“By force if necessary.”

“What shall we call him?”

“Let’s call him Uzi. It’s a very cool name.”

Gabriel looked down at the young bodyguards milling in the quiet street. Never again would he set foot in public without them. And neither would his wife and children. Shamron started to light a cigarette but stopped himself.

“I can’t say the prime minister is going to be pleased about a three-month paternity leave. In fact,” he added, “he was wondering whether you would be willing to undertake a diplomatic mission on his behalf.”

“Where?”

“Washington,” said Shamron. “Our relationship with the Americans could use a bit of restoration. You’ve always got on well with the Americans. Even the president seems to like you.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Will you make the trip?”

“Some paintings are beyond repair, Ari. And so are some relationships.”

“You’re going to need the Americans when you become chief.”

“You always told me to keep my distance from them.”

“The world has changed, my son.”

“That’s true,” said Gabriel. “The American president writes love letters to the ayatollah. And us . . .” He gave an indifferent shrug of his shoulders but said nothing more.

“American presidents come and go, but we spies endure.”

“So do Persians,” remarked Gabriel.

“At least Reza Nazari won’t be feeding the Office any more taqiyya. For the record,” Shamron added, “I never thought much of him.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I did.” Shamron finally lit another cigarette. “He’s back in Tehran, by the way. He’d better stay there. Otherwise, the Russians are likely to kill him.” Shamron smiled. “Your operation managed to plant a seed of mistrust between two of our adversaries.”

“May it grow into a very large tree.”

“How long before the next shoe drops?”

“Her article will appear in the Sunday edition.”

“The Russians will deny it, of course.”

“But no one will believe them,” said Gabriel. “And they’ll think twice about ever taking another shot at me.”

“You underestimate them.”

“Never.”

A silence fell between them. Gabriel listened to the wind moving in the eucalyptus tree and the sound of Chiara’s gentle voice drifting from the sitting room. It seemed a lifetime ago that he was in South Armagh. Even Quinn was slipping from his grasp. Quinn who could make a ball of fire travel a thousand feet per second. Quinn who had made the acquaintance in Libya of a Palestinian named Tariq al-Hourani.

“Is this how you imagined it would be?” asked Shamron quietly.

“Coming home?” Gabriel lifted his gaze to the south sky and waited for a flash of fire. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “This is exactly how I imagined it would be.”

83

NARKISS STREET, JERUSALEM

AS WITH MOST NOTEWORTHY OCCASIONS in his life, Gabriel prepared for the birth of his children as though it were an operation. He planned the escape route, prepared a backup plan, and then devised backups for his backups. It was a model of economy and timing, with few moving parts, save for the star of the show. Shamron gave it a thorough review, as did Uzi Navot and the rest of Gabriel’s fabled team. Without exception, all declared it a masterpiece.

It was not as if Gabriel had much else to do. For the first time in years he had no work and no prospect of work. He had managed to put the Office on hold, and there were no paintings to restore. Chiara was his only project now. The dinner with the Shamrons turned out to be her last public appearance. She was too uncomfortable to receive visitors, and even brief phone calls fatigued her. Gabriel hovered over her like a headwaiter, ever eager to fill an empty glass or send an unsatisfactory meal back to the kitchen. He was flawless in his demeanor and unfailingly considerate of her demands, be they physical or emotional. Even Chiara came to resent the perfection of his conduct.

Owing to her age and a complicated reproductive history, Chiara’s pregnancy was considered high-risk. Consequently, her doctor insisted on seeing her every few days for a sonogram. In Gabriel’s absence, she had traveled to Hadassah Medical Center accompanied by her bodyguards and, on occasion, Gilah Shamron. Now Gabriel came with her, with all the attendant madness of his official motorcade. In the examination room he would stand proprietarily over Chiara as the doctor ran the probe across her lubricated belly. Early in the pregnancy, the ultrasound had rendered the two children complete and distinct. Now it was difficult to tell where one child left off and the other began, though occasionally the machine would offer a shockingly clear glimpse of a face or hand that made Gabriel’s heart beat with operational swiftness. The ghostly images looked like X-rays depicting the underdrawing of a painting. The dwindling supply of amniotic fluid appeared as islands of solid black.

“How long does she have?” asked Gabriel, with the gravity of a man who conducted most of his conversations in safe flats and over secure phones.

“Three days,” said the doctor. “Four at most.”

“Any chance they could come before that?”

“There’s a chance,” replied the doctor, “that she could go into labor on the way home today. But that’s not likely to happen. She’ll run out of fluid long before she goes into labor.”

“What then?”

“A caesarean delivery is safest.”

The doctor seemed to sense his unease. “Your wife will be fine,” he said. Then, with a smile, he added, “I’m glad you’re not dead. We need you. And so do your children.”

The visits to the hospital were their only break from the long monotonous hours of bed rest and waiting. Restless with inactivity, Gabriel longed for a project. Chiara allowed him to pack her suitcase for the hospital, which consumed all of five minutes. Afterward, he went in search of something else to do. His quest led him into the nursery, where he stood for a long time before Chiara’s clouds, a hand pressed to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side.

“Would you mind terribly,” he asked Chiara, “if I retouch them a bit?”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re beautiful,” he said too hastily.

“But?”

“They’re a bit childlike.”

“They’re for children.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Grudgingly, she approved the commission, provided he use only child-safe paints and that the work be done within twenty-four hours. Gabriel hurried off to a nearby paint store with his bodyguards in tow and returned in short order with the necessary supplies. With a few strokes of a roller—an instrument he had never used before—he obliterated Chiara’s work beneath a fresh layer of pale blue paint. It remained too wet to work more that evening, so he rose early the next morning and swiftly decorated the wall in a bank of glowing Titianesque clouds. Lastly, he added a small child angel, a boy, who was peering downward over the edge of the highest cloud on the scene below. The figure was borrowed from Veronese’s Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints. With tears in his eyes and a trembling hand, Gabriel gave the angel the face of his son as it appeared on the night of his death. Then he signed his name and the date, and it was done.

Later that day the London Sunday Telegraph published an exclusive exposé linking Russia and its foreign intelligence service to the murder of the princess, the bombing on Brompton Road, the killing of four MI6 security personnel in West Cornwall, and the bloodbath in Crossmaglen, Northern Ireland. The operation, said the paper, was in reprisal for the revocation of lucrative Russian drilling rights in the North Sea and the defection of Madeline Hart, the Russian sleeper agent who had briefly shared Prime Minister Lancaster’s bed. Russia’s president had ordered it; Alexei Rozanov, the SVR officer recently found dead in Germany, had overseen its implementation. His primary operative had been Eamon Quinn, the Omagh bomber turned international mercenary. Quinn was now missing and was the target of a global manhunt.