The Kill Artist

the basin to dry. What now? Some mornings he stayed indoors and read. Lately he had taken to walking, a little farther on each occasion. Yesterday he'd walked all the way up the slope of Mount Scopus. He found it helped him to think, to sort through the wreckage of the case.
    He showered, dressed, and walked downstairs. As he stepped out of the apartment building and entered the street, he heard a series of sounds: a hoarse stage whisper, a car door closing, a motor turning over. Shamron's watchers. Gabriel ignored them, zipped his coat against the morning chill, started walking.
    He moved along the Khativat Yerushalayim, entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate. He wandered through the hectic markets of El Bazaar: piles of chickpeas and lentils, stacks of flatbread, sacks overflowing with aromatic spices and roasted coffee beans, boys hawking silver trinkets and coffee-pots. An Arab boy pressed an olive wood statue of Jesus into Gabriel's hand and named an exorbitant price. He had Tariq's sharp brown eyes. Gabriel gave the statue back to the boy and in flawless Arabic told him it was too much.
    Once free of the noisy market, he meandered through the quiet, twisting alleyways, making his way gradually eastward, toward the Temple Mount. The air warmed slowly. It was nearly spring. Overhead was a sky of cloudless azure, but the sun was still too low to penetrate the labyrinth of the Old City. Gabriel floated among the shadows, a skeptic among the believers in this place where devotion and hatred collided. He supposed like everyone else he was looking for answers. Different answers, but answers nonetheless.
    He wandered for a long time, thinking. He followed the dark, cool passageways wherever they led him. Sometimes he would find himself at a locked gate or an impenetrable wall of Herodian stone. Sometimes he would come upon a courtyard bathed in warm sunlight. For an instant things would seem clear to him. Then he would embark down another twisting passage, the shadows would close in, and he would realize he was still no closer to the truth.
    He came to an alley leading to the Via Dolorosa. A few feet ahead of him a shaft of light fell upon the stones of the path. He watched as two men, a Hasid in a black shtreimel and an Arab in a flowing white kaffiyeh, approached each other. They passed sightlessly, without a nod or glance, and continued their separate ways. Gabriel walked to the Beit ha-Bad and left the Old City through the Damascus Gate.
    Shamron summoned Gabriel to Tiberias that evening for supper. They ate on the terrace beneath a pair of hissing gas heaters. Gabriel didn't want to be there, but he played the role of gracious guest-listened to the old man's stories, told a few of his own.
    "Lev gave me his resignation today. He said he can no longer serve in an organization in which the director of Operations is kept in the dark about a major operation."
    "He has a point. Did you accept it?"
    "I had no choice." Shamron smiled. "Poor little Lev's position had become untenable. We had crushed the serpent. We had beheaded Tariq's organization and rounded up his foot soldiers. Yet Lev was completely out of the loop. I explained my reasons for running the operation the way I did. I told him the prime minister needed ironclad deniability and, unfortunately, that required deceiving my own deputy. Lev wasn't mollified."
    "And the rest of your problem children?"
    "They'll be gone soon." Shamron set down his fork and looked up at Gabriel. "There'll be several vacancies in the executive suite at King Saul Boulevard. Can I tempt you back? How does chief of Operations sound?"
    "Not interested. Besides, I was never much of a headquarters man."
    "I didn't think so, but I'd never forgive myself if I didn't try."
    "What about the Americans? Have you managed to get back into their good graces?"
    "Slowly, but surely. They seem to have accepted our version of the story: That we'd run an agent into Tariq's organization and that the agent had been exposed. That we had no choice but to take appropriate steps to safeguard the agent's life. They're still furious that we didn't bring them into the picture earlier."
    "That's quite understandable, considering the way it ended. What did you tell them?"
    "I told them we had no idea Tariq was in New York until Jacqueline freed herself and alerted us."
    "And they believed this?"
    "Even I believe it now."
    "My name ever come up?"
    "From time to time. Adrian Carter would like another go at