The Confessor

denied there had been a quid pro quo, though no one believed it. For Shamron, it had been a bitter herb indeed, and now, flipping through the pages of the file, he relived it all again. He came to a photograph, the one image they had managed to cap'ture of the team leader. It was useless, really: a long-distance shot, grainy and muddled, a face concealed behind sunglasses and a hat.
    He placed the picture beside the surveillance photograph from London and spent several minutes comparing them. Same man? Impossible to tell. He picked up the phone and rang Research again. This time Yossi answered.
    "Yes, boss?"
    "Bring me the file on the Leopard."
    He was an enigma, an educated guess, a theory. Some said he was German. Some said Austrian. Some Swiss. One linguist who listened to the tapes of his conversations with Shamron, which were conducted in English, theorized that he was from the Alsace-Lorraine. It was the West Germans who had hung the codename Leopard on him; he had done a good deal of killing there and they wanted him the most. A terrorist for hire. A man who would work for any group, any cause, as long as it conformed to his core beliefs: Communist, anti-Western, anti-Zionist. It was the Leopard who was believed to have been behind the hijacking in Cyprus and the Leopard who had murdered three other Israelis in Europe on behalf of PLO commando Abu Jihad. Shamron had wanted him dead. His wish had gone unfulfilled.
    He leafed through the file, which was hopelessly thin. Here a report from the French service, here an Interpol dispatch, here a rumor of an alleged sighting in Istanbul. There were three photographs as well, though it was not clear whether any were really him. The shot from the yacht in Cyprus, a surveillance photo taken in Bucharest, another at Charles de Gaulle airport. Shamron laid the photo from London next to them and looked up at Yossi, who was watching over his shoulder.
    "That one and that one, boss."
    Shamron pulled the Bucharest shot out of the lineup and laid it next to London. Same angle, head-on, chin slightly to the left, obscuring half the face.
    "I could be wrong, Yossi, but I think it's possible that these are the same man."
    "Hard to say, boss, but the computer may be able to tell us for sure."
    "Run them," Shamron said, then he picked up the files. "I want to keep these."
    "You have to sign a chit."
    Shamron looked at Yossi over spectacles.
    Yossi said, "I'll sign the chit for you."
    "Good boy."
    Shamron reached for the telephone one last time and dialed Travel. When he finished with his arrangements, he placed the files in his briefcase and headed downstairs. I'm coming, Gabriel, he thought. But where in God's name are you?
    The Mediterranean sea
    The rocks of Cap Corse appeared at dawn. Chiara guided the yacht around the tip of the island and set it on a northwesterly heading. A line of gunpowder cloud stood before them, swollen with rain. The winds had increased by several knots, and it was suddenly much colder. "The mistral," Chiara said. "It's blowing hard today. I'm afraid the rest of the trip isn't going to be so pleasant."
    A ferry appeared off the port side, steaming out of L'lle Rousse toward the French coast. "That one's going to Nice," she said. "We can follow his heading, then steer toward Cannes as we get closer to the coastline."
    "How long?"
    "Five to six hours, maybe longer because of the mistral. Take the wheel for a while. I'll go down to the galley and see if there's anything for breakfast."
    "Make sure Sleeping Beauty is still with us." "I will."
    Breakfast consisted of coffee, toasted bread, and a lump of hard cheese. They barely had time to eat, because thirty minutes after rounding Cap Corse, the storm closed in. For the next four hours the boat was battered by a steady onslaught of wind-driven swells rolling out of the north, and sheets of rain that reduced visibility to less than a hundred meters. At some point they lost track of the ferry. It was no matter; Chiara simply navigated by compass and GPS.
    The rain quit at noon, but the wind blew ceaselessly. It seemed to grow stronger as they drew closer to the coast. Behind the storm was a mass of bitterly cold air, and for the last hour of the journey, the sun was in and out of the clouds, shining one minute, hidden the next. The color of the water changed with the sun, now gray-green, now deep blue.
    Finally, directly off the prow, Cannes: the distinctive line of gleaming white hotels and apartment houses