The Fallen Angel

flat-screen television, a writing desk stocked with pens and stationery, and a comfortable bed with starched linens. Even the Swiss police, thought Gabriel, were excellent hoteliers.
    They left him alone for several hours to ponder his predicament, then, without warning or legal representation, brought him handcuffed to an interrogation room. Waiting there was the officer in charge of Gabriel’s case. He called himself Ziegler. No first name, no rank, no small talk—just Ziegler. He was tall and Alpine, with the broad, square shoulders of a cross-country skier and a ruddy complexion. Arrayed on the table before him were many photographs of Gabriel at different stages of his career, and in various levels of disguise. They showed him entering and leaving banks, crossing hotel lobbies and borders, and, in one, walking along the embankment of a leaden Zurich canal in the company of the renowned Swiss violinist Anna Rolfe. Ziegler seemed especially proud of the display. Obviously, he had put a great deal of thought into it.
    “We have a theory,” he began as Gabriel sat.
    “I can hardly wait.”
    Ziegler’s face remained as placid as a bottomless Swiss lake. “It seems that before coming to St. Moritz, you made a brief stop in France, where you stole a painting by Cézanne and a two-thousand-year-old Greek hydria. You then transported the vase in pieces across the border and attempted to sell it to David Girard of the Galleria Naxos. What Girard didn’t realize, however, is that you never had any intention of delivering the vase, since the true purpose of your little ruse de guerre was to kill him.”
    “Why would I want to kill a Swiss antiquities dealer?”
    “Because, as you already know, that antiquities dealer wasn’t Swiss. Well,” Ziegler added with a xenophobic frown, “not truly Swiss. He was born in southern Lebanon. And from what we’ve learned, he was apparently still doing plenty of business there. Which is why Israeli intelligence wanted him dead.”
    “If we’d wanted him dead, we would have done it in a way that didn’t kill two innocent people in the process.”
    “How noble of you, Herr Allon.”
    “You seem to be forgetting one other minor detail,” said Gabriel wearily.
    “What’s that?”
    “That bomb nearly killed me .”
    “Yes,” Ziegler replied matter-of-factly. “Perhaps the legendary Gabriel Allon has lost a step.”
     
     
    Gabriel was returned to his holding cell and fed a proper Swiss meal of potato raclette and breaded veal. Afterward, he watched the evening news in German on SF 1. Fifteen minutes elapsed before they got around to a follow-up report on the bombing in St. Moritz. It was a feature piece about how the affair had adversely impacted holiday bookings. The story made no mention of David Girard’s connections to Hezbollah. Nor did it refer to any arrests in the case, which Gabriel regarded as an encouraging sign.
    After dinner, a doctor silently inspected his cuts and changed a few of his bandages. Then he was taken back to the interrogation room for an evening session. This time, Ziegler was nowhere to be found. In his place was a thin officer with the pallor of a man who had no time for outdoor pursuits. He introduced himself as Christoph Bittel of the DAP’s counterterror division, which meant he was more spy than policeman. It was another encouraging sign. Policemen made arrests. Spies made deals.
    “Before we begin,” he said evenly, “you should know that Ziegler and the Federal Department of Justice and Police intend to file formal charges against you tomorrow morning. They have more than enough evidence to ensure that you spend the rest of your life in a Swiss jail. You should also know that there are numerous people here in Bern who would love to be granted the honor of escorting you to your cell.”
    “I had nothing to do with planting that bomb.”
    “I know.”
    Bittel picked up a remote control and pointed at a video monitor in the corner of the room. A few seconds later, two figures appeared on the screen—the tall French-speaking man and the girl with an El Greco face. Gabriel watched again as the man whispered intimately into her ear.
    “These are the real bombers,” Bittel said, pausing the video. “The girl concealed the device in the gallery’s powder room while her colleague kept Girard busy.”
    “Who are they?”
    “We were hoping you’d be able to tell us.”
    “I’d never seen them before that night.”
    Bittel