Her room was small and square, with cinder-block walls painted bone white and a cement floor. It contained nothing except for a folding army cot with a bricklike pillow and a scratchy woolen blanket that smelled of mothballs and disinfectant. Her hands were cuffed and her legs shackled, and they left the light on always so that she had no idea whether it was day or night. There was a spy hole in the metal door through which a malevolent brown eye watched her constantly. She dreamed of ramming a scalpel into it. When she slept, which was seldom, her dreams were filled with violence.

Interaction with her captors was kept to an absolute minimum and strictly regulated. The ground rules were established early on the first day, after she had awakened from the drugs. All communication was conducted in writing, with notes slipped beneath the door of her cell. Upon receipt of such a note, she was to reply yes or no in a low voice. Any deviation from the procedures, they warned, would result in a loss of food and water. Thus far they had asked her only two questions. One was: Do you want food? The other was: Do you wish to use the toilet? Each time a question appeared beneath her door, she replied yes, regardless of whether she was hungry or needed to relieve herself. Saying yes to them meant a break from the tedium of staring at the featureless white walls. Saying yes meant a moment of contact with her kidnappers, which, no matter how much she loathed them, she found strangely comforting.

Her food never varied: a bit of bread and cheese, a bottle of water, a few pieces of chocolate if she had been behaving herself. Her toilet was a yellow plastic bucket. Only two of the kidnappers ever entered her cell. They wore balaclava hoods in her presence to conceal their faces, but she learned to recognize them by their eyes. One had brown eyes; the other had green eyes that she found perversely beautiful. She nicknamed “brown eyes” Cain and “green eyes” Abel. Cain always brought her food, but poor Abel was the one who had to collect her bucket. He was kind enough to avert his green eyes when he did so.

She played mind games with herself to fill the long empty hours. She floated down endless ski runs through perfect crystalline air. She performed difficult surgeries and reread all her dreary medical school textbooks. She spoke often to her mother. But it was the moment of her capture she thought of most. It played ceaselessly in her memory, like a loop of videotape over which she had no control: the men in black jumpsuits pouring out of the vans, the shredded bodies of her friends lying in Hyde Park, the man who had tried to save her. She had glimpsed him briefly as they were forcing her into the back of the van, an angular figure with gray temples, crouched on one knee with a gun in his outstretched hands. She wondered often who he was. She hoped that one day, if she were ever rescued, she would have an opportunity to thank him.

If she were ever rescued… For some reason she found it easier to contemplate her own death than to picture the moment of her liberation. She knew that she was almost certainly the target of a massive search, but her hope of ever being found faded as the days ground slowly past-and as the notes came with a mind-deadening regularity. Do you want food?…Do you wish to use the toilet?… But on the fifth day, as the man with gray temples was boarding a jetliner at Heathrow Airport, a different note appeared. It said: One of my men needs a doctor. Will you help us? “Yes,” she replied in a low voice, and a moment later Cain and Abel entered her cell and lifted her gently to her feet.

They led her wordlessly up a flight of steep narrow stairs, slowly, so that she did not trip over the shackles. At the top of the stairs they passed through a creaking metal door and entered a small warehouse. It was abandoned and dark, except for a single utility lamp burning above a cluster of cots in the far corner. On one of the cots lay a man whose face was not covered by a balaclava. It was twisted into a grimace of pain and damp with sweat. Cain lifted the blanket, exposing his right leg.

“Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said softly.

The bullet had entered below the knee and had shattered the crown of the tibia. The entrance wound was about two centimeters in diameter and was imbedded with bits of debris from the clothing he had been wearing the morning of the attack. The surrounding skin was now reddish brown and badly swollen, and red streaks had begun to radiate up the thigh. It was obvious he was suffering from a severe local infection and was on the verge of sepsis. She reached toward his wrist, but one of the terrorists seized her arm. It was the one with brown eyes: Cain.

“I have to take his pulse.”

She pulled away from Cain’s grasp and placed her fingertips on the inside of his wrist. The pulse was rapid and weak. Next she placed her hand upon his forehead and found it was damp and burning with fever.

“He needs to go to a trauma center right away. A good one.”

Cain shook his head.

“If he doesn’t, he’ll die.”

The terrorist lifted a gloved hand and pointed his finger at Elizabeth ’s face like a loaded gun.

“Me ? I can’t do anything for him here. He needs to be in a sterile environment. He needs to go to a hospital now. ”

Once again the terrorist shook his head.

“If I help him, will you let me go?”

This time he didn’t bother to respond. Elizabeth looked down at the wounded man. He was no more than twenty-five, she guessed, and if she didn’t intervene immediately he would die a very painful death within thirty-six hours. It was a death he deserved, but that didn’t matter now. He was a human being in great pain, and Elizabeth was oath bound to treat him. She looked at the brown-eyed terrorist.

“I’ll need some things. We are still in Britain, aren’t we?”

The terrorist hesitated, then nodded.

“Then your friend is in luck. It’s still possible to get some very strong over-the-counter antibiotics here. Get me a piece of paper and something to write with. I’ll make you a list. Get me everything I ask for. If you don’t, your friend is going to die.”

T he VIP reception room was empty when Gabriel arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport later that same evening. He walked the long white corridor alone and stepped into the frigid night air. Shamron’s armored limousine was idling in the traffic circle, cigarette smoke wafting through the half-open rear window. Parked behind it was a second car filled with absurdly young security men, a new addition to his detail since the attempt on his life. Shamron had spent his old age surrounded by children with guns. Gabriel feared it would be his fate, too.

He climbed into the back of the limousine and closed the door. Shamron regarded him silently, then lifted a liver-spotted hand and gestured to his driver to move. A moment later, as they were speeding into the Judean Hills toward Jerusalem, he placed a stack of Israeli newspapers in Gabriel’s lap: Haaretz, Maariv, Yediot Aharonot , the Jerusalem Post . Gabriel’s photograph appeared on the front page of each.

“I send you to Amsterdam for a few days of quiet reading and this is what you bring me? You know, Gabriel, there are easier ways of getting out of dinner with the prime minister.”

“I was actually looking forward to it.”

Shamron gave him a dubious look. “At least the tone of the articles is positive-not like the drubbing we usually endure when our agents are exposed in the field. Once again you’re a national hero. Haaretz has dubbed you ‘ Israel ’s not-so-secret super-agent.’ That’s my favorite.”

“I’m glad you find this all so entertaining.”

“I don’t find it the least bit entertaining,” Shamron said. “We took the extraordinary step of sending you to London to make certain that the British understood the seriousness of our warning. They chose to ignore it, and the result was a holocaust in the Underground and the daughter of the American ambassador in the hands of Islamic terrorists.”

“Not to mention six dead American diplomats and security men.”

“Yes, everyone seems to have forgotten them.” Shamron ignited another cigarette. “How did you know they were going to hit in Hyde Park?”

“I didn’t know . It was just a theory that unfortunately turned out to be correct.”

“And what led you to this theory?”

Gabriel told him about the image on the legal pad he’d taken from Samir al-Masri’s apartment in Amsterdam. Shamron smiled. He regarded Gabriel’s flawless memory as one of his finest achievements. Gabriel had come to him with the mechanism in place, but it was Shamron who taught him how to use it.

“So you warned them not once but twice, ” Shamron pointed out. “It’s no wonder the British were behaving like such jackasses during the negotiations for your release. I got the distinct impression that they were using your arrest and incarceration as a means of bringing pressure to bear against us.”

“For what purpose?”

“So that your testimony at the inevitable public inquiry into the attacks doesn’t reflect the true nature of your two conversations with Graham Seymour.”

“ Seymour ’s covering his ass?”

“He’s entered the final lap of a long and distinguished career. He can almost see his country house and his knighthood and comfortable seat on the board of a respectable financial house in the City. He doesn’t want some gunslinging Israeli to trip him up as he nears the finish line.”

“The last thing I’m going to do is fall on my sword to protect Graham Seymour’s reputation and retirement.”

“No, but you’re not going to go out of your way to embarrass him either. We’ll need to concoct some subtle variation on the truth that protects both your reputation and his.” Shamron smiled; concocting subtle variations on the truth was one of his favorite pastimes. “Burning Graham Seymour serves no useful purpose. You’re going to need him, and his friends, in your next life.”

“And what life is that?”

Shamron scrutinized Gabriel through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Being deliberately obtuse serves no useful purpose either, Gabriel. You know very well what we have in store for you. The time has come for you to lead. The keys to the throne room are within your grasp.”

“Perhaps, Ari, but there’s only one problem. I don’t want them. I have other things I want to do with the rest of my life.”