“I’d like to meet her sometime.”
“You have, Leah. She’s come here to see you many times.”
“I don’t remember her. Perhaps it’s better that way.” She turned away from him. “I want to talk to my mother,” she said. “I want to hear the sound of my mother’s voice.”
“We’ll call her right away, Leah.”
“Make sure Dani is buckled into his seat tightly. The streets are slippery.”
“He’s fine, Leah.”
She turned to face him again. Then, after a moment, she asked, “Do you have children?”
He wasn’t certain whether she was in the present or the past. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“With Chiara.”
“No,” he answered. “No children.”
“Maybe someday.”
“Yes,” he said, but nothing more.
“Make me a promise, Gabriel.”
“Anything, my love.”
“If you have another child, you mustn’t forget Dani.”
“I think about him every day.”
“I think of nothing else.”
He felt as though the bones of his rib cage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart.
“And when you leave Venice?” Leah asked after a moment. “What then?”
“I’m coming home.”
“For good?”
“Yes, Leah.”
“What are you going to do? There are no paintings here in Israel.”
“I’m going to be the chief of the Office.”
“I thought Ari was the chief.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Where will you live?”
“Here in Jerusalem so I can be close to you.”
“In that little apartment?”
“I’ve always liked it.”
“It’s not big enough for children.”
“We’ll find the room.”
“Will you still come to see me after you have children, Gabriel?”
“Every chance I get.”
She tilted her face to the cloudless sky. “Look at the snow, Gabriel.”
“Yes,” he said, weeping softly. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
The doctor was waiting for Gabriel in the common room. He spoke not a word until they had returned to the lobby.
“Is there anything you want to tell me?” he asked.
“It went as well as could be expected.”
“For her or for you?”
Gabriel said nothing.
“It’s all right, you know,” the doctor said after a moment.
“What’s that?”
“For you to be happy.”
“I’m not sure I know how.”
“Try,” said the doctor. “And if you need someone to talk to, you know where to find me.”
“Take good care of her.”
“I always have.”
With that, Gabriel surrendered himself to the care of his security detail and climbed into the back of the limousine. It was odd, he thought, but he no longer felt like crying. He supposed that was what it meant to be the chief.
C
HIARA HAD ARRIVED IN
J
ERUSALEM
only an hour before Gabriel, and yet their apartment on Narkiss Street already looked like a photograph in one of those glossy home design magazines she was always reading. There were fresh flowers in the vases and bowls of snacks on the end tables, and the glass of wine she placed in his hand was chilled to perfection. Her lips, when kissed, were warm from the Jerusalem sun.
“I expected you sooner,” she said.
“I had a couple of errands to run.”
“Where have you been?”
“Hell,” he answered seriously.
She frowned. “You’ll have to tell me about it later.”
“Why later?”
“Because we have company coming, darling.”
“Do I have to ask who it is?”
“Probably not.”
“How did he know we were back?”
“He mentioned something about a burning bush.”
“Can’t we do it another night?”
“It’s too late to cancel now. He and Gilah have already left Tiberias.”
“I suppose he’s giving you running updates on his location.”
“He’s called twice already. He’s very excited about seeing you.”
“I wonder why.”
He kissed Chiara again and carried the glass of wine into their bedroom. Its walls were hung with paintings. There were paintings by Gabriel, paintings by his gifted mother, and several paintings by his grandfather, the noted German expressionist Viktor Frankel, who was murdered at Auschwitz in the lethal winter of 1942. There was also a three-quarter-length portrait, unsigned, of a gaunt young man who appeared haunted by the shadow of death. Leah had painted it a few days after Gabriel returned to Israel with the blood of six Black September terrorists on his hands. It was the first and last time he agreed to sit for her.
We should have stayed in Venice together, my love. Things would have turned out differently
. . .
He stripped away his clothing under the portrait’s pitiless gaze and stood beneath the shower until the last traces of Leah’s touch had slipped from his skin. Then he changed into clean clothing and returned to the sitting room, just as Gilah and Ari Shamron were coming through the front door. Gilah was holding a platter of her famous eggplant with Moroccan spice; her famous husband held only an olive wood cane. He was dressed, as usual, in a pair of pressed khaki trousers, a white oxford cloth shirt, and a leather jacket with an unrepaired tear in the left shoulder. It was obvious he was unwell, but the smile he wore was one of contentment. Shamron had spent years trying to convince Gabriel to return to Israel to take his rightful place in the executive suite at King Saul Boulevard. Now, at long last, the task was complete. His successor was in place. The bloodline was secure.
He leaned his cane against the wall of the entrance hall and, with Gabriel following, went out onto the little terrace where two wrought-iron chairs stood beneath the drooping canopy of a eucalyptus tree. Narkiss Street lay still and silent beneath their feet, but in the distance came the faint rush of evening traffic along King George. Shamron lowered himself unsteadily into one of the chairs and motioned for Gabriel to sit in the other. Then he removed a packet of Turkish cigarettes and, with enormous concentration, extracted one. Gabriel looked at Shamron’s hands, the hands that had nearly squeezed the life out of Adolf Eichmann on a street corner in northern Buenos Aires. It was one of the reasons Shamron had been given the assignment: the unusual size and power of his hands. Now they were liver-spotted and covered with unhealed abrasions. Gabriel looked away as they fumbled with the old Zippo lighter.
“You really shouldn’t, Ari.”
“What difference does it make now?”
The lighter flared, acrid Turkish smoke mingled with the sharp scent of the eucalyptus tree. Memories gathered suddenly at Gabriel’s feet like floodwaters. He tried to hold them at bay but could not; Leah had shattered what remained of his defenses. He was driving across a sea of windblown Cornish grass with Shamron at his side. It was the dawn of the new millennium, the days of suicide bombings and delusion. Shamron had recently been hauled from retirement to repair the Office after a string of operational disasters, and he wanted Gabriel’s help with the enterprise. The bait he used was Tariq al-Hourani, the Palestinian master terrorist who had planted the bomb beneath Gabriel’s car in Vienna.
Maybe if you help me take down Tariq, you can finally let go of Leah and get on with your life
. . .
Gabriel heard the sound of Chiara’s laughter from the sitting room and the memory dissolved.
“What’s wrong now?” he asked gently of Shamron.
“The list of my physical ailments is almost as long as the list of challenges facing the State of Israel. But don’t worry,” he added hastily. “I’m not going anywhere yet. I fully intend to be around to witness the birth of my grandchildren.”
Gabriel resisted the impulse to remind Shamron that they were not truly father and son. “We’re expecting you to be there, Ari.”
Shamron smiled. “Have you decided where you’re going to live after they’re born?”
“It’s funny,” replied Gabriel, “but Bella asked me the same thing.”
“I heard it was an interesting conversation.”
“How did you know I went to see her?”
“Uzi told me.”
“I thought he wasn’t taking your calls.”
“It seems the great thaw has begun. It’s one of the few advantages of failing health,” he added. “All the petty grievances and broken promises seem to fall away as one gets closer to the end.”
The limbs of the eucalyptus tree swayed with the first breeze of the evening. The air was cooling by the minute. Gabriel had always loved the way it turned cold in Jerusalem at night, even in summer. He wished he had the power to freeze this moment a little longer. He looked at Shamron, who was tapping his cigarette thoughtfully against the rim of an ashtray.
“It took a great deal of courage for you to sit down with Bella. And shrewdness, too. It proves I was right about one thing all along.”
“What’s that, Ari?”
“That you have the makings of a great chief.”
“Sometimes I wonder whether I’m about to make my first mistake.”
“By keeping Uzi on in some capacity?”
Gabriel nodded slowly.
“It’s risky,” Shamron agreed. “But if there’s anyone who can pull it off, it’s you.”
“No advice?”
“I’m through giving you advice, my son. I am the worst thing a man can be, old and obsolete. I am a bystander. I am underfoot.” Shamron looked at Gabriel and frowned. “Feel free to disagree with me at any time.”
Gabriel smiled but said nothing.
“Uzi tells me things got a bit heated between you and Bella,” Shamron said.
“It reminded me of the interrogation I went through that night in the Empty Quarter.”
“The worst night of my life.” Shamron thought about it for a moment. “Actually,” he said, “it was the second worst.”
He didn’t have to say which night ranked above it. He was talking about Vienna.
“I think Bella is more upset about all this than Uzi is,” he continued. “I’m afraid she’s grown rather accustomed to the trappings of power.”
“Whatever gave you that impression?”
“The way she’s clinging to them. She blames me for everything, of course. She thinks I planned this all along.”
“You did.”
Shamron made a face that fell somewhere between a grimace and a smile.
“No denials?” asked Gabriel.
“None,” replied Shamron. “I had my fair share of triumphs, but when all is said and done, yours is the career against which all others will be measured. It’s true I played favorites, especially after Vienna. But my faith in you was rewarded with a string of operations that were far beyond the talents of someone like Uzi. Surely even Bella realizes that.”
Gabriel made no reply. He was watching a boy of ten or eleven riding a bicycle along the quiet street.
“And now,” Shamron was saying, “it appears you may have found a way into the finances of the butcher boy from Damascus. With a bit of luck, it will go down as the first great triumph of the Gabriel Allon era.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in luck.”
“I don’t.” Shamron ignited another cigarette; then, with a flip of his wrist, he closed his lighter with a sharp snap. “The butcher boy has the cruelty of his father but lacks his father’s cleverness, which makes him very dangerous. At this point, it’s all about the money. It’s what’s holding the clan together. It’s why the loyalists remain loyal. It’s why children are dying by the thousands. But if you could actually get control of the money . . .” He smiled. “The possibilities would be endless.”
“Do you really have no advice for me?”
“Keep the butcher boy in power for as long as he remains even remotely palatable. Otherwise, the next few years will be very interesting for you and your friends in Washington and London.”
“So this is how the Great Arab Awakening ends?” asked Gabriel. “We cling to a mass murderer because he’s the only one who can save Syria from al-Qaeda?”
“Far be it from me to say I told you so, but I predicted the Arab Spring would end disastrously, and it has. The Arabs are not yet ready for true democracy, not at a time when radical Islam is in ascendance. The best we can hope for is
decent
authoritarian regimes in places like Syria and Egypt.” Shamron paused, then added, “Who knows, Gabriel? Perhaps you can find some way to convince the ruler to educate his people properly and treat them with the dignity they deserve. Maybe you can compel him to stop gassing children.” “There’s one other thing I want from him.”
“The Caravaggio?”
Gabriel nodded.
“First you find the money,” said Shamron, crushing out his cigarette. “Then you find the painting.”
Gabriel said nothing more. He was watching the boy on the bicycle gliding in and out of the long shadows at the end of the street. When the child was gone, he tilted his face toward the Jerusalem sky. Look at the snow, he thought. Isn’t it beautiful?
T
HE TOLLING OF CHURCH BELLS
woke Gabriel from a dreamless sleep. He lay motionless for a moment, not altogether certain where he was. Then he saw Leah’s brooding portrait staring down at him from the wall and realized he was in his bedroom in Narkiss Street. He slipped from beneath the sheets, quietly, so as not to wake Chiara, and padded into the kitchen. The only evidence of the previous evening’s dinner party was the heavy, sweet smell of flowers wilting in their vases. On the spotless counter stood a French press coffee maker and a tin of Lavazza. Gabriel placed the kettle atop the stove and stood over it while waiting for the water to boil.
He drank his coffee outside on the terrace and read the morning papers on his BlackBerry. Then he crept into the bathroom to shave and shower. When he emerged, Chiara was still sleeping soundly. He opened the closet and stood there for a moment, debating what to wear. A suit, he decided, was inappropriate; it might send the message to the troops that he was already in charge. In the end he settled for his usual attire: a pair of faded blue jeans, a cotton pullover, and a leather jacket. Shamron had had his uniform, he thought, and so would he.
A few minutes after eight o’clock, he heard his motorcade disturb the quiet of Narkiss Street. He kissed Chiara softly and then headed downstairs to his waiting limousine. It bore him eastward across Jerusalem to the Dung Gate, the main entrance to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. He skirted the metal detectors and, flanked by his bodyguards, set out across the open plaza toward the Western Wall, the much-disputed remnant of the ancient retaining barrier that had once surrounded the great Temple of Jerusalem. Above the Wall, shimmering in the early-morning sunlight, was the golden Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-holiest shrine. There were many aspects to the Israeli-Arab conflict, but Gabriel had concluded it all came down to this—two faiths locked in a death struggle over the same parcel of a sacred land. There could be periods of quiet, months or even years with no bombs or blood; but Gabriel feared there would never be true peace.