The Messenger

weight on the heel. Gabriel knew the gesture well. It meant something provocative was coming.
    “Why are you here, Gabriel Allon?”
    “I was told you wanted to see me.”
    “And so you came? Just like that?”
    “Just like that.”
    The corners of her lips started to curl into a smile.
    “What’s so funny?” he asked.
    “Poor Gabriel. You’re still in love with me, aren’t you?”
    “I always was.”
    “Just not enough to marry me?”
    “Can we do this in private?”
    “Not for a while. I need to keep an eye on the office. My other job,” she said in a tone of mock conspiracy.
    “Please give Rabbi Zolli my regards.”
    “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Rabbi Zolli is still furious with you.”
    She dug a key from her pocket and tossed it to him. He looked at it for a long moment. Even after months of separation it was difficult for Gabriel to imagine Chiara leading a life of her own.
    “In case you’re wondering, I live there alone. It’s more than you have a right to know, but it’s the truth. Make yourself comfortable. Get some rest. You look like hell.”
    “Full of compliments today, aren’t we?” He slipped the key into his pocket. “What’s the address?”
    “You know, for a spy, you’re a terrible liar.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You know my address, Gabriel. You got it from Operations, the same place you got my telephone number.”
    She leaned down and kissed his cheek. When her hair fell across his face, he closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of vanilla.

    H ER BUILDING WAS on the other side of the Grand Canal in Santa Croce, in a small enclosed corte with but one passage in and out. Gabriel, as he slipped into her apartment, had the sensation of walking into his own past. The sitting room seemed posed for a magazine photo shoot. Even her old magazines and newspapers appeared to have been arranged by a fanatic in pursuit of visual perfection. He walked over to an end table and browsed the framed photographs: Chiara and her parents; Chiara and an older brother who lived in Padua; Chiara with a friend on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. It was during that trip, when she was just twenty-five, that she’d come to the attention of an Office talent scout. Six months later, after being vetted and trained, she was sent back to Europe as a bat leveyha , a female escort officer. There were no photographs of Chiara with Gabriel, for none existed.
    He went to the window and looked out. Thirty feet below, the oily green waters of the Rio del Megio flowed sluggishly by. A clothing line stretched to the building opposite. Shirts and trousers hung drunkenly in the sunlight, and at the other end of the line an old woman sat in an open window with her fleshy arm draped over the sill. She seemed surprised to see Gabriel. He held up the key and said he was Chiara’s friend from Milan.
    He lowered the blinds and went into the kitchen. In the sink was a half-drunk bowl of milky coffee and a crust of buttered toast. Chiara, fastidious in all other things, always left her breakfast dishes in the sink until the end of the day. Gabriel, in an act of domestic pettiness, left them where they stood and went into her bedroom.
    He tossed his bag onto the unmade bed and, resisting the temptation to search her closet and drawers, went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. He opened the medicine chest, looking for razors or cologne or any other evidence of a man. There were two things he’d never seen before: a bottle of sleeping tablets and a bottle of antidepressants. He returned them to the precise position in which he’d found them. Chiara, like Gabriel, had been trained to notice even the subtlest of changes.
    He stripped off his clothes and tossed them into the hallway, then spent a long time standing beneath the shower. When he was finished he wrapped a towel around his waist and padded into the bedroom. The duvet smelled of Chiara’s body. When he placed his head atop her pillow the bells of Santa Croce tolled midday. He closed his eyes and plunged into a dreamless sleep.

    H E WOKE IN late afternoon to the sound of a key being pushed into the lock, followed by the clatter of Chiara’s boot heels in the entrance hall. She didn’t bother calling out that she was home. She knew he came awake at the slightest sound or movement. When she entered the bedroom she was singing softly to herself, a silly Italian pop song she knew he loathed.
    She sat on the edge of the bed,