Prince of Fire

disassemble the sophisticated shipping crate, and only with Shamron’s help was he able to maneuver the enormous canvas onto the twin easels. The image of Daniel surrounded by wild beasts intrigued Shamron, and he stayed late into the evening as Gabriel, armed with cotton swabs and a basin of distilled water and ammonia, began the tedious task of scrubbing more than a century’s worth of dirt and grime from the surface of the painting.
    To the degree possible he duplicated his work habits from Venice. He rose before it was light and resisted the impulse to switch on the radio, lest the daily toll of bloodshed and constant security alerts break the spell the painting had cast over him. He would remain in his studio all morning and usually worked a second shift late into the night. He spent as little time as possible at King Saul Boulevard; indeed he heard of Lev’s resignation on the car radio while driving from Narkiss Street to Mount Herzl to see Leah. During their visits together, her journeys to Vienna were shallower and shorter in duration. She asked him questions about their past.
    “Where did we meet, Gabriel?”
    “At Bezalel. You’re a painter, Leah.”
    “Where were we married?”
    “In Tiberias. On Shamron’s terrace overlooking the Sea of Galilee.”
    “And you’re a restorer now?”
    “I studied in Venice, with Umberto Conti. You used to visit me there every few months. You posed as a German girl from Bremen. Do you remember, Leah?”
    One searing afternoon in June, Gabriel had coffee with Dr. Bar-Zvi in the staff canteen.
    “Will she ever be able to leave this place?”
    “No.”
    “What about for short periods?”
    “I don’t see why not,” the doctor said. “In fact, I think it sounds like a rather good idea.”
    She came with a nurse the first few times. Then, as she grew more comfortable being away from the hospital, Gabriel brought her home alone. She sat in a chair in his studio and watched him work for hours on end. Sometimes her presence brought him peace, sometimes unbearable pain. Always, he wished he could set her upon his easel and re-create the woman he had placed in a car that snowy night in Vienna.
    “Do you have any of my paintings?”
    He showed her the portrait in the bedroom. When she asked who the model had been, Gabriel said it was him.
    “You look sad.”
    “I was tired,” he said. “I’d been gone for three years.”
    “Did I really paint this?”
    “You were good,” he said. “You were better than me.”
    One afternoon, while Gabriel was retouching a damaged portion of Daniel’s face, she asked him why she had come to Vienna.
    “We’d grown apart because of my work. I thought my cover was secure enough to bring you and Dani along. It was a foolish mistake, and you were the one to pay for it.”
    “There was another woman, wasn’t there? A French girl. Someone who worked for the Office.”
    Gabriel nodded once and returned to work on the face of Daniel. Leah pressed him for more. “Who did it?” she asked. “Who put the bomb in my car?”
    “It was Arafat. I was supposed to die with you and Dani, but the man who carried out the mission changed the plan.”
    “Is he alive, this man?”
    Gabriel shook his head.
    “And Arafat?”
    Leah’s grasp on the present situation was tenuous at best. Gabriel explained that Yasir Arafat, Israel’s mortal enemy, now lived a few miles away, in Ramallah.
    “Arafat is here ? How can that be?”
    From the mouths of innocents, thought Gabriel. Just then he heard footfalls in the stairwell. Eli Lavon let himself into the flat without bothering to knock.

37

A IX - EN -P ROVENCE : FIVE MONTHS LATER
    T HE FIRST STIRRINGS OF A MISTRAL WERE PROWLING the ravines and gorges of the Bouches-du-Rhône. Paul Martineau, climbing out of his Mercedes sedan, buttoned his canvas field coat and turned the collar up round his ears. Another winter had come to Provence. A few more weeks, he thought, then he’d have to shut down the dig until spring.
    He retrieved his canvas rucksack from the trunk, then set out along the edge of the ancient stone wall of the hill fort. A moment later, at the point where the wall ended, he paused. About fifty meters away, near the edge of the hilltop, a painter stood before a canvas. It was not unusual to see artists working atop the hill; Cézanne himself had adored the commanding view over the Chaine de l’Étoile. Still, Martineau reckoned it would be wise to have a closer look at the man