“I’ve always preferred to dwell upon the worst-case scenario.”
“Why?”
“Motivation,” said Mikhail. “If I imagine a rabbi soaking up my blood for burial, it will motivate me to do my job properly.”
“Just wait until the guns appear. We can’t kill them until we see the guns.”
“What if they don’t draw their guns? What if they just detonate themselves in the street?”
“Positive thoughts, Mikhail.”
“I’m a Jew from Russia. Positive thoughts aren’t in my nature.”
The waitress placed a check on the table. Gabriel gave her a twenty and told her to keep the change. Mikhail glanced at the four EKO Cobra men.
“They look more nervous than we do.”
“They probably are.”
Mikhail turned his gaze to the street. “Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do next?”
“I’m going to sleep for several days.”
“Make sure you turn the phone off.”
“This is the last time, Mikhail.”
“Until some terrorist comes along who decides he wants to reduce the world’s population of Jews by a few hundred. Then we’ll be right back here again.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to do it without me next time.”
“We’ll see.” Mikhail looked at Gabriel. “Are you really sure you’re up for this?”
“If you ask me that one more time, I’m going to shoot you.”
“That would be a very bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Look out the window.”
In the crisis center of the Austrian Interior Ministry, Ari Shamron stared at the video monitors, watching intently as the four Hezbollah terrorists turned into the narrow cobbled alley leading to the synagogue, followed by Gabriel and Mikhail. And at that moment, he had a chillingly clear premonition of disaster unlike any he had ever experienced before. It was nothing, he assured himself. The Stadttempel had survived Kristallnacht; it would survive this night, too. He ignited the Zippo lighter and stared at the jewel-like flame. Two seconds, he thought, maybe less. Then it would be done.
They had arranged themselves in a boxlike formation, with two in front and the other two trailing a few steps behind. Gabriel couldn’t help but admire their tradecraft. With their winter coats and false casual demeanor, they looked like four young men out for an evening in Vienna’s famed Bermuda Triangle—anything but four Hezbollah suicide bombers who were minutes from death. Gabriel knew a great deal about them. He knew each of their names, the villages where they had been born, and the circumstances of their recruitments. For now, though, they were simply Alef, Bet, Gimel, and Dalet—the first four letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Alef and Bet belonged to Gabriel; Gimel and Dalet, to Mikhail.
The street rose at a pitched angle and curved slightly to the right. After a few more paces, Gabriel could see Yaakov and Oded standing in a pool of white light outside the synagogue’s entrance. Oded was cross-examining a pair of American Jews who wished to attend Shabbat services in the city of their ancestry, but Yaakov was watching the four young men coming toward him up the street. He stared at them for an appropriate interval before forcing himself to look away. Oded seemed not to notice them. Having admitted the two Americans, he was now working his way through the rest of the small line of congregants waiting to enter. A dozen more, including a pair of young children, stood in the street, unaware of the horror that was approaching.
From the moment Gabriel and Mikhail had left the café, they had been gradually closing the distance between themselves and their targets. Twenty-five feet now separated them—four terrorists, two secret soldiers, each committed to his mission, each certain of his cause and his God. Tonight the ancient war for control of the Land of Israel would once again be played out on a pretty Viennese street. Gabriel couldn’t help but feel the weight of history pressing down upon his shoulders as he climbed the sloping cobbles—his own history, the history of his people,
Gabriel and Mikhail quickened their pace slightly, closing the gap further still. As the terrorists passed through a cone of lamplight, Gabriel noticed the wire of a detonator switch running along the inside of Alef’s wrist. All four of the terrorists wore their overcoats tightly buttoned, and, not coincidentally, all four had their right hands in their pockets. That’s where the guns would be.
Gabriel quickly glanced over his shoulder and saw the EKO Cobra team trailing quietly behind. Yaakov and Oded had managed to usher most of the crowd inside, but a few congregants were still milling about in the street, including the two young children. Mikhail drew several long, heavy breaths in an attempt to slow his racing heart, but Gabriel didn’t bother. It wouldn’t be possible. Not tonight. And so he stared at Alef’s right hand, his heart beating in his chest like a kettledrum, and waited for the gun to emerge. In the end, though, it was one of the children, a young boy, who saw it first. His scream of terror set fire to the back of Gabriel’s neck.
There would be no explosion.
There would be no funeral for a child.
Just a pair of fallen angels rushing forward with their arms extended.
Two seconds, maybe less.
Then it was done.
Chiara never heard the gunshots, only the sirens. Alone in her room, she thought it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. She listened for several minutes, then snatched up her mobile phone and dialed Uzi Navot at the Interior Ministry. She could barely hear his voice over the background noise.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s over,” he said.
“Was anyone else hurt?”
“Only the bad guys.”
“Where is he?”
“The Austrians have him.”
“I want him back.”
“Don’t worry,” Navot said. “He’s all yours now.”
36
VIENNA–TEL AVIV–VATICAN CITY
LIKE MOST LIES, IT WAS not altogether convincing. Shamron found no fault in this; in fact, he wholeheartedly approved. Lying, he said, was a distinctly human endeavor, even when it was being done by professionals. And a lie that was too well told was one not easily believed.
Initially, there was confusion over precisely what had occurred at sunset in the narrow street outside the Stadttempel. The first bulletins on Austrian radio reported that a pair of gunmen had killed four Jewish men outside the synagogue in what appeared to be an act of right-wing extremist violence. The situation was muddied further when an obscure neo-Nazi group proudly claimed responsibility for the deed. Jonas Kessler’s first instinct was to quickly correct the story. But Shamron and Uzi Navot prevailed upon him to let it linger until nine that evening, when he finally appeared in the Interior Ministry’s press briefing room to reveal the truth—or at least the truth as he saw it. Yes, Kessler began, there had indeed been a shooting at the synagogue, but the four dead were suicide bombers from Hezbollah who had come to Vienna to carry out a murderous terrorist attack. The Austrian authorities, he said,
