The Rembrandt Affair

the gondola and entered a café to wait. It was filled with excited neon-clad skiers oblivious to the bargain that had just been struck on a sunlit glade a few miles away. As Gabriel ordered coffee and bread, he couldn’t help but marvel at the incongruity of the scene. He was struck, too, by the fact that, despite his advancing age, he had never once been on skis. Chiara had been begging him for years to take her on a ski vacation. Perhaps he would finally succumb. But not here. Maybe Italy or America, he thought, but not Switzerland.
    Gabriel carried his coffee and bread to the front of the café and sat at a table with a good view of the road and parking lot. A dark-haired woman with a young boy asked to join him; together, they watched as the gondola rose like a dirigible and disappeared into the mountains. Gabriel checked the time on his secure mobile phone. The deadline was still ten minutes away. He wanted to call Chiara and tell her he was safe. He wanted to tell Uzi and Shamron he had just closed the deal of a lifetime. But he didn’t dare. Not over the air. It was a coup, perhaps the greatest of Gabriel’s career, but it was his alone. He’d had accomplices, some willing, some not so willing. Lena Herzfeld, Peter Voss, Alfonso Ramirez, Rafael Bloch, Zoe Reed…
    He glanced at the time again. Five minutes until the deadline. Five minutes until the first test of the Allon-Landesmann joint venture. Nothing to do now but wait. It was a fitting end, he thought. Like most Office veterans, he had made a career of waiting. Waiting for a plane or a train. Waiting for a source. Waiting for the sun to rise after a night of killing. And waiting now for Saint Martin Landesmann to surrender two agents who had very nearly disappeared from the face of the earth. The waiting, he thought. Always the waiting. Why should this morning be any different?
    He turned over the phone, concealing the digital clock, and stared out the window. To help pass the time, he made small talk with the woman, who looked far too much like his mother for Gabriel’s comfort, and with the boy, who was not much older than Dani had been on the night of his death in Vienna. And all the while he kept his eyes fastened on the road. And on the morning traffic streaming out of the Oberland. And, finally, on the silver Mercedes GL450 sport-utility vehicle now turning into the parking lot. It was driven by a man wearing a dark blue ski jacket emblazoned with the insignia of Zentrum Security. Two figures, a man and a woman, sat in back. They, too, wore Zentrum jackets. The man’s eyes were concealed by large sunglasses. Gabriel turned over his phone and looked at the time. One hour exactly. There were certain advantages to doing business with the Swiss.
    He bade the woman and child a pleasant morning and stepped outside into the sunlight. The Mercedes sport-utility had come to a stop. A striking woman and a lanky man with blond hair were in the process of climbing out. It was the woman who first noticed Gabriel. But in a stroke of professionalism belying her inexperience, she did not call out to him or even acknowledge his presence. Instead, she simply took her companion gently by the arm and led him over to the Audi. Gabriel had the engine running by the time they arrived. A moment later, they were heading down the Vallée des Ormonts, Zoe at Gabriel’s side, Mikhail stretched out in the backseat.
    “Lift your glasses,” said Gabriel.
    Mikhail complied.
    “Who did that to you?”
    “I never caught their names.” Mikhail lowered the glasses and propped his head against the window. “Did you beat him, Gabriel? Did you beat Martin?”
    “No, Mikhail. You and Zoe beat him. You beat him badly.”
    “How much of his computer did I get?”
    “We own him, Mikhail. He’s ours.”
    “Where to now?”
    “Out of Switzerland.”
    “I’m in no condition to fly.”
    “So we’ll drive instead.”
    “No more airplanes, Gabriel?”
    “No, Mikhail. Not for a while.”

PART FIVE
    RECOVERY

77
    NEW SCOTLAND YARD, LONDON
    D etective Inspector Kenneth Ramsay, chief of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Squad, scheduled the news conference for two p.m. Within minutes of the announcement, rumors of a major recovery swept the pressroom. The speculation was fed mainly by the few surviving veterans of the Metropolitan Police beat, who read a great deal of significance into the timing of the news conference itself. An early-afternoon summons nearly always meant