The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(5)

Navot fixed his eyes back on the road. “My sister lives in Bethesda, Maryland. It’s very nice there. You can eat your lunch in an outdoor café without fear that the next person who walks by your table is a shaheed who’s going to blow you to bits.” He glanced at Gabriel. “Maybe that’s why you like Italy so much. You want to make a new life for yourself away from Israel. You want to leave the blood and tears to mere mortals.”

Gabriel’s dark look made clear he had shed more blood and tears for his country than most. “I’m an art restorer who specializes in Italian Old Masters. The paintings are in Italy, Uzi, not here.”

“Art restoration was your cover job, Gabriel. You are not an art restorer. You are a secret servant of the State of Israel, and you have no right to leave the fighting to others. And if you think you’re going to find a quiet life for yourself in Europe, forget it. The Europeans condemned us for Lebanon, but what they don’t understand is that Lebanon is merely a preview of coming attractions. The movie will soon be showing in theaters all across Europe. It’s the next battleground.”

The next battleground? No, thought Gabriel, it had been his battleground for more than thirty years. He looked up at the looming shadow of Mount Herzl, where his former wife resided in a psychiatric hospital, locked in a prison of memory and in a body destroyed by Gabriel’s enemies. His son was on the other side of Jerusalem, in a hero’s grave on the Mount of Olives. Between them lay the Valley of Hinnom, an ancient burning ground believed by both Jews and Muslims to be the fiery place where the wicked are punished after death. Gabriel had spent the better part of his life traversing the valley. It was clear that Uzi Navot wanted him to return again.

“What’s on your mind, Uzi? Surely you didn’t come all the way to the airport just to ask me to join your plot against Amos.”

“We have an errand we’d like you to run for us,” Navot said.

“I’m not an errand boy.”

“No offense, Gabriel.”

“None taken. Where’s the errand?”

“Amsterdam.”

“Why Amsterdam?”

“Because we’ve had a death in the family there.”

“Who?”

“Solomon Rosner.”

“Rosner? I never knew Rosner was ours.”

“He wasn’t ours,” said Navot. “He was Shamron’s.”





3




JERUSALEM



They drove to Narkiss Street, a quiet, leafy lane in the heart of Jerusalem, and parked outside the limestone apartment house at Number 16. It was three floors in height and largely concealed by a towering eucalyptus tree growing in the front garden. Gabriel led Navot through the small foyer and mounted the stairs. Despite his long absence he didn’t bother to check the postbox. He never received mail, and the name on the box was false. As far as the bureaucracy of the State of Israel was concerned, Gabriel Allon did not exist. He lived only in the Office, and even there he was a part-time resident.

His flat was on the top floor. As always he hesitated before opening the door. The room that greeted him was not the same one he had walked out of six months earlier. It had been a small but fully functioning art studio; now it was meticulously decorated in the subtle beiges and soft whites that Chiara Zolli, his Venetian-born fiancée, so adored. She’d been busy while he was away. Somehow she’d neglected to mention the redecoration during her last visit to Italy.

“Where are my things?”

“Housekeeping has them in storage until you can find some proper studio space.” Navot smiled at Gabriel’s discomfort. “You didn’t expect your wife to live in an apartment without furniture, did you?”

“She’s not my wife yet.” He laid his bag on the new couch. It looked expensive. “Where is she?”

“She didn’t tell you where we were sending her?”

“She takes rules of compartmentalization and need to know very seriously.”

“So do I.”

“Where is she, Uzi?”

Navot opened his mouth to reply, but a voice from the kitchen answered for him. It was familiar to Gabriel, as was the elderly figure who emerged a moment later, dressed in khaki trousers and a leather bomber jacket with a tear in the left breast. His head was shaped like a bullet and bald, except for a monkish fringe of cropped white hair. His face was more gaunt than Gabriel remembered, and his ugly wire-framed spectacles magnified pale blue eyes that were no longer clear. He was leaning heavily on a handsome olive-wood cane. The hand that held it seemed to have been borrowed from a man twice his size.

“Argentina,” said Ari Shamron for a second time. “Your wife-to-be is in Argentina.”

“What type of job is it?”

“Surveillance of a known terrorist operative.”

Gabriel didn’t have to ask the affiliation of the operative. The answer lay in the location of the operation. Argentina, like the rest of South America, was a hotbed of Hezbollah activity.

“We think it’s only a matter of time before Hezbollah tries to take its revenge for the damage we inflicted on them in Lebanon. A terror attack that leaves no fingerprints is the most likely scenario. The only question in our mind is the target. Will it be us or our supporters in America?”