many times-a color, a hat.
He purchased a newspaper from a kiosk, sat down in a restaurant with small round tables spilling onto the side-walk. It was a warm evening, sidewalks filled with people. He ordered falafel and beer, then opened the newspaper and read the lead article on the front page: “Benjamin Stone, the maverick publisher and entrepreneur, is missing and feared drowned off St. Martin in the Caribbean. Authorities believe Stone fell overboard from his luxury yacht sometime during the night.”
Gabriel closed the newspaper.
“How’s Benjamin Stone?”
“Relaxing in the Caribbean aboard his yacht.”
When the food arrived he folded his newspaper and dropped it onto the extra chair. He looked up and spotted a man outside on the sidewalk: slender, good looking, black curly hair, blond Israeli girl on his arm. Gabriel laid down his fork, stared directly at him, throwing all discretion and tradecraft to the wind.
There was no doubt about it: Yusef al-Tawfiki.
Gabriel left money on the table and walked out. For thirty minutes he followed him. Along Sheinkin, then Allenby, then down to the Promenade. A face can be deceiving, but sometimes a man’s walk is as unique as his fingerprints. Gabriel had followed Yusef for weeks in London. His walk was imprinted on Gabriel’s memory. The flow of his hips. The line of his back. The way he always seemed to be on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce.
Gabriel tried to remember whether he was left-handed or right. He pictured him standing in his window, wearing nothing but his briefs, a thick silver watch on his left wrist. He’s right-handed. If he was trained by the Office, he’d wear his gun on his left hip.
Gabriel increased his pace, closing the distance between them, and drew his Beretta. He pressed the barrel of the gun against Yusef’s lower back, then in one quick movement reached beneath his jacket and snatched the gun from the holster on his hip.
Yusef started to swivel.
Gabriel shoved the gun into his back even harder. “Don’t move again, or I’ll leave a bullet in your spine. And keep walking.” Gabriel spoke Hebrew. Yusef stood very still. “Tell your girlfriend to take a walk.”
Yusef nodded to the girl; she walked quickly away.
“Move,” Gabriel said.
“Where?”
“Down to the beach.”
They crossed the Promenade, Yusef leading, Gabriel behind him, gun pressed against Yusef’s kidney. They descended a flight of steps and walked across the beach until the lights of the Promenade grew faint.
“Who are you?”
“Fuck you! Who do you think you are, grabbing me like that!”
“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you. For all I know you’re a member of Tariq’s organization. You might have come to Israel to plant a bomb or shoot up a market. I still might kill you unless you tell me who you are.”
“You have no right to talk to me like that!”
“Who ran you?”
“Who do you think?”
“Shamron?”
“Very good. Everyone always said you were smart.”
“Why?”
“You want to know why, you talk to Shamron. I just did what I was told. But let me tell you one thing. If you ever come near me again, I’ll kill you. I don’t care who you used to be.”
He held out his hand, palm up. Gabriel gave him the gun. He slipped it back into his holster. Then he turned and walked across the darkened beach toward the bright lights of the Promenade.
Lightning flickered over the hills of the Upper Galilee as Gabriel drove along the shore of the lake toward Shamron’s villa. Rami waited at the gate. When Gabriel lowered the window, Rami poked his head inside and looked quickly around the interior. “He’s on the terrace. Park here. Walk up to the house.”
Rami held out his hand.
“You don’t actually believe I’d shoot the bastard?”
“Just give me your fucking gun, Allon, or you can’t go up to the house.”
Gabriel handed over his Beretta and walked up the drive. Lightning exploded over the hills, illuminating the swirling clouds, wind tossing up whitecaps on the surface of the lake. The screams of waterbirds filled the air. He looked up toward the terrace and saw Shamron, lit by the swirling gas lamps.
When Gabriel reached the terrace, he found Shamron in the same position, but instead of looking down at the drive his gaze was fixed on the storm over the mountains. Just then the lightning ceased and the wind died. The lake went still and the birds stopped their screaming. There was not a sound. Only the hiss of Shamron’s gas lamps, burning brightly.
Yes, Shamron began, there was a real Yusef al-Tawfiki, but he was dead-killed in Shatila, the night of the Phalangist massacre, along with the rest of his family. One of Shamron’s agents went into the house after the killing and cleaned out the family’s personal papers. The al-Tawfikis had no other relatives in Lebanon. Only an uncle in London -a maternal uncle who had never seen his young nephew. A few days later a boy turns up in a hospital in West Beirut. Gravely wounded, no identification. The doctors ask his name. He tells them his name is Yusef al-Tawfiki.
“How did he get the wound on his back?” Gabriel wondered.
“It was put there by a doctor connected to the Office. The boy was treated at the hospital in West Beirut, and the UN started looking for this mysterious uncle in London. It took them a week to find him. They told him what had happened to the boy. The uncle made arrangements to bring him to England.”
He was a child, thought Gabriel: thirteen, fourteen maybe. Where had Shamron found him? How had he trained him? It was too monstrous to contemplate.
Shamron snapped his powerful fingers so loudly that Rami, standing in the drive outside the guardhouse, looked up suddenly.
“Just like that we have an agent in the enemy’s camp, a boy whose life has been torn by unimaginable brutality. A boy with fire in his belly, who loathes the Israelis. A boy who will one day become a fighter and take his revenge on the people who butchered his family.”
“Remarkable,” said Gabriel.
“When he was old enough, Yusef began moving with London ’s radical Palestinian set. He came to the attention of a talent spotter for Tariq’s organization. They vetted him. Clean, or so they thought. They put him to work in their intelligence and planning section. The Office now had an agent inside one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on earth. He was so valuable his material had the shortest distribution list in the history of the Office: one person, me.”
Shamron sat down and gestured toward the empty chair. Gabriel remained standing.
“A few months ago Yusef sent us a fascinating report. There was a rumor sweeping the organization: Tariq had a brain tumor. Tariq was dying. The succession fight was on. Tariq’s colonels were jockeying for position. And one other thing: Tariq didn’t intend to go quietly. He intended to raise a little hell on earth before he floated off to Paradise. Kill an ambassador or two. Bomb a few airline offices. Maybe shoot down a jetliner.”
“So you come to me after Paris. You tell me this sad tale about how the Office can’t shoot straight anymore. How the Office couldn’t find the Office without a map. Like a fool I agree. And at the same time you whisper into Tariq’s ear that I’m back and looking for him. And the game has begun.”
“His organization was rigidly compartmentalized. Even with a man on the inside, I knew he was going to be hard to take down. I had to help him make a mistake. I thought if I waved Gabriel Allon in front of him, I could make him angry. I thought I could make him charge, leave himself exposed just long enough for me to plunge a sword into his heart.”
“So you send me after Yusef, your own agent. You tell me he’s vulnerable to an approach by a woman. It was in his file. I watch him for two days, he’s with two different women. Were they Office too?”
“They were Yusef’s girls. Yusef never had much trouble finding women on his own.”
“I ask Jacqueline to help me. It’s supposed to be a quick job. But Yusef takes an interest in her. Yusef wants to
