He got up, paid, and asked for the bathroom in Arabic.

“The toilet’s plugged,” he said when he came back. “Can I make a local call before you call the plumber, though?”

The waiter was gray, middle-aged, nondescript. But when their eyes met for a moment across the counter Gavi had a sudden uncomfortable intuition that this was a man who was far too smart to be waiting tables.

“I’m not supposed to…” But the man was already setting the terminal on the scratched bartop.

Gavi rang up the number, waited for two rings, then hung up. “No one home,” he said before leaving. “But thanks anyway.”

Two hours later he was climbing the steps of a grimy, narrow-fronted apartment building on Ibn Batuta Street.

He rang the bell, waited while unseen eyes inspected him and unseen fingers buzzed him in.

A young man waited for him in the shadows behind the door. He looked like a Yeshiva student, except for the aura of cold-blooded confidence that even the thick glasses couldn’t completely camouflage. Gavi raised his arms and leaned against the wall and submitted to the search that was never quite perfunctory enough to be a mere formality. Then he climbed the steep stairs to the third floor and stepped into the familiar room and closed the door behind him and leaned back against it.

“Hello, Gavi,” said the man in the armchair.

Gavi looked into the sad eyes of the man he loved and hated more than he’d ever loved or hated his own gently distant father.

“Hello, Didi.”

Short and sweet and rare. That was how Didi liked to keep their meetings.

“It’s difficult to live a double life,” he’d said the first time they’d sat together in this room. “It’s terribly tempting to begin to rely on your control for emotional support, even for simple relief from the loneliness. But every meeting is a fresh chance to buy yourself a bullet in the head. So when you walk out of here, this room must no longer exist for you. Imust no longer exist for you. The less we disturb the unity of the life we wish you to lead, the less we risk revealing ourselves.”

Now Didi just looked at him, smiling.

“How are you, Gavi?”

Gavi stood, knowing he should sit down but too nervous to do it. “How are the girls?” he asked, forcing himself to take a genuine interest, repressing the surge of resentment that flooded through him whenever he was faced with the offensive and depressing fact of other people’s children.

“They’re fine, Gavi. You look tired.”

“I am tired.”

Didi’s eyes rested gently on him, but was it the concern of an old friend or just the cool professionalism of a katsaassessing the condition of a valuable resource? And why, after two years of this, was Gavi still asking himself that question?

“You know about Li?”

“I just heard.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“Not yet.”

“Your mole hunt’s getting ugly, Didi. Has it occurred to you that Li’s…wherever she is because someone took one of your barium meals too much to heart?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“That’s all? It just crossed your mind? Like the weather report?”

“I have a job to do.”

“That’s pretty cold, Didi. Even for you.”

“If it makes you feel better to make me the heavy, go ahead.”

Gavi dropped his head into his hands and rubbed at his temples. “Sorry. What about this Maracaibo bar bombing, then? Any news on that?”

“The boys are working on it.”

“Osnat said there were people from the Office there. She brought Arkady to me because she decided she couldn’t trust anyone else. You included. She brought him through the Line on nothing but guts and shoe leather. Crazy. Only a lunatic would try it.”

“She’s a little hotheaded,” Didi agreed, “but she’s a good girl.”

“Can I trust her?”

“It’s not like you to ask that. The Gavi I used to know wouldn’t have trusted her no matter what I told him.”

“I’m not the Gavi you used to know.”

“You arelooking a little frayed around the edges.” Didi acknowledged this as simple fact, in the same disinterested voice with which he would have acknowledged that the weather was warmer than usual.

“I’ve had it, Didi. If I were in your position, I’d cash me out before I brought the whole case down on top of our heads.”

“Your slang is out-of-date,” Didi said on a smile as gentle as snow falling on the desert. “These days the youngsters call it ‘better worlding.’ Or, in the case of death by apparently accidental causes, ‘giving someone the measles.’ And in any case I know you far too well to believe that you would do any such thing. You always took care of your people to a fault.”

“Not Gur.”

“No. Poor kid. I guess I don’t have to ask what’s got you thinking of him.”

There was a sofa along the wall facing Didi’s chair. Gavi subsided into it and turned sideways so he could put his bad leg up. The skin under the normally comfortable cuff was raw and bruised from the long day of pounding over concrete and cobblestones, and it stung atrociously as the feeling came back into it. Why was it that trudging on concrete was so much worse than running on any natural surface?

“What I still don’t get,” he said, “is how Osnat got mixed up with GolaniTech. Moshe, I can buy. But what idiot decided to push Osnat off the Office payroll?”

He looked over to find Didi watching him with an intensity that would have been infuriating in anyone else. He took in the shapeless figure slouched in the armchair, looked past the stained and wrinkled suit to meet Didi’s eyes for the first time since he’d entered the room.

“Oh,” he breathed. “She never left. She’s still yours. Yousent her.”

“Let’s just say I may have pointed her in your direction and given her a gentle push.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of your gentle pushes. And how could you even think about sending her through the Line without someone to cover her back?”

“Osnat can cover her own back, I imagine.”

And then, for the first time, Gavi stopped thinking of the risks Osnat was running—and started thinking of the risks he was running. “My God. She’s kidon. And I’m still on the prime minister’s list. You sent a Mossad assassin into my house, with only his initials to stand between me and the knife!”

“Actually, the PM initialed your name last month.” Didi spread his hands in a gesture that was half excuse half apology. “Old friends aren’t what they used to be.”

“I saved that son of a bitch’s life!” Gavi said—and even as the words left his mouth he realized that he sounded ridiculously like Dibbuk when someone stepped on her tail.

“He told me. Twice. If it makes you feel any better, I had to spend half the night at his house letting him cry on my shoulder before he’d sign the order.”

“What’s going on, Didi? You taking out insurance on me?”

“Gavi, please believe me when I say that I want you to come out of this alive and well more than I want anything except the safety of Israel. But my grip on things is slipping. The IDF is rattling their cage. There are two more Interfaithers on the Knesset Intelligence Committee. We could run out of turf before we catch Absalom. And if there’s going to be a hit order out on you, I’d rather it was my hand on the trigger than my enemy’s hands.”

Gavi looked out the window. His leg was spasming from the long walk. He rubbed at the cramp, but it didn’t seem to improve things much. “Does Osnat know about this?”

“About the PM’s order? No. She really is there to help, not hurt. She’s the best I could send you without everyone on the eighth floor knowing I’d sent someone.”

“You still shouldn’t have picked Osnat. I can’t work with her. I don’t want her there.”

“Don’t you like her? That’s funny. I always thought you had a bit of a crush on her.”

“I was her commanding officer,” Gavi said, doubly outraged by the accusation because of the little grain of truth in it. “I would never have thought about that. And just because I have a thing for the heroic kibbutznik types doesn’t mean I’m easy picking for any—”