The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(30)

“What does he have for us?”

“We won’t know until we sit down with him,” Shamron said. “We meet with him outside the country.”

“Where?”

“Cyprus.”

“Who’s his case officer?”

“Shimon Pazner.”

Pazner was the chief of station in Rome, which doubled as the headquarters for Office operations throughout the Mediterranean.

“When is Pazner going to Cyprus?”

“He leaves in the morning.”

“Tell him to stay put in Rome.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m going to Cyprus to meet with the Egyptian.”

Shamron greeted Gabriel’s declaration with an obstinate silence. “Your involvement in this affair is officially over,” he said finally. “This is an American and British problem now. We have enough of our own to worry about.”

Gabriel pushed back. “I was there when it happened, Ari. I want us to do anything we can to find her.”

“And we will. Shimon Pazner has been handling Wazir for three years now. He’s more than capable of going to Cyprus and conducting a crash debriefing.”

“I’m sure he is, but I’m going to go to Cyprus for him.”

Shamron’s old stainless steel lighter flared in the darkness. “You’re not the Memuneh yet, my son. Besides, have you forgotten that your picture is in all the newspapers?”

“I’m not going behind the Iron Curtain, Ari.”

Shamron touched his cigarette to the flame and extinguished it with a flick of his sturdy wrist. “You use my own words against me,” he said. “Go ahead, Gabriel, go to Cyprus tomorrow. Just make sure Identity does something about that face of yours. You made yourself another enemy with your actions in Hyde Park.”

“Graham Seymour said the same thing.”

“Well,” Shamron said reflectively, “at least he was right about something.”





When Gabriel entered his apartment twenty minutes later, he found lights burning in the sitting room and a faint trace of vanilla on the air. He tossed his bag onto the new couch and walked into the bedroom. Chiara was perched at the end of the bed, scrutinizing her toes with considerable interest. Her body was wrapped in bath towels, and her skin was very dark from the sun. She looked up at Gabriel and smiled. It was as if it had been several minutes since they had seen each other last and not several weeks.

“You’re here,” she said in mock surprise.

“Shamron didn’t mention that I was coming home tonight?”

“He may have.”

Gabriel walked over and removed the towel from her hair. Heavy and wet, it tumbled riotously onto her dark shoulders. She lifted her face to be kissed and loosened the towel around her body. Maybe Shamron was right, Gabriel thought as she pulled him onto the bed. Maybe he would let Pazner go to Cyprus to meet with the Egyptian after all.





They were both famished after making love. Gabriel sat at the small table in the kitchen, watching the news on television, while Chiara made fettuccine and mushrooms. She was wearing one of Gabriel’s dress shirts, unbuttoned to her abdomen, and nothing else.

“How did you find out that I’d been arrested?”

“I read it in the newspapers like everyone else.” She poured him a glass of red wine. “You were all the rage in Buenos Aires.”

“What kind of work were you doing there?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“I know you were watching members of a Hezbollah cell. I just want to know whether you were part of the actual surveillance team or just an escort officer?”

“I was part of the team,” she said. “I don’t do much escort work anymore.”

“Why did they pull you out?”

“Overexposure to the targets.” Elizabeth Halton’s face appeared suddenly on the television screen. “Pretty girl,” Chiara said. “Why did they take her?”

“I may find out tomorrow.” He told her about his trip to Cyprus.

“What about your dinner with the prime minister?”

Gabriel looked up from the television. “How did you know about that?”

“Shamron told me.”

“So much for operational security,” he said. “What exactly did he say to you?”

She placed the fettuccine in the water to boil and sat down next to him. “He said that you had agreed to succeed Amos as director.”

“I’ve agreed to no such thing.”

“That’s not what Shamron says.”

“Shamron has a long history of hearing exactly what he wants to hear. What else did he say?”

“He wants us to get our personal life in order as soon as possible. He doesn’t think it’s proper for the director to be living with a woman out of wedlock, especially one who happens to be an employee of the Office. He thinks we should accelerate our wedding plans.” She placed a finger beneath his chin and turned his face toward hers. “You agree, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Gabriel hastily. He had learned that any hesitation to engage in a discussion of wedding plans was always wrongly interpreted by Chiara as a reluctance to marry. “We should get married as soon as possible.”