Prince of Fire

far from their house in Cannaregio. The third photograph, Gabriel leaving the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo, turned his spinal cord to ice. How many times? he wondered. How many times had an assassin been waiting in the campo when he left work for the night?

“It couldn’t last forever,” Shamron said. “Eventually they were going to find you here. You’ve made too many enemies over the years. We both have.”

Gabriel handed the photographs back to Shamron. Chiara sat down next to him. In this setting, in this light, she reminded Gabriel of Raphael’s Alba Madonna. Her hair, dark and curly and shimmering with highlights of chestnut and auburn, was clasped at the nape of her neck and spilled riotously about her shoulders. Her skin was olive and luminous. Her eyes, deep brown with flecks of gold, shone in the lamplight. They tended to change color with her mood. Gabriel, in Chiara’s dark gaze, could see there was more bad news to come.

Shamron reached into the briefcase a second time. “This is a dossier, summarizing your career, uncomfortably accurate, I’m afraid.” He paused. “Seeing one’s entire life reduced to a succession of deaths can be difficult. Are you sure you want to read it?”

Gabriel held out his hand. Shamron had not bothered to have the dossier translated from Arabic into Hebrew. The Jezreel Valley contained many Arab towns and villages. Gabriel’s Arabic, while not fluent, was good enough to read a recitation of his own professional exploits.

Shamron was right-somehow his enemies had managed to assemble a tellingly complete account of his career. The dossier referred to Gabriel by his real name. The date of his recruitment was correct, as was the reason, though it credited him with killing eight members of Black September when in truth he had killed only six. Several pages were devoted to Gabriel’s assassination of Khalil el-Wazir, the PLO’s second-in-command, better known by his nom de guerre Abu Jihad. Gabriel had killed him inside his seaside villa in Tunis in 1988. The description of the operation had been provided by Abu Jihad’s wife, Umm Jihad, who had been present that night. The entry for Vienna was terse and noteworthy for its one glaring factual error: Wife and son killed by car bomb, Vienna, January 1991. Reprisal ordered by Abu Amar. Abu Amar was none other than Yasir Arafat. Gabriel had always suspected Arafat’s personal involvement. Until now he had never seen evidence confirming it.

He held up the pages of the dossier. “Where did you get this?”

“ Milan,” Shamron said. He then told Gabriel about the raid on the pensione and the computer disk found in one of the suspects’ bags. “When the Italians couldn’t break the security code, they turned to us. I suppose we should consider ourselves fortunate. If they’d been able to get inside that disk they would have been able to solve a thirty-year-old Roman murder in a matter of minutes.”

Contained in the dossier was the fact that he had killed a Black September operative named Wadal Abdel Zwaiter in a Rome apartment house in 1972. It was that killing, Gabriel’s first, which had caused his temples to gray virtually overnight. He handed the dossier back to Shamron.

“What do we know about the men who were hiding in that pensione?”

“Based on fingerprints discovered on the material and in the room, along with the photos in the false passports, we’ve managed to identify one of them. His name is Daoud Hadawi, a Palestinian, born in the Jenin refugee camp. He was a ringleader during the first intifada and was in and out of prison. At seventeen he joined Fatah, and when Arafat came to Gaza after Oslo, Hadawi went to work for Al-Amn Al-Ra’isah, the Presidential Security Service. You may know that organization by its previous name, the name it used before Oslo: Force 17, Arafat’s praetorian guard. Arafat’s favorite killers.”

“What else do we know about Hadawi?”

Shamron reached into his coat pocket for his cigarettes. Gabriel stopped him and explained that the smoke was harmful to the paintings. Shamron sighed and carried on with his briefing.

“We were convinced he was involved in terror operations during the second intifada. We placed him on a list of wanted suspects, but the Palestinian Authority refused to hand him over. We assumed he was hiding inside the Mukata with Arafat and the rest of the senior men.” The Mukata was the name of Arafat’s walled, militarized compound in Ramallah. “But when we smashed into the Mukata during Operation Defense Shield, Hadawi was not among the men we found hiding there.”

“Where was he?”

“Shabak and Aman assumed he’d fled to Jordan or Lebanon. They turned the case file over to the Office. Unfortunately, locating Hadawi was not high on Lev’s list of priorities. It turned out to be a very costly mistake.”

“Is Hadawi still a member of Force 17?”

“Unclear.”

“Does he still have links to Arafat?”

“We simply don’t know yet.”

“Does Shabak think Hadawi was capable of pulling off something like this?”

“Not really. He was considered a foot soldier, not a mastermind. Rome was planned and executed by a class act. Someone very smart. Someone capable of pulling off a shocking act of terrorism on the world stage. Someone with experience in this sort of thing.”

“Like who?”

“That’s what we want you to find out.”

“Me?”

“We want you to find the animals who carried out this massacre, and we want you to put them down. It will be just like seventy-two, except this time you’ll be the one in command instead of me.”

Gabriel shook his head slowly. “I’m not an investigator. I was the executioner. Besides, this isn’t my war any longer. It’s Shabak’s war. It’s the Sayaret’s war.”

“They’ve come back to Europe,” Shamron said. “ Europe is Office turf. This is your war.”

“Why don’t you lead the team?”

“I’m a mere adviser with no operational authority.” Shamron’s tone was heavy with irony. He enjoyed playing the role of the downtrodden civil servant who’d been put out to pasture before his time, even if the reality was far different. “Besides, Lev wouldn’t hear of it.”

“And he would let me lead the team?”

“He doesn’t have a choice. The prime minister has already spoken on the matter. Of course I was whispering in his ear at the time.” Shamron paused. “Lev did make one demand, however, and I’m afraid I was in no position to challenge it.”

“What’s that?”

“He insists that you come back on the payroll and return to full-time duty.”

Gabriel had left the Office after the bombing in Vienna. His missions in the intervening years had been essentially freelance affairs orchestrated by Shamron. “He wants me under Office discipline so he can keep me under his control,” Gabriel said.

“His motives are rather transparent. For a man of the secret world, Lev does a terrible job covering his own tracks. But don’t take it personally. It’s me who Lev despises. You, I’m afraid, are guilty by association.”

A sudden clamor rose from the street, children running and shouting. Shamron remained silent until the noise dissipated. When he spoke again, his voice took on a new tone of gravity.

“That disk contains more than just your dossier,” he said. “We also found surveillance photographs and detailed security analyses of several potential future targets in Europe.”

“What sorts of targets?”

“Embassies, consulates, El Al offices, major synagogues, Jewish community centers, schools.” Shamron’s final word echoed in the apses of the church for a moment before dying away. “They’re going to hit us again, Gabriel. You can help us stop them. You know them as well as anyone at King Saul Boulevard.” He turned his gaze toward the altarpiece. “You know them like the brushstrokes of that Bellini.”

Shamron looked at Gabriel. “Your days in Venice are over. There’s a plane waiting on the other side of the lagoon. You’re getting on it, whether you like it or not. What you do after that is your business. You can sit around a safe flat, pondering the state of your life, or you can help us find these murderers before they strike again.”

Gabriel could muster no challenge. Shamron was right: he had no choice but to leave. Still, there was