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

  “Weinberg was an interesting fellow. He was a prominent lawyer here in Paris. He was also something of a memory militant. He brought a great deal of pressure on the government to come clean about the role of the French in the Holocaust. As a result he wasn’t terribly popular in some circles here in Paris.”

  “And the daughter? What are her politics?”

  “Moderate Eurosocialist, but that’s no crime in France. She also inherited a bit of militancy from her father. She’s involved with a group that’s trying to combat the anti-Semitism here. She actually met with the French president once. Look underneath that photograph.”

  Gabriel found a clipping from a French magazine about the current wave of anti-Semitism in France. The accompanying photograph showed Jewish protesters marching across one of the Seine bridges. At the head of the column, carrying a sign that read STOP THE HATRED NOW, was Hannah Weinberg.

  “Has she ever been to Israel?”

  “At least four times. Shabak is working that end of things to make certain she wasn’t sitting up in Ramallah plotting with the terrorists. I’m sure they’ll turn up nothing on her. She’s golden, Gabriel. She’s a gift from the intelligence gods.”

  “Sexual preferences?”

  “Men, as far as we can tell. She’s involved with a civil servant.”

  “Jewish?”

  “Thank God.”

  “Have you been inside her flat.”

  “I went in with the neviot team myself.”

  Neviot teams specialized in gathering intelligence from hard targets such as apartments, offices, and hotel rooms. The unit employed some of the best break-in artists and thieves in the world. Gabriel had other plans for them later in the operation—provided, of course, Hannah Weinberg agreed to part with her van Gogh.

  “Did you see the painting?”

  Navot nodded. “She keeps it in her childhood bedroom.”

  “How did it look?”

  “You want my assessment of a van Gogh?” Navot shrugged his heavy shoulders. “It’s a very nice painting of a girl sitting at a dressing table. I’m not artistic like you. I’m potted chicken and a nice love story at the movies. You’re not eating your soup.”

  “I don’t like it, Uzi. I told you I don’t like it.”

  Navot took Gabriel’s spoon and swirled the dab of sour cream, lightening the hue of the purple mixture.

  “We had a peek at her papers,” Navot said. “We rummaged through her closets and drawers. We left a little something on her phone and computer as well. One can never be too careful in a situation like this.”

  “Room coverage?”

  Navot appeared hurt by the question. “Of course,” he said.

  “What are you using for a listening post?”

  “A van for the moment. If she agrees to help us, we’re going to need something more permanent. One of the neviot boys is already scouting the neighborhood for a suitable flat.”

  Navot pushed the remnants of his potted chicken to one side and started in on Gabriel’s borscht. For all his European sophistication, he was at heart still a peasant from the shtetl.

  “I can see where this is going,” he said between spoonfuls. “You get to track down the bad guy, and I get to spend the next year watching a girl. But that’s the way it’s always been with us, hasn’t it? You get all the glory while the field hands like me do all the spade work. My God, you saved the Pope himself. How’s a mere mortal like me supposed to compete with that?”

  “Shut up and eat your soup, Uzi.”

  Being Shamron’s chosen one had not come without a price. Gabriel was used to the professional jealousy of his colleagues.

  “I have to leave Paris tomorrow,” Navot said. “I’ll be gone only a day.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Amos wants a word with me.” He paused, then added, “I think it’s about the Special Ops job. The job you turned down.”

  It made sense, Gabriel thought. Navot was an extremely capable field agent who’d taken part in several major operations, including a few with Gabriel.

  “Is that what you want, Uzi? A job at King Saul Boulevard?”

  Navot shrugged. “I’ve been out here in the field a long time. Bella wants to get married. It’s hard to have a stable home life when you live like this. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I never know where I’m going to wind up at the end of the day. I can have breakfast in Berlin, lunch in Amsterdam, and be sitting in King Saul Boulevard at midnight briefing the director.” Navot gave Gabriel a conspiratorial smile. “That’s what the Americans don’t understand about us. They put their case officers into little boxes and slap their wrists when they step outside the lines. The Office isn’t that way. It never was. That’s what makes it the greatest job in the world—and that’s why our service is so much better than theirs. They wouldn’t know what to do with a man like you.”

  Navot had lost interest in the borscht. He pushed it across the table, so that it looked as though Gabriel had eaten it. Gabriel reached for the glass of wine but thought better of it. He had a headache from the train ride and the rainy Paris weather, and the kosher wine smelled about as appealing as paint thinner.

  “But it takes its toll on marriages and relationships, doesn’t it, Gabriel? How many of us are divorced? How many of us have had affairs with girls out there in the field? At least if I’m working in Tel Aviv, I’ll be around more often. There’s still a lot of travel with the job but less than this. Bella has a place near the beach in Caesarea. It will be a nice life.” He shrugged again. “Listen to me. I’m acting as though Amos has offered me the job. Amos hasn’t offered me anything. For all I know, he’s bringing me to King Saul Boulevard to fire me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the most qualified man for the job. You’ll be my boss, Uzi.”

  “Your boss? Please. No one is your boss, Gabriel. Only the old man.” Navot’s expression turned suddenly grave. “How is he? I hear it’s not good.”

  “He’s going to be fine,” Gabriel assured him.

  They lapsed into silence as the waiter came to the table and cleared away the dishes. When he was gone again, Gabriel gave the file folder to Navot, who slipped it back into his briefcase.

  “So how are you going to play it with Hannah Weinberg?”

  “I’m going to ask her to give up a painting that’s worth eighty million dollars. I have to tell her the truth—or at least some version of the truth. And then we’ll have to deal with the security consequences.”

  “What about the approach? Are you going to dance for a while or go straight in for the kill?”

  “I don’t dance, Uzi. I’ve never had time for dancing.”

  “At least you won’t have any trouble convincing her who you are. Thanks to the French security service, everyone in Paris knows your name and your face. When do you want to start?”

  “Tonight.”

  “You’re in luck then.”

  Navot looked toward the window. Gabriel followed his gaze and saw a woman with dark hair walking down the rue des Rosiers beneath the shelter of an umbrella. He stood without a word and headed toward the door. “Don’t worry, Gabriel,” Navot muttered to himself. “I’ll take care of the check.”

  AT THE END of the street she turned left and disappeared. Gabriel paused on the corner and watched black-coated Orthodox men filing into a large synagogue for evening prayers. Then he looked down the rue Pavée and saw the silhouette of Hannah Weinberg receding gently into the shadows. She stopped at the doorway of an apartment building and reached into her handbag for the key. Gabriel set out down the pavement and stopped a few feet from her, as her hand was outstretched toward the lock.

  “Mademoiselle Weinberg?”

  She turned and regarded him calmly in the darkness. Her eyes radiated a calm and sophisticated intelligence. If she was startled by his approach, she gave no sign of it.

  “You are Hannah Weinberg, are you not?”

  “What can I do for you, Monsieur?”
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  “I need your help,” Gabriel said. “I was wondering whether we might have a word in private.”

  “Are we acquainted, Monsieur?”

  “No,” said Gabriel.

  “Then how can I possibly help you?”

  “It would be better if we discussed this in private, Mademoiselle.”

  “I don’t make a habit of going to private places with strange men, Monsieur. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  She turned away and raised the key toward the lock again.

  “It’s about your painting, Mademoiselle Weinberg. I need to talk to you about your van Gogh.”

  She froze and looked at him again. Her gaze was still placid.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Monsieur, but I don’t have a van Gogh. If you’d like to see some paintings by Vincent, I suggest you visit the Musée d’Orsay.”

  She looked away again.

  “Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table,” said Gabriel calmly. “It was purchased by your grandfather from Theo van Gogh’s widow, Johanna, and given to your grandmother as a birthday present. Your grandmother bore a vague resemblance to Mademoiselle Gachet. When you were a child, the painting hung in your bedroom. Shall I go on?”

  Her composure disappeared. Her voice, when she spoke again after a moment of stunned silence, was unexpectedly vehement. “How do you know about the painting?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Of course not.” She said this as an insult. “My father always warned me that one day a greedy French art dealer would try to get the painting away from me. It is not for sale, and if it ever turns up missing, I’ll make certain to give the police your description.”

  “I’m not an art dealer—and I’m not French.”

  “Then who are you?” she asked. “And what do you want with my painting?”

  15.

  The Marais, Paris

  THE COURTYARD WAS EMPTY and dark, lit only by the lights burning in the windows of the apartments above. They crossed it in silence and entered the foyer, where an old-fashioned cage lift stood ready to receive them. She mounted a flight of wide stairs instead and led him up to the fourth floor. On the landing were two stately mahogany doors. The door on the right was absent a nameplate. She opened it and led him inside. Gabriel took note of the fact that she punched the code into the keypad before switching on the lights. Hannah Weinberg, he decided, was good at keeping secrets.

  It was a large apartment, with a formal entrance hall and a library adjoining the sitting room. Antique furniture covered in faded brocade stood sedately about, thick velvet curtains hung in the windows, and an ormolu clock set to the wrong time ticked quietly on the mantel. Gabriel’s professional eye went immediately to the six decent oil paintings that hung on the walls. The effect of the decor was to create the impression of a bygone era. Indeed Gabriel would scarcely have been surprised to see Paul Gachet reading the evening newspapers by gaslight.

  Hannah Weinberg removed her coat, then disappeared into the kitchen. Gabriel used the opportunity to look inside the library. Leather-bound legal volumes lined formal wooden bookcases with glass doors. There were more paintings here—prosaic landscapes, a man on horseback, the obligatory sea battle—but nothing that suggested the owner might also be in possession of a lost van Gogh.

  He returned to the sitting room as Hannah Weinberg emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of Sancerre and two glasses. She handed him the bottle and a corkscrew and watched his hands carefully as he removed the cork. She was not as attractive as she had appeared in Uzi Navot’s photograph. Perhaps it had been a trick of the nickeled Parisian light, or perhaps almost any woman looked attractive descending a flight of steps in Montmartre. Her pleated wool skirt and heavy sweater concealed what Gabriel suspected was a somewhat chunky figure. Her eyebrows were very wide and lent a profound seriousness to her face. Seated as she was now, surrounded by the dated furnishings of the room, she looked much older than her forty-four years.

  “I’m surprised to see you in Paris, Monsieur Allon. The last time I read your name in the newspaper you were still wanted for questioning by the French police.”

  “I’m afraid that’s still the case.”

  “But you still came—just to see me? It must be very important.”

  “It is, Mademoiselle Weinberg.”

  Gabriel filled two glasses with wine, handed one to her, and raised his own in a silent toast. She did the same, then lifted the glass to her lips.

  “Are you aware of what happened here in the Marais after the bombing?” She answered her own question. “Things were very tense. Rumors were flying that it had been carried out by Israel. Everyone believed it was true, and unfortunately the French government was very slow to do anything about the situation, even after they knew it was all a lie. Our children were beaten in the streets. Rocks were thrown through the windows of our homes and shops. Terrible things were spray-painted on the walls of the Marais and other Jewish neighborhoods. We suffered because of what happened inside that train station.” She gave him a scrutinizing look, as though trying to determine whether he was really the man she had seen in the newspapers and on television. “But you suffered, too, didn’t you? Is it true your wife was involved in it?”

  The directness of her question surprised Gabriel. His first instinct was to lie, to conceal, to guide the conversation back onto ground of his choosing. But this was a recruitment—and a perfect recruitment, Shamron always said, is at its heart a perfect seduction. And when one was seducing, Gabriel reminded himself, one had to reveal something of oneself.

  “They lured me to Gare de Lyon by kidnapping my wife,” he said. “Their intention was to kill us both, but they also wanted to discredit Israel and make things unbearable for the Jews of France.”

  “They succeeded…for a little while, at least. Don’t misunderstand me, Monsieur Allon, things are still bad for us here. Just not as bad as they were during those days after the bombing.” She drank some more of the wine, then crossed her legs and smoothed the pleats of her skirt. “This might sound like a silly question, considering who you work for, but how did you find out about my van Gogh?”

  Gabriel was silent for a moment, then he answered her truthfully. The mention of Isherwood’s visit to this very apartment more than thirty years earlier caused her lips to curl into a vague smile of remembrance.

  “I think I remember him,” she said. “A tall man, quite handsome, full of charm and grace but at the same time somehow vulnerable.” She paused, then added, “Like you.”

  “Charm and grace are words that are not often applied to me.”

  “And vulnerability?” She gave him another slight smile. It served to soften the serious edges of her face. “All of us are vulnerable to some degree, are we not? Even someone like you? The terrorists found where you were vulnerable, and they exploited that. That’s what they do best. They exploit our decency. Our respect for life. They go after the things we hold dear.”

  Navot was right, Gabriel thought. She was a gift from the intelligence gods. He placed his glass on the coffee table. Hannah’s eyes followed his every movement.

  “What happened to this man Samuel Isakowitz?” she asked. “Did he make it out?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “He and his wife were captured in Bordeaux when the Germans moved south.”

  “Where did they send them?”

  “Sobibor.”

  She knew what that meant. Gabriel needn’t say anything more.

  “And your grandfather?” he said.

  She peered into her Sancerre for a moment before answering. “Jeudi Noir,” she said. “Do you know this term?”

  Gabriel nodded solemnly. Jeudi Noir. Black Thursday.

  “On the morning of July 16, 1942, four thousand French police officers descended on the Marais and other Jewish districts in Paris with orders to seize twenty-seven thousand Jewish immigrants from Germany, Austria, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. My father and grandparents were
on the list. You see, my grandparents were originally from the Lublin district of Poland. The two policemen who knocked on the door of this very apartment took pity on my father and told him to run. A Catholic family who lived a floor below took him in, and he stayed there until liberation. My grandparents weren’t so lucky. They were sent to the detention camp at Drancy. Five days after that, a sealed railcar to Auschwitz. Of course, that was the end for them.”

  “And the van Gogh?”

  “There wasn’t any time to make arrangements for it, and there was no one in Paris that my grandfather felt he could trust. It was war, you know. People were betraying each other for stockings and cigarettes. When he heard the roundups were coming, he removed the painting from the stretcher and hid it beneath a floorboard in the library. After the war it took my father years to get the apartment back. A French family had moved in after my grandparents were arrested, and they were reluctant to give up a nice apartment on the rue Pavée. Who could blame them?”

  “What year did your father regain possession of the apartment?”

  “It was 1952.”

  “Ten years,” Gabriel said. “And the van Gogh was still there?”

  “Just as my grandfather had left it, hidden under the floorboards of the library.”

  “Amazing.”

  “Yes,” she said. “The painting has remained in the Weinberg family for more than a century, through war and Holocaust. And now you’re asking me to give it up.”

  “Not give it up,” said Gabriel.

  “Then what?”

  “I just need to—” He paused, searching for the appropriate word. “I need to rent it.”

  “Rent it? For how long?”

  “I can’t say. Perhaps a month. Perhaps six months. Maybe a year or longer.”

  “For what purpose?”

  Gabriel was not ready to answer her. He picked up the cork and used his thumbnail to scratch away a torn edge.

  “Do you know how much that painting is worth?” she asked. “If you’re asking me to give it up, even for a brief period, I believe I’m entitled to know the reason why.”