Confronted by an enemy of infinite religious zeal, the secular Dutch had turned their churches into bureaus of the welfare state.
At ten minutes past twelve he heard a faint knock and looked up to find Sophie Vanderhaus leaning against the doorjamb with a batch of files clutched to her breast. A former student of Rosner’s, she had come to work for him after completing a graduate degree on the impact of the Holocaust on postwar Dutch society. She was part secretary and research assistant, part nursemaid and surrogate daughter. She kept his office in order and typed the final drafts of all his reports and articles. She was the minder of his impossible schedule and tended to his appalling personal finances. She even saw to his laundry and made certain he remembered to eat. Earlier that morning she had informed him that she was planning to spend a week in Saint-Maarten over the New Year. Rosner, upon hearing the news, had fallen into a profound depression.
“You have an interview with
“Are you suggesting my thoughts lack focus, Sophie?”
“I’m suggesting nothing of the sort. It’s just that you’ve been working on that article since five-thirty this morning. You need something more than coffee in your stomach.”
“It’s not that dreadful reporter who called me a Nazi last year?”
“Do you really think I’d let her near you again?” She entered the office and started straightening his desk. “After the interview with
“I’ll try to behave myself, but I’m afraid my forbearance is now gone forever.”
She peered into his coffee cup and pulled a sour face. “Why do you insist on putting out your cigarettes in your coffee?”
“My ashtray was full.”
“Try emptying it from time to time.” She poured the contents of the ashtray into his rubbish bin and removed the plastic liner. “And don’t forget you have the forum this evening at the university.”
Rosner frowned. He was not looking forward to the forum. One of the other panelists was the leader of the European Muslim Association, a group that campaigned openly for the imposition of
“I’m afraid I’m coming down with a sudden case of leprosy,” he said.
“They’ll insist that you come anyway. You’re the star of the show.”
He stood and stretched his back. “I think I’ll go to Cafe de Doelen for a coffee and something to eat. Why don’t you have the reporter from
“Do you really think that’s wise, Professor?”
It was common knowledge in Amsterdam that the famous cafe on the Staalstraat was his favorite haunt. And Rosner was hardly inconspicuous. Indeed, with his shock of white hair and rumpled tweed wardrobe, he was one of the most recognizable figures in Holland. The geniuses in the Dutch police had once suggested he utilize some crude disguise while in public, an idea Rosner had likened to putting a hat and a false mustache on a hippopotamus and calling it a Dutchman.
“I haven’t been to the Doelen in months.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s any safer.”
“I can’t live my life as a prisoner forever, Sophie.” He gestured toward the window. “Especially on a day like today. Wait until the last possible minute before you tell the reporter from
“That isn’t funny, Professor.” She could see there was no talking him out of it. She handed him his mobile phone. “At least take this so you can call me in an emergency.”
Rosner slipped the phone into his pocket and headed downstairs. In the entry hall he pulled on his coat and trademark silk scarf and stepped outside. To his left rose the spire of the Zuiderkirk; to his right, fifty yards along a narrow canal lined with small craft, stood a wooden double drawbridge. The Groenburgwal was a quiet street for the Old Side: no bars or cafes, only a single small hotel that never seemed to have more than a handful of guests. Directly opposite Rosner’s house was the street’s only eyesore, a modern tenement block with a lavender-and-lime pastel exterior. A trio of housepainters dressed in smudged white coveralls was squatting outside the building in a patch of sunlight.
Rosner glanced at the three faces, committing each to memory, before setting off in the direction of the drawbridge. When a sudden gust of wind stirred the bare tree limbs along the embankment, he paused for a moment to bind his scarf more tightly around his neck and watch a plump Vermeer cloud drift slowly overhead. It was then that he noticed one of the painters walking parallel to him along the opposite side of the canal. Short dark hair, a high flat forehead, a heavy brow over small eyes: Rosner, connoisseur of immigrant faces, judged him to be a Moroccan from the Rif Mountains. They arrived at the drawbridge simultaneously. Rosner paused again, this time to light a cigarette he did not want, and watched with relief as the man turned to the left. When he disappeared round the next corner, Rosner headed in the opposite direction toward the Doelen.
He took his time making his way down the Staalstraat, now dawdling in the window of his favorite pastry shop to gaze at that day’s offerings, now sidestepping to avoid being run down by a pretty girl on a bicycle, now pausing to accept a few words of encouragement from a ruddy-faced admirer. He was about to step through the entrance of the cafe when he felt a tug at his coat sleeve. In the few remaining seconds he had left to live, he would be tormented by the absurd thought that he might have prevented his own murder had he resisted the impulse to turn around. But he did turn around, because that is what one does on a glorious December afternoon in Amsterdam when one is summoned in the street by a stranger.
He saw the gun only in the abstract. In the narrow street the shots reverberated like cannon fire. He collapsed onto the cobblestones and watched helplessly as his killer drew a long knife from the inside of his coveralls. The slaughter was ritual, just as the imams had decreed it should be. No one intervened-hardly surprising, thought Rosner, for intervention would have been intolerant-and no one thought to comfort him as he lay dying. Only the bells spoke to him.
2
What are you doing here, Uzi?” Gabriel asked. “You’re the boss now. Bosses don’t make midnight airport runs. They leave that sort of work to the flunkies in Transport.”
“I had nothing better to do.”
“Nothing better to do than hang around the airport waiting for me to come off a plane from Rome? What’s wrong? You didn’t think I’d really come back this time?”
Uzi Navot didn’t respond. He was now peering through the one-way glass window of the VIP reception room into the arrivals hall, where the other passengers from the Rome flight were queuing up at passport control. Gabriel looked around: the same faux-limestone walls, the same tired-looking leather couches, the same smell of male tension and burnt coffee. He had been coming to this room, or versions of it, for more than thirty years. He had entered it in triumph and staggered into it in failure. He had been feted in this room and consoled by a prime minister; and once, he had been wheeled into it with a bullet wound in his chest. But it never changed.
“Bella needed an evening to herself,” Navot said, still facing the glass. He looked at Gabriel. “Last week she confessed that she liked it better when I was in the field. We saw each other once a month, if we were lucky. Now…” He frowned. “I think Bella’s starting to have buyer’s remorse. Besides, I miss hanging around in airport lounges. By my calculation I’ve spent two-thirds of my career waiting in airport terminals, train stations, restaurants, and hotel rooms. They promise you glamour and excitement, but it’s mostly mind-numbing boredom
