graceful facades of the surrounding streets. Then there was something that sounded like a tropical downpour but it was only the glass, raining onto the pavement from a thousand shattered windows. He raised his hands to shield his face but after a few seconds his fingers ran red with his own blood.
The shower of glass ended, the echo of the explosion receded into the distance. Gabriel resisted the impulse to look over his shoulder at the devastation. He had seen the results of a street bomb before and could imagine the scene behind him. Burning cars, blackened buildings, a devastated cafe, bodies, and blood, the stunned looks on the faces of the survivors. So he removed his hands from his face and hid them in the pockets of his jacket, and he kept walking, head down, ears ringing with the awful silence.
18
PARIS HAD SUFFERED its unfair share of terrorist bombings over the years, and the French police and security services had become quite efficient at dealing with the aftermath. Within two minutes of the explosion, the first units arrived. Within five minutes, the surrounding streets were sealed. Gabriel’s car had been caught inside the cordon, so he had been forced to flee on foot. It was nearly dusk by the time he reached the sprawling rail yard on the southern edge of the city.
Now, sheltering in the loading bay of an abandoned factory, he took mental inventory of the things in the trunk. A suitcase, a few items of clothing, a camera, a tape recorder, the radio he had used to communicate with the surveillance team. If the car was not collected soon, the police would impound it, break open the trunk, and examine the contents. They would play the audiotape and discover that Werner Muller’s gallery and telephones had been bugged. They would develop exposed rolls of film and discover photographs of the gallery’s exterior. They would calculate the angle of the photographs and surmise that they had been taken from a window of the Hotel Laurens. They would question the staff at the hotel and discover that the room in question had been occupied by a rude German writer.
Gabriel’s right hand began to throb. The strain was catching up with him. He’d stayed on the move after the bombing, ridden a dozen Metro trains, walked countless miles along the crowded boulevards. From a public telephone near the Luxembourg Gardens, he had made contact with Uzi Navot on the emergency channel.
Gabriel looked up now and saw two cars moving slowly along a narrow service road bordered by a sagging chain-link fence. The headlights were doused. The cars stopped about fifty yards away. Gabriel jumped down from the loading dock-the landing sent shock waves of pain through his hands- and walked toward them. The rear door of the first car flew open. Navot was slumped in the backseat. “Get in,” he grumbled. Clearly, he had watched too many American movies about the Mafia.
Navot had brought a doctor, one of Ari Shamron’s
The doctor flushed the wound with an antiseptic solution and went to work. Gabriel, the restorer, watched him intently.
The doctor didn’t care for Navot’s attitude, and he took his time about it. This time he didn’t bother to ask Gabriel whether he wanted anything for the pain. He simply prepared a syringe and injected an anesthetic into Gabriel’s hand. He worked slowly and steadily for almost a half-hour. Then he looked up. “I did the best I could, under the circumstances.” A hostile glance toward Navot-
“Leave us,” Navot said. “Go to the other car and wait there.” Navot dismissed the driver too. When they were alone, he looked at Gabriel. “What the hell happened?”
“How many dead?” Gabriel asked, ignoring Navot’s question.
“Three, so far. Four more in bad shape.”
“Have you heard from the rest of the team?”
“They’ve left Paris. Shamron is bringing everyone home. This could get ugly.”
“The car?”
“We’ve got a man watching it. So far, the police haven’t made a move on it.”
“Eventually, they will.”
“What are they going to find when they do?”
Gabriel told him. Navot closed his eyes and swayed a bit, as though he had just been told of a death. “What about Muller’s apartment?”
“There’s a glass on his telephone.”
“Shit.”
“Any chance of getting inside and cleaning things up?”
Navot shook his head. “The police are already there. If they find your car and establish that Muller was under surveillance of some sort they’ll tear apart his flat. It won’t take them long to find the bug.”
“Any friends on the force that might be able to help us?”
“Not for something like this.”
“That bug is like a calling card.”
“I know, Gabriel, but I wasn’t the one who put it there.”
Gabriel fished the roll of film from his pocket and handed it to Navot. “I got a picture of the man who left the bomb at the gallery. Get it to King Saul Boulevard tonight. Tell the troglodytes in Research to run it through the database. Maybe they can put a name to his face.”
The film disappeared into Navot’s big paw.
“Contact Shamron and tell him to get a security detail up to Anna Rolfe’s villa right away.” Gabriel opened the car door and put his foot on the ground. “Which car is mine?”
“Shamron wants you to come home.”
“I can’t find the man who planted that bomb if I’m sitting in Tel Aviv.”
“You won’t be able to find him if you’re sitting in a French jail cell, either.”
“Which car is mine, Uzi?”
“All right! Take this one. But you’re on your own.”
“Someday, I’ll try to repay the favor.”
“Have a good time, Gabriel. I’ll stay here and clean up your fucking mess.”
“Just get the film to Tel Aviv. Good dog.”
ON the Costa de Prata, Anna Rolfe lowered her violin and switched off
