forever, however, was not an option. Better to get it over with. Reluctantly, he clicked on the icon, and a line of gibberish appeared on the screen. Typing a password into the proper window, the encryption melted away, leaving a few words in clear text:
MALACHI REQUESTS MEETING. PRIORITY RESH.
Gabriel frowned. Malachi was the code word for the chief of Special Operations. Priority Resh was reserved for time-sensitive situations, usually those involving questions of life and death. He hesitated, then typed in a reply. It took just ninety seconds for the response to arrive:
MALACHI LOOKS FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.
Gabriel switched off the computer and climbed into the empty bed. Malachi looks forward to seeing you… He doubted that was the case, since he and Malachi were not exactly on speaking terms. Closing his eyes, he saw a hand reaching toward an iron spike. He tapped a brush against his palette and painted until he drifted into sleep. Then he painted some more.
4
TO TRAVERSE the road from the Villa dei Fiori to the hill town of Amelia is to see Italy in all its ancient glory and, Gabriel thought sadly, all its modern distress. He had resided in Italy for much of his adult life and had witnessed the country’s slow but methodical march toward oblivion. Evidence of decay was all around: governing institutions rife with corruption and incompetence; an economy too feeble to provide enough work for the young; once-glorious coastlines fouled by pollution and sewage. Somehow, these facts escaped the notice of the world’s travel writers, who churned out countless words each year extolling the virtue and beauty of Italian life. As for the Italians themselves, they had responded to their deteriorating state of affairs by marrying late, if at all, and having fewer children. Italy ’s birthrate was among the lowest in Western Europe, and more Italians were over the age of sixty than under twenty, a demographic milestone in human history. Italy was already a country of elderly people and was aging rapidly. If trends continued unabated, it would experience a decline in population not seen since the Great Plague.
Amelia, the oldest of Umbria ’s cities, had seen the last outbreak of Black Death and, in all likelihood, every one before it. Founded by Umbrian tribesmen long before the dawn of the Common Era, it had been conquered by Etruscans, Romans, Goths, and Lombards before finally being placed under the dominion of the popes. Its dun- colored walls were more than ten feet thick, and many of its ancient streets were navigable only on foot. Few Amelians sought refuge behind the safety of the walls any longer. Most resided in the new town, a graceless maze of drab apartment blocks and concrete shopping malls that spilled down the hill south of the city.
Its main street, Via Rimembranze, was the place where most Amelians passed their ample amounts of free time. In late afternoon, they strolled the pavements and congregated on street corners, trading in gossip and watching the traffic heading down the valley toward Orvieto. The mysterious tenant from the Villa dei Fiori was among their favorite topics of conversation. An outsider who conducted his affairs politely but with an air of standoffish ness, he was the subject of substantial mistrust and no small amount of envy. Rumors about his presence at the villa were stoked by the fact that the staff refused to discuss the nature of his work. He’s involved in the arts, they would respond evasively under questioning. He prefers to be left alone. A few of the old women believed him to be an evil spirit who had to be cast out of Amelia before it was too late. Some of the younger ones were secretly in love with the emerald-eyed stranger and flirted with him shamelessly on those rare occasions when he ventured into town.
Among his most ardent admirers was the girl who presided over the gleaming glass counter of Pasticceria Massimo. She wore the cateye spectacles of a librarian and a permanent smile of mild rebuke. Gabriel ordered a cappuccino and a selection of pastries and walked over to a table at the far end of the room. It was already occupied by a man with strawberry blond hair and the heavy shoulders of a wrestler. He was pretending to read a local newspaper-pretending, Gabriel knew, because Italian was not one of his languages.
“Anything interesting, Uzi?” Gabriel asked in German.
Uzi Navot glared at Gabriel for a few seconds before resuming his appraisal of the paper. “If I’m not mistaken, there seems to be some sort of political crisis in Rome,” he responded in the same language.
Gabriel sat in the empty seat. “The prime minister is involved in a rather messy financial scandal at the moment.”
“Another one?”
“Something to do with kickbacks on several large construction projects up north. Predictably, the opposition is demanding his resignation. He’s vowing to stay in office and fight it out.”
“Maybe it would be better if the Church were still running the place.”
“Are you proposing a reconstitution of the Papal States?”
“Better a pope than a playboy prime minister with shoe-polish hair. He’s raised corruption to an art form.”
“Our last prime minister had serious ethical shortcomings of his own.”
“That’s true. But fortunately, he isn’t the one protecting the country from its enemies. That job still belongs to King Saul Boulevard.”
King Saul Boulevard was the address of Israel ’s foreign intelligence service. The service had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Those who worked there referred to it as “the Office” and nothing else.
The girl placed the cappuccino in front of Gabriel and a plate of pastries in the center of the table. Navot grimaced.
“What’s wrong, Uzi? Don’t tell me Bella has you on a diet again?”
“What makes you think I was ever off it?”
“Your expanding waistline.”
“We all can’t be blessed with your trim physique and high metabolism, Gabriel. My ancestors were plump Austrian Jews.”
“So why fight nature? Have one, Uzi-for the sake of your cover, if nothing else.”
Navot’s selection, a trumpet-shaped pastry filled with cream, disappeared in two bites. He hesitated, then chose one filled with sweet almond paste. It vanished in the time it took Gabriel to pour a packet of sugar into his coffee.
“I didn’t get a chance to eat on the plane,” Navot said sheepishly. “Order me a coffee.”
Gabriel asked for another cappuccino, then looked at Navot. He was staring at the pastries again.
“Go ahead, Uzi. Bella will never know.”
“That’s what you think. Bella knows everything.”
Bella had worked as an analyst on the Office’s Syria Desk before taking a professorship in Levantine history at Ben-Gurion University. Navot, a veteran agent-runner and covert operative schooled in the art of manipulation, was incapable of deceiving her.
“Is the rumor true?” Gabriel asked.
“What rumor is that?”
“The one about you and Bella getting married. The one about a quiet wedding by the sea in Caesarea with only a handful of close friends and family in attendance. And the Old Man, of course. There’s no way the chief of Special Ops could get married without Shamron’s blessing.”
Special Ops was the dark side of a dark service. It carried out the assignments no one else wanted, or dared, to do. Its operatives were executioners and kidnappers; buggers and blackmailers; men of intellect and ingenuity with a criminal streak wider than the criminals themselves; multilinguists and chameleons who were at home in the finest hotels and salons in Europe or the worst back alleys of Beirut and Baghdad. Navot had never managed to get over the fact he had been given command of the unit because Gabriel had turned it down. He was competence to Gabriel’s brilliance, caution to Gabriel’s occasional recklessness. In any other service, in any other land, he would have been a star. But the Office had always valued operatives like Gabriel, men of creativity unbound by orthodoxy. Navot was the first to admit he was a mere field hand, and he had spent his entire career toiling in Gabriel’s
