The Messenger

I searched your things, I didn’t.”
    “Oh, please.”
    “Why can’t you sleep?”
    “Do you really want me to answer that?”
    He made no reply.
    “There was no one else, Gabriel, but then you knew that, didn’t you? How could there be?” She gave him a bittersweet smile. “They never tell you that when they ask you to join their exclusive club. They never tell you how the lies begin to add up, or that you’ll never truly be comfortable around people who aren’t members. Is that the only reason why you fell in love with me, Gabriel? Because I was Office?”
    “I liked your fettuccini and mushrooms. You make the best fettuccini and mushrooms in all of Venice.”
    “And what about you? Were you with any other women while I was gone?”
    “I spent all my time with a very large canvas.”
    “Oh, yes, I forgot about your affliction. You can’t make love to a woman unless she knows you’ve killed on behalf of your country. I’m sure you could have found someone suitable at King Saul Boulevard if you’d set your mind to it. Every woman in the Office lusts after you.”
    “You’re talking too much. I’ll never finish this if you keep talking.”
    “I’m hungry. You shouldn’t have mentioned food. How’s Leah, by the way?”
    Gabriel stopped sketching and glared at Chiara over the top of the sketchpad, as if to tell her he did not appreciate the rather cavalier juxta-position of food and his wife.
    “I’m sorry,” Chiara said. “How is she?”
    Gabriel heard himself say that Leah was doing well, that two or three days a week he drove up to the psychiatric hospital atop Mount Herzl to spend a few minutes with her. But as he told her these things his mind was elsewhere; on a tiny street in Vienna not far from the Judenplatz; on the car bomb that killed his son and the inferno that destroyed Leah’s body and stole her memory. For thirteen years she had been silent in his presence. Now, for brief periods, she spoke to him. Recently, in the garden of the hospital, she had posed to him the same question Chiara had a moment earlier: Were there other women while I was gone? He had answered her truthfully.
    “Did you love this girl, Gabriel?”
    “I loved her, but I gave her up for you.”
    “Why on earth would you do that, my love? Look at me. There’s nothing left of me. Nothing but a memory.”
    Chiara had lapsed into silence. The light on her face was fading slowly from coral-red to gray. The plump woman appeared in the window opposite and began reeling in her laundry. Chiara lifted the sheet to her throat.
    “What are you doing?”
    “I don’t want Signora Lorenzetto to see me naked.”
    Gabriel, in pulling the sheet down to its original position, left a smudge of charcoal on her breast.
    “I suppose I have to move back to Jerusalem,” she said. “Unless you feel like telling Shamron that you can’t take over Special Ops because you’re coming back to Venice.”
    “It’s tempting,” Gabriel said.
    “Tempting, but not possible. You’re a loyal soldier, Gabriel. You always do what you’re told. You always did.” She brushed the charcoal from her breast. “At least I won’t have to decorate the apartment.”
    Gabriel’s eyes remained downward toward the sketchpad. Chiara studied his expression, then asked, “Gabriel, what have you done to the apartment?”
    “I’m afraid I needed a place to work.”
    “So you just moved some things around?”
    “You know, I’m getting hungry, too.”
    “Gabriel Allon, is there anything left?”
    “It’s warm tonight,” he said. “Let’s take the boat out to Murano and have fish.”

9.

Jerusalem

    I T WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK the following evening when Gabriel returned to Narkiss Street. Shamron’s car was parked at the curb and Rami, his bodyguard, was standing watch in the walkway outside Number 16. Upstairs Gabriel found all the lights on and Shamron drinking coffee at the kitchen table.
    “How did you get in?”
    “In case you’ve forgotten, this used to be an Office safe flat. There’s a key in Housekeeping.”
    “Yes, but I changed the locks over the summer.”
    “Really?”
    “I guess I’ll have to change them again.”
    “Don’t bother.”
    Gabriel pushed open the window to vent the smoke from the room. Six cigarette butts lay like spent bullets in one of Gabriel’s saucers. Shamron had been here for some time.
    “How was Venice?” Shamron asked.
    “Venice was lovely, but the next time you break into my flat,