Prince of Fire

something in the self-satisfied tone of Shamron’s voice that Gabriel found irritating. Shamron had been pleading with him for years to forsake Europe and return to Israel, preferably to assume control of the Office, or at least Operations. Gabriel couldn’t help but feel Shamron, in his Machiavellian way, was deriving a certain satisfaction from the situation.

He stood and walked to the altarpiece. Attempting to hurriedly finish it was out of the question. The figure of Saint Christopher, with the Christ Child straddling his shoulders, still required substantial inpainting. Then the entire piece required a new coat of varnish. Four weeks minimum, probably more like six. He supposed Tiepolo would have to give it to someone else to finish, a thought that made Gabriel’s stomach churn with acid. But there was something else: Israel wasn’t exactly flooded with Italian Old Master paintings. Chances were he would never again touch a Bellini.

“My work is here,” Gabriel said, though his voice was heavy with resignation.

“No, your work was here. You’re coming home”-Shamron hesitated-“to King Saul Boulevard. To Eretz Yisrael.”

“Leah, too,” Gabriel said. “It’s going to take some time to make the arrangements. Until then, I want a man at the hospital. I don’t care if the dossier says she’s dead.”

“I’ve already dispatched a Security agent from London station.”

Gabriel looked at Chiara.

“She’s coming, too,” Shamron said, reading his thoughts. “We’ll leave a team from Security in Venice as long as necessary to look after her family and the community.”

“I have to tell Tiepolo that I’m leaving.”

“The fewer people who know, the better.”

“I don’t care,” said Gabriel. “I owe it to him.”

“Do what you need to do. Just do it quickly.”

“What about the house? There are things-”

“Extraction will see to your things. By the time they finish, there’ll be no trace of you here.” Shamron, in spite of Gabriel’s admonition against smoking, lit a cigarette. He held the match aloft for a moment, then ceremoniously blew it out. “It will be as though you never existed.”

SHAMRON GRANTED HIM one hour. Gabriel, with Chiara’s Beretta in his pocket, slipped from the back door of the church and made his way to Castello. He had lived there during his apprenticeship and knew the tangled streets of the sestiere well. He walked in a section where tourists never went and many of the houses were uninhabited. His route, deliberately circuitous, took him through several underground sottoportegi, where it was impossible for a pursuer to hide. Once he purposely led himself into an enclosed corte, from which there was only one way to enter and leave. After twenty minutes, he was certain no one was following him.

Francesco Tiepolo kept his office in San Marco, on the Viale 22 Marzo. Gabriel found him seated behind the large oaken table he used as his desk, his large body folded over a stack of paperwork. Were it not for the notebook computer and electric light, he might have been a figure in a Renaissance painting. He looked up at Gabriel and smiled through his tangled black beard. On the streets of Venice, tourists often mistook him for Luciano Pavarotti. Lately he’d taken to posing for photographs and singing a few lines of “Non ti scordar di me” very badly.

He had been a great restorer once; now he was a businessman. Indeed, Tiepolo’s was the most successful restoration firm in the entire Veneto. He spent most of his day preparing bids for various projects or locked in political battles with the Venetian officials charged with the care of the city’s artistic and architectural treasures. Once a day he popped into the Church of San Crisostomo to prod his gifted chief restorer, the recalcitrant and reclusive Mario Delvecchio, into working faster. Tiepolo was the only person in the art world other than Julian Isherwood who knew the truth about the talented Signore Delvecchio.

Tiepolo suggested they walk around the corner for a glass of prosecco, then, confronted with Gabriel’s reluctance to leave the office, he fetched a bottle of ripasso from the next room instead. Gabriel scanned the framed photographs arrayed on the wall behind the Venetian’s desk. There was a new photograph of Tiepolo with his good friend, His Holiness Pope Paul VII. Pietro Lucchesi had been the Patriarch of Venice before reluctantly moving to the Vatican to become leader of the world’s one billion Roman Catholics. The photo showed Tiepolo and the pope seated in the dining room of Tiepolo’s gloriously restored palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal. What it didn’t show was that Gabriel, at that moment, had been seated to the pope’s left. Two years earlier, with a bit of help from Tiepolo, he had saved the pope’s life and destroyed a grave threat to his papacy. He hoped that Chiara and the team from Extraction had found the Hanuka card the Holy Father had sent him in December.

Tiepolo poured out two glasses of the blood-red ripasso and slid one across the tabletop toward Gabriel. Half of his own wine disappeared in one swallow. Only in his work was Tiepolo meticulous. In all other things-food, drink, his many women-Francesco Tiepolo was prone to extravagance and excess. Gabriel leaned forward and quietly told Tiepolo the news-that his enemies had found him in Venice, that he had no choice but to leave the city immediately, before he could finish the Bellini. Tiepolo smiled sadly and closed his eyes.

“Is there no other way?”

Gabriel shook his head. “They know where I live. They know where I work.”

“And Chiara?”

Gabriel answered the question truthfully. Tiepolo, in Italian, was an uomo di fiducia, a man of trust.

“I’m sorry about the Bellini,” Gabriel said. “I should have finished it months ago.” He would have, were it not for the Radek affair.

“To hell with the Bellini! It’s you I care about.” Tiepolo stared into his wine. “I’m going to miss Mario Delvecchio, but I’m going to miss Gabriel Allon more.”

Gabriel raised his glass in Tiepolo’s direction. “I know I’m not in any position to ask for a favor…” His voice trailed off.

Tiepolo looked at the photograph of the Holy Father and said, “You saved my friend’s life. What do you want?”

“Finish the Bellini for me.”

“Me?”

“We shared the same teacher, Francesco. Umberto Conti taught you well.”

“Yes, but do you know how long it’s been since I’ve put a brush to a painting?”

“You’ll do just fine. Trust me.”

“That’s quite a vote of confidence, coming from a man like Mario Delvecchio.”

“Mario’s dead, Francesco. Mario never was.”

GABRIEL MADE HIS WAY back to Cannaregio through the gathering darkness. He took a short detour so he could walk, one final time, through the ancient ghetto. In the square, he watched proprietarily as a pair of boys, clad all in black with wispy untrimmed beards, hurried across the paving stones toward the yeshiva. He looked at his watch. An hour had elapsed since he’d left Shamron and Chiara in the church. He turned and started walking toward the house that would soon bear no trace of him, and the plane that would carry him home again. As he walked, two questions ran ceaselessly in his mind. Who had found him in Venice? And why was he being allowed to leave alive?

5 TEL AVIV: MARCH 10

GABRIEL ARRIVED AT KING SAUL BOULEVARD AT eight o’clock the following morning. Two officers from Personnel were waiting for him. They wore matching cotton shirts and matching smiles-the tight, humorless smiles of men who are empowered to ask embarrassing questions. In the eyes of Personnel, Gabriel’s return to discipline was long overdue. He was like fine wine, to be savored slowly and with much commentary. He placed himself in their hands with the melancholy air of a fugitive surrendering after a long time on the run and followed them