The Messenger

Venice

IT WAS A SMALL terra-cotta church, built for a poor parish in the sestiere of Cannaregio. The plot of land had been too cramped for a proper church square, and so the main entrance opened directly onto the busy Salizzada San Giovanni Crisostomo. Gabriel had once carried a key to the church in his pocket. Now he entered like an ordinary tourist and paused for a moment in the vestibule, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light while a breath of cool air, scented with candle wax and incense, brushed against his cheek. He thought of the last time he had set foot in the church. It was the night Shamron had come to Venice to tell Gabriel that he had been discovered by his enemies and that it was time for him to come home again. There’ll be no trace of you here, Shamron had said. It will be as though you never existed.

He crossed the intimate nave to the Chapel of St. Jerome on the right side of the church. The altarpiece was concealed by heavy shadow. Gabriel dropped a coin into the light meter, and the lamps flickered into life, illuminating the last great work by Giovanni Bellini. He stood for a moment, right hand pressed to his chin, head tilted slightly to one side, examining the painting in raked lighting. Francesco Tiepolo had done a fine job finishing it for him. Indeed it was nearly impossible for Gabriel to tell where his inpainting left off and Tiepolo’s began. Hardly surprising, he thought. They had both served their apprenticeships with the master Venetian restorer Umberto Conti.

The meter ran out, and the lights switched off automatically, plunging the painting into darkness again. Gabriel went back into the street and made his way westward across Cannaregio until he came to an iron bridge, the only one in all of Venice. In the Middle Ages there had been a gate in the center of the bridge, and at night a Christian watchman had stood guard so that those imprisoned on the other side could not escape. He crossed the bridge and entered a darkened sottoportego. At the end of the passageway, a broad square opened before him, the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, center of the ancient ghetto of Venice. More than five thousand Jews had once lived in the ghetto. Now it was home to only twenty of the city’s four hundred Jews, and most of those were elderly who resided in the Casa di Riposo Israelitica.

He crossed the campo and stopped at Number 2899. A small brass plaque read COMUNITA EBRAICA DI VENEZIA-Jewish Community of Venice. He pressed the bell and quickly turned his back to the security camera over the doorway. After a long silence a woman’s voice, familiar to him, crackled over the intercom. “Turn around,” she said. “Let me have a look at your face.”

HE WAITED WHERE she had told him to wait, on a wooden bench in a sunlit corner of the campo, near a memorial for the Venetian Jews who were rounded up in December 1943 and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. Ten minutes elapsed, then ten minutes more. When finally she emerged from the office she took her time crossing the square, then stopped several feet away from him, as though she were afraid to come any closer. Gabriel, still seated, pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and regarded her in the dazzling autumn light. She wore faded blue jeans, snug around her long thighs and flared at the bottom, and a pair of high-heeled suede boots. Her white blouse was tailored in such a way that it left no doubt about the generous figure beneath it. Her riotous auburn hair was held back by a chocolate-colored satin ribbon, and a silk scarf was wound round her neck. Her olive skin was very dark. Gabriel suspected she’d been to the sun recently. Her eyes, wide and Oriental in shape, were the color of caramel and flecked with gold. They tended to change color with her mood. The last time Gabriel had seen Chiara’s eyes they were nearly black with anger and streaked with mascara. She folded her arms defensively beneath her breasts and asked what he was doing in Venice.

“Hello, Chiara. Don’t you look lovely.”

The breeze took her hair and blew a few strands across her face. She brushed it away with her left hand. It was absent the diamond engagement ring Gabriel had given her. There were other rings on her fingers now and a new gold watch on her wrist. Gabriel wondered if they were gifts from someone else.

“I haven’t heard from you since I left Jerusalem,” Chiara said in the deliberately even tone she used whenever she was trying to keep her emotions in check. “It’s been months. Now you show up here without warning and expect me to greet you with my arms open and a smile on my face?”

“Without warning? I came here because you asked me to come.”

“Me? What on earth are you talking about?”

Gabriel searched her eyes. He could tell she was not dissembling. “Forgive me,” he said. “It seems I was brought here under false pretenses.”

She toyed with the ends of her scarf, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “Brought here by whom?”

Donati and Tiepolo, reckoned Gabriel. Maybe even His Holiness himself. He stood abruptly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m sorry, Chiara. It was nice to see you again.”

He turned and started to walk away, but she seized his arm.

“Wait,” she said. “Stay for a moment.”

“Are you going to be civil?”

“Civility is for divorced couples with children.”

Gabriel sat down again, but Chiara remained standing. A man in dark glasses and a tan blazer emerged from the sottoportego. He looked admiringly at Chiara, then crossed the campo and disappeared over the bridge that led to the pair of old Sephardic synagogues at the southern end of the ghetto. Chiara watched the man go, then tilted her head and scrutinized Gabriel’s appearance.

“Has anyone ever told you that you bear more than a passing resemblance to the man who saved the Pope?”

“He’s an Italian,” Gabriel said. “Didn’t you read about him in the newspapers?”

She ignored him. “When I saw the footage on television, I thought I was hallucinating. I knew it was you. That night, after things calmed down, I checked in with Rome. Shimon told me you’d been at the Vatican.”

A sudden movement in the campo caused her to turn her head. She watched as a man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a fedora hurried toward the entrance of the community center. It was her father, the chief rabbi of Venice. She raised the toe of her right boot and balanced her weight on the heel. Gabriel knew the gesture well. It meant something provocative was coming.

“Why are you here, Gabriel Allon?”

“I was told you wanted to see me.”

“And so you came? Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

The corners of her lips started to curl into a smile.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“Poor Gabriel. You’re still in love with me, aren’t you?”

“I always was.”

“Just not enough to marry me?”

“Can we do this in private?”

“Not for a while. I need to keep an eye on the office. My other job,” she said in a tone of mock conspiracy.

“Please give Rabbi Zolli my regards.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Rabbi Zolli is still furious with you.”

She dug a key from her pocket and tossed it to him. He looked at it for a long moment. Even after months of separation it was difficult for Gabriel to imagine Chiara leading a life of her own.

“In case you’re wondering, I live there alone. It’s more than you have a right to know, but it’s the truth. Make yourself comfortable. Get some rest. You look like hell.”

“Full of compliments today, aren’t we?” He slipped the key into his pocket. “What’s the address?”

“You know, for a spy, you’re a terrible liar.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know my address, Gabriel. You got it from Operations, the same place you got my telephone number.”

She leaned down and kissed his cheek. When her hair fell across his face, he closed his eyes and inhaled the