keep seeing her. I tell you to pull her out. But you force me to keep her in.”
Shamron folded his arms, set his jaw. Clearly he wanted to see how much of it Gabriel had figured out on his own.
“Yusef tells his people he thinks he’s being watched. He also tells them about a French girl he’s been seeing. He tells them he thinks she might be an Israeli agent. Tariq is ecstatic. Tariq has been waiting for this. He tells Yusef to recruit the girl under false pretenses for a mission. They know Jacqueline will bite, because they know she’s Office.”
“Bravo, Gabriel.”
“Did she know?”
“Jacqueline?”
“Yes, Jacqueline! Did she know the truth?”
“Of course not. She’s in love with you. She would never have agreed to deceive you.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
“Tell me something, Gabriel. If I had come to Cornwall and asked you to come out of retirement to serve as bait for Tariq, would you actually have done it? Of course not.”
“So you put my life on the line. And Jacqueline’s!”
“I’m sorry about what happened in New York. It went much further than I ever anticipated.”
“But he was already dying. Why didn’t you just let the tumor kill Tariq?”
“Because his organization would have carried on without him. It would have been more dangerous and unpredictable than before. And because my organization was in shambles. The Office needed a coup to restore the confidence of the government and the people of Israel.”
“What if the government and the people found out exactly how you pulled off this great coup?”
“The prime minister knows everything.”
“And the people?”
“Don’t get any ideas about running to the newspapers.”
“Why? Because I might end up like Benjamin Stone?”
Shamron said nothing.
Gabriel shook his head. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you? You’d kill me too if I got in your way. And you wonder why you can’t sleep at night.”
“Someone has to do these things, Gabriel! If not me, who? If our enemies think the Office is weak, then our enemies will test us. They might kill a few Jews whenever they felt like it. The Syrians might come rolling out of those hills again and try to drive us into the sea. Another Hitler might get the idea that he can exterminate my people while the world stands by and does nothing. I may embarrass you from time to time. I may use methods that you find distasteful, but secretly you’re glad I’m here. It helps you sleep at night.”
“Why?” said Gabriel. “Why lie to me after all these years? Why not play it straight? Why engage in such an elaborate deception?”
Shamron managed a weak smile. “Did I ever tell you about the night we kidnapped Eichmann?”
“I’ve heard the story a hundred times.”
“Never the whole story, though.” Shamron closed his eyes and winced slightly, as if the memory were painful. “We knew the bastard rode the same bus home every night. All we had to do was grab him as he stepped off. We’d practiced it a hundred times. During the drills I was able to perform the snatch in twelve seconds. But that night, as I climbed out of the car, I tripped. Eichmann nearly got away from us because I tripped. Do you know why I tripped, Gabriel? I tripped because I had forgotten to tie my shoelaces. I got him of course. But I learned a valuable lesson that night. Leave absolutely nothing to chance.”
“So it was no accident Yusef walked past my table tonight in Tel Aviv?” Gabriel asked. “You sent him there so I would see him. You wanted me to know the truth.”
Shamron inclined his head a fraction of an inch. Indeed.
It was four o’clock in the morning by the time Gabriel returned to the flat in Jerusalem. On the table was a large Office envelope. Inside were three smaller packets: one containing an airline ticket for the morning flight to London, another containing three passports of different nationalities, and a third filled with American dollars and British pounds. Gabriel placed the smaller envelopes in the larger one and carried it into the bedroom, where he packed his remaining possessions into his rucksack. The flight wasn’t for another five hours. He thought about sleeping, knew he couldn’t. He thought about driving up to Herzliya. Jacqueline. None of it had been real. Only Jacqueline. He went into the kitchen and made coffee. Then he stepped out onto the balcony and waited for dawn.
EPILOGUE
Port Navas, Cornwall
Something made Peel wake up. He rolled onto his side, snatched the torch from his bedside table, and shone it at his watch: 3:15 A.M. He switched off the light and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the wind moaning in the eaves and his mother and Derek quietly quarreling in the room next door.
He could hear only snatches of their conversation, so he closed his eyes, remembering something about the blind hearing better than the sighted. “Having trouble with the new play,” Derek was saying. “Can’t seem to find my way into the first act… hard with a child in the house… back to London to be with his father… time alone together… lovers again…” Peel squeezed his eyes tightly, refusing to permit the tears to escape onto his cheeks.
He was about to cover his ears with his pillow when he heard a sound outside on the quay: a small car, rattling like an oxcart with a broken wheel. He sat, threw off his blankets, placed his feet on the cold wood floor. He carried his torch to the window and looked out: a single red taillight, floating along the quay toward the oyster farm.
The car vanished into the trees, then appeared a moment later, only now Peel was staring directly into the headlights. It was an MG, and it was stopping in front of the old foreman’s cottage. Peel raised his torch, aimed it at the car, and flashed the light twice. The lights of the MG winked back. Then the engine died, and the lights went dark.
Peel climbed back into bed and pulled his blankets beneath his chin. Derek and his mother were still quarreling, but he didn’t really care. The stranger was back in Port Navas. Peel closed his eyes and soon was asleep.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not have been written without the generous assistance of David Bull. He truly is one of the world’s finest art restorers, and I was privileged to spend many enjoyable hours in his company. He gave freely of his time and expertise, and allowed me to wander through his studio and through his memories as well. For that I am eternally grateful. A special thanks to David’s talented wife, Teresa Longyear; to Lucy Bisognano, formerly of the National Gallery conservation staff, who tried to teach me the basics of X-ray analysis; and to Maxwell Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, for his friendship and assistance. It goes without saying that they bear no responsibility for errors, omissions, or dramatic license.
Wolf Blitzer, a friend and colleague from my days at CNN, generously helped fill in some blanks in my research on the Israeli intelligence community. Louis Toscano, author of Triple Cross, a groundbreaking book on the Vanunu affair, read my manuscript and offered his keen insights. Glenn Whidden answered all my questions on the art of audio surveillance, as did a former head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services.
Ion Trewin, the managing director of Weidenfeld amp; Nicolson in London, read my manuscript and, as always, offered wise counsel. Joseph Finder and Mark T. Sullivan provided invaluable moral support and kept me
