The Fallen Angel

ST. MORITZ, SWITZERLAND

THE BOMB HAD BEEN EXPERTLY assembled and planted with care. Initially, the Swiss Federal Police concluded it had been detonated with a timing device, only to discover later it had been set off by a cell phone. The explosion blew out hundreds of windows in the center of the village, triggered a series of avalanches on the highest ski slopes, and collapsed a display of Dom Pérignon bottles in the ornate lobby of the Badrutt’s Palace Hotel. The broken glass was removed with typical Swiss efficiency, and order soon restored. Even so, everyone agreed that St. Moritz, the quaint former spa town in the Upper Engadine valley, would never be the same.

Despite the power of the explosion, only three people lost their lives, including the owner of the antiquities gallery where the bomb had been planted. An additional fifty-four people were wounded, including the president of a major Swiss bank, a famous English footballer, and a Czech supermodel who had come to St. Moritz to console herself after the dissolution of her third marriage. Most of the injured sustained only minor cuts and bruises, but there were numerous broken bones suffered by those blown from their feet by the force of the blast wave.

One of the most seriously injured victims could not be identified. He had been carrying no passport or credit cards at the time of the explosion and afterward could not seem to recall his name or why he was in St. Moritz to begin with. Suffering from numerous lacerations and a severe concussion, he remained hospitalized for several days after the incident, unaware, or so it seemed, that he was the subject of intense interest on the part of the Swiss police.

There was, for a start, the video footage showing him standing at the entrance of the gallery at the time the bomb exploded, wearing a wig and false eyeglasses, and holding an aluminum attaché case—all of which were eventually recovered by crime-scene investigators. And then there was the tall, gray-eyed man with a Russian accent who had tried to carry him from the square before being stopped by police. And the large, multilingual group of tourists who had fled a luxury slope-side chateau just three nights into a weeklong booking. A thorough search of the chateau produced not a single scrap of paper that would indicate the names and identities of those who had stayed there. The same was true of the Russian’s garret room at the Jägerhof Hotel.

The most intriguing piece of evidence, however, was the injured man’s distinctive face, which revealed itself slowly as the swelling receded and the bruising began to fade. It was well known to Swiss intelligence; in fact, there was an entire shelf in the file rooms of the DAP, the Swiss security service, devoted solely to his exploits on the soil of their blessed little land. And now, at long last, he had been delivered helpless into their hands. There were some who wanted to throw a net over him lest he slip through their fingers yet again, but cooler heads prevailed. And so they stood watch outside his door and waited for his injuries to heal. And when he was fit enough to leave the hospital, they placed him in handcuffs and took him away.

They bundled him into a helicopter without bothering to tell the local kantonspolizei and flew him at high speed to the headquarters of the Swiss Federal Police on the Nussbaumstrasse in Bern. After fingerprinting him and photographing his face from every conceivable angle, they locked him away in a holding cell. It had a small flat-screen television, a writing desk stocked with pens and stationery, and a comfortable bed with starched linens. Even the Swiss police, thought Gabriel, were excellent hoteliers.

They left him alone for several hours to ponder his predicament, then, without warning or legal representation, brought him handcuffed to an interrogation room. Waiting there was the officer in charge of Gabriel’s case. He called himself Ziegler. No first name, no rank, no small talk—just Ziegler. He was tall and Alpine, with the broad, square shoulders of a cross-country skier and a ruddy complexion. Arrayed on the table before him were many photographs of Gabriel at different stages of his career, and in various levels of disguise. They showed him entering and leaving banks, crossing hotel lobbies and borders, and, in one, walking along the embankment of a leaden Zurich canal in the company of the renowned Swiss violinist Anna Rolfe. Ziegler seemed especially proud of the display. Obviously, he had put a great deal of thought into it.

“We have a theory,” he began as Gabriel sat.

“I can hardly wait.”

Ziegler’s face remained as placid as a bottomless Swiss lake. “It seems that before coming to St. Moritz, you made a brief stop in France, where you stole a painting by Cézanne and a two-thousand-year-old Greek hydria. You then transported the vase in pieces across the border and attempted to sell it to David Girard of the Galleria Naxos. What Girard didn’t realize, however, is that you never had any intention of delivering the vase, since the true purpose of your little ruse de guerre was to kill him.”

“Why would I want to kill a Swiss antiquities dealer?”

“Because, as you already know, that antiquities dealer wasn’t Swiss. Well,” Ziegler added with a xenophobic frown, “not truly Swiss. He was born in southern Lebanon. And from what we’ve learned, he was apparently still doing plenty of business there. Which is why Israeli intelligence wanted him dead.”

“If we’d wanted him dead, we would have done it in a way that didn’t kill two innocent people in the process.”

“How noble of you, Herr Allon.”

“You seem to be forgetting one other minor detail,” said Gabriel wearily.

“What’s that?”

“That bomb nearly killed me.”

“Yes,” Ziegler replied matter-of-factly. “Perhaps the legendary Gabriel Allon has lost a step.”

Gabriel was returned to his holding cell and fed a proper Swiss meal of potato raclette and breaded veal. Afterward, he watched the evening news in German on SF 1. Fifteen minutes elapsed before they got around to a follow-up report on the bombing in St. Moritz. It was a feature piece about how the affair had adversely impacted holiday bookings. The story made no mention of David Girard’s connections to Hezbollah. Nor did it refer to any arrests in the case, which Gabriel regarded as an encouraging sign.

After dinner, a doctor silently inspected his cuts and changed a few of his bandages. Then he was taken back to the interrogation room for an evening session. This time, Ziegler was nowhere to be found. In his place was a thin officer with the pallor of a man who had no time for outdoor pursuits. He introduced himself as Christoph Bittel of the DAP’s counterterror division, which meant he was more spy than policeman. It was another encouraging sign. Policemen made arrests. Spies made deals.

“Before we begin,” he said evenly, “you should know that Ziegler and the Federal Department of Justice and Police intend to file formal charges against you tomorrow morning. They have more than enough evidence to ensure that you spend the rest of your life in a Swiss jail. You should also know that there are numerous people here in Bern who would love to be granted the honor of escorting you to your cell.”

“I had nothing to do with planting that bomb.”

“I know.”

Bittel picked up a remote control and pointed at a video monitor in the corner of the room. A few seconds later, two figures appeared on the screen—the tall French-speaking man and the girl with an El Greco face. Gabriel watched again as the man whispered intimately into her ear.

“These are the real bombers,” Bittel said, pausing the video. “The girl concealed the device in the gallery’s powder room while her colleague kept Girard busy.”

“Who are they?”

“We were hoping you’d be able to tell us.”

“I’d never seen them before that night.”

Bittel scrutinized Gabriel dubiously for a moment before switching off the video monitor. “You are a very lucky man, Allon. It seems you have a number of friends in high places. One of them has interceded on your behalf.”

“So that’s it? I’m free to go?”

“Not quite yet. You did violate numerous laws prohibiting foreign espionage activity—laws we take very seriously. We are a welcoming country,” he added, as though he were sharing highly classified information, “but we insist that visitors show us the courtesy of signing the guestbook on the way in, preferably under their own names.”

“And what would you have done if we’d asked for your help?”

“We would have sent you away and dealt with it ourselves,” Bittel said. “We’re Swiss. We don’t like outsiders meddling in our affairs.”