The Messenger

Navot someplace other than the most famous delicatessen in the most visible Jewish district of Paris, but Navot had insisted on Jo Goldenberg, based on his long-held belief that the best place to hide a pine tree was in a forest.
    “This place is making me nervous,” Gabriel murmured. “Let’s take a walk.”
    “In this weather? Forget it. Besides, no one is going to recognize you in that getup. Even I nearly didn’t notice you when you came through the door.”
    Gabriel looked at the ghostly face reflected in the glass. He wore a dark corduroy flat cap, contact lenses that turned his green eyes to brown, and a false goatee that accentuated his already narrow features. He had traveled to Paris on a German passport bearing the name Heinrich Kiever. After arriving at the Gare du Nord he’d spent two hours walking the Seine embankments, checking his tail for surveillance. In his shoulder bag was a worn volume of Voltaire he’d purchased from a bouquiniste on the Quai Montebello.
    He turned his head and looked at Navot. He was a heavy-shouldered man, several years younger than Gabriel, with short strawberry-blond hair and pale blue eyes. In the lexicon of the Office, he was a katsa , an undercover field operative and case officer. Armed with an array of languages, a roguish charm, and a fatalistic arrogance, he had penetrated Palestinian terrorist cells and recruited agents in Arab embassies scattered across western Europe. He had sources in nearly all the European security and intelligence services and oversaw a vast network of sayanim . He could always count on getting the best table in the grill room at the Ritz in Paris because the maître d’hôtel was a paid informant, as was the chief of the maid staff. He was dressed now in a gray tweed jacket and black rollneck sweater, for his identity in Paris was one Vincent Laffont, a freelance travel writer of Breton descent who spent most of his time living out of a suitcase. In London he was known as Clyde Bridges, European marketing director of an obscure Canadian business-software firm. In Madrid he was a German of independent means who idled away the hours in cafés and bars and traveled to relieve the burdens of a restless and complex soul.
    Navot reached into his briefcase and produced a manila file folder, which he placed on the table in front of Gabriel. “There’s the owner of your van Gogh,” he said. “Have a look.”
    Gabriel discreetly lifted the cover. The photograph inside showed an attractive middle-aged woman with dark wavy hair, olive skin, and a long aquiline nose. She was holding an umbrella above her head and descending a flight of stone steps in Montmartre.
    “Hannah Weinberg,” Navot said. “Forty-four, unmarried, childless. Jewish demographics in microcosm. An only child with no children. At this rate, we won’t need a state.” Navot looked down and picked morosely at a bowl of potted chicken and vegetables. He was prone to fits of despondency, especially when it came to the future of the Jewish people. “She owns a small boutique up in Montmartre on the rue Lepic. Boutique Lepic is the name of it. I snapped that photo of her earlier this afternoon as she was walking to lunch. One is left with the impression the boutique is more of a hobby than a vocation. I’ve seen her bank accounts. Marc Weinberg left his daughter very well off.”
    The waiter approached and placed a bowl of purple dreck in front of Gabriel. He immediately pushed it toward the center of the table. He couldn’t bear the smell of borscht. Navot dropped a lump of bread into his broth and prodded it with his spoon.
    “Weinberg was an interesting fellow. He was a prominent lawyer here in Paris. He was also something of a memory militant. He brought a great deal of pressure on the government to come clean about the role of the French in the Holocaust. As a result he wasn’t terribly popular in some circles here in Paris.”
    “And the daughter? What are her politics?”
    “Moderate Eurosocialist, but that’s no crime in France. She also inherited a bit of militancy from her father. She’s involved with a group that’s trying to combat the anti-Semitism here. She actually met with the French president once. Look underneath that photograph.”
    Gabriel found a clipping from a French magazine about the current wave of anti-Semitism in France. The accompanying photograph showed Jewish protesters marching across one of the Seine bridges. At the head of the