The flat had been fitted with a system capable of recording the time and duration of unwanted entries and intrusions. Even so, Gabriel inserted an old-fashioned telltale between the door and the jamb as he let himself out. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the geniuses in the Office’s Technical division; he was simply a man of the sixteenth century at heart and clung to antiquated ways when it came to matters of tradecraft and security. Computerized telltales were wonderful devices, but a scrap of paper never failed, and it didn’t require an engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT to keep it running.
It had rained during the night, and the pavements of the Via Gregoriana were still damp as Gabriel stepped from the foyer. He turned to the right, toward the Church of the Trinità dei Monti, and descended the Spanish Steps to the piazza, where he drank his first cappuccino of the day. After deciding that his return to Rome had gone unnoticed by the Italian security services, he hiked back up the Spanish Steps and climbed aboard a Piaggio motorbike. Its little four-stroke engine buzzed like an insect as he sped down the graceful sweep of the Via Veneto.
The Excelsior Hotel stood near the end of the street, near the Villa Borghese. Gabriel parked on the Corso d’Italia and locked his helmet in the rear storage compartment. Then he put on a pair of dark wraparound sunglasses and a ball cap and headed back to the Via Veneto on foot. He walked nearly the length of the boulevard to the Piazza Barberini, then crossed over to the opposite side and headed back toward the Villa Borghese. Along the way, he spotted four men he assumed to be plainclothes American security-the U.S. Embassy stood at Via Veneto 121-but no one who appeared to be an agent of Russian intelligence.
The waiters at Doney were setting the sidewalk tables for lunch. Gabriel went inside and drank a second cappuccino while standing at the bar. Then he walked next door to the Excelsior and lifted the receiver of a house phone near the elevators. When the operator came on the line, he asked to speak to a guest named Boris Ostrovsky and was connected to his room right away. Three rings later, the phone was answered by a man speaking English with a pronounced Russian accent. When Gabriel asked to speak to someone named “Mr. Donaldson, ” the Russian-speaking man said there was no one there by that name and immediately hung up.
Gabriel left the connection open for a few seconds and listened for the sound of a transmitter on the line. Hearing nothing suspicious, he hung up and walked to the Galleria Borghese. He spent an hour looking at paintings and checking his tail for signs of surveillance. Then, at 11:45, he climbed aboard the Piaggio motorbike again and set off toward a quiet square at the edge of the old ghetto. The filetti and Frascati were waiting when he arrived. And so was Eli Lavon.
I thought you were supposed to be on your honeymoon.”
"Shamron had other ideas.”
"You need to learn how to set boundaries.”
"I could build a Separation Fence and it still wouldn’t stop him.”
Eli Lavon smiled and pushed a few strands of wispy hair from his forehead. Despite the warmth of the Roman afternoon, he was wearing a cardigan sweater beneath his crumpled tweed jacket and an ascot at his throat. Even Gabriel, who had known Lavon for more than thirty years, sometimes found it difficult to believe that the brilliant, bookish little archaeologist was actually the finest street surveillance artist the Office had ever produced. His ties to the Office, like Gabriel’s, were tenuous at best. He still lectured at the Academy-indeed, no Office recruit ever made it into the field without first spending a few days at Lavon’s legendary feet-but these days his primary work address was Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, where he taught biblical archaeology and regularly took part in digs around the country.
Their close bond had been formed many years earlier during OperationWrath of God, the secret Israeli intelligence operation to hunt down and kill the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. In the Hebrew-based lexicon of the team, Gabriel was known as an aleph. Armed with a.22 caliber Beretta pistol, he had personally assassinated six of the Black September terrorists responsible for Munich, including a man named Wadal Abdel Zwaiter, whom he had killed in the foyer of an apartment building a few miles from where they were seated now. Lavon was an ayin-a tracker and surveillance specialist. They had spent three years stalking their prey across Western Europe, killing both at night and in broad daylight, living in fear that, at any moment, they would be arrested by European police and charged as murderers. When they finally returned home, Gabriel’s temples were the color of ash and his face was that of a man twenty years his senior. Lavon, who had been exposed to the terrorists for long periods of time with no backup, suffered from innumerable stress disorders, including a notoriously fickle stomach. Gabriel winced inwardly as Lavon took a very large bite of the fish. He knew the little watcher would pay for it later.
“Uzi tells me you’re working in the Judean Desert. I hope it wasn’t something too important.”
“Only one of the most significant archaeological expeditions in Israel in the last twenty years. We’ve gone back into the Cave of Letters. But instead of being there with my colleagues, sifting through the relics of our ancient past, I’m in Rome with you.” Lavon’s brown eyes flickered around the piazza. “But, then, we have a bit of history here ourselves, don’t we, Gabriel? In a way, this is where it began for the two of us.”
“It began in Munich, Eli, not Rome.”
“I can still smell that damn fig wine he was carrying when you shot him. Do you remember the wine, Gabriel?”
“I remember, Eli.”
“Even now, the smell of figs turns my stomach.” Lavon took a bite of the fish. “We’re not going to kill anyone today, are we, Gabriel?”
“Not today, Eli. Today, we just talk.”
“You have a picture?”
Gabriel removed the photograph from his shirt pocket and placed it on the table. Lavon shoved on a pair of smudged half-moon reading glasses and scrutinized the image carefully.
“These Russians all look the same to me.”
“I’m sure they feel the same way about you.”
“I know exactly how they feel about me. Russians made the lives of my ancestors so miserable that they chose to live beside a malarial swamp in Palestine instead. They supported the creation of Israel to begin with, but in the sixties they threw in their lot with those who were sworn to destroy us. The Russians like to portray themselves as allies of the West in the war against international terrorism, but we should never forget they helped to create international terrorism in the first place. They encouraged leftist terror groups across Western Europe in the seventies and eighties, and, of course, they were the patron saints of the PLO. They gave Arafat and his killers all the weapons and explosives they wanted, along with freedom of movement behind the Iron Curtain. Don’t forget, Gabriel, the attack on our athletes in Munich was directed from East Berlin.”
“Are you finished, Professor?”
Lavon slipped the photo into the breast pocket of his jacket. Gabriel ordered two plates of spaghetti con carciofi and briefed Lavon on the assignment as they ate the last of the fish.
“And if he’s clean when he gets to Tre Scalini?” Lavon asked. “What happens then?”
“I want you to have a go at him in that fluent Russian of yours. Back him into a corner and see if he breaks.”
“And if he insists on talking to you?”
“Then you tell him to visit one more Roman tourist attraction.”
“Which one?”
Lavon, after hearing Gabriel’s answer, picked at the corner of his napkin in silence for a moment. “It certainly meets your requirements for a public place, Gabriel. But I doubt that your friend His Holiness will be pleased if he ever finds out you used his church for a clandestine meeting.”