Prince of Fire

wearily to the fourth floor and opened the door. The flat was large by Israeli standards—two bedrooms, a galley kitchen, a small study off the combination living room and dining room—but a far cry from the piano nobile of Gabriel’s canal house in Venice. Housekeeping had offered to sell it to him. The value of Jerusalem apartments seemed to sink with each suicide bombing, and at the moment it could be had for a good price. Chiara had decided not to wait for a deed to make it her own. With little else to do, she spent much of her time shopping and was steadily turning the functional but cheerless place into something like a home. A new rug had appeared since Gabriel had been home; so had a circular brass coffee table with a lacquered wood pedestal. He hoped she’d bought it somewhere reputable and not from one of those hucksters who sold Holy Land air in a bottle.
    He called Chiara’s name but received only silence in reply. He wandered down the hall to their bedroom. It had been furnished for operatives rather than lovers. Gabriel had pushed the twin beds together, but invariably he would awaken in the middle of the night to find himself falling into the crevasse, clinging to the edge of the precipice. At the foot of the bed rested a small cardboard box. Chiara had packed away most of their things; this was all that remained. He supposed the psychologist at King Saul Boulevard would have read deep analytical insight into his failure to unpack the box. The truth was far more prosaic—he’d been too busy at work. Still, it was depressing to think that his entire life could fit into this box, just as it is hard to fathom a small metallic urn can contain the ashes of a human being. Most of the things weren’t even his. They’d belonged to Mario Delvecchio, a role he had played for some time to moderate acclaim.
    He sat down and with his thumbnail sliced open the packing tape. He was relieved to find a small wooden case, the traveling restoration kit containing pigments and brushes that Umberto Conti had given him as a gift at the end of his apprenticeship. The rest was mainly rubbish, things with which he should have parted long ago: old check stubs, notes on restorations, a harsh review he’d received in an Italian art magazine for his work on Tintoretto’s Christ on the Sea of Galilee. He wondered why he’d bothered to read it, let alone keep it.
    At the bottom of the box he found a manila envelope no bigger than a checkbook. He loosened the flap and turned the envelope over. Out fell a pair of eyeglasses. They had belonged to Benjamin Stern, a former Office agent who’d been murdered. Gabriel could still make out Benjamin’s oily fingerprints on the dirty lenses.
    He started to place the glasses back into the envelope but noticed something lodged at the bottom. He turned it over and tapped on the base. An object fell to the floor, a strand of leather on which hung a piece of red coral shaped like a hand. Just then he heard Chiara’s footfalls on the landing. He scooped up the talisman and slipped it into his pocket.
    By the time he arrived in the front room, she’d managed to get the door open and was in the process of carrying several bags of groceries over the threshold. She looked up at Gabriel and smiled, as though surprised to find him there. Her dark hair was braided into a heavy plait, and the early spring Mediterranean sun had left a trace of color across her cheeks. She looked to Gabriel like a native-born Sabra. Only when she spoke Hebrew with her outrageous Italian accent did she betray her country of origin. Gabriel no longer spoke to her in Italian. Italian was the language of Mario, and Mario was dead. Only in bed did they speak to each other in Italian, and that was a concession to Chiara, who believed Hebrew was not a proper language for lovers.
    Gabriel closed the door and helped carry the plastic bags of groceries into the kitchen. They were mismatched, some white, some blue, a pinkish bag bearing the name of a well-known kosher butcher. He knew Chiara once again had ignored his admonition to stay out of the Makhane Yehuda Market.
    “Everything is better there, especially the produce,” she said defensively, reading the look of disapproval on his face. “Besides, I like the atmosphere. It’s so intense.”
    “Yes,” Gabriel agreed. “You should see it when a bomb goes off.”
    “Are you saying that the great Gabriel Allon is afraid of suicide bombers?”
    “Yes, I am. You