“Fight?” she asked. “I’m sure you can find people better suited for that than me.”

“There are different ways to fight them, Sarah.”

She hesitated. Carter filled the sudden silence by engaging in a prolonged study of his own hands. He wasn’t the kind of man who asked things twice. In that regard he was very much like her father. “Yes,” she said finally. “I’d be willing.”

“And what if it involved working with an intelligence service other than the Central Intelligence Agency?” he asked, as though discussing an abstract theory. “An intelligence service that is closely allied with us in this fight against the Islamic terrorists?”

“And who might that be?”

Carter was good at evading questions. He proved it again now.

“There’s someone I’d like you to meet. He’s a serious chap. A little rough around the edges. He’s going to ask you a few questions. Actually, he’s going to put you under the lights for the next few hours. It’s going to get rather personal at times. If he likes what he sees, he’s going to ask you to help us in a very important endeavor. This endeavor is not without risk, but it is critical to the security of the United States, and it has the Agency’s full support. If you’re interested, remain where you are. If not, walk out the door, and we’ll pretend you stumbled in here by mistake.”

SARAH WOULD NEVER be sure how Carter had summoned him or from where he came. He was small and spare, with short-cropped hair and gray temples. His eyes were the greenest Sarah had ever seen. His handshake, like Carter’s, was fleeting but probing as a doctor’s touch. His English was fluent but heavily accented. If he had a name, it wasn’t yet relevant.

They settled at the long table in the formal dining room, Carter and his nameless collaborator on one side and Sarah on the other like a suspect in an interrogation room. The collaborator was now in possession of her CIA file. He was leafing slowly through the pages as if seeing them for the first time, which she doubted was the case. His first question was put to her as a mild accusation.

“You wrote your doctoral dissertation at Harvard on the German Expressionists.”

It seemed a peculiar place to begin. She was tempted to ask why he was interested in the topic of her dissertation, but instead she simply nodded her head and said, “Yes, that’s correct.”

“In your research did you ever come across a man named Viktor Frankel?”

“He was a disciple of Max Beckmann,” she said. “Frankel is little known today, but at the time he was considered extremely influential and was highly regarded by his contemporaries. In 1936 the Nazis declared his work degenerate, and he was forbidden to continue painting. Unfortunately, he decided to remain in Germany. By the time he decided to leave, it was too late. He was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, along with his wife and teenaged daughter, Irene. Only Irene survived. She went to Israel after the war and was one of the country’s most influential artists in the fifties and sixties. I believe she died several years ago.”

“That’s correct,” said Carter’s collaborator, his eyes still on Sarah’s file.

“Why are you interested in whether I knew about Viktor Frankel?”

“Because he was my grandfather.”

“You’re Irene’s son?”

“Yes,” he said. “Irene was my mother.”

She looked at Carter, who was gazing at his own hands. “I guess I know who’s running this endeavor of yours.” She looked back at the man with gray temples and green eyes. “You’re Israeli.”

“Guilty as charged. Shall we continue, Sarah, or would you like me to leave now?”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Do I get a name, or are names forbidden?”

He gave her one. It was vaguely familiar. And then she remembered where she had seen it before. The Israeli agent who was involved in the bombing of the Gare de Lyon in Paris…

“You’re the one who-”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m the one.”

He looked down at the open file again and turned to a new page. “But let’s get back to you, shall we? We have a lot of ground to cover and very little time.”

HE STARTED SLOWLY, a climber plodding his way through the foothills, conserving his strength for the unseen perils that lay ahead. His questions were short and efficient and methodically posed, as though he were reading them from a prepared list, which he wasn’t. He devoted the first hour to her family. Her father, the high-flying Citicorp executive who’d had no time for his children but plenty of time for other women. Her mother, whose life had crumbled after the divorce and who was now living like a hermit in her classic-eight Manhattan apartment on Fifth Avenue. Her older sister, whom Sarah described as “the one who got all the brains and beauty.” Her little brother, who had checked out of life early and, much to her father’s disappointment, was now working for pennies in a ski-rental shop somewhere in Colorado.

After family came another hour devoted solely to her expensive European schooling. The American in St. John’s Wood, where she’d done her elementary years. The international middle school in Paris, where she’d learned how to speak French and get into trouble. The all-girls boarding school outside Geneva, where she’d been incarcerated by her father for the purpose of “sorting herself out.” It was in Switzerland, she volunteered, where she discovered her passion for art. Each of her answers was greeted by the scratching of his pen. He wrote in red ink on a legal pad the color of sunflowers. At first she thought he was scribbling in shorthand or some form of hieroglyphics. Then she realized he was making notes in Hebrew. The fact that it was written right to left-and that he could write with equal speed with either hand-served to reinforce her impression that she had passed through the looking glass.

At times he seemed to have all the time in the world; at others he would glare at his wristwatch and frown, as though calculating how much farther they could push on before making camp for the night. From time to time he slipped into other languages. His French was quite good. His Italian faultless but tinged with a vague accent that betrayed the fact he was not a native speaker. When he addressed her in German a change came over him. A straightening of his back. A hardening of his severe features. She answered him in the language of his question, though invariably her words were recorded in Hebrew on his yellow legal pad. For the most part he did not challenge her, though any inconsistencies, real or imagined, were pursued with a prosecutorial zeal.

“This passion for art,” he said. “Where do you think it came from? Why art? Why not literature or music? Why not film or drama?”

“Paintings became a refuge for me. A sanctuary.”

“From what?”

“Real life.”

“You were a rich girl going to the finest schools in Europe. What was wrong with your life?” He switched from English into German in mid-accusation. “What were you running from?”

“You judge me,” she responded in the same language.

“Of course.”

“May we speak in English?”

“If you must.”

“Paintings are other places. Other lives. An instant in time that exists on the canvas and nowhere else.”

“You like to inhabit these places.”

It was an observation, not a question. She nodded in response.

“You like to lead other lives? Become other people? You like to walk through Vincent’s wheat fields and Monet’s flower gardens?”

“And even through Frankel’s nightmares.”

He laid down his pen for the first time. “Is that why you applied to join the Agency? Because you wanted to lead another life? Because you wanted to become another person?”

“No, I did it because I wanted to serve my country.”

He gave her a disapproving frown, as if he found her response naïve, and then shot another glance at his wristwatch. Time was his enemy.