The Black Widow

75 WASHINGTON — JERUSALEM

THE RECRIMINATIONS BEGAN EVEN BEFORE the sun had risen. One party blamed the president for the calamity that had befallen America, the other blamed his predecessor. That was the only thing Washington was good at these days — recriminations and apportionment of blame. There was once a time, during the darkest days of the Cold War, when American foreign policy was characterized by consensus and steadfastness. Now the two parties could not agree on what to call the enemy, let alone how to combat him. It was little wonder, then, that an attack on the nation’s capital was yet another occasion for partisan bickering.

In the meantime — at the National Counterterrorism Center, the Lincoln Memorial, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Harbor Place, a string of restaurants along M Street, and at Café Milano — they counted the dead. One hundred and sixteen at the NCTC and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, 28 at the Lincoln Memorial, 312 at the Kennedy Center, 147 at Harbor Place, 62 along M Street, and 49 at Café Milano. Among those killed at the renowned Georgetown eatery were the four ISIS gunmen. All had been shot to death. But in the immediate aftermath, there was confusion over precisely who had done the shooting. The Metropolitan Police said it had been the FBI. The FBI said it had been the Metropolitan Police.

The suicide bomber was identified as a woman, late twenties, blond. In short order, it would be established that she had flown from Paris to New York on a French passport and had spent a single night at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, in a room registered to a Dr. Leila Hadawi, also a French citizen. The French government was then forced to acknowledge that the suicide bomber, identified by her passport as Asma Doumaz, was in fact Safia Bourihane, the woman who had attacked the Weinberg Center in Paris. But how had the most wanted woman in the world, a jihadist icon, managed to slip back into France, board an international flight, and enter the United States? On Capitol Hill, members of both political parties called for the secretary of homeland security to resign, along with the commissioner of customs and border protection. Recriminations and apportionment of blame: Washington’s favorite pastime.

But who was Dr. Leila Hadawi? The French government claimed she had been born in France of Palestinian parentage and was an employee of the state-run health care system. According to passport records, she had spent the month of August in Greece, though French security and intelligence officials now suspected she had traveled clandestinely to Syria for training. Curiously, ISIS seemed not to know her. Indeed, her name appeared in none of the celebratory videos or social media postings that flooded the Internet in the hours after the attack. As for her current whereabouts, they were unknown.

Media on both sides of the Atlantic began calling it the “French Connection”—the uncomfortable links between the attack on Washington and citizens of America’s oldest ally. Le Monde revealed an additional “connection” when it reported that a senior DGSI officer named Paul Rousseau, the hero of the secret campaign against Direct Action, had been wounded in the bombing of the National Counterterrorism Center. But why was Rousseau there? The DGSI claimed that he was involved in the routine security measures surrounding the French president’s visit to Washington. Le Monde, however, politely disagreed. Rousseau, said the newspaper, was the chief of something called Alpha Group, an ultra-secret counterterrorism unit known for deception and dirty tricks. The interior minister denied Alpha Group’s existence, as did the chief of the DGSI. No one in France believed them.

Nor did anyone really care at that point, at least not in America, where blood vengeance was the first order of business. The president immediately ordered massive air strikes against all known ISIS targets in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, though he went out of his way to assure the Islamic world that America was not at war with them. He also rejected calls for a full-scale U.S. invasion of the caliphate. The American response, said the president, would be limited to air strikes and special operations to kill or capture senior ISIS leaders, like the man, still unidentified, who had planned and executed the attack. The president’s critics were livid. So, too, was ISIS, which wanted nothing more than a final apocalyptic battle with the armies of Rome, in a place called Dabiq. The president refused to grant ISIS its wish. He had been elected to end the endless wars in the Middle East, not start another one. This time, America would not overreact. It would survive the attack on Washington, he said, and be stronger as a result.

Among the first targets of the U.S. military response was an apartment building near al-Rasheed Park in Raqqa and a large house of many rooms and courts west of Mosul. At home, however, the American media was focused on a house of a far different sort, a timbered A-frame cottage near the town of Hume, Virginia. The cottage had been rented to a Northern Virginia — based shell entity owned by an Egyptian national named Qassam el-Banna. The very same Qassam el-Banna had been discovered in a small pond on the property, in the front seat of his Kia sedan, having been shot four times at close range. Five additional bodies were discovered inside the cottage, four ISIS fighters in black tactical suits and a woman who would later be identified as Megan Taylor, a convert to Islam originally from Valparaiso, Indiana. The FBI concluded that all five had been shot with 5.56x45mm rounds fired by two AR-15 assault rifles. Later, through ballistics analysis, it would be determined that those same AR-15s had been involved in the attack on Café Milano in Georgetown. But exactly who had done the shooting? The FBI director said he did not know the answer. No one believed him.

Not long after the discovery in rural Virginia, the FBI detained Amina el-Banna, the wife of the man found in the pond, for questioning. And it was at this point that the story took an intriguing turn. For immediately after her release, Mrs. el-Banna retained the services of a lawyer from a civil rights organization with well-established ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. A press conference soon followed, conducted on the front lawn of the el-Bannas’ small duplex on Eighth Place in Arlington. Speaking in Arabic, with the lawyer acting as her translator, Mrs. el-Banna denied that her husband was a member of ISIS or had played any role in the attack on Washington. Furthermore, she claimed that, on the night of the attack, two men had broken into her house and brutally interrogated her. She described one of the men as tall and lanky. The other was of medium height and build, with gray temples and the greenest eyes she had ever seen. Both were quite obviously Israeli. She claimed that they had threatened to kill her and her son — she never mentioned that he was named for Mohamed Atta — unless she gave them the passwords for her husband’s computers. After uploading the contents of the devices, they left quickly. No, she admitted, she did not report the incident to the police. She was frightened, she claimed, because she was a Muslim.

Mrs. el-Banna’s claims might well have been dismissed were it not for her description of one of the men who had entered her house — the man of medium height and build, with gray temples and vivid green eyes. Former inhabitants of the secret world recognized him as the noted Israeli operative named Gabriel Allon, and a few said so on television. They were quick to point out, however, that Allon could not possibly have been present in Mrs. el-Banna’s house because he had been killed in a bombing in London’s Brompton Road almost a year earlier. Or had he? Israel’s ambassador to Washington inadvertently muddied the waters when he refused to state categorically and without equivocation that Gabriel Allon was indeed no longer among the living. “What do you want me to say?” he snapped during an interview. “That he’s still dead?” Then, hiding behind Israel’s long-standing policy of refusing to comment on intelligence matters, the ambassador asked the interviewer to change the subject. And thus commenced the slow resurrection of a legend.

There quickly appeared in the press accounts of many Washington sightings, all of dubious provenance and reliability. He had been seen entering and leaving a large Federal-style house on N Street, or so claimed a neighbor. He had been seen having coffee at a patisserie on Wisconsin Avenue, or so claimed the woman who had been seated at the next table. He had even been seen having dinner at the Four Seasons on M Street, as if the great Gabriel Allon, with his endless list of deadly enemies, would ever dream of eating in public. There was also a report that, like Paul Rousseau, he had been inside the National Counterterrorism Center at the time of the attack. The Israeli ambassador, who was almost never at a loss for words, failed to return phone calls and text messages, as did his spokeswoman. No one bothered to ask the NCTC for comment. Its press officer had died in the bombing, as had its director. For all intents and purposes, there was no NCTC anymore.

And there the matter might have faded into the void were it not for an enterprising reporter from the Washington Post. Many years earlier, not long after 9/11, she had revealed the existence of a chain of secret CIA detention centers — the so-called black sites — where al-Qaeda terrorists were subjected to harsh interrogations. Now she sought to answer the many unanswered questions surrounding the attack on Washington. Who was Dr. Leila Hadawi? Who had killed the four terrorists in Café Milano and the five terrorists at the cottage in Hume? And why had a dead man, a legend, been inside the NCTC when a thousand-pound truck bomb leveled it?

The reporter’s story appeared one week to the day after the attack. It stated that the woman known as Dr. Leila Hadawi was in fact an agent of Israeli intelligence who had penetrated the network of a mysterious ISIS terror mastermind called Saladin. He had been in Washington at the time of the attack but had managed to escape. He was now assumed to be back in the caliphate, hiding from the American and coalition air bombardment. Gabriel Allon, she wrote, was in hiding, too — and very much alive. Israel’s prime minister, when asked for a comment, managed only a crooked smile. Then, cryptically, he suggested he would have more to say about the matter soon. Very soon.

In the old central Jerusalem neighborhood of Nachlaot, there had been doubts about the circumstances surrounding Allon’s death for some time, especially on leafy Narkiss Street, where he was known to reside in a limestone apartment house with a drooping eucalyptus tree in the front garden. On the evening the story appeared on the Post’s Web site, he and his family were seen dining at Focaccia on Rabbi Akiva Street — or so claimed the couple who had been seated at the next table. Allon, they said, had ordered the chicken livers and mashed potatoes, while his wife, an Italian by birth, had opted for pasta. The children, a few weeks shy of their first birthday, had displayed exemplary behavior. Mother and father appeared relaxed and happy, though their bodyguards were clearly on edge. The entire city was. Earlier that afternoon, near Damascus Gate, three Jews had been stabbed to death. Their killer, a young Palestinian from East Jerusalem, had been shot several times by police. He had died in the trauma center at Hadassah Medical Center, despite heroic efforts to preserve his life.

The following afternoon Allon was seen lunching with an old friend, the noted biblical archaeologist Eli Lavon, in a café along the Mamilla Mall, and at four o’clock he was spotted on the tarmac at Ben Gurion Airport, where he met the daily Air France flight from Paris. Documents were signed, and a large wooden crate, flat and rectangular, was placed carefully in the back of his personal armored SUV. Inside the crate was payment in full for an unfinished job: Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table, oil on canvas, by Vincent van Gogh. One hour later, after a high-speed journey up the Bab al-Wad, the canvas was propped upon an easel in the conservation lab of the Israel Museum. Gabriel stood before it, one hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side. Ephraim Cohen stood next to him. For a long time, neither spoke.

“You know,” said Cohen at last, “it’s not too late to change your mind.”

“Why would I want to do something like that?”

“Because she wanted you to have it.” After a pause, Cohen added, “And it’s worth more than a hundred million dollars.”

“Give me the papers, Ephraim.”

They were contained in a formal leather folio case, embossed with the museum’s logo. The agreement was brief and straightforward. Henceforth, Gabriel Allon renounced any and all claim to the van Gogh; it was now the property of the Israel Museum. There was, however, one inviolable proviso. The painting could never, under any circumstances, be sold or lent to another institution. As long as there was an Israel Museum — indeed, as long as there was an Israel—Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table would hang there.

Gabriel signed the document with an indecipherable flourish and resumed his contemplation of the painting. At length, he reached out and trailed a forefinger lightly across the face of Marguerite. She required no additional restoration; she was ready for her coming-out party. He only wished he could say the same for Natalie. Natalie required a bit of retouching. Natalie was a work in progress.

76 NAHALAL, ISRAEL

THEY RETURNED HER TO THE place where it all began, to the farmhouse in the old moshav of Nahalal. Her room was as she had left it, save for the volume of Darwish poetry, which had vanished. So, too, had the outsize photographs of Palestinian suffering. The walls of the sitting room were now hung with paintings.

“Yours?” she asked on the evening of her arrival.

“Some,” answered Gabriel.

“Which ones?”

“The ones with no signatures.”

“And the others?”

“My mother.”

Her eyes moved across the canvases. “She was obviously a great influence on you.”

“Actually, we influenced each other.”

“You were competitive?”

“Very.”

She went to the French doors and gazed across the darkened valley, toward the lights of the Arab village atop the hillock.

“How long can I stay here?”

“As long as you like.”

“And then?”

“That,” said Gabriel, “is entirely up to you.”

She was the farmhouse’s only occupant, but she was never truly alone. A security detail monitored her every move, as did the cameras and the microphones, which recorded the awful sounds of her night terrors. Saladin appeared often in her dreams. Sometimes he was the wounded, helpless man whom she had encountered in the house near Mosul. And sometimes he was the strong, elegantly dressed figure who had so gleefully sentenced her to die in a cottage at the edge of the Shenandoah. Safia came to Natalie in her dreams, too. She never wore a hijab or abaya, only the gray five-button jacket she had worn the night of her death, and her hair was always blond. She was Safia as she might have been if radical Islam hadn’t sunk its hooks into her. She was Safia the impressionable girl.

Natalie explained all this to the team of physicians and therapists who checked in on her every few days. They prescribed sleeping pills, which she refused to take, and anti-anxiety medication, which left her feeling dull and listless. To aid in her recovery, she led herself on punishing training runs on the farm roads of the valley. As before, she covered her arms and legs, not out of piety, but because it was late autumn and quite cold. The security guards kept watch over her always, as did the other residents of Nahalal. It was a tight-knit community, with many veterans of the IDF and the security services. They came to regard Natalie as their responsibility. They also came to believe she was the one they had read about in the newspapers. The one who had infiltrated the most vicious terrorist group the world had ever known. The one who had gone to the caliphate and lived to tell about it.

The doctors were not her only visitors. Her parents came often, sometimes spending the night, and early each afternoon she had a session with her old trainers. This time, their task was to undo what they had done before, to flush Natalie’s system of Palestinian enmity and Islamic zeal, to turn her into an Israeli again. “But not too Israeli,” Gabriel cautioned the trainers. He had invested a great deal of time and effort transforming Natalie into one of his enemies. He did not want to lose her because of a few terrifying minutes in a Virginia cottage.

She was visited, too, by Dina Sarid. During six interminable sessions, all recorded, she debriefed Natalie in far greater detail than before — her time in Raqqa and the camp at Palmyra, her initial interrogation at the hands of Abu Ahmed al-Tikriti, the many hours she had spent alone with the former Iraqi intelligence officer who called himself Saladin. All the material would eventually find its way into Dina’s voluminous files, for she was already preparing for the next round. Saladin, she had warned the Office, was not finished. One day soon he would come for Jerusalem.

At the end of the last session, after Dina had switched off her computer and packed away her notes, the two women sat in silence for a long time as night fell heavily over the valley.

“I owe you an apology,” said Dina at last.

“For what?”

“For talking you into it. I shouldn’t have. I was wrong.”

“If not me,” said Natalie, “then who?”

“Someone else.”

“Would you have done it?”

“No,” answered Dina, to her everlasting credit. “I don’t think I would have. In the end it wasn’t worth it. He beat us.”

“This time,” said Natalie.

Yes, thought Dina. This time. .

Mikhail waited nearly a week before making his first appearance at the farm. The delay was not his idea; the doctors feared his presence might further complicate Natalie’s already complicated recovery. His initial visit was brief, a little more than an hour, and entirely professional, save for an intimate exchange in the moonlit garden that escaped the sharp ears of the microphones.

The next night they watched a film — French, Hebrew subtitles — and the night after that, with the approval of Uzi Navot, they went for a pizza in Caesarea. Afterward, while walking in the Roman ruins, Mikhail told Natalie about the worst few minutes of his life. They had occurred, oddly enough, in his homeland, at a dacha many miles east of Moscow. A hostage rescue operation had gone awry, he and two other operatives were about to be killed. But another man had traded his life for theirs, and they all three had survived. One of the operatives had recently given birth to a set of twins. And the other, he said portentously, would soon be the chief of the Office.

“Gabriel?”

He nodded slowly.

“And the woman?”

“It was his wife.”

“My God.” They walked in silence for a moment. “So what is the moral of this awful story?”

“There is no moral,” answered Mikhail. “It’s just what we do. And then we try to forget.”

“Have you managed to forget?”

“No.”

“How often do you think about it?”

“Every night.”

“I suppose you were right after all,” said Natalie after a moment.

“About what?”

“I’m more like you than I realized.”

“You are now.”

She took his hand. “When?” she whispered into his ear.

“That,” said Mikhail, smiling, “is entirely up to you.”

The following afternoon, when Natalie returned from her training run in the valley, she found Gabriel waiting in the sitting room of the farmhouse. He was dressed in a gray suit and a white open-neck dress shirt; he looked very professional. On the coffee table before him were three files. The first, he said, was the final report of Natalie’s team of doctors.

“What does it say?”

“It says,” answered Gabriel evenly, “that you are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which, given what you went through in Syria and America, is entirely understandable.”

“And my prognosis?”

“Quite good, actually. With proper medication and counseling, you will eventually make a full recovery. In fact,” Gabriel added, “we are all of the opinion you can leave here whenever you like.”

“And the other two files?”

“A choice,” he answered obliquely.

“What kind of choice?”

“It concerns your future.”

She pointed to one of the files. “What’s in that one?”

“A termination agreement.”

“And the other?”

“The exact opposite.”

A silence fell between them. It was Gabriel who broke it.

“I assume you’ve heard the rumors about my pending promotion.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“It seems the reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated.”

“Mine, too.”

He smiled warmly. Then his expression turned serious. “Some chiefs are fortunate enough to serve during relatively quiet times. They serve their term, they collect their accolades, and then they go forth into the world to make money. I’m confident I won’t be so lucky. The next few years promise to be tumultuous for the Middle East and for Israel. It will be up to the Office to help determine whether we survive in this land.” He looked out at the valley, the valley of his youth. “It would be a dereliction of duty if I were to let someone of your obvious gifts slip through my fingers.”

He said nothing more. Natalie made a show of thought.

“What is it?” he asked. “More money?”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head. “I was wondering about the Office policy regarding relationships between coworkers.”

“Officially, we discourage it.”

“And unofficially?”

“We’re Jewish, Natalie. We’re natural matchmakers.”

“How well do you know Mikhail?”

“I know him in ways only you could understand.”

“He told me about Russia.”

“Did he?” Gabriel frowned. “That was insecure on his part.”

“It was in service of a good cause.”

“And what cause was that?”

Natalie picked up the third file, the one with the employment contract.

“Did you bring a pen?” she asked.

77 PETAH TIKVA, ISRAEL

THE END WAS NEAR, IT was plain to see. On the Thursday, Uzi Navot was seen lugging several cardboard boxes from his office suite, including a lifetime supply of his beloved butter cookies, a parting gift from the Vienna station chief. The next morning, during the nine a.m. senior staff meeting, he acted as though a great weight had been lifted from his sturdy shoulders. And that afternoon, before departing for the weekend, he made a slow tour of King Saul Boulevard from the top floor to the underground recesses of Registry, shaking hands, patting shoulders, and kissing a few damp cheeks. Curiously, he avoided the dark, forbidding lair occupied by Personnel, the place where careers went to die.

Navot spent the Saturday behind the walls of his residence in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikva. Gabriel knew this because the movements of the ramsad, the official abbreviation for the head of the Office, were monitored constantly by the operations desk, as were his own. He decided it was better to show up unannounced, thus preserving the element of surprise. He slid from the back of his official SUV into a pouring rain and pressed the call button of the intercom at the front gate. Twenty long wet seconds elapsed before a voice answered. Unfortunately, it was Bella’s.

“What do you want?”

“I need to have a word with Uzi.”

“Haven’t you done enough already?”

“Please, Bella. It’s important.”

“It always is.”

Another prolonged delay ensued before the locks opened with an inhospitable snap. Gabriel opened the gate and hurried up the garden walk to the front entrance, where Bella awaited him. She wore an elaborate flowing pantsuit of embroidered crushed silk and gold sandals. Her hair was newly coiffed, her face was discreetly but thoroughly made up. She looked as though she were entertaining. She always did. Appearances had always mattered to Bella, which is why Gabriel had never understood her decision to marry a man like Uzi Navot. Perhaps, he thought, she had done it simply out of cruelty. Bella always struck Gabriel as the sort who enjoyed pulling the wings off flies.

Coldly, she shook Gabriel’s hand. Her nails were blood red.

“You’re looking well, Bella.”

“You, too. But then I suppose that’s to be expected.”

She gestured toward the sitting room, where Navot was working his way through the latest edition of the Economist. The room was a showpiece of contemporary Asian design, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the waterworks and manicured shrubbery in the garden. Navot looked like one of the workmen whom Bella had so terrorized during the long renovation. He wore wrinkled chinos and a stretched-out cotton pullover, and the gray stubble of his hair had encroached on his cheeks and chin. His disheveled appearance surprised Gabriel. Bella had never been one to permit weekend negligence when it came to grooming and dress.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

“Hemlock,” answered Gabriel.

Frowning, Bella withdrew. Gabriel looked around the large room. It was three times the size of the sitting room of his little apartment in Narkiss Street. Perhaps, he thought, it was time for an upgrade. He sat down directly opposite Navot, who was now staring at a silent television. Earlier that day, the Americans had launched a drone strike on a house in western Iraq where Saladin was thought to be hiding. Twenty-two people had been killed, including several children.

“Think they got him?” asked Navot.

“No,” answered Gabriel, watching as a limp body was pulled from the rubble. “I don’t think they did.”

“Neither do I.” Navot switched off the television. “I hear you managed to convince Natalie to join the Office full-time.”

“Actually, Mikhail did it for me.”

“Think they’re serious?”

Gabriel gave a noncommittal shrug. “Love is harder in the real world than in the secret world.”

“Tell me about it,” murmured Navot. He plucked a low-calorie rice treat from a bowl on the coffee table. “What’s this I hear about Eli Lavon coming back?”

“It’s true.”

“As what?”

“Nominally, he’ll oversee the watchers. In truth, I’ll use him as I see fit.”

“Who gets Special Ops?”

“Yaakov.”

“Good call,” said Navot, “but Mikhail will be disappointed.”

“Mikhail isn’t ready. Yaakov is.”

“What about Yossi?”

“Head of Research. Dina will be his number two.”

“And Rimona?”

“Deputy director for planning.”

“A clean sweep. I suppose it’s for the best.” Navot stared blankly at the darkened television screen.

“I heard a rumor about you the other day when I was in the prime minister’s office.”

“Really?”

“They say you’re moving to California to work for a defense contractor. They say you’re going to make a million dollars a year, plus bonuses.”

“When searching for the truth,” said Navot philosophically, “the last place one should look is the prime minister’s office.”

“My source says Bella has already picked out the house.”

Navot scooped a handful of the rice treats from the bowl. “And what if it’s true? What difference does it make?”

“I need you, Uzi. I can’t do this job without you.”

“What would you call me? What would I actually do?”

“You’ll run the place and see to the politics while I run the ops.”

“A manager?”

“You’re better with people than I am, Uzi.”

“That,” said Navot, “is the understatement of the year.”

Gabriel gazed out the window. The rain was lashing Bella’s garden.

“How can you go to California at a time like this? How can you leave Israel?”

“You’re one to talk. You lived abroad for years, and you socked away plenty of money restoring all those paintings, too. It’s my turn now. Besides,” Navot added, “you don’t really need me.”

“I’m not making this offer out of the goodness of my heart. My motives are purely selfish.” Gabriel lowered his voice and added, “You’re the closest thing to a brother I have, Uzi. You and Eli Lavon. Things are going to get rough. I need you both at my side.”

“Is there no depth to which you won’t stoop?”

“I learned from the best, Uzi. So did you.”

“Sorry, Gabriel, but it’s too late. I’ve already accepted the job.”

“Tell them you’ve had a change of heart. Tell them your country needs you.”

Navot nibbled thoughtfully at the rice treats, one by one. It was, thought Gabriel, an encouraging sign.

“Has the prime minister approved it?”

“He didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Where will my office be?”

“Across the hall from mine.”

“Secretary?”

“We’ll share Orit.”

“The minute you try to cut me out of something,” warned Navot, “I walk. I get to talk to you whenever and wherever I please.”

“You’ll be sick of me in no time.”

“That much I believe.”

The rice treats were gone. Navot exhaled heavily.

“What’s wrong, Uzi?”

“I’m just wondering how I’m going to tell Bella that I’ve turned down a million-dollar-a-year job in California to stay at the Office.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” said Gabriel. “You’ve always been good with people.”

78 JERUSALEM

WHEN GABRIEL RETURNED TO Narkiss Street, he found Chiara dressed in a dark professional pantsuit and the children strapped into their carry seats. Together, they made the short drive across West Jerusalem to the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital. In the old days, before his remarriage, before his unwanted celebrity, Gabriel had slipped in and out of the facility unnoticed, usually late at night. Now he arrived with all the subtlety of a visiting head of state, a circle of bodyguards protecting him, Raphael wriggling in his grasp. Chiara walked silently at his side, Irene in her arms, her heels clattering over the paving stones of the forecourt. He did not envy her this moment. He took her hand and squeezed it tightly while Raphael tugged at his earlobe.

In the lobby waited a rotund, rabbinical-looking doctor in his late fifties. He had approved of the visit — in fact, Gabriel reminded himself, it was the doctor who had suggested it in the first place. Now he didn’t seem so certain it was a good idea.

“How much does she know?” asked Gabriel as his son reached for the doctor’s spectacles.

“I told her that she’s going to have visitors. Otherwise. .” He shrugged his rounded shoulders. “I thought it would be best if you were the one who explained it to her.”

Gabriel handed Raphael to Chiara and followed the doctor along a corridor of Jerusalem limestone, to the doorway of a common room. It was empty of patients except for one. She sat in her wheelchair with the stillness of a figure in a painting while behind her a television flickered silently. On the screen Gabriel briefly glimpsed his own face. It was a still photo, snapped a thousand years ago, after his return from Operation Wrath of God. He might have looked like a kid were it not for the gray hair at his temples. The smudges of ash on the prince of fire. .

“Mazel tov,” said the doctor.

“Condolences are more appropriate,” answered Gabriel.

“These are challenging times, but I’m sure you can handle it. And remember, if you ever need someone to talk to”—he patted Gabriel’s shoulder—“I’m always available.”

Gabriel’s face vanished from the screen. He looked at Leah. She had not moved or even blinked. Woman in a Wheelchair, oil on canvas, by Tariq al-Hourani.

“Do you have any advice for me?”

“Be honest with her. She doesn’t like it when you try to mislead her.”

“What if it’s too painful?”

“It will be. But she won’t remember it for long.”

With a nudge, the doctor cast Gabriel adrift. Slowly, he crossed the common room and sat down in the chair that had been placed at Leah’s side. Her hair, once long and wild like Chiara’s, was now institutionally short. Her hands were twisted and white with scar tissue. They were like patches of bare canvas. Gabriel longed to repair them, but could not. Leah was beyond restoration. He kissed her cheek softly and waited for her to become aware of his presence.

“Look at the snow, Gabriel,” she said at once. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Gabriel looked out the window, where a bright sun shone upon the stone pine of the hospital’s garden.

“Yes, Leah,” he said absently as his vision blurred with tears. “It’s beautiful.”

“The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. The snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain down on Tel Aviv.”

Gabriel squeezed Leah’s hand. The words were among the last she had spoken the night of the bombing in Vienna. She suffered from a particularly acute combination of psychotic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. At times, she experienced moments of lucidity, but for the most part she remained a prisoner of the past. Vienna played ceaselessly in her mind like a loop of videotape that she was unable to pause: the last meal they shared together, their last kiss, the fire that killed their only child and burned the flesh from Leah’s body. Her life had shrunk to five minutes, and she had been reliving it, over and over again, for more than twenty years.

“I saw you on television,” she said, suddenly lucid. “It seems you’re not dead after all.”

“No, Leah. It was just something we had to say.”

“For your work?”

He nodded.

“And now they say you’re going to become the chief.”

“Soon.”

“I thought Ari was the chief.”

“Not for many years.”

“How many?”

He didn’t answer. It was too depressing to think about.

“He’s well?” asked Leah.

“Ari?”

“Yes.”

“He has good days and bad days.”

“Like me,” said Leah.

Her expression darkened. The memories were welling. Somehow, she fought them off.

“I can’t quite believe you’re actually going to be the memuneh.”

It was an old word that meant “the one in charge.” There hadn’t been a true memuneh since Shamron.

“Neither can I,” admitted Gabriel.

“Aren’t you a little young to be the memuneh? After all, you’re only—”

“I’m older now, Leah. We both are.”

“You look exactly as I remember you.”

“Look closely, Leah. You can see the lines and the gray hair.”

“Thanks to Ari, you always had gray hair. Me, too.” She gazed out the window. “It looks like winter.”

“It is.”

“What year is it?”

He told her.

“How old are your children?”

“Tomorrow is their first birthday.”

“Will there be a party?”

“At the Shamrons’ house in Tiberias. But they’re here now, if you feel up to seeing them.”

Her face brightened. “What are their names?”

He had told her several times. Now he told her again.

“But Irene is your mother’s name,” she protested.

“My mother died a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry, Gabriel. Sometimes I—”

“It’s not important.”

“Bring them to me,” she said, smiling. “I want to see them.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, of course.”

Gabriel rose and went into the foyer.

“Well?” asked Chiara and the doctor simultaneously.

“She says she wants to see them.”

“How should we do it?” asked Chiara.

“One at a time,” suggested the doctor. “Otherwise, it might be overwhelming.”

“I agree,” said Gabriel.

He took Raphael from Chiara’s grasp and returned to the common room. Leah was gazing sightlessly out the window again, lost in memory. Gently, Gabriel placed his son in her lap. Her eyes focused, her mind came briefly back to the present.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“It’s him, Leah. It’s my son.”

She gazed at the child spellbound, clutching him tightly with her ruined hands.

“He looks exactly like—”

“Me,” interjected Gabriel hastily. “Everyone says he looks like his father.”

Leah trailed a twisted finger through the child’s hair and placed her lips to his forehead.

“Look at the snow,” she whispered. “Isn’t it beautiful.”

79 JERUSALEM — TIBERIAS

AT TEN THE FOLLOWING MORNING, the Israel Museum announced it had acquired a previously unknown work by Vincent van Gogh—Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table, oil on canvas, 104 by 60 centimeters — from the estate of Hannah Weinberg. Later, the museum would be forced to acknowledge that, in point of fact, it had received the painting from an anonymous donor, who in turn had inherited it from Mademoiselle Weinberg after her tragic murder in Paris. In time, the museum would face enormous pressure to reveal the donor’s identity. It steadfastly refused, as did the government of France, which had permitted the transfer of the painting to Israel from French soil, much to the dismay of the editorialists and the cultural elite. It was, they said, yet another blow to French pride, this one entirely self-inflicted.

On that Sunday in December, however, the painting was soon an afterthought. For at the stroke of noon, the prime minister announced that Gabriel Allon was very much alive and would be the next chief of the Office. There was little surprise; the press had been buzzing with rumors and speculation for days. Still, it was a shock to the country to see the angel in the flesh, looking for all the world like a mere mortal. His clothing for the occasion had been carefully chosen — a white oxford cloth shirt, a black leather jacket, slim-fitting khaki trousers, a pair of suede brogues with rubber soles that made no sound when he walked. Pointedly, the prime minister referred to him not as the ramsad but the memuneh, the one in charge.

The flash of the cameras was like the glow of his halogen work lamps. He stood motionless, his hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at ease, while the prime minister delivered a highly sanitized version of his professional accomplishments. He then invited Gabriel to speak. His term, he promised, would be forward-looking but rooted in the great traditions of the past. The message was unmistakable. An assassin had been placed in charge of Israel’s intelligence service. Those who tried to harm the country or its citizenry would face serious, perhaps lethal, consequences.

When the reporters attempted to question him, he smiled and then followed the prime minister into the Cabinet room, where he spoke at length of his plans and priorities and the many challenges, some immediate, some looming, confronting the Jewish state. ISIS, he said, was a threat that could no longer be ignored. He also made it clear that the previous ramsad would be remaining at the Office.

“In what capacity?” asked the foreign minister incredulously.

“In whatever capacity I see fit.”

“It’s unprecedented.”

“Get used to it.”

The chief of the Office does not swear an oath; he merely signs his contract. When the paperwork was complete, Gabriel traveled to King Saul Boulevard, where he addressed his troops and met briefly with the outgoing senior staff. Afterward, he and Navot rode in the same armored SUV to Shamron’s villa in Tiberias. The steep drive was so jammed with cars they had to abandon the vehicle far from the entrance. When they stepped onto the terrace overlooking the lake, there arose a great cheer that might very well have carried across the Golan Heights into Syria. It seemed that everyone from Gabriel’s tangled past had made the trip: Adrian Carter, Fareed Barakat, Paul Rousseau, even Graham Seymour, who had come from London. So, too, had Julian Isherwood, the art dealer who had provided Gabriel’s cover as a restorer, and Samantha Cooke, the reporter from the Telegraph who had quite intentionally blown the story regarding his death.

“You owe me,” she said, kissing his cheek.

“The check is in the mail.”

“When should I expect it?”

“Soon.”

There were many others, of course. Timothy Peel, the Cornish boy who had lived next door to Gabriel when he was hiding out on the Helford Passage, made the trip at Office expense. So did Sarah Bancroft, the American art historian and curator whom Gabriel had used to penetrate the courts of Zizi and Ivan. She shook Mikhail’s hand coolly and glared at Natalie, but otherwise the evening proceeded without incident.

Maurice Durand, the world’s most successful art thief, popped in from Paris and somehow managed to avoid bumping into Paul Rousseau, who surely would have remembered him from the brasserie on the rue de Miromesnil. Monsignor Luigi Donati, private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII, was in attendance, as was Christoph Bittel, Gabriel’s new ally inside the Swiss security service. Half the Knesset came, along with several senior IDF officers and the chiefs of all the other Israeli intelligence agencies. And watching over it all, smiling contentedly as though the entire production had been arranged for his private amusement, was Shamron. He was happier than Gabriel had ever seen him. His life’s work was finally complete. Gabriel was remarried, a father, and the chief of the Office. The restorer was restored.

But the evening was more than a celebration of Gabriel’s promotion, it was also the children’s first birthday party. Chiara presided over the lighting of the candles while Gabriel, playing the role of proud father, recorded the event on his secure mobile phone. When the entire gathering erupted into a rousing version of “Happy Birthday,” Irene wept hysterically. Then Shamron whispered a bit of Polish-accented nonsense into her ear, and she giggled with delight.

By ten o’clock the first cars were moving slowly down the drive, and by midnight the party was over. Afterward, Shamron and Gabriel sat in their usual spot at the edge of the terrace, a gas heater burning between them, while the caterers cleared away the debris of the celebration. Shamron refrained from smoking because Raphael was sleeping soundly in Gabriel’s arms.

“You made quite an impression today at the announcement,” Shamron said. “I liked your clothing. And your title.”

“I wanted to send a signal.”

“What signal is that?”

“That I intend to be an operational chief.” Gabriel paused, then added, “That I can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

With a glance toward the Golan Heights, Shamron said, “I’m not sure you have much of a choice.”

The child stirred in Gabriel’s arms and then settled into sleep once more. Shamron twirled his old Zippo lighter in his fingertips. Two turns to the right, two turns to the left. .

“Is this how you expected it would end?” he asked after a moment.

“How what would end?”

“You and me.” Shamron looked at Gabriel and added, “Us.”

“What are you talking about, Ari?”

“I’m old, my son. I’ve been clinging to life for this night. Now that it’s over, I can go.” He smiled sadly. “It’s late, Gabriel. I’m very tired.”

“You’re not going anywhere, Ari. I need you.”

“No, you don’t,” replied Shamron. “You are me.”

“Funny how it worked out that way.”

“You seem to think it was serendipitous. But it wasn’t. It was all part of a plan.”

“Whose plan?”

“Maybe it was mine, maybe it was God’s.” Shamron shrugged. “What difference does it make? We are on the same side when it comes to you, God and me. We are accomplices.”

“Who has the final say?”

“Who do you think?” Shamron laid his large hand across Raphael. “Do you remember the day I came for you in Cornwall?”

“Like it was yesterday.”

“You drove like a madman through the hedgerows of the Lizard. We had omelets in that little café atop the cliffs. You treated me,” Shamron added with a note of bitterness, “like a debt collector.”

“I remember,” said Gabriel distantly.

“How do you suppose your life would have turned out if I hadn’t come that day?”

“Just fine.”

“I doubt it. You’d still be restoring paintings for Julian and sailing that old ketch down the Helford to the sea. You would never have come back to Israel or met Chiara. And you wouldn’t be holding that beautiful child in your arms right now.”

Gabriel did not take issue with Shamron’s characterization. He had been a lost soul that day, a broken and bitter man.

“It wasn’t all bad, was it?” asked Shamron.

“I could have lived my entire life without seeing the inside of Lubyanka.”

“What about that dog in the Swiss Alps that tried to tear your arm off?”

“I got him in the end.”

“And that motorcycle you crashed in Rome? Or the antiquities gallery that blew up in your face in St. Moritz?”

“Good times,” said Gabriel darkly. “But I lost a lot of friends along the way.”

“Like Hannah Weinberg.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Like Hannah.”

“Perhaps a bit of old-fashioned vengeance is in order.”

“The deal is done.”

“Who’s going to handle it?”

“I’d like to see to it personally, but it’s probably not a wise move at the moment.”

Shamron smiled. “You’re going to be a great chief, my son.”

80 BETHNAL GREEN, LONDON

IN EVERY OPERATION THERE ARE loose threads, small problems that for one reason or another slip through the cracks. Jalal Nasser, talent spotter, recruiter, long arm of Saladin, fell into that category. An arrest was out of the question; a trial would expose not only Gabriel’s operation but the incompetence of the British and French security services as well. Nor was deportation an option. Were he to return to Jordan, he would have gone straight to the cellars of the Fingernail Factory — and then, in all likelihood, to an unmarked grave in a potter’s field. Such an outcome might have been acceptable during the earliest days of the global war on terror, but now that cooler, more civilized heads had prevailed, it was unthinkable. There would be international outrage, perhaps a lawsuit or even criminal prosecution of the spymasters involved. “Collateral damage,” intoned Fareed Barakat gravely. “And you know how His Majesty feels about collateral damage.”

There was a simple solution, a Shamronian solution. All that was required was the connivance of the native service, which, for the above stated reasons, was not difficult to obtain. In fact, the agreement was reached during a private interlude in Shamron’s kitchen, on the night of the party. Much later, it would be regarded as Gabriel’s first official decision as chief.

The other party to the agreement was Graham Seymour of MI6. The operation could not go forward, however, without the cooperation of Amanda Wallace, Seymour’s counterpart at MI5. He secured it over martinis in Amanda’s Thames House office. It wasn’t a difficult sale; MI5’s watchers had long ago grown weary of chasing Jalal through the streets of London. For Amanda, it was little more than a manpower decision. By moving Jalal off her plate, she would have additional resources to deploy against her primary target, the Russians.

“But no messes,” she cautioned.

“No,” agreed Seymour, shaking his gray head vigorously. “No messes, indeed.”

Within forty-eight hours, Amanda terminated all surveillance of the subject in question, which later, during the inevitable inquiry, she would describe as mere coincidence. Graham Seymour then rang Gabriel at King Saul Boulevard and informed him that the field was his. Secretly, he wished it were so, but that wouldn’t have been appropriate, not for a chief. That night he drove Mikhail to Ben Gurion Airport and placed him aboard a flight for London. Inside Mikhail’s false Russian passport, Gabriel had concealed a note. It was three words in length, the three words of Shamron’s eleventh commandment.

Don’t get caught. .

Jalal Nasser spent his final day in London in much the same way he had spent the previous hundred, seemingly unaware of the fact he was blown to kingdom come. He shopped in Oxford Street, he loitered in Leicester Square, he prayed in the East London Mosque. Afterward, he had tea with a promising recruit. Gabriel forwarded the recruit’s name to Amanda Wallace. It was, he thought, the least he could do.

By then, Jalal’s flat in Chilton Street had been emptied of its hidden cameras and microphones, leaving the team across the street with no option but to observe their quarry the old-fashioned way, with binoculars and a camera fitted with a telephoto lens. From afar, he seemed like a man without a care in the world. Perhaps it was a bit of performance art. But the more likely explanation was that Saladin had failed to inform his operative that the British, the Americans, the Israelis, and the Jordanians knew of his connection to the network and to the attacks in Paris, Amsterdam, and Washington. At King Saul Boulevard — and at Langley, Vauxhall Cross, and an elegant old building on the rue de Grenelle — this was seen as an encouraging sign. It meant that Jalal had no secrets to divulge, that the network, at least for the moment, was dormant. For Jalal, however, it meant that he was expendable, which is the worst thing a terrorist can be when his master is a man like Saladin.

At seven that evening the Jordanian spread a mat upon the floor of his tiny sitting room and prayed for the last time. Then, at seven twenty, he walked to the Noodle King on Bethnal Green Road, where, alone, he ate a final meal of fried rice and spicy chicken wings, watched over by Eli Lavon. Leaving the restaurant, he popped into the Saver Plus for a bottle of milk and then set off toward his flat, unaware that Mikhail was walking a few paces behind him.

Later, Scotland Yard would determine that Jalal arrived on his doorstep at twelve minutes past eight o’clock. It would also determine that, while fishing his keys from his coat pocket, he dropped them to the pavement. Stooping, he noticed Mikhail standing in the street. He left the keys where they lay and, slowly, stood upright. He was clutching the shopping bag defensively to his chest.

“Hello, Jalal,” said Mikhail calmly. “So good to finally meet you.”

“Who are you?” asked the Jordanian.

“I’m the last person you’re ever going to see.”

Swiftly, Mikhail drew a gun from the small of his back. It was a.22-caliber Beretta, with no suppressor. It was a naturally soft-spoken weapon.

“I’m here for Hannah Weinberg,” he said quietly. “And for Rachel Lévy and Arthur Goldman and all the other people you killed in Paris. I’m here for the victims in Amsterdam and America. I speak for the dead.”

“Please,” whispered the Jordanian. “I can help you. I know things. I know the plans for the next attack.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I swear.”

“Where will it be?”

“Here in London.”

“What’s the target?”

Before Jalal could answer, Mikhail fired his first shot. It shattered the bottle of milk and lodged in the Jordanian’s heart. Slowly, Mikhail moved forward, firing nine more shots in rapid succession, until his target lay motionless in the entrance, in a pool of blood and milk. The gun was empty. Mikhail rammed a new magazine into the grip, placed the barrel to the dead man’s head, and fired one last shot. The eleventh. Behind him, a motorcycle pulled to the curb. He climbed onto the back, and in a moment he was gone.