He was suddenly very tired. Imagine, all those years, all those killings, and now he was behind bars for the first time, for a murder he did not commit. Thou shalt not get caught! Shamron’s Eleventh Commandment. Thou shalt do anything to avoid being arrested. Thou shalt shed the blood of innocents if necessary. No, thought Gabriel. Thou shalt not shed innocent blood.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to sleep but it was no good: Peterson’s incessant light. The lights were surely burning on King Saul Boulevard too. And a call would go out. Don’t wake him, thought Gabriel, because I don’t ever want to see his lying face again. Let him sleep. Let the old man sleep.

IT was a few minutes after 8A.M. when Peterson entered Gabriel’s cell. Gabriel knew this not because Peterson bothered to tell him but because he managed a glance at the face of Peterson’s big diver’s watch as Peterson tipped coffee into his mouth.

“I’ve spoken to your chief.”

He paused to see if his words provoked any response, but Gabriel remained silent. His position was that he was an art restorer, nothing more, and that Herr Peterson was suffering from a case of temporary insanity.

“He did me the professional courtesy of not trying to lie his way out of this situation. I appreciate the way he handled things. But it seems Bern has no appetite to pursue this matter further.”

“Which matter is that?”

“The matter of your involvement in the murder of Ali Hamidi,” Peterson said coldly. Gabriel had the impression he was struggling to control violent thoughts. “Since prosecuting you for your role in the Rolfe affair would inevitably reveal your sordid past, we have no choice but to drop charges against you in that matter as well.”

Peterson clearly disagreed with the decision of his masters in Bern.

“Your government has assured us that you are no longer a member of any branch of Israeli intelligence and that you did not come to Zurich in any official capacity. My government has chosen to accept these assurances at face value. It has no stomach for allowing Switzerland to become a stage for the Israelis and the Palestinians to relive the horrors of the past.”

“When do I get to leave?”

“A representative of your government will collect you.”

“I’d like to change my clothes. May I have my suitcase?”

“No.”

Peterson stood up, straightened his tie, and smoothed his hair. Gabriel thought it was an oddly intimate thing for one man to do in front of another. Then he walked to the door, knocked once, and waited for the guard to unlock it.

“I don’t like murderers, Mr. Allon. Especially when they kill for a government. One of the conditions of your release is that you never set foot in Switzerland again. If you come back here, I’ll see to it that you never leave.”

The door opened. Peterson started to leave, then turned and faced Gabriel.

“It’s a shame about what happened to your wife and son in Vienna. It must be very hard living with a memory like that. I suppose sometimes you wish it had been you in the car instead of them. Good day, Mr. Allon.”

IT was late afternoon by the time Peterson finally saw fit to release him. Sergeant-Major Baer escorted Gabriel from his holding cell, performing this task silently, as though Gabriel was bound for the gallows instead of freedom. Baer surrendered Gabriel’s suitcase, his restoration supplies, and a thick honey-colored envelope containing his personal effects. Gabriel spent a long moment taking careful inventory of his things. Baer looked at his watch as if pressing matters were tugging at him. The clothing in Gabriel’s suitcase had been dumped, searched, and stuffed haphazardly back into place. Someone had spilled a flask of arcosolve in his case. Baer tilted his head-Sorry, dear man, but these things happen when one bumps up against police officers.

Outside, in the misty courtyard, stood a black Mercedes sedan surrounded by a half-dozen uniformed officers. In the windows of the surrounding buildings stood policemen and secretaries come to see the Israeli assassin led away. As Gabriel approached the car, the rear door opened and a cloud of cigarette smoke billowed forth. A glimpse into the shadowed backseat established the source.

He stopped in his tracks, a move that seemed to take Baer completely by surprise. Then, reluctantly, he started walking again and climbed into the backseat. Baer closed the door, and the car immediately pulled away, the tires slipping over the wet cobblestones. Shamron didn’t look at him. Shamron was gazing out the window, his eyes on the next battlefield, his thoughts on the next campaign.

5

TO GET TO Kloten Airport it was necessary to make the ascent up the Zürichberg one more time. As they breasted the summit, the graceful villas receded and they entered a river flatland scarred by ugly modular strip malls. They moved slowly along a clogged two-lane commuter road as the afternoon sun tried to fight its way out of the clouds. A car was following them. The man on the passenger side could have been Peterson.

Ari Shamron had come to Zurich in an official capacity, but in dress and manner he had assumed the identity of Herr Heller, the cover he used for his frequent European travels. Herr Rudolf Heller of Heller Enterprises, Ltd., an international venture capital firm with offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Bern, and Nassau. His multitude of critics might have said that Heller Enterprises specialized in murder and mayhem, blackmail and betrayal. Heller Enterprises was an Old Economy firm, the critics said. What King Saul Boulevard needed to shake off its long winter of despair was a New Economy chief for the New Economy world. But Herr Heller clung to the keys of the executive suite with one of his patented vise grips, and few in Israel, prime ministers included, could muster the courage to wrest them away from him.

To his brotherhood of devoted acolytes, Shamron was a legend. Once Gabriel had been among them. But Shamron was also a liar, an unrepentant, unreconstructed liar. He lied as a matter of course, lied because he knew no other way, and he had lied to Gabriel time and time again. For a time their relationship had been like that of a father and a son. But the father became like a man who gambles or drinks or sleeps with many women and is forced to lie to his children, and now Gabriel hated him the way only a son can hate his father.

“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you just send someone from Bern station to pick me up?”

“Because you’re too important to entrust to someone from the station.” Shamron lit another one of his vile Turkish cigarettes and violently snapped the lighter closed. “Besides, Herr Peterson and his friends from the Foreign Ministry made my appearance here a condition of your release. The Swiss love to yell at me when one of our agents gets in trouble. I’m not sure why. I suppose it reinforces their superiority complex-makes them feel better for their past sins.”

“Who’s Peterson?”

“Gerhardt Peterson works for the Division of Analysis and Protection.”

“What the hell is that?”

“The new name for Switzerland ’s internal security service. It has responsibility for national security matters, counterintelligence, and investigating Swiss citizens suspected of treason. Peterson is the number-two man in the division. He oversees all operations.”

“How did you convince him to let me go?”

“I played the subservient Jew. I gave them the usual promises that we would not operate on Swiss soil without first consulting Herr Peterson and his superiors in the Swiss security service. I also told them about a certain Swiss arms-maker who’s flogging bomb triggers to terrorists on the open market. I suggested that they see to the situation themselves before someone takes matters into their own hands.”