Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant

  Isherwood was brought back to the present by the appearance of the waiter. He ordered bisque and a boiled lobster, Gabriel green salad and plain grilled sole with rice. He’d been living in Europe for the better part of the last thirty years, but he still had the simple tastes of a Sabra farm boy from the Jezreel Valley. Food and wine, fine clothing and fast cars—these things were lost on him.

  “I’m surprised you were able to make it today,” Isherwood said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Rome.”

  Gabriel kept his eyes on the menu. “That’s not my portfolio, Julian. Besides, I’m retired. You know that.”

  “Please,” said Isherwood in a confessional murmur. “So what are you working on these days?”

  “I’m finishing the San Giovanni Crisostomo altarpiece.”

  “Another Bellini? You’re going to make quite a name for yourself.”

  “I already have.”

  Gabriel’s last restoration, Bellini’s San Zaccaria altarpiece, had ignited a sensation in the art world and set the standard against which all future Bellini restorations would be judged.

  “Isn’t Tiepolo’s firm handling the Crisostomo project?”

  Gabriel nodded. “I’m working exclusively for Francesco now, more or less.”

  “He can’t afford you.”

  “I like working in Venice, Julian. He pays me enough to make ends meet. Don’t worry. I’m not exactly living the way I did when I was doing my apprenticeship with Umberto.”

  “From what I hear, you’ve been a busy boy lately. According to the rumor mill, they nearly took the San Zaccaria altarpiece away from you because you left Venice on a personal matter.”

  “You shouldn’t listen to rumors, Julian.”

  “Oh, really. I also hear that you’re shacked up in a palazzo in Cannaregio with a lovely young woman named Chiara.”

  The sharp look, delivered over the rim of a wineglass, confirmed for Isherwood that the rumors of Gabriel’s romantic entanglement were true.

  “Does the child have a last name?”

  “Her family name is Zolli, and she’s not a child.”

  “Is it true her father is the chief rabbi of Venice?”

  “He’s the only rabbi in Venice. It’s not exactly a thriving community. The war ended that.”

  “Does she know about your other line of work?”

  “She’s Office, Julian.”

  “Just promise me you’re not going to break this girl’s heart like all the others,” Isherwood said. “My God, the women you’ve let slip through your fingers. I still have the most marvelous fantasies about that creature Jacqueline Delacroix.”

  Gabriel leaned forward across the table, his face suddenly quite serious. “I’m going to marry her, Julian.”

  “And Leah?” Isherwood asked gently. “What are you planning to do about Leah?”

  “I have to tell her. I’m going to see her tomorrow morning.”

  “Will she understand?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure, but I owe it to her.”

  “God forgive me for saying this, but you owe it to yourself. It’s time you got on with your life. I don’t need to remind you that you’re not a boy of twenty-five anymore.”

  “You’re not the one who has to look her in the eye and tell her that you’re in love with another woman.”

  “Forgive my impertinence. It’s the burgundy talking—and the Rubens. Want some company? I’ll drive you down.”

  “No,” said Gabriel. “I need to go alone.”

  The first course arrived. Isherwood tucked into his bisque. Gabriel speared a piece of lettuce.

  “What kind of fee did you have in mind for the Rubens cleaning?”

  “Off the top of my head? Somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand pounds.”

  “Too bad,” Gabriel said. “For two hundred, I’d consider taking it on.”

  “All right, two hundred, you bastard.”

  “I’ll call you next week and let you know.”

  “What’s stopping you from making a commitment now? The Bellini?”

  No, thought Gabriel. It wasn’t the Bellini. It was Rome.

  The Stratford Clinic, one of the most prestigious private psychiatric hospitals in Europe, was located an hour’s drive from the center of London on a rambling old Victorian estate in the hills of Surrey. The patient population included a distant member of the British royal family and the second cousin of the current prime minister, and so the staff were accustomed to unusual demands by visitors. Gabriel passed through the front security gate after identifying himself as “Mr. Browne.”

  He parked his rented Opel in the visitors’ carpark in the forecourt of the old redbrick manor house. Leonard Avery, Leah’s physician, greeted him in the entrance hall, a windblown figure dressed in a Barbour coat and Wellington boots. “Once a week I lead a select group of patients on a nature walk in the surrounding countryside,” he said, explaining his appearance. “It’s extremely therapeutic.” He shook Gabriel’s hand without removing his glove and inquired about the drive from London as if he did not truly wish to know the answer. “She’s waiting for you in the solarium. She still likes the solarium the best.”

  They set out down a corridor with a pale linoleum floor, Avery as though he were still pounding along a Surrey footpath. He was the only one at the hospital who knew the truth about the patient named Lee Martinson —or at least part of the truth. He knew that her true family name was Allon and that her terrible burns and near-catatonic state were not the result of a motor accident—the explanation that appeared in Leah’s hospital records—but of a car bombing in Vienna. He also knew that the bombing had claimed the life of her young son. He believed Gabriel was an Israeli diplomat and did not like him.

  As they walked, he provided Gabriel with a terse update on Leah’s condition. There had been no change to speak of—Avery did not seem overly concerned by this. He was never one for false optimism and had always maintained low expectations about Leah’s prognosis. He had been proven correct. In the thirteen years since the bombing, she had never once uttered a word to Gabriel.

  At the end of the corridor was a set of double doors, with round portholelike windows clouded by moisture. Avery opened one and led Gabriel into the solarium. Gabriel, greeted by the oppressive humidity, immediately removed his coat. A gardener was watering the potted orange trees and chatting with a nurse, an attractive dark-haired woman whom Gabriel had never before seen.

  “You can go now, Amira,” Dr. Avery said.

  The nurse went out, followed by the gardener.

  “Who’s that?” Gabriel asked.

  “She’s a graduate of the King’s College school of nursing and a specialist in the care of the acutely mentally ill. Very accomplished at what she does. Your wife is quite fond of her.”

  Avery gave Gabriel an avuncular pat on the shoulder, then saw himself out as well. Gabriel turned around. Leah was seated in a straight-backed wrought-iron chair, her eyes lifted toward the dripping windows of the solarium. She wore white trousers made from flimsy institutional cotton and a high-necked sweater that helped conceal her frail body. Her hands, scarred and twisted, held a sprig of blossom. Her hair, once long and black as a raven’s wing, was cropped short and nearly all gray. Gabriel leaned down and kissed her cheek. His lips fell upon cool, firm scar tissue. Leah seemed not to sense his touch.

  He sat down and took hold of what remained of Leah’s left hand. He felt no life within. Her head swiveled slowly round until her eyes found his. He searched for some sign of recognition, but saw nothing. Her memory had been stolen. In Leah’s mind only the bombing remained. It played ceaselessly, like a loop of videotape. All else had been erased or pushed to some inaccessible corner of her brain. To Leah, Gabriel was no more important than the nurse who had brought her here or the gardener who cared for the plants. Leah had been punished for his sins. Leah was the price a decent man had paid for climbing into the sewer with murderers and terrorists
. For Gabriel, a man blessed with the ability to heal beautiful things, Leah’s situation was doubly painful. He longed to strip away the scars and restore her glory. But Leah was beyond repair. Too little remained of the original.

  He spoke to her. He reminded her that he was living in Venice these days, working for a firm that restored churches. He did not tell her that, occasionally, he still ran the odd errand for Ari Shamron, or that two months previously he had engineered the capture of an Austrian war criminal named Erich Radek and returned him to Israel to face justice. When finally he screwed up the nerve to tell her that he was in love with another woman and wished to dissolve their marriage so he could marry her, he could not go through with it. Talking to Leah was like talking to a gravestone. There seemed no point.

  When a half hour had elapsed, he left Leah’s side and poked his head into the corridor. The nurse was waiting there, leaning against the wall with her arms folded across the front of her tunic.

  “Are you finished?” she asked.

  Gabriel nodded. The woman brushed past and went wordlessly inside.

  It was late afternoon when the flight from Heathrow airport touched down in Venice. Gabriel, riding into town in a water taxi, stood in the cockpit with the driver, his back to the cabin door, watching the channel markers of the lagoon rising out of the mist like columns of defeated soldiers returning home from the front. Soon the edges of Cannaregio appeared. Gabriel felt a fleeting sense of tranquillity. Venice, crumbling, sagging, sodden Venice, always had that effect on him. She’s an entire city in need of restoration, Umberto Conti had said to him. Use her. Heal Venice, and she’ll heal you.

  The taxi dropped him at the Palazzo Lezze. Gabriel walked westward across Cannaregio along the banks of a broad canal called the Rio della Misericordia. He came to an iron bridge, the only one in all of Venice. In the Middle Ages there had been a gate in the center of the bridge, and at night a Christian watchman had stood guard so that those imprisoned on the other side could not escape. Gabriel crossed the bridge and entered an underground sottoportego. At the other end of the passageway a broad square opened before him: the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, the center of the ancient ghetto of Venice. At its height it had been the cramped home to more than five thousand Jews. Now only twenty of the city’s four hundred Jews lived in the old ghetto, and most of those were elderly who resided in the Casa Israelitica di Riposo.

  Gabriel made for the modern glass doorway at the opposite side of the square and went inside. To his right was the entrance to a small bookstore that specialized in books dealing with Jewish history and the Jews of Venice. It was warm and brightly lit, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the canal that encircled the ghetto. Behind the counter, seated atop a wooden stool in a cone of halogen light, was a girl with short blond hair. She smiled at him as he entered and greeted him by his work name.

  “She left about an hour ago.”

  “Really? Where is she?”

  The girl shrugged elaborately. “Didn’t say.”

  Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. Four-fifteen. He decided to put in a few hours on the Bellini before dinner.

  “If you see her, tell her I’m at the church.”

  “No problem. Ciao, Mario.”

  He walked to the Rialto Bridge. One street over from the canal he turned to the left and headed for a small terra-cotta church. He paused. Standing at the entrance of the church, in the shelter of the lunette, was a man Gabriel recognized, an Office security agent named Rami. His presence in Venice could mean but one thing. He caught Gabriel’s eye and glanced toward the doorway. Gabriel slipped past and went inside.

  The church was in the final stages of restoration. The pews had been removed from the Greek Cross nave and pushed temporarily against the eastern wall. The cleaning of Sebastiano del Piombo’s main altarpiece was complete. Unlit, it was barely visible in the late-afternoon shadow. The Bellini hung in the Chapel of Saint Jerome, on the right side of the church. It should have been concealed behind a tarpaulin-draped scaffold, but the scaffolding had been moved aside and the painting was ablaze with harsh fluorescent lights. Chiara turned to watch Gabriel’s approach. Shamron’s hooded gaze remained fixed on the painting.

  “You know something, Gabriel—even I have to admit it’s beautiful.”

  The old man’s tone was grudging. Shamron, an Israeli primitive, had no use for art or entertainment of any kind. He saw beauty only in a perfectly conceived operation or the destruction of an enemy. But Gabriel took note of something else—the fact that Shamron had just spoken to him in Hebrew and committed the unpardonable sin of uttering his real name in an insecure location.

  “Beautiful,” he repeated; then he turned to Gabriel and smiled sadly. “It’s a pity you’ll never be able to finish it.”

  4

  VENICE

  Shamron eased his body wearily onto a church pew and, with a liver-spotted hand, motioned for Gabriel to adjust the angle of the fluorescent lights. From a metal briefcase he removed a manila envelope and from the envelope three photographs. He placed the first wordlessly into Gabriel’s outstretched hand. Gabriel looked down and saw himself walking in the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo with Chiara at his side. He examined the image calmly, as if it was a painting in need of restoration, and tried to determine when it had been taken. Their clothing, the sharp contrast of the afternoon light, and the dead leaves on the paving stones of the square suggested late autumn. Shamron held up a second photo—Gabriel and Chiara again, this time in a restaurant not far from their house in Cannaregio. The third photograph, Gabriel leaving the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo, turned his spinal cord to ice. How many times? he wondered. How many times had an assassin been waiting in the campo when he left work for the night?

  “It couldn’t last forever,” Shamron said. “Eventually they were going to find you here. You’ve made too many enemies over the years. We both have.”

  Gabriel handed the photographs back to Shamron. Chiara sat down next to him. In this setting, in this light, she reminded Gabriel of Raphael’s Alba Madonna. Her hair, dark and curly and shimmering with highlights of chestnut and auburn, was clasped at the nape of her neck and spilled riotously about her shoulders. Her skin was olive and luminous. Her eyes, deep brown with flecks of gold, shone in the lamplight. They tended to change color with her mood. Gabriel, in Chiara’s dark gaze, could see there was more bad news to come.

  Shamron reached into the briefcase a second time. “This is a dossier, summarizing your career, uncomfortably accurate, I’m afraid.” He paused. “Seeing one’s entire life reduced to a succession of deaths can be difficult. Are you sure you want to read it?”

  Gabriel held out his hand. Shamron had not bothered to have the dossier translated from Arabic into Hebrew. The Jezreel Valley contained many Arab towns and villages. Gabriel’s Arabic, while not fluent, was good enough to read a recitation of his own professional exploits.

  Shamron was right—somehow his enemies had managed to assemble a tellingly complete account of his career. The dossier referred to Gabriel by his real name. The date of his recruitment was correct, as was the reason, though it credited him with killing eight members of Black September when in truth he had killed only six. Several pages were devoted to Gabriel’s assassination of Khalil el-Wazir, the PLO’s second-in-command, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Jihad. Gabriel had killed him inside his seaside villa in Tunis in 1988. The description of the operation had been provided by Abu Jihad’s wife, Umm Jihad, who had been present that night. The entry for Vienna was terse and noteworthy for its one glaring factual error: Wife and son killed by car bomb, Vienna, January 1991. Reprisal ordered by Abu Amar. Abu Amar was none other than Yasir Arafat. Gabriel had always suspected Arafat’s personal involvement. Until now he had never seen evidence confirming it.

  He held up the pages of the dossier. “Where did you get this?”

  “Milan,” Shamron said. He then told Gabriel about the raid on the pensione and the computer disk found in one o
f the suspects’ bags. “When the Italians couldn’t break the security code, they turned to us. I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate. If they’d been able to get inside that disk, they would have been able to solve a thirty-year-old Roman murder in a matter of minutes.”

  Contained in the dossier was the fact that he had killed a Black September operative named Wadal Abdel Zwaiter in a Rome apartment house in 1972. It was that killing, Gabriel’s first, which had caused his temples to gray virtually overnight. He handed the dossier back to Shamron.

  “What do we know about the men who were hiding in that pensione?”

  “Based on fingerprints discovered on the material and in the room, along with the photos in the false passports, we’ve managed to identify one of them. His name is Daoud Hadawi, a Palestinian, born in the Jenin refugee camp. He was a ringleader during the first intifada and was in and out of prison. At seventeen he joined Fatah, and when Arafat came to Gaza after Oslo, Hadawi went to work for Al-Amn Al-Ra’isah, the Presidential Security Service. You may know that organization by its previous name, the name it used before Oslo: Force 17, Arafat’s praetorian guard. Arafat’s favorite killers.”

  “What else do we know about Hadawi?”

  Shamron reached into his coat pocket for his cigarettes. Gabriel stopped him and explained that the smoke was harmful to the paintings. Shamron sighed and carried on with his briefing.

  “We were convinced he was involved in terror operations during the second intifada. We placed him on a list of wanted suspects, but the Palestinian Authority refused to hand him over. We assumed he was hiding inside the Mukata with Arafat and the rest of the senior men.” The Mukata was the name of Arafat’s walled, militarized compound in Ramallah. “But when we smashed into the Mukata during Operation Defense Shield, Hadawi was not among the men we found hiding there.”