The Fallen Angel

make several more attempts to bring peace to the Middle East during the last days of his presidency, including the so-called Clinton Parameters, which he placed before the Israelis and Palestinians during a dramatic meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House. A non-negotiable set of terms for a final agreement, the Parameters called for the creation of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and 96 percent of the West Bank. The Temple Mount plateau, sacred to the three Abrahamic faiths, would have been included in the Palestinian state, while the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter of the Old City would have remained under Israeli control. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted the terms, but Yasir Arafat, after much dithering and equivocation, did not. In his memoirs, President Clinton was remarkably candid about his feelings toward the man whose “colossal mistake” had denied him a historic foreign policy achievement. “I am a failure,” he told Arafat during a bitter telephone conversation. “And you have made me one.”
    But did the Temple of Solomon, as described in wondrous detail in Kings I and Chronicles, truly exist? The best way to answer that question would be to conduct a thorough but careful excavation of the entire Temple Mount plateau, with Israeli and Palestinian scholars working side by side, perhaps under United Nations supervision. Given Islamic sensitivities and current political realities, that is unlikely. So, too, is a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, at least in the near future. At some point soon, Middle East watchers agree, there is likely to be another eruption of violence, a third intifada. Bombs will explode, bullets will fly, and children on both sides of the long and bloody contest over the twice-promised land will die. And to think it would have ended more than a decade ago if Yasir Arafat had only found the courage to speak a single word: “Yes.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
     
    T HIS NOVEL, LIKE THE PREVIOUS books in the Gabriel Allon series, could not have been written without the assistance of David Bull, who truly is among the finest art restorers in the world. Each year, David spends many hours scouring my manuscripts for factual errors when he could be standing in front of an easel bringing a damaged painting back to life. David has filled our lives with art and humor, and his cherished friendship is perhaps the greatest unexpected by-product of the Gabriel Allon series.
    I am deeply indebted to Father Mark Haydu, the international director of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums, for his invaluable contribution to this project. Also, to Sara Savodello, Carolina Rea, Lorna Richardson, and Dottoressa Gabriella Lalatta, a brilliant art historian who took my family and me from the glory of the Sistine Chapel room to the basement of the Vatican Picture Gallery, where the staff restorers care for the pope’s magnificent collection of paintings. There we met the remarkable Francesca Persegati, who was not at all concerned when I told her a notoriously introverted Israeli assassin would soon be working in a curtained cave beneath the loft. A special thanks to Father Kevin Lixey, who was at our side as we processed through the streets of Rome on the feast of Corpus Christi, a few feet behind Pope Benedict XVI. The meal we all shared that candlelit night was the highlight of our time in Rome.
    I spoke to numerous Israeli and American intelligence officers and policymakers while preparing this manuscript, and I thank them now in anonymity, which is how they would prefer it. Fred S. Zeidman, the former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, opened many doors for me in Israel and inspires me daily with his dedication to preserving the memory of those killed in the Shoah. The brilliant Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, patiently answered my many questions about the curatorial hazards of acquiring antiquities under the new guidelines put in place to protect the cultural patrimony of the so-called source countries. As always, Roger Cressey, formerly of the National Security Council, now of Booz Allen Hamilton, helped me to better understand the way the world really works. My dear friend George Weigel gave me valuable insights into the historic visit of Pope John Paul II to the Holy Land in 2000 and influenced my thinking on relations between Roman Catholics and the State of Israel. “M” and “B” gave me tutorials on the turbulent