The Kill Artist

THIRTY-FIVE

Before the Catastrophe, Daoud al-Hourani lived in the Upper Galilee. He was a muktar and the richest man in the village. He owned livestock-several head of cattle, many goats, and a large flock of sheep-as well as a grove of lemon, orange, and olive trees. When it was time to pick the fruit, he and the other village elders organized a communal harvest. The family lived in a whitewashed house with cool tile floors and fine rugs and cushions. His wife bore him five daughters but only one son, Mahmoud.

Daoud al-Hourani kept up good relations with the Jews who had settled on land near the village. When the Jews’ well became fouled, he drafted men from the village to help them dig a new one. When several Arabs in the village fell sick with malaria, Jews from the settlement came and drained a nearby swamp. Daoud al-Hourani learned to speak Hebrew. When one of his daughters fell in love with a Jewish man from the settlement, he permitted them to marry.

Then came the war, and then the Catastrophe. The al-Hourani clan, along with most of the Arabs of the Upper Galilee, fled across the border into Lebanon and settled in a refugee camp near Sidon. The camp itself was organized much like the villages of the Upper Galilee, and Daoud al-Hourani retained his status as an elder and a respected man, even though his land had been taken and his animals lost. His large whitewashed home was replaced by a cramped tent, broiling in the heat of summer, freezing and porous in the cold rains of winter. In the evenings, the men sat outside the tents and told stories of Palestine. Daoud al-Hourani assured his people that the exile would only be temporary-that the Arab armies would gather themselves and hurl the Jews into the sea.

But the Arab armies didn’t gather themselves, and they didn’t try to hurl the Jews into the sea. At the camp in Sidon, the tents turned to tattered rags, only to be replaced by crude huts, with open sewers. Slowly, as the years passed, Daoud al-Hourani began to lose influence over his villagers. He had told them to be patient, but their patience had gone unrewarded. Indeed, the plight of the Palestinians seemed only to worsen.

During those first awful years in the camp, there was only one piece of joyous news. Daoud al-Hourani’s wife became pregnant, even though she had reached the age when most women can no longer bear children. In the spring of that year, five years to the day after the al-Hourani clan fled its home in the Upper Galilee, she gave birth to a son in the infirmary of the camp. Daoud al-Hourani called the boy Tariq.

Branches of the al-Hourani clan were scattered throughout the diaspora. Some were across the border in Syria, some in camps in Jordan. A few, including al-Hourani’s brother, had managed to make it to Cairo. A few years after the birth of Tariq, Daoud al-Hourani’s brother died. He wished to attend his brother’s funeral, so he traveled to Beirut and obtained the necessary visas and permits to make the journey. Because he was a Palestinian, he had no passport. The following day he boarded a flight for Cairo but was turned back at the airport by a customs official who declared his papers were not in order. He returned to Beirut, but an immigration official denied him permission to reenter Lebanon. He was locked in a detention room at the airport, with no food or water.

A few hours later a dog was placed in the room. It had arrived unaccompanied on a flight from London, and, like Daoud al-Hourani, its papers had been challenged by Lebanese immigration officials. But one hour later a senior customs officer appeared and led the dog away. The animal had been granted special dispensation to enter the country.

Finally, after a week, Daoud al-Hourani was allowed to leave the airport and return to the camp at Sidon. That night, as the men sat around the fires, he gathered his sons to his side and told them of his ordeal.

“I asked our people to be patient. I promised them that the Arabs would come to our rescue, but here we are, many years later, and we are still in the camps. The Arabs treat us worse than the Jews. The Arabs treat us worse than dogs. The time for patience has ended. It is time to fight.”

Tariq was too young to fight; he was still just a boy. But Mahmoud was nearly twenty now, and he was ready to take up arms against the Jews. That night he joined the feyadeen. It was the last time Tariq would see him alive.

Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris

Yusef slipped his hand into Jacqueline’s and guided her through the crowded terminal. She was exhausted. She had slept miserably and shortly before dawn had been awakened by a nightmare in which Gabriel assassinated Yusef while Yusef was making love to her. Her ears were ringing, and there was a flickering in the periphery of her vision, like flash-bulbs popping on a runway. They passed through the transit lounge, cleared a security check, and entered the depar-ture terminal. Yusef released her hand, then kissed her cheek and placed his lips close to her ear. When he spoke, it reminded her of the way Gabriel had spoken to her the previous night in the gallery-softly, as if he were telling her a bedtime story.

“You’re to wait in that café. You’re to order a cup of coffee and read the newspaper that I’ve slipped into the flap of your bag. You’re not to leave the café for any reason. He’ll come for you unless he thinks there’s a problem. If he doesn’t appear within an hour-”

“-Get on the next available flight for London, and don’t try to contact you when I arrive,” Jacqueline said, finishing his sentence for him. “I remember everything you’ve told me.”

Another kiss, this time on her other cheek. “You have a spy’s memory, Dominique.”

“Actually, I have my mother’s memory.”

“Remember, you have nothing to fear from this man and nothing to fear from the authorities. You’re doing nothing wrong. He’s a kind man. I think you’re going to enjoy his company. Have a safe trip, and I’ll see you when you get back.”

He kissed her forehead and gave her a gentle nudge in the direction of the café, as if she were a toy boat adrift on a pond. She walked a few steps, then stopped and turned to have one last look at him, but he had already melted into the crowd.

It was a small airport restaurant, a few wrought-iron tables spilling into the terminal to create the illusion of a Parisian café. Jacqueline sat down and ordered a café au lait from the waiter. She was suddenly conscious of her appearance and felt an absurd desire to make a good first impression. She wore black jeans and an ash-colored cashmere pullover. Her face had no makeup, and she had done nothing with her hair except pull it back. When the waiter brought her coffee, Jacqueline lifted the spoon and looked at the distorted reflection of her eyes. They were red-rimmed and raw.

She stirred sugar into her coffee and looked around her. At the table behind her a young American couple were quietly quarreling. At the next table were a pair of German businessmen studying a performance chart on the screen of a laptop computer.

Jacqueline suddenly remembered she was supposed to be reading the newspaper. She removed the Times that Yusef had left in her bag and unfolded it. A British Airways cocktail napkin fell out onto the table. Jacqueline picked it up and turned it over. On the back was a note, penned in Yusef’s chaotic hand: I’ll miss you. With love and fond memories, Yusef.

She crumpled it and left it next to her coffee. Sounds like a farewell note. She picked up the newspaper and leafed through the front section. She paused to scan the news from the Middle East: U.S. PRESIDENT APPLAUDS INTERIM AGREEMENT REACHED BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS… SIGNING CEREMONY NEXT WEEK AT UNITED NATIONS. She licked the tip of her finger and turned another page.

Boarding announcements blared from the public address system. She had a terrible headache. She reached into her purse, removed a bottle of aspirin, washed down two tablets with the coffee. She looked for Gabriel. Nothing. Damn it, where the hell are you, Gabriel Allon? Tell me you haven’t left me here alone with them… She placed the cup carefully in the saucer and returned the aspirin bottle to her purse.

She was about to resume reading when a stunningly attractive woman with lustrous black hair and wide brown eyes appeared at the table. “Do you mind if I join you?” the woman said in French.

“Actually, I’m meeting someone.”

“You’re meeting Lucien Daveau. I’m Lucien’s friend.” She pulled out the chair and sat down. “Lucien asked me to collect you and take you to your flight.”

“I was told that Lucien himself would meet me here.”

“I understand, but I’m afraid there’s been a slight change in plan.” She smiled a radiant, seductive smile. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Lucien asked me to take good care of you.”

Jacqueline had no idea what to do. They had violated the terms of the agreement. She had every right to stand up and walk off and be done with it. But then what? Tariq would slip away and continue his campaign of terror. More innocent Jews would die. The peace process would be placed in jeopardy. And Gabriel would go on blaming himself for what had happened to Leah and his son in Vienna.

“I don’t like this, but I’ll do it.”

“Good, because they’ve just called our flight.”

Jacqueline stood up, picked up her bag, and followed the woman out of the café. “Our flight?” she asked.

“That’s right. I’m going to be traveling with you for the first leg of your journey. Lucien will join you later.”

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll find out in a moment.”

“Since we’re going to be traveling together, do you think you could tell me your name?”

The girl smiled again. “If you feel you must call me something, you may call me Leila.”

Gabriel stood in a duty-free shop one hundred feet away, pretending to look at cologne, while he watched Jacqueline at the café. Shamron was aboard Benjamin Stone’s private plane. All they needed was Tariq.

Suddenly, he realized that he was excited by the prospect of finally seeing Tariq. The photographs in Shamron’s file were useless-too old, too grainy. Three of them were only presumed to be pictures of Tariq. The truth was no one inside the Office really knew what he looked like. Gabriel was about to get the first good look at him in years. Was he tall or short? Was he handsome or ordinary-looking? Did he look like a ruthless killer? Of course not, Gabriel thought. He’ll be someone who blends naturally into his surroundings.

He’ll be like me. Then he thought: Or am I like him?

When the attractive, raven-haired girl sat down at Jacqueline’s table, he thought for a moment that it was just one of those horrid accidents that sometimes sends operations into a tailspin-girl needs a seat, girl assumes Jacqueline’s alone, girl helps herself to the empty chair. Then he realized it was part of Tariq’s game. He had survived all these years because he was unpredictable. He made plans and changed plans constantly-told different stories to different members of his organization. Never let the left hand know what the right was doing.

The two women stood up and started walking. Gabriel waited for a moment, then trailed them from a safe distance. He felt dejected. The game had barely begun and already Tariq had bested him. He wondered whether he was really ready to do battle with a man like Tariq. He had been out of the game too long. Perhaps his reactions had slowed, his instincts for survival waned. He thought of the night he’d planted the bugs in Yusef’s flat, how he had nearly been caught because he had lost his concentration for a few seconds.

He felt the sickening rush of adrenaline all over again. For a moment he considered rushing forward and pulling her out. He forced himself to calm down and think clearly. She was just getting on an airplane. She would be safe while they were in the air, and Shamron would have a team waiting at the other end. Tariq had won the first round, but Gabriel decided to let the game continue.

The girl led Jacqueline into a glass-enclosed gate area. Gabriel watched as they passed through a final security check and handed over their tickets to a gate attendant. Then they headed into the Jetway and were gone. Gabriel glanced up at the monitor one last time to make certain he had seen it right: Air France flight 382, destination Montreal.

A few moments after takeoff Shamron hung up the secure telephone in the office of Benjamin Stone’s private jet and joined Gabriel in the luxuriously appointed salon. “I just notified Ottawa station.”

“Who’s in Ottawa these days?”

“Your old friend Zvi Yadin. He’s on his way to Montreal now with a small team. They’ll meet the plane and put Jacqueline and her new friend under watch.”

“Why Montreal?”

“Haven’t you read the papers?”

“I’m sorry, Ari, but I’ve been a bit busy.”

On the table next to Shamron’s chair was a stack of newspapers, neatly arranged so the mastheads were visible. He snatched the top paper and flipped it into Gabriel’s lap. “There’s going to be a signing ceremony at the UN in three days. Everyone’s going to be there. The American president, the prime minister, Arafat and all his deputies. It looks as though Tariq’s going to try to spoil the party.”

Gabriel glanced at the newspaper and tossed it back onto the table.

“ Montreal is a natural staging point for a man like Tariq. He speaks fluent French and has the capability to secure false passports. He flies to Montreal as a Frenchman and enters Quebec without a visa. Once he’s in Canada he’s almost home. There are tens of thousands of Arabs living in Montreal. He’ll have plenty of places to hide. Security along the U.S.-Canadian border is lax or nonexistent. On some roads there are no border posts at all. In Montreal he can switch passports-American or Canadian-and simply drive into the States. Or, if he’s feeling adventurous, he can walk across the border.”

“Tariq never struck me as an outdoorsman.”

“He’ll do whatever is necessary to get his target. And if that means walking ten miles through the snow, he’ll walk through the snow.”

“I don’t like the fact that they changed the rules in Paris,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like the fact that Yusef lied to Jacqueline about how this was going to work.”

“All it means is that for reasons of security Tariq finds it necessary to deceive his own people. That’s standard procedure for a man like him. Arafat did it for years. That’s the reason he’s alive today. His enemies within the Palestinian movement couldn’t get to him.”

“And neither could you.”

“Point well taken.”

The door connecting the salon to the office opened, and Stone entered the room.

Shamron said, “There’s a stateroom in the back of the plane. Go get some sleep. You look terrible.”

Gabriel stood up without a word and left the salon. Stone lowered his mammoth body into a chair and scooped up a handful of Brazil nuts. “He has passion,” he said, popping a pair of nuts into his mouth. “An assassin with a conscience. I like that. The rest of the world is going to like him even better.”

“Benjamin, what on earth are you talking about?”

“He’s the meal ticket. Don’t you understand, Ari? He’s the way you repay your debts to me. All of them, wiped out in a single neat payment.”

“I didn’t realize you were keeping a ledger. I thought you helped us because you believed in us. I thought you helped us because you wanted to help protect the State.”

“Let me finish, Ari. Hear me out. I don’t want your money. I want him. I want you to let me tell his story. I’ll assign it to my best reporter. Let me publish the story of the Israeli who restores old master paintings by day and kills Palestinian terrorists by night.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“On the contrary, Ari. I’m quite serious. I’ll serialize it. I’ll sell the film rights to Hollywood. Give me an exclusive on this manhunt. The view from the inside. It will send a message to my troops that we still have what it takes to shake up Fleet Street. And-this is the best part, Ari-and it will send a strong signal to my backers in the City that I’m still a force to be reckoned with.”

Shamron made an elaborate show of lighting his next cigarette. He studied Stone through a cloud of smoke, nodding slowly while he considered the gravity of his proposition. Stone was a drowning man, and unless Shamron did something to cut him away, he would take them both straight to the bottom.

Gabriel tried to sleep, but it was no use. Each time he closed his eyes, images of the case appeared in his mind. Instinctively he saw them rendered as motionless reproductions captured in oil on canvas. Shamron on the Lizard, calling him back to service. Jacqueline making love to Yusef. Leah in her greenhouse prison in Surrey. Yusef meeting his contact in Hyde Park… “Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you.”

Then he thought of the scene he had just witnessed at Charles de Gaulle. Restoration had taught Gabriel a valuable lesson. Sometimes what appears on the surface is quite different from what is taking place just below. Three years earlier he had been hired to restore a Van Dyck, a piece the artist had painted for a private chapel in Genoa depicting the Assumption of Mary. When Gabriel performed his initial analysis of the painting’s surface, he thought he saw something beneath the Virgin’s face. Over time the light-toned paints Van Dyck had used to render her skin had faded, and it seemed an image below was beginning to rise. Gabriel performed an extensive X-ray examination of the picture to view what was taking place beneath the surface. He discovered a completely finished work, a portrait of a rather fleshy woman clad in a white gown. The black-and-white film of the X ray made her appear specterlike. Even so Gabriel recognized the shimmering quality of Van Dyck’s silks and the expressive hands that characterized the paintings he produced while living in Italy. He later learned that the work had been commissioned by a Genoese aristocrat whose wife had hated it so much that she refused to accept it. When Van Dyck was commissioned to paint the chapel piece, he simply covered up the old portrait in white paint and reused the canvas. By the time the canvas reached Gabriel’s hands, more than three and a half centuries later, the wife of the Genoese aristocrat had taken her revenge on the artist by rising to the surface of his painting.

He closed his eyes again and this time drifted into a restless sleep. The last image he saw before slipping into unconsciousness was Jacqueline and the woman seated in the airport café, rendered as an Impressionist street scene, and standing in the background was the ghostly, translucent figure of Tariq, beckoning Gabriel forward with an exquisite Van Dyck hand.

THIRTY-SIX

Paris

Yusef took a taxi from the airport to the center of the city. For two hours he moved steadily about Paris -by Métro, by taxi, and on foot. When he was confident he was alone, he walked to an apartment house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement not far from the Bois de Boulogne. On the wall in the entranceway was a house phone and next to the phone a list of occupants. Yusef pressed the button for 4B, which bore the name Guzman in faded blue script. When the door opened he stepped quickly inside, crossed the foyer, and rode the lift up to the fourth floor. He knocked on the door. It was opened instantly by a stout man with steel-blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. He pulled Yusef inside and quietly closed the door.

It was early evening in Tel Aviv when Mordecai stepped out of his office in the top-floor executive suite and made his way down the corridor toward Operations. As he entered the room a pair of Lev’s black-eyed desk officers stared at him contemptuously over their computer terminals.

“Is he still in?”

One of the officers pointed toward Lev’s office with the tip of a chewed pencil. Mordecai turned and walked down the corridor. He felt like a stranger in a besieged village. Outsiders were not welcome in Lev’s realm, even if the outsider happened to be the second-most-senior officer in the service.

He found Lev seated in his cheerless office, hunched forward, elbows resting on the desk, long hands folded at the last knuckle and pressed against his temples. With his bald head, protruding eyes, and tentaclelike fingers, he looked very much like a praying mantis. As Mordecai moved closer, he could see that it was not a case file or field report that held Lev’s attention but a large volume on the beetles of the Amazon Basin. Lev closed the book deliberately and pushed it aside.

“Is there something going on in Canada I should know about?” Mordecai asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“I was reviewing the expense reports from Ottawa station, and there was a minor discrepancy in the payouts for the support staff. I thought I’d save a few minutes and deal with it by telephone rather than cable. It really is just a minor thing. I thought that Zvi and I could clear it up in a moment or two.”

Lev drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. “What does this have to do with Operations?”

“I couldn’t find Zvi. In fact I couldn’t find anyone. It seems your entire Ottawa station is missing.”

“What do you mean missing?”

“I mean nowhere to be found. Gone without explanation.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“A girl from the code room.”

“What did she say?”

“That Zvi and all his field personnel took off in a hurry a few hours ago.”

“Where’s the old man?”

“Somewhere in Europe.”

“He just came back from Europe. Why did he go this time?”

Mordecai frowned. “You think the old man tells me anything? That old bastard is so secretive that half the time I don’t think he even knows where he’s going.”

“Find him,” Lev said.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Montreal

Leila rented a car at the airport. She drove very fast along an elevated motorway. To their right lay an icy river, to their left freezing fog drifted over a vast rail yard like the smoke of battle. The lights of downtown Montreal floated in front of them, obscured by a veil of low cloud and falling snow. Leila drove as if she knew the way.

“You’ve been here before?” Leila asked. It was the first time she had spoken to Jacqueline since the café at Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

“No, never. How about you?”

“No.”

Jacqueline folded her arms against her body and shivered. The heater was roaring, but it was still so cold in the car she could see her breath. “I don’t have clothes for this kind of cold,” she said.

“Lucien will buy you whatever you need.”

So, Lucien was meeting her here in Montreal. Jacqueline blew on her hands. “It’s too cold to go shopping.”

“All the best boutiques in Montreal are underground. You’ll never have to set foot outside.”

“I thought you said you’ve never been here.”

“I haven’t.”

Jacqueline leaned her head against the window and briefly closed her eyes. They had sat in business class, Leila across the aisle and one row behind. An hour before landing, Leila had gone to the lavatory. On the way back to her seat she’d handed Jacqueline a note: Go through immigration and customs alone and meet me at the Hertz counter.

Leila turned off the motorway and turned onto the boulevard René Lévesque. Wind howled through the canyons of high-rise office buildings and hotels. The snowbound sidewalks seemed to have been depopulated. She drove a few blocks, stopped in front of a large hotel. A porter rushed out and opened Jacqueline’s door. “Welcome to the Queen Elizabeth. Checking in?”

“Yes,” said Leila. “We can manage the bags, thank you.”

The porter gave her a claim check for the car and climbed behind the wheel. Leila led Jacqueline into the large, noisy lobby. It was filled with Japanese tourists. Jacqueline wondered what on earth could bring them to Montreal in the dead of winter. Leila deliberately switched her bag from her right hand to her left. Jacqueline forced herself to look the other way. She had been trained in the art of impersonal communication; she knew a good piece of body talk when she saw it. The next act was about to begin.

Tariq watched them from the hotel bar. His appearance had changed since Lisbon: charcoal-gray wool trousers, a cream-colored pullover, Italian blazer. He was neatly shaved and wore small gold-rimmed eyeglasses with clear lenses. He had added a touch of gray to his hair.

He had seen the photograph of the woman called Dominique Bonard, but he was still taken aback by her appearance. He wondered how Shamron and Gabriel Allon could justify putting a woman like that into such danger.

He glanced around the lobby. He knew that they were here, somewhere, hidden among the tourists and the businessmen and the hotel employees: Shamron’s watchers. Tariq had stretched their resources by taking the woman from London to Paris and then Montreal. But surely they had regrouped and moved their assets into place. He knew that the moment he approached the woman he would be revealing himself to his enemies for the first time.

He found that he was actually looking forward to it. Finally, after all these years in the shadows, he was about to step into the light. He wanted to shout: Here I am. See, I’m a man like you, flesh and blood, not a monster. He was not ashamed of his life’s work. Quite the opposite. He was proud of it. He wondered if Allon could say the same thing.

Tariq knew that he had one major advantage over Allon. He knew he was about to die. His life was over. He had survived on the knife edge of danger to be betrayed in the end not by his enemies but by his own body. He would use the knowledge of his impending death like a weapon, the most powerful he had ever possessed.

Tariq stood up, smoothed the front of his blazer, and crossed the lobby.

They rode an elevator to the fourteenth floor, walked along a quiet corridor, stopped at room 1417. He opened the door with a electronic card key, then slipped the card into his pocket. When Jacqueline entered the room, Shamron’s awareness and memory drills took over: small suite, separate bedroom and sitting room. On the coffee table was a room service tray with a half-eaten salad. A garment bag lay on the floor, open, still packed.

He held out his hand. “Lucien Daveau.”

“Dominique Bonard.”

He smiled: warm, confident. “I was told by my associates that you were a very beautiful woman, but I’m afraid their descriptions did not do you justice.”

His mannerisms and speech were all very French. If she had not known he was a Palestinian, she would have assumed he was a well-to-do Parisian.

“You’re not what I expected,” she said truthfully.

“Oh really? What did you expect?” He was already testing her-she could sense it.

“Yusef said you were an intellectual. I suppose I was expecting someone with long hair and blue jeans and a sweater with holes in it.”

“Someone more professorial?”

“Yes, that’s the word.” She managed a smile. “You don’t look terribly professorial.”

“That’s because I’m not a professor.”

“I’d ask what you are, but Yusef told me not to ask too many questions, so I suppose we’ll just have to make pleasant small talk.”

“It’s been a long time since I made pleasant small talk with a beautiful woman. I think I’m going to enjoy the next few days immensely.”

“Have you been in Montreal long?”

“You just asked me a question, Dominique.”

“I’m sorry, I just-”

“Don’t apologize. I was just joking. I arrived this morning. As you can see, I haven’t had a chance to unpack.”

She walked from the sitting room into the bedroom.

He said, “Don’t worry, I intend to sleep on the couch tonight.”

“I thought we were supposed to be posing as lovers.”

“We are.”

“What if the hotel staff notices that you slept on the couch?”

“They might assume we’re quarreling. Or they might assume that I was working late and didn’t want to disturb you and that I fell asleep on the couch.”

“They might.”

“Yusef said you were intelligent, but he neglected to say that you also possess a conspiratorial mind.”

It had played out long enough. Jacqueline was proud of the fact that she was guiding the conversation and not he. It gave her the sense that at least she was in control of something.

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

She placed a cigarette between her lips and struck the lighter Shamron had given her. She could almost imagine the radio waves flying out, searching for a receiver.

“I didn’t bring clothing for this kind of weather. Leila said you would take me out shopping for something warmer.”

“I’d be happy to. I apologize for the way we had to keep you in the dark about where you were going. I assure you it was quite necessary.”

“I understand.” A pause. “I suppose.”

“Answer one question for me, Dominique. Why did you agree to come on this mission with me? Do you believe in what you are doing? Or are you doing it simply for love?”

The coincidence of his question was almost too vulgar to contemplate. She calmly placed the lighter back into her handbag and said, “I’m doing it because I believe in love. Do you believe in love?”

“I believe in the right of my people to have a homeland of our own choosing. I’ve never had the luxury of love.”

“I’m sorry-” She was about to call him Lucien, but for some reason she stopped herself.

“You don’t want to say my name, Dominique? Why won’t you call me Lucien?”

“Because I know it isn’t your real name.”

“How do you know that?”

“Yusef told me.”

“Do you know my real name?”

“No, Yusef wouldn’t tell me.”

“Yusef is a good man.”

“I’m very fond of him.”

“Is Dominique really your name?”

She was caught off guard. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s a simple question, really. I want to know if your name is really Dominique.”

“You’ve seen my passport.”

“Passports can easily be forged.”

“Maybe for people like you!” she snapped. “Listen, Lucien, or whatever the fuck your name is, I don’t like your question. It’s making me uncomfortable.”

He sat down and rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry, you’re right. Please accept my apology. The politics of the Middle East tend to make one paranoid after a while. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“I need to check my machine in London.”

“Of course.” He reached out and pressed the speaker button on the telephone. “Tell me the number, and I’ll dial it for you.”

She recited the number, and his fingers worked over the keypad. A few seconds later she heard the phone ringing-the two-beat moan of a British phone-followed by the sound of her own voice on the message tape. She pictured a technician, seated behind a computer console in Tel Aviv, reading the words Hotel Queen Elizabeth, Montreal, Room 1417. She reached out for the receiver, but he covered it with his hand and looked up at her. “I’d like to listen, if you don’t mind. Paranoia is creeping up on me again.”

She had three messages. The first was from a woman who identified herself as Dominique’s mother. The second was from Julian Isherwood-he had misplaced a file and was wondering if she could give him a ring at some point to help him locate it. The third was from a man who didn’t identify himself. She instantly recognized the sound of Gabriel’s voice. “I just wanted you to know that I was thinking of you. If you need anything I’m here for you. See you soon, I hope. Cheers.”

“You can hang up now.”

He punched the speaker button and severed the connection. “That didn’t sound much like Yusef.”

“It wasn’t Yusef. It was a man I knew before Yusef.”

“It sounds to me as though this man still cares for you.”

“No, he never really cared for me.”

“But it’s obvious to me you cared for him. Perhaps you still do.”

“I’m in love with Yusef.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot.” He stood abruptly. “Let’s go shopping.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Montreal

Zvi Yadin met Gabriel and Shamron at the airport and drove them into Montreal. He had thick, curly hair, a rather shaggy full beard, and the body of a rugby player. Because he was large, people tended to think he was stupid, which he was not. Gabriel had spent time at the Academy with him. They had been paired for the physical combat course, despite the vast difference in their size. On the final day Yadin had broken two of Gabriel’s ribs. Gabriel had retaliated with an elbow to Yadin’s chin that dislocated his jaw. Later, when they were being patched up in the infirmary, Yadin had admitted that Shamron had put him up to it-that he had wanted to test Gabriel’s capacity for pain. Gabriel wished he had broken Shamron’s jaw instead.

“They say it’s going to be thirty below tonight,” Yadin said as he sped along the motorway toward downtown. “I brought you some parkas and gloves. And I brought this for you, Gabriel.”

He handed Gabriel a stainless steel combat case. Inside was a.22 Beretta target pistol. Gabriel stroked the barrel and the walnut grip. The gun felt cold. He closed the lid and placed the case beneath the seat.

Shamron said, “Thanks for the weather update, Zvi, but where the hell is Jacqueline?”

Yadin brought them quickly up to date. The flight from Paris had arrived twenty minutes late. Yadin’s team had picked them up after they cleared immigration and customs. The girl had rented a car from Hertz and driven downtown to the Hotel Queen Elizabeth. She’d handed Jacqueline to a man: forties, well dressed, decent looking. They went upstairs to a room. Yadin had a sayan on the hotel staff: a senior concierge. He said the fellow in question had checked into the hotel earlier that day under the name Lucien Daveau. Room 1417.

“Pictures?” Shamron asked hopefully.

“No way, Boss. Not possible under the circumstances.”

“Was it Tariq?”

“Could have been. Hard to say.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“After the handoff she left the hotel. She was picked up by another car outside on the boulevard René Lévesque. I didn’t try to follow her. I didn’t think we could spare the personnel.”

“How many people do you have?”

“Three experienced men and that new girl you sent me from the Academy.”

“How are they deployed?”

“Two members of the team are in the hotel lobby pretending to be shopping. The other two are outside in the car.”

Gabriel said, “Can our friend on the concierge desk get us inside the room?”

“Sure.”

“I want to put a glass on his telephone.”

“No problem. I brought a kit from Ottawa. We can get another room at the hotel to set up a listening post. It will tie down one member of the team, though.”

“Getting his phone is well worth one member of your team.”

“I’ll use the new girl.”

“No, I may need the girl for street work.”

Yadin glanced at Shamron. “Now for the problems, Boss.”

“What problems?”

“Lev.”

“What about Lev?”

“While I was waiting for you to arrive, I checked in with the station.”

“And?”

“Mordecai called on a routine housekeeping matter after we’d left. Obviously he told Lev the entire station was missing, because Lev fired off a cable from the operations center about a half hour later, wondering what the fuck was going on.”

“What was Lev told?” Shamron said wearily.

“I left a cover story in place with our secretary. She told Lev that we received a tip from a friend in the Canadian service that a member of Islamic Jihad might be living in Quebec City and that we had run up to QC to have a look at him. Lev sends another rocket: On whose authority? Please supply the name of IJ Activist. So on and so forth. You get the picture, boss.”

Shamron swore softly. “Send him a message when you get home. Tell him it was a false alarm.”

“Listen, boss, we go back a long way. But you’re going to retire again soon, and Lev may be running this place. He could make my life miserable. He enjoys that sort of thing. He’s a bastard.”

“Let me worry about Lev. You were just doing what I told you to do.”

“Just following orders-right, boss?”

Yadin’s cell phone chirped softly. He flipped open the mouthpiece and brought it to his ear. “Yes?”

A pause.

“When?”

Another pause.

“Where?”

Another pause, slightly longer.

“Stay with them. But remember who you’re dealing with. Keep a safe distance.”

He severed the connection and tossed the phone onto the dash.

“What is it?” asked Shamron.

“He’s on the move.”

“What about Jacqueline?”

“They’re together.”

“Where?”

“Look’s like they’ve gone shopping.”

“Get me a picture, Zvi. I need to make sure it’s him.”

There are two Montreals. There is the Montreal of the surface. In winter it becomes a snowbound tundra. Icy Arctic winds roar between the skyscrapers and prowl the winding alleyways of the Old City down by the river. Then there is underground Montreal: a labyrinth of gleaming shops, cafés, bars, markets, and designer clothing stores that snakes its way beneath much of downtown, making it possible to travel for blocks without ever setting foot outside.

A fitting spot for it to end, thought Jacqueline; two worlds, two layers, two realities. I’m Jacqueline Delacroix, the model. I’m Dominique Bonard, the secretary from Isherwood Fine Arts in London. I’m Sarah Halévy, the Jewish girl from Marseilles, the agent from the Office. She had more layers than Montreal.

She was walking at his side. His hand was resting lightly on her shoulder, and he was using it to guide her through the crowds of evening shoppers. Jacqueline studied the kaleidoscope of faces streaming past her: pretty French boys and girls, Arabs, Africans, Jews-the ethnic patchwork quilt that is Montreal. She might have forgotten she had ever left Paris except for the blunt edge of their French accents.

He was checking to see if they were being followed-Jacqueline could see that. Pausing in storefronts, making abrupt changes in direction, inventing excuses to double back. She hoped Shamron’s team was good. If they weren’t, Tariq was going to spot them.

They walked through the exclusive shops beneath the rue St-Catherine. In one she picked out a full-length down-lined coat. In another a fur hat. In a third two pairs of jeans and several pairs of long underwear. Finally, in a shop specializing in outdoor goods, she picked out a pair of insulated boots. He hung at her side the entire time. When she went into a changing room to try on the jeans he waited just outside the door and smiled pleasantly at the salesgirls. He paid for everything with a credit card in the name of Lucien Daveau.

When they were finished they walked back toward the hotel. She thought: What are you waiting for? Do it now. Take him down. But they couldn’t do it here-not in underground Montreal. The entire network of shopping malls could be sealed off in a matter of minutes. Gabriel and the rest of the team would be trapped inside. They would be arrested and questioned. The police would establish a link to the Office, and the whole thing would blow up in Shamron’s face.

He suggested a coffee before dinner, so they stopped in an espresso bar a short distance from the hotel. Jacqueline flipped idly through a tourist guide while he sipped his drink. At one point he removed a prescription bottle from his pocket and swallowed two tablets. Five minutes later-she knew the exact time because she had been playing Shamron’s awareness games throughout the excursion-a man in a gray business suit sat down at the next table. He placed his briefcase on the ground: black leather, soft sides, gold combination latches. The man stayed for a few minutes, then stood and walked away, leaving the bag behind. When Tariq had finished his coffee, he nonchalantly picked up the bag along with Jacqueline’s parcels.

Two Montreals, two realities, thought Jacqueline as they walked back to the hotel. In one reality they had just gone shopping. In the other Tariq had spent an hour checking to see if he was being followed, and Tariq had taken possession of his gun.

Gabriel appeared at the concierge desk and asked directions to a good restaurant. The concierge was called Jean-small and neat, with the thin mustache and frozen smile of an accomplished hotelier. Gabriel spoke rapid French. The concierge answered him in the same language. He told Gabriel about an excellent Parisian-style bistro called the Alexandre; then he handed him a folded tourist map and told him the address. Gabriel tucked the map into the inside breast pocket of his jacket, thanked the concierge, and walked away. But instead of heading toward the street entrance, he strode across the lobby, boarded an elevator, and rode it to the fourteenth floor.

He walked quickly along the corridor. In his right hand was a plastic shopping bag from one of the boutiques in the lobby, and inside the bag was a hotel telephone, wrapped in tissue paper. As he approached the door he removed the map from his breast pocket and unfolded it. Inside was the credit card-style key to Tariq’s room. A Do Not Disturb sign hung from the latch. Gabriel slipped the card key in and out of the door slot, then stepped into the room and quietly closed the door.

For their command post Yadin had taken a suite at the Sheraton, a few blocks up the boulevard René Lévesque from the Queen Elizabeth. When Gabriel entered the suite, Shamron was there, along with Yadin and a black-haired girl whom Yadin introduced as Deborah. She reminded Gabriel a great deal of Leah, more than he might have wished at that moment. A large-scale street map of Montreal was spread over the bed. Shamron had shoved his glasses onto his forehead and was rubbing the bridge of his nose as he paced. Gabriel poured himself a cup of coffee and held it tightly to warm his hands.

Yadin said, “They’re back in the room. The glass is picking up their conversation perfectly. Nice work, Gabriel.”

“What are they saying?”

“Small talk mostly. I’ll send a man over to collect the tapes. If there’s anything urgent the boy in the room will call.”

“Where’d they go while they were out?”

“Shopping mainly, but we think Tariq may have a gun.”

Gabriel lowered his coffee cup and looked up sharply.

“Deborah was following them at the time,” Yadin said. “She saw the whole thing.”

She quickly described the scene at the coffee bar. She spoke English with an American accent.

“How’s Jacqueline holding up?”

“She looked good. A little tired but fine.”

The telephone rang. Yadin picked it up before it could ring a second time. He listened for a moment without speaking, then set down the receiver and looked up at Shamron. “He just booked a table at a restaurant on the rue St. Denis.”

“What’s the area like?”

“Cafés, shops, bars, discos, that sort of thing,” said Yadin. “Very busy, very Bohemian.”

“The kind of place we could mount a surveillance operation?”

“Absolutely.”

“The kind of place where a kidon might be able to get close to a target?”

“No problem.”

Gabriel said, “What about escape routes?”

“We’d have several,” Yadin said. “You could head north into Outremont or Mont-Royal or go south, straight to the expressway. The rest of the team could melt into the Old City.”

There was a soft knock outside. Yadin murmured a few words through the closed door, then opened it. A boyish-looking man with fair hair and blue eyes entered the room.

“I’ve got them on videotape.”

Shamron said, “Let’s see it.”

The young man connected the handheld recorder to the television set and played the tape: Jacqueline and the man called Lucien Daveau, moving through the underground mall. It had been shot from a balustrade one level up.

Shamron smiled. “It’s him. No question.”

Gabriel said, “How can you tell from that angle?”

“Look at him. Look at the photographs. It’s the same man.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes, I’m certain!” Shamron shut off the television. “What’s wrong with you, Gabriel?”

“I just don’t want to kill the wrong man.”

“It’s Tariq. Trust me.” Shamron looked down at the street map of Montreal. “Zvi, show me the rue St-Denis. I want to end this thing tonight and go home.”

THIRTY-NINE

Montreal

They left the hotel room at eight o’clock, rode the elevator down to the lobby. The evening check-in rush had ended. A Japanese couple was having their picture taken by a stranger. Tariq paused, turned around, and theatrically beat his pockets as if he were missing something important. When the photo session ended he resumed walking. A roar rose from the hotel bar: Americans watching a football game on television. They rode an escalator down to underground Montreal, then walked a short distance to a Métro station. He made a point of keeping her to his right. She remembered he was left-handed-obviously he didn’t want her in a position to grab his arm if he had to go for his gun. She tried to remember what kind of gun he preferred. A Makarov; that was it. Tariq liked the Makarov.

He moved through the station as if he knew the way. They boarded a train and rode east to the rue St-Denis. When they stepped outside on the crowded boulevard, the bitter cold nearly took her breath away.

It may happen someplace quiet, completely out of sight, or it may happen in the middle of a busy street…

She kept her eyes down and resisted the impulse to look for him.

You may see me coming, you may not. If you do see me, you’re not to look at me. You’re not to flinch or call out my name. You’re not to make a sound…

“Is something wrong?” He spoke without looking at her.

“I’m just freezing to death.”

“The restaurant isn’t far.”

They walked past a row of bars. The ragged sound of a blues band spilled from a cellar tavern. A used record store. A vegetarian restaurant. A tattoo parlor. A gang of skinhead boys walked past them. One of them said something crude to Jacqueline. Tariq eyed him coldly; the boy shut his mouth and walked away.

They arrived at the restaurant. It was in an old Victorian house, set slightly back from the street. He guided her up the steps. The maître d‘ helped them off with their coats and showed them upstairs to a table in the window. Tariq sat facing out. She could see his eyes scanning the street below. When the waiter appeared, Jacqueline ordered a glass of Bordeaux.

“Monsieur Daveau?”

“Just some sparkling water, please,” he said. “I’m afraid I have a bit of a headache tonight.”

The Italian restaurant was a half block to the north, on the opposite side of the rue St-Denis. To reach it Gabriel and Deborah had to descend a short flight of icy steps. The tables next to the window were all filled, but they were seated close enough so that Gabriel could see Jacqueline’s long black hair in the window across the street. Shamron and Zvi Yadin were outside in a rented van. At the southern end of the block, closer to the edge of the Old City, one of Yadin’s men sat behind the wheel of the getaway car. Another man waited in a car one block to the west on the rue Sanguinet. Tariq was in a box.

Gabriel ordered wine but drank none of it. He ordered a salad and a bowl of pasta, but the odor of food nauseated him. The girl was well schooled in Office doctrine. She was carrying him. She flirted with the waiter. She talked to a couple at another table. She devoured her food and part of Gabriel’s. She held his hand. Once again Gabriel found uncomfortable comparisons with Leah. Her scent. The flecks of gold in her nearly black eyes. The way her long hands floated when she spoke. Gabriel looked out the window at the pavement of the rue St-Denis, but in his mind he was back in Vienna, sitting with Leah and Dani in the trattoria in the Jewish Quarter.

He was sweating. He could feel cold water running down the groove at the center of his back, sweat running over his ribs. The Beretta was in the front pocket of his parka, the parka hanging over the back of his chair, so that Gabriel could feel the comforting weight of the gun pressing against his thigh. The girl was talking-“Maybe we should get away,” she was saying. “The Caribbean, St. Bart’s, someplace warm with good food and wine.” Gabriel was listening to her with one corner of his mind-he was nodding at appropriate times and even managed a few words now and again-but for the most part he was visualizing how he would kill Tariq. He took no pleasure from these thoughts. He engaged in them not out of rage or a desire to inflict punishment but in the same way he might plot a tacking maneuver through a particularly difficult stretch of wind and water; or the way he might mend a bare spot in a five-hundred-year-old canvas.

He visualized what would happen after Tariq was down. Deborah would look after herself. Gabriel was responsible for Jacqueline. He would grab her and move away from the body as quickly as possible. One of Yadin’s men would pick them up on the rue St-Denis in a rental car, a green Ford, and they would head toward the airport. They would switch cars once along the way. At the airport they would go directly to the private aviation terminal and board Benjamin Stone’s jet. If things went according to plan, he would be back in Israel by the following afternoon.

If they didn’t…

Gabriel pushed the image of failure from his mind.

Just then his cell phone chirped softly. He brought it to his ear, listened without speaking. He severed the connection, handed the telephone to the girl, stood up, pulled on his coat. The Beretta banged against his hip. He reached into the pocket of the parka, held the gun by its grip.

He had paid the check ahead of time so he wouldn’t cause a scene when the time came to leave. The girl led the way through the restaurant. Gabriel was burning. Outside, he slipped and nearly fell climbing the stairs. The girl caught his arm and steadied him. When they reached the sidewalk there was no sign of Tariq and Jacqueline. Gabriel turned and faced the girl. He kissed her on the cheek, then brought his mouth close to her ear. “Tell me when you see them.”

He buried his face against the side of the girl’s neck. Her hair covered his face. She smelled shockingly of Leah. He held her with his left hand. His right was still in his coat pocket, wrapped around the grip of the Beretta.

He rehearsed it one last time. It played out in his head like an Academy lecture. Turn around, walk directly toward him. Don’t hesitate or loiter, just walk. Get close, draw the gun with your right hand, start shooting. Don’t think about the bystanders, think only of the target. Become the terrorist. Cease being the terrorist only when he is dead. The spare clip is in your left pocket if you need it. Don’t get caught. You are a prince. You are more valuable than anyone else. Do anything to avoid capture. If a policeman challenges you, kill the policeman. Under no circumstances are you to allow yourself to be arrested.

“There they are.”

She gave him a slight push to separate their bodies. Gabriel turned and started across the street, taking his eyes off Tariq just long enough to make certain he wasn’t walking into the path of a car. His hand was making the gun wet. He could hear nothing except his own breathing and the hiss of blood rushing through his inner ears. Jacqueline looked up. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second; then she abruptly looked away. Tariq took her by the elbow.

As Gabriel pulled the Beretta from his pocket, a car careened around the corner and accelerated toward him. He had no choice but to quickly step out of the way. Then the car skidded to a halt, with Gabriel on one side and Tariq and Jacqueline on the other.

The rear door facing Tariq flew open. He pulled Jacqueline forward and forced her into the car. Her handbag fell from her shoulder and tumbled into the street. Tariq smiled wolfishly at Gabriel and climbed into the backseat next to Jacqueline.

The car sped away. Gabriel crossed the street and picked up Jacqueline’s purse. Then he went back to the restaurant and collected the girl. Together they walked up the rue St-Denis. Gabriel opened Jacqueline’s purse and thumbed through the contents. Inside was her wallet, her passport, some makeup, and the gold lighter Shamron had given her at the gallery.

“You should have taken the shot, Gabriel!”

“I didn’t have a shot!”

“You had a shot over the roof of that car!”

“Bullshit!”

“You had a shot, but you hesitated!”

“I hesitated because if I had missed that shot over the roof of the car, the bullet would have ended up in the restaurant across the street, and you might have a dead bystander on your hands.”

“You never used to consider the possibility of missing.”

The van accelerated away from the curb. Gabriel was seated on the floor of the rear cargo bay, the girl opposite him, knees beneath her chin, eyeing him intently. Gabriel closed his eyes and tried to think calmly for a moment. It was a complete disaster. Jacqueline was gone. She had no passport, no identification, and, more important, no tracking beacon. They’d had one major advantage over Tariq: the ability to know where she was all the time. Now that advantage had vanished.

He pictured the sequence of events. Tariq and Jacqueline leaving the restaurant. The car appearing out of nowhere. Tariq pushing Jacqueline into the backseat. Tariq’s wolfish smile.

Gabriel closed his eyes and saw the ghostly image of Tariq beckoning him forward with a Van Dyck hand. He knew all along, thought Gabriel. He knew it was me coming for him on the rue St-Denis. He led me there.

Shamron was talking again. “Your first responsibility was to Jacqueline. Not to someone in a bistro behind her. You should have taken the shot, regardless of the consequences!”

“Even if I’d managed to hit him, Jacqueline still would be gone. She was in the car, the engine was running. They were going to take her, and there was nothing I could have done to stop it.”

“You should have fired at the car. We might have been able to trap them on that street.”

“Is that what you wanted? A gunfight in the middle of Montreal? A shoot-out? You would have had another Lillehammer on your hands. Another Amman. Another disaster for the Office.”

Shamron turned around, glared at Gabriel, then stared straight ahead.

Gabriel said, “What now, Ari?”

“We find them.”

“How?”

“We have a very good idea where they’re going.”

“We can’t find Tariq in the States alone.”

“What are you suggesting, Gabriel?”

“We need to alert the Americans that he’s probably coming their way. We need to tell the Canadians too. Maybe they can prevent him from taking her across the border. If we get lucky they might be able to stop them before they reach the border.”

“Tell the Americans and the Canadians? Tell them what exactly? Tell them that we intended to assassinate a Palestinian on Canadian soil? Tell them that we botched the job, and now we’d like their help cleaning up the mess? I don’t think that would go over very well in Ottawa or Washington.”

“So what do we do? Sit on our hands and wait?”

“No, we go to America, and we tighten security around the prime minister. Tariq didn’t come all this way for nothing. Eventually he has to make his move.”

“And what if his target isn’t the prime minister?”

“The security of the prime minister is my only concern at this point.”

“I’m sure Jacqueline would be pleased to know this.”

“You know what I mean, Gabriel. Don’t play word games with me.”

“You’ve forgotten one thing, Ari. She doesn’t have a passport any longer.” Gabriel held up her handbag. “It’s here. How are they going to get her across the border without a passport?”

“Obviously, Tariq’s made other arrangements.”

“Or maybe he doesn’t intend to take her across the border. Maybe he’s going to kill her first.”

“That’s why you should have taken the shot, Gabriel.”

FORTY

Sabrevois, Quebec

Jacqueline had tried to follow the road signs. Route 40 through Montreal. Route 10 across the river. Route 35 into the countryside. Now this: Route 133, a two-lane provincial road stretching across the tabletop of southern Quebec. Strange how quickly cosmopolitan Montreal had given way to this vast empty space. A brittle moon floated above the horizon, ringed by a halo of ice. Wind-driven snow swirled across the asphalt like a sandstorm. Occasionally an object floated out of the gloom. A grain silo poking above the snow cover. A dimly lit farmhouse. A blacked-out agricultural sup-ply store. Ahead she saw neon lights. As they drew closer she could see that the lights formed the outlines of women with enormous breasts: a strip joint in the middle of no-where. She wondered where they got the girls. Maybe they enjoyed watching their sisters and girlfriends dance topless. Desolation, she thought. This is why the word was created.

After an hour of driving they were just a few miles from the U.S. border. She thought: How’s he going to take me across when my passport and the rest of my things are laying back on the rue St-Denis in Montreal?

My passport and the cigarette lighter with the beacon…

It had all happened so quickly. After spotting Gabriel she had looked away and prepared herself for what she thought would happen next. Then the car appeared, and he pushed her inside so roughly that her handbag fell from her grasp. As the car sped away she yelled at him to go back and let her get her bag, but he ignored her and told the driver to go faster. It was then that Jacqueline noticed the woman she knew as Leila was driving the car. A few blocks away they switched cars. The driver was the same man who had left his briefcase for Tariq in the underground coffee bar. This time they drove several blocks to the part of Montreal known as Outremont. There they switched cars one last time. Now Tariq was driving.

He was sweating. Jacqueline could see the shine on his skin in the lime-colored glow of the dashboard lights. His face had turned deathly white, dark circles beneath his eyes, right hand shaking.

“Would you like to explain to me what happened back there in Montreal?”

“It was a routine security precaution.”

“You call that routine? If it was so routine, why didn’t you let me go back and get my purse?”

“From time to time I find myself under surveillance by Israeli intelligence and by their friends in the West. I’m also monitored by my enemies within the Palestinian movement. My instincts told me that someone was watching us in Montreal.”

“That charade cost me my handbag and everything in it.”

“Don’t worry, Dominique. I’ll replace your things.”

“Some things can’t be replaced.”

“Like your gold cigarette lighter?”

Jacqueline felt a stab of pain in her abdomen. She remembered Yusef toying with the lighter on the way to the council flat in Hounslow. Christ, he knows. She changed the subject. “Actually, I was thinking about my passport.”

“Your passport can be replaced too. I’ll take you to the French consulate in Montreal. You’ll tell them that it was lost or stolen, and they’ll issue a new one.”

No, they’ll discover it was forged, and I’ll end up in a Canadian jail.

“Why do these people watch you?”

“Because they want to know where I’m going and who I am meeting with.”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t want me to succeed.”

“What are you trying to accomplish that would make them so concerned?”

“I’m just trying to bring a little justice to the so-called peace process. I don’t want my people to accept a sliver of our ancestral land just because the Americans and a handful of Israelis are willing to let us have it now. They offer us crumbs that fall from their table. I don’t want the crumbs, Dominique. I want the entire loaf.”

“Half a loaf is better than nothing.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

A highway sign floated out of the swirling snow. The border was three miles ahead.

Jacqueline said, “Where are you taking me?”

“To the other side.”

“So how do you intend to get me across the border without a passport?”

“We’ve made other arrangements.”

“Other arrangements? What kind of other arrangements?”

“I have another passport for you. A Canadian passport.”

“How did you get a Canadian passport?”

Another sign: the border was now two miles ahead.

“It’s not yours, of course.”

“Hold on a minute! Yusef promised you wouldn’t ask me to do anything illegal.”

“You’re not doing anything illegal. It’s an open border, and the passport is perfectly valid.”

“It might be valid, but it’s not mine!”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s not yours. No one’s going to question you.”

“I’m not going to enter the United States on a false passport! Stop the car! I want out!”

“If I let you out here you’ll freeze to death before you ever reach safety.”

“Then drop me somewhere! Just let me out!”

“Dominique, this is why we brought you from London: to help me get across this border.”

“You lied to me! You and Yusef!”

“Yes, we found it necessary to mislead you slightly.”

“Slightly!”

“But none of that matters now. What matters is that I need to get across this border, and I need your help.”

The border was now a mile away. Ahead she could see the bright white lights of the crossing. She wondered what to do. She supposed she could simply tell him no. Then what would he do? Turn around, kill her, dump her body into the snow, and cross the border on his own. She considered deceiving him: saying yes and then alerting the officer at the crossing point. But Tariq would just kill her and the border patrolman. There would be an investigation, the Office’s role in the affair would come to light. It would be an embarrassing fiasco for Ari Shamron. She had only one option. Play the game a little longer and find some way to alert Gabriel.

She said, “Let me see the passport.”

He handed it to her.

She opened it and looked at the name: Hélène Sarrault. Then she looked at the photograph: Leila. The likeness was vague but convincing.

“You’ll do it?”

Jacqueline said, “Keep driving.”

He entered the plaza at the border crossing and braked to a halt. A border patrolman stepped out of his booth and said, “Good evening. Where are you headed this evening?”

Tariq said, “ Burlington.”

“Business or pleasure?”

“My sister is ill, I’m afraid.”

“Sorry to hear that. How long are you planning to stay?”

“One day, two at the most.”

“Passports, please.”

Tariq handed them across. The officer opened them and examined the photographs and the names. Then he looked into the car and glanced at each of their faces.

He closed the passports and handed them back. “Have a pleasant stay. And drive carefully. Weather report says there’s a big storm coming in later tonight.”

Tariq took the passports, dropped the car into gear, and drove slowly across the border into Vermont. He placed the passports in his pocket and a moment later, when they were well clear of the border, he removed a Makarov pistol and placed the barrel against the side of her head.

FORTY-ONE

Washington, D.C.

Yasir Arafat sat behind the desk in the presidential suite at the Madison Hotel, making his way through a stack of paperwork, listening to the late-evening traffic hissing along the damp pavement of Fifteenth Street. He paused for a moment, popped a Tunisian date into his mouth, then swallowed a few spoonfuls of yogurt. He was fastidious about his diet, did not smoke or consume alcohol, and never drank coffee. It had helped him survive a demanding revolutionary lifestyle that might have destroyed other men.

Because he was expecting no more visitors that evening, he had changed out of his uniform into a blue tracksuit. His bald head was bare, and as usual he had several days’ growth on his pouchy face. He wore reading glasses, which magnified his froglike eyes. His thick lower lip jutted out, giving him the appearance of a child on the verge of tears.

He possessed a near-photographic memory for written material and faces, which allowed him to work through the stack of documents quickly, pausing now and then to scribble notes in the margins of memoranda or sign his name. He was now in charge of the Gaza Strip and a large portion of the West Bank, a development that had seemed impossible only a few years earlier. His Palestinian Authority was responsible for the mundane details of ordinary governance, like trash collection and schools. It was a far cry from the old days, when he had been the world’s most famous guerrilla.

He set aside the remainder of his work and opened a document bound in a leather cover. It was a copy of the interim agreement he was to sign the following day at the United Nations in New York. The agreement was yet another incremental step toward the fulfillment of his life’s work: the establishment of a Palestinian state. It was much less than he had wanted when he set out on this path-back then he had dreamed of the destruction of Israel-but it was the best he was going to get. There were some within the movement who wished him failure, some who even wished him death. The rejectionists, the dreamers. If they’d had their way, the Palestinians would be forever condemned to the refugee camps of the diaspora.

An aide knocked on the door. Arafat looked up as he entered the room. “Sorry to disturb you, Abu Amar, but the president is on the phone.”

Arafat smiled. This too would have been impossible only a few years earlier. “What does he want so late at night?”

“He says his wife is out of town and he’s bored. He wants to know whether you would be willing to come to the White House and keep him company.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“To do what?”

The aide shrugged. “Talk, I suppose.”

“Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Arafat stood up, removed his tracksuit, and dressed in his usual plain khaki uniform and traditional Palestinian headdress. He wore the black-and-white kaffiyeh of the peasant with the front shaped to a point to symbolize the map of Palestine. The aide reappeared with an overcoat and draped it over Arafat’s shoulders. Together they stepped into the hall and were immediately surrounded by a group of security men. Some were members of his personal bodyguard, the rest were officers of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service. They moved down the corridor, Arafat in the center of the party, and stepped into a private elevator, which whisked them downward to the garage. There Arafat slipped into the back of a limousine. A moment later his motorcade was speeding south on Fifteenth Street toward the White House.

Arafat looked out his window. A bit like the old days, this late-night dash through wet streets-like the days when he never spent two nights in a row in the same bed. Sometimes he even switched residences in the middle of the night when his well-tuned instincts sensed trouble. He avoided public places-never ate in restaurants, never went to the cinema or the theater. His skin turned blotchy from lack of sun. His survival skills had thwarted hundreds of attempts on his life by the Israelis and his enemies within the movement. Some had not been so lucky. He thought of his old friend and second in command, Abu Jihad. He had led the war effort in the Occupied Territories; helped to organize the intifada. And for that the Israelis had murdered him in his villa in Tunis. Arafat knew that without Abu Jihad he would not be where he was today: driving across Washington for a secret meeting with the American president. It was a shame his old friend was not here to see this.

The motorcade passed through the barricade on Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the White House grounds. A moment later Arafat’s car stopped beneath the shelter of the North Portico.

A Marine guard stepped forward and opened the door. “Good evening, Mr. Arafat. Right this way, please.”

President James Beckwith was waiting in the drawing room of the residence in the Executive Mansion. He looked as though he had just stepped off the deck of his sailboat. He wore a pair of wrinkled khaki trousers and a crewneck pullover sweater. He was a tall man with a full head of silver hair and a genteel manner. His permanently tanned face projected youth and exuberance, despite the fact that he was nearly seventy years old.

They sat in front of the fire, Beckwith nursing a glass of whiskey, Arafat sipping tea sweetened with honey. When Beckwith had been in the Senate he had been one of Israel ’s staunchest allies and led the opposition to U.S. recognition of the PLO-indeed, he had regularly referred to Arafat and the PLO as “bloodthirsty terrorists.” Now the two men were close allies in the quest for peace in the Middle East. Each needed the help of the other to succeed. Arafat needed Beckwith to press the Israelis to make concessions at the negotiating table. Beckwith needed Arafat to keep the radicals and fundamentalists in line so the talks could continue.

After an hour Beckwith raised the murders of Ambassador Eliyahu and David Morgenthau. “My CIA director tells me your old friend Tariq was probably behind both attacks, but they have no proof.”

Arafat smiled. “I’ve never doubted for a moment that it was Tariq. But if your CIA thinks they’re going to find proof of this, I’m afraid they’re sadly mistaken. Tariq doesn’t operate that way.”

“If he continues to kill Jews, it’s going to make it more difficult to keep moving toward a final settlement.”

“Forgive my bluntness, Mr. President, but Tariq is only a factor if you and the Israelis allow him to be a factor. He does not act on my behalf. He does not operate from territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority. He does not speak for those Palestinians who want peace.”

“All true, but isn’t there anything you can do to dissuade him?”

“Tariq?” Arafat shook his head slowly. “We were close friends once. He was one of my finest intelligence officers. But he left me over the decision to renounce terrorism and begin peace talks. We haven’t spoken in years.”

“Perhaps he might listen to you now.”

“I’m afraid Tariq listens to no voice but his own. He’s a man haunted by demons.”

“All of us are, especially when you reach my age.”

“And mine,” said Arafat. “But I’m afraid Tariq is haunted by a different kind of demon. You see, he’s a young man who’s dying, and he wants to settle accounts before he leaves.”

Beckwith raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Dying?”

“According to my sources he has a severe brain tumor.”

“Do the Israelis know this?”

“Yes,” Arafat said. “I’ve told them myself.”

“Who?”

“Their chief of intelligence, Ari Shamron.”

“I wonder why their chief of intelligence neglected to share this piece of information with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Arafat laughed. “I suppose you’ve never met Ari Shamron. He’s crafty and a warrior from the old school. Shamron makes a habit of never letting the left hand know what the right is doing. Do you know the motto of the Israeli secret service?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“ ”By way of deception, thou shalt do war.“ Ari Shamron lives by those words.”

“You think Shamron might be playing some game?”

“Anything’s possible when it comes to Shamron. You see, there are some people inside the Israeli secret service who want Tariq dead, whatever the political costs. But there are others, I’m afraid, who would like to see him succeed.”

“Into which category does Shamron fall?”

Arafat frowned. “I wish I knew.”

Shortly before midnight the president walked Arafat down to his waiting car. They were a mismatched pair, the tall, patrician president and the little revolutionary in his olive drab and flowing kaffiyeh.

Beckwith said, “I understand you’re attending a reception at the home of Douglas Cannon after the signing ceremony tomorrow. Douglas and I are good friends.”

“He and I are friends as well. He saw the justness of the Palestinian cause long before most American politicians. It took a great amount of courage, considering the fact that he was a senator from New York, where the Jewish lobby is so powerful.”

“ Douglas always stood his ground and let the political chips fall where they might. That’s what set him apart from most of the politicians in this damned town. Please give him my warmest regards when you see him.”

“I will indeed.”

They shook hands formally beneath the North Portico; then Arafat turned and walked toward his limousine.

“And do me one other favor, Mr. Arafat.”

The Palestinian turned around and raised one eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“Watch your back.”

“Always,” said Arafat. Then he climbed into the back of his car and disappeared from sight.

FORTY-TWO

Burlington, Vermont

“Your name is not Dominique Bonard, and you don’t work for an art gallery in London. You work for Israeli intelligence. And we left Montreal the way we did because your friend Gabriel Allon was coming to kill me.”

Jacqueline’s mouth went dry. She felt as though her throat might close up. She remembered what Gabriel had told her in London: Dominique Bonard has nothing to fear from this man. If he pushes, push back.

“What the hell are you talking about? I don’t know anyone named Gabriel Allon! Stop this fucking car! Where the fuck do you think you’re taking me! What’s wrong with you?”

He hit her in the side of the head with the gun: a short, brutal blow that instantly brought tears to her eyes. She reached up, touched her scalp, found blood. “You bastard!”

He ignored her. “Your name is not Dominique Bonard, and you don’t work for an art gallery in London. You work for Ari Shamron. You’re an Israeli agent. You’re working with Gabriel Allon. That was Gabriel Allon who was crossing the street toward us in Montreal. He was coming to kill me.”

“I wish you would just shut up about all this shit! I don’t know what you’re talking about! I don’t know anyone named Gabriel, and I don’t know anyone named Ari Shamron.”

He hit her again, another blow that seemed to come out of nowhere. It landed in precisely the same spot. The pain was so intense that in spite of every effort she began to cry. “I’m telling you the truth!”

Another blow: harder.

“My name is Dominique Bonard! I work for-”

Another blow: harder still. She felt as though she was going to lose consciousness.

“You bastard,” she said, weeping. She pressed her fingers against the wound. “Where are you taking me? What are you going to do to me?”

Once again he ignored her. If he was trying to drive her mad, it was working. When he spoke there was an edge of pity to his voice, as if he felt sorry for her. She knew what he was trying to do. He was trying to tear down the last of her resistance, to make her believe she had been betrayed and was completely alone.

“You went to Tunis with Gabriel Allon and posed as his lover while he planned the murder of Abu Jihad.”

“I’ve never been to Tunis in my life, let alone with someone named Gabriel Allon!”

He lifted the gun to hit her again, but this time she saw the blow coming and raised her hands in defense. “Please,” she cried. “Don’t hit me again.”

He lowered the gun. Even he seemed to have no stomach for it.

“He’s aged a bit since I saw him last. I suppose he has a right, considering everything he’s been through.”

Jacqueline felt her will to resist crumble. The reality of intelligence work set in. Before it had been an adventure, something she did to make herself feel that she was more than just a face and a body. But this was the true nature of Ari Shamron’s secret war. It was dirty and violent, and now she was caught in the middle of it. She had to think of some way to gain control of the situation. Perhaps she could discover his plans. Maybe she could find some way to warn Gabriel and Shamron. Maybe I can find some way to survive.

“They’ll come for you,” she said. “Half the police in Canada and America are probably looking for us right now. You’ll never get to New York.”

“Actually, I doubt anyone’s looking for us but your friends Gabriel Allon and Shamron. I suspect they can’t ask the Canadians for help, because the Canadians and Americans probably don’t know they’re here. If they found out now, it could prove very embarrassing to your service.”

He reached into his pocket and handed her a handkerchief for her head. “By the way, we knew you were working for the Office the moment you walked into Yusef’s life.”

“How?”

“Do you really want to know this?”

“Yes.”

“All right, but first you have to answer a few questions for me. Are you really French?”

So, she thought, he doesn’t know everything. She said, “Yes, I’m French.”

“Are you also Jewish?”

“Yes.”

“Is Dominique Bonard your true name?”

“No.”

“What is your real name?”

She thought: What is my real name? Am I really Jacqueline Delacroix? No, that was just the name Marcel Lambert gave to a pretty young girl from Marseilles. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die with the name I was born with.

“My name is Sarah,” she said. “Sarah Halévy.”

“Such a beautiful name. Well, Sarah Halévy, I suppose you’re entitled to know how you ended up in a mess like this.” He looked at her to see her reaction, but she stared back at him with icy hostility. “By the way, if you wish, you may call me Tariq.”

He spoke for nearly an hour without stopping. He was clearly enjoying himself. After all, he had outmaneuvered one of the most feared intelligence services in the world. He told her how they had learned Gabriel had been brought back to the Office to find him. He told her about the security alert they had issued to all their operatives in the field. He told her how Yusef had immediately informed his control officer about the contact with the attractive French woman.

“We told Yusef to continue seeing you while we checked out your cover story in Paris. We discovered a flaw; a minor flaw, but a flaw nonetheless. We made photographs of you in London and compared them with photographs of a woman who worked with Gabriel Allon in Tunis. We told Yusef to deepen his relationship with this Dominique Bonard. We told him to develop an emotional bond with her: a bond of trust.”

She thought of their long conversations. His lectures about the suffering of the Palestinian people. His confession about the scars on his back and the horrible night in Shatila. All the while she had believed that she was controlling the game-that she was the deceiver and the manipulator-when in reality it was Yusef.

“When we felt your relationship had progressed to that point, we told Yusef to ask a very special favor of you: Would you be willing to accompany a Palestinian dignitary on an important secret mission? You put up a very convincing argument, but in the end you said yes, of course, because you’re not Dominique Bonard, a secretary from a London art gallery, but Sarah Halévy, an agent of Israeli intelligence. Ari Shamron and Gabriel Allon assumed correctly that this Palestinian dignitary was in reality me, since I have a history of using unsuspecting women in my operations. They placed you in this extremely dangerous situation because they wanted me. But now I’m going to turn the game against them. I’m going to use you to bring Allon to me.”

“Leave him,” she said. “He’s suffered enough because of you.”

“Allon has suffered? Gabriel Allon murdered my brother. His suffering is nothing compared to the suffering he inflicted on my family.”

“Your brother was a terrorist! Your brother deserved to die!”

“My brother fought for his people. He didn’t deserve to be shot like a dog as he lay in bed.”

“It was a long time ago. It’s over now. Take me instead of Gabriel.”

“That’s very noble of you, Sarah, but your friend Gabriel is not going to lose another woman to me without a fight. Close your eyes and get some rest. We have a long way to go tonight.”

It was nearly dawn as Tariq sped across the Whitestone Bridge and entered Queens. The traffic began to thicken as he passed La Guardia Airport. To the east the sky had turned light gray with the coming dawn. He switched on the radio, listened to a traffic report, then turned down the volume and concentrated on his driving. After a few minutes the East River appeared. Jacqueline could see the first rays of sunlight reflected on the skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan.

He exited the expressway and drove along the surface streets of Brooklyn. Now that it was light she could see him clearly for the first time since the previous afternoon. The long night of driving had taken its toll. He was pale, his eyes bloodshot and strained. He drove with his right hand. His left hand lay in his lap, clutching the Makarov.

She looked at the street signs: Coney Island Avenue. The neighborhood had turned markedly Middle Eastern and Asian. Colorful Pakistani markets with fruit stands spilling onto the sidewalk. Lebanese and Afghan restaurants. Middle East travel companies. A carpet and tile store. A mosque with a false green-and-white marble facade mounted on the brick exterior of an old commercial property.

He turned into a quiet residential street called Parkville Avenue and drove slowly for one block, stopping outside a square three-story brick building on the corner of East Eighth Street. On the ground floor was a boarded-up delicatessen. He shut off the engine, gave two short beeps of the horn. A light flared briefly in the second-floor apartment.

“Wait for me to walk around the car,” he said calmly. “Don’t open the door. If you open the door, I’ll kill you. When we get out of the car, walk straight inside and up the stairs. If you make a sound, if you try to run, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

She nodded. He slipped the Makarov into the front of his coat and climbed out. Then he walked around the back of the car, opened her door, and pulled her out by the hand. He closed the door, and together they walked quickly across the street. The ground-floor door was slightly ajar. They stepped inside and crossed a small foyer littered with flyers. The frame of a rusting bicycle with no tires leaned against the flaking woodwork.

Tariq mounted the stairs, still clutching her hand; his skin was hot and damp. The stairwell smelled of curry and turpentine. A door opened, and a face briefly appeared in the darkness, a bearded man wearing a white gown. He glanced at Tariq, then slipped back into his apartment and softly closed the door.

They came to a doorway marked 2A. Tariq knocked softly twice.

Leila opened the door and pulled Jacqueline inside.

FORTY-THREE

New York City

One hour later Ari Shamron arrived at the Israeli diplomatic mission to the United Nations on Second Avenue and Forty-third Street. He slipped through a knot of protesters, head bowed slightly, and stepped inside. A member of the mission security staff was waiting for him in the lobby and escorted him upstairs to the secure room. The prime minister was there, surrounded by a trio of nervous-looking aides, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Shamron sat down and looked at the prime minister’s chief of staff. “Give me a copy of his schedule and leave the room.”

As the aides filed out of the room, the prime minister said, “What happened in Montreal?”

Shamron gave him a detailed account. When he finished, the prime minister closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “I brought you out of retirement to restore the reputation of the Office, Ari-not to create yet another disaster! Do we have any reason to believe the Canadians were aware of our presence in Montreal?”

“No, Prime Minister.”

“Do you think your agent is still alive?”

“It’s hard to say, but the situation appears to be rather bleak. The women who have encountered Tariq in the past have not fared terribly well.”

“The press is going to have a field day with this one. I can see the headlines now: Beautiful French Fashion Model Secret Agent for Israel! Fuck, Ari!”

“There’s no way she can be formally linked to the Office.”

“Someone’s going to get the story, Ari. Someone always does.”

“If they do, we’ll use our friends like Benjamin Stone to knock it down. I can assure you complete deniability of all aspects of this affair.”

“I don’t want deniability! You promised me Tariq’s head on a platter with no fuckups and no fingerprints! I still want Tariq’s head on a platter, and I want Jacqueline Delacroix alive.”

“We want the same things, Prime Minister. But at this moment your security is our first priority.” Shamron picked up the schedule and began to read.

“After the ceremony at the United Nations, it’s down to the financial district for a meeting with investors, followed by an appearance at the New York Stock Exchange. After that you go to the Waldorf for a luncheon hosted by the Friends of Zion.” Shamron looked up briefly. “And that’s the first half of the day. After lunch you go to Brooklyn to visit a Jewish community center and discuss the peace process. Then it’s back to Manhattan for a round of cocktail parties and receptions.”

Shamron lowered the paper and looked at the prime minister. “This is a security nightmare. I want Allon assigned to your personal detail for the day.”

“Why Allon?”

“Because he got a good look at Tariq in Montreal. If Tariq’s out there, Gabriel will see him.”

“Tell him he has to wear a suit.”

“I don’t think he owns one.”

“Get one.”

It was a tiny apartment: a sparsely furnished living room, a kitchen with a two-burner stove and cracked porcelain sink, a single bedroom, a bathroom that smelled of damp. The windows were hung with thick woolen blankets, which blocked out all light. Tariq opened the closet door. Inside was a large, hard-sided suitcase. He carried the suitcase into the living room, placed it on the floor, opened it. Black gabardine trousers, neatly pressed and folded, white dinner jacket, white shirt, and bow tie. In the zippered compartment, a wallet. Tariq opened it and studied the contents: a New York driver’s license in the name of Emilio Gonzales, a Visa credit card, a video store rental card, an assortment of receipts, a clip-on identification badge. Kemel had done his work well.

Tariq looked at the photograph. Emilio Gonzales was a balding man with salt and pepper hair and a thick mustache. His cheeks were fuller than Tariq’s; nothing a few balls of cotton wouldn’t take care of. He removed the clothing from the suitcase and laid it carefully over the back of a chair. Then he removed the final item from the suitcase-a small leather toiletry kit, and went into the bathroom.

He placed the toiletry kit on the basin and propped the photograph of Emilio Gonzales on the shelf below the mirror. Tariq looked at his reflection in the glass. He barely recognized his own face: deep black circles beneath his eyes, hollow cheeks, pale skin, bloodless lips. Part of it was lack of sleep-he couldn’t remember when he had slept last-but the illness was to blame for most of it. The tumor was stalking him now: numbness in his extremities, ringing in his ears, unbearable headaches, fatigue. He did not have much longer to live. He had arrived at this place, this moment in history, with little time to spare.

He opened the toiletry kit, removed a pair of scissors and a razor, and began cutting his hair. It took nearly an hour to complete the job.

The transformation was remarkable. With the silver hair coloring, mustache, and thicker cheeks, he bore a striking resemblance to the man in the photograph. But Tariq understood that the subtleties of his performance were just as important as the actual likeness. If he behaved like Emilio Gonzales, no security guard or policeman would question him. If he acted like a terrorist on a suicide mission, he would die in an American prison.

He went into the living room, removed his clothing, changed into the waiter’s uniform. Then he walked back to the bathroom for one final look in the mirror. He combed his thinned-out hair over his new bald spot and felt vaguely depressed. To die in a strange land, with another man’s name and another man’s face. He supposed it was the logical conclusion of the life he had led. Only one thing to do now: make certain his life had not been wasted on a lost cause.

He walked into the bedroom.

As he entered Leila stood, face alarmed, and raised her gun.

“It’s only me,” he said softly in Arabic. “Put the gun down before it goes off and you hurt somebody.”

She did as he said, then shook her head in wonderment. “It’s remarkable. I would never have recognized you.”

“That’s the point.”

“You obviously missed your true calling. You should have been an actor.”

“So, everything is in place. All we need now is Gabriel Allon.”

Tariq looked at Jacqueline. She lay spread-eagled on the small bed, wrists and ankles secured by four sets of handcuffs, mouth gagged by heavy electrical tape.

“I found it interesting that within minutes of arriving at the hotel room in Montreal you checked your telephone messages at your flat in London. When I was working for the PLO, we discovered that the Israelis had the ability to take virtually any telephone in the world and route it directly to their headquarters in Tel Aviv on a secure link. Obviously that was done to your telephone in London. When you called that number, it must have alerted headquarters that you were in the Hotel Queen Elizabeth in Montreal.”

Tariq sat down on the edge of the bed, gently pushed Jacqueline’s hair out of her face. She closed her eyes and tried to draw away from his touch.

“I’m going to use that device one more time to deceive Ari Shamron and Gabriel Allon. Leila is not a bad actress herself. When I’m ready to move against the target, Leila will telephone your number in London and impersonate you. She will tell headquarters where I am and what I’m about to do. Headquarters will tell Shamron, and Shamron will quickly dispatch Gabriel Allon to the scene. Obviously, I will know that Allon is coming. Therefore, I will hold a significant advantage.”

He removed the Makarov, placed the barrel beneath her chin. “If you are a good girl, if you behave yourself, you will be allowed to live. Once Leila makes that telephone call, she will have to leave this place. It’s up to her whether Ari Shamron finds a dead body chained to this bed. Do you understand me?”

Jacqueline stared back at him with a cold insolence. He pressed the barrel of the gun into the soft flesh of her throat until she groaned through the gag.

“Do you understand me?”

She nodded.

He stood up, slipped the Makarov into the waistband of his trousers. Then he walked into the living room, pulled on an overcoat and a pair of gloves, and went out.

A clear, cold afternoon, the sun shining brightly. Tariq slipped on a pair of sunglasses, turned up the collar of his overcoat. He walked to Coney Island Avenue, strolled along a row of shops until he found a grocer specializing in Middle Eastern goods. He entered the cramped market, accompanied by the tinkle of a small bell on the door, and was immediately overwhelmed by the scents of home. Coffee and spices, roasting lamb, honey and tobacco.

A teenage boy stood behind the counter. He wore a Yankees sweatshirt and was speaking rapid, Moroccan-accented Arabic on a cordless telephone.

“Dates,” Tariq said in English. “I’m looking for dried dates.”

The boy paused for a moment. “Back row on the left.”

Tariq picked his way through the narrow aisles until he arrived at the back of the store. The dates were on the top shelf. As Tariq reached up to grasp them, he could feel the Makarov digging into the small of his back. He pulled down the dates and looked at the label. Tunisia. Perfect.

He paid and went out. From Coney Island Avenue he walked east through quieter residential streets, past small apartment houses and tiny brick homes, until he arrived at the Newkirk Avenue subway stop. He purchased a token, then walked down the stairs to the small exposed platform. Two minutes later he boarded a Q train bound for Manhattan.

Gabriel was beginning to think he would never find Tariq. At that moment he was speeding up Park Avenue in the front seat of a black minivan, surrounded by the rest of the prime minister’s security detail. A few feet ahead of them was the prime minister’s limousine. To their right, a motorcycle outrider. Gabriel wore a gray suit he had borrowed from one of the other bodyguards. The jacket was too big, the pants too short. He felt like a damned fool-like someone who comes to an expensive restaurant without proper attire and has to borrow the house blazer. It was no matter; he had more important things to worry about.

So far the day had gone off without a problem. The prime minister had had coffee with a group of high-powered investment bankers to discuss business opportunities in Israel. Then he had toured the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Gabriel had been at his side the entire time. He left nothing to chance. He stared at every face-the bankers, the traders, the janitors, people on the street-looking for Tariq. He remembered Tariq’s face from the rue St-Denis in Montreal: the mocking smile as he pushed Jacqueline into the car and drove away.

He wondered whether she was even still alive. He thought about the string of dead women Tariq had left in his wake: the American in Paris, the hooker in Amsterdam, the shopgirl in Vienna.

He borrowed a cell phone from one of the other security officers and checked in with Shamron at the mission. Shamron had heard nothing. Gabriel severed the connection, swore softly. It was beginning to feel hopeless. It seemed Tariq had beaten them again.

The motorcade pulled into the parking garage at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The prime minister bounded out of his limousine and shook a few hands before he was escorted to the grand ballroom. Gabriel followed a few paces behind him. As the prime minister entered the ballroom, a thousand people stood up and began to applaud. The noise was thunderous. It could easily cover the sound of a gunshot. The prime minister walked to the podium, basked in the warm reception. Gabriel slowly circled the ballroom, looking for Tariq.

Tariq left the Q train at the Broadway-Lafayette Street station and boarded an uptown Number 5 train. He got off at East Eighty-sixth Street and strolled from Lexington Avenue across town to Fifth Avenue, taking in the grand old apartment houses and brownstones. Then he walked uptown two blocks to Eighty-eighth Street. He stopped in front of an apartment house overlooking the park. An Elite Catering truck was double-parked on Eighty-eighth Street; white-jacketed waiters were carrying trays and food and cases of liquor through the service entrance. He looked at his watch. It wouldn’t be long now. He crossed Fifth Avenue, sat down on a bench in a patch of sunlight, and waited.

Jacqueline closed her eyes, tried to think. Tariq was going to use the resources and technology of the Office to lure Gabriel into a trap. She pictured him in his new disguise; even she barely recognized him, and they had been together every minute for the past eighteen hours. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for Gabriel to spot him. Tariq was right: he would hold every advantage. Gabriel would never see him coming.

The girl came into the room, a mug of tea in her hands, gun shoved down the front of her jeans. She paced slowly, looking at Jacqueline, drinking the tea. Then she sat on the edge of the bed. “Tell me something, Dominique. Did you make love to Tariq while you were in Montreal?”

Jacqueline stared back at the girl, wondering what possible relevance this question could have now. The girl lifted the bottom of Jacqueline’s blouse, exposing her abdomen, and poured the scalding tea over her skin.

The gag muffled Jacqueline’s scream. The girl tenderly blew air over the burned skin and covered it with Jacqueline’s blouse. Even the sensation of the light cotton lying on her flesh caused pain. She closed her eyes and felt hot tears running over her cheeks.

Leila said, “Let’s try again. Did you ever make love to Tariq?”

Jacqueline shook her head, eyes still closed.

“Too bad for you,” she said. “I hear he’s a wonderful lover. The girl in Paris told me everything in explicit detail. In a way I suppose she’s lucky Tariq killed her in the end. No man would have ever made love to her the way he did. Her love life would have been a series of disappointments.”

Jacqueline realized that she was never going to set foot outside this room alive. Leila was a psychopath who had no intention of allowing her to live. Indeed, she would probably take pleasure in Jacqueline’s death. No, she thought, if she were going to die, she would die on her own terms. She would die trying to save Gabriel.

But how?

She had to create an opportunity to get away. To do that she had to convince Leila to let her out of the bed.

Through her gag Jacqueline managed to mumble, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“What did you say?”

Jacqueline repeated her words, more forcefully.

Leila said, “If you have to go, go.”

“Please,” said Jacqueline.

Leila set the empty mug on the floor and removed the gun from the waistband of her trousers. “Remember, we don’t need you for anything. If you try to get away I’ll shoot you in that beautiful face of yours. Do you understand me?”

Jacqueline nodded.

Leila unlocked the cuffs, starting with Jacqueline’s hands and ending with her feet.

“Stand up,” said Leila. “Slowly. And walk, slowly, into the bathroom with your hands behind your head.”

Jacqueline did as she was told. She entered the bathroom, turned around, started to close the door. Leila put her hand on it and aimed the gun at Jacqueline’s face. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Please,” said Jacqueline.

Leila looked around. The bathroom was windowless, no way out except the door. “Knock on the door when you’re finished, Dominique. Stay inside until I tell you to come out.”

Jacqueline lowered her jeans and sat down on the toilet. Now what? To have any chance of getting away she needed a weapon of some sort. Maybe she could hit her with the lid to the toilet tank. No, too big, too heavy. She looked around the bathroom: a shampoo bottle, a bar of soap, a can of shaving cream, a disposable razor, a nail file.

A nail file.

It was resting on the shelf above the sink, below the mirror: a metal nail file, rounded at one end, sharp at the other. Jacqueline remembered her self-defense course at the Academy. The simplest device could be turned into a lethal weapon if the attacker struck in the right place: the eyes, the ears, the throat. Carefully, she picked up the nail file and gripped it across her palm, so that about an inch of the blade protruded from the heel of her hand.

But can I really do this?

Jacqueline thought of what Tariq was going to do to Gabriel. She thought about what Leila was going to do to her. She raised her blouse and looked at the burned skin of her abdomen.

She stood up and knocked on the door.

“Open the door slowly and step out with your hands behind your head.”

Jacqueline concealed the nail file in the palm of her right hand, opened the door, and placed her hands behind her head. Then she walked out into the living room. Leila was there, pointing the gun at Jacqueline’s chest. “Back to the bedroom,” she said, motioning with the gun.

Jacqueline turned and walked to the bedroom, Leila trailing a pace behind her, the gun in her outstretched hands. Jacqueline stopped at the edge of the bed.

Leila said, “Lie down and attach the handcuff to your right wrist.”

Jacqueline hesitated.

Leila shouted, “Do it!”

Jacqueline whirled around. As she turned she used her thumb to press the blade of the nail file into view. Leila was caught completely off guard. Instead of shooting she instinctively raised her hands. Jacqueline was aiming for her ear canal, but Leila moved just enough so that the tip of the file tore into the flesh of her cheekbone.

It was a deep wound, and blood immediately began to spout from it. Leila howled in pain, the gun tumbled from her grasp.

Jacqueline resisted the natural impulse to grab for the gun and forced herself to stab the girl again. She drew back her arm and swung it in a wide arc. This time the blade struck Leila in the side of the neck.

Warm blood spurted onto Jacqueline’s hand.

She let go of the file. It was protruding from the side of Leila’s neck. Leila looked at Jacqueline, her gaze a peculiar mixture of pain, horror, and utter surprise, her hands clutching at the metal object in her neck.

Jacqueline reached down and picked up the fallen gun.

Leila pulled the nail file from the side of her neck and lunged toward Jacqueline with a killing rage in her eyes.

Jacqueline raised the gun and shot her through the heart.

FORTY-FOUR

New York City

Tariq stood up and crossed Fifth Avenue. He walked to the service entrance of the apartment house and picked up a case of champagne that was standing just inside the doorway. A man with an apron and heavily oiled black hair looked up. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Tariq shrugged, still holding the case of champagne. “My name is Emilio Gonzales.”

“So?”

“I was told to come here. I work for Elite Catering.”

“So how come I don’t know you?”

“This is my first job for them. I got a call this morning. Guy told me to get my ass over here right away-big party, needed some extra help. So here I am.”

“Well, it is a big party, and I could use a pair of extra hands. Someone important too. Helluva lot of security up there.”

“So?”

“So what the fuck are you standing there for? Take that upstairs and get your ass back down here.”

“Yes, sir.”

In the small apartment the gunshot sounded like a cannon blast. Surely someone had heard it. Jacqueline had to get away quickly. But she had to do one thing first. She had to warn Gabriel about Tariq’s plan.

She stepped over Leila’s dead body, snatched up the receiver, dialed the number in London. When she heard the recording of her own voice, she pressed three more numbers. There was a series of clicks, followed by a humming tone, then the voice of a young woman.

“Yes.”

“I need Ari Shamron, priority one. It’s an emergency.”

“Security word.”

“ Jericho. Please, hurry!”

“Stand by, please.”

The calmness in the woman’s voice was maddening. There was another series of clicks and buzzes, but this time it was the voice of Shamron on the line.

“Jacqueline? Is that really you? Where are you?”

“I’m not sure. Somewhere in Brooklyn, I think.”

“Hold on. I’ll get your exact address from headquarters.”

“Don’t leave me alone!”

“I’m not. I’m right here.”

She began to cry.

“What happened?”

“Tariq’s out there somewhere! He’s disguised as a waiter. He looks totally different from Montreal. He was going to use the secure link to lure Gabriel into a trap, but I killed Leila with a nail file and her gun.”

She realized she probably sounded like a hysteric.

“Is the girl there now?”

“Yes, right next to me, on the floor. Oh, Ari, it’s horrible.”

“You have to get out of there. Just tell me one thing: Do you know where Tariq is going?”

“No.”

Just then she heard heavy footfalls in the stairwell.

Shit!

She whispered, “Someone’s coming!”

“Get out of there!”

“There’s only one way out.”

She heard knocking at the door: two crisp blows that seemed to shake the entire apartment.

“Ari, I don’t know what to do.”

“Be quiet and wait.”

Three more knocks, harder still. No more footsteps. Whoever was out there hadn’t left yet.

She was unprepared for the next sound: a violent thud, followed by the crackle of splintering wood. The noise was so loud that Jacqueline expected to see several people charge into the room, but it was only one man-the man who had appeared in the doorway that morning when Tariq brought her into the building.

He held a baseball bat in his clenched fists.

Jacqueline dropped the receiver. The man looked down at Leila’s body, then at Jacqueline. Then he raised the bat and started running toward her. Jacqueline leveled the gun and squeezed off two shots. The first struck him high in the shoulder, spinning him around. The second tore into the center of his back, severing his spinal cord. She moved forward and fired two more shots.

The room was filled with gun smoke and the smell of powder, the walls and floor spattered with blood. Jacqueline bent down and picked up the telephone.

“Ari?”

“Thank God it’s you. Listen carefully, Jacqueline. You have to get out of there now.”

“No shit, Ari! Where do I go?”

“Apparently, you’re at the corner of Parkville Avenue and East Eighth Street in Brooklyn.”

“That doesn’t mean shit to me.”

“Leave the building and walk to Parkville Avenue. Make a left turn onto Parkville and walk to Coney Island Avenue. At Coney Island Avenue make a right turn. Do not cross Coney Island. Stay on that side of the street. Keep walking. Someone will pick you up.”

“Who?”

“Just do as I say, and get out of there now!”

The line went dead.

She dropped the receiver onto the floor and picked up her coat, which was lying on the floor next to the bed. She pulled on the coat, slipped the gun into the front pocket, and walked quickly out. She followed Shamron’s instructions and a moment later was walking past the storefronts of Coney Island Avenue.

One mile away, in the auditorium of a Jewish community center on Ocean Avenue, Gabriel stood a few feet from the prime minister as he read the story of Masada to a group of schoolchildren. Another member of the prime minister’s security detail tapped Gabriel on the shoulder lightly and whispered, “You have a phone call. Sounds urgent.”

Gabriel stepped into the lobby. Another bodyguard handed him a cell phone.

“Yes?”

Shamron said, “She’s alive.”

“What! Where is she?”

“Heading your way on Coney Island Avenue. She’s walking on the west side of the street. She’s alone. Go get her. I’ll let her tell you the rest.”

Gabriel severed the connection and looked up. “I need a car. Now!”

Two minutes later Gabriel was speeding north along Coney Island Avenue, his eyes scanning the pedestrians on the sidewalks for any sign of Jacqueline. Shamron had said she would be on the west side of the street, but Gabriel looked on both sides in case she had become confused or frightened by something else. He read the passing street signs: Avenue L, Avenue K, Avenue J…

Damn! Where the hell is she?

He spotted her at the intersection of Coney Island and Avenue H. Her hair was mussed, her face swollen. She had the air of the hunted about her. Still, she was composed and cool. Gabriel could see her eyes scanning slowly back and forth.

He quickly made a U-turn, pulled to the curb, and reached across the front seat to open the passenger-side door. Reflexively, she backed away a few steps and reached into her pocket. Then she saw it was him, and her composure dissolved. “Gabriel,” she whispered. “Thank God.”

“Get in,” he said calmly.

She climbed in and closed the door.

Gabriel pulled into traffic, accelerating rapidly.

After a few blocks she said, “Pull over.”

Gabriel turned into a side street and parked, engine running. “Are you all right, Jacqueline? What happened? Tell me everything.”

She started to weep, softly at first; then her entire body began to convulse with wrenching sobs. Gabriel pulled her to him and held her tightly. “It’s over,” he said softly. “It’s all over.”

“Please don’t ever leave me again, Gabriel. Be with me, Gabriel. Please, be with me.”

FORTY-FIVE

New York City

Tariq circulated through the magnificent rooms overlooking Central Park while the guests carelessly dropped items on his oval-shaped tray: empty glasses, half-eaten plates of food, crumpled napkins, cigarette butts. He glanced at his watch. Leila would have made the call by now. Allon was probably on his way. It would be over soon.

He walked through the library. A pair of French doors led onto the terrace. In spite of the cold, a handful of guests stood outside admiring the view. As Tariq stepped onto the balcony, the wail of distant sirens filled the air. He walked to the balustrade and looked up Fifth Avenue: a motorcade, complete with police escort and motorcycle outriders.

The guest of honor was about to arrive.

But where the hell is Allon?

“Excuse me? Hello?”

Tariq looked up. A woman with a fur coat was waving at him. He had been so absorbed by the sight of the approaching motorcade that he had forgotten he was posing as a busboy.

The woman held up a half-empty glass of red wine. “Can you take this please?”

“Certainly, madam.”

Tariq walked across the terrace and stood next to the woman, who was now talking to a friend. Without looking she reached out and tried to place the glass on Tariq’s tray, but it teetered on its small base and tipped over, splashing red wine over Tariq’s white jacket.

“Oh heavens,” the woman said. “I’m so sorry.” Then she turned away as if nothing had happened and resumed her conversation.

Tariq carried his tray back to the kitchen.

“What the fuck happened to you?” It was the man with the apron and the oiled black hair: Rodney, the boss.

“A woman spilled wine on me.”

Tariq placed his full tray on the counter next to the sink. Just then he heard a round of applause sweep through the apartment. The guest of honor had entered the room. Tariq picked up an empty tray and started to leave the kitchen.

Rodney said, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Back out to do my job.”

“Not looking like that, you’re not. You’re on kitchen duty now. Get over there and help with the dishes.”

“I can clean the jacket.”

“It’s red wine, pal. The jacket’s ruined.”

“But-”

“Just get over there and start on those dishes.”

Douglas Cannon said, “President Arafat, so good to see you again.”

Arafat smiled. “Same to you, Senator. Or should I say Ambassador Cannon now?”

“ Douglas will do you just fine.”

Cannon took Arafat’s small hand in his own bearish paws and shook it vigorously. Cannon was a tall man, with broad shoulders and a mane of unruly gray hair. His middle had thickened with age, though his paunch was concealed nicely by an impeccably tailored blue blazer. The New Yorker magazine had once called him “a modern-day Pericles”-a brilliant scholar and philanthropist who rose from the world of academia to become one of the most powerful Democrats in the Senate. Two years earlier he had been called out of retirement to serve as the American ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in London. His ambassador-ship had been cut short, however, when he was gravely wounded in a terrorist attack. He showed no sign of it now as he took Arafat by the hand and propelled him into the party.

“I was so saddened by the attempt on your life, Douglas. It’s good to see you looking so fit again. Did you receive the flowers that Suhla and I sent for you?”

“Yes, indeed. They were the most beautiful in the hospital room. Thank you so much. But enough about me. Come, this way. There are a lot of people here who are interested in meeting you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” said Arafat, smiling. “Lead on.”

Gabriel sped over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. Jacqueline had regained her composure and was giving him a thorough account of the last forty-eight hours, beginning with the night in the council flat near Heathrow, ending with the gruesome sequence of events in Brooklyn. Gabriel forced himself to listen dispassionately, to set aside momentarily his rage over what Tariq had done to her so he could search for clues to his intentions.

One detail caught his attention. Why did Tariq feel it was necessary to bring Gabriel to him by having Leila impersonate Jacqueline over the secure phone link?

The answer was probably quite simple: because he did not believe Gabriel would be at the place where he intended to strike. But why not? If he had come to New York to assassinate the prime minister of Israel, the great peacemaker, then surely he would assume that Gabriel would be at the prime minister’s side. After all, Gabriel had just seen Tariq in Montreal.

Gabriel thought of the painting by Van Dyck: a religious scene on the surface, a rather ugly woman beneath. One painting, two realities. The entire operation had been like that painting, and Tariq had beaten him at every turn.

Damn it, Gabriel. Don’t be afraid to trust your instincts!

He picked up the cell phone and dialed the number for Shamron at the diplomatic mission. When Shamron came on the line, Gabriel said tersely, “Where’s Arafat?”

He listened for a moment, then said: “Shit! I think Tariq is there disguised as a waiter. Tell his people I’m coming.”

He severed the connection and looked at Jacqueline. “You still have the girl’s gun?”

She nodded.

“Anything left?”

Jacqueline released the magazine and counted the remaining rounds. “Five,” she said.

Gabriel turned north onto the FDR Drive and put the accelerator to the floor.

Tariq walked to the entrance of the kitchen and peered through the passageway into the party. Flashbulbs popped as guests posed for photographs with Arafat. Tariq shook his head. Ten years ago these same people had written Arafat off as a ruthless terrorist. Now they were treating him like a rock star in a kaffiyeh.

Tariq looked around the room for Allon. Something must have gone wrong. Perhaps Leila had been unable to get through on the telephone. Perhaps Allon was playing some sort of game. Whatever the case, Tariq knew he could not wait long to act. He knew Arafat better than anyone. The old man was prone to last-minute changes in plans. That’s how he had survived all these years. He could walk out of the party at any time, and Tariq would lose his opportunity to kill him.

He had wanted to kill them both at the same time-Allon and Arafat, one final act of vengeance-but it looked as though that was not to be. Once he killed Arafat, the bodyguards would swarm him. He would fight back and leave them no choice but to kill him. Anything is better than letting the tumor kill me. Allon would miss everything, and therefore his life would be spared. Arafat the traitorous coward would not be so lucky.

Rodney tapped Tariq on the shoulder. “Start washing dishes, my friend, or this will be the last party you ever work.”

Rodney walked away. Tariq went into the pantry and switched on the light. He reached up to the top shelf and removed the bag of Tunisian dates he had hidden there an hour earlier. He carried the dates into the kitchen, arranged them on a white china plate. Then he started picking his way through the crowd.

Arafat was standing in the center of the main drawing room, surrounded by a half-dozen aides and security men and a crowd of well-wishers. Ambassador Cannon stood at his side. Tariq moved forward, the butt of the Makarov pressing into the flesh of his abdomen. Arafat was now ten feet away, but there were five people between him and Tariq, including a bodyguard. Arafat was so short that Tariq could barely see him through the crowd-only the black-and-white of his checkered kaffiyeh. If he drew the Makarov now, surely one of the bodyguards would spot it and open fire. Tariq had to get closer before he drew the gun. He had to play out the ruse with the dates.

But now Tariq had another problem. The crowd around Arafat was so tightly packed that he could move no closer. Standing directly in front of him was a tall man in a charcoal-gray suit. When Tariq tapped him on the shoulder, the man turned briefly and, spotting the tray and Tariq’s white jacket, said, “No thank you.”

“They’re for President Arafat,” Tariq said, and the man reluctantly stepped aside.

Next Tariq was confronted with a woman. Once again, he tapped the woman on the shoulder, waited for her to step aside, and moved another three feet closer to the target. But now he was standing beside one of Arafat’s aides. He was about to tap the man on the shoulder when he heard a cell phone chirp. The aide reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and brought the telephone quickly to his ear. He listened intently for a moment, then slipped the phone into his pocket, leaned forward, and whispered into Arafat’s ear. Arafat then turned to Cannon and said, “I’m afraid I have an urgent matter to attend to.”

Tariq thought: Damn it, but the man has the luck of the devil!

Arafat said, “I need to conduct a telephone conversation in private.”

“I think you’ll find my study to your liking. Please, come right this way.”

Arafat disengaged himself from the crowd and, together with Cannon and his bevy of aides, moved along a corridor toward the back of the apartment. A moment later they disappeared into a room. One of Arafat’s bodyguards immediately took up a post outside the door. Cannon and the aides emerged a moment later and rejoined the party.

Tariq knew he had to strike now or he would lose his chance. He sliced his way through the crowded living room, and walked down the hallway, stopping in front of the bodyguard. Tariq could see he was a member of Arafat’s personal security unit, a man who would know that the Palestinian leader loved nothing more than a good Tunisian date.

“One of Mr. Arafat’s assistants asked me to bring these to him.”

The guard looked at the plate of dates, then at Tariq.

Tariq thought: We can do this one of two ways. You can let me pass peacefully, or I can take out my gun and shoot you in the face and then go inside.

The guard snatched one of the dates and popped it in his mouth. Then he opened the door and said, “Leave the plate and come right out again.”

Tariq nodded and stepped into the room.

Gabriel double-parked the minivan on Eighty-eighth Street. He climbed out, ignoring the shouts of a foot patrolman, and ran to the entrance of the building on Fifth Avenue, Jacqueline a few strides behind him. When they entered the lobby, three people were waiting for them: a member of Arafat’s personal security unit, an American Diplomatic Security Service agent, and a New York City policeman.

A doorman was holding one of the elevators. He pressed the button for the seventeenth floor as the five people piled into the car.

The DSS agent said, “I hope to hell you’re sure about this, my friend.”

Gabriel removed his Beretta, chambered the first round, and slipped it back beneath his coat.

The doorman said, “Jesus Christ.”

It was a small study: a carved antique desk with leather in-lay, recessed lighting high in the molded ceiling, bookshelves filled with volumes of history and biography, a wood fire burning slowly in a marble fireplace. Arafat was on the telephone, listening intently. Then he murmured a few words in Arabic, replaced the receiver, and looked at Tariq. When he saw the plate of dates, his face broke into a warm, childlike smile.

Tariq said in Arabic: “Peace be with you, President Arafat. One of your aides asked me to bring these to you.”

“Dates! How marvelous.” He took one, inspected it briefly, and bit into it. “This date is from Tunisia, I’m sure of it.”

“I believe you’re right, President Arafat.”

“You speak Arabic with the accent of a Palestinian.”

“That’s because I am from Palestine.”

“What part of Palestine?”

“My family lived in the Upper Galilee before al-Nakba. I grew up in the camps of Lebanon.”

Tariq placed the plate of dates on the desk and unbuttoned his jacket so that he could get at his Makarov. Arafat cocked his head slightly and touched his lower lip. “You are not well, my brother?”

“I’m just a bit tired. I’ve been working very hard lately.”

“I know what fatigue looks like, my brother. I’ve seen what lack of sleep has done to me over the years. I’ve seen what it’s done to the men around me. But you are not suffering only from fatigue. You’re sick, my brother. I can see it. I have a very powerful instinct for these things.”

“You’re correct, President Arafat. I am not well these days.”

“What is the nature of your illness, my brother?”

“Please, President Arafat-you are far too busy, and too important, to worry about the problems of a common man like me.”

“That’s where you are wrong, my brother. I’ve always thought of myself as the father of all the Palestinian people. When one of my people suffers, I suffer.”

“Your concern means the world to me, President Arafat.”

“It is a tumor, isn’t it, my brother? You are sick from a cancer of some sort?”

Tariq said nothing. Arafat abruptly changed the direction of the conversation. “Tell me something, my friend. Which one of my aides asked you to bring me those dates?”

Tariq thought, So, his survival instincts are still as strong as ever. He thought of a night in Tunis a long time ago. An interminable meeting, a typical Arafat session, beginning at midnight and stretching till dawn. At some point a package arrived, addressed to Arafat himself, from an Iraqi diplomat in Amman. It sat on his desk for some time, unopened, until finally Arafat stood up and said, “There is a bomb in that package, Tariq! I can smell it! Take it away!” Tariq removed the package and gave it to a Fatah engineer to inspect. The old man had been right. The Israelis had managed to place a bomb in a senior PLO staff meeting. If Arafat had opened the package, all the top leadership would have been liquidated.

Tariq said, “He didn’t tell me his name. He just told me to bring the dates.”

Arafat reached out and took another date from Tariq’s tray. “It’s strange, but you seem very familiar. Have we met before?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Are you sure about that? You see, I never forget a face.”

“I’m certain, President Arafat.”

“You remind me of an old comrade-a man who served at my side during the good times and the bad.”

“I’m afraid I’m just a laborer.”

“I owe my life to this man. He protected me from my enemies. He saved my life more times than I care to remember.” Arafat lifted his face toward the ceiling and closed his eyes for a moment. “I remember one night in particular. I had been summoned to Damascus for a meeting with the brother of President Assad. This friend of mine begged me not to go. It was in the old days, when Assad and his secret police wanted me dead. The meeting went off fine, but as we were about to board our motorcade for the drive back to Beirut, this friend of mine tells me it is not safe. You see, he had learned that the Syrians intended to ambush the motorcade and assassinate me. We sent the motorcade on its way as a decoy, and this man managed to hide me in Damascus, right under the noses of the Syrians. Late that night we received word that Syrian special forces had attacked the motorcade outside Damascus and that several of my men were killed. It was a very sad night, but I was still alive, thanks to this man.”

“A very interesting story, President Arafat.”

“Will you allow me to indulge in another?”

“I should probably be going,” Tariq said, reaching for the Makarov.

“Please, it will only take a moment.”

Tariq hesitated and said, “Of course, President Arafat. I’d love to hear the story.”

“Sit down, my friend. You must be tired.”

“It would not be appropriate.”

“As you wish,” Arafat replied. “It was during the siege of Beirut. The Israelis were trying to finish off the PLO once and for all. They wanted me dead, too. Everywhere I went Israeli bombs and rockets fell. It was as if they knew where I was all the time. So this friend of mine starts investigating. He discovers that Israeli intelligence has recruited several spies among my staff. He discovers that the Israelis have given the spies radio beacons, so they know where I am all the time. He detains the spies and convinces them to confess their crimes. He wants to send a message to other potential spies that this sort of betrayal will not be tolerated. He asks me to sign death warrants so the spies can be executed.”

“And did you?”

“I did not. I told this man that if I executed the traitors, I would be making enemies of their brothers and cousins. I told this man that they would be punished in a different way-that they would be cut off from the revolution. Banished. Exiled. For me, this would be a punishment worse than death. But I told him one other thing. I told him that no matter how serious their crimes, we Palestinians cannot be killing each other. We have too many enemies as it is.”

“And how did this man react?”

“He was angry with me. He told me I was a fool. He was the only one of my senior staff who had the courage to speak to me that way. He had the heart of a lion, this man.” Arafat paused, then said, “I have not seen him in many years. I hear he’s very sick. I hear he does not have long to live.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“When we have our own state, I will repay him for all the great things he did for the movement. When we have our own state, and our own schools, the children of Palestine will learn about all his heroic deeds. In the villages they will tell stories about this man around the fires at night. He will be a great hero of the Palestinian people.” Arafat lowered his voice. “But not if he does something foolish now. Then he will be remembered as just another fanatic.”

Arafat looked into Tariq’s eyes and said calmly, “If you must do this thing, my brother, then do it and get it over with. If you have no stomach for it, then I suggest you leave here, and quickly, and find some way to end your life with dignity.”

Arafat lifted his chin slightly. Tariq lowered his gaze, smiled slightly, and slowly buttoned his coat. “I believe you’ve mistaken me for another man. Peace be with you, my brother.”

Tariq turned and walked out of the room.

Arafat looked at the bodyguard and said, “Come in here and close the door, you idiot.” Then he let out a long breath and tried to quiet his trembling hands.

They entered the apartment, Gabriel and Jacqueline side by side, surrounded by the group of security men. The sudden appearance of five very agitated people sent a shock wave through the guests, and the party immediately fell silent. Gabriel had his hand inside his jacket, fingers wrapped around the butt of the Beretta. He looked quickly around the room; there were at least a half-dozen white-jacketed waiters moving through the crowd. He looked at Jacqueline. She shook her head.

Douglas Cannon joined the group as they moved from the entrance hall to the large living room overlooking Fifth Avenue and the park. Three waiters were moving through the guests, passing out hors d’oeuvres and glasses of champagne. Two of the waiters were women. Jacqueline looked at the man. “Not him.”

At that moment she spotted a white-jacketed man disappear into the kitchen. She had seen him for just an instant, but she was certain of it. “Gabriel! There he is!”

Gabriel looked at Cannon. “Where’s Arafat?”

“In my study using the telephone.”

“Where’s the study?”

“At the end of that hall!”

Gabriel pushed his way past the guests and ran down the hallway. When he burst through the door, he found himself confronted by a bodyguard pointing a pistol directly at his chest. Arafat was seated calmly behind the desk. “I’m afraid he’s come and gone,” Arafat said. “I’m still here, however-no thanks to you.”

Gabriel turned and ran out of the room.

Tariq walked quickly through the kitchen. There was a back door, leading onto a set of service stairs. He stepped out the door and quickly closed it. Several cases of champagne stood on the landing. He pushed the cases against the door. They were not heavy enough to block it completely, just heavy enough to slow down whoever was trying to get through, which was his intention. He walked down to the next landing, removed his Makarov, and waited.

Gabriel charged into the kitchen, Beretta drawn, as the back door was closing. He sprinted across the room and tried to open it. The knob turned, but the door itself wouldn’t move.

Jacqueline came into the room on the run.

Gabriel took a step back and then drove his shoulder into the door. It opened a few inches, and on the other side he could hear a loud thud, followed by the sound of shattering glass.

He pushed the door again. This time it gave way, though there was still some resistance.

He pushed again, and the door opened completely. Gabriel stepped onto the landing and looked down.

Tariq stood on the landing below, feet apart, the Makarov in his outstretched hands.

Gabriel saw the muzzle flashes in the dim light, felt the first bullet tearing into his chest. He thought how fitting it was that it should end like this. He had killed his first man in the stairwell of an apartment house, and now he would die the same way. There was a circular quality about it, like a good piece of music. He wondered if Tariq had planned it this way all along.

He could hear Tariq running down the stairs. Then he saw Jacqueline’s face leaning over him-Jacqueline’s beautiful face. Then her face turned to water, only to be replaced by the face of the woman in the lost Van Dyck. And then he blacked out.

As Gabriel slipped into unconsciousness, Jacqueline screamed, “Call an ambulance!” Then she stood and started running down the stairs.

Above her she heard one of the security officers scream, “Stop!” She ignored him.

She could hear the pounding of Tariq’s feet echoing up the stairwell toward her. She reached into her pocket and removed the gun she had taken from the apartment in Brooklyn. She thought: I’ve done this twice today. I can do it again.

She ran. The stairs seemed to go on forever. She tried to remember what floor the apartment had been on. Seventeen-yes, that was it; she was sure of it. She passed a door that said eighth floor.

She thought: Keep going, Jacqueline. Don’t slow down. He’s sick. He’s dying. You can catch him. Move!

She thought of Gabriel, his life draining out of him on the landing above her. She forced herself to run even faster. She propelled herself down the stairs so quickly that her feet struggled to stay beneath her body. She imagined that by catching up with Tariq and killing him she might save Gabriel’s life.

She thought of the day Gabriel had come for her, remembered the bicycle ride she had taken through the hills around Valbonne, the fire in her thighs as she had pushed herself to a new record.

Do it again!

She reached the bottom of the stairwell. There was a metal fire door, and it was slowly closing.

Tariq was right in front of her!

She ripped open the door and sprinted through it. Ahead of her stretched a corridor about fifty feet long, with another door at the opposite end. Halfway down the corridor was Tariq.

He was clearly exhausted. His pace was beginning to flag, his strides short and uncoordinated. He turned and looked over his shoulder, his face a mask of pain from the run down the stairs. Jacqueline raised the gun and fired two shots in quick succession. The first appeared to sail harmlessly over his head, but the second struck him high in the left shoulder, knocking him from his feet. As he landed on the ground, his gun fell from his grasp and slid along the corridor until it rattled against the door at the other end. Jacqueline moved forward and fired again, and again, and again, until the gun contained no more bullets and she was quite certain Tariq al-Hourani was dead.

Then the door at the end of the corridor opened. She leveled the gun at the man coming through, but it was only Ari Shamron. He stepped forward, loosened her grip on the gun, and slipped it into his coat pocket.

“Where’s Gabriel?”

“Upstairs.”

“Is it bad?”

“I think so.”

“Take me to him.”

Jacqueline looked at the body of Tariq. “What about him?”

“Let him lie there,” said Shamron. “Let the dogs lap up his blood. Take me to Gabriel. I want to see Gabriel.”

FORTY-SIX

Jerusalem: March

Gabriel awakened. He looked at the luminous face of his watch, closed his eyes: five-fifteen. He lay there trying to calculate how long he had slept. Trying to remember when he had lifted himself from the couch and dragged himself into bed-how long after that had it taken to slip into unconsciousness? Had he really slept? His mind had been so alive with dreams it felt as though he hadn’t.

He lay very still, waiting to see if sleep would take him again, but it was no good. Then came the sounds: the cry of a muezzin, drifting over the Hinnom Valley from Silwan. A church bell tolling in the Armenian Quarter. The faithful had awakened. The faithless and the damaged had little choice but to join them.

He probed his chest with his fingertips, testing for pain. Not as bad as yesterday. Each day was a little better. He rolled gingerly out of bed, walked into the kitchen, brewed coffee, toasted some bread. He was a prisoner, and like any prisoner he took comfort in the ritual of routine.

His cell was not a cell at all, but a pleasant safe flat overlooking Zion Gate: cool tile floors, white throw rugs, white furniture. It reminded Gabriel of a hospital, which in many respects it was. He pulled on a sweater, a gray cotton pullover with a stretched neck, and carried his breakfast through the French doors to the small table on the balcony.

As he waited for daybreak he sifted through the individual scents that combine to create the unique fragrance of Jerusalem: sage and jasmine, honey and coffee, leather and tobacco, cypress and eucalyptus. Then dawn came. In the absence of his restoration work, Jerusalem at sunrise had become Gabriel’s art. The last stars melted, the sun peeked over the backbone of mountain separating Jerusalem from the desert of the West Bank. The first light seeped down the chalk-colored slope of the Mount of Olives, then ignited a golden fire on the Dome of the Rock. Then the rays fell upon the Church of the Dormition, turning the east-facing surfaces of the church to scarlet and leaving the rest deep in shadow.

Gabriel finished his breakfast, carried the dishes into the kitchen, washed them fastidiously in the sink, placed them on the basin to dry. What now? Some mornings he stayed indoors and read. Lately he had taken to walking, a little farther on each occasion. Yesterday he’d walked all the way up the slope of Mount Scopus. He found it helped him to think, to sort through the wreckage of the case.

He showered, dressed, and walked downstairs. As he stepped out of the apartment building and entered the street, he heard a series of sounds: a hoarse stage whisper, a car door closing, a motor turning over. Shamron’s watchers. Gabriel ignored them, zipped his coat against the morning chill, started walking.

He moved along the Khativat Yerushalayim, entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate. He wandered through the hectic markets of El Bazaar: piles of chickpeas and lentils, stacks of flatbread, sacks overflowing with aromatic spices and roasted coffee beans, boys hawking silver trinkets and coffee-pots. An Arab boy pressed an olive wood statue of Jesus into Gabriel’s hand and named an exorbitant price. He had Tariq’s sharp brown eyes. Gabriel gave the statue back to the boy and in flawless Arabic told him it was too much.

Once free of the noisy market, he meandered through the quiet, twisting alleyways, making his way gradually eastward, toward the Temple Mount. The air warmed slowly. It was nearly spring. Overhead was a sky of cloudless azure, but the sun was still too low to penetrate the labyrinth of the Old City. Gabriel floated among the shadows, a skeptic among the believers in this place where devotion and hatred collided. He supposed like everyone else he was looking for answers. Different answers, but answers nonetheless.

He wandered for a long time, thinking. He followed the dark, cool passageways wherever they led him. Sometimes he would find himself at a locked gate or an impenetrable wall of Herodian stone. Sometimes he would come upon a courtyard bathed in warm sunlight. For an instant things would seem clear to him. Then he would embark down another twisting passage, the shadows would close in, and he would realize he was still no closer to the truth.

He came to an alley leading to the Via Dolorosa. A few feet ahead of him a shaft of light fell upon the stones of the path. He watched as two men, a Hasid in a black shtreimel and an Arab in a flowing white kaffiyeh, approached each other. They passed sightlessly, without a nod or glance, and continued their separate ways. Gabriel walked to the Beit ha-Bad and left the Old City through the Damascus Gate.

Shamron summoned Gabriel to Tiberias that evening for supper. They ate on the terrace beneath a pair of hissing gas heaters. Gabriel didn’t want to be there, but he played the role of gracious guest-listened to the old man’s stories, told a few of his own.

“Lev gave me his resignation today. He said he can no longer serve in an organization in which the director of Operations is kept in the dark about a major operation.”

“He has a point. Did you accept it?”

“I had no choice.” Shamron smiled. “Poor little Lev’s position had become untenable. We had crushed the serpent. We had beheaded Tariq’s organization and rounded up his foot soldiers. Yet Lev was completely out of the loop. I explained my reasons for running the operation the way I did. I told him the prime minister needed ironclad deniability and, unfortunately, that required deceiving my own deputy. Lev wasn’t mollified.”

“And the rest of your problem children?”

“They’ll be gone soon.” Shamron set down his fork and looked up at Gabriel. “There’ll be several vacancies in the executive suite at King Saul Boulevard. Can I tempt you back? How does chief of Operations sound?”

“Not interested. Besides, I was never much of a headquarters man.”

“I didn’t think so, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try.”

“What about the Americans? Have you managed to get back into their good graces?”

“Slowly, but surely. They seem to have accepted our version of the story: That we’d run an agent into Tariq’s organization and that the agent had been exposed. That we had no choice but to take appropriate steps to safeguard the agent’s life. They’re still furious that we didn’t bring them into the picture earlier.”

“That’s quite understandable, considering the way it ended. What did you tell them?”

“I told them we had no idea Tariq was in New York until Jacqueline freed herself and alerted us.”

“And they believed this?”

“Even I believe it now.”

“My name ever come up?”

“From time to time. Adrian Carter would like another go at you.”

“Oh, God.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let him talk to you again.”

Before Gabriel had been allowed to leave the United States, he was forced to endure eight hours of questioning: CIA, FBI, New York City police. Shamron had been at his side, like a good defense attorney at a deposition-objecting, stonewalling, impeding every step of the way. In the end it disintegrated into a shouting match. A full account of the operation against Tariq, based on anonymous “Western and Middle Eastern intelligence sources,” appeared in The New York Times two days later. Gabriel’s name made it into print. So did Jacqueline’s.

“I’m convinced it was Carter who leaked everything to the Times.” Gabriel detected a hint of admiration in the old man’s voice. He’d used the press to eviscerate an enemy once or twice himself over the years. “I suppose he had a right to be angry with me. I lied to his face about our knowledge of Tariq’s involvement in Paris.”

“Lev must have talked too.”

“Of course he did. Carter’s beyond my reach. Little Lev will pay dearly.” Shamron pushed his plate away a few inches, rested his stubby elbows on the table, and covered his mouth with his fist. “At least our reputation as a bold action service has been restored. After all, we did take down Tariq in the middle of Manhattan and save Arafat’s life.”

“No thanks to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Tariq nearly killed me. And he could have killed Arafat if he hadn’t gotten cold feet at the last minute. Why did he let him live?”

“Arafat is being very tight-lipped about what transpired in that room. Obviously, he said something that made Tariq change his mind.”

“Any sign of Yusef?”

Shamron shook his head. “We’ll keep looking for him, of course, but I doubt we’ll ever find him again. He’s probably deep in the mountains of Afghanistan by now.”

“And Benjamin Stone?”

“Relaxing in the Caribbean aboard his yacht.” Shamron abruptly changed course. “I stopped in on Jacqueline today.”

“How is she?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? She wants to see you.”

“I have to get back to Jerusalem.”

“Why, Gabriel? So you can waste more time wandering the Old City with the crazies? Go see the girl. Spend some time with her. Who knows? You might actually enjoy yourself.”

“When do I get to leave?”

“In my professional opinion it will never be safe for you to leave Israel.”

“I want to go home.”

“This is your home, Gabriel!”

But Gabriel just shook his head slowly.

“What have I done to you, Gabriel? Why do you hate your people and your country so?”

“I don’t hate anyone. I just have no peace here.”

“So you want to run back to Europe? Back to your paintings? Do me a favor. Get out of Jerusalem for a few days. Take a car and travel this country of yours. Get to know her again. You might like what you see.”

“I’m not up to it. I’d rather stay in Jerusalem until you set me free.”

“Damn you, Gabriel!” Shamron slammed his fist onto the table, rattling dishes. “You’ve spent the last years of your life fixing everything and everyone but yourself. You restore paintings and old sailboats. You restored the Office. You restored Jacqueline and Julian Isherwood. You even managed to restore Tariq in a strange way-you made certain we buried him in the Upper Galilee. But now it’s time to restore yourself. Get out of that flat. Live life, before you wake up one day and discover you’re an old man. Like me.”

“What about your watchers?”

“I put them there for your own good.”

“Get rid of them.”

Shamron stuck out his jaw. “Fine, you’re on your own.”

As Gabriel rode back to Jerusalem that night, he thought how well things had worked out for the old man. Lev and the others were gone, Tariq was dead, and the reputation of the Office had been restored. Not bad for a few weeks’ work, Ari. Not bad at all.

Gabriel went south first, down through the barren escarpments and craters of the Negev to Eilat and the Red Sea. He spent a day sunning himself on the beach but soon grew restless and set out toward the north, taking the fast road up the western Negev to Beersheba, then the black ribbon of highway through the Wilderness of Judea and the West Bank.

Something made him scale the punishing Snake Path up the eastern face of Masada and roam the ruins of the ancient fortress. He avoided the tourist kitsch of the Dead Sea, spent an afternoon wandering the Arab markets of Hebron and Jenin. He wished he could have seen Shamron’s face, watching him as he haggled with the merchants in their white kaffiyehs under the steady gaze of dark-eyed veterans of the intifada.

He drove through the Jezreel Valley and paused beyond the gates of the farming settlement, just outside Afula on the road to Nazareth, where he had lived as a boy. He considered going in. To do what? To see what? His parents were long dead, and if by some miracle he actually came across someone he knew, he could only lie.

He kept driving, kept moving north. Wildflowers burned on the hillsides as he headed into the Galilee. He drove around the shores of the lake. Then up to the ancient hill city of Safed. Then into the Golan. He parked beside the road near a Druse shepherd tending his flock, watched the sunset over the Finger of Galilee. For the first time in many years he felt something like contentment. Something like peace.

He got back into the car, drove down the Golan to a kibbutz outside Qiryat Shemona. It was a Friday night. He went to the dining hall for Shabbat meal, sat with a group of adults from the kibbutz: farmworkers with sunburned faces and callused hands. They ignored him for a time. Then one of them, an older man, asked his name and where he was from. He told them he was Gabriel. That he was from the Jezreel Valley but had been away for a long time.

In the morning he crossed the fertile flatlands of the coastal plain and drove south along the Mediterranean-through Akko, Haifa, Caesarea, and Netanya-until finally he found himself on the beach at Herzliya.

She was leaning against the balustrade, arms folded, looking out to sea at the setting sun, wind pushing strands of hair across her face. She wore a loose-fitting white blouse and the sunglasses of a woman in hiding.

Gabriel waited for her to notice him. Eventually she would. She had been trained by Ari Shamron, and no pupil of the great Shamron would ever fail to take notice of a man standing below her terrace. When she finally saw him a smile flared, then faded. She lifted her hand, the reluctant wave of someone who had been burned by the secret fire. Gabriel lowered his head and started walking.

They drank icy white wine on her terrace and made small talk, avoiding the operation or Shamron or Gabriel’s wounds. Gabriel told her about his journey. Jacqueline said she would have liked to come. Then she apologized for saying such a thing-she had no right.

“So why did you come here after all these weeks, Gabriel? You never do anything without a reason.”

He wanted to hear it one more time: Tariq’s version of the story. The way he had told it to her that night during the drive from the border to New York. He looked out to sea as she spoke, watching the wind tossing the sand about, the moonlight on the waves, but he was listening fiercely. When she was done, he still couldn’t put the final pieces into place. It was like an unfinished painting or a series of musical notes with no resolution. She invited him to stay for dinner. He lied and said he had pressing matters in Jerusalem.

“Ari tells me you want to leave. What are your plans?”

“I have a man named Vecellio waiting for me in England.”

“Are you sure it’s safe to go back?”

“I’ll be fine. What about you?”

“My story has been splashed across newspapers and television screens around the world. I’ll never be able to return to my old life. I have no choice but to stay here.”

“I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this business, Jacqueline. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Forgive you? No, Gabriel-quite the opposite, actually. I thank you. I got exactly what I wanted.” A second’s hesitation. “Well, almost everything.”

She walked him down to the beach. He kissed her softly on the mouth, touched her hair. Then he turned and walked to his car. He paused once to look over his shoulder at her, but she had already gone.

He was hungry, so instead of going straight to Jerusalem he stopped in Tel Aviv for dinner. He parked in Balfour Street, walked to Sheinkin, wandered past trendy cafés and avant-garde shops, thinking of the rue St-Denis in Montreal. He had the sense he was being followed. Nothing specific, just the flash of a familiar face too many times-a color, a hat.

He purchased a newspaper from a kiosk, sat down in a restaurant with small round tables spilling onto the side-walk. It was a warm evening, sidewalks filled with people. He ordered falafel and beer, then opened the newspaper and read the lead article on the front page: “Benjamin Stone, the maverick publisher and entrepreneur, is missing and feared drowned off St. Martin in the Caribbean. Authorities believe Stone fell overboard from his luxury yacht sometime during the night.”

Gabriel closed the newspaper.

“How’s Benjamin Stone?”

“Relaxing in the Caribbean aboard his yacht.”

When the food arrived he folded his newspaper and dropped it onto the extra chair. He looked up and spotted a man outside on the sidewalk: slender, good looking, black curly hair, blond Israeli girl on his arm. Gabriel laid down his fork, stared directly at him, throwing all discretion and tradecraft to the wind.

There was no doubt about it: Yusef al-Tawfiki.

Gabriel left money on the table and walked out. For thirty minutes he followed him. Along Sheinkin, then Allenby, then down to the Promenade. A face can be deceiving, but sometimes a man’s walk is as unique as his fingerprints. Gabriel had followed Yusef for weeks in London. His walk was imprinted on Gabriel’s memory. The flow of his hips. The line of his back. The way he always seemed to be on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce.

Gabriel tried to remember whether he was left-handed or right. He pictured him standing in his window, wearing nothing but his briefs, a thick silver watch on his left wrist. He’s right-handed. If he was trained by the Office, he’d wear his gun on his left hip.

Gabriel increased his pace, closing the distance between them, and drew his Beretta. He pressed the barrel of the gun against Yusef’s lower back, then in one quick movement reached beneath his jacket and snatched the gun from the holster on his hip.

Yusef started to swivel.

Gabriel shoved the gun into his back even harder. “Don’t move again, or I’ll leave a bullet in your spine. And keep walking.” Gabriel spoke Hebrew. Yusef stood very still. “Tell your girlfriend to take a walk.”

Yusef nodded to the girl; she walked quickly away.

“Move,” Gabriel said.

“Where?”

“Down to the beach.”

They crossed the Promenade, Yusef leading, Gabriel behind him, gun pressed against Yusef’s kidney. They descended a flight of steps and walked across the beach until the lights of the Promenade grew faint.

“Who are you?”

“Fuck you! Who do you think you are, grabbing me like that!”

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you. For all I know you’re a member of Tariq’s organization. You might have come to Israel to plant a bomb or shoot up a market. I still might kill you unless you tell me who you are.”

“You have no right to talk to me like that!”

“Who ran you?”

“Who do you think?”

“Shamron?”

“Very good. Everyone always said you were smart.”

“Why?”

“You want to know why, you talk to Shamron. I just did what I was told. But let me tell you one thing. If you ever come near me again, I’ll kill you. I don’t care who you used to be.”

He held out his hand, palm up. Gabriel gave him the gun. He slipped it back into his holster. Then he turned and walked across the darkened beach toward the bright lights of the Promenade.

Lightning flickered over the hills of the Upper Galilee as Gabriel drove along the shore of the lake toward Shamron’s villa. Rami waited at the gate. When Gabriel lowered the window, Rami poked his head inside and looked quickly around the interior. “He’s on the terrace. Park here. Walk up to the house.”

Rami held out his hand.

“You don’t actually believe I’d shoot the bastard?”

“Just give me your fucking gun, Allon, or you can’t go up to the house.”

Gabriel handed over his Beretta and walked up the drive. Lightning exploded over the hills, illuminating the swirling clouds, wind tossing up whitecaps on the surface of the lake. The screams of waterbirds filled the air. He looked up toward the terrace and saw Shamron, lit by the swirling gas lamps.

When Gabriel reached the terrace, he found Shamron in the same position, but instead of looking down at the drive his gaze was fixed on the storm over the mountains. Just then the lightning ceased and the wind died. The lake went still and the birds stopped their screaming. There was not a sound. Only the hiss of Shamron’s gas lamps, burning brightly.

Yes, Shamron began, there was a real Yusef al-Tawfiki, but he was dead-killed in Shatila, the night of the Phalangist massacre, along with the rest of his family. One of Shamron’s agents went into the house after the killing and cleaned out the family’s personal papers. The al-Tawfikis had no other relatives in Lebanon. Only an uncle in London -a maternal uncle who had never seen his young nephew. A few days later a boy turns up in a hospital in West Beirut. Gravely wounded, no identification. The doctors ask his name. He tells them his name is Yusef al-Tawfiki.

“How did he get the wound on his back?” Gabriel wondered.

“It was put there by a doctor connected to the Office. The boy was treated at the hospital in West Beirut, and the UN started looking for this mysterious uncle in London. It took them a week to find him. They told him what had happened to the boy. The uncle made arrangements to bring him to England.”

He was a child, thought Gabriel: thirteen, fourteen maybe. Where had Shamron found him? How had he trained him? It was too monstrous to contemplate.

Shamron snapped his powerful fingers so loudly that Rami, standing in the drive outside the guardhouse, looked up suddenly.

“Just like that we have an agent in the enemy’s camp, a boy whose life has been torn by unimaginable brutality. A boy with fire in his belly, who loathes the Israelis. A boy who will one day become a fighter and take his revenge on the people who butchered his family.”

“Remarkable,” said Gabriel.

“When he was old enough, Yusef began moving with London ’s radical Palestinian set. He came to the attention of a talent spotter for Tariq’s organization. They vetted him. Clean, or so they thought. They put him to work in their intelligence and planning section. The Office now had an agent inside one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on earth. He was so valuable his material had the shortest distribution list in the history of the Office: one person, me.”

Shamron sat down and gestured toward the empty chair. Gabriel remained standing.

“A few months ago Yusef sent us a fascinating report. There was a rumor sweeping the organization: Tariq had a brain tumor. Tariq was dying. The succession fight was on. Tariq’s colonels were jockeying for position. And one other thing: Tariq didn’t intend to go quietly. He intended to raise a little hell on earth before he floated off to Paradise. Kill an ambassador or two. Bomb a few airline offices. Maybe shoot down a jetliner.”

“So you come to me after Paris. You tell me this sad tale about how the Office can’t shoot straight anymore. How the Office couldn’t find the Office without a map. Like a fool I agree. And at the same time you whisper into Tariq’s ear that I’m back and looking for him. And the game has begun.”

“His organization was rigidly compartmentalized. Even with a man on the inside, I knew he was going to be hard to take down. I had to help him make a mistake. I thought if I waved Gabriel Allon in front of him, I could make him angry. I thought I could make him charge, leave himself exposed just long enough for me to plunge a sword into his heart.”

“So you send me after Yusef, your own agent. You tell me he’s vulnerable to an approach by a woman. It was in his file. I watch him for two days, he’s with two different women. Were they Office too?”

“They were Yusef’s girls. Yusef never had much trouble finding women on his own.”

“I ask Jacqueline to help me. It’s supposed to be a quick job. But Yusef takes an interest in her. Yusef wants to keep seeing her. I tell you to pull her out. But you force me to keep her in.”

Shamron folded his arms, set his jaw. Clearly he wanted to see how much of it Gabriel had figured out on his own.

“Yusef tells his people he thinks he’s being watched. He also tells them about a French girl he’s been seeing. He tells them he thinks she might be an Israeli agent. Tariq is ecstatic. Tariq has been waiting for this. He tells Yusef to recruit the girl under false pretenses for a mission. They know Jacqueline will bite, because they know she’s Office.”

“Bravo, Gabriel.”

“Did she know?”

“Jacqueline?”

“Yes, Jacqueline! Did she know the truth?”

“Of course not. She’s in love with you. She would never have agreed to deceive you.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

“Tell me something, Gabriel. If I had come to Cornwall and asked you to come out of retirement to serve as bait for Tariq, would you actually have done it? Of course not.”

“So you put my life on the line. And Jacqueline’s!”

“I’m sorry about what happened in New York. It went much further than I ever anticipated.”

“But he was already dying. Why didn’t you just let the tumor kill Tariq?”

“Because his organization would have carried on without him. It would have been more dangerous and unpredictable than before. And because my organization was in shambles. The Office needed a coup to restore the confidence of the government and the people of Israel.”

“What if the government and the people found out exactly how you pulled off this great coup?”

“The prime minister knows everything.”

“And the people?”

“Don’t get any ideas about running to the newspapers.”

“Why? Because I might end up like Benjamin Stone?”

Shamron said nothing.

Gabriel shook his head. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you? You’d kill me too if I got in your way. And you wonder why you can’t sleep at night.”

“Someone has to do these things, Gabriel! If not me, who? If our enemies think the Office is weak, then our enemies will test us. They might kill a few Jews whenever they felt like it. The Syrians might come rolling out of those hills again and try to drive us into the sea. Another Hitler might get the idea that he can exterminate my people while the world stands by and does nothing. I may embarrass you from time to time. I may use methods that you find distasteful, but secretly you’re glad I’m here. It helps you sleep at night.”

“Why?” said Gabriel. “Why lie to me after all these years? Why not play it straight? Why engage in such an elaborate deception?”

Shamron managed a weak smile. “Did I ever tell you about the night we kidnapped Eichmann?”

“I’ve heard the story a hundred times.”

“Never the whole story, though.” Shamron closed his eyes and winced slightly, as if the memory were painful. “We knew the bastard rode the same bus home every night. All we had to do was grab him as he stepped off. We’d practiced it a hundred times. During the drills I was able to perform the snatch in twelve seconds. But that night, as I climbed out of the car, I tripped. Eichmann nearly got away from us because I tripped. Do you know why I tripped, Gabriel? I tripped because I had forgotten to tie my shoelaces. I got him of course. But I learned a valuable lesson that night. Leave absolutely nothing to chance.”

“So it was no accident Yusef walked past my table tonight in Tel Aviv?” Gabriel asked. “You sent him there so I would see him. You wanted me to know the truth.”

Shamron inclined his head a fraction of an inch. Indeed.

It was four o’clock in the morning by the time Gabriel returned to the flat in Jerusalem. On the table was a large Office envelope. Inside were three smaller packets: one containing an airline ticket for the morning flight to London, another containing three passports of different nationalities, and a third filled with American dollars and British pounds. Gabriel placed the smaller envelopes in the larger one and carried it into the bedroom, where he packed his remaining possessions into his rucksack. The flight wasn’t for another five hours. He thought about sleeping, knew he couldn’t. He thought about driving up to Herzliya. Jacqueline. None of it had been real. Only Jacqueline. He went into the kitchen and made coffee. Then he stepped out onto the balcony and waited for dawn.