The Black Widow

“The French are concerned that ISIS has managed to construct a sophisticated network on French soil.”

“Is that so?”

“The French are also concerned,” said Navot, ignoring the remark, “that this network intends to strike again in short order. Obviously, they would like to roll it up before the next attack. And they’d like you to help them do it.”

“Why me?”

“It seems you have an admirer inside the French security service. His name is Paul Rousseau. He runs a small operational unit called Alpha Group. He wants you to fly to Paris tomorrow morning for a meeting.”

“And if I don’t?”

“That painting will never leave French soil.”

“I’m supposed to meet with the prime minister tomorrow. He’s going to tell the world that I wasn’t killed in that bombing on the Brompton Road. He’s going to announce that I’m the new chief of the Office.”

“Yes,” said Navot dryly, “I know.”

“Maybe you should be the one to work with the French.”

“I suggested that.”

“And?”

“They only want you.” Navot paused, then added, “The story of my life.”

Gabriel tried and failed to suppress a smile.

“There is a silver lining to this,” Navot continued. “The prime minister thinks a joint operation with the French will help to repair our relations with a country that was once a valuable and trusted ally.”

“Diplomacy by special ops?”

“In so many words.”

“Well,” said Gabriel, “you and the prime minister seem to have it all worked out.”

“It was Paul Rousseau’s idea, not ours.”

“Was it really, Uzi?”

“What are you suggesting? That I engineered this to hold on to my job a little longer?”

“Did you?”

Navot waved his hand as though he were dispersing a foul odor. “Take the operation, Gabriel—for Hannah Weinberg, if for no other reason. Get inside the network. Find out who Saladin really is and where he’s operating. And then put him down before another bomb explodes.”

Gabriel gazed northward, toward the distant black mass of mountains separating Israel from what remained of Syria. “You don’t even know whether he really exists, Uzi. He’s only a rumor.”

“Someone planned that attack and moved the pieces into place under the noses of the French security services. It wasn’t a twenty-nine-year-old woman from the banlieues and her friend from Brussels. And it wasn’t a rumor.”

Navot’s phone flared like a match in the darkness. He raised it briefly to his ear before offering it to Gabriel.

“Who is it?”

“The prime minister.”

“What does he want?”

“An answer.”

Gabriel stared at the phone for a moment. “Tell him I have to have a word with the most powerful person in the State of Israel. Tell him I’ll call first thing in the morning.”

Navot relayed the message and rang off.

“What did he say?”

Navot smiled. “Good luck.”

8 (#ulink_beb5890c-5d8b-59f5-b82f-cb1266e424b6)

NARKISS STREET, JERUSALEM (#ulink_beb5890c-5d8b-59f5-b82f-cb1266e424b6)

THE GRUMBLE OF GABRIEL’S SUV disturbed the resolute quiet of Narkiss Street. He alighted from the backseat, passed through a metal gate, and headed up the garden walk to the entrance of a Jerusalem limestone apartment building. On the third-floor landing, he found the door to his flat slightly ajar. He opened it slowly, silently, and in the half-light saw Chiara seated at one end of the white couch, a child to her breast. The child was wrapped in a blanket. Only when Gabriel crept closer could he see it was Raphael. The boy had inherited his father’s face and the face of a half-brother he would never know. Gabriel toyed with the downy dark hair and then leaned down to kiss Chiara’s warm lips.

“If you wake him,” she whispered, “I’ll kill you.”

Smiling, Gabriel slipped off his suede loafers and in stocking feet padded down the corridor to the nursery. Two cribs stood end to end against a wall covered by clouds. They had been painted by Chiara and then hastily repainted by Gabriel upon his return to Israel, after what was supposed to be his last operation. He stood at the railing of one of the cribs and gazed down at the child sleeping below. He didn’t dare touch her. Raphael was already sleeping through the night, but Irene was a nocturnal creature who had learned how to blackmail her way into her parents’ bed. She was smaller and trimmer than her corpulent sibling, but far more stubborn and determined. Gabriel thought she had the makings of a perfect spy, though he would never permit it. A doctor, a poet, a painter—anything but a spy. He would have no successor, there would be no dynasty. The House of Allon would fade with his passing.

Gabriel peered upward toward the spot where he had painted Daniel’s face among the clouds, but the darkness rendered the image invisible. He left the nursery, closing the door soundlessly behind him, and went into the kitchen. The savor of meat braising in red wine and aromatics hung decadently in the air. He peered through the oven window and saw a covered orange casserole centered on the rack. Next to the stove, arranged as if for a recipe book, were the makings of Chiara’s famous risotto: Arborio rice, grated cheese, butter, white wine, and a large measuring cup filled with homemade chicken stock. There was also a bottle of Galilean Syrah, unopened. Gabriel eased the cork from the neck, poured a glass, and returned to the sitting room.

Quietly, he settled into the armchair opposite Chiara. And he thought, not for the first time, that the little apartment in the old neighborhood of Nachlaot was too small for a family of four, and too far from King Saul Boulevard. It would be better to have a house in the secular belt of suburbs along the Coastal Plain, or a large apartment in one of the smart new towers that seemed to sprout overnight along the sea in Tel Aviv. But long ago, Jerusalem, God’s fractured city upon a hill, had cast a spell over him. He loved the limestone buildings and the smell of the pine and the cold wind and rains in the winter. He loved the churches and the pilgrims and the Haredim who shouted at him because he drove a motorcar on the Sabbath. He even loved the Arabs in the Old City who eyed him warily as he passed their stalls in the souk, as if somehow they knew that he was the one who had eliminated so many of their patron saints of terror. And while not religious by practice, he loved to slip into the Jewish Quarter and stand before the weighty ashlars of the Western Wall. Gabriel was willing to accept territorial compromises in order to secure a lasting and viable peace with the Palestinians and the broader Arab world, but privately he regarded the Western Wall as nonnegotiable. There would never again be a border through the heart of Jerusalem, and Jews would never again have to request permission to visit their holiest site. The Wall was part of Israel now, and it would remain so until the day the country ceased to exist. In this volatile corner of the Mediterranean, kingdoms and empires came and went like the winter rains. One day the modern reincarnation of Israel would disappear, too. But not while Gabriel was alive, and certainly not while he was chief of the Office.

He drank some of the earthy, peppery Syrah and contemplated Chiara and Raphael as though they were figures in his own private nativity. The child had released his hold on his mother’s breast and was lying drunken and sated in her arms. Chiara was staring down at him, her long curly hair, with its auburn and chestnut highlights, tumbling over one shoulder, her angular nose and jaw in semi-profile. Chiara’s was a face of timeless beauty. In it Gabriel saw traces of Arabia and North Africa and Spain and all the other places her ancestors had wandered before finding themselves in the ancient Jewish ghetto of Venice. It was there, ten years earlier, in a small office off the ghetto’s broad piazza, that Gabriel had seen her for the first time—the beautiful, opinionated, overeducated daughter of the city’s chief rabbi. Unbeknownst to Gabriel, she was also an Office field agent, a bat leveyha female escort officer. She revealed herself to him a short time later in Rome, after an incident involving gunplay and the Italian police. Trapped alone with Chiara in a safe flat, Gabriel had wanted desperately to touch her. He had waited until the case was resolved and they had returned to Venice. There, in a canal house in Cannaregio, they made love for the first time, in a bed prepared with fresh linen. It was like making love to a figure painted by the hand of Veronese.

She was far too young for him, and he was much too old to be a father again—or so he had thought until the moment his two children, first Raphael, then Irene, emerged in a blur from the incision in Chiara’s womb. Instantly, all that had come before seemed like stops along a journey to this place: the bombing in Vienna, the years of self-imposed exile, the long Hamlet-like struggle over whether it was proper for him to remarry and start another family. The shadow of Leah would always hang over this little home in the heart of Jerusalem, and the face of Daniel would always peer down on his half-siblings from his heavenly perch on the wall of the nursery. But after years of wandering in the wilderness, Gabriel Allon, the eternal stranger, the lost son of Ari Shamron, was finally home. He drank more of the blood-red Syrah and tried to compose the words he would use to tell Chiara that he was leaving for Paris because a woman she had never met had left him a van Gogh painting worth more than a hundred million dollars. The woman, like too many others he had met along his journey, was dead. And Gabriel was going to find the man responsible.

They call him Saladin …

Chiara placed a finger to her lips. Then, rising, she carried Raphael into the nursery. She returned a moment later and took the glass of wine from Gabriel’s hand. She lifted it to her nose and breathed deeply of its rich scent but did not drink.

“It won’t hurt them if you take a small sip.”

“Soon.” She returned the glass to Gabriel. “Is it finished?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I think it is.”

“That’s good.” She smiled. “What now?”

“Have you considered the possibility,” asked Chiara, “that this is all an elaborate plot by Uzi to hang on to his job a little longer?”