Prince of Fire

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.”
    G ABRIEL 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

T EL A VIV : M ARCH 10
    G ABRIEL ARRIVED AT K ING S AUL B OULEVARD 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