The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(7)
“In Amsterdam?”
“Never,” said Shamron. “Usually we met across the border, in Antwerp.”
“And when they ran you out of the Office for the second time?”
“I hung onto a few bits and pieces to keep me occupied in my dotage. Rosner was one of those bits. Another was you, of course. I didn’t trust you with anyone else.” He spooned sugar into his coffee and gave it a melancholy stir. “When I went to work for the prime minister as his senior security adviser, I had to surrender control of Rosner.” He glanced at Navot. “I entrusted him to Uzi. After all, he was our western European katsa.”
“And your protégé,” Gabriel added.
“It wasn’t exactly heavy lifting,” Navot conceded. “Ari had already done all that. I just had to handle Rosner’s reports. Eighteen months ago, he gave me a nugget of pure gold. According to one of Rosner’s sources inside the Muslim community, an al-Qaeda-affiliated cell operating in west Amsterdam had got their hands on a missile and was planning to shoot down an El Al jetliner on approach at Schiphol Airport. That evening we diverted the flight to Brussels and tipped off the Dutch. They arrested four men sitting in a parked car at the end of the runway. In the trunk was an antiaircraft missile that had been smuggled into Amsterdam from Iraq.”
“How did Rosner know about the plot?”
“He had sources,” said Shamron. “Very good sources. I tried on a number of occasions to convince him to turn them over to us, but he always refused. He said his sources talked to him because he wasn’t a professional. Well, not quite a professional, but no one else in Holland knew that.”
“And you’re sure about that?” asked Gabriel. “You’re certain Rosner didn’t die because of his links to us?”
“Unfortunately, there was no shortage of people in Amsterdam who wanted Solomon dead. Some of the city’s most prominent jihadist imams had been openly calling for a volunteer to step forward. They finally found their man in Muhammad Hamza, a housepainter from north Amsterdam who just happened to be working on a project across the street from Rosner’s home. The Amsterdam police found a videotape inside Hamza’s apartment after his arrest. It was shot the morning of Rosner’s murder. On it Hamza calmly says that today would be the day he killed his Jew.”
“So what type of errand do you want me to run in Amsterdam?”
Navot and Shamron looked at each other, as if trying to get their story straight. Shamron let Navot answer. He was, after all, chief of Special Ops.
“We’d like you to go to Amsterdam and clean out his files. We want the names of all those golden sources, of course, but we also want to make sure there’s nothing there that might link him to us.”
“It would be deeply embarrassing if our ties to Solomon were ever exposed,” Shamron added. “And it would also make it more difficult for us to recruit sayanim from the Jewish communities around the world. We’re a small service. We can’t function without them.”
The sayanim were a worldwide network of volunteer Jewish helpers. They were the bankers who supplied Office agents with cash in emergencies; the doctors who treated them in secret when they were wounded; the hoteliers who gave them rooms under false names, and the rental-car agents who supplied them with untraceable vehicles. The vast majority of the sayanim had been recruited and nurtured by Shamron himself. He devotedly referred to them as the secret fruit of the Diaspora.
“It also has the potential to make a volatile situation in the Netherlands much worse,” Gabriel said. “Solomon Rosner was one of the most well-known critics of militant Islam in Europe. If it ever came out that he was our paid mouthpiece, the Jewish community in Holland might find itself at risk.”
“I disagree with your characterization,” said Shamron, “but your point is duly noted.”
“How am I supposed to get into Rosner’s office?”
It was Navot who answered. “About a year ago, when the threats against Rosner started coming fast and furious, we knew we had to make plans for just such a contingency. Rosner told his assistant, a young woman named Sophie Vanderhaus, that, in the event of his death, she would be contacted by a gentleman named Rudolf Heller and given a set of instructions she was to follow to the letter.”
Herr Rudolf Heller, venture capitalist for Zurich, was one of Shamron’s many false identities.
“I contacted Sophie last night,” Shamron said. “I told her that a colleague of mine would be arriving in Amsterdam tomorrow afternoon and that he was to be given complete access to all of Professor Rosner’s files.”
“Tomorrow afternoon?”
“There’s an El Al flight that leaves Ben-Gurion at six forty-five and arrives in Amsterdam at two. Sophie will meet you in front of the Café de Doelen at four.”
“It could take me days to go through all of Rosner’s files.”
“Yes,” Shamron said, as though he were glad the task had not been inflicted on him. “That’s why we’ve decided to send along some help. He’s already in Europe on a personal matter. He’ll be there when you arrive.”
Gabriel raised his coffee cup to his lips and eyed Shamron over the rim. “And what about the promises we made to the European security services? The covenant we signed in blood in exchange for getting them to drop all the charges and lawsuits against me?”