The Secret Servant

 
    G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
     
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    Copyright © 2007 by Daniel Silva
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
     
    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Silva, Daniel, date.
The secret servant / Daniel Silva.
p. cm.
Sequel to: The messenger.
ISBN: 1-4295-3754-X
1. Allon, Gabriel (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 3. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 4. Israelis—Netherlands—Amsterdam—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.I5443S43 2007b 2007017548
813'.6—dc22
     
    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
     
    While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
     

 
For Stacy and Henry Winkler, for their friendship,
support, and tireless work on behalf of children. And, as
always, for my wife, Jamie, and my children, Lily and
Nicholas.

 
On present demographic trends, by the end of the twenty-first century at the latest, Europe will be Muslim.
    —B ERNARD L EWIS
     
The threat is serious, is growing and will, I believe, be with us for a generation. It is a sustained campaign, not a series of isolated incidents. It aims to wear down our will to resist.
    —D AME E LIZA M ANNINGHAM -B ULLER,
DIRECTOR GENERAL OF MI5
     
If you send a prisoner to Jordan, you get a better interrogation. If you send a prisoner, for instance, to Egypt, you will probably never see him again.
    —R OBERT B AER, AS QUOTED BY
S TEPHEN G REY IN Ghost Plane
     

THE SECRET SERVANT

PART O NE
     

DEATH OF A PROPHET

1
     
    A MSTERDAM
     
    I t was Professor Solomon Rosner who sounded the first alarm, though his name would never be linked to the affair except in the secure rooms of a drab office building in downtown Tel Aviv. Gabriel Allon, the legendary but wayward son of Israeli intelligence, would later observe that Rosner was the first asset in the annals of Office history to have proven more useful to them dead than alive. Those who overheard the remark found it uncharacteristically callous but in keeping with the bleak mood that by then had settled over them all.
    The backdrop for Rosner’s demise was not Israel, where violent death occurs all too frequently, but the normally tranquil quarter of Amsterdam known as the Old Side. The date was the first Friday in December, and the weather was more suited to early spring than the last days of autumn. It was a day to engage in what the Dutch so fondly refer to as gezelligheid , the pursuit of small pleasures: an aimless stroll through the flower stalls of the Bloemenmarkt, a lager or two in a good bar in the Rembrandtplein, or, for those so inclined, a bit of fine cannabis in the brown coffeehouses of the Haarlemmerstraat. Leave the fretting and the fighting to the hated Americans,