by Daniel Silva
“Lev gave me his resignation today. He said he can no longer serve in an organization in which the director of Operations is kept in the dark about a major operation.”
“He has a point. Did you accept it?”
“I had no choice.” Shamron smiled. “Poor little Lev’s position had become untenable. We had crushed the serpent. We had beheaded Tariq’s organization and rounded up his foot soldiers. Yet Lev was completely out of the loop. I explained my reasons for running the operation the way I did. I told him the prime minister needed iron-clad deniability and, unfortunately, that required deceiving my own deputy. Lev wasn’t mollified.”
“And the rest of your problem children?”
“They’ll be gone soon.” Shamron set down his fork and looked up at Gabriel. “There’ll be several vacancies in the executive suite at King Saul Boulevard. Can I tempt you back? How does chief of Operations sound?”
“Not interested. Besides, I was never much of a headquarters man.”
“I didn’t think so, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t try.”
“What about the Americans? Have you managed to get back into their good graces?”
“Slowly but surely. They seem to have accepted our version of the story: That we’d run an agent into Tariq’s organization and that the agent had been exposed. That we had no choice but to take appropriate steps to safeguard the agent’s life. They’re still furious that we didn’t bring them into the picture earlier.”
“That’s quite understandable, considering the way it ended. What did you tell them?”
“I told them we had no idea Tariq was in New York until Jacqueline freed herself and alerted us.”
“And they believed this?”
“Even I believe it now.”
“My name ever come up?”
“From time to time. Adrian Carter would like another go at you.”
“Oh, God.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let him talk to you again.”
Before Gabriel had been allowed to leave the United States, he was forced to endure eight hours of questioning: CIA, FBI, New York City police. Shamron had been at his side, like a good defense attorney at a deposition—objecting, stonewalling, impeding every step of the way. In the end it disintegrated into a shouting match. A full account of the operation against Tariq, based on anonymous “Western and Middle Eastern intelligence sources,” appeared in The New York Times two days later. Gabriel’s name made it into print. So did Jacqueline’s.
“I’m convinced it was Carter who leaked everything to the Times.” Gabriel detected a hint of admiration in the old man’s voice. He’d used the press to eviscerate an enemy once or twice himself over the years. “I suppose he had a right to be angry with me. I lied to his face about our knowledge of Tariq’s involvement in Paris.”
“Lev must have talked too.”
“Of course he did. Carter’s beyond my reach. Little Lev will pay dearly.” Shamron pushed his plate away a few inches, rested his stubby elbows on the table, and covered his mouth with his fist. “At least our reputation as a bold action service has been restored. After all, we did take down Tariq in the middle of Manhattan and save Arafat’s life.”
“No thanks to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tariq nearly killed me. And he could have killed Arafat if he hadn’t gotten cold feet at the last minute. Why did he let him live?”
“Arafat is being very tight-lipped about what transpired in that room. Obviously, he said something that made Tariq change his mind.”
“Any sign of Yusef ?”
Shamron shook his head. “We’ll keep looking for him, of course, but I doubt we’ll ever find him again. He’s probably deep in the mountains of Afghanistan by now.”
“And Benjamin Stone?”
“Relaxing in the Caribbean aboard his yacht.” Shamron abruptly changed course. “I stopped in on Jacqueline today.”
“How is she?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself? She wants to see you.”
“I have to get back to Jerusalem.”
“Why, Gabriel? So you can waste more time wandering the Old City with the crazies? Go see the girl. Spend some time with her. Who knows? You might actually enjoy yourself.”
“When do I get to leave?”
“In my professional opinion it will never be safe for you to leave Israel.”
“I want to go home.”
“This is your home, Gabriel!”
But Gabriel just shook his head slowly.
“What have I done to you, Gabriel? Why do you hate your people and your country so?”
“I don’t hate anyone. I just have no peace here.”
“So you want to run back to Europe? Back to your paintings? Do me a favor. Get out of Jerusalem for a few days. Take a car and travel this country of yours. Get to know her again. You might like what you see.”
“I’m not up to it. I’d rather stay in Jerusalem until you set me free.”
“Damn you, Gabriel!” Shamron slammed his fist onto the table, rattling dishes. “You’ve spent the last years of your life fixing everything and everyone but yourself. You restore paintings and old sailboats. You restored the Office. You restored Jacqueline and Julian Isherwood. You even managed to restore Tariq in a strange way—you made certain we buried him in the Upper Galilee. But now it’s time to restore yourself. Get out of that flat. Live life, before you wake up one day and discover you’re an old man. Like me.”
“What about your watchers?”
“I put them there for your own good.”
“Get rid of them.”
Shamron stuck out his jaw. “Fine, you’re on your own.”
As Gabriel rode back to Jerusalem that night, he thought how well things had worked out for the old man. Lev and the others were gone, Tariq was dead, and the reputation of the Office had been restored. Not bad for a few weeks’ work, Ari. Not bad at all.
Gabriel went south first, down through the barren escarpments and craters of the Negev to Eilat and the Red Sea. He spent a day sunning himself on the beach but soon grew restless and set out toward the north, taking the fast road up the western Negev to Beersheba, then the black ribbon of highway through the Wilderness of Judea and the West Bank.
Something made him scale the punishing Snake Path up the eastern face of Masada and roam the ruins of the ancient fortress. He avoided the tourist kitsch of the Dead Sea, spent an afternoon wandering the Arab markets of Hebron and Jenin. He wished he could have seen Shamron’s face, watching him as he haggled with the merchants in their white kaffiyehs under the steady gaze of dark-eyed veterans of the intifada.
He drove through the Jezreel Valley and paused beyond the gates of the farming settlement, just outside Afula on the road to Nazareth, where he had lived as a boy. He considered going in. To do what? To see what? His parents were long dead, and if by some miracle he actually came across someone he knew, he could only lie.
He kept driving, kept moving north. Wildflowers burned on the hillsides as he headed into the Galilee. He drove around the shores of the lake. Then up to the ancient hill city of Safed. Then into the Golan. He parked beside the road near a Druse shepherd tending his flock, watched the sunset over the Finger of Galilee. For the first time in many years he felt something like contentment. Something like peace.
He got back into the car, drove down the Golan to a kibbutz outside Qiryat Shemona. It was a Friday night. He went to the dining hall for Shabbat meal, sat with a group of adults from the kibbutz: farmworkers with sunburned faces and callused hands. They ignored him for a time. Then one of them, an older man, asked his name and where he was from. He told them he was Gabriel. That he was from the Jezreel Valley but had been away for a long time.
In the morning he crossed the fertile flatlands of the coastal plain and drove south along the Mediterranean—through Akko, Haifa, Caesarea, and Netanya—until finally he found himself on the beach at Herzliya.
She was leaning against the balustrade, arms folded, looking out to sea at the setting sun, wind pushing strands of hair across her face. She wore a loose-fitting white blouse and the sunglasses of a woman in hiding.
Gabriel waited for her to notice him. Eventually she would. She had been trained by Ari Shamron, and no pupil of the great Shamron would ever fail to take notice of a man standing below her terrace. When she finally saw him a smile flared, then faded. She lifted her hand, the reluctant wave of someone who had been burned by the secret fire. Gabriel lowered his head and started walking.
They drank icy white wine on her terrace and made small talk, avoiding the operation or Shamron or Gabriel’s wounds. Gabriel told her about his journey. Jacqueline said she would have liked to come. Then she apologized for saying such a thing—she had no right.
“So why did you come here after all these weeks, Gabriel? You never do anything without a reason.”
He wanted to hear it one more time: Tariq’s version of the story. The way he had told it to her that night during the drive from the border to New York. He looked out to sea as she spoke, watching the wind tossing the sand about, the moonlight on the waves, but he was listening fiercely. When she was done, he still couldn’t put the final pieces into place. It was like an unfinished painting or a series of musical notes with no resolution. She invited him to stay for dinner. He lied and said he had pressing matters in Jerusalem.
“Ari tells me you want to leave. What are your plans?”
“I have a man named Vecellio waiting for me in England.”
“Are you sure it’s safe to go back?”
“I’ll be fine. What about you?”
“My story has been splashed across newspapers and television screens around the world. I’ll never be able to return to my old life. I have no choice but to stay here.”
“I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this business, Jacqueline. I hope you can forgive me.”
“Forgive you? No, Gabriel—quite the opposite, actually. I thank you. I got exactly what I wanted.” A second’s hesitation. “Well, almost everything.”
She walked him down to the beach. He kissed her softly on the mouth, touched her hair. Then he turned and walked to his car. He paused once to look over his shoulder at her, but she had already gone.
He was hungry, so instead of going straight to Jerusalem he stopped in Tel Aviv for dinner. He parked in Balfour Street, walked to Sheinkin, wandered past trendy cafés and avant-garde shops, thinking of the rue St-Denis in Montreal. He had the sense he was being followed. Nothing specific, just the flash of a familiar face too many times—a color, a hat.
He purchased a newspaper from a kiosk, sat down in a restaurant with small round tables spilling onto the sidewalk. It was a warm evening, sidewalks filled with people. He ordered falafel and beer, then opened the newspaper and read the lead article on the front page: “Benjamin Stone, the maverick publisher and entrepreneur, is missing and feared drowned off St. Martin in the Caribbean. Authorities believe Stone fell overboard from his luxury yacht sometime during the night.”
Gabriel closed the newspaper.
“How’s Benjamin Stone?”
“Relaxing in the Caribbean aboard his yacht.”
When the food arrived he folded his newspaper and dropped it onto the extra chair. He looked up and spotted a man outside on the sidewalk: slender, good-looking, black curly hair, blond Israeli girl on his arm. Gabriel laid down his fork, stared directly at him, throwing all discretion and tradecraft to the wind.
There was no doubt about it: Yusef al-Tawfiki.
Gabriel left money on the table and walked out. For thirty minutes he followed him. Along Sheinkin, then Allenby, then down to the Promenade. A face can be deceiving, but sometimes a man’s walk is as unique as his fingerprints. Gabriel had followed Yusef for weeks in London. His walk was imprinted on Gabriel’s memory. The flow of his hips. The line of his back. The way he always seemed to be on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce.
Gabriel tried to remember whether he was left-handed or right-. He pictured him standing in his window, wearing nothing but his briefs, a thick silver watch on his left wrist. He’s right-handed. If he was trained by the Office, he’d wear his gun on his left hip.
Gabriel increased his pace, closing the distance between them, and drew his Beretta. He pressed the barrel of the gun against Yusef’s lower back, then in one quick movement reached beneath his jacket and snatched the gun from the holster on his hip.
Yusef started to swivel.
Gabriel shoved the gun into his back even harder. “Don’t move again, or I’ll leave a bullet in your spine. And keep walking.” Gabriel spoke Hebrew. Yusef stood very still. “Tell your girlfriend to take a walk.”
Yusef nodded to the girl; she walked quickly away.
“Move,” Gabriel said.
“Where?”
“Down to the beach.”
They crossed the Promenade, Yusef leading, Gabriel behind him, gun pressed against Yusef’s kidney. They descended a flight of steps and walked across the beach until the lights of the Promenade grew faint.
“Who are you?”
“Fuck you! Who do you think you are, grabbing me like that?”
“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you. For all I know you’re a member of Tariq’s organization. You might have come to Israel to plant a bomb or shoot up a market. I still might kill you unless you tell me who you are.”
“You have no right to talk to me like that!”
“Who ran you?”
“Who do you think?”
“Shamron?”
“Very good. Everyone always said you were smart.”
“Why?”
“You want to know why, you talk to Shamron. I just did what I was told. But let me tell you one thing. If you ever come near me again, I’ll kill you. I don’t care who you used to be.”
He held out his hand, palm up. Gabriel gave him the gun. He slipped it back into his holster. Then he turned and walked across the darkened beach toward the bright lights of the Promenade.
Lightning flickered over the hills of the Upper Galilee as Gabriel drove along the shore of the lake toward Shamron’s villa. Rami waited at the gate. When Gabriel lowered the window, Rami poked his head inside and looked quickly around the interior. “He’s on the terrace. Park here. Walk up to the house.”
Rami held out his hand.
“You don’t actually believe I’d shoot the bastard?”
“Just give me your fucking gun, Allon, or you can’t go up to the house.”
Gabriel handed over his Beretta and walked up the drive. Lightning exploded over the hills, illuminating the swirling clouds, wind tossing up whitecaps on the surface of the lake. The screams of waterbirds filled the air. He looked up toward the terrace and saw Shamron, lit by the swirling gas lamps.
When Gabriel reached the terrace, he found Shamron in the same position, but instead of looking down at the drive his gaze was fixed on the storm over the mountains. Just then the lightning ceased and the wind died. The lake went still and the birds stopped their screaming. There was not a sound. Only the hiss of Shamron’s gas lamps, burning brightly.
Yes, Shamron began, there was a real Yusef al-Tawfiki, but he was dead—killed in Shatila, the night of the Phalangist massacre, along with the rest of his family. One of Shamron’s agents went into the house after the killing and cleaned out the family’s personal papers. The al-Tawfikis had no other relatives in Lebanon. Only an uncle in London—a maternal uncle who had never seen his young nephew. A few days later a boy turns up in a hospital in West Beirut. Gravely wounded, no identification. The doctors ask his name. He tells them his name is Yusef al-Tawfiki.
“How did he get the wound on his back?” Gabriel wondered.
“It was put there by a doctor connected to the Office. The boy was treated at the hospital in West Beirut, and the UN started looking for this mysterious uncle in London. It took them a week to find him. They told him what had happened
to the boy. The uncle made arrangements to bring him to England.”
He was a child, thought Gabriel: thirteen, fourteen maybe. Where had Shamron found him? How had he trained him? It was too monstrous to contemplate.
Shamron snapped his powerful fingers so loudly that Rami, standing in the drive outside the guardhouse, looked up suddenly.
“Just like that we have an agent in the enemy’s camp, a boy whose life has been torn by unimaginable brutality. A boy with fire in his belly, who loathes the Israelis. A boy who will one day become a fighter and take his revenge on the people who butchered his family.”
“Remarkable,” said Gabriel.
“When he was old enough, Yusef began moving with London’s radical Palestinian set. He came to the attention of a talent spotter for Tariq’s organization. They vetted him. Clean, or so they thought. They put him to work in their intelligence and planning section. The Office now had an agent inside one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on earth. He was so valuable his material had the shortest distribution list in the history of the Office: one person, me.”
Shamron sat down and gestured toward the empty chair. Gabriel remained standing.
“A few months ago Yusef sent us a fascinating report. There was a rumor sweeping the organization: Tariq had a brain tumor. Tariq was dying. The succession fight was on. Tariq’s colonels were jockeying for position. And one other thing: Tariq didn’t intend to go quietly. He intended to raise a little hell on earth before he floated off to Paradise. Kill an ambassador or two. Bomb a few airline offices. Maybe shoot down a jetliner.”
“So you come to me after Paris. You tell me this sad tale about how the Office can’t shoot straight anymore. How the Office couldn’t find the Office without a map. Like a fool I agree. And at the same time you whisper into Tariq’s ear that I’m back and looking for him. And the game has begun.”
“His organization was rigidly compartmentalized. Even with a man on the inside, I knew he was going to be hard to take down. I had to help him make a mistake. I thought if I waved Gabriel Allon in front of him, I could make him angry. I thought I could make him charge, leave himself exposed just long enough for me to plunge a sword into his heart.”
