The Heist

“I was hoping to spend a few more hours with my Veronese this afternoon.”

“Then you should eat something. You need your strength.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“You don’t eat when you’re restoring?”

“Coffee and a bit of bread.”

“What kind of diet is that?”

“The kind that allows me to concentrate.”

“No wonder you’re so thin.”

General Ferrari went to the antipasti trolley and filled his plate a second time. There was no one else in the restaurant, no one but the owner and his daughter, a pretty dark-haired girl of twelve or thirteen. The child bore an uncanny resemblance to the daughter of Abu Jihad, the second-in-command of the PLO whom Gabriel, on a warm spring evening in 1988, had assassinated at his villa in Tunis. The killing had been carried out in Abu Jihad’s second-floor study, where he had been watching videos of the Palestinian intifada. The girl had seen everything: two immobilizing shots to the chest, two fatal shots to the head, all set to the music of Arab rebellion. Gabriel could no longer recall the death mask of Abu Jihad, but the young girl’s portrait, serene but seething with rage, hung prominently in the exhibition rooms of his memory. As the general retook his seat, Gabriel concealed her face beneath a layer of obliterating paint. Then he leaned forward across the table and asked, “Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“Shall I start with the obvious reasons?”

“If it makes you feel better.”

“I’m not an Italian policeman. In fact, I’m quite the other thing.”

“You have a long history here in Italy.”

“Not all of it pleasant.”

“True,” agreed the general. “But along the way, you’ve made important contacts. You have friends in high places like the Vatican. And, perhaps more importantly, you have friends in low places, too. You know the country from end to end, you speak our language like a native, and you’re married to an Italian. You’re practically one of us.”

“My wife isn’t Italian anymore.”

“What language do you speak at home?”

“Italian,” admitted Gabriel.

“Even when you’re in Israel?”

Gabriel nodded.

“I rest my case.” The general lapsed into a thoughtful silence. “This might surprise you,” he said finally, “but when a painting goes missing, or someone gets hurt, I usually have a pretty good idea who’s behind it. We have more than a hundred informants on our payroll, and we’ve tapped more phones and e-mail accounts than the NSA. When something happens in the criminal end of the art world, there’s always chatter. As you say in the counterterrorism business, nodes light up.”

“And now?”

“The silence is deafening.”

“What do you think it means?”

“It means that, in all likelihood, the men who killed Jack Bradshaw were not from Italy.”

“Any guess as to where they’re from?”

“No,” the general said, shaking his head slowly, “but the level of violence concerns me. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies during my career, but this one was different. The things they did to Jack Bradshaw were …” His voice trailed off, then he said, “Medieval.”

“And now you want me to get mixed up with them.”

“You strike me as a man who knows how to take care of himself.”

Gabriel ignored the remark. “My wife is pregnant. I can’t possibly leave her alone.”

“We’ll keep a close eye on her.” The general lowered his voice and added, “We already are.”

“It’s good to know the Italian government is spying on us.”

“You didn’t really expect otherwise, did you?”

“Of course not.”

“I didn’t think so. Besides, Allon, it’s for your own good. You have a lot of enemies.”

“And now you want me to make another one.”

The general laid down his fork and peered contemplatively out the window in the manner of Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan. “It’s rather ironic,” he said after a moment.

“What’s that?”

“That a man such as yourself would choose to live in a ghetto.”

“I don’t actually live in the ghetto.”

“Close enough,” said the general.

“It’s a nice neighborhood—the nicest in Venice, if you ask me.”

“It’s filled with ghosts.”

Gabriel glanced at the young girl. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

The general dabbed his napkin skeptically at the corner of his mouth.

“How would it work?” asked Gabriel.

“Consider yourself one of my informants.”

“Meaning?”

“Go forth into the nether regions of the art world and find out who killed Jack Bradshaw. I’ll take care of the rest.”