The Confessor

of rugelach with cinnamon and nuts. As she leaned over the table, a mane of dark hair fell across the front of one shoulder. Her long hands smelled of vanilla. She covered herself in a bronze-colored wrap and went into the campo, leaving Gabriel and Shamron alone in the shop.
    Gabriel said, "I'm listening."
    "That's an improvement. Usually, you start off by yelling at me about how I've ruined your life."
    "I'm sure we'll get to that at some point."
    "You and my daughter should compare notes."
    "We have. How is she?"
    "Still living in New Zealand--on a chicken farm if you can believe that--and still refusing to take my telephone calls." He took a long time lighting his next cigarette. "She resents me terribly. Says I was never there for her. What she doesn't understand is that I was busy. I had a people to protect."
    "It won't last forever."
    "In case you haven't noticed, neither will I." Shamron took a bite of rugelach and chewed it slowly. "How's Anna?"
    "I suppose she's fine. I haven't spoken to her in nearly two months."
    Shamron lowered his chin and peered disapprovingly at Gabriel over his spectacles. "Please tell me you didn't break that poor woman's heart."
    Gabriel stirred sugar into his coffee and looked away from Shamron's steady stare. Anna Rolfe.. . She was a world-renowned concert violinist and the daughter of a wealthy Swiss banker named Augustus Rolfe. A year earlier, Gabriel had helped her track down the men who had murdered her father. Along the way he had also forced her to confront the unpleasant circumstances about her father's wartime past and the source of his remarkable collection of Impressionist and Modern paintings. He had also fallen in love with the tempestuous virtuoso. After the operation, he'd lived for six months at her secluded villa on the Sintra coast of Portugal. Their relationship began to crumble when Gabriel confessed to her that each time they strolled the streets of the village it was the shadow of his wife Leah he saw at his shoulder--and that some nights, while they made love, Leah stood in their bedroom, a silent spectator to their contentment. When Francesco Tiepolo offered him the San
    Zaccaria altarpiece, Gabriel accepted without hesitation. Anna Rolfe did not stand in his way.
    "I'm very fond of her, but it would never have worked."
    "Did she spend any time with you here in Venice?"
    "She performed at a benefit at the Frari. She stayed with me for two days. I'm afraid it only made things worse."
    Shamron slowly crushed out his cigarette. "I suppose I'm partly to blame. I pushed you into it before you were ready."
    As he always did on occasions such as these, Shamron asked if Gabriel had been to see Leah. Gabriel heard himself say that he had gone to the secluded psychiatric clinic in the south of England before coming to Venice; that he had spent an afternoon with her, pushing her about the grounds; that they had even had a picnic lunch beneath the bare limbs of a maple. But while he spoke, his mind was elsewhere: the tiny street in Vienna not far from the Juden-platz; the car bomb that killed his son; the inferno that destroyed Leah's body and stole her memory.
    "It's been twelve years and she still doesn't recognize me. To be honest with you, sometimes I don't recognize her." Gabriel paused, then said, "But you didn't come here to discuss my personal life."
    "No, I didn't," Shamron said. "But your personal life is relevant. You see, if you were still involved with Anna Rolfe, I couldn't ask you to come back to work for me--at least, not in good conscience."
    "When have you ever let your conscience get in the way of something you wanted?"
    "Now there's the old Gabriel that I know and love." Shamron flashed an iron smile. "How much do you know about the murder of Benjamin?"
    "Only what I read in the Herald Tribune. The Munich police say he was killed by neoNazis."
    Shamron snorted. Clearly, he did not agree with the findings of the Munich police, no matter how preliminary. "I suppose it's possible. Benjamin's writings on the Holocaust made him extremely unpopular among many segments of German society, and the fact that he was an Israeli made him a target. But I'm not convinced that some skinhead managed to kill him. You see, whenever Jews die on German soil, it makes me uneasy. I want to know more than what the Munich police are telling us on an official basis."
    "Why don't you send a fyatsa to Munich to investigate?"
    "Because if one of our field officers starts asking