“You always have an ace in the hole.”
“It’s been my experience that one can never be too prepared.”
“I thought your term was over.”
“It was supposed to end six months ago, but the prime minister asked me to stay on. Given the current situation in the territories, we both agreed that now was not the time for a change of leadership at King Saul Boulevard.”
Shamron had probably engineered the uprising himself, thought Gabriel. What better way to make himself indispensable? No, that was beyond even Shamron.
“My offer still stands.”
“Which offer is that?”
“Deputy director for operations.”
“No, thank you.”
Shamron shrugged. “Tell me what happened. I want to hear it all, from beginning to end.”
Gabriel so mistrusted Shamron that he considered giving him an abridged account of the affair, based on the theory that the less Shamron knew about anything, the better. But at least it would give them something new to talk about instead of refighting old wars, so Gabriel told him everything, starting with his arrival on the overnight train from Paris and ending with his arrest and interrogation. Shamron looked out the window as Gabriel spoke, turning over his lighter in his fingers: clockwise, counterclockwise, clockwise, counterclockwise…
“Did you see the body?”
“Very professional, one shot through the eye. He was probably dead before he hit the ground. A coup de grâce wasn’t necessary.”
“Did the police ever hit you?”
“No.”
Shamron seemed disappointed by this.
Gabriel said, “Peterson told me the case was dropped because of pressure from Bern.”
“Perhaps, but there was no way Peterson was ever going to hang the Ali Hamidi job on you. Prosecuting anyone on a twenty-five-year-old murder is hard enough. Prosecuting a professional-” He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say such things are just not done. “The Hamidi job was a work of art. No witnesses, no evidence.”
The movie-star-handsome face of Ali Abdel Hamidi flashed in Gabriel’s memory. Within the corridors of King Saul Boulevard, the amorous Palestinian has been known as the Swordsman of Allah. Writer of plays that graced no stage, seducer and manipulator of foolish young women. Would you mind delivering this package to this address for me? You’re flying to Tel Aviv? Would you mind taking a package to a friend? The packages would inevitably be filled with explosives, and his lovers would be blown to bits along with anyone else who happened to be nearby. One night in Zurich, Hamidi met a university student named Trude in a bar in the Niederdorf section. When the girl suggested they go back to her flat, Hamidi agreed. Five minutes later, she led him into the narrow alley where Gabriel was waiting with a.22-caliber Beretta. Even now, Gabriel could hear the sound of bullets tearing into Hamidi’s body.
“I suppose I should thank you for getting me out.”
“A show of gratitude isn’t necessary. In fact, I’m afraid I owe you an apology.”
“An apology? Whatever for?”
“Because if it wasn’t for me, you would have never been at Augustus Rolfe’s villa in the first place.”
RAMI, Shamron’s ever-present personal bodyguard, was behind the wheel of the car. Shamron told him to drive in circles at Kloten. For twenty minutes Gabriel watched the same parade of airline signs and departure gates marching past his window. In his mind he was seeing something else: flash frames of past operations, old colleagues and old enemies. His palms were damp, his heart was beating faster. Shamron. He had done it again.
“Rolfe sent a message to us through our embassy,” Shamron began. “He wanted to meet with someone from the Office. He didn’t say why, but when a man like Augustus Rolfe wants to talk, we usually try to accommodate him. He wanted the meeting to be handled with discretion. I looked into Rolfe’s background and discovered he was an art collector. Naturally, I thought you were the perfect man for the job, so I arranged for you to be hired to clean one of his paintings. A Rubens, if I’m not mistaken.”
“It was a Raphael.”
Shamron pulled a face, as if to say such distinctions were of no interest to him. Art, music, literature, the theater-these things bored him. He was a man of the real world.
“Did Isherwood know it was all a game?”
“Julian? No, I’m afraid I deceived him as well.”
“Why do it like this? Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
“Would you have done it?”
“No.”
A tilt of his bald head, another long pull from his Turkish cigarette-I rest my case. “I’m afraid the truth and I are somewhat estranged. I’m an old man, Gabriel. I’ve spent my entire life telling lies. To me, lies are more comfortable than the truth.”
“Let me out of the car! I don’t want to hear any more!”
“Let me finish.”
“Shut up! I don’t want to hear your voice.”
“Listen to me, Gabriel!” Shamron slammed his fist onto the console. “Augustus Rolfe, a Swiss banker, wanted to speak to us and for that he was murdered. I want to know what Rolfe was going to tell us, and I want to know who killed him for it!”
“Find someone else, Ari. Investigating murder cases was never my specialty. Actually, thanks to you, I excelled at quite the other thing.”
“Please, Gabriel, let’s not have this argument again.”
“You and Peterson seem to be very tight. If you play the subservient Jew again, I’m sure he’d be willing to keep you abreast of all the developments in his investigation.”
“Augustus Rolfe was killed because someone knew you were coming to Zurich -someone who didn’t want you to hear what Augustus Rolfe had to say. Someone who was willing to make it appear as though you were the killer.”
“If that was their intention, they did a damned lousy job of it. I was on the train from Paris at the time Rolfe was killed.” Gabriel was calmer now. He was furious with Shamron for deceiving him, but at the same time he was intrigued. “What do you know about Augustus Rolfe?”
“The Rolfe family has been stashing money beneath the Bahnhofstrasse for a couple of hundred years. They’re one of the most prominent banking families in Switzerland.”
“Who would want him dead?”
“A lot of dirty money has flowed through the numbered accounts of Rolfe’s bank. It’s safe to assume he’d made his fair share of enemies.”
“What else?”
“The family suffers from a legendary curse. Twenty-five years ago, Rolfe’s wife committed suicide. She dug her own grave in the garden of Rolfe ’s country chalet, climbed in, and shot herself. A few years after that, Rolfe’s only son, Maximilian, died in a cycling accident in the Alps.”
“Is there any family that’s alive?”
“His daughter, at least she was the last time anyone heard from her. Her name is Anna.”
“His daughter is Anna Rolfe?”
“So you know her? I’m impressed.”
“She’s only one of the most famous musicians in the world.”
“Do you still want to get out of the car?”
GABRIEL had been given two gifts that made him a great art restorer: a meticulous attention to detail and an unflagging desire to see every task, no matter how mundane, through to its conclusion. He never left his studio until his work space and supplies were spotless, never went to bed with dirty dishes in the sink. And he never left a painting unfinished, even when it was a cover job for Shamron. To Gabriel, a half-restored painting was no longer a work of art, just a bit of oil and pigment smeared on a canvas or a wood panel. The dead body of Augustus Rolfe, lying at the foot of the Raphael, was like a painting that had only been half-restored. It would not be whole again until Gabriel knew who had killed him and why.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Talk to her.”
“Why me?”
“Apparently, she has something of an artistic temperament.”