The Messenger

scent of vanilla.

HER BUILDING WAS on the other side of the Grand Canal in Santa Croce, in a small enclosed corte with but one passage in and out. Gabriel, as he slipped into her apartment, had the sensation of walking into his own past. The sitting room seemed posed for a magazine photo shoot. Even her old magazines and newspapers appeared to have been arranged by a fanatic in pursuit of visual perfection. He walked over to an end table and browsed the framed photographs: Chiara and her parents; Chiara and an older brother who lived in Padua; Chiara with a friend on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was during that trip, when she was just twenty-five, that she’d come to the attention of an Office talent scout. Six months later, after being vetted and trained, she was sent back to Europe as a bat leveyha, a female escort officer. There were no photographs of Chiara with Gabriel, for none existed.

He went to the window and looked out. Thirty feet below, the oily green waters of the Rio del Megio flowed sluggishly by. A clothing line stretched to the building opposite. Shirts and trousers hung drunkenly in the sunlight, and at the other end of the line an old woman sat in an open window with her fleshy arm draped over the sill. She seemed surprised to see Gabriel. He held up the key and said he was Chiara’s friend from Milan.

He lowered the blinds and went into the kitchen. In the sink was a half-drunk bowl of milky coffee and a crust of buttered toast. Chiara, fastidious in all other things, always left her breakfast dishes in the sink until the end of the day. Gabriel, in an act of domestic pettiness, left them where they stood and went into her bedroom.

He tossed his bag onto the unmade bed and, resisting the temptation to search her closet and drawers, went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He opened the medicine chest, looking for razors or cologne or any other evidence of a man. There were two things he’d never seen before: a bottle of sleeping tablets and a bottle of antidepressants. He returned them to the precise position in which he’d found them. Chiara, like Gabriel, had been trained to notice even the subtlest of changes.

He stripped off his clothes and tossed them into the hallway, then spent a long time standing beneath the shower. When he was finished he wrapped a towel around his waist and padded into the bedroom. The duvet smelled of Chiara’s body. When he placed his head atop her pillow the bells of Santa Croce tolled midday. He closed his eyes and plunged into a dreamless sleep.

HE WOKE IN late afternoon to the sound of a key being pushed into the lock, followed by the clatter of Chiara’s boot heels in the entrance hall. She didn’t bother calling out that she was home. She knew he came awake at the slightest sound or movement. When she entered the bedroom she was singing softly to herself, a silly Italian pop song she knew he loathed.

She sat on the edge of the bed, close enough so that her hip pressed against his thigh. He opened his eyes and watched her remove her boots and wriggle out of her jeans. She pressed her palm against his chest. When he pulled the ribbon from her hair, auburn curls tumbled about her face and shoulders. She repeated the question she had posed to him in the ghetto: Why are you here, Gabriel Allon?

“I was wondering whether we might try this again,” Gabriel said.

“I don’t need to try it. I tried it once, and I liked it very much.”

He unwound the silk scarf from her throat and slowly loosened the buttons of her blouse. Chiara leaned down and kissed his mouth. It was like being kissed by Raphael’s Alba Madonna.

“If you hurt me again, I’ll hate you forever.”

“I won’t hurt you.”

“I never stopped dreaming of you.”

“Good dreams?”

“No,” she said. “I dreamt only of your death.”

THE ONLY TRACE of Gabriel in the apartment was an old sketchpad. He turned to a fresh page and regarded Chiara with a professional dispassion. She was seated at the end of the couch, with her long legs folded beneath her and her body wrapped in a silk bedsheet. Her face was turned toward the window and lit by the setting sun. Gabriel was relieved to see the first lines around Chiara’s eyes. He always feared she was far too young for him and that one day, when he was old, she would leave him for another man. He tugged at the bedsheet, exposing her breast. She held his gaze for a moment, then closed her eyes.

“You’re lucky I was here,” she said. “I might have been away on assignment.”

She was a talker. Gabriel had learned long ago it was pointless to ask her to remain silent while posing for him.

“You haven’t worked since that job in Switzerland.”

“How do you know about that operation?”

Gabriel gave her an inscrutable glance over the top of his sketchpad and reminded her not to move.

“So much for the concept of need to know. It seems you can walk into Operations any time you feel like it and find out what I’m doing.” She started to turn her head, but Gabriel stilled her with a sharp tsk- tsk. “But I shouldn’t be surprised. Have they given you the directorate yet?”

“Which directorate is that?” Gabriel said, being deliberately obtuse.

“Special Operations.”

Gabriel confessed that the post had been offered and accepted.

“So you’re my boss now,” she pointed out. “I suppose we just violated about a half dozen different Office edicts about fraternization between senior officers and staff.”

“At least,” said Gabriel. “But my promotion isn’t official yet.”

“Oh, thank goodness. I wouldn’t want the great Gabriel to get into any sort of trouble because of his sex life. How much longer are we allowed to plunder each other’s bodies before we run into trouble with Personnel?”

“As long as we like. We’ll just have to go on the record with them at some point.”

“And what about God, Gabriel? Will you go on the record with God this time?” There was silence, except for the scratching of a charcoal pencil across paper. She changed the subject. “How much do you know about what I was doing in Switzerland?”

“I know that you went to Zermatt to seduce a Swiss arms merchant who was about to make a deal with someone who didn’t have our best interests at heart. King Saul Boulevard wanted to know when the shipment was leaving and where it was bound.”

After a long silence he asked her whether she had slept with the Swiss.

“It wasn’t that kind of operation. I was working with another agent. I just kept the arms dealer entertained in the bar while the other agent broke into his room and stole the contents of his computer. Besides, you know that a bat leveyha isn’t supposed to be used for sex. We hire professionals for that sort of thing.”

“Not always.”

“I could never use my body like that. I’m a religious girl.” She smiled at him mischievously. “We got it, by the way. The boat had a mysterious accident near the coast of Crete. The weapons are now on the bottom of the sea.”

“I know,” Gabriel said. “Close your eyes again.”

“Make me,” she said, then she smiled and did what he wanted. “Aren’t you going to ask me whether I was with anyone while we were apart?”

“It’s none of my business.”

“But you must be curious. I can only imagine what you did to my apartment when you walked through the door.”

“If you’re suggesting I searched your things, I didn’t.”

“Oh, please.”

“Why can’t you sleep?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

He made no reply.

“There was no one else, Gabriel, but then you knew that, didn’t you? How could there be?” She gave him a bittersweet smile. “They never tell you that when they ask you to join their exclusive club. They never tell you how the lies begin to add up, or that you’ll never truly be comfortable around people who aren’t members. Is that the