Prince of Fire

Martineau, at his back, felt the first gusts of a mistral. The night air smelled of charcoal smoke and turmeric and faintly of honey. A pair of old men, seated on spindly chairs outside the doorway of a tenement house, shared a hubble-bubble water pipe and studied Martineau indifferently as he trod past. A moment later a soccer ball, deflated and nearly the color of the pavement, bounded toward him out of the darkness. Martineau put a foot on it and sent it adroitly back in the direction from which it came. It was scooped up by a sandaled boy, who, upon seeing the tall stranger in Western clothes, turned and vanished into the mouth of an alleyway. Martineau had a vision of himself, thirty years earlier. Charcoal smoke, turmeric, honey . . . For an instant he felt as though he was walking the streets of south Beirut.
    He came to the intersection of two streets. On one corner was a shwarma stand, on another a tiny café that promised Cuisine Tunisienne. A trio of teenage boys eyed Martineau provocatively from the doorway of the café. In French he wished them good evening, then lowered his gaze and turned to the right.
    The street was narrower than the rue des Convalescents, and most of the pavement was consumed by market stalls filled with cheap carpets and aluminum pots. At the other end was an Arab coffeehouse. Martineau went inside. At the back of the coffeehouse, near the toilet, was a narrow flight of unlit stairs. Martineau climbed slowly upward through the gloom. At the top was a door. As Martineau approached, it swung open suddenly. A man, clean-shaven and dressed in a galabia gown, stepped onto the landing.
    “Maa-salaamah,” he said. Peace be upon you.
    “As-salaam alaykum,” replied Martineau, as he slipped past the man and entered the apartment.

9

J ERUSALEM
    J ERUSALEM IS QUITE LITERALLY A CITY ON A HILL . It stands high atop the Judean Mountains and is reached from the Coastal Plain by a staircase-like road that climbs through the twisting mountain gorge known as the Sha’ar Ha’Gai. Gabriel, like most Israelis, still referred to it by its Arab name, the Bab al-Wad. He lowered the window of his Office Skoda and rested his arm in the opening. The evening air, cool and soft and scented with cypress and pine, tugged at his shirtsleeve. He passed the rusted carcass of an armored personnel carrier, a memorial relic of the fighting in 1948, and thought of Sheikh Asad and his campaign to sever the lifeline to Jerusalem.
    He switched on the radio, hoping to find a bit of music to take his mind off the case, but instead heard a bulletin that a suicide bomber had just struck a bus in the affluent Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. He listened to the updates for a time; then, when the somber music began, he switched off the radio. Somber music meant fatalities. The more music, the higher the number of dead.
    Highway One changed suddenly from a four-lane motorway into a broad urban boulevard, the famed Jaffa Road that ran from the northwest corner of Jerusalem to the walls of the Old City. Gabriel followed the road to the left, then down a long, gentle sweep, past the chaotic New Central Bus Station. In spite of the bombing, commuters streamed across the road toward the entrance. Most had no choice but to board their bus and hope that tonight the roulette ball didn’t land on their number.
    He passed the entrance of the sprawling Makhane Yehuda Market. An Ethiopian girl in police uniform stood watch at a metal barricade, checking the bag of each person who entered. When Gabriel stopped for a traffic light, clusters of black-coated Haredi men drifted between the cars like swirling leaves.
    A series of turns brought him to Narkiss Street. There were no parking spaces to be had, so he left the car around the corner and walked slowly back to his apartment beneath the protective awning of the eucalyptus trees. He had a bittersweet memory of Venice, of gliding home upon the silken waters of a canal and tying his boat to the dock at the back of his house.
    The Jerusalem limestone apartment block was set back a few meters from the street and reached by a cement walkway through a tangled little garden. The foyer was lit by a greenish light and smelled heavily of new oil-based paint. He didn’t bother checking the mailbox—no one knew he lived there, and the utility bills went directly to an ersatz property management company run by Housekeeping.
    The block contained no elevator. Gabriel climbed the cement stairs