The Kill Artist

ONE

Port Navas, Cornwall: The Present

By coincidence Timothy Peel arrived in the village the same week in July as the stranger. He and his mother moved into a ramshackle cottage at the head of the tidal creek with her latest lover, a struggling playwright named Derek, who drank too much wine and detested children. The stranger arrived two days later, settling into the old foreman’s cottage just up the creek from the oyster farm.

Peel had little to do that summer-when Derek and his mother weren’t making clamorous love, they were taking inspirational forced marches along the cliffs-so he determined to find out exactly who the stranger was and what he was doing in Cornwall. Peel decided the best way to begin was to watch. Because he was eleven, and the only child of divorced parents, Peel was well schooled in the art of human observation and investigation. Like any good surveillance artist, he required a fixed post. He settled on his bedroom window, which had an unobstructed view over the creek. In the storage shed he found a pair of ancient Zeiss binoculars, and at the village store he purchased a small notebook and ballpoint pen for recording his watch report.

The first thing Peel noticed was that the stranger liked old objects. His car was a vintage MG roadster. Peel would watch from his window as the man hunched over the motor for hours at a time, his back poking from beneath the bonnet. A man of great concentration, Peel concluded. A man of great mental endurance.

After a month the stranger vanished. A few days passed, then a week, then a fortnight. Peel feared the stranger had spotted him and taken flight. Bored senseless without the routine of watching, Peel got into trouble. He was caught hurling a rock though the window of a tea shop in the village. Derek sentenced him to a week of solitary confinement in his bedroom.

But that evening Peel managed to slip out with his binoculars. He walked along the quay, past the stranger’s darkened cottage and the oyster farm, and stood at the point where the creek fed into the Helford River, watching the sailboats coming in with the tide. He spotted a ketch heading in under power. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and studied the figure standing at the wheel.

The stranger had come back to Port Navas.

The ketch was old and badly in need of restoration, and the stranger cared for it with the same devotion he had shown his fickle MG. He toiled for several hours each day: sanding, varnishing, painting, polishing brass, changing lines and canvas. When the weather was warm he would strip to the waist. Peel couldn’t help but compare the stranger’s body with Derek’s. Derek was soft and flabby; the stranger was compact and very hard, the kind of man you would quickly regret picking a fight with. By the end of August his skin had turned nearly as dark as the varnish he was so meticulously applying to the deck of the ketch.

He would disappear aboard the boat for days at a time. Peel had no way to follow him. He could only imagine where the stranger was going. Down the Helford to the sea? Around the Lizard to St. Michael’s Mount or Penzance? Maybe around the cape to St. Ives.

Then Peel hit upon another possibility. Cornwall was famous for its pirates; indeed, the region still had its fair share of smugglers. Perhaps the stranger was running the ketch out to sea to meet cargo vessels and ferry contraband to shore.

The next time the stranger returned from one of his voyages, Peel stood a strict watch in his window, hoping to catch him in the act of removing contraband from the boat. But as he leaped from the prow of the ketch onto the quay, he had nothing in his hands but a canvas rucksack and plastic rubbish bag.

The stranger sailed for pleasure, not profit.

Peel took out his notebook and drew a line through the word smuggler.

The large parcel arrived the first week of September, a flat wooden crate, nearly as big as a barn door. It came in a van from London, accompanied by an agitated man in pinstripes. The stranger’s days immediately assumed a reverse rhythm. At night the top floor of the cottage burned with light-not normal light, Peel observed, but a very clear white light. In the mornings, when Peel left home for school, he would see the stranger heading down the creek in the ketch, or working on his MG, or setting off in a pair of battered hiking boots to pound the footpaths of the Helford Passage. Peel supposed he slept afternoons, though he seemed like a man who could go a long time without rest.

Peel wondered what the stranger was doing all night. Late one evening he decided to have a closer look. He pulled on a sweater and coat and slipped out of the cottage without telling his mother. He stood on the quay, looking up at the stranger’s cottage. The windows were open; a sharp odor hung on the air, something between rubbing alcohol and petrol. He could also hear music of some sort-singing, opera perhaps.

He was about to move closer to the house when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He spun around and saw Derek standing over him, hands on his hips, eyes wide with anger. “What in the bloody hell are you doing out here?” Derek said. “Your mother was worried sick!”

“If she was so worried, why did she send you?”

“Answer my question, boy! Why are you standing out here?”

“None of your business!”

In the darkness Peel did not see the blow coming: open-handed, against the side of his head, hard enough to make his ear ring and bring water instantly to his eyes.

“You’re not my father! You’ve no right!”

“And you’re not my son, but as long as you live in my house you’ll do as I say.”

Peel tried to run, but Derek grabbed him roughly by the collar of his coat and lifted him off the ground.

“Let go!”

“One way or another you’re coming home.”

Derek took a few steps, then froze. Peel twisted his head around to see what was the matter. It was then that he saw the stranger, standing in the center of the lane, arms crossed in front of his chest, head cocked slightly to one side.

“What do you want?” snapped Derek.

“I heard noises. I thought there might be a problem.”

Peel realized this was the first time he had ever heard the stranger speak. His English was perfect, but there was a trace of an accent to it. His diction was like his body: hard, compact, concise, no fat.

“No problem,” Derek said. “Just a boy who’s someplace he shouldn’t be.”

“Maybe you should treat him like a boy and not a dog.”

“And maybe you should mind your own fucking business.”

Derek released Peel and stared hard at the smaller man. For a moment Peel feared Derek was going to try to hit the stranger. He remembered the man’s taut, hard muscles, the impression that he was a man who knew how to fight. Derek seemed to sense it too, for he simply took Peel by the elbow and led him back toward the cottage. Along the way Peel glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of the stranger still standing in the lane, arms crossed like a silent sentinel. But by the time Peel returned to his room and peered out his window, the stranger was gone. Only the light remained, clean and searing white.

By the late autumn Peel was frustrated. He had not learned even the most basic facts about the stranger. He still had no name-oh, he had heard a couple of possible names whispered around the village, both vaguely Latin-nor had he discovered the nature of his nocturnal work. He decided a crash operation was in order.

The following morning, when the stranger climbed into his MG and sped toward the center of the village, Peel hurried along the quay and slipped into the cottage through an open garden window.

The first thing he noticed was that the stranger was using the drawing room as a bedroom.

He quickly climbed the stairs. A chill ran over him.

Most of the walls had been knocked down to create a spacious open room. In the center was a large white table. Mounted on the side was a microscope with a long retractable arm. On another table were clear flasks of chemicals, which Peel reckoned were the source of the strange odor, and two strange visors with powerful magnifying glasses built into them. Atop a tall, adjustable stand was a bank of fluorescent lights, the source of the cottage’s peculiar glow.

There were other instruments Peel could not identify, but these things were not the source of his alarm. Mounted on a pair of heavy wooden easels were two paintings. One was large, very old looking, a religious scene of some sort. Parts had flaked away. On the second easel was a painting of an old man, a young woman, and a child. Peel examined the signature in the bottom right-hand corner: Rembrandt.

He turned to leave and found himself face-to-face with the stranger.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m‘s-s-sorry,” Peel stammered. “I thought you were here.”

“No you didn’t. You knew I was away, because you were watching me from your bedroom window when I left. In fact, you’ve been watching me since the summer.”

“I thought you might be a smuggler.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“The boat,” Peel lied.

The stranger smiled briefly. “Now you know the truth.”

“Not really,” said Peel.

“I’m an art restorer. Paintings are old objects. Sometimes they need a little fixing up, like a cottage, for example.”

“Or a boat,” said Peel.

“Exactly. Some paintings, like these, are very valuable.”

“More than a sailboat?”

“Much more. But now that you know what’s in here, we have a problem.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” Peel pleaded. “Honest.”

The stranger ran a hand over his short, brittle hair. “I could use a helper,” he said softly. “Someone to keep an eye on the place while I’m away. Would you like a job like that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m going sailing. Would you like to join me?”

“Yes.”

“Do you need to ask your parents?”

“He’s not my father, and my mum won’t care.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive.”

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Peel. What’s yours?”

But the stranger just looked around the room to make certain Peel hadn’t disturbed any of his things.

TWO

Paris

The stranger’s restless Cornish quarantine might have gone undisturbed if Emily Parker had not met a man called René at a drunken dinner party, which was thrown by a Jordanian student named Leila Khalifa on a wet night in late October. Like the stranger, Emily Parker was living in self-imposed exile: she had moved to Paris after graduation in the hope that it would help mend a broken heart. She possessed none of his physical attributes. Her gait was loose-limbed and chaotic. Her legs were too long, her hips too wide, her breasts too heavy, so that when she moved, each part of her anatomy seemed in conflict with the rest. Her wardrobe varied little: faded jeans, fashionably ripped at the knees, a quilted jacket that made her look rather like a large throw pillow. And then there was the face-the face of a Polish peasant, her mother had always said: rounded cheeks, a thick mouth, a heavy jaw, dull brown eyes set too closely together. “I’m afraid you have your father’s face,” her mother had said. “Your father’s face and your father’s fragile heart.”

Emily met Leila in mid-October at the Musée de Montmartre. She was a student at the Sorbonne, a stunningly attractive woman with lustrous black hair and wide brown eyes. She had been raised in Amman, Rome, and London, and spoke a half-dozen languages fluently. She was everything that Emily was not: beautiful, confident, cosmopolitan. Gradually, Emily unburdened all her secrets to Leila: the way her mother had made her feel so terribly ugly; the pain she felt over being abandoned by her fiancé; her deep-rooted fear that no one would ever love her again. Leila promised to fix everything. Leila promised to introduce Emily to a man who would make her forget all about the boy she had foolishly fallen for in college.

It happened at Leila’s dinner party. She had invited twenty guests to her cramped little flat in Montparnasse. They ate wherever they could find space: on the couch, on the floor, on the bed. All very Parisian bohemian: roast chicken from the corner rotisserie, a heaping salade verte, cheese, and entirely too much inexpensive Bordeaux. There were other students from the Sorbonne, an artist, a young German essayist of note, the son of an Italian count, a pretty Englishman with flowing blond hair called Lord Reggie, and a jazz musician who played the guitar like Al DiMeola. The room sounded like the Tower of Babel. The conversation moved from French to English, then from English to Italian, then from Italian to Spanish. Emily watched Leila moving about the flat, kissing cheeks, lighting cigarettes. She marveled at the ease with which Leila made friends and brought them together.

“He’s here, you know, Emily-the man you’re going to fall in love with.”

René. René from the south somewhere, a village Emily had never heard of, somewhere in the hills above Nice. René who had a bit of family money and had never had the time, or the inclination, to work. René who traveled. René who read many books. René who disdained politics-“Politics is an exercise for the feebleminded, Emily. Politics has nothing to do with real life.” René who had a face you might pass in a crowd and never notice, but if you looked carefully was rather good looking. René whose eyes were lit by some secret source of heat that Emily could not fathom. René who took her to bed the night of Leila’s dinner party and made her feel things she had never thought possible. René who said he wanted to remain in Paris for a few weeks-“Would it be possible for me to crash at your place, Emily? Leila has no room for me. You know Leila. Too many clothes, too many things. Too many men.” René who had made her happy again. René who was eventually going to break the heart he had healed.

He was already slipping away; she could feel him growing slightly more distant every day. He was spending more time on his own, disappearing for several hours each day, reappearing with no warning. When she asked him where he had been, his answers were vague. She feared he was seeing another woman. A skinny French girl, she imagined. A girl who didn’t have to be taught how to make love.

That afternoon Emily wound her way through the narrow streets of Montmartre to the rue Norvins. She stood beneath the crimson awning of a bistro and peered through the window. René was seated at a table near the door. Funny how he always insisted on sitting near the doorway. There was a man with him: dark hair, a few years younger. When Emily entered the bistro, the man stood and quickly walked out. Emily removed her coat and sat down. René poured wine for her.

She asked, “Who was that man?”

“Just someone I used to know.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jean,” he said. “Would you like-”

“Your friend left his backpack.”

“It’s mine,” René said, putting a hand on it.

“Really? I’ve never seen you carry it before.”

“Trust me, Emily. It’s mine. Are you hungry?”

And you’re changing the subject again. She said, “I’m famished, actually. I’ve been walking around in the cold all afternoon.”

“Have you really? Whatever for?”

“Just doing some thinking. Nothing serious.”

He removed the backpack from the chair and placed it on the floor at his feet. “What have you been thinking about?”

“Really, René-it was nothing important.”

“You used to tell me all your secrets.”

“Yes, but you’ve never really told me yours.”

“Are you still upset about this bag?”

“I’m not upset about it. Just curious, that’s all.”

“All right, if you must know, it’s a surprise.”

“For who?”

“For you!” He smiled. “I was going to give it to you later.”

“You bought me a backpack? How very thoughtful, René. How romantic.”

“The surprise is inside the backpack.”

“I don’t like surprises.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s been my experience that the surprise itself never quite lives up to the anticipation of the surprise. I’ve been let down too many times. I don’t want to be let down again.”

“Emily, I’ll never let you down. I love you too much.”

“Oh, René, I wish you hadn’t said that.”

“It happens to be the truth. Let’s eat something, shall we? Then we’ll take a walk.”

Ambassador Zev Eliyahu stood in the grand center hall of the Musée d’Orsay, using every diplomatic skill he possessed to hide the fact that he was bored to tears. Trim, athletic, deeply tanned in spite of the dreary Parisian fall, he crackled with a brash energy. Gatherings like this annoyed him. Eliyahu had nothing against art; he simply didn’t have time for it. He still had the work ethic of a kibbutznik, and between ambassadorial postings he had made millions in investment banking.

He had been talked into attending the reception tonight for one reason: it would give him an opportunity to have an unofficial moment or two with the French foreign minister. Relations between France and Israel were icy at the moment. The French were angry because a pair of Israeli intelligence officers had been caught trying to recruit an official from the Defense Ministry. The Israelis were angry because the French had recently agreed to sell jet fighters and nuclear reactor technology to one of Israel ’s Arab enemies. But when Eliyahu approached the French foreign minister for a word, the minister virtually ignored him, then pointedly engaged the Egyptian ambassador in a lively conversation about the Middle East peace process.

Eliyahu was angry-angry and bored silly. He was leaving for Israel the following night. Ostensibly, it was for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry, but he also planned to spend a few days in Eilat on the Red Sea. He was looking forward to the trip. He missed Israel, the cacophony of it, the hustle, the scent of pine and dust on the road to Jerusalem, the winter rains over the Galilee.

A waiter in a white tunic offered him champagne. Eliyahu shook his head. “Bring me some coffee, please.” He looked over the heads of the shimmering crowd for his wife, Hannah, and spotted her standing next to the chargé d’affaires from the embassy, Moshe Savir. Savir was a professional diplomat: supercilious, arrogant, the perfect temperament for the posting in Paris.

The waiter returned, bearing a silver tray with a single cup of black coffee on it.

“Never mind,” Eliyahu said, and he sliced his way through the crowd.

Savir asked, “How did it go with the foreign minister?”

“He turned his back on me.”

“Bastard.”

The ambassador reached out his hand for his wife. “Let’s go. I’ve had enough of this nonsense.”

“Don’t forget tomorrow morning,” Savir said. “Breakfast with the editorial staff of Le Monde at eight o’clock.”

“I’d rather have a tooth pulled.”

“It’s important, Zev.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be my usual charming self.”

Savir shook his head. “See you then.”

The Pont Alexandre III was Emily’s favorite spot in Paris. She loved to stand in the center of the graceful span at night and gaze down the Seine toward Notre-Dame, with the gilded église du Dôme to her right, floating above Les Invalides, and the Grand Palais on her left.

René took Emily to the bridge after dinner for her surprise. They walked along the parapet, past the ornate lamps and the cherubs and nymphs, until they reached the center of the span. René removed a small rectangular, gift-wrapped box from the backpack and handed it to her.

“For me?”

“Of course it’s for you!”

Emily tore away the wrapping paper like a child and opened the leather case. Inside was a bracelet of pearls, diamonds, and emeralds. It must have cost him a small fortune. “René, my God! It’s gorgeous!”

“Let me help you put it on.”

She put out her arm and pulled up the sleeve of her coat. René slipped the bracelet around her wrist and closed the clasp. Emily held it up in the lamplight. Then she turned around, leaned her back against his chest, and gazed at the river. “I want to die just like this.”

But René was no longer listening. His face was expressionless, brown eyes fixed on the Musée d’Orsay.

The waiter with the platter of tandoori chicken had been assigned to watch the ambassador. He removed the cellular phone from the pocket of his tunic and pressed a button that dialed a stored number. Two rings, a man’s voice, the drone of Parisian traffic in the background. “Oui.”

“He’s leaving.”

Click.

Ambassador Eliyahu took Hannah by the hand and led her through the crowd, pausing occasionally to bid good night to one of the other guests. At the entrance of the museum, a pair of bodyguards joined them. They looked like mere boys, but Eliyahu took comfort in the fact that they were trained killers who would do anything to protect his life.

They stepped into the cold night air. The limousine was waiting, engine running. One bodyguard sat in front with the driver; the second joined the ambassador and his wife in back. The car pulled away, turned onto the rue de Bellechasse, then sped along the bank of the Seine.

Eliyahu leaned back and closed his eyes. “Wake me when we get home, Hannah.”

“Who was that, René?”

“No one. Wrong number.”

Emily closed her eyes again, but a moment later came another sound: two cars colliding on the bridge. A minivan had smashed into the rear end of a Peugeot sedan, the asphalt littered with shattered glass, traffic at a standstill. The drivers jumped out and began screaming at each other in rapid French. Emily could tell they weren’t French-Arabs, North Africans perhaps. René snatched up his backpack and walked into the roadway, picking his way through the motionless cars.

“René! What are you doing?”

But he acted as though he hadn’t heard her. He kept walking, not toward the wrecked cars but toward a long black limousine caught in the traffic jam. Along the way he unzipped the bag and pulled something out of it: a small sub-machine gun.

Emily couldn’t believe what she was seeing. René, her lover, the man who had slipped into her life and stolen her heart, walking across the Pont Alexandre III with a machine gun in his hand. Then the pieces began falling into place. The nagging suspicion that René was keeping something from her. The long, unexplained absences. The dark-haired stranger at the bistro that afternoon. Leila?

The rest of it she saw as slow-moving half images, as though it were taking place beneath murky water. René running across the bridge. René tossing his backpack beneath the limousine. A flash of blinding light, a gust of fiercely hot air. Gunfire, screams. Someone on a motorbike. Black ski mask, two pools of black staring coldly through the eyeholes, damp lips glistening behind the slit for the mouth. A gloved hand nervously revving the throttle. But it was the eyes that captured Emily’s attention. They were the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

Finally, in the distance, she could hear the two-note song of a Paris police siren. She looked away from the motorcyclist and saw René advancing slowly toward her through the carnage. He expelled the spent magazine from his weapon, casually inserted another, pulled the slide.

Emily backpedaled until she was pressed against the parapet. She turned and looked down at the black river gliding slowly beneath her.

“You’re a monster!” she screamed in English, because in her panic her French had abandoned her. “You’re a fucking monster! Who the fuck are you?”

“Don’t try to get away from me,” he said in the same language. “It will only make things worse.”

Then he raised his gun and fired several shots into her heart. The force of the bullets drove her over the edge of the parapet. She felt herself falling toward the river. Her hands reached out, and she saw the bracelet on her wrist. The bracelet René, her lover, had given her just moments before. Such a beautiful bracelet. Such a terrible shame.

She collided with the river and slipped below the surface. She opened her mouth, and her lungs filled with frigid water. She could taste her own blood. She saw a flash of brilliant white, heard her mother calling her name. Then there was only darkness. A vast, silent darkness. And the cold.

THREE

Tiberias, Israel

Despite the events in Paris, the stranger might have managed to remain in seclusion but for the resurrection of the legendary spymaster Ari Shamron. It was not necessary to awaken Shamron that night, for he had long ago lost the gift of sleep. Indeed, he was so restless at night that Rami, the young head of his personal security detail, had christened him the Phantom of Tiberias. At first Shamron suspected it was age. He had turned sixty-five recently and for the first time had contemplated the possibility that someday he might actually die. During a grudging annual physical his doctor had had the audacity to suggest-“And this is just a suggestion, Ari, because God knows I’d never try to actually give you an order”-that Shamron reduce his daily intake of caffeine and tobacco: twelve cups of black coffee and sixty strong Turkish cigarettes. Shamron had found these suggestions mildly amusing.

It was only during an uncharacteristic period of introspection, brought on by his forced retirement from the service, that Shamron had settled on the causes of his chronic sleeplessness. He had told so many lies, spun so many deceptions, that sometimes he could no longer tell fact from fiction, truth from untruth. And then there was the killing. He had killed with his own hands, and he had ordered other men, younger men, to kill for him. A life of betrayal and violence had taken its toll. Some men go crazy, some burn out. Ari Shamron had been sentenced to remain forever awake.

Shamron had made an uneasy peace with his affliction, the way some people accommodate madness or terminal disease. He had become a night wanderer, roaming his sandstone-colored villa overlooking the Sea of Galilee, sitting on the terrace when the nights were fine and soft, staring at the lake and the moonlit expanse of the Upper Galilee. Sometimes he would slip down to his studio and engage in his great passion, repairing old radios-the only activity that completely released his mind from thoughts of work.

And sometimes he would wander down to the security gate and pass a few hours sitting in the shack with Rami and the other boys, telling stories over coffee and cigarettes. Rami liked the story of Eichmann’s capture the best. Each time a new boy joined the detail, Rami urged Shamron to tell it again, so the new boy would understand that he had been given a great privilege: the privilege of protecting Shamron, the Sabra superman, Israel ’s avenging angel.

Rami had made him tell the story again that night. As usual it had dredged up many memories, some of them not so pleasant. Shamron had no old radios in which to lose himself, and it was too cold and rainy to sit outside, so he lay in bed, wide-eyed, sorting through new operations, remembering old ones, dissecting opponents for frailty, plotting their destruction. So when the special telephone on his bedside table emitted two sharp rings, Shamron reached out with the relieved air of an old man grateful for company and slowly pulled the receiver to his ear.

Rami stepped outside the guardhouse and watched the old man pounding down the drive. He was bald and thick, with steel-rimmed spectacles. His face was dry and deeply creviced-like the Negev, thought Rami. As usual he wore khaki trousers and an ancient leather bomber jacket with a tear on the right breast, just below the armpit. Within the service there were two theories about the tear. Some believed the jacket had been pierced by a bullet during a reprisal raid into Jordan in the fifties. Others argued that it had been torn by the dying fingers of a terrorist whom Shamron garroted in a Cairo back alley. Shamron always insisted gruffly that the truth was much more prosaic-the jacket had been torn on the corner of a car door-but no one within the service took him seriously.

He walked as if he were anticipating an assault from behind, elbows out, head down. The Shamron shuffle, the walk that said, “Get the fuck out of my way or I’ll have your balls for breakfast.” Rami felt his pulse quicken at the sight of the old man. If Shamron told him to jump off a cliff, he’d jump. If the old man told him to stop in midair, he’d figure out some way to do it.

As Shamron drew closer, Rami caught sight of his face. The lines around his mouth were a little deeper. He was angry-Rami could see it in his eyes-but there seemed to be a hint of a smile across his arid lips. What the hell is he smiling about? Chiefs aren’t disturbed after midnight unless it’s urgent or very bad news. Then Rami hit upon the reason: the Phantom of Tiberias simply was relieved he had been spared another sleepless night with no enemies to fight.

Forty-five minutes later Shamron’s armored Peugeot slipped into the underground garage of a cheerless office block looming over King Saul Boulevard in northern Tel Aviv. He stepped into a private elevator and rode up to his office suite on the top floor. Queen Esther, his long-suffering senior secretary, had left a fresh packet of cigarettes on the desk next to a thermos bottle of coffee. Shamron immediately lit a cigarette and sat down.

His first action after returning to the service had been to remove the pompous Scandinavian furnishings of his predecessor and donate them to a charity for Russian émigrés. Now the office looked like the battlefield headquarters of a fighting general. It stressed mobility and function over style and grace. For his desk Shamron used a large, scarred library table. Along the wall opposite the window was a row of gunmetal file cabinets. On the shelf behind his desk was a thirty-year-old German-made shortwave radio. Shamron had no need for the daily summaries of the Office radio-monitoring department, because he spoke a half-dozen languages fluently and understood a half-dozen more. He could also repair the radio himself when it broke down. In fact, he could fix almost anything electronic. Once his senior staff had arrived for a weekly planning meeting to find Shamron peering into the entrails of Queen Esther’s videocassette player.

The only hint of modernity in the office was the row of large television sets opposite his desk. Using his remote controls, he switched them on one by one. He had lost the hearing in one ear, so he turned up the volume quite loud, until it sounded as if three men-a Frenchman, an Englishman, and an American-were having a violent row in his office.

Outside, in the chamber between Esther’s office and his own, Shamron’s senior staff had gathered like anxious acolytes awaiting an audience with their master. There was the whippetlike Eli from Planning and the Talmudic Mordecai, the service’s executive officer. There was Yossi, the genius from the Europe Desk who had read the Greats at Oxford, and Lev, the highly flammable chief of Operations, who filled his precious empty hours by collecting predatory insects. Only Lev seemed to have no physical fear of Shamron. Every few minutes he would thrust his angular head through the doorway and shout, “For God’s sake, Ari! When? Sometime tonight, I hope!”

But Shamron was in no particular hurry to see them, for he was quite certain he knew more about the terrible events that evening in Paris than they ever would.

For one hour Shamron sat in his chair, stone-faced, smoking one cigarette after another, watching CNN International on one television, the BBC on another, French state television on the third. He didn’t particularly care what the correspondents had to say-they knew next to nothing at this point, and Shamron knew he could put words in their mouths with one five-minute phone call. He wanted to hear from the witnesses, the people who had seen the assassination with their own eyes. They would tell him what he wanted to know.

A German girl, interviewed on CNN, described the auto accident that preceded the assault: “There were two vehicles, a van of some sort, and a sedan. Maybe it was a Peugeot, but I can’t be sure. Traffic on the bridge came to a standstill in a matter of seconds.”

Shamron used his remote to mute CNN and turn up the volume on the BBC. A taxi driver from the Ivory Coast described the killer: dark hair, well dressed, good-looking, cool. The killer had been with a girl on the bridge when the accident occurred: “A blond girl, a little heavy, a foreigner, definitely not French.” But the taxi driver saw nothing else, because he took cover beneath the dashboard when the bomb went off and didn’t look up again until the shooting stopped.

Shamron removed a scuffed leather-bound notebook from his shirt pocket, laid it carefully on the desk, and opened it to a blank page. In his small precise hand he wrote a single word.

GIRL.

Shamron’s gaze returned to the television. An attractive young Englishwoman called Beatrice was recounting the attack for a BBC correspondent. She described a traffic accident involving a van and a car that brought traffic on the bridge to a standstill, trapping the ambassador’s car. She described how the killer walked away from his girlfriend and drew a weapon from his bag. How he then tossed the bag beneath the undercarriage of the limousine and waited for it to detonate before calmly walking forward and killing everyone inside.

Then Beatrice described how the killer walked slowly toward the girl-the girl who seconds before he had been passionately kissing-and fired several bullets into her chest.

Shamron licked the tip of his pencil and below the word GIRL he wrote a name:

TARIQ.

Shamron picked up his secure telephone and dialed Uzi Navot, the head of his Paris station. “They had someone inside that reception. Someone who alerted the team outside that the ambassador was leaving. They knew his route. They staged an accident to tie up traffic and leave the driver with no way to escape.”

Navot agreed. Navot made it a habit to agree with Shamron.

“There’s a great deal of very valuable artwork inside that building,” Shamron continued. “I would suspect there’s a rather sophisticated video surveillance system, wouldn’t you, Uzi?”

“Of course, boss.”

“Tell our friends in the French service that we’d like to dispatch a team to Paris immediately to monitor the investigation and provide any support they require. And then get your hands on those videotapes and send them to me in the pouch.”

“Done.”

“What about the bridge? Are there police surveillance cameras covering that bridge? With any luck we may have a recording of the entire attack-and their preparation.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Anything left of the limousine?”

“Not much. The fuel tank exploded, and the fire consumed just about everything, including the bodies, I’m afraid.”

“How did he get away?”

“He hopped on the back of a motorcycle. Gone in a matter of seconds.”

“Any sign of him?”

“Nothing, boss.”

“Any leads?”

“If there are any, the Paris police aren’t sharing them with me.”

“What about the other members of the team?”

“Gone too. They were good, boss. Damned good.”

“Who’s the dead girl?”

“An American.”

Shamron closed his eyes and swore softly. The last thing he needed now was the involvement of the Americans. “Have the Americans been told yet?”

“Half the embassy staff is on the bridge now.”

“Does this girl have a name?”

“Emily Parker.”

“What was she doing in Paris?”

“Apparently she was taking a few months off after graduation.”

“How wonderful. Where was she living?”

“ Montmartre. A team of French detectives is working the neighborhood: poking around, asking questions, trying to pick up anything they can.”

“Have they learned anything interesting?”

“I haven’t heard anything else, boss.”

“Go to Montmartre in the morning. Have a look around for yourself. Ask a few questions. Quietly, Uzi. Maybe someone in her building or in a local café got a look at lover boy.”

“Good idea, boss.”

“And do me one other favor. Take the file photographs of Tariq with you.”

“You think he was behind this?”

“I prefer to keep my options open at this point.”

“Even if they got a look at him, those old photographs won’t be any help. He’s changed his appearance a hundred times since then.”

“Humor me.” Shamron jabbed at the winking green light on the telephone and killed the connection.

It was still dark as Shamron’s Peugeot limousine sped across the coastal plain and rose into the Judean Mountains toward Jerusalem. Shamron removed his spectacles and rubbed the raw red skin beneath his eyes. It had been six months since he had been pulled from retirement and given a simple mission: bring stability to an intelligence service badly damaged by a series of highly publicized operational blunders and personnel scandals. His job was to rebuild morale. Restore the esprit de corps that had characterized the Office in the old days.

He had managed to stem the bleeding-there had been no more humiliations, like the bungled attempt to assassinate a violent Moslem cleric in Amman that had been orchestrated by his predecessor-but there had been no stunning successes either. Shamron knew better than anyone that the Office had not earned its fearsome reputation by playing it safe. In the old days it had stolen MiGs, planted spies in the palaces of its friends and its enemies, rained terror on those who dared to terrorize the people of Israel. Shamron did not want his legacy to be an Office that no longer made mistakes. He wanted to leave behind an Office that could reach out and strike at will. An Office that could make the other services of the world shake their heads in wonder.

He knew he did not have much time. Not everyone at King Saul Boulevard had celebrated his return. There were some who believed Shamron’s time had come and gone, that Shamron should have been left in Tiberias to wrestle with his radios and his conscience while the torch was passed to the next generation. Certainly a man like Mordecai deserved to be chief after all those years slugging it out in the trenches of Operations, Shamron’s detractors had argued. Eli had the makings of a fine chief, they said. He just needed a bit more seasoning in the executive suite and he would be ready for the top job. Even Lev of Operations was thought to be suitable material, though Lev did let his temper get the better of him now and again, and Lev had made his share of enemies over the years.

Shamron was stuck with them. Because he was only a caretaker, he had been given almost no power to make changes among the senior staff at King Saul Boulevard. As a result he was surrounded by a pack of predators who would pounce at the first sign of weakness. And the volcanic Lev was the most threatening of all, for Lev had anointed himself Shamron’s personal Brutus.

Shamron thought: Poor little Lev. He has no idea who he’s fucking with.

“Zev Eliyahu was a personal friend of mine,” the prime minister said as Shamron took his seat. “Who did this to him?”

He poured coffee and slid the cup across the desk, his placid brown eyes fixed on Shamron. As usual Shamron had the feeling he was being contemplated by a sheep.

“I can’t say for certain, but I suspect it may have been Tariq.”

Just Tariq. No last name. None necessary. His résumé was engraved on Shamron’s brain. Tariq al-Hourani, son of a village elder from the Upper Galilee, born and raised in a refugee camp outside Sidon in southern Lebanon, educated in Beirut and Europe. His older brother had been a member of Black September, assassinated by a special unit led by Shamron himself. Tariq had dedicated his life to avenging his brother’s death. He joined the PLO in Lebanon, fought in the civil war, then accepted a coveted post in Force 17, Yasir Arafat’s personal bodyguard and covert operations unit. During the eighties he had trained extensively behind the Iron Curtain-in East Germany, Romania, and Moscow -and was transferred from Force 17 to the Jihaz el-Razd, the PLO’s intelligence and security apparatus. Eventually he led a special unit whose mission was to wage war on the Israeli secret services and diplomatic personnel. In the early nineties he split with Arafat over his decision to enter into negotiations with Israel and formed a small, tightly knit terror organization dedicated to one end: the destruction of Arafat’s peace process.

Upon hearing Tariq’s name, the prime minister’s eyes flashed, then resumed their calm appraisal of Shamron. “What makes you think it was Tariq who did this?”

“Based on the preliminary descriptions, the attack had all the hallmarks of one of his operations. It was meticulously planned and executed.” Shamron lit a cigarette and waved away the cloud of smoke. “The killer was calm and utterly ruthless. And there was a girl. It smells of Tariq.”

“So you’re telling me that you have a hunch it was Tariq?”

“It’s more than a hunch,” Shamron said, pressing on in the face of the prime minister’s skepticism. “Recently we received a report that suggested Tariq’s organization was about to resume its activities. You may remember that I briefed you personally, Prime Minister.”

The prime minister nodded. “I also remember that you discouraged me from giving the report wider circulation. Zev Eliyahu might be alive this morning if we had warned the Foreign Ministry.”

Shamron rubbed out his cigarette. “I resent the suggestion that the Office is somehow culpable in the ambassador’s death. Zev Eliyahu was a friend of mine as well. And a colleague. He worked in the Office for fifteen years, which is why I suspect Tariq targeted him. And I discouraged you from giving the report wider circulation in order to protect the source of that information. Sometimes that’s necessary when it comes to vital intelligence, Prime Minister.”

“Don’t lecture me, Ari. Can you prove it was Tariq?”

“Possibly.”

“And if you can? Then what?”

“If I can prove it was Tariq, then I’d like your permission to take him down.”

The prime minister smiled. “Take down Tariq? You’ll have to find him first. You really think the Office is ready for something like that? We can’t afford another situation like Amman -not now, not with the peace process in such a tenuous state.”

“The operation in Amman was poorly planned and disastrously executed, in part because of interference and unprecedented pressure from the man who was sitting in this office at the time. If you give me authority to go after Tariq, I assure you it will be a very different kind of operation, with very different results.”

“What makes you think you can even find Tariq?”

“Because I am better positioned to find him now than ever before.”

“Because of this source of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about this source.”

Shamron smiled briefly and picked at the thumbnail of his right hand. “It was a case I ran personally before I was told that my services were no longer required at King Saul Boulevard-a long-term penetration case, something that took years to unfold. Now, the source is involved in the planning and logistical side of Tariq’s organization.”

“Did the source know about Paris in advance?”

“Of course not! If the source had alerted me about Paris, I would have warned everyone necessary, even if it required pulling the source.”

“So do it,” the prime minister said. “Take Tariq down. Make him pay for Eliyahu and all the others he’s killed over the years. Take him down hard, and make certain he never gets up again.”

“Are you prepared for the repercussions of an assassination at this time?”

“There won’t be any repercussions if it’s handled properly.”

“The Palestinian Authority and their friends in Washington and Western Europe won’t look kindly on an assassination, even if the target is Tariq.”

“Then make sure you leave no fingerprints. Make certain your kidons don’t get caught, like that pair of bumbling amateurs that were sent to Amman. Once I sign the order, the operation is in your hands. You get rid of him any way you see fit-just get rid of him. The people of Israel will never allow me to make peace while Tariq or anyone else is running around killing Jews.”

“I’ll need the proper documentation to set things in motion.”

“You’ll have it by the end of the day.”

“Thank you, Prime Minister.”

“So who do you have in mind for the job?”

“I thought you had no intention of interfering.”

“I just want to know who you’re assigning the case to. I don’t believe that qualifies as interference.”

“I was thinking about Allon.”

“Gabriel Allon? I thought he left the Office after Vienna.”

Shamron shrugged; such things did not matter when it came to a man like Gabriel Allon. “It’s been a long time since anyone at the Office has handled a case like this. And they’ve generally fucked them up. But there’s one other reason why I want Allon. Tariq operates mainly in Europe. Allon is very experienced on the Continent. He knows how to get things done without making a racket.”

“Where is he now?”

“Living somewhere in England last time I heard.”

The prime minister smirked. “It’ll be easier for you to find Tariq than Gabriel Allon.”

“I’ll find Allon, and Allon will find Tariq.” Shamron pulled his lips into a fatalistic frown. “And then it will be done.”

FOUR

Samos, Greece

The ferry from Turkey arrived twelve hours late because of heavy seas in the Straits of Mycale. Tariq had never cared for boats-he hated the feeling of being surrounded by water with no route of escape. He stood at the bow, collar up against the night wind, watching the approach to Samos. In the moonlight he could see the peaks of the island’s two distinctive mountains: Mount Ampelos in the foreground and Mount Kerkis in the distance.

In the five days since the Paris assassination, he had worked his way southeast across Europe, changing identities and passports, subtly altering his appearance. Six times he changed automobiles. The last, a dark green Volvo station wagon, he left near the terminal in Kusadasi on the Turkish side of the strait. It had been collected by an agent from his organization.

He had seduced three women during his odyssey: a waitress in Munich, a hairdresser in Bucharest, and a hotel hostess in Sofia. He told each of them a different story. To the German girl he was an Italian fabric salesman on his way to Paris. To the Romanian girl he was an Egyptian trader hoping to do some business in Ukraine. To the Bulgarian hostess he was a Frenchman with rich parents who traveled and read books about philosophy. He made love to each of them differently. He slapped the German girl and was unconcerned about her satisfaction. He gave the Romanian many orgasms and a gold bracelet. The Bulgarian was a dark-haired girl with olive skin. She reminded him of girls from Palestine. They made love all night, until it was time for her to go back on duty. He was sad when she was gone.

The ferry slipped into the sheltered water of the harbor and tied up. Tariq disembarked and walked to a brightly lit taverna. Parked outside was a dark blue motor scooter with a smashed rearview mirror, just as he had been promised. Inside his coat pocket was the key. He strapped his overnight bag onto the back of the bike and started the engine. A moment later he was speeding along a narrow track toward the mountains.

He was not dressed for a night ride; his thin leather gloves, low-cut loafers, and black jeans were no match for the cold. Still, he opened the throttle and pushed the little bike as hard as it would go up a long hill at the base of Mount Kerkis. He slowed for a switchback, then opened the throttle again and raced through a vineyard spilling down the side of the hill into a little valley. Above the vineyard lay an olive grove and above the olive grove a line of towering cypress trees, silhouettes against a carpet of wet stars. The tang of cypress was heavy on the air. Somewhere, meat was cooking over a wood fire. The scent reminded him of Lebanon. Good to be out of Paris, he thought. Dull gray Paris of late autumn. Good to be back in the eastern Mediterranean.

The road turned to a pitted track. Tariq eased off the throttle. It was a stupid thing to do, driving so fast on an unfamiliar road, but he had taken to doing needlessly risky things lately. For the first time since leaving Paris, he thought of the American girl. He felt no remorse or guilt. Her death, while unfortunate, was completely necessary.

He opened the throttle again and raced down a gentle slope into a tiny valley. He thought about this need of his, this compulsion to be in the company of a woman during an operation. He supposed it came from growing up in the camps of Sidon. His father had died when Tariq was young, and his older brother, Mahmoud, was murdered by the Jews. Tariq was raised by his mother and his older sister. There was only one room in their hut at the camp, so Tariq and his mother and sister all slept in the same bed-Tariq in the middle, head resting against his mother’s bosom, his sister’s bony body pressed against his back. Sometimes he would lie awake and listen to the shelling or the rhythmic thump of the Israeli helicopters hovering over the camp. He would think of his father-how he had died of a broken heart with the keys to the family home in the Upper Galilee still in his pocket-and he would think of poor Mahmoud. He hated the Jews with an intensity that made his chest ache. But he never felt fear. Not when he was in his bed, protected by his women.

The whitewashed villa stood atop a rock outcropping on a craggy hillside between the villages of Mesogion and Pirgos. To reach it Tariq had to negotiate a steep path through an old vineyard. The smell of the last harvest hung in the air. He shut down the motor, and the silence rang in his ears. He put the bike on its kickstand, drew his Makarov pistol, and walked through a small garden to the entrance of the villa.

He slid the key into the lock, turned it slowly, testing the chamber for unnatural resistance. Then he opened the door and stepped inside, Makarov drawn. As he closed the door a light came on in the living room, illuminating a slender young man with long hair seated on a rustic couch. Tariq nearly shot him before he saw that the other man’s gun was lying on a table in front of him and his hands were raised in a gesture of surrender.

Tariq pointed the Makarov at the young man’s face. “Who are you?”

“My name is Achmed. Kemel sent me.”

“I nearly killed you. Then I’d never have known why Kemel sent you here.”

“You were supposed to come this morning. I had nowhere else to wait.”

“The ferry was delayed. You would have known that if you’d bothered to pick up the telephone and place a single call. What does he want?”

“He wants to meet. He says he needs to discuss something with you, and it’s too important to do it through the usual methods of communication.”

“Kemel knows I don’t like face-to-face meetings.”

“He’s made special arrangements.”

“Tell me.”

“Would you mind pointing that gun somewhere else?”

“I would, actually. How do I know you were really sent here by Kemel? Maybe your real name is Yitzhak or Jonathan. Maybe you’re an Israeli. Maybe you work for the CIA. Maybe Kemel has been compromised, and you’ve come here to kill me.”

The young man sighed heavily and began to speak. “Kemel wants to meet with you three days from now in a first-class compartment of a train between Zürich and Prague. You’re to join him there at any point during the journey when you feel it’s safe.”

“You have a ticket?”

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

Achmed reached into the pocket of his blazer.

Tariq lifted the Makarov. “Slowly.”

Achmed removed the ticket, held it up for Tariq to see, and dropped it onto the table. Tariq looked at the ticket briefly, then turned his gaze back on the boy seated in front of him. “How long have you been waiting at the villa?”

“Most of the day.”

“Most of the day?”

“I went into the village in the afternoon.”

“Whatever for?”

“I was hungry and I wanted to have a look around.”

“Do you speak Greek?”

“A little.”

How perfect, thought Tariq derisively. A young man who speaks a few words of Greek with an Arabic accent had been hanging around the port all afternoon. Tariq imagined a scenario: a busybody Greek shopkeeper gets suspicious about an Arab loitering in the village and calls the police. A policeman comes down to have a look for himself. Maybe he has a friend or a cousin who works in the Greek security service. Damn! It was a miracle he hadn’t been picked up the moment he stepped off the ferry. He asked, “Where are you planning to spend the night?”

“I thought I might stay here.”

“Out of the question. Go to the Taverna Petrino. It’s near the harbor. You can get a room there at a reasonable price. In the morning take the first ferry to Turkey.”

“Fine.”

Achmed leaned forward to pick up the gun. Tariq shot him twice in the top of the head.

Blood spread over the stone floor. Tariq looked at the body and felt nothing more than a vague sense of disappointment. He had been looking forward to a few days of recuperation on the island before the next operation. He was tired, his nerves were frayed, and the headaches were getting worse. Now he would have to be on the move again, all because the goddamned ferry had been held up by high seas and Kemel had sent a bumbling idiot to deliver an important message.

He slipped the Makarov into the waistband of his trousers, picked up the train ticket, and went out.

FIVE

Tel Aviv

Uzi Navot traveled to Tel Aviv the following morning. He came to Shamron’s office “black,” which meant that neither Lev nor any other member of the senior staff witnessed his arrival. Hanging from the end of his bricklayer’s arm was a sleek metal attaché case, the kind carried by businessmen the world over who believe their papers are too valuable to be entrusted to mere leather. Unlike the other passengers aboard the El Al flight from Paris that morning, Navot had not been asked to open the case for inspection. Nor had he been forced to endure the maddening ritualistic interrogation by the suntanned boys and girls from El Al security. Once he was safely inside Shamron’s office, he worked the combination on the attaché case and opened it for the first time since leaving the embassy in Paris. He reached inside and produced a single item: a videotape.

Navot lost count of how many times the old man watched the tape. Twenty times, thirty, maybe even fifty. He smoked so many of his vile Turkish cigarettes that Navot could barely see the screen through the fog. Shamron was entranced. He sat in his chair, arms folded, head tilted back so he could peer through the black-rimmed reading glasses perched at the end of his daggerlike nose. Navot offered the occasional piece of narrative background, but Shamron was listening to his own voices.

“According to museum security, Eliyahu and his party got into the car at ten twenty-seven,” Navot said. “As you can see from the time code on the screen, the Arab makes his telephone call at exactly ten twenty-six.”

Shamron said nothing, just jabbed at his remote control, rewound the tape, and watched it yet again.

“Look at his hand,” Navot said breathlessly. “The number has been stored into the mobile phone. He just hits the keypad a couple of times with his thumb and starts talking.”

If Shamron found this scrap of insight interesting or even remotely relevant he gave no sign of it.

“Maybe we could get the records from the telephone company,” Navot said, pressing on. “Maybe we could find out the number he dialed. That phone might lead us to Tariq.”

Shamron, had he chosen to speak, would have informed young Navot that there were probably a half-dozen operatives between Tariq and the French cellular telephone company. Such an inquiry, while admirable, would surely lead to a dead end.

“Tell me something, Uzi,” Shamron said at last. “What kind of food did that boy have on his silver platter?”

“What, boss?”

“The food, the hors d’oeuvres, on his platter. What were they?”

“Chicken, boss.”

“What kind of chicken, Uzi?”

“I don’t know, boss. Just chicken.”

Shamron shook his head in disappointment. “It was tandoori chicken, Uzi. Tandoori chicken, from India.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

“Tandoori chicken,” Shamron repeated. “That’s interesting. You should have known that, Uzi.”

Navot signed out an Office car and drove dangerously fast up the coast road to Caesarea. He had just pulled off a very nice piece of work-he had stolen a copy of the videotape from the Musée d’Orsay-but the only thing the old man cared about was the chicken. What difference did it make if it was tandoori chicken or Kentucky Fried Chicken? Maybe Lev was right. Maybe Shamron was past his prime. To hell with the old man.

There was a saying inside the Office these days: the further we are from our last disaster, the closer we are to our next. Shamron would step into the shit too. Then they’d shove him out again, this time for good.

But Navot realized he did care what the old man thought about him. In fact he cared too much. Like most officers his age, he revered the great Shamron. He’d done a lot of jobs for the old man over the years-dirty jobs no one else wanted. Things that had to be kept secret from Lev and the others. He’d do almost anything to get back in his good graces.

He entered Caesarea and parked outside an apartment house a few blocks from the sea. He slipped inside the foyer, rode the lift up to the fourth floor. He still had a key but chose to knock instead. He hadn’t called to say he was coming. She might have another man there. Bella had many men.

She answered the door dressed in faded jeans and a torn shirt. She had a long body and a beautiful face that seemed perpetually in mourning. She regarded Navot with a look of thinly veiled malice, then stepped aside and allowed him to enter. Her flat had the air of a secondhand bookstore and smelled of incense. She was a writer and a historian, an expert in Arab affairs, a sometime consultant to the Office on Syrian and Iraqi politics. They had been lovers before the Office sent Navot to Europe, and she despised him a little for choosing the field over her. Navot kissed her and pulled her gently toward the bedroom. She resisted, only for a moment.

Afterward, she said, “What are you thinking about?”

“Shamron.”

“What now?”

He told her as much as he could, no specifics, just the essence.

“You know how Shamron works,” she said. “He beats you down when he wants something. You have one of two choices. You can go back to Paris and forget about it, or you can drive up to Tiberias tonight and see what the old fucker has in mind for you now.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know.”

“Bullshit, Uzi. Of course you want to know. If I told you I never wanted to see you again, you wouldn’t give it a second thought. But if the old man looks at you cross-eyed, you fall to pieces.”

“You’re wrong, Bella.”

“About which part?”

“The first. If you told me you never wanted to see me again, I’d quit the Office and beg you to marry me.”

She kissed his lips and said, “I never want to see you again.”

Navot smiled and closed his eyes.

Bella said, “My God, but you’re a horrible liar, Uzi Navot.”

“Is there an Indian restaurant in Caesarea?”

“A very good one, actually, not far from here.”

“Does it serve tandoori chicken?”

“That’s like asking if an Italian restaurant serves spaghetti.”

“Get dressed. We’re going.”

“I’ll make something for us here. I don’t want to go out.”

But Navot was already pulling on his trousers.

“Get dressed. I need tandoori chicken.”

For the next seventy-two hours Ari Shamron acted like a man who smelled smoke and was frantically looking for fire. The mere rumor of his approach could empty a room as surely as if an antipersonnel grenade had been rolled along the carpet. He prowled the halls of King Saul Boulevard, barging unannounced into meetings, exhorting the staff to look harder, listen more carefully. What was the last confirmed sighting of Tariq? What had happened to the other members of the Paris hit team? Had there been any interesting electronic intercepts? Were they talking to one another? Were they planning to strike again? Shamron had the fever, Lev told Mordecai over a late supper in the canteen. The bloodlust. Best to keep him isolated from the uninfected. Send him into the desert. Let him howl at the moon until it’s passed.

The second break in the case came twenty-four hours after Navot delivered the videotape. It was the wispy Shimon of Research who made the discovery. He raced up to Shamron’s office in his sweatshirt and bare feet, clutching a file in his gnawed fingertips. “It’s Mohammed Azziz, boss. He used to be a member of the Popular Front, but when the Front signed on with the peace process, Azziz joined Tariq’s outfit.”

“Who’s Mohammed Azziz?” asked Shamron, squinting at Shimon curiously through a cloud of smoke.

“The boy from the Musée d’Orsay. I had the technicians in the photo lab digitally enhance the surveillance videotape. Then I ran that through the database. There’s no doubt about it. The waiter with the cell phone was Mohammed Azziz.”

“You’re certain it’s Azziz?”

“Positive, boss.”

“And you’re certain Azziz is now working for Tariq?”

“I’d stake my life on it.”

“Choose your words carefully, Shimon.”

Shimon left the file on his desk and went out. Shamron now had what he wanted: proof that Tariq’s fingerprints were all over the attack in Paris. Later that same evening, a bleary-eyed Yossi appeared at Shamron’s door. “I just heard something interesting, boss.”

“Speak, Yossi.”

“A friend of ours from the Greek service just passed a message to Athens station. A Palestinian named Achmed Natour was murdered a couple of days ago on the Greek island of Samos. Shot through the head twice and left in a villa.”

“Who’s Achmed Natour?”

“We’re not sure. Shimon is having a look around.”

“Who owns the villa?”

“That’s the most interesting thing, boss. The villa was rented to an Englishman named Patrick Reynolds. The Greek police are trying to find him.”

“And?”

“There’s no Patrick Reynolds at the London address on the rental agreement. There’s no Patrick Reynolds at the London telephone number either. As far as the British and Greek authorities can figure, Patrick Reynolds doesn’t exist.”

The old man was going away for a while-Rami could sense it.

Shamron’s last night was a restless one, even by the lofty standards of the Phantom of Tiberias. He spent a long time pacing the terrace, then killed a few hours tinkering with a vintage Philco radio that had arrived that day from the States. He did not sleep, made no telephone calls, and had just one visitor: a penitent-looking Uzi Navot. He spoke to the old man on the terrace for fifteen minutes, then quickly departed. On the way out his face reminded Rami of the look Shamron had worn the night of the Paris attack: part grim determination, part self-satisfied smirk.

But it was the garment bag that confirmed Rami’s worst fears: Italian manufacture, black leather, audacious gold-plated snaps and buckles. It was everything the old man was not. The Phantom could carry his kit in his back pocket and still have room for his billfold. Then there was the name on the tag dangling from the grip: Rudolf Heller, Bern address, Bern telephone number. Shamron was going under.

Rami was distant over breakfast, like the mother who picks a fight with her child the morning of a separation. Instead of sitting with him at the table, he stood at the counter and violently flipped through the sports section of Maa’riv.

“Rami, please,” said Shamron. “Are you reading it or trying to beat a confession out of it?”

“Let me come with you, boss.”

“We’re not going to have this conversation again. I know you may find this difficult to believe, but I know how to function in the field. I was a katsa long before your parents saw fit to bring you into this world.”

“You’re not as young as you used to be, boss.”

Shamron lowered his newspaper and peered at Rami over his half-moon glasses. “Any time you think you’re ready, you may have a go at testing my fitness.”

Rami pointed his finger at Shamron like a gun and said, “Bang, bang, you’re dead, boss.”

But Shamron just smiled and finished his newspaper. Ten minutes later Rami walked him down to the gate and loaded the bag into the car. He stood and watched the car drive away, until all that was left of Ari Shamron was a puff of pink Galilee dust.

SIX

Zürich

Schloss Pharmaceuticals was the largest drug company in Europe and one of the largest in the world. Its research labs, production plants, and distribution centers were scattered around the globe, but its corporate headquarters occupied a stately gray stone building on Zürich’s exclusive Bahnhof-strasse, not far from the shores of the lake. Because it was a Wednesday, the division chiefs and senior vice presidents had assembled in the paneled boardroom on the ninth floor for their weekly meeting. Martin Schloss sat at the head of the table beneath a portrait of his great-grandfather Walther Schloss, the company’s founder. An elegant figure, dark suit, neatly trimmed silver hair. At twelve-thirty he looked at his watch and stood up, signaling the meeting had concluded. A few of the executives gathered around him, hoping for one last word with the chief.

Kemel Azouri gathered up his things and slipped out. He was a tall man with a lean, aristocratic build, narrow features, and pale green eyes. He stood out at the Schloss empire, not only because of his appearance but because of his remarkable story. Born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, he had studied medicine briefly at Beirut University before coming to Europe in search of work. He was hired by Schloss and given a low-level job in the sales department. He proved so successful that within five years he was placed in charge of the company’s Middle East sales division. The job kept him on the road constantly, leaving him no time for a family, or a personal life of any kind. But Kemel was not troubled by the fact that he had never found the time to marry and have children. He had been rewarded in many other ways. A year ago he had been promoted to chief of the company’s sales division. Martin Schloss had made him a millionaire. He lived in a grand house overlooking the Limmat River and rode around Zürich in a chauffeured company Mercedes.

He entered his office: a large room, high ceiling, Persian rugs, pale Danish furniture, a magnificent view of the Zürichsee. He sat down at his desk and reviewed his notes of the meeting.

His secretary entered the room. “Good morning, Herr Azouri. I hope your meeting went well.”

She spoke to him in German, and he answered flawlessly in the same language. “Very well, Margarite. Any messages?”

“I left them on your desk, Herr Azouri. Your train tickets are there too, along with your hotel information for Prague. You should hurry, though. Your train leaves in half an hour.”

He flipped through the pile of telephone messages. There was nothing that couldn’t wait. He pulled on an overcoat, placed a fedora on his head, and tied a silk scarf around his throat. Margarite handed him his briefcase and a small overnight bag.

Kemel said, “I’d like to use the time on the train to catch up on some paperwork.”

“I won’t bother you unless it’s a crisis. Your driver is waiting downstairs.”

“Tell him to take the rest of the afternoon off. I’ll walk to Hauptbahnhof. I need the exercise.”

Snow drifted over the Bahnhofstrasse as Kemel made his way past the glittering shops. He entered a bank and quietly withdrew a large sum of cash from a personal numbered account. Five minutes later he was outside again, money tucked in a hidden compartment of his briefcase.

He entered the Hauptbahnhof and walked across the main hall, pausing to check his tail. Then he walked to a newsstand and bought a stack of papers for the ride. As he gave money to the clerk, he glanced around the terminal to see if anyone was watching him. Nothing.

He walked to the platform. The train was nearly finished boarding. Kemel stepped into the carriage and picked his way along the corridor toward his first-class compartment. It was empty. He hung up his coat and sat down as the train pulled out of the station. He reached into his briefcase and got out his newspapers. He started with the European edition of The Wall Street Journal, then the Financial Times, The Times of London, and finally Le Monde.

Forty-five minutes later the steward brought him coffee. Kemel started working his way through a batch of quarterly sales figures from the South American division-just another successful business executive, too driven to relax even for a moment. Kemel smiled; it was so far from the truth.

For years he had lived a double life, working for Schloss Pharmaceuticals while at the same time serving as an agent of the PLO. His job and respectable front had provided him an airtight cover, allowing him to travel the Middle East and Europe without raising the suspicion of security and intelligence services. The ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing, he moved among the most elite and cultured circles of Europe, worked with the Continent’s most powerful business leaders, socialized with the rich and famous. Yet all the while he was working for the PLO-maintaining networks, recruiting agents, planning operations, carrying messages, collecting money from donors across the Middle East. He used the shipping and distribution systems of Schloss to move weaponry and explosives into place for operations. Indeed, it always gave him a rather morbid sense of pleasure to think that packed among life-giving medicines were the instruments of murder and terror.

Now his situation was even more complicated. When Yasir Arafat agreed to renounce violence and enter into negotiations with the Zionists, Kemel became enraged and secretly joined forces with his old comrade Tariq al-Hourani. Kemel served as the chief of operations and planning for Tariq’s organization. He saw to the finances, ran the communications networks, secured the weaponry and explosives, and handled operational planning-all from his office in Zürich. They formed a rather unique partnership: Tariq, the ruthless terrorist and cold-blooded killer; Kemel, the refined and respectable front man who provided him the tools of terror.

Kemel closed his sales reports and looked up. Damn! Where is he? Perhaps something had gone wrong.

Just then the compartment door opened and a man stepped inside: long blond hair, sunglasses, Yankees baseball hat, rock music blaring from his headphones. Kemel thought: Christ! Who is this idiot? Now Tariq will never dare to show.

He said, “I’m sorry, but you’re in the wrong compartment. These seats are all taken.”

The man lifted one earpiece of his headphones and said, “I can’t hear you.” He spoke English like an American.

“These seats are taken,” Kemel repeated impatiently. “Leave, or I’ll call a steward.”

But the man just sat down and removed his sunglasses. “Peace be with you, my brother,” Tariq said softly in Arabic.

Kemel smiled in spite of himself. “Tariq, you bastard.”

“I was worried when Achmed failed to check in after I sent him to Greece,” Kemel said. “Then I heard a body had been found in the villa on Samos, and I knew you two must have spoken.”

Tariq closed his eyes, tilted his head slightly to one side. “He was sloppy. You should choose your messengers more carefully.”

“But did you really have to kill him?”

“You’ll find another-better, I hope.”

Kemel looked at him carefully for a moment. “How are you feeling, Tariq? You don’t-”

“Fine,” Tariq said, cutting him off. “How are things proceeding in Amsterdam?”

“Quite nicely, actually. Leila has arrived. She’s found you a woman and a place to stay.”

Tariq said, “Tell me about her.”

“She works in a bar in the red-light district. Lives alone on a houseboat on the Amstel. It’s perfect.”

“When do I go?”

“About a week.”

“I need money.”

Kemel reached into his briefcase and handed Tariq the envelope of cash. Tariq slipped it into his coat pocket. Then his pale gray eyes settled on Kemel. As always Kemel had the uncomfortable feeling that Tariq was deciding how best to kill him if he needed to.

“Surely you didn’t drag me all the way here to criticize me for killing Achmed and to ask about my health. What else do you have?”

“Some interesting news.”

“I’m listening.”

“The men from King Saul Boulevard are convinced you were behind the attack in Paris.”

“How brilliant of them.”

“Ari Shamron wants you dead, and the prime minister has given him the green light.”

“Ari Shamron has wanted me dead for years. Why is this so important now?”

“Because he’s going to give the job to an old friend of yours.”

“Who?”

Kemel smiled and leaned forward.

SEVEN

St. James’s, London

The sometimes-solvent firm of Isherwood Fine Arts resided in a crumbling Victorian warehouse in a quiet backwater of St. James’s called Mason’s Yard. It was wedged between the offices of a minor shipping company and a pub that always seemed to be filled with pretty office girls who rode motor scooters. The formal sign in the first-floor window stated that the gallery specialized in the works of the old masters, that the owner, Julian Isherwood, was a member in good standing of the Society of London Art Dealers, and that his collection could be seen by appointment only. Galleries in Venice and New York were also promised, though they had closed a long time ago-Isherwood simply hadn’t the heart, or the spare cash, to update the sign to reflect the shrinking fortunes of his empire.

Shamron arrived at twelve-thirty. His bomber jacket and khaki trousers had given way to a double-breasted suit, a silk shirt and tie of matching dark blue, and a gray cashmere overcoat. The steel-rimmed goggles had been replaced by fashionable tortoiseshell spectacles. On his wrist was a gold Rolex watch, on the last finger of his right hand a signet ring. The absence of a wedding band bespoke sexual availability. He moved with an easy, cosmopolitan saunter instead of his usual death charge.

Shamron pressed the cracked buzzer next to the ground-floor entrance. A moment later the sultry voice of Heather, Isherwood’s latest in a series of young and unhelpful personal assistants, came over the intercom.

“My name is Rudolf Heller,” Shamron said in German-accented English. “I’m here to see Mr. Isherwood.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, but Julian and I are very old friends.”

“One moment, please.”

A moment turned to two, then three. Finally the automatic door lock snapped back. Shamron went inside and mounted a short flight of groaning stairs. There was a large brown stain in the carpet on the landing. Heather was seated in the anteroom behind an empty desk and a silent telephone. Isherwood’s girls all followed a familiar pattern: pretty art school graduates seduced into his service with promises of apprenticeship and adventure. Most quit after a month or two when they became hopelessly bored or when Isherwood couldn’t seem to scrape together the cash to pay them.

Heather was flipping through a copy of Loot. She smiled and pointed into Isherwood’s office with the end of a chewed pink pencil. Isherwood flashed past the open door, all pinstripe and silk, speaking rapid Italian into a cordless telephone.

“Go inside if you dare,” said Heather in a lazy Mayfair drawl that secretly set Shamron’s teeth on edge. “He’ll be off in a minute. Can I get you anything to drink?”

Shamron shook his head and went inside. He sat down and surveyed the room. Bookshelves filled with monographs on artists, cloth-bound ledgers, old catalogs, a pedestal covered in black velvet for showing paintings to prospective buyers. Isherwood was pacing before a window overlooking Mason’s Yard. He paused once to glare at Shamron, then again to coax a groaning fax machine into action. Isherwood was in trouble-Shamron could sense it. But then he was always in trouble.

Julian Isherwood was very selective about the paintings he bought and even more selective about whom he sold them to. He slipped into a state of melancholia each time he watched one of his paintings walk out the door. As a result he was an art dealer who did not sell a great deal of art-fifteen pictures in a normal year, twenty in a good one. He had made a fortune in the eighties, when anyone with a few feet of gallery space and half a brain had made money, but now that fortune was gone.

He tossed the telephone onto his chaotic desk. “Whatever it is you want, the answer is no.”

“How are you, Julian?”

“Go to hell! Why are you here?”

“Get rid of the girl for a few minutes.”

“The answer will still be no, whether the girl’s here or not.”

“I need Gabriel,” Shamron said quietly.

“Well, I need him more, and therefore you can’t have him.”

“Just tell me where he is. I need to talk to him.”

“Sod off!” Isherwood snapped. “Who the hell do you think you are, barging in here like this and giving me orders? Now, if you’re interested in purchasing a painting, perhaps I can be of some assistance. If it’s not art that brings you here, then Helen will show you the door.”

“Her name is Heather.”

“Oh, Christ.” Isherwood sat down heavily into the chair behind his desk. “Helen was last month’s girl. I can’t keep them straight anymore.”

“Things aren’t going well, Julian?”

“Things haven’t been going well, but all that’s about to change, which is why I need you to crawl back under your rock and leave me, and Gabriel, in peace.”

“How about lunch?” Shamron suggested. “You can tell me your problems, and perhaps we can come to some mutually beneficial solution.”

“You never struck me as someone who was terribly interested in compromise.”

“Get your coat.”

Shamron had taken the precaution of booking a quiet corner table at Green’s restaurant in Duke Street. Isherwood ordered the cold boiled Canadian lobster and the most expensive bottle of Sancerre on the wine list. Shamron’s jaw clenched briefly. He was notoriously tightfisted when it came to Office funds, but he needed Isherwood’s help. If that required a pricey lunch at Green’s, Shamron would tickle his expense account.

In the lexicon of the Office, men like Julian Isherwood were known as the sayanim: the helpers. They were the bankers who tipped Shamron whenever certain Arabs made large transactions or who could be called upon in the dead of night when a katsa was in trouble and needed money. They were the concierges who opened hotel rooms when Shamron wanted a look inside. They were the car rental clerks who provided Shamron’s field agents with clean transport. They were the sympathetic officers in unsympathetic security services. They were the journalists who allowed themselves to be used as conduits for Shamron’s lies. No other intelligence service in the world could claim such a legion of committed acolytes. To Ari Shamron they were the secret fruit of the Diaspora.

Julian Isherwood was a special member of the sayanim. Shamron had recruited him to service just one very important katsa, which was why Shamron always displayed uncharacteristic patience in the face of Isherwood’s volatile mood swings.

“Let me tell you why you can’t have Gabriel right now,” Isherwood began. “Last August a very dirty, very damaged painting appeared in a sale room in Hull -sixteenth-century Italian altarpiece, oil on wood panel, Adoration of the Shepherds, artist unknown. That’s the most important part of the story, artist unknown. Do I have your full attention, Herr Heller?”

Shamron nodded and Isherwood sailed on.

“I had a hunch about the picture, so I piled a load of books into my car and ran up to Yorkshire to have a look at it. Based on a brief visual inspection of the work, I was satisfied my hunch was correct. So when this same very dirty, very damaged painting, artist unknown, came up for sale at the venerable Christie’s auction house, I was able to pick it up for a song.”

Isherwood licked his lips and leaned conspiratorially across the table. “I took the painting to Gabriel, and he ran several tests on it for me. X ray, infrared photography, the usual lot. His more careful inspection confirmed my hunch. The very dirty, very damaged work from the sale room in Hull is actually a missing altarpiece from the Church of San Salvatore in Venice, painted by none other than Francesco Vecellio, brother of the great Titian. That’s why I need Gabriel, and that’s why I’m not going to tell you where he is.”

The sommelier appeared. Shamron picked at a loose thread in the tablecloth while Isherwood engaged in the elaborate ritual of inspection, sniffing, sipping, and pondering. After a dramatic moment of uncertainty, he pronounced the wine suitable. He drank a glass very fast, then poured another.

When he resumed, his voice had turned wistful, his eyes damp. “Remember the old days, Ari? I used to have a gallery in New Bond Strasse, right next to Richard Green. I can’t afford New Bond Strasse these days. It’s all Gucci and Ralph Lauren, Tiffany and Miki-Bloody-Moto. And you know who’s taken over my old space? The putrid Giles Pittaway! He’s already got two galleries in Bond Street alone, and he’s planning to open two more within the year. Christ, but he’s spreading like the Ebola virus-mutating, getting stronger, killing everything decent in his wake.”

A chubby art dealer with a pink shirt and a pretty girl on his arm walked past their table. Isherwood paused long enough to say, “Hullo, Oliver,” and blow him a kiss.

“This Vecellio is a real coup. I need a coup once every couple of years. The coups are what keep me in business. The coups support all the dead stock and all the small sales that earn me next to nothing.” Isherwood paused and took a long drink of wine. “We all need coups now and again, right, Herr Heller? I suspect that even someone in your line of work needs a big success every now and again to make up for all the failures. Cheers.”

“Cheers,” said Shamron, tipping his glass a fraction of an inch.

“Giles Pittaway could’ve bought the Vecellio, but he passed. He passed because he and his boys didn’t bother to do their homework. They couldn’t authenticate it. I was the only one who knew what it was, because I was the only one who did my homework. Giles Pittaway wouldn’t know a Vecellio from vermicelli. He sells crap. High-gloss crap. Have you seen his stuff? Total crap! Complete and utter greeting card crap!”

Shamron, playing the part of Herr Heller, said it had been some time since he had visited the galleries of the infamous Giles Pittaway.

Isherwood leaned forward across the table, eyes wide, lips damp. “I need this Vecellio cleaned and ready for sale by the spring,” he said, sotto voce. “If it’s not ready, I’ll lose my buyer. Buyers don’t grow on trees these days, especially for a Vecellio altarpiece. I can count the number of potential buyers for a piece like this on the fingers of one hand. If my buyer gets cold feet, I may never find another. And if I can’t find another, my Vecellio becomes just another piece of dead stock. Burned, as we say in the trade. You burn agents, we burn our paintings. A picture gets snatched up, or it turns to dust in some art dealer’s storeroom. And once a painting’s been burned it’s worthless, just like your agents.”

“I understand your dilemma, Julian.”

“Do you really? There are maybe five people in the world who can restore that Vecellio properly. Gabriel Allon happens to be one of them, and the other four would never lower their standards to work for someone like me.”

“Gabriel is a talented man. Unfortunately, I require his talents too, and it’s something a bit more important than a five-hundred-year-old painting.”

“Oh, no you don’t! The sharks are circling, and my fickle bank is threatening to set me adrift. I’m not going to be able to find a backer quickly enough to save the ship. Giles Pittaway has backers! Lloyd’s Bank! When art and high finance start to intermarry, I say it’s time to head for the Highlands and build a bloody ark.” A pause. “And by the way, Herr Heller, few things in this life are more important than good paintings. And I don’t care how old they are.”

“I should have chosen my words more carefully, Julian.”

“If I have to liquidate I’ll lose my shirt,” Isherwood said. “I’d be lucky to get thirty pence on the pound for what my collection is really worth.”

Shamron was unmoved by his pleadings. “Where is he?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because I need him, Julian. We need him.”

“Oh, Christ! Don’t pull that shit with me, because it won’t work a second time. I’ve heard all your stories, and I know how they end. And by the way, Gabriel feels the same way. He’s through with your lot, too.”

“So tell me where he is. What harm would it do?”

“Because I know you too well to trust you. No one in his right mind would trust you.”

“You can tell me where he is, or we can find him ourselves. It might take a few days, but we’ll find him.”

“Suppose I tell you. What are you prepared to offer in return?”

“Maybe I could find a backer to keep you afloat until you sell your Vecellio.”

“Reliable backers are as rare as a reliable Vecellio.”

“I know someone who’s been thinking about getting into the art business. I might be able to speak to him on your behalf.”

“What’s his name?”

“I’m afraid he would insist on anonymity.”

“If Gabriel suspects I told you-”

“He won’t suspect a thing.”

Isherwood licked his bloodless lips.

EIGHT

Port Navas, Cornwall

The old man came while the stranger was away on his boat. Peel spotted him from his bedroom window as the man tried to guide a big Mercedes along the narrow lane overlooking the quay. He stopped at the foreman’s cottage, rang the bell, and knocked on the door. Peel could hear the old man’s knuckles striking the wood all the way across the creek: short, brutal blows. He pulled on a sweater and raincoat and dashed out of the cottage. A moment later he was standing behind the man, panting, face hot from exertion.

The old man said, “Who are you?”

An accent, Peel noted-like the stranger’s, but heavier.

“I’m Peel. Who are you?”

But the old man ignored this question. “I’m looking for the man who lives in this cottage.”

“He’s not here now.”

“I’m a friend. Do you know where he is?”

Peel said nothing, for the notion of the stranger having a friend who would appear unannounced was ludicrous. The old man looked toward the quay, then his gaze settled once again on Peel. “He’s out on his boat, isn’t he.”

Peel nodded. Something about the man’s eyes made the boy shiver.

The old man looked at the sky: pewter-colored clouds pressing down on the creek, thick and heavy with coming rain. “Rather unpleasant weather for sailing.”

“He’s very good.”

“Yes, he is. When will he be back?”

“He never says. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

“Actually, I think I’d like to wait for him.” He looked like a man who could wait a long time if he set his mind to it. “Is there someplace to get some coffee around here?”

Peel pointed toward the village.

But the old man didn’t go into the village for coffee. In fact he didn’t go anywhere. He just climbed into the Mercedes and settled himself behind the wheel like a statue. Peel walked to the point and made a base camp next to the oyster farm, staring down the river toward the sea, waiting for the stranger. By midafternoon there were whitecaps on the river, and a rainstorm was coming up. At four o’clock it was thoroughly dark. Peel was soaked, freezing half to death. He was about to give up his vigil when he spotted a cluster of soft blue running lights floating upriver through the mist. A moment later he heard the rhythmic rattle of an engine: the stranger’s fine wooden ketch, heading for home under power.

Peel switched on his flashlight and signaled the stranger. The ketch made a gentle turn to starboard, headed toward the point, slicing through black water. When the boat was within a few yards of the shore, the stranger shouted, “What’s wrong?”

“There’s a man waiting for you.”

“What does he want?”

“He says he’s a friend of yours.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“No.”

Peel heard his voice coming back at him from the other side of the creek.

“How did he look?”

“Unhappy.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“A bit like yours, only heavier.”

“Go home.”

But Peel didn’t want to leave him alone. “I’ll meet you at the quay and help you tie her up.”

“Just do as I say,” said the stranger, and he vanished below the deck.

Gabriel Allon entered the galley. In the cabinet above the propane stove he found his gun, a Glock 9mm semiautomatic. Gabriel preferred the midsized model, which was slightly less accurate because of the shorter barrel but easier to conceal. He pulled the square, chunky slide, chambering the first round, dropped the gun into the front right-hand pocket of his amber oilskin slicker. Then he doused the running lights and clambered back onto the deck.

He reduced speed as the ketch rounded the point and entered the quiet of the creek. He spotted the large Mercedes parked outside his cottage, heard the door opening and the tinny electronic warning chime. The interior light had been switched off. A professional. He reached into his pocket and wrapped his hand around the Glock, his finger outside the trigger guard.

The intruder crossed the quay and descended a short set of stone steps to the water level. Gabriel would have recognized him anywhere: the bullet head, the weather-beaten jaw, the distinctive march, like a fighter advancing toward the center of the ring. For an instant he considered turning around and heading back downriver into the squall, but instead he released his grip on the Glock and guided the boat toward the quay.

Shamron led himself on a restless tour of Gabriel’s studio, pausing in front of the Vecellio. “So this is Isherwood’s great coup, the lost Vecellio altarpiece. Imagine, a nice Jewish boy, working on a painting like this. I can’t understand why people waste time and money on such things.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. What did you do to poor Julian to make him betray me?”

“I bought him lunch at Green’s. Julian never was the stoic sort.”

“What are you doing here?”

But Shamron wasn’t ready to show his hand. “You’ve done very well for yourself,” he said. “This cottage must have cost you quite a bit of money.”

“I’m one of the most respected art restorers in the world.”

“How much is Julian paying you for fixing that Vecellio?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You can tell me, or Julian can tell me. I would prefer to hear it from you. It might bear some semblance to the truth.”

“One hundred thousand pounds.”

“Have you seen any of it yet?”

“We’re talking about Julian Isherwood. I get paid when he sells the Vecellio, and even then I’ll probably be forced to beat it out of him.”

“And the Rembrandt?”

“A quick job for Christie’s. It doesn’t need much work, a clean coat of varnish, maybe a bit of retouching. I haven’t finished the assessment yet.”

Shamron moved from the Vecellio to the trolley containing Gabriel’s pigments and oils. “Which identity are you using these days?”

“Not one of yours, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Italian?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“Rudolf Heller.”

“Ah, Herr Heller, one of my favorites. I trust business has been good for Herr Heller of late?”

“We have our good days and our bad days.”

Gabriel switched on the bank of fluorescent lights and turned the lights on Shamron.

Shamron squinted. “Gabriel, shut that thing off.”

“I know you prefer to work in the dark, Herr Heller, but I want to see your face. What do you want?”

“Let’s take a drive.”

They sped along a narrow road lined with tall hedgerows. Gabriel drove one-handed and very fast. When Shamron asked him to slow down, Gabriel pressed the accelerator even harder. Shamron tried to punish him with smoke, but Gabriel lowered the windows, filling the car with freezing air. Shamron signaled his surrender by tossing his cigarette into the darkness.

“You know about Paris?”

“I saw the television and read the papers.”

“They were good, the people who did Paris -better than anything we’ve seen for a long time. They were good like Black September was good. These were not stone throwers or boys who walk into a market with fifty pounds of Semtex strapped to their bodies. These were professionals, Gabriel.”

Gabriel concentrated on his driving and not the drumbeat cadence of Shamron’s speech. He didn’t like the reaction it had already provoked within him. His pulse had quickened and his palms were damp.

“They had a large team-ten, maybe twelve operatives. They had money, transport, false passports. They planned the hit down to the last detail. The entire thing was over and done in thirty seconds. Within a minute every member of the hit team was off the bridge. They all managed to escape. The French have come up with nothing.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

Shamron closed his eyes and recited a verse from Scripture: “And the enemy shall know I am Lord when I can lay down my vengeance upon them.”

“Ezekiel,” said Gabriel.

“I believe that if someone kills one of my people, I should kill him in return. Do you believe that, Gabriel?”

“I used to believe it.”

“Better yet, I believe that if a boy picks up a stone to throw at me, I should shoot him before it ever leaves his hand.” Shamron’s lighter flared in the dark, making shadows in the fissures of his face. “Maybe I’m just a relic. I remember huddling against my mother’s breast while the Arabs burned and looted our settlement. The Arabs killed my father during the general strike in ‘thirty-seven. Did I ever tell you that?”

Gabriel kept his eyes fastened on the winding Cornish road and said nothing.

“They killed your father, too. In the Sinai. And your mother, Gabriel? How long did she live after your father’s death? Two years? Three?”

Actually it was a little more than a year, thought Gabriel, remembering the day they laid her cancer-ridden body into a hillside overlooking the Jezreel Valley. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that revenge is good. Revenge is healthy. Revenge is purifying.”

“Revenge only leads to more killing and more revenge. For every terrorist we kill, there’s another boy waiting to step forward and pick up the stone or the gun. They’re like sharks’ teeth: break one and another will rise in its place.”

“So we should do nothing? Is that what you mean to say, Gabriel? We should stand aside and wring our hands while these bastards kill our people?”

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

Shamron fell silent as the Mercedes flashed through a darkened village.

“It’s not my idea, you know. It’s the prime minister’s. He wants his peace with the Palestinians, but he can’t make peace if the extremists are throwing tomatoes onto the stage from the balcony.”

“Since when did you become such a peacenik, Ari?”

“My own opinions are irrelevant. I am merely a secret servant who does what he is told.”

“Bullshit.”

“All right, if you want my opinion, I believe we will be no more secure after a peace deal than before it. If you want my opinion, I believe the fire in the Palestinian heart will never be extinguished until the Jews are driven into the sea. And I’ll tell you one other thing, Gabriel. I would much rather do battle with a sworn enemy than with an enemy who finds expediency in posing as a friend.”

Shamron rubbed the spot on the bridge of his nose where his elegant tortoiseshell glasses were pinching him. He had aged; Gabriel could see it at the edges of his eyes when he removed the little spectacles. Even the great Shamron was not immune to the ravages of time.

“You know what happened in Amman?” Shamron asked.

“I read about it in the newspapers. I also know what happened in Switzerland.”

“Ah, Switzerland,” Shamron said mildly, as if Switzerland were an unfortunate romance he would rather forget. “A simple operation, right? Bug the flat of a high-level Islamic extremist. Nothing to it. In the old days we could do something like this with our eyes closed. Place the device and get out before anyone realizes we’ve been there. But these idiots forget that the Swiss are the most vigilant people on earth. One old lady makes a telephone call, and the entire team is in the hands of the Swiss police.”

“How unfortunate.”

“And I’m on the next plane to Zürich begging our Swiss brethren not to make it public.”

“I would have enjoyed watching that.”

Shamron emitted a few grunts of laughter. Gabriel realized that in an odd way he had missed the old man. How long had it been since they had seen each other? Eight years? No, nearly nine. Shamron had come to Vienna after the bombing to help clean up the mess and make certain the real reason for Gabriel’s presence in the city remained secret. Gabriel saw Shamron once more after that: when he returned to Tel Aviv to tell him he wanted out.

“I’m not sure where it went wrong,” Shamron said. “Everyone thinks now that peace is at hand there are no more threats to our survival. They don’t understand that peace will only make the fanatics more desperate. They don’t understand that we will need to spy on our new Arab friends just as hard as when they were openly committed to our destruction.”

“A spy’s work is never done.”

“But these days all the smart boys do their compulsory service in the IDF and then run like hell. They want to make money and talk on their cell phones from the cafés of Ben Yehuda Street. We used to get only the best. Like you, Gabriel. Now we get the ones who are too stupid or lazy to make it in the real world.”

“Change your recruiting tactics.”

“I have, but I need someone now. Someone who can run an operation in Europe without permission from the host government and without it ending up on the front page of The Sunday Times. I need you, Gabriel. I need a prince. I need you to do for the Office what you are doing to that Vecellio. Our service has been damaged. I need you to help me restore it.”

“Five hundred years of dirt and neglect I can fix. Ten years of institutional incompetence is another matter entirely. Find someone else to find your terrorists and fix your Office. I’m already under contract.”

Shamron removed his glasses, breathed on the lenses, polished them with his scarf. “It was Tariq, by the way,” he said, inspecting the glasses in the weak dashboard light. “Did I mention that, Gabriel? It was Tariq who killed the ambassador and his wife in Paris. It was Tariq who made the Seine run red with the blood of my people. Tariq-your old friend.”

Gabriel slammed on the brakes, and Shamron’s spectacles careened against the windshield.

Gabriel drove through Lizard Town, then raced across a stark plain of windblown grass down to the sea. He pulled into a car park near the lighthouse and killed the engine. The car shuddered in the wind. He led Shamron along a darkened footpath down to the cliffs. The crashing of the waves filled the air. A seabird screamed at them. When the foghorn in the lighthouse groaned, Shamron spun around and braced himself as if he were preparing for a silent kill.

Lights burned in the little café on the edge of the cliffs. The staff was trying to close up, but Gabriel charmed them out of a couple of omelets and a pot of tea. Shamron, acting the role of Herr Heller, used a damp paper napkin to dab the dust of the footpath from his costly suede loafers. The girl who served them wore so many earrings and bracelets she sounded like a wind chime when she moved. There was something of Leah in her-Gabriel could see it; Shamron could see it too.

“Why do you think it was Tariq?”

“Did you hear about the girl? The American girl? The one he used for cover and then murdered in cold blood? Tariq always liked women. Too bad they all ended up the same way.”

“That’s all you have? A dead American girl?”

Shamron told him about the videotape, about the waiter who made a mysterious telephone call a minute before the ambassador and his wife stepped into the car. “His name is Mohammed Azziz. He told the catering company he was an Algerian. He’s not a waiter, and he’s not Algerian. He’s been a member of Tariq’s organization for ten years. He’s played a supporting role in several of Tariq’s operations.”

Shamron fell silent as the girl with the bracelets came to their table and added hot water to their teapot.

When she was gone he asked, “Do you have a girl?” He knew no boundaries when it came to asking personal questions. No corner of a man’s life, friend or enemy, was off limits.

Gabriel shook his head and busied himself with the tea-milk on the bottom, tea on top, English style. Shamron dumped three packets of sugar into his cup, stirred violently, and pressed on with his inquiries. “No little loves? No loose women that you lure onto your boat for a pleasure cruise?”

“No women on the boat. Just Peel.”

“Ah, yes, Peel. Your watcher.”

“My watcher.”

“May I ask why not?”

“No, you may not.”

Shamron frowned. He was accustomed to unimpeded access into Gabriel’s personal life.

“What about this girl?” Shamron cocked his head in the direction of the waitress. “She can’t take her eyes off of you. She doesn’t interest you in any way?”

“She’s a child,” said Gabriel.

“You’re a child.”

“I’m closing in on fifty now.”

“You look forty.”

“That’s because I don’t work for you anymore.”

Shamron dabbed omelet from his lips. “Maybe you won’t take another woman because you’re afraid Tariq will try to kill her too.”

Gabriel looked up as if he had heard a gunshot.

“Maybe if you help me take down Tariq, you can forgive yourself for what happened in Vienna. I know you blame yourself, Gabriel. If it wasn’t for Tunis, Leah and Dani would never have been in Vienna.”

“Shut up-”

“Maybe if you help me take down Tariq, you can finally let go of Leah and get on with your life.”

Gabriel stood up, tossed a crumpled ten-pound note onto the table, and went out. Shamron smiled apologetically at the girl and followed softly after him.

At the base of the cliff, on the little gray-sand beach at Polpeor Cove, stood the ruins of a lifeguard station slip. A bright wet moon shone through the broken clouds, and the sea held the reflection of light. Gabriel thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, thinking of Vienna. The afternoon before the bombing. The last time he had made love to Leah. The last time he had made love to anyone… Leah had insisted on keeping the blinds of their bedroom window open, even though it overlooked the courtyard of the apartment house and Gabriel was convinced the neighbors were watching them. Leah hoped they were. She found perverse justice in the idea of Jews-even secret Jews living as an Italian art restorer and his Swiss girlfriend-seeking pleasure in a city where they had suffered so much persecution. Gabriel remembered the damp heat of Leah’s body, the taste of salt on her skin. Afterward they had slept. When he awakened he found her sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him. “I want this to be your last job. I can’t take this anymore. I want you to leave the Office and do something normal. We can stay in Europe and you can work only as a restorer. Promise me, Gabriel.”

Shamron joined him on the beach.

Gabriel looked up. “Why did you go back to the Office? Why couldn’t you stay in Tiberias and live life? Why did you go running back when they called?”

“Too much unfinished business. I’ve never known anyone who left the secret world with all his affairs in order. We all leave behind bits of loose thread. Old operations, old enemies. They pull at you, like memories of old lovers. I also couldn’t bear to watch the Alsatian and Lev destroying my service any longer.”

“Why did you keep Lev?”

“Because I was forced to keep Lev. Lev made it clear to the prime minister that he would not go quietly if I tried to push him out. The last thing the prime minister wanted was a paralyzed Operations division. He got weak knees and made Lev untouchable.”

“He’s a snake.”

“The prime minister?”

“Lev.”

“A venomous snake, however, who needs to be handled carefully. When the Alsatian resigned, Lev believed he was next in the line of succession. Lev is no longer a young man. He can feel the keys to the throne room slipping through his fingers. If I come and go quickly, Lev may still get his chance. If I serve out my full term, if I linger and take a long time to die, then perhaps the prime minister will choose a younger prince as my successor. Needless to say, I do not count Lev as one of my supporters at King Saul Boulevard.”

“He never liked me.”

“That’s because he was envious of you. Envious of your professional accomplishments. Envious of your talent. Envious of the fact you earned three times as much in your cover job as Lev earned on his Office salary. My God, he was even envious of Leah. You’re everything Lev wanted to see in himself, and he hated you for it.”

“He wanted to be part of the Black September team.”

“Lev is brilliant, but he was never field material. Lev is a headquarters man.”

“Does he know you’re here?”

“He knows nothing,” Shamron said coldly. “And if you decide to come back, he’ll know nothing about that either. I’ll handle you personally, just like the old days.”

“Killing Tariq isn’t going to bring back Dani. Or Leah. Haven’t you learned anything? While we were busy killing the members of Black September, we didn’t notice that the Egyptians and the Syrians were preparing to drive us into the sea. And they nearly succeeded. We killed thirteen members of Black September, and it didn’t bring back one of the boys they slaughtered in Munich.”

“Yes, but it felt good.”

Gabriel closed his eyes: an apartment block in Rome ’s Piazza Annabaliano, a darkened stairwell, a painfully thin Palestinian translator named Wadal Abdel Zwaiter. Black September’s chief of operations in Italy. He remembered the sound of a neighbor practicing piano-a rather tedious piece he didn’t recognize-and the sickening thud of the bullets tearing through tissue and cracking bone. One of Gabriel’s shots missed Zwaiter’s body and shattered a bottle of fig wine that he had purchased moments earlier. For some reason Gabriel always thought of the wine, dark, purple and brown, flowing over the stone floor, mingling with the blood of the dying man.

He opened his eyes, and Rome was gone. “It feels good for a while,” he said. “But then you start to think you’re as bad as the people you’re killing.”

“War always takes a toll on the soldiers.”

“When you look into a man’s eyes while pouring lead into his body, it feels more like murder than war.”

“It’s not murder, Gabriel. It was never murder.”

“What makes you think I can find Tariq?”

“Because I’ve found someone who works for him. Someone I believe will lead us to Tariq.”

“Where is he?”

“Here in England.”

“Where?”

“ London, which presents me with a problem. Under our agreements with British intelligence, we’re obligated to inform them when we are operating on their soil. I would prefer not to live up to that agreement, because the British will inform their friends at Langley, and Langley will pressure us to knock it off for the sake of the peace process.”

“You do have a problem.”

“Which is why I need you. I need someone who can run an operation in England without arousing suspicion among the natives. Someone who can run a simple surveillance operation without fucking it up.”

“I watch him, and he leads me to Tariq?”

“Sounds simple, doesn’t it?”

“It’s never that simple, Ari. Especially when you’re involved.”

Gabriel slipped into the cottage and tossed his jacket onto the cot in the sitting room. Immediately he felt the Vecellio pulling at him. It was always this way. He never left the house without first spending one more moment before his work, never returned home without going directly to his studio to gaze at the painting. It was the first thing he saw each afternoon when he awoke, the last thing he saw each morning before he went to sleep. It was something like obsession, but Gabriel believed only an obsessive could be a good restorer. Or a good assassin, for that matter.

He climbed the stairs to his studio, switched on the fluorescent lamp, gazed at the painting. God, how long had he been at it already? Six months? Seven? Vecellio had probably completed the altarpiece in a matter of weeks. It would take Gabriel ten times that long to repair it.

He thought of everything he had done so far. Two weeks studying Vecellio himself. Life, influences, techniques. A month analyzing The Adoration of the Shepherd with several pieces of high-tech equipment: the Wild microscope to view the surface, X-ray photography to peer below the surface, ultraviolet light to expose previous retouching. After the assessment, four months removing the dirty, yellowed varnish. It was not like stripping a coffee table; it was tedious, time-consuming work. Gabriel first had to create the perfect solvent, one that would dissolve the varnish but leave the paint intact. He would dip a homemade cotton swab into the solvent and then twirl it over the surface of the painting until it became soiled with dirty varnish. Then make another swab and start all over again. Dip… twirl… discard. Dip… twirl… discard. Like swabbing the deck of a battleship with a toothbrush. On a good day he could remove a few square inches of dirty varnish.

Now he had begun the final phase of the job: retouching those portions of the altarpiece damaged or destroyed over the centuries. It was mind-bending, meticulous work, requiring him to spend several hours each night with his face pressed against the painting, magnifying glasses over his eyes. His goal was to make the retouching invisible to the naked eye. The brush strokes, colors, and texture all had to match the original. If the surrounding paint was cracked, Gabriel painted false cracks into his retouching. If the artist had created a unique shade of lapis lazuli blue, Gabriel might spend several hours mixing pigment on his palette trying to duplicate it. His mission was to come and go without being seen. To leave the painting as he had found it, but restored to its original glory, cleansed of impurity.

He needed sleep, but he needed time with the Vecellio more. Shamron had wakened his emotions, sharpened his senses. He knew it would be good for his work. He switched on the stereo, waited for the music to begin, then slipped his Binomags on his head and picked up his palette as the first notes of La Bohème washed over him. He placed a small amount of Mowolith 20 on the palette, added a bit of dry pigment, thinned down the mixture with arcosolve until the consistency felt right. A portion of the Virgin’s cheek had flaked away. Gabriel had been struggling to repair the damage for more than a week. He touched his brush to the paint, lowered the magnifying visor on the Binomags, and gently tapped the tip of the brush against the surface of the painting, carefully imitating Vecellio’s brushstrokes. Soon he was completely lost in the work and the Puccini.

After two hours Gabriel had retouched an area about half the size of the button on his shirt. He lifted the visor on the Binomags and rubbed his eyes. He prepared more paint on his palette and started in again.

After another hour Shamron intruded on his thoughts.

It was Tariq who killed the ambassador and his wife in Paris.

If it wasn’t for the old man, Gabriel would never have become an art restorer. Shamron had wanted an airtight cover, something that would allow Gabriel to live and travel legitimately in Europe. Gabriel had been a gifted painter-he had studied art at a prestigious institute in Tel Aviv and had spent a year studying in Paris -so Shamron sent him to Venice to study restoration. When he had finished his apprenticeship, Shamron had recruited Julian Isherwood to find him work. If Shamron needed to send Gabriel to Geneva, Isherwood used his connections to find Gabriel a painting to restore. Most of the work was for private collections, but sometimes he did work for small museums and for other dealers. Gabriel was so talented he quickly became one of the most sought-after art restorers in the world.

At 2:00 A.M. the Virgin’s face blurred before Gabriel’s eyes. His neck felt as though it were on fire. He pushed back the visor, scraped the paint from his palette, put away his things. Then he went downstairs and fell into his bed, still clothed, and tried to sleep. It was no good. Shamron was back in his head.

It was Tariq who made the Seine run red with the blood of my people.

Gabriel opened his eyes. Slowly, bit by bit, layer by layer, it all came back, as though it were depicted in some obscene fresco painted on the ceiling of his cottage: the day Shamron recruited him, his training at the Academy, the Black September operation, Tunis, Vienna… He could almost hear the crazy Hebrew-based lexicon of the place: kidon, katsa, sayan, bodel, bat leveyha.

We all leave behind bits of loose thread. Old operations, old enemies. They pull at you, like memories of old lovers.

Damn you, Shamron, thought Gabriel. Find someone else.

At dawn he swung his feet to the floor, climbed out of bed, and stood in front of the window. The sky was low and dark and filled with swirling rain. Beyond the quay, in the choppy water off the stern of the ketch, a flotilla of seagulls quarreled noisily. Gabriel went into the kitchen and fixed coffee.

Shamron had left behind a file: ordinary manila folder, no label, a Rorschach-test coffee stain on the back cover next to a cometlike smear of cigarette ash. Gabriel opened it slowly, as if he feared it might explode, and gently lifted it to his nose-the file room at Research, yes, that was it. Attached to the inside of the front cover was a list of every officer who had ever checked out the file. They were all Office pseudonyms and meant nothing to him-except for the last name: Rom, the internal code name for the chief of the service. He turned the first page and looked at the name of the subject, then flipped through a series of grainy surveillance photographs.

He read it once quickly, then poured himself more coffee and read it again more slowly. He had the strange sensation of walking through the rooms of his childhood-everything was familiar but slightly different, a bit smaller than he remembered, a bit shabbier perhaps. As always he was struck by the similarities between the craft of restoration and the craft of killing. The methodology was precisely the same: study the target, become like him, do the job, slip away without a trace. He might have been reading a scholarly piece on Francesco Vecellio instead of an Office case file on a terrorist named Yusef al-Tawfiki.

Maybe if you help me take down Tariq, you can finally let go of Leah and get on with your life.

When he had finished it a second time, he opened the cabinet below the sink and removed a stainless steel case. Inside was a gun: a Beretta.22-caliber semiautomatic, specially fitted with a competition-length barrel. The Office weapon of choice for assassinations-quiet, rapid, reliable. Gabriel pressed the release and thumbed the eight cartridges into the magazine. The rounds contained a light power loading, which made the Beretta fire extremely quietly. When Gabriel had killed the Black September operative in Rome, the neighbors mistook the lethal shots for firecrackers. He rammed the magazine into the grip and pulled the slide, chambering the first round. He had fine-tuned the spring in the blowback mechanism to compensate for the light power in the cartridges. He raised the weapon and peered through the sights. An image appeared before his eyes: pale olive skin, soft brown eyes, cropped black hair.

It was Tariq who made the Seine run red with the blood of my people. Tariq-your old friend.

Gabriel lowered the gun, closed the file, pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He had made himself a promise after the disaster in Vienna. He would leave the Office for good: no return engagements, no trips down memory lane, no contact with headquarters, period. He would restore his paintings and match wits with the sea and try to forget that Vienna ever happened. He had seen too many old-timers get pulled in whenever the Office had a lousy job and no one to do it-too many men who could never quite leave the secret world behind.

But what if it were true? What if the boy could actually lead him to Tariq?

Maybe if you help me take down Tariq, you can forgive yourself for what happened in Vienna.

By instinct he drifted upstairs to his studio and stood before the Vecellio, inspecting that evening’s work. He approved. At least something good had come of Shamron’s visit. He felt a pang of regret. If he went to work for Shamron, he would have to leave the Vecellio behind. He would be a stranger to the painting when he got back. It would be like starting over. And the Rembrandt? The Rembrandt he would return to Christie’s, with his deepest professional apologies. But not the Vecellio. He had invested too much time-put too much of himself into it-to let anyone else touch it now. It was his painting. Julian would just have to wait.

He slipped downstairs, extinguished the gas fire, packed away his Beretta, slipped Shamron’s file into a drawer. As he stepped outside, a gust of wet wind rocked him onto his heels. The air was oppressively cold, the rain on his face like pellets. He felt as though he were being pulled from a warm, safe place. The halyards snapped against the mast of his ketch. The gulls lifted from the surface of the river, screamed in unison, turned toward the sea, white wings beating against the gray of the clouds. Gabriel pulled his hood over his head and started walking.

Outside the village store was a public telephone. Gabriel dialed the number for the Savoy Hotel and asked to be connected to the room of Rudolf Heller. He always pictured Shamron in portrait over the telephone: the creviced face, the leather hands, the afflicted expression, a patch of bare canvas over the spot where his heart might be. When Shamron answered, the two men exchanged pleasantries in German for a moment, then switched to English. Gabriel always assumed telephone lines were monitored, so when he spoke to Shamron about the operation, he used a crude code. “A project like this will require a large amount of capital. I’ll need money for personnel, transportation, office space, apartment rentals, petty cash for unexpected expenses.”

“I assure you, capital will not be a problem.”

Gabriel raised the issue of Lev and how to keep the operation secret from him. “But if memory serves, the bank where you have obtained financing for such ventures in the past is now under the control of your competitors. If you approach the bank for financing now, you run the risk of alerting the competition to our intentions.”

“Actually, I have another source of capital that will permit me to raise the money for the project without the knowledge of the competition.”

“If I accept your proposal, I would demand complete authority to run the venture as I see fit. Keeping the project secret from the competition will require the use of independent contractors and other freelance personnel. These people cost money. I will require the independent authority to spend money and use resources as I deem necessary.”

“You have it, though overall operational control of the venture will remain with me in Geneva.”

“Agreed. Then there is the matter of my own compensation.”

“I’m afraid you are in a position to name your own price.”

“One hundred and fifty thousand pounds. If the job lasts longer than six months, I will be paid an additional one hundred thousand pounds.”

“Done. So, do we have an agreement?”

“I’ll let you know by the end of the day.”

But it was Peel, not Shamron, who received the news first.

Late that afternoon Peel heard noises on the quay. He raised his head from his schoolwork and peered out the window. There, in the dying twilight, he saw the stranger on the deck of his ketch, dressed in his yellow oilskin and a black woolen watch cap pulled so low that Peel could barely see his eyes. He was putting the ketch in mothballs: taking down sails, removing aerials, locking hatch covers. There was a look of grim determination on his face that Peel had never seen before. He considered running down to see if there was something wrong, but the stranger’s demeanor suggested he was in no mood for visitors.

After an hour the stranger disappeared into the cottage. Peel returned to his schoolwork, only to be interrupted again a few minutes later, this time by the sound of the stranger’s MG starting up. Peel rushed to the window in time to see the car rolling slowly up the lane, rain drifting through the beams of the headlights. He lifted his hand, more a gesture of surrender than a wave. For a moment he thought the stranger didn’t see him. Then the headlights flashed once and the little MG vanished.

Peel waited in the window until the sound of the motor died away. A tear spilled down his cheek. He punched it away. Big boys don’t cry, he told himself. The stranger would never cry for me. I won’t cry for him. Downstairs his mother and Derek were quarreling again. Peel climbed into bed and pulled his pillow around his ears.

NINE

Holborn, London

Looking Glass Communications, a multi-billion-dollar international publishing conglomerate, was headquartered in a modern office building overlooking New Square. It was owned by a six-foot-eight-inch, three-hundred-pound tyrant named Benjamin Stone. From his luxuriously appointed penthouse atop the headquarters, Stone ruled an empire of companies stretching from the Middle East to the United States. He owned dozens of newspapers and magazines as well as a controlling stake in the venerable New York publishing house Horton amp; McLawson. But the jewel in Stone’s crown was the tabloid Daily Sentinel, Britain ’s third-largest-selling national newspaper. Among the journalists of Fleet Street, the Daily Sentinel was known as the Daily Stone, because it was not unusual for the paper to publish two stories in a single day about Stone’s business and philanthropic activities.

What his competitors did not know was that Stone, a Hungarian Jew by birth, was also Ari Shamron’s most valuable sayan. When Shamron needed to insert a katsa into a hostile country on short notice, he could turn to Stone and the Daily Sentinel for cover. When a disgruntled former katsa tried to pedal a tell-all book about the Office, Shamron turned to Stone and his New York publishing house to knock it down. When Shamron wanted to plant a story in the Western press, he simply had to pick up a telephone and whisper into Benjamin Stone’s ear.

But Stone’s most valuable contribution to the Office was money. Among the senior staff at King Saul Boulevard, his charitable instincts had earned him the nickname Hadassah. Indeed, money looted from the pension funds of Stone’s companies had been used to bankroll Office operations for years. Whenever Shamron needed funds, Stone moved money through a series of dummy corporations and shell companies into one of Shamron’s operational accounts in Geneva.

Stone greeted Shamron that evening in the garish entrance hall. “Fuck’s sake!” he roared in his trademark baritone bellow. “Rudolf, my love! Didn’t realize you were in town. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I would have arranged something suitable. A banquet. A human sacrifice.” Stone laid his huge paw on Shamron’s shoulder. “Treasonous bastard! You’re lucky I’m here. Marvelous! Sensational! Come. Sit. Eat. Drink.”

Stone pulled Shamron into the sitting room. Everything was oversized, to accommodate Stone’s mass: deep chairs and couches of hand-tooled leather, a thick red carpet, large ottomans, and broad, low tables covered with fresh flowers and expensive trinkets given to him by other rich men. Stone forced Shamron into a chair as if he were about to interrogate him. He strode to the window, pressed a button, and the heavy curtains drew back. A window washer was working on the other side of the glass. Stone rapped his fat knuckle against the glass and gave the window washer a karate chop of a wave.

“I am the lord and master of all you see, Herr Heller,” Stone announced, admiring his view. “This man washes my window every day. Can’t stand a dirty window. Can you? If I ordered him to jump he’d do it and thank me for the suggestion later. Wouldn’t do it out of loyalty. Or respect. Or love. He’d do it because he’d be afraid not to. Fear is the only emotion that really matters.”

The window washer finished quickly and rappelled down the building. Stone lumbered across the room and opened the refrigerator behind the bar. He pulled out two bottles of champagne-he never opened just one-and slammed the door shut again as though he were kneeing a competitor in the balls. He tried to open one of the bottles, but his thick fingers were ill designed for the task of peeling foil and twisting bits of wire. Finally he threw back his head and roared, “Angelina!”

A terrified Portuguese maid entered the room, her eyes slightly averted.

“Take these,” Stone commanded, holding the bottles by the necks as though he were strangling them. “Remove the corks, bury them in ice. Bring food, Angelina. Mounds of food. Caviar, smoked salmon, and don’t forget strawberries. Big fucking strawberries. Big as a teenage girl’s titties.”

Stone fell into the corner of a couch and put his feet up on an ottoman. He removed his tie, twirled it into a ball, and tossed it over his shoulder onto the floor. He wore a striped shirt, handmade from Egyptian cotton, and maroon suspenders. The gold cuff links were nearly as big as the face on his solid gold wristwatch. Angelina came back into the room, deposited the tray of food, and fled. Stone poured champagne into flutes the size of beer glasses. He grasped a plum-sized strawberry, dipped it into the wine, and devoured it. He seemed to swallow it whole. Shamron suddenly felt like Alice. Everything was too big: the glasses, the strawberries, the slabs of smoked salmon, the giant-screen television silently playing an American financial news network, Stone and his ludicrous voice.

“May we drop the pretenses, Herr Heller?”

Shamron nodded. A technician from the Office’s London station had swept the apartment earlier that evening and found no listening devices.

“Ari, my friend!”

Stone plunged a toast point into a bowl of caviar. Shamron watched as three hundred dollars’ worth of beluga vanished down Stone’s gullet. For twenty minutes he treated Shamron to tales of his business ventures, his charitable activities, his most recent meeting with the Prince of Wales, his active and diverse sex life. He paused only once to scream for Angelina to bring another vat of caviar. Shamron sat with his legs crossed, watching the bubbles rise in his champagne. Occasionally he murmured, “How interesting,” or “That’s fascinating.”

“How are your children?” Stone blurted, unexpectedly changing course. Shamron had a son serving in the IDF in the security zone of southern Lebanon and a daughter who had moved to New Zealand, gone native, and never returned his calls.

“Fine,” said Shamron. “And you? How are the boys?”

“I had to fire Christopher last week.”

“So I heard.”

“My competitors had great fun at my expense, but I thought it showed courage. Every Looking Glass employee, no matter how far down the food chain, now knows I’m a tough bastard-but fair.”

“It was a bit harsh for coming five minutes late to a meeting.”

“The principle, Ari. The principle. You should use some of my techniques in your shop.”

“And Jonathan?”

“Gone to work for the competition. Told him to forget about his inheritance. Said he’d forgotten about it long ago.”

Shamron shook his head at the strange ways of children.

“So what brings you to my doorstep, Ari Shamron? Certainly not food. You’ve not touched the caviar. Or the champagne. Don’t just sit there. Speak, Ari.”

“I need money.”

“Can see that, can’t I? Not a complete idiot, after all. Practically have your cap in hand. What’s it for? Share, Ari. Entitled to it after everything I’ve done for you.”

“It concerns the incident in Paris,” Shamron said. “I’m afraid that’s all I can say.”

“Come on, Ari. You can do better than that. Give me something I can hang my hat on.”

“I need it to catch the terrorists who did it.”

“Now that’s more like it. How much this time?”

“Half million.”

“What flavor?”

“Dollars.”

“Down payment or payment in full?”

“Actually, I may need a line of credit, depending on how long the search for these boys lasts.”

“I think I can manage that. How would you like it delivered?”

“There’s a small shipping company based in Nassau called Carlton Limited. Its largest container vessel is in dry dock undergoing repairs. Unfortunately, the repairs are taking longer and costing much more than the owners of Carlton Limited projected. They need an infusion of cash quickly, or the ship may go down and take Carlton with it.”

“I see.”

Shamron rattled off the number of an account in the Bahamas, which Stone jotted down on a notepad with a gold pen.

“I can have a half million in the account by morning.”

“Thank you.”

“What else?”

“I need you to make another investment.”

“Another shipping company?”

“Actually, in an art dealership here in London.”

“Art! No, thank you, Ari.”

“I’m asking you as a favor.”

Stone let out a long sigh. Shamron could smell the caviar and champagne on his breath. “I’m listening.”

“I need you to make a bridge loan to a firm called Isherwood Fine Arts.”

“Isherwood!”

Shamron nodded.

“Julian Isherwood? Julie Isherwood? I have made my share of questionable investments, Ari, but lending money to Julie Isherwood is tantamount to setting it on fire. Won’t do it. Sorry, can’t help.”

“I’m asking you as a personal favor.”

“And I’m telling you that I won’t do it. Julie can sink or swim on his own.” Stone made another of his sudden course changes. “I didn’t know Julie was part of the brotherhood.”

“I didn’t say that he was.”

“Doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to give him any of my money. I’ve made my decision. End of discussion.”

“That’s disappointing.”

“Don’t threaten me, Ari Shamron. How dare you, after everything I’ve done for you? The Office wouldn’t have a pot to piss in if it weren’t for me. I’ve lost track of how many millions I’ve given you.”

“You’ve been very generous, Benjamin.”

“Generous! Christ! I’ve single-handedly kept you afloat. But in case you haven’t noticed, things aren’t going well at Looking Glass these days. I have creditors peering into every orifice. I have banks demanding their money before they’ll give me any more. Looking Glass is shipping water, love. And if Looking Glass goes down, you lose your unlimited supply of money.”

“I’m aware of your current difficulties,” Shamron said. “But I also know Looking Glass will emerge from this crisis stronger than ever.”

“Do you? Do you really? Shit! And what gives you that idea?”

“My complete confidence in you.”

“Don’t fox with me, Ari. I’ve given freely for many years and asked for nothing in return. But now I need your help. I need you to lean on your friends in the City to loosen the grip on their money. I need you to convince my Israeli investors that it might be best for all concerned if they forgive a substantial portion of my debt.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“And there’s one other thing. I print your black propaganda whenever you ask. Why don’t you toss me a real story every once in a while? Something with a little sizzle. Something that will sell newspapers. Show the money boys that Looking Glass is still a force to be reckoned with.”

“I’ll try to come up with something.”

“You will come up with something.” Stone shoved another fistful of caviar into his mouth. “Together we can move mountains, Ari. But if Looking Glass goes down, things could get quite nasty indeed.”

The following morning Shamron and Gabriel met in Hampstead Heath. They walked along a footpath bordered by two rows of dripping beech trees. Shamron waited for a pair of joggers to pass before speaking. “You have your money-five hundred thousand American. Usual account in Geneva.”

“And if I need more?”

“Then I’ll get you more. But the well is not bottomless. You were always careful about money. I hope nothing will change now that you have no reason to fear the accountants of King Saul Boulevard.”

“I’ll spend only what I need.”

Shamron changed the subject to communication. Because Lev controlled London Station, its staff and facilities were strictly off-limits to Gabriel. There were three London bodelim who were loyal to Shamron and could be counted on to do favors for Gabriel without telling the station chief. Shamron recited a series of telephone numbers. Gabriel committed them to memory. It was as if they were back at the Academy, playing silly memory games and awareness drills, like counting the steps on a flight of stairs, or recording the contents of a man’s closet, or the registration numbers of a dozen parked cars, with one brief glance.

Shamron moved on. The London Station secure cable could not be used for electronic communication because all transmissions would have to be cleared by the station chief. The London Station pouch could not be used for the same reason. In a pinch Gabriel could insert a field report into the diplomatic pouch addressed to Amos Argov. A friend in the Foreign Ministry would forward it to Shamron at King Saul Boulevard. But he should not abuse the privilege. Gabriel was also forbidden to use London safe flats, because London Station administered them and Lev kept careful track of their use.

Shamron rattled off a telephone number in Oslo that was routed through to his home in Tiberias. Gabriel was to treat the line as though it were insecure.

“If a face-to-face meeting is required, Paris will be the venue,” Shamron said. “We’ll use the sites from the Black September operation, for old times’ sake. Same sequence, same fallbacks, same body talk. Do you remember the Paris sites?”

“We’ll always have Paris.”

“Any questions?”

Gabriel shook his head.

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“You may leave the United Kingdom as quickly as possible,” Gabriel said.

Then he turned and walked quickly away.

TEN

St. James’s, London

“Listen, Julie,” said Oliver Dimbleby, leaning his thick head over the table and lowering his voice. “I know you’re in trouble. The whole street knows you’re in trouble. There’re no secrets down here, petal.”

Oliver Dimbleby was a pink man in a pink shirt who always seemed unduly pleased with himself. His hair was curly and sandy, with tiny horns over his ears. Isherwood and Dimbleby were as close as two competitors could be in the London art trade, which meant that Isherwood despised him only a little.

“You’ve lost your backing,” Dimbleby said. “You can’t give a painting away. You even lost this month’s girl, two weeks ahead of schedule. Oh, hell, what was this one’s name?”

“Heather.”

“Ah, yes, Heather. A shame to lose one like that, wasn’t it? I would have enjoyed getting to know Heather a bit better. She came to me before she went to Giles Pittaway. Lovely girl, but I told her I wouldn’t poach in a friend’s forest. Sent her packing. Unfortunately, she walked to New Bond Strasse and straight into the arms of the devil.”

“So I’m in trouble,” said Isherwood, trying to change the subject. “What’s your point?”

“It’s Pittaway, isn’t it? Killing all of us, what?” There was a bit of the Estuary in Dimbleby’s accent, and it had thickened with the two bottles of Burgundy they’d consumed over lunch at Wilton ’s. “Allow me to let you in on a little secret, old love. We’re all in the same boat. There are no buyers and no good pictures to sell even if there were. It’s all modern and the Impressionists, and nobody can afford to deal van Goghs and Monets except the big boys. I had a pop star come into my gallery the other day. Wanted something for his bedroom to pull together his duvet cover and Santa Fe carpet. I sent him to Selfridges. He didn’t see the humor in that, thick bastard. Father warned me to stay out of this business. Sometimes, I wish to Christ I’d listened to the old bugger. Giles Pittaway has sucked all the air out of the market. And with such crap. Jesus! But it’s crap, isn’t it, Julie?”

“Beyond crap, Oliver,” Isherwood agreed, and poured some more of the wine.

“I wandered past one of his galleries last week. Looked in the window. There was a very glossy, very shiny piece of shit by that French flower painter from Colmar. Oh, shit, what’s his name, Julie?”

“Are you referring to Jean-Georges Hirn?”

“Ah, yes, that’s it! Jean-Georges Hirn. Bouquet of roses, narcissi, hyacinth, nasturtium, morning glory, and other flowers. I call it chocolate box. Know what I mean, Julie?”

Isherwood nodded slowly and sipped his wine. Dimbleby took a deep breath and plunged on. “That very same night Roddy and I had dinner at the Mirabelle. You know how dinners with Roddy can be. Needless to say, when the two of us left the restaurant at midnight, we were flying very high indeed. Feeling absolutely no pain. Numb. Roddy and I wandered the streets for a while. He’s getting divorced, Roddy. Wife’s finally had enough of his antics. In any case, we soon found ourselves standing in front of the very same gallery owned by the venerable Giles Pittaway, in front of the very same piece of shit by Jean-Georges Hirn, bouquet of roses, narcissi, hyacinth, nasturtium, morning glory, and other flowers.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear the rest,” Isherwood moaned.

“Oh, but you do, petal.” Dimbleby leaned forward even closer and moistened his thin lips with his agile little tongue. “Roddy went crazy. Made one of his speeches. He was so loud they probably heard him in St. John’s Wood. Said Pittaway was the devil. Said his ascendancy was a sign the apocalypse was near. Marvelous stuff, really. I just stood on the pavement and applauded and tossed in a ”hear, hear‘ every now and again for good measure.“

Dimbleby drew even closer and lowered his voice to an excited whisper. “When he’s finished with the sermon, he starts beating his briefcase against the glass. You know that hideous metal creature he insists on carrying. After a couple of throws, the window shatters and the alarm starts to sound.”

“Oliver! Tell me this is just another one of your stories! My God!”

“Truth, Julie. Unvarnished truth. Not telling tall tales. I grabbed Roddy by the collar and we started to run like hell. Roddy was so pissed he can’t remember a thing.”

Isherwood was getting a headache from the wine. “Is there a point to this wretched story, Oliver?”

“My point is that you’re not alone. We’re all hurting. Giles Pittaway has us all by the balls, and he’s squeezing harder than ever. Mine are turning blue, for Christ’s sake.”

“You’re surviving, Oliver. And you’re getting fatter. You’re going to need a bigger gallery soon.”

“Oh, doing quite nicely, thank you very much. But I could be doing better. And so could you, Julie. No criticism intended, but you could move a few more pictures than you’re moving.”

“Things are going to turn around. I just need to hold on by my fingernails for a few weeks, and then I’ll be fine. What I need is a new girl.”

“I can get you a girl.”

“Not that kind of girl. I need a girl who can answer the phone, a girl who knows something about art.”

“The girl I was thinking about is very good on the phone and is a real work of art. And you’re not pinning your hopes on that piece you bought at Christie’s last summer?”

“Oliver, how did you-”

“Like I said, petal. There are no secrets down here.”

“Oliver, if there is a point to this conversation, please do come to it soon.”

“My point is that we need to band together. We need to form an alliance if we’re to survive. We’re never going to defeat the dreaded Giles Pittaway, but if we create a mutual defense pact perhaps we can live side by side in peace.”

“You’re babbling, Oliver. Try talking straight for once in your life, for God’s sake. I’m not one of your girlfriends.”

“All right, straight talk. I’m thinking about a partnership.”

“A partnership? What kind of partnership?”

“You want it straight?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The kind of partnership where I buy you out.”

“Oliver!”

“You’ve a nice gallery.”

“Oliver!”

“You’ve nice paintings down there in your vault.”

“Oliver!”

“You’ve even managed to retain something of a reputation. I would like to inspect your inventory and come to a fair price. Enough money for you to clear away your debt. Then I’d like to burn all your dead stock, get something for it, and start over. You can work for me. I’ll pay you a generous salary, plus commission. You can do quite nicely, Julie.”

“Work for you? Are you completely insane? Oliver, how dare you?”

“Don’t get your back up. Don’t get your pride up. It’s business, not personal. You’re drowning, Julian. I’m throwing you a lifeline. Don’t be a fool. Take the bloody thing.”

But Isherwood was getting to his feet and digging through his pockets for money.

“Julian, please. Keep your money. It’s my party. Don’t behave like this.”

“Piss off!” Isherwood hurled a pair of twenty-pound notes toward Dimbleby’s pink face. “How dare you, Oliver! Really!”

He stormed out of the restaurant and walked back to the gallery. So, the jackals of St. James’s were circling, and fat Oliver Dimbleby wanted the biggest piece of the carcass for himself. Buy me out, Oliver! Imagine the nerve! Imagine me working for that tubby little misogynist! He had half a mind to call Giles Pittaway and tell him the story about the broken window.

As Isherwood marched across Mason’s Yard, he vowed not to surrender without a fight. But in order to fight he needed a clean Vecellio, and for that he needed Gabriel. He had to find him before he fell under Shamron’s spell and was gone forever. He walked up the stairs and let himself into the gallery. It was terribly depressing to be alone. He was used to seeing a pretty girl behind the desk when he came back to work after lunch. He sat down at his desk, found Gabriel’s number in his telephone book, dialed the number, let it ring a dozen times, slammed down the receiver. Maybe he’s just gone to the village. Or maybe he’s out on that bloody boat of his.

Or maybe Shamron has already got to him.

“Shit!” he said softly.

He left the gallery, flagged down a taxi on Piccadilly, rode up to Great Russell Street. He paid off the cab a few blocks from the British Museum and stepped through the doorway of the L. Cornellissen amp; Son art supplies shop. He felt strangely calm as he stood on the scuffed wooden floor, surrounded by the varnished shelves filled with paints, palettes, paper, canvases, brushes, and charcoal pencils.

A flaxen angel called Penelope smiled at him over the counter.

“Hullo, Pen.”

“Julian, super,” she breathed. “How are you? God, but you look all in.”

“Lunch with Oliver Dimbleby.” No other explanation was necessary. “Listen, I was wondering if you’ve seen our friend. He’s not answering his phone, and I’m starting to think he’s wandered off the edge of a cliff down there in Cornwall.”

“Unfortunately, I haven’t been fortunate enough to lay eyes on that lovely man in quite some time.”

“Anyone else in the shop heard from him?”

“Hold on. I’ll check.”

Penelope asked Margaret, and Margaret asked Sherman, and Sherman asked Tricia, and on it went until a disembodied male voice from deep in the shop-the acrylic paint and pencil section judging by the sound of it-announced solemnly, “I spoke to him just this morning.”

“Mind telling me what he wanted?” said Isherwood to the ceiling.

“To cancel his monthly shipment of supplies.”

“How many monthly shipments exactly?”

“Every monthly until further notice.”

“Did he say why?”

“Does he ever, darling?”

Next morning Isherwood canceled his appointments for the rest of the week and hired a car. For five hours he sped along the motorways. Westward to Bristol. Southward along the Channel. Then the long haul down through Devon and Cornwall. Weather as volatile as Isherwood’s mood, marbles of rain one moment, weak white winter sun the next. The wind was constant, though. So much wind Isherwood had trouble keeping the little Ford Escort attached to the road. He ate lunch while he drove and stopped only three times-once for petrol, once for a piss, and a third time on the Dartmoor when his car struck a seabird. He picked up the corpse, using an empty plastic sandwich bag to protect his fingers, and said a brief Jewish prayer for the dead before ceremoniously tossing the bird into the heather.

He arrived at Gabriel’s cottage shortly before three o’clock. Gabriel’s boat was covered in a tarpaulin. He crossed the lane and rang the bell. He rang it a second time, then hammered on the door, then tried the latch. Locked.

He peered through the paned glass into a spotless kitchen. Gabriel was never one for food-throw him a scrap of bread and a few grains of rice and he could walk another fifty miles-but even by Gabriel’s standards the kitchen was exceptionally clean and free of supplies. He was gone, Isherwood concluded. Gone for a very long time.

He entered the back garden and walked along the edge of the cottage, trying each of the windows on the off chance that Gabriel had forgotten to lock one. Not Gabriel’s style.

He retraced his steps and stood on the quay again. Gunpowder clouds were rolling up the river from the sea. A fat ball of rain struck him in the center of the forehead and rolled down the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. He removed them and the river scene blurred. He dug a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his face, and put the glasses back on.

When his surroundings came back into focus, he discovered a young boy standing a few feet away. He seemed to have come out of nowhere, like a cat stalking prey. Isherwood had never had children and was terrible at placing ages. He guessed that the pinched-faced lad was eleven or twelve.

The boy said, “Why are you sneaking around that cottage?”

“I’m not sneaking, and who the bloody hell are you?”

“I’m Peel. Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of the man who lives there. My name is Julian.”

Isherwood held out his hand, but the boy just stood there, body rigid and coiled.

“He never mentioned he had a friend named Julian.”

“He doesn’t mention a lot of things.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk to him.”

“He’s away.”

“I can see that. Do you know where he is?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Know when he’ll be back?”

“Didn’t say.”

The rain started to come down harder. The boy remained still. Isherwood held a hand over his head and turned to look at the cottage. “Do you know what he does for a living?” Isherwood asked.

Peel nodded.

“Does anyone else in the village?”

Peel shook his head.

“He works for me,” Isherwood said, as if he were confessing some misdeed. “I own the painting he’s restoring.”

“The Rembrandt or the Vecellio?”

Isherwood smiled and said, “The Vecellio, my dear fellow.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Indeed, it is.”

They stood side by side for a moment, oblivious of the rain. Isherwood saw something of himself in Gabriel’s miniature sentinel. Another Gabriel refugee, another piece of wreckage adrift in Gabriel’s wake. Another damaged soul in need of restoration by Gabriel’s skilled hands.

“Who took him?” Isherwood finally asked.

“The bald man who walked like a soldier. Do you know him?”

“Unfortunately, I do.” Isherwood smiled at Peel. “Are you hungry?”

Peel nodded.

“Is there someplace in the village to get some tea and sweets?”

“And a pastie,” Peel said. “Do you like sausage pasties?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever tried one, but there’s no time like the present. Should you ask your parents for permission first?”

Peel shook his head. “He’s not my dad, and my mum won’t care.”

Ari Shamron arrived at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv late the following evening. Rami was waiting at the gate. He shepherded Shamron through the arrivals area into a secure room reserved for Office personnel and special guests. Shamron stripped off his European business suit and pulled on his khakis and bomber jacket.

“The prime minister wants to see you tonight, Boss.”

Shamron thought: So much for keeping his nose out of the operation.

They rode into the hills toward Jerusalem. Shamron passed the time by leafing through a stack of paperwork that had piled up in his brief absence.

As usual there was a crisis in the prime minister’s diverse coalition. To reach his office Shamron first had to negotiate a smoky corridor filled with feuding politicians.

The prime minister listened raptly as Shamron brought him up-to-date. He was by nature a schemer. He had begun his career in the cutthroat atmosphere of academia, then moved to the hornets’ nest at the Foreign Ministry. By the time he entered the political arena, he was well-versed in the black arts of bureaucratic treachery. His meteoric rise through the party ranks was attributed to his powerful intellect and his willingness to resort to subterfuge, misdirection, and outright blackmail to get what he wanted. In Shamron he saw a kindred spirit-a man who would stop at nothing if he believed his cause was right.

“There’s only one problem,” Shamron said.

The prime minister glanced at the ceiling impatiently. He was fond of saying, “Bring me solutions, not problems.” Shamron had an innate distrust of men who lived by catchy maxims.

“Benjamin Stone.”

“What now?”

“His business is in terrible shape. He’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Peter’s friends are getting upset about it.”

“Will it affect us?”

“If he goes under quietly, we’ll just miss his money. But if he goes under in a messy way, he could make things uncomfortable for us. I’m afraid he knows too much.”

“Benjamin Stone never does anything quietly.”

“Point taken.”

“What about those lovely home movies you made of him last year at the King David?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time, but Stone has developed a rather high threshold for public embarrassment. I’m not sure he’s going to be terribly upset if the world sees him utilizing the services of an Israeli prostitute.”

“The politicians outside my door are my problem,” the prime minister said. “But I’m afraid that Benjamin Stone is yours. Deal with him as you see fit.”