The Secret Servant

Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and saw Lavon start after them. Sophie Vanderhaus gazed down at the cobbles, as if organizing her thoughts.
    “It’s been five days since his murder,” she said, “and not a single Muslim leader has bothered to condemn it. In fact, given a chance to do so by the Dutch media, they have chosen to blame it on him . Where are these so-called moderate Muslims one always hears about in the press? Do they exist or are they merely figments of our imagination? If one insults the Prophet Muhammad, our Muslim countrymen pour into the streets in a sacred rage and threaten us with beheading. But when one of them commits murder in the Prophet’s name…”
    Her voice trailed off. Gabriel completed the thought for her.
    “The silence is deafening.”
    “Well put,” she said. “But you didn’t come to Amsterdam to listen to a lecture by me. You have a job to do.” She scrutinized him carefully for a moment while they walked side by side in the narrow street. “Do you know, Herr Kiever, it was exactly a year ago that Professor Rosner first told me about his relationship with a man named Rudolf Heller and what I was to do in the event anything ever happened to him. Needless to say, I hoped this day would never come.”
    “I understand you and Professor Rosner were very close.”
    “He was like a father to me. I had a dozen other job offers when I completed my degree—jobs that paid much more than the Center for European Security Studies—but I chose to work for Professor Rosner for a pittance instead.”
    “You’re a historian?”
    She nodded. “While I was researching my thesis, I learned that we Dutch have a habit of trying to reach accommodation with murderous ideologies, be it National Socialism or Islamic fascism. I wanted to help break that cycle. Working for Professor Rosner gave me that chance.” She pushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead and looked at Gabriel. “I was at Professor Rosner’s side for five years, Herr Kiever. I had to endure the taunts and threats as well. And I believe that entitles me to ask a few questions before we start.”
    “I’m afraid asking too many questions about who I am and why I’m here will make your life more complicated and dangerous than it already is.”
    “Will you permit me to posit a hypothesis?”
    “If you insist.”
    “I don’t believe Herr Rudolf Heller is Swiss. And I certainly don’t believe he’s a venture capitalist who had an interest in supporting the work of a terrorism analyst in Amsterdam.”
    “Really?”
    “Professor Rosner didn’t talk much about his feelings toward Israel. He knew it would only make him more radioactive in Amsterdam than he already was. But he was a Zionist. He believed in Israel and the right of the Jewish people to a homeland. And I suspect that if a clever Israeli intelligence officer came along and made him the right sort of offer, he would have done almost anything to help.”
    She stopped walking and looked at Gabriel for a moment with one eyebrow raised, as if giving him a chance to respond.
    “My name is Heinrich Kiever,” he said. “I’m a colleague of Herr Rudolf Heller from Zurich, and I’ve come to Amsterdam to review the private papers of Professor Solomon Rosner.”
    She capitulated, though judging from her expression she remained deeply skeptical of his cover story. Gabriel didn’t blame her. It was hardly airtight.
    “I hope you’re not planning on leaving Amsterdam any time soon,” she said. “At last estimate, we had more than a hundred thousand pages of documents in our archives.”
    “I brought help.”
    “Where?”
    Gabriel nodded toward Lavon, who was gazing into a shopwindow twenty yards behind them.
    “Since when do Zurich venture capitalists employ professional surveillance men?” She set off down the Groenburgwal. “Come on, Herr Kiever . You have a long night ahead of you.”
     
     
     
    Her original estimate of Rosner’s archives proved wildly optimistic. Gabriel, after conducting a brief tour of the canal house, reckoned the true number of pages ran closer to a quarter million. There were files in Rosner’s office and files in Sophie’s. Files lined the hallway, and there was a dank chamber filled with files in the cellar. And then, of course, there was all the material contained on the hard drive of Rosner’s computer. So much for Shamron’s prediction that they would be back in Jerusalem by the weekend.
    They started in Rosner’s