The Fallen Angel

to help his cause. High on the list of Italian grievances was his conduct during meetings. His standard response when questioned about Israeli tactics and operations was to remind his brethren that, were it not for the deplorable conduct of Europeans, there would be no Israel at all.
    Gabriel found Pazner seated alone on a stone bench outside the Galleria Borghese. Short and compact, he had gunmetal gray hair and a face like pumice. He offered Gabriel a perfunctory greeting in Italian, then suggested it might be better if they walked. They headed westward across the gardens along a footpath lined with umbrella pine. The cold air was heavy with the scent of damp leaves, wood smoke, and cooking—the smell of Rome on a winter’s night. Pazner spoiled it by lighting a cigarette. His mood seemed worse than usual, but it was always a little hard to tell with Pazner. Rome annoyed him. As far as Pazner was concerned, it would always be the center of the empire that had destroyed the Second Temple and scattered the Jews to the four winds of the diaspora. He was a man with a long memory who held grudges. Gabriel was the object of several.
    “I suppose it’s fortuitous you called,” he said finally. “We needed to have a word with you.”
    “We?”
    “Don’t get nervous, Gabriel. No one at King Saul Boulevard has any intention of calling you out of retirement again, not after what you went through in Saudi Arabia. Even the old man seems content to leave you in peace this time.”
    “Are you sure we’re talking about the same Ari Shamron?”
    “Actually, he’s not the same, not anymore.” Pazner was silent for a moment. “Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life,” he said at last, “but it might be a good idea to pay him a visit the next time you’re in town.”
    “When did you see him last?”
    “A few weeks ago when I was in Tel Aviv for the annual meeting of the station chiefs. Shamron made his traditional appearance at dinner on the last night. He used to stay up to all hours regaling us with stories about the old days, but this time I had the sense he was just going through the motions. All I could think about was how things were when we were kids. Do you remember what he was like back then, Gabriel? The ground seemed to tremble whenever the old man entered a room.”
    “I remember,” said Gabriel distantly, and for a moment he was striding across the courtyard of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, on a sun-bleached afternoon in September 1972. Seemingly from nowhere there appeared a small iron bar of a man with hideous black spectacles and teeth like a steel trap. The man didn’t offer a name, for none was necessary. He was the one they spoke of only in whispers. The one who had stolen the secrets that led to Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War. The one who had plucked Adolf Eichmann, managing director of the Holocaust, from an Argentine street corner.
    As usual, Shamron had come well prepared that day. He had known, for example, that Gabriel descended from a long line of gifted artists, that he spoke fluent German with a pronounced Berlin accent, and that he was married to a fellow art student named Leah Savir. He had also known that Gabriel, having been raised by a woman who had survived the Nazi death camp at Birkenau, was a natural keeper of secrets. “The operation will be called Wrath of God,” he had said that day. “It’s not about justice. It’s about vengeance, pure and simple—vengeance for the eleven innocent lives lost at Munich.” Gabriel had told Shamron to find someone else. “I don’t want someone else,” Shamron had said. “I want you.”
    It was but one of many arguments Shamron would eventually win. Time and time again, he had managed to manipulate Gabriel into doing his bidding, always coming up with some excuse, some minor operational errand, to keep his gifted prodigy within reach of the Office. It had been Shamron’s wish that Gabriel assume his rightful place in the director’s suite at King Saul Boulevard. But Gabriel, in one final act of defiance, had turned his back on the offer, handing the job instead to an old rival named Uzi Navot. For a time, it seemed Navot would be willing to act merely as Shamron’s puppet. But now, having established his hold over the Office, Navot had banished Shamron to the Judean Wilderness, thus severing the old man’s ties to the intelligence service he had created in his own image.