The Secret Servant

words of the celebrated Israeli spymaster Ari Shamron, Special Ops was “the dark side of a dark service.” They were the ones who did the jobs no one else wanted, or dared, to do. They were executioners and kidnappers, buggers and blackmailers; men of intellect and ingenuity with a criminal streak wider than the criminals themselves; multilinguists and chameleons who were at home in the finest hotels and salons in Europe or the worst back alleys of Beirut and Baghdad. Navot was new to the job and had been granted the promotion only because Gabriel had turned it down. There was no animosity between them. Navot was the first to admit he was a mere field hand. Gabriel Allon was a legend.
    The corridor led to a secure door, and the door to a restricted area just off the main traffic circle outside the terminal. A dented Renault sedan stood in the reserved parking place. Navot opened the trunk and tossed Gabriel’s bag inside. “I gave my driver the night off,” he said. “I wanted a word in private. You know how the drivers can be. They sit around down there in the motor pool all day with nothing to do but gossip. They’re worse than a sewing circle.”
    Gabriel got into the passenger seat and closed the door. He looked into the backseat. It was stacked with Bella’s books and files. Bella was an academic who specialized in Syria and drifted in and out of government service. She was far more intelligent than Navot, an openly acknowledged fact that had been a source of considerable tension in their long and turbulent relationship. Navot started her car with a hostile twist of the key and drove it too hard toward the airport exit ramp.
    “How did the painting turn out?” he asked.
    “It turned out just fine, Uzi.”
    “It was a Botticelli, wasn’t it?”
    “Bellini,” Gabriel corrected him. “ Lament over the Dead Christ .” He might have added that the sublime panel had once formed the cyma of Bellini’s remarkable altarpiece in the Church of San Francesco in Pesaro, but he didn’t. The fact that Gabriel was one of the world’s finest art restorers had always made him the target of professional envy among his colleagues. He rarely discussed his work with them, even with Navot, who had become a close friend.
    “Botticelli, Bellini—it’s all the same to me.” Navot shook his head. “Imagine, a nice Jewish boy like you restoring a Bellini masterpiece for the pope. I hope he paid you well.”
    “He paid me the standard fee—and then a little more.”
    “It’s only fair,” Navot said. “After all, you did save his life.”
    “You had a hand in it, too, Uzi.”
    “But I wasn’t the one who got his picture in the paper doing it.”
    They came to the end of the ramp. Overhead was a blue-and-white traffic sign. To the left was Tel Aviv, to the right, Jerusalem. Navot turned to the right and headed toward the Judean Hills.
    “How’s the mood at King Saul Boulevard?” Gabriel asked.
    King Saul Boulevard was the longtime address of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. The service had a long name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Men like Gabriel and Uzi Navot referred to it as “the Office” and nothing else.
    “Consider yourself fortunate you’ve been away.”
    “That bad?”
    “It’s the night of the long knives. Our adventure in Lebanon was an unmitigated disaster. None of our institutions came out of it with their reputations intact, including the Office. You know how these things work. When mistakes of this magnitude are made, heads must roll, the more the better. No one is safe, especially Amos. The Commission of Inquiry wants to know why the Office didn’t realize Hezbollah was so well armed and why our vast network of well-paid collaborators couldn’t seem to find Hezbollah’s leadership once the fighting started.”
    “The last thing the Office needs now is another power struggle and battle for succession—not with Hezbollah gearing up for another war. Not with Iran on the verge of a nuclear weapon. And not with the territories about to explode.”
    “The decision has already been made by Shamron and the rest of the wise men that Amos must die. The only question is, will it be an execution, or will Amos be allowed to do the deed himself after a decent interval?”
    “How do you know where Shamron stands on all this?”
    Navot, by his edgy silence, made clear that his source was Shamron himself. It had been years now since Shamron had done his