The Secret Servant

arrested?”
    “I read it in the newspapers like everyone else.” She poured him a glass of red wine. “You were all the rage in Buenos Aires.”
    “What kind of work were you doing there?”
    “You know I can’t tell you that.”
    “I know you were watching members of a Hezbollah cell. I just want to know whether you were part of the actual surveillance team or just an escort officer?”
    “I was part of the team,” she said. “I don’t do much escort work anymore.”
    “Why did they pull you out?”
    “Overexposure to the targets.” Elizabeth Halton’s face appeared suddenly on the television screen. “Pretty girl,” Chiara said. “Why did they take her?”
    “I may find out tomorrow.” He told her about his trip to Cyprus.
    “What about your dinner with the prime minister?”
    Gabriel looked up from the television. “How did you know about that?”
    “Shamron told me.”
    “So much for operational security,” he said. “What exactly did he say to you?”
    She placed the fettuccine in the water to boil and sat down next to him. “He said that you had agreed to succeed Amos as director.”
    “I’ve agreed to no such thing.”
    “That’s not what Shamron says.”
    “Shamron has a long history of hearing exactly what he wants to hear. What else did he say?”
    “He wants us to get our personal life in order as soon as possible. He doesn’t think it’s proper for the director to be living with a woman out of wedlock, especially one who happens to be an employee of the Office. He thinks we should accelerate our wedding plans.” She placed a finger beneath his chin and turned his face toward hers. “You agree, don’t you?”
    “Oh, yes, of course,” said Gabriel hastily. He had learned that any hesitation to engage in a discussion of wedding plans was always wrongly interpreted by Chiara as a reluctance to marry. “We should get married as soon as possible.”
    “When?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s a very simple question, Gabriel. When do you think we should get married?”
    “Late spring,” he said. “Before it gets too hot.”
    “May?”
    “May would be perfect.”
    Chiara removed her fingertip from beneath Gabriel’s chin and nibbled nervously at her nail. “How am I going to plan a wedding in six months?”
    “Hire a professional planner to help you.”
    “A wedding isn’t an operation, Gabriel. It’s supposed to be planned by family, not a professional.”
    “What about Gilah Shamron? She’s the closest thing to a mother I have.”
    “Gilah has enough on her plate at the moment looking after her husband.”
    “All the more reason to ask her to help with the wedding. Trust me, she’ll jump at the chance.”
    “It’s not a bad idea, actually. No wonder Shamron wants you to be the chief. The first thing we have to do is settle on a guest list.”
    “That’s easy,” Gabriel said. “Just invite everyone from the Office, Shabak, AMAN, most of the Cabinet, and half of the Knesset. Oh, and don’t forget the prime minister.”
    “I’m not sure I want the prime minister to attend my wedding.”
    “You’re afraid of being overshadowed by a chubby octogenarian?”
    “Yes.”
    “The prime minister has three daughters of his own. He’ll make certain not to steal the limelight on your big day.”
    “ Our big day, Gabriel.” The water began to boil over. She stood up and walked back over to the stove. “Are you sure you have to go to Cyprus tomorrow?”
    “I want to hear what the Egyptian has to say with my own ears.”
    “But you’ve only just come home.”
    “It’s just for a day or two. Why don’t you come with me? You can work on that suntan of yours.”
    “It’s cold in Cyprus this time of year.”
    “So you want me to go alone?”
    “I’ll come,” she said. “You didn’t say anything about the way I decorated the apartment. Do you like it?”
    “Oh, yes,” he said hastily. “It’s lovely.”
    “I found a ring on the coffee table. Did you put a hot drink on it without a coaster?”
    “It was Uzi,” Gabriel said.
    Chiara poured the fettuccine into a colander and frowned. “He’s such a slob,” she said. “I don’t know how Bella can live with him.”

14
     
    T he items she had requested lay arranged on an adjacent cot: isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, rubber gloves, tweezers, needle-nose pliers, a straight razor, codeine and cephalin tablets, four-by-four sterile pads, medical tape, two eighteen-inch strips of wood,