The Messenger

health, like almost every other aspect of his life, was a closely held secret.
    “Is it the kidneys?”
    Gilah shook her head. “The cancer is back.”
    “I thought they got it all.”
    “So did Ari,” she said. “And that’s not all. His lungs are a mess from the cigarettes. Tell him not to smoke so much.”
    “He never listens to me.”
    “You’re the only one he listens to. He loves you like a son, Gabriel. Sometimes I think he loves you more than Yonatan.”
    “Don’t be silly, Gilah.”
    “He’s never happier than when you’re sitting on the terrace together in Tiberias.”
    “We’re usually arguing.”
    “He likes arguing with you, Gabriel.”
    “I’ve gathered that.”
    On the television cabinet ministers and security chiefs were arriving at the Prime Minister’s Office for an emergency session. Under ordinary circumstances Shamron would have been among them. Gabriel looked at Gilah. She was pulling at the torn leather of Shamron’s jacket. “It was Ari, wasn’t it?” she asked. “It was Ari who dragged you into this life…after Munich.”
    Gabriel looked at the emergency lights flashing on the television screen and nodded absently.
    “You were in the army?”
    “No, I’d finished with the army. I was studying at the Bezalel Academy of Art by then. Ari came to see me a few days after the hostages had been killed. No one knew it then, but Golda had already given the order to kill everyone involved.”
    “Why did he select you ?”
    “I spoke languages, and he saw things in my army fitness reports—qualities he thought would make me suitable for the kind of work he had in mind.”
    “Killing at close range, face-to-face. That’s how you did it, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, Gilah.”
    “How many?”
    “Gilah.”
    “How many, Gabriel?”
    “Six,” he said. “I killed six of them.”
    She touched the gray hair at his temples. “But you were just a boy.”
    “It’s easier when you’re a boy. It gets harder as you get older.”
    “But you did it anyway. You were the one they sent to kill Abu Jihad, weren’t you? You walked into his villa in Tunis and killed him in front of his wife and children. And they took their revenge, not on the country but on you . They put a bomb beneath your car in Vienna.”
    She was pulling harder at the tear in Shamron’s coat. Gabriel took her hand. “It’s all right, Gilah. It was a long time ago.”
    “I remember when the call came. Ari told me a bomb had gone off beneath a diplomat’s car in Vienna. I remember going into the kitchen to make him some coffee and coming back to the bedroom to find him crying. He said, ‘It’s all my fault. I killed his wife and child.’ It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him cry. I didn’t see him for a week. When he finally came home, I asked him what had happened. He wouldn’t answer, of course. He’d regained his composure by then. But I know it’s eaten away at him all these years. He blames himself for what happened.”
    “He shouldn’t,” Gabriel said.
    “You weren’t even allowed to grieve properly, were you? The government told the world that the wife and child of the Israeli diplomat were both dead. You buried your son in secret on the Mount of Olives—just you, Ari, and a rabbi—and you hid your wife away in England under a false name. But Khaled found her. Khaled kidnapped your wife and used her to lure you to the Gare de Lyon.” A tear spilled down Gilah’s cheek. Gabriel brushed it away and found her wrinkled skin was still as soft as velvet. “All because my husband came to see you one afternoon in September so long ago. You could have had such a different life. You could have been a great artist. Instead we turned you into a killer. Why aren’t you bitter, Gabriel? Why don’t you hate Ari like his children do?”
    “The course of my life was charted the day the Germans chose the little Austrian corporal to be their chancellor. Ari was just the helmsman on the night watch.”
    “Are you that fatalistic?”
    “Believe me, Gilah, I went through a period of time where I couldn’t bear to look at Ari. But I’ve come to realize I’m more like him than I ever knew.”
    “Maybe that’s the quality he saw in your army fitness report.”
    Gabriel smiled briefly. “Maybe it was.”
    Gilah fingered the tear in Shamron’s jacket. “Do you know the story about how this happened?”
    “It’s one of the great mysteries inside the Office,” Gabriel said. “There are all