed it thoughtfully but made no move for it.

“How much is in there, Mike?”

“Two thousand.”

“What flavor?”

“Dollars.”

“So what’s the deal? Half now, half on delivery? I’m just a dumb Arab, but two thousand and two thousand add up to four thousand, and I’m not going into Ein al-Hilweh for four thousand dollars.”

“Two thousand is only the retainer.”

“And how much for delivery of the information?”

“Another five.”

Azouri shook his head. “No, another ten.”

“Six.”

Another shake of the head. “Nine.”

“Seven.”

“Eight.”

“Done,” said Gabriel. “Two thousand in advance, another eight on delivery. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. If you behave yourself we’ll even throw in gas money.”

“Oh, you’ll pay for the gas, Mike. My expenses are always separate from my fee.” The waiter brought the second bottle of champagne. When he was gone again, Azouri said, “So what do you want to know?”

“I want you to find someone.”

“There are forty-five thousand refugees in that camp, Mike. Help me out a little bit.”

“He’s an old man named al-Tamari.”

“First name?”

“We don’t know it.”

Azouri sipped his wine. “It’s not a terribly common name. It shouldn’t be a problem. What else can you tell me about him?”

“He’s a refugee from the Western Galilee.”

“Most of them are. Which village?”

Gabriel told him.

“Family details?”

“Two sons were killed in eighty-two.”

“In the camp?”

Gabriel nodded. “They were Fatah. Apparently his wife was killed, too.”

“Lovely. Go on.”

“He had a daughter. She ended up in Europe. I want to know everything you can find out about her. Where she went to school. What she studied. Where she lived. Who she slept with.”

“What’s the girl’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Age?”

“Early thirties, I’d say. Spoke decent French.”

“Why are you looking for her?”

“We think she may have been involved in the attack on the Gare de Lyon.”

“Is she still alive?”

Gabriel shook his head. Azouri looked out at the beach for a long moment. “So you think that by tracing the background of the girl, you’re going to get to the big boss? The brains behind the operation?”

“Something like that, Nabil.”

“How do I play it with the old man?”

“Play it any way you want to,” Gabriel said. “Just get me what I need.”

“This girl,” the Lebanese said. “What did she look like?”

Gabriel handed Azouri a magazine he’d brought down from his room. Azouri opened it and leafed through the pages until he came upon the sketch Gabriel had made aboard Fidelity.

“She looked like that,” Gabriel said. “She looked exactly like that.”

HE HEARD NOTHING from Nabil Azouri for three days. For all Gabriel knew, the Lebanese had absconded with the down payment or had been killed trying to get into Ein al-Hilweh. Then, on the fourth morning, the telephone rang. It was Azouri, calling from Beirut. He would be at the Palm Beach Hotel in time for lunch. Gabriel hung up the phone, then he went down to the beach and took a long run at the water’s edge. His bruises were beginning to fade, and much of the soreness had left his body. When he had finished, he returned to his room to shower and change. By the time he arrived at the poolside restaurant, Azouri was working on his second glass of champagne.

“What a fucking place, Mike. Hell on earth.”

“I’m not paying you ten thousand dollars for a report on conditions at Ein al-Hilweh,” Gabriel said. “That’s the UN’s job. Did you find the old man? Is he still alive?”

“I found him.”

“And?”

“The girl left Ein al-Hilweh in 1990. She’s never been back.”

“Her name?”

“Fellah,” said Azouri. “Fellah al-Tamari.”

“Where did she go?”

“She was a smart girl, apparently. Earned a UN grant to study in Europe. The old man told her to take it and never come back to Lebanon.”

“Where did she study?” Gabriel asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

“ France,” Azouri said. “ Paris first, then she went somewhere in the south. The old man wasn’t sure. Apparently there were long periods with no contact.”

“I’m sure there were.”

“He didn’t seem to fault his daughter. He wanted a better life for her in Europe. He didn’t want her wallowing in the Palestinian tragedy, as he put it to me.”

“She never forgot about Ein al-Hilweh,” Gabriel said absently. “What did she study?”

“She was an archaeologist.”

Gabriel remembered the appearance of her fingernails. He’d had the impression then that she was a potter or someone who worked with her hands outdoors. An archaeologist certainly fit that description.

“Archaeology? You’re certain.”

“He seemed very clear on that point.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Azouri said. “Two years ago she sent him a very strange letter. She told him to destroy all the letters and photographs she’d sent from Europe over the years. The old man disobeyed his daughter’s wishes. The letters and photos were all he had left of her. A couple of weeks later, a bully boy shows up in his room and burned the things for him.”

A friend of Khaled, Gabriel thought. Khaled was trying to erase her past.

“How did you play it with him?”

“You got the information you wanted. Leave the operational details to me, Mike.”

“Did you show him the sketch?”

“I showed him. He wept. He hadn’t seen his daughter in fifteen years.”

AN HOUR LATER, Gabriel checked out of the hotel and drove to the airport, where he waited until the evening flight to Tel Aviv. It was after midnight by the time he returned to Narkiss Street. Chiara was asleep. She stirred as he climbed into bed, but did not wake. When he pressed his lips against her bare shoulder, she murmured incoherently and rolled away from him. He looked at his nightstand. The papers were gone.

35 TEL MEGIDDO, ISRAEL

NEXT MORNING GABRIEL WENT TO ARMAGEDDON.

He left his Skoda in the parking lot of the visitors center and hiked up the footpath to the top of the mount through the searing sunlight. He paused for a moment to gaze out across the Jezreel Valley. For Gabriel the valley was the place of his birth, but biblical scholars and those obsessed by endtime prophesies believed it would be the setting for the apocalyptic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. Regardless of what calamity might lay ahead, Tel Megiddo had already witnessed much bloodshed. Located at the crossroads between Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, it had been the site of dozens of major battles over the millennia. Assyrians, Israelites, Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Greeks, Romans, and Crusaders-all had shed blood beneath this hillock. Napolean defeated the Ottomans there in 1799, and a little more than a century later General Allenby of the British army defeated them again.

The soil on the top of the hill was cut by a labyrinth of trenches and pits. Tel Megiddo had been under intermittent archaeological excavation for more than a century. So far, researchers had discovered evidence that the city atop the mount had been destroyed and rebuilt some twenty-five times. A dig was under way at the moment. From one of the trenches came the sound of English spoken with an American accent. Gabriel walked over and looked down. Two American college students, a boy and a girl, were hunched over something in the soil. Bones, thought Gabriel, but he couldn’t be sure.

“I’m looking for Professor Lavon.”

“He’s working in K this morning.” It was the girl who’d spoken to him.

“I don’t understand.”

“The excavation trenches are laid out in a grid pattern. Each plot is lettered. That way we can chart the location of every artifact. You’re standing next to F. See the sign? Professor Lavon is working in K.”

Gabriel made his way over to the pit marked K and looked down. At the bottom of the trench, two meters below the surface, crouched an elfin figure wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat. He was scratching at the hard subsoil with a small pick and appeared thoroughly engrossed in his work, but then he usually did.

“Find anything interesting, Eli?”

The picking stopped. The figure looked over his shoulder.

“Just a few pieces of broken pottery,” he said. “How about you?”

Gabriel reached down into the trench. Eli Lavon took hold of Gabriel’s hand and pulled himself out.

THEY SAT IN the shade of a blue tarpaulin and drank mineral water at a folding table. Gabriel, his eyes on the valley below, asked Lavon what he was doing at Tel Megiddo.

“There’s a popular school of archaeological thought these days called biblical minimalism. The minimalists believe, among other things, that King Solomon was a mythical figure, something of a Jewish King Arthur. We’re trying to prove them wrong.”

“Did he exist?”

“Of course,” said Lavon, “and he built a city right here at Megiddo.”

Lavon removed his floppy hat and used it to beat the gray-brown dust from his khaki trousers. As usual he seemed to be wearing all of his clothing at once-three shirts, by Gabriel’s count, with a red cotton handkerchief knotted at his throat. His sparse, unkempt gray hair moved in the faint breeze. He pushed a stray lock from his forehead and appraised Gabriel with a pair of quick brown eyes.

“Isn’t it a little soon for you to be up here in this heat?”

The last time Gabriel had seen Lavon, he’d been lying in a hospital bed in the Hadassah Medical Center.

“I’m only a volunteer. I work for a few hours in the early morning. My doctor says it’s good therapy.” Lavon sipped his mineral water. “Besides, I find this place provides a valuable lesson in humility.”

“What’s that?”

“People come and go from this place, Gabriel. Our ancestors ruled it briefly a very long time ago. Now we rule it again. But one day we’ll be gone, too. The only question is how long will we be here this time, and what will we leave behind for men like me to unearth in the future? I hope it’s something more than the footprint of a Separation Fence.”

“I’m not ready to give it up just yet, Eli.”

“So I gather. You’ve been a busy boy. I’ve been reading about you in the newspapers. That’s not a good thing in your line of work-being in the newspapers.”

“It was your line of work, too.”

“Once,” he said, “a long time ago.”

Lavon had been a promising young archaeologist in September 1972 when Shamron recruited him to be a member of the Wrath of God team. He’d been an ayin, a tracker. He’d followed the Black Septembrists and learned their habits. In many ways his job had been the most dangerous of all, because he had been exposed to the terrorists for days on end with no backup. The work had left him with a nervous disorder and chronic intestinal problems.

“How much do you know about the case, Eli?”

“I’d heard through the grapevine you were back in the country, something to do with the Rome bombing. Then Shamron showed up at my door one evening and told me you were chasing Sabri’s boy. Is it true? Did little Khaled really do Rome?”

“He’s not a little boy anymore. He did Rome, and he did Gare de Lyon. And Buenos Aires and Istanbul before that.”

“It doesn’t surprise me. Terrorism is in Khaled’s veins. He drank it with his mother’s milk.” Lavon shook his head. “You know, if I’d been watching your back in France, like I did in the old days, none of this would have happened.”

“That’s probably true, Eli.”

Lavon’s street skills were legendary. Shamron always said that Eli Lavon could disappear while shaking your hand. Once a year he went to the Academy to pass along the secrets of his trade to the next generation. Indeed, the watchers who’d been in Marseilles had probably spent time sitting at Lavon’s feet.

“So what brings you to Armageddon?”

Gabriel laid a photograph on the tabletop.

“Handsome devil,” Lavon said. “Who is he?”

Gabriel laid a second version of the same photo on the table. This one included the figure seated at the subject’s left, Yasir Arafat.

“Khaled?”

Gabriel nodded.

“What does this have to do with me?”

“I think you and Khaled might have something in common.”

“What’s that?”

Gabriel looked out at the excavation trenches.

A TRIO OF American students joined them beneath the shade of the tarpaulin. Lavon and Gabriel excused themselves and walked slowly around the perimeter of the dig. Gabriel told him everything, beginning with the dossier discovered in Milan and ending with the information Nabil Azouri had brought out of Ein al-Hilweh. Lavon listened without asking questions, but Gabriel could see, in Lavon’s clever brown eyes, that he was already making connections and searching for further avenues of exploration. He was more than just a skilled surveillance artist. Like Gabriel, Lavon was the child of Holocaust survivors. After the Wrath of God operation, he had settled in Vienna and opened a small investigative bureau called Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Operating on a shoestring budget, he had managed to track down millions of dollars in looted Jewish assets and had played a significant role in prying a multibillion-dollar settlement from the banks of Switzerland. Five months earlier a bomb had exploded at Lavon’s office. Lavon’s two assistants were killed; Lavon, seriously injured, had been in a coma for several weeks. The man who planted the bomb had been working for Erich Radek.

“So you think Fellah al-Tamari knew Khaled?”

“Without question.”

“It seems a bit out of character. To remain hidden all those years, he must have been a careful chap.”

“That’s true,” Gabriel said, “but he knew that Fellah would be killed in the bombing of the Gare de Lyon and that his secret would be protected. She was in love with him, and he lied to her.”

“I see your point.”

“But the most compelling piece of evidence that they knew each other comes from her father. Fellah told him to burn the letters and the photographs she’d sent over the years. That means Khaled must have been in them.”

“As Khaled?”

Gabriel shook his head. “It was more threatening than that. She must have mentioned him by his other name-his French name.”

“So you think Khaled met the girl under ordinary circumstances and recruited her sometime after?”

“That’s the way he’d play it,” Gabriel said. “That’s how his father would have played it, too.”

“They could have met anywhere.”

“Or they could have met somewhere just like this.”

“A dig?”

“She was an archaeology student. Maybe Khaled was, too. Or maybe he was a professor, like you.”

“Or maybe he was just some good-looking Arab guy she met in a bar.”

“We know her name, Eli. We know she was a student and that she studied archaeology. If we follow the trail of Fellah, it will lead us back to Khaled. I’m sure of it.”

“So follow the trail.”

“For obvious reasons, I can’t go back to Europe just yet.”

“Why not turn it over to the Office and let their searchers do the job?”

“Because after the fiasco in Paris there’s not going to be an appetite for having another go at Khaled on European soil-at least not officially. Besides, I am the Office, and I’m giving it to you. I want you to find him, Eli. Quietly. That’s your special gift. You know how to do these sorts of things without making a racket.”

“True, but I’ve lost a step or two.”

“Are you fit enough to travel?”

“As long as there’s no rough stuff. That’s your department. I’m the bookish one, you’re the muscle Jew.”

Lavon dug a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it, cupping his hand against the breeze. He looked out over the Valley of Jezreel for a moment before speaking again.

“But you always were, weren’t you, Gabriel?”

“What’s that?”

“The muscle Jew. You like to play the role of the sensitive artist, but deep down you’re more like Shamron than you realize.”

“He’s going to kill again. Maybe he’ll wait until next April, or maybe a target will come along sooner-something that will allow him to temporarily quench his thirst for Jewish blood.”

“Maybe you suffer from the same thirst?”

“A little,” Gabriel conceded, “but this isn’t about revenge. It’s about justice. And it’s about protecting the lives of innocents. Will you find him for me, Eli?”

Lavon nodded. “Don’t worry, Gabriel. I’ll find him-before he can kill again.”

They stood in silence for a moment, looking down at the land.

“Did we drive them out, Eli?”

“The Canaanites?”

“No, Eli. The Arabs.”

“We certainly didn’t ask them to stay,” Lavon said. “Maybe it was easier that way.”

A BLUE SEDAN was idling in Narkiss Street. Gabriel recognized the face of the man seated behind the wheel. He entered the apartment house and climbed quickly up the stairs. Two suitcases stood on the landing, outside the half-open door. Chiara was seated in the living room, dressed in a smart black European two-piece suit and high-heeled shoes. Her face had makeup on it. Gabriel had never seen Chiara with makeup before.

“Where are you going?”

“You know better than to ask me that.”

“A job?”

“Yes, of course a job.”

“How long will you be gone?”

Her silence told him she was not coming back.

“When it’s over, I’m going back to Venice.” Then she added: “To take care of my family.”

He stood motionless and looked down at her. Chiara’s tears, when they spilled down her cheeks, were black with mascara. To Gabriel they looked like streaks of dirty rain on a statue. She wiped them away and examined her blackened fingertips, angry at her inability to control her emotions. Then she straightened her back and blinked hard several times.

“You look disappointed in me, Gabriel.”

“For what?”

“Crying. You never cry, do you?”

“Not anymore.”

He sat down next to her and tried to hold her hand. She drew it away from him and dabbed at her smudged makeup with a tissue, then she opened a compact case and looked at her reflection in the mirror.

“I can’t get on a plane looking like this.”

“Good.”

“Don’t get any ideas. I’m still leaving. Besides, it’s what you want. You would never tell me to leave-you’re far too decent for that-but I know you want me to go.” She snapped the compact shut. “I don’t blame you. In a strange way, I love you more. I only wish you hadn’t told me that you wanted to marry me.”

“I did,” he said.

“Did?”

“I do want to marry you, Chiara”-he hesitated-“but I can’t. I’m married to Leah.”

“Fidelity, right, Gabriel? Devotion to duty or to one’s obligations. Loyalty. Faithfulness.”

“I can’t leave her now, not after what she’s just been put through by Khaled.”

“In another week, she won’t remember it.” Chiara, noticing the color in Gabriel’s face, took his hand. “God, I’m sorry. Please forget I ever said that.”

“It’s forgotten.”

“You’re a fool to let me walk out of here. No one will ever love you the way I’ve loved you.” She stood up. “But we’ll see each other again, I’m sure. Who knows, maybe I’ll be working for you soon.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The Office is swirling with rumors.”

“It usually is. You shouldn’t pay attention to rumors, Chiara.”

“I once heard a rumor that you’d never leave Leah to marry me. I wish I’d paid attention to that one.”

She slung her bag over her shoulder, then bent down and kissed Gabriel’s lips.

“One last kiss,” she whispered.

“At least let me drive you to the airport.”

“The last thing we need is a tearful good-bye at Ben-Gurion. Help me with my bags.”

He carried the suitcases down and loaded them in the trunk of the car. Chiara climbed into the backseat and closed the door without looking at him. Gabriel stood in the shade of a eucalyptus tree and watched the car drive off. As he walked upstairs to the empty apartment, he realized he hadn’t asked her to stay. Eli had been right. It was easier that way.

36 TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

A WEEK AFTER CHIARA’S DEPARTURE GABRIEL drove to Tiberias for dinner at the Shamrons. Yonatan was there, along with his wife and three young children. So was Rimona and her husband. They both had just come off duty and were still in uniform. Shamron, surrounded by his family, seemed happier than Gabriel had seen him in years. After supper he led Yonatan and Gabriel onto the terrace. A bright three-quarter moon was reflected in the calm surface of the Sea of Galilee. Beyond the lake, black and shapeless, loomed the Golan Heights. Shamron liked it best on his terrace, because it faced east toward his enemies. He was content to sit quietly and say nothing for a time while Gabriel and Yonatan talked pessimistically about the matsav-the situation. After a while, Shamron gave Yonatan a look that said he needed to speak to Gabriel privately. “I get the message, Abba,” Yonatan said, getting to his feet. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“He is a colonel in the IDF,” Gabriel said, when Yonatan had gone. “He doesn’t like when you treat him like that.”

“Yonatan has his line of work, and we have ours.” Shamron adroitly shifted the focus from his personal problems to Gabriel’s. “How’s Leah?”

“I’m taking her to the Mount of Olives tomorrow to see Dani’s grave.”

“I assume her doctor has approved this outing?”

“He’s coming with us, along with half the staff of the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital.”

Shamron lit a cigarette. “Have you heard from Chiara?”

“No, and I don’t expect to. Do you know where she is?”

Shamron looked theatrically at his wristwatch. “If the operation is proceeding as planned, she’s probably sipping brandy in a ski lodge in Zermatt with a certain Swiss gentleman of questionable character. This gentleman is about to ship a rather large consignment of arms to a Lebanese guerrilla group that doesn’t have our best interests at heart. We’d like to know when that shipment is leaving port and where it’s going.”

“Please tell me Operations isn’t using my former fiancée as bait in a honey trap.”

“I’m not privy to the details of the operation, only the overarching goals. As for Chiara, she’s a girl of high moral character. I’m sure she’ll play hard to get with our Helvetian friend.”

“I still don’t like it.”

“Don’t worry,” Shamron said. “Soon you’ll be the one deciding how we use her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The prime minister would like a word with you. He has a job he’d like you to take.”

“Javelin-catcher?”

Shamron threw back his head and laughed, then suffered a long, spasmodic fit of coughing.

“Actually, he wants you to be the next director of Operations.”

“Me? By the time Lev’s committee of inquiry has finished with me, I’ll be lucky to get a job as a security guard at a café in Ben-Yehuda Street.”

“You’ll come out of it just fine. Now is not the time for public self-flagellation. Leave that for the Americans. If we have to tell a few half-truths, if we must lie to a country like France that is not interested in our survival, then so be it.”

“By way of deception, thou shalt do war,” Gabriel said, reciting the motto of the Office. Shamron nodded once and said, “Amen.”

“Even if I come out of it in one piece, Lev won’t allow me to have Operations.”

“He won’t have a say in the matter. Lev’s term is ending, and he has few friends in King Saul Boulevard or Kaplan Street. He won’t be invited to stay for a second dance.”

“So who’s going to be the next chief?”

“The prime minister and I have a short list of names. None of them are Office. Whoever we select, he’ll need an experienced man running Operations.”

“I knew it was leading to this,” Gabriel said. “I knew it the moment I saw you in Venice.”

“I admit my motives are selfish. My term is coming to an end, too. If the prime minister goes, so do I. And this time there won’t be a return from exile. I need you, Gabriel. I need you to keep watch over my creation.”

“The Office?”

Shamron shook his head, then lifted his hand toward the land.

“I know you’ll do it,” Shamron said. “You have no choice. Your mother named you Gabriel for a reason. Michael is the highest, but you, Gabriel, you are the mightiest. You’re the one who defends Israel against its accusers. You’re the angel of judgment-the prince of fire.”

Gabriel, silent, looked out at the lake. “There’s something I need to take care of first.”

“Eli will find him, especially with the clues you’ve given him. That was a brilliant piece of detective work on your part. But then you always did have that kind of mind.”

“It was Fellah,” Gabriel said. “She doomed him by telling me her story.”

“But that’s the Palestinian way. They’re trapped in their narrative of loss and exile. There’s no escaping it.” Shamron leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Are you really sure you want the job of turning Khaled into a martyr? There are other boys who can do it for you.”

“I know,” he said, “but I need to do it.”

Shamron sighed heavily. “If you must, but it’s going to be a private affair this time. No teams, no surveillance, nothing Khaled can manipulate to his advantage. Just you and him.”

“As it should be.”

A silence fell between them. They watched the running lights of a fishing boat steaming slowly toward Tiberias.

“There’s something I need to ask you,” Gabriel said.

“You want to talk to me about Tochnit Dalet,” Shamron said. “About Beit Sayeed and Sumayriyya.”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve been wandering in the wilderness of Palestinian pain for a long time now. It’s only natural.”

He asked Shamron the same question he’d put to Eli Lavon a week earlier at Megiddo. Did we drive them out?

“Of course we did,” Shamron said, then hastily he added: “In a few places, under specific circumstances. And if you ask me, we should have driven more out. That was where we went wrong.”

“You can’t be serious, Ari.”

“Let me explain,” he said. “History dealt us a losing hand. In 1947, the United Nations decided to give us a scrap of land to found our new state. Remember, four-fifths of Mandatory Palestine had already been cut away to create the state of Transjordan. Eighty percent! Of the final twenty percent, the United Nations gave us half-ten percent of Mandatory Palestine, the Coastal Plain and the Negev. And still the Arabs said no. Imagine if they’d said yes. Imagine if they’d said yes in 1937, when the Peel Commission recommended partition. How many millions might we have saved? Your grandparents would still be alive. My parents and my sisters might still be alive. But what did the Arabs do? They said no, and they aligned themselves with Hitler and cheered our extermination.”

“Does that justify expelling them?”

“No, and that’s not the reason why we did it. They were expelled as a consequence of war, a war they initiated. The land the UN gave us contained five hundred thousand Jews and four hundred thousand Arabs. Those Arabs were a hostile force, committed to our destruction. We knew that the minute we declared our independence we were going to be the target of a pan-Arab military invasion. We had to prepare the battlefield. We couldn’t fight two wars at the same time. We couldn’t fight the Egyptians and the Jordanians with one hand while battling the Arabs of Beit Sayeed and Sumayriyya with the other. They had to go.”

Shamron could see that Gabriel remained unconvinced.

“Tell me something, Gabriel. Do you think that if the Arabs had won the war that there would be any Jewish refugees? Look at what happened in Hebron. They brought the Jews to the center of town and cut them down. They attacked a convoy of doctors and nurses heading up Mount Scopus and butchered them all. To make certain no one survived, they doused the vehicles with gasoline and set them alight. This was the nature of our enemy. Their goal was to kill us all, so we would never come back. And that remains their goal today. They want to kill us all.”

Gabriel recited to Shamron the words Fellah had spoken to him on the road to Paris. My Holocaust is as real as yours, and yet you deny my suffering and exonerate yourself of guilt. You claim my wounds are self-inflicted.

“They are self-inflicted,” Shamron said.

“But was there a blanket strategy of expulsion? Did you engage in ethnic cleansing as a matter of policy?

“No,” Shamron said, “and the proof is all around us. You had dinner the other night in Abu Ghosh. If there was a blanket policy of expulsion, why is Abu Ghosh still there? In the Western Galilee, why is Sumayriyya gone but al-Makr still there? Because the residents of Abu Ghosh and al-Makr didn’t try to butcher us. But maybe that was our mistake. Maybe we should have expelled them all instead of trying to retain an Arab minority in our midst.”

“Then there would have been more refugees.”

“True, but if they had no hope of ever returning, perhaps they might have integrated themselves into Jordan and Lebanon, instead of allowing themselves to be used as a propaganda tool to demonize and delegitimize us. Why is Fellah al-Tamari’s father still in Ein al-Hilweh after all these years? Why didn’t any of his brother Arab states-nations with whom he shares a common language, culture, and religion-why didn’t any of them take him in? Because they want to use him as a tool to question my right to exist. I’m here. I live, I breathe. I exist. I don’t need anyone’s permission to exist. I don’t need anyone’s approval. And I certainly have nowhere else to go.” He looked at Gabriel. “I just need you to watch over it for me. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

The lights of the fishing boat disappeared into the port of Tiberias. Shamron seemed suddenly weary. “There will never be peace in this place, but then there never was. Ever since we stumbled into this land from Egypt and Mesopotamia, we’ve been fighting. Canaanites, Assyrians, Philistines, Romans, Amalekites. We deluded ourselves into believing our enemies had given up their dream of destroying us. We have prayed for impossible things. Peace without justice, forgiveness without restitution.” He looked provocatively at Gabriel. “Love without sacrifice.”

Gabriel stood and prepared to take his leave.

“What shall I tell the prime minister?”

“Tell him I have to think about it.”

“Operations is only a way station, Gabriel. One day you’ll be the chief. The Memuneh.”

“You’re the Memuneh, Ari. And you always will be.”

Shamron gave a satisfied laugh. “What shall I tell him, Gabriel?”

“Tell him I have nowhere else to go, either.”

THE TELEPHONE CALL from Julian Isherwood provided Gabriel with the excuse he’d been looking for to remove the last traces of Chiara from the flat. He contacted a charity for Russian immigrants and said he wished to make a donation. The following morning, two skinny boys from Moscow came and removed all the furniture from the living room: the couches and chairs, the end tables and lamps, the dining room table, even the decorative brass pots and ceramic dishes that Chiara had selected and placed with such care. The bedroom he left untouched, except for the sheets and the duvet, which still bore the vanilla scent of Chiara’s hair.

During the days that followed, Narkiss Street was visited by a succession of delivery trucks. The large white examination table arrived first, followed by the fluorescent and halogen lamps with adjustable stanchions. The venerable art supply shop of L. Cornelissen amp; Son, Great Russell Street, London, dispatched a shipment of brushes, pigment, medium, and varnish. A chemical firm in Leeds sent several cases of potentially dangerous solvents that aroused more than the passing interest of the Israeli postal authorities. From Germany came a costly microscope on a retractable arm; from a workshop in Venice two large oaken easels.

Daniel in the Lions’ Den, oil on canvas, dubiously attributed to Erasmus Quellinus, arrived the following day. It took Gabriel the better part of the afternoon to disassemble the sophisticated shipping crate, and only with Shamron’s help was he able to maneuver the enormous canvas onto the twin easels. The image of Daniel surrounded by wild beasts intrigued Shamron, and he stayed late into the evening as Gabriel, armed with cotton swabs and a basin of distilled water and ammonia, began the tedious task of scrubbing more than a century’s worth of dirt and grime from the surface of the painting.

To the degree possible he duplicated his work habits from Venice. He rose before it was light and resisted the impulse to switch on the radio, lest the daily toll of bloodshed and constant security alerts break the spell the painting had cast over him. He would remain in his studio all morning and usually worked a second shift late into the night. He spent as little time as possible at King Saul Boulevard; indeed he heard of Lev’s resignation on the car radio while driving from Narkiss Street to Mount Herzl to see Leah. During their visits together, her journeys to Vienna were shallower and shorter in duration. She asked him questions about their past.

“Where did we meet, Gabriel?”

“At Bezalel. You’re a painter, Leah.”

“Where were we married?”

“In Tiberias. On Shamron’s terrace overlooking the Sea of Galilee.”

“And you’re a restorer now?”

“I studied in Venice, with Umberto Conti. You used to visit me there every few months. You posed as a German girl from Bremen. Do you remember, Leah?”

One searing afternoon in June, Gabriel had coffee with Dr. Bar-Zvi in the staff canteen.

“Will she ever be able to leave this place?”

“No.”

“What about for short periods?”

“I don’t see why not,” the doctor said. “In fact, I think it sounds like a rather good idea.”

She came with a nurse the first few times. Then, as she grew more comfortable being away from the hospital, Gabriel brought her home alone. She sat in a chair in his studio and watched him work for hours on end. Sometimes her presence brought him peace, sometimes unbearable pain. Always, he wished he could set her upon his easel and re-create the woman he had placed in a car that snowy night in Vienna.

“Do you have any of my paintings?”

He showed her the portrait in the bedroom. When she asked who the model had been, Gabriel said it was him.

“You look sad.”

“I was tired,” he said. “I’d been gone for three years.”

“Did I really paint this?”

“You were good,” he said. “You were better than me.”

One afternoon, while Gabriel was retouching a damaged portion of Daniel’s face, she asked him why she had come to Vienna.

“We’d grown apart because of my work. I thought my cover was secure enough to bring you and Dani along. It was a foolish mistake, and you were the one to pay for it.”

“There was another woman, wasn’t there? A French girl. Someone who worked for the Office.”

Gabriel nodded once and returned to work on the face of Daniel. Leah pressed him for more. “Who did it?” she asked. “Who put the bomb in my car?”

“It was Arafat. I was supposed to die with you and Dani, but the man who carried out the mission changed the plan.”

“Is he alive, this man?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“And Arafat?”

Leah’s grasp on the present situation was tenuous at best. Gabriel explained that Yasir Arafat, Israel ’s mortal enemy, now lived a few miles away, in Ramallah.

“Arafat is here? How can that be?”

From the mouths of innocents, thought Gabriel. Just then he heard footfalls in the stairwell. Eli Lavon let himself into the flat without bothering to knock.

37 AIX-EN-PROVENCE: FIVE MONTHS LATER

THE FIRST STIRRINGS OF A MISTRAL WERE PROWLING the ravines and gorges of the Bouches-du-Rhône. Paul Martineau, climbing out of his Mercedes sedan, buttoned his canvas field coat and turned the collar up round his ears. Another winter had come to Provence. A few more weeks, he thought, then he’d have to shut down the dig until spring.

He retrieved his canvas rucksack from the trunk, then set out along the edge of the ancient stone wall of the hill fort. A moment later, at the point where the wall ended, he paused. About fifty meters away, near the edge of the hilltop, a painter stood before a canvas. It was not unusual to see artists working atop the hill; Cézanne himself had adored the commanding view over the Chaine de l’Étoile. Still, Martineau reckoned it would be wise to have a closer look at the man before starting to work.

He transferred his Makarov pistol from his rucksack to the pocket of his coat, then walked toward the painter. The man’s back was turned to Martineau. Judging from the attitude of his head he was gazing at the distant Mont Sainte-Victoire. This was confirmed for Martineau a few seconds later when he glimpsed the canvas for the first time. The work was very much in the style of Cézanne’s classic landscape. Actually, thought Martineau, it was an uncanny reproduction.

The artist was so engrossed in his work he seemed not to hear Martineau’s approach. Only when Martineau was standing at his back did he cease painting and glance over his shoulder. He wore a heavy woolen sweater and a floppy wide-brimmed hat that moved with the wind. His gray beard was long and unkempt, his hands were smeared with paint. Judging from his expression he was a man who did not enjoy being interrupted while he was working. Martineau was sympathetic.

“You’re obviously a devotee of Cézanne,” said Martineau.

The painter nodded once, then resumed his work.

“It’s quite good. Would you be willing to sell it to me?”

“I’m afraid this one is spoken for, but I can do another if you like.”

Martineau handed him his card. “You can reach me at my office at the university. We’ll discuss the price when I see the finished canvas.”

The painter accepted the card and dropped it into a wooden case containing his paints and brushes. Martineau bid him a good morning, then set off across the site, until he arrived at the excavation trench where he’d been working the previous afternoon. He climbed down into the pit and removed the blue tarpaulin spread over the bottom, exposing a stone-carved severed head in semi-profile. He opened his rucksack and removed a small hand trowel and a brush. Just as he was about to begin working, a shadow darkened the base of the pit. He rose onto his knees and looked up. He had expected to see Yvette or one of the other archaeologists working on the dig. Instead, he saw the hatted silhouette of the painter, lit from behind by the bright sun. Martineau lifted his hand to his brow and shielded his eyes.

“Would you mind moving away from there? You’re blocking my light.”

The painter silently held up the card Martineau had just given him. “I believe the name on this is incorrect.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“The name says Paul Martineau.”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“But it’s not your real name, is it?”

Martineau felt a searing heat across the back of his neck. He looked carefully at the figure standing at the edge of the trench. Was it really him? Martineau couldn’t be sure, not with the heavy beard and floppy hat. Then he thought of the landscape. It was a perfect imitation of Cézanne in tone and texture. Of course it was him. Martineau inched his hand toward his pocket and made one more play for time.

“Listen, my friend, my name is-”

“Khaled al-Khalifa,” the painter said, finishing the sentence for him. His next words were spoken in Arabic. “Do you really want to die as a Frenchman? You’re Khaled, son of Sabri, grandson of Asad, the Lion of Beit Sayeed. Your father’s gun is in your coat pocket. Reach for it. Tell me your name.”

Khaled seized the grip of the Makarov and was pulling it from his pocket when the first round tore into his chest. The second shot caused the gun to slip from his grasp. He toppled backward and struck his head against the rocklike base of the pit. As he slipped toward unconsciousness, he looked up and saw the Jew, scooping a handful of earth from the mound at the edge of the trench. He tossed the soil onto Khaled’s face, then raised his gun for the final time. Khaled saw a flash of fire, then darkness. The trench began to spin, and he felt himself spiraling downward, into the past.

THE PAINTER SLIPPED the Beretta back into the waistband of his trousers and walked back to the spot where he’d been working. He dipped his brush in black paint and signed his name to the canvas, then turned and started up the slope of the hill. In the shadow of the ancient wall he encountered a girl with short hair who bore a vague resemblance to Fellah al-Tamari. He bid her a good morning and climbed into the saddle of his motorcycle. A moment later he was gone.