Prince of Fire

case, the traveling restoration kit containing pigments and brushes that Umberto Conti had given him as a gift at the end of his apprenticeship. The rest was mainly rubbish, things with which he should have parted long ago: old check stubs, notes on restorations, a harsh review he’d received in an Italian art magazine for his work on Tintoretto’s Christ on the Sea of Galilee. He wondered why he’d bothered to read it, let alone keep it.

At the bottom of the box he found a manila envelope no bigger than a checkbook. He loosened the flap and turned the envelope over. Out fell a pair of eyeglasses. They had belonged to Benjamin Stern, a former Office agent who’d been murdered. Gabriel could still make out Benjamin’s oily fingerprints on the dirty lenses.

He started to place the glasses back into the envelope but noticed something lodged at the bottom. He turned it over and tapped on the base. An object fell to the floor, a strand of leather on which hung a piece of red coral shaped like a hand. Just then he heard Chiara’s footfalls on the landing. He scooped up the talisman and slipped it into his pocket.

By the time he arrived in the front room, she’d managed to get the door open and was in the process of carrying several bags of groceries over the threshold. She looked up at Gabriel and smiled, as though surprised to find him there. Her dark hair was braided into a heavy plait, and the early spring Mediterranean sun had left a trace of color across her cheeks. She looked to Gabriel like a native-born Sabra. Only when she spoke Hebrew with her outrageous Italian accent did she betray her country of origin. Gabriel no longer spoke to her in Italian. Italian was the language of Mario, and Mario was dead. Only in bed did they speak to each other in Italian, and that was a concession to Chiara, who believed Hebrew was not a proper language for lovers.

Gabriel closed the door and helped carry the plastic bags of groceries into the kitchen. They were mismatched, some white, some blue, a pinkish bag bearing the name of a well-known kosher butcher. He knew Chiara once again had ignored his admonition to stay out of the Makhane Yehuda Market.

“Everything is better there, especially the produce,” she said defensively, reading the look of disapproval on his face. “Besides, I like the atmosphere. It’s so intense.”

“Yes,” Gabriel agreed. “You should see it when a bomb goes off.”

“Are you saying that the great Gabriel Allon is afraid of suicide bombers?”

“Yes, I am. You can’t stop living, but there are sensible things you can do. How did you get home?”

Chiara looked at him sheepishly.

“Damn it, Chiara!”

“I couldn’t find a cab.”

“Do you know a bus was just bombed in Rehavia?”

“Of course. We heard the explosion inside Makhane Yehuda. That’s why I decided to take the bus home. I figured the odds were in my favor.”

Such macabre calculations, Gabriel knew, were a daily facet of modern Israeli life.

“From now on, take bus number eleven.”

“Which one is that?”

He pointed two fingers toward the floor and moved them in a walking motion.

“Is that an example of your fatalistic Israeli sense of humor?”

“You have to have a sense of humor in this country. It’s the only way to keep from going crazy.”

“I liked you better when you were an Italian.” She pushed him gently from the kitchen. “Go take a shower. We’re having guests for dinner.”

ARI SHAMRON HAD ALIENATED all those who loved him most. He had wagered, foolishly as it turned out, that his lifelong commitment to the defense of his country granted him immunity when it came to his children and his friends. His son, Yonatan, was a tank commander in the Israel Defense Forces and seemed gripped by an almost suicidal need to die in battle. His daughter had moved to New Zealand and was living on a chicken farm with a gentile. She avoided his calls and refused his repeated demands to return to the land of her birth.

Only Gilah, his long-suffering wife, had remained faithfully at his side. She was as calm as Shamron was temperamental and blessed with a myopic ability to see only the good in him. She was the only person who ever dared to scold him, though to spare him needless embarrassment she usually did so in Polish-as she did when Shamron tried to light a cigarette at the dinner table after finishing his plate of roasted chicken and rice pilaf. She knew only the vaguest details of her husband’s work and suspected his hands were unclean. Shamron had spared her the worst, for he feared that Gilah, if she knew too much, would abandon him the way his children had. She viewed Gabriel as a restraining influence and treated him kindly. She also sensed that Gabriel loved Shamron in the turbulent way in which a son loves a father, and she loved him in return. She did not know that Gabriel had killed men on orders from her husband. She believed he was a clerk of some sort who had spent a great deal of time in Europe and knew much about art.

Gilah helped Chiara with the dishes while Gabriel and Shamron adjourned to the study to talk. Shamron, shielded from Gilah’s gaze, lit a cigarette. Gabriel opened the window. Night rain beat a gentle rhythm on the street, and the sharp scent of wet eucalyptus leaves filled the room.

“I hear you’re chasing Khaled,” Shamron said.

Gabriel nodded. He had briefed Lev on Dina’s findings that morning, and Lev had immediately gone to Jerusalem to see the prime minister and Shamron.

“To be honest with you, I never put much stock in the Khaled myth,” Shamron said. “I always assumed the boy had changed his name and had chosen to live out his life free from the shadow of his grandfather and father-free of the shadow of this land.”

“So did I,” said Gabriel, “but the case is compelling.”

“Yes, it is. Why didn’t anyone ever make the connection between the dates of Buenos Aires and Istanbul?”

“It was assumed to be a coincidence,” Gabriel said. “Besides, there wasn’t enough evidence to close the circle. No one ever thought to look at Beit Sayeed until now.”

“She’s very good, this girl Dina.”

“I’m afraid it’s something of an obsession with her.”

“You’re referring to the fact she was at Dizengoff Square the day the Number Five exploded?”

“How did you know that?”

“I took the liberty of reviewing the personnel files of your team. You chose well.”

“She knows a lot about you, including a few things you never told me.”

“Such as?”

“I never knew it was Rabin who drove the getaway car after you killed Sheikh Asad.”

“We were very close after that, Rabin and I, but I’m afraid we parted company over Oslo. Rabin believed that Arafat was down and that it was time to strike a deal. I told him Arafat was striking a deal because he was down, that Arafat intended to use Oslo as a way to wage war against us by other means. I was right, of course. For Arafat, Oslo was just another step in his ‘phased strategy’ to bring about our destruction. He said so in his own words, when he was speaking in Arabic to his people.”

Shamron closed his eyes. “I take no satisfaction in being proven correct. Rabin’s death was a terrible blow to me. His opponents called him a traitor and a Nazi, and then they killed him. We murdered one of our own. We succumbed to the Arab disease.” He shook his head slowly. “Still, I suppose it was all necessary, this delusional attempt to make peace with our sworn enemies. It’s steeled our spine for the steps we’ll need to take if we are to survive in this land.”

The next subject, the demolition of Beit Sayeed, Gabriel approached with great caution.

“It was a Palmach operation, was it not?”

“What exactly do you want to know, Gabriel?”

“Were you there?”

Shamron exhaled heavily, then nodded once. “We had no choice. Beit Sayeed was a base of operations for Sheikh Asad’s militia. We couldn’t leave such a hostile village in our midst. After the sheikh’s death, it was necessary to deal the remnants of his force a fatal blow.”

Shamron’s gaze grew suddenly distant. Gabriel could see he wished to discuss the matter no further. Shamron drew heavily on his cigarette, then told Gabriel about the premonition of disaster he’d had the night before the bombing. “I knew it was something like this. I could feel it the moment it happened.” Then he corrected himself. “I could feel it before it happened.”