Prince of Fire

said Gabriel.
    Lev crossed one long leg over the other and picked a piece of invisible lint from his trousers. “You’ve never worked at headquarters before, have you, Gabriel?”
    “You know exactly where I’ve worked.”
    “Which is why I feel I should give you a helpful reminder. The progress of your investigation, assuming you make any, is not to be shared with anyone outside this service. You will report to me and only me. Is that clear?”
    “I take it you’re referring to the old man.”
    “You know exactly who I’m referring to.”
    “Shamron and I are personal friends. I won’t cut off my relationship with him just to put your mind at ease.”
    “But you will refrain from discussing the case with him. Have I made myself clear?”
    Lev had neither mud on his boots nor blood on his hands, but he was a master in the art of boardroom thrust and parry.
    “Yes, Lev,” Gabriel said. “I know exactly where you stand.”
    Lev got to his feet, signaling that the meeting had ended, but Gabriel remained seated.
    “There’s something else I needed to discuss with you.”
    “My time is limited,” said Lev, looking down.
    “It won’t take but a minute. It’s about Chiara.”
    Lev, rather than suffer the indignity of retaking his seat, walked over to the window and looked down at the lights of Tel Aviv. “What about her?”
    “I don’t want her used again until we determine who else saw the contents of that computer disk.”
    Lev rotated slowly, as if he were a statue on a pedestal. With the light behind him, he appeared as nothing more than a dark mass against the horizontal lines of the blinds.
    “I’m glad you feel comfortable enough to walk into this office and make demands,” he said acidly, “but Chiara’s future will be determined by Operations and, ultimately, by me.”
    “She’s only a bat leveyha . Are you telling me you can’t find any other girls to serve as escort officers?”
    “She’s got an Italian passport, and she’s damned good at her job. You know that better than anyone.”
    “She’s also burned, Lev. If you put her in the field with an agent, you’ll put the agent at risk. I wouldn’t work with her.”
    “Fortunately, most of our field officers aren’t as arrogant as you.”
    “I never knew a good field man who wasn’t arrogant, Lev.”
    A silence fell between them. Lev walked over to his desk and pressed a button on his telephone. The door swung open automatically, and a wedge of bright light entered from Lev’s reception area.
    “It’s been my experience that field agents don’t take well to the discipline of headquarters. In the field, they’re a law unto themselves, but in here, I’m the law.”
    “I’ll try to keep that in mind, sheriff.”
    “Don’t fuck this up,” Lev said as Gabriel headed toward the open door. “If you do, not even Shamron will be able to protect you.”
    T HEY CONVENED AT nine o’clock the following morning. Housekeeping had made a halfhearted attempt at putting the room in order. A chipped wooden conference table stood in the center, surrounded by several mismatched chairs. The excess debris had been piled against the far wall. Gabriel, as he entered, was reminded of the pews stacked against the wall of the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo. Everything about the setting suggested impermanence, including the misleading paper sign, affixed to the door with packing tape, that read: TEMPORARY COMMITTEE FOR THE STUDY OF TERROR THREATS IN WESTERN EUROPE . Gabriel embraced the disarray. From adversity, Shamron always said, comes cohesion.
    His team numbered four in all, two boys and two girls, all eager and adoring and unbearably young. From Research came Yossi, a pedantic but brilliant intelligence analyst who had read Greats at Oxford; from History, a dark-eyed girl named Dina who could recite the time, place, and butcher’s bill of every act of terrorism ever committed against the State of Israel. She walked with a very slight limp and was treated with unfailing tenderness by the others. Gabriel found the reason why in her personnel file. Dina had been standing in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street the day in October 1994 when a Hamas suicide bomber turned the Number 5 bus into a coffin for twenty-one people. Her mother and two of her sisters were killed that day. Dina had been seriously wounded.
    The two other members of the team came from outside the Office. The Arab Affairs Department of Shabak lent Gabriel a pockmarked