Tiepolo poured out two glasses of the blood-red ripasso and slid one across the tabletop toward Gabriel. Half of his own wine disappeared in one swallow. Only in his work was Tiepolo meticulous. In all other things-food, drink, his many women-Francesco Tiepolo was prone to extravagance and excess. Gabriel leaned forward and quietly told Tiepolo the news-that his enemies had found him in Venice, that he had no choice but to leave the city immediately, before he could finish the Bellini. Tiepolo smiled sadly and closed his eyes.

“Is there no other way?”

Gabriel shook his head. “They know where I live. They know where I work.”

“And Chiara?”

Gabriel answered the question truthfully. Tiepolo, in Italian, was an uomo di fiducia, a man of trust.

“I’m sorry about the Bellini,” Gabriel said. “I should have finished it months ago.” He would have, were it not for the Radek affair.

“To hell with the Bellini! It’s you I care about.” Tiepolo stared into his wine. “I’m going to miss Mario Delvecchio, but I’m going to miss Gabriel Allon more.”

Gabriel raised his glass in Tiepolo’s direction. “I know I’m not in any position to ask for a favor…” His voice trailed off.

Tiepolo looked at the photograph of the Holy Father and said, “You saved my friend’s life. What do you want?”

“Finish the Bellini for me.”

“Me?”

“We shared the same teacher, Francesco. Umberto Conti taught you well.”

“Yes, but do you know how long it’s been since I’ve put a brush to a painting?”

“You’ll do just fine. Trust me.”

“That’s quite a vote of confidence, coming from a man like Mario Delvecchio.”

“Mario’s dead, Francesco. Mario never was.”

GABRIEL MADE HIS WAY back to Cannaregio through the gathering darkness. He took a short detour so he could walk, one final time, through the ancient ghetto. In the square, he watched proprietarily as a pair of boys, clad all in black with wispy untrimmed beards, hurried across the paving stones toward the yeshiva. He looked at his watch. An hour had elapsed since he’d left Shamron and Chiara in the church. He turned and started walking toward the house that would soon bear no trace of him, and the plane that would carry him home again. As he walked, two questions ran ceaselessly in his mind. Who had found him in Venice? And why was he being allowed to leave alive?

5 TEL AVIV: MARCH 10

GABRIEL ARRIVED AT KING SAUL BOULEVARD AT eight o’clock the following morning. Two officers from Personnel were waiting for him. They wore matching cotton shirts and matching smiles-the tight, humorless smiles of men who are empowered to ask embarrassing questions. In the eyes of Personnel, Gabriel’s return to discipline was long overdue. He was like fine wine, to be savored slowly and with much commentary. He placed himself in their hands with the melancholy air of a fugitive surrendering after a long time on the run and followed them upstairs.

There were declarations to sign, oaths to swear, and unapologetic questions about the state of his bank account. He was photographed and issued an identification badge, which was hung like an albatross around his neck. New fingerprints were taken because no one could seem to find the originals from 1972. He was examined by a medical doctor who, upon seeing the scars all over his body, seemed surprised to find a pulse in his wrist and blood pressure in his veins. He even endured a mind-numbing session with an Office psychologist, who jotted a few notes in Gabriel’s file and hurriedly fled the room. Motor Pool granted him temporary use of a Skoda sedan; Housekeeping assigned him a windowless cell in the basement and living accommodations until he could find a place of his own. Gabriel, who wished to maintain a buffer between himself and King Saul Boulevard, chose a disused safe flat on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem, not far from the old campus of the Bezalel Academy of Art.

At sunset he was summoned to the executive suite for the final ritual of his return. The light above Lev’s door shone green. His secretary, an attractive girl with suntanned legs and hair the color of cinnamon, pressed an unseen button, and the door swung silently open under its own power like the entrance of a bank vault.

Gabriel stepped inside and paused before advancing farther. He felt a peculiar sense of dislocation, like a man who returns to his childhood bedroom only to find it turned into his father’s den. The office had been Shamron’s once. Gone were the scarred wooden desk and steel file cabinets and the German shortwave radio on which he had monitored the bellicose voices of his enemies. Now the motif was modern and monochrome gray. The old linoleum floor had been torn up and covered by a plush executive rug. Strategically placed around the room were several expensive-looking Oriental carpets. From high in the ceiling a recessed halogen bulb shone down upon a seating area of contemporary black leather furniture that reminded Gabriel of a first-class airport lounge. The wall nearest the seating area had been transformed into a giant plasma video display, from which the world’s media flickered silently in high definition. The remote control, resting on the glass coffee table, was the size of a prayer book and looked as though it required an advanced engineering degree to operate.

Whereas Shamron had placed his desk barrier-like in front of the door, Lev had chosen to reside near the windows. The pale gray blinds were drawn but angled in such a way that it was just possible to make out the ragged skyline of downtown Tel Aviv and a large orange sun sinking slowing into the Mediterranean. Lev’s desk, a large expanse of smoky glass, was vacant except for a computer and a pair of telephones. He was seated before the monitor, with his hands folded praying mantis-like beneath his defiant chin. His bald head glowed softly in the restrained light. Gabriel noted that Lev’s eyeglasses cast no reflection. He wore special lenses so that his enemies-meaning anyone within the Office who opposed him-could not see what he was reading.

“Gabriel,” he said, as though surprised by his presence. He came out from behind the desk and shook Gabriel’s hand carefully, then, with a bony finger pressed to Gabriel’s spine like a pistol, guided him across the room to the seating area. As he was lowering himself into a chair, one of the images on the video wall caught his attention, which one Gabriel could not tell. He sighed heavily, then turned his head slowly and studied Gabriel with a predatory gaze.

The shadow of their last meeting fell between them. It had taken place not in this room but in Jerusalem, in the office of the prime minister. There had been but one item on the agenda: whether the Office should capture Erich Radek and bring him back to Israel to face justice. Lev had steadfastly opposed the idea, despite the fact that Radek had very nearly killed Gabriel’s mother during the death march from Auschwitz in January 1945. The prime minister had overruled Lev and mandated that Gabriel be placed in charge of the operation to seize Radek and spirit him out of Austria. Radek now resided in a police detention facility in Jaffa, and Lev had spent much of the last two months trying to undo the damage caused by his initial opposition to Radek’s capture. Lev’s standing among the troops at King Saul Boulevard had fallen to dangerously low levels. In Jerusalem, some were beginning to wonder whether Lev’s time had come and gone.

“I’ve taken the liberty of assembling your team,” said Lev. He pressed the intercom button on the telephone and summoned his secretary. She entered the room with a file beneath her arm. Lev’s meetings were always well-choreographed. He adored nothing more than standing before a complicated chart, pointer in hand, and decoding its secrets for a mystified audience.