The Defector

she had first illuminated it with the beam of her headlamp. It was then she noticed the broken windows and the bits of safety glass scattered over the ground like crystals. She also realized the car was familiar. It belonged to the two friends of the restorer, the young men with odd names who spoke no known language. She told the police she had never truly believed their story. Her father had been a soldier, she said, and she knew a couple of security guards when she saw them. Dismounting the bike, she had hurried over to the car to see if anyone was injured. What she had found, she said, was clearly no accident. Both men had been shot many times and were drenched in blood.
    Though Margherita was the first to be questioned by the police, she had not actually been the one to summon them. Like the other members of the staff, she had been given strict instructions about what to do in the event of any incident involving the restorer or his wife. She was to telephone Count Gasparri, the villa’s absentee owner, and inform him first. Which she had done at 10:07. The count had then placed a hasty call to Monsignor Luigi Donati, private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII, and Donati had contacted the Vatican Security Office. Within twenty minutes, units of both the Polizia di Stato and Carabiniere had arrived at the villa’s entrance and cordoned off the scene. Unable to locate the keys to the vehicle, the officers had opened the trunk by force. Inside they had found three suitcases, one filled with the belongings of a woman, and a woman’s handbag. The commanding officer had quickly surmised that the crime scene represented more than just a double homicide. It appeared there had been a woman in the car. And the woman was now missing.
    Unbeknownst to the officers at the scene, a quiet call had already been placed from the Vatican to the woman’s employers in Tel Aviv. The officer who had taken the call immediately telephoned Uzi Navot, who was at that moment heading toward his home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petah Tikvah. He swung a reckless U-turn and drove dangerously fast back to King Saul Boulevard. Along the way, he placed three calls from his secure phone: one to Adrian Carter at Langley, the next to the director of the Office, and a third to the Memuneh, the one in charge.
    As for Gabriel, he was largely unaware of the storm swirling around him. Indeed, at the same moment Shamron was rousing the prime minister from his sleep, he was doing his best to console a distraught Elena Kharkov. Her two children, Anna and Nikolai, were playing quietly in the next room, oblivious as to what had just transpired. Precisely what was said between Gabriel and Elena would never be known. They emerged from the lodge together a short time later, Elena in tears, Gabriel looking stoic, with his overnight bag slung over his shoulder. By the time he arrived at Adirondack Regional Airport, his plane was fueled and cleared for takeoff. It took him directly to Andrews Air Force Base, where a second aircraft, a Gulfstream G500, was on standby to ferry him home. The crew would later report that he took no food or drink during the ten-hour flight and spoke not a single word. He just sat in his seat like a statue, staring out the window, into the blackness.

36
    BEN-GURION AIRPORT, ISRAEL
    THERE IS a room at Ben-Gurion Airport known to only a handful of people. It is located to the left of passport control, behind an unmarked door kept locked at all times. Its walls are faux Jerusalem limestone; its furnishings are typical airport fare: black vinyl couches and chairs, modular end tables, cheap modern lamps that cast an unforgiving light. There are two windows, one looking onto the tarmac, the other onto the arrivals hall. Both are fashioned of high-quality one-way glass. Reserved for Office personnel, it is the first stop for operatives returning from secret battlefields abroad. There is a permanent odor of stale cigarettes, burnt coffee, and male tension. The cleaning staff has tried every product imaginable to expel it, but the smell remains. Like Israel’s enemies, it cannot be defeated by conventional means.
    Gabriel had entered this room, or versions of it, many times before. He had entered it in triumph and staggered into it in failure. He had been fêted in this room, and once he had been wheeled in with a bullet still lodged in his chest. Now, for the second time in his life, he entered after men of indiscriminate violence had