Switzerland’s shameful behavior in WWII provides the backdrop for this superbly crafted thriller that puts Silva at the forefront of his generation of foreign intrigue specialists…. Silva’s sophisticated treatment polished prose, an edgy mood, convincing research gives his plot a crisp, almost urgent quality.”
—Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)

Silva, who writes with the atmospheric grace and whiplash tension of le Carre, brings something special to the spy thriller: a multifaceted, believable hero whose sideline, spying, is only as intriguing as his regular job, restoring Old Masters…. Silva makes a stunning contribution to the spy thriller.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)

An exceptionally readable, sophisticated thriller…. Silva ranks, with Alan Furst, among the best of the younger American spy novelists.”
—The Washington Post

Enthralling…. A thriller that entertains as well as enlightens.”
—The Orlando Sentinel

Silva excitingly delivers his story’s twists and turns…. Moves at a brisk clip, with clean, lucid exposition and characters who are thoughtfully drawn.”
—The New York Times

MUNICH

The apartment house at Adalbertstrasse 68 was one of the few in the fashionable district of Schwabing yet to be overrun by Munich’s noisy and growing professional elite. Wedged between two red brick buildings that exuded prewar charm, No. 68 seemed rather like an ugly younger stepsister. Her façade was a cracked beige stucco, her form squat and graceless. As a result her suitors were a tenuous community of students, artists, anarchists, and unrepentant punk rockers, all presided over by an authoritarian caretaker named Frau Ratzinger, who, it was rumored, had been living in the original apartment house at No. 68 when it was leveled by an Allied bomb. Neighborhood activists derided the building as an eyesore in need of gentrification. Defenders said it exemplified the very sort of Bohemian arrogance that had once made Schwabing the Montmartre of Germany, the Schwabing of Hesse and Mann and Lenin. And Adolf Hitler, the professor working in the second-floor window might have been tempted to add, but few in the old neighborhood liked to be reminded of the fact that the young Austrian outcast had once found inspiration in these quiet tree-lined streets too.

To his students and colleagues, he was Herr Doktorprofessor Stern. To friends in the neighborhood he was just Benjamin; to the occasional visitor from home, he was Binyamin. In an anonymous stone-and-glass office complex in the north of Tel Aviv, where a file of his youthful exploits still resided despite his pleas to have it burned, he would always be known as Beni, youngest of Ari Shamron’s wayward sons. Officially, Benjamin Stern remained a member of the faculty at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, though for the past four years he had served as visiting professor of European studies at Munich’s prestigious Ludwig-Maximilian University. It had become something of a permanent loan, which was fine with Professor Stern. In an odd twist of historical fate, life was more pleasant for a Jew these days in Germany than in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

The fact that his mother had survived the horrors of the Riga ghetto gave Professor Stern a certain dubious standing among the other tenants of No. 68. He was a curiosity. He was their conscience. They railed at him about the plight of the Palestinians. They gently asked him questions they dared not put to their parents and grandparents. He was their guidance counselor and trusted sage. They came to him for advice on their studies. They poured out their heart to him when they’d been dumped by a lover. They raided his fridge when they were hungry and pillaged his wallet when they were broke. Most importantly, he served as tenant spokesman in all disputes involving the dreaded Frau Ratzinger. Professor Stern was the only one in the building who did not fear her. They seemed to have a special relationship. A kinship. “It’s Stockholm Syndrome,” claimed Alex, a psychology student who lived on the top floor. “Prisoner and camp guard. Master and servant.” But it was more than that. The professor and the old woman seemed to speak the same language.

The previous year, when his book on the Wannsee Conference had become an international bestseller, Professor Stern had flirted with the idea of moving to a more stylish building, perhaps one with proper security and a view of the English Gardens. A place where the other tenants didn’t treat his flat as if it were an annex to their own. This had incited panic among the others. One evening they came to him en masse and petitioned him to stay. Promises were made. They would not steal his food, nor would they ask for loans when there was no hope of repayment. They would be more respectful of his need for quiet. They would come to him for advice only when it was absolutely necessary. The professor acquiesced, but within a month his flat was once again the de facto common room of Adalbertstrasse 68. Secretly, he was glad they were back. The rebellious children of No. 68 were the only family Benjamin Stern had left.

The clatter of a passing streetcar broke his concentration. He looked up in time to see it disappear behind the canopy of a chestnut tree, then glanced at his watch. Eleven-thirty. He’d been at it since five that morning. He removed his glasses and spent a long moment rubbing his eyes. What was it Orwell had said about writing a book? “A horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” Sometimes, Benjamin Stern felt as though this book might be fatal.

The red light on his telephone answering machine was blinking. He made a habit of muting the ringers to avoid unwanted interruptions. Hesitantly, like a bomb handler deciding which wire to cut, he reached out and pressed the button. The little speaker emitted a blast of heavy metal music, followed by a warlike yelp.

“I have some good news, Herr Doktorprofessor. By the end of the day, there will be one less filthy Jew on the planet! Wiedersehen, Herr Doktorprofessor.”

Click.

Professor Stern erased the message. He was used to them by now. He received two a week these days; sometimes more, depending on whether he had made an appearance on television or taken part in some public debate. He knew them by voice; assigned each a trivial, unthreatening nickname to lessen their impact on his nerves. This fellow called at least twice each month. Professor Stern had dubbed him Wolfie. Sometimes he told the police. Most of the time he didn’t bother. There was nothing they could do anyway.

He locked his manuscript and notes in the floor safe tucked beneath his desk. Then he pulled on a pair of shoes and a woolen jacket and collected the rubbish bag from the kitchen. The old building had no elevator, which meant he had to walk down two flights of stairs to reach the ground floor. As he entered the lobby, a chemical stench greeted him. The building was home to a small but thriving kosmetik. The professor detested the beauty shop. When it was busy, the rancid smell of nail-polish remover rose through the ventilation system and enveloped his flat. It also made the building less secure than he would have preferred. Because the kosmetik had no separate street entrance, the lobby was constantly cluttered with beautiful Schwabinians arriving for their pedicures, facials, and waxings.

He turned right, toward a doorway that gave onto the tiny courtyard, and hesitated in the threshold, checking to see if the cats were about. Last night he’d been awakened at midnight by a skirmish over some morsel of garbage. There were no cats this morning, only a pair of bored beauticians in spotless white tunics smoking cigarettes against the wall. He padded across the sooty bricks and tossed his bag into the bin.

Returning to the entrance hall, he found Frau Ratzinger punishing the linoleum floor with a worn straw broom. “Good morning, Herr Doktorprofessor,” the old woman snapped; then she added accusingly: “Going out for your morning coffee?”

Professor Stern nodded and murmured, “Ja, ja, Frau Ratzinger.” She glared at two messy stacks of fliers, one advertising a free concert in the park, the other a holistic massage clinic on the Schellingstrasse. “No matter how many times I ask them not to leave these things here, they do it anyway. It’s that drama student in 4B. He lets anyone into the building.”

The professor shrugged his shoulders, as if mystified by the lawless ways of the young, and smiled kindly at the old woman. Frau Ratzinger picked up the fliers and marched them into the courtyard. A moment later, he could hear her berating the beauticians for tossing their cigarette butts on the ground.

He stepped outside and paused to take stock of the weather. Not too cold for early March, the sun peering through a gauzy layer of cloud. He pushed his hands into his coat pockets and set out. Entering the English Gardens, he followed a tree-lined path along the banks of a rain-swollen canal. He liked the park. It gave his mind a quiet place to rest after the morning’s exertions on the computer. More importantly, it gave him an opportunity to see if today they were following him. He stopped walking and beat his coat pockets dramatically to indicate he had forgotten something. Then he doubled back and retraced his steps, scanning faces, checking to see if they matched any of the ones stored in the database of his prodigious memory. He paused on a humpbacked footbridge, as if admiring the rush of the water over a short fall. A drug dealer with spiders tattooed on his face offered him heroin. The professor mumbled something incoherent and walked quickly away. Two minutes later he ducked into a public telephone and pretended to place a call while carefully surveying the surroundings. He hung up the receiver.

“Wiedersehen, Herr Doktorprofessor.”

He turned onto the Ludwigstrasse and hurried across the university district, head down, hoping to avoid being spotted by any students or colleagues. Earlier that week, he had received a rather nasty letter from Dr. Helmut Berger, the pompous chairman of his department, wondering when the book might be finished and when he could be expected to resume his lecturing obligations. Professor Stern did not like Helmut Berger, their well-publicized feud was both personal and academic, and conveniently he had not found the time to respond.

The bustle of the Viktualienmarkt pushed thoughts of work from his mind. He moved past mounds of brightly colored fruit and vegetables, past flower stalls and open-air butchers. He picked out a few things for his supper, then crossed the street to Café Bar Eduscho for coffee and a Dinkelbrot. Forty-five minutes later, as he set out for Schwabing, he felt refreshed, his mind light, ready for one more wrestling match with his book. His illness, as Orwell would have called it.

As he arrived at the apartment house, a gust of wind chased him into the lobby and scattered a fresh stack of salmon-colored fliers. The professor twisted his head so he could read one. A new curry takeaway had opened around the corner. He liked a good curry. He scooped up one of the fliers and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

The wind had carried a few of the leaflets toward the courtyard. Frau Ratzinger would be furious. As he trod softly up the stairs, she poked her head from her foxhole of a flat and spotted the mess. Predictably appalled, she glared at him with inquisitor’s eyes. Slipping the key into his door lock, he could hear the old woman cursing as she dealt with this latest outrage.

In the kitchen, he put away the food and brewed himself a cup of tea. Then he walked down the hallway to his study. A man was standing at his desk, casually leafing through a stack of research. He wore a white tunic, like the ones worn by the beauticians at the kosmetik, and was very tall with athletic shoulders. His hair was blond and streaked with gray. Hearing the professor enter the room, the intruder looked up. His eyes were gray too, cold as a glacier.

“Open the safe, Herr Doktorprofessor.”

The voice was calm, almost flirtatious. The German was accented. It wasn’t Wolfie, Professor Stern was sure of that. He had a flair for languages and an ear for local dialects. The man in the tunic was Swiss, and his Schwyzerdtsch had the broad singsong accent of a man from the mountain valleys.

“Who in the hell do you think you are?”

“Open the safe,” the intruder repeated as the eyes returned to the papers on the desk.

“There’s nothing in the safe of any value. If it’s money you’re…”

Professor Stern wasn’t permitted to finish the sentence. In a swift motion, the intruder reached beneath the tunic, produced a silenced handgun. The professor knew weapons as well as accents. The gun was a Russian-made Stechkin. The bullet tore through the professor’s right kneecap. He fell to the floor, hands clutching the wound, blood pumping between his fingers.

“I suppose you’ll just have to give me the combination now,” the Swiss said calmly.

The pain was like nothing Benjamin Stern had ever experienced. He was panting, struggling to catch his breath, his mind a maelstrom. “The combination?” God, but he could barely remember his name.

“I’m waiting, Herr Doktorprofessor.”

He forced himself to take a series of deep breaths. This supplied his brain with enough oxygen to permit him to access the combination to the safe. He recited the numbers, his jaw trembling with shock. The intruder knelt in front of the safe and deftly worked the tumbler. A moment later, the door swung open.

The intruder looked inside, then at the professor.

“You have backup disks. Where do you keep them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“As it stands right now, you’ll be able to walk with the use of a cane.” He raised the gun. “If I shoot you in the other knee, you’ll spend the rest of your life on crutches.”

The professor was slipping from consciousness. His jaw was trembling. “Don’t shiver, damn you! Don’t give him the pleasure of seeing your fear!” “In the refrigerator.”

“The refrigerator?”

“In case”-a burst of pain shot through him-“of a fire.”

The intruder raised an eyebrow. “Clever boy.” He’d brought a bag along with him, a black nylon duffel, about three feet in length. He reached inside and withdrew a cylindrical object: a can of spray paint. He removed the cap, and with a skilled hand he began to paint symbols on the wall of the study. Symbols of violence. Symbols of hate. Ludicrously, the professor found himself wondering what Frau Ratzinger would say when she saw this. In his delirium, he must have murmured something aloud, because the intruder paused for a moment to examine him with a vacant stare.

When he was finished with his graffiti, the intruder returned the spray can to his duffel, then stood over the professor. The pain from the shattered bones was making Benjamin Stern hot with fever. Blackness was closing in at the edges of his vision, so that the intruder seemed to be standing at the end of a tunnel. The professor searched the ashen eyes for some sign of lunacy, but he found nothing at all but cool intelligence. This man was no racist fanatic, he thought. He was a professional.

The intruder stooped over him. “Would you like to make a last confession, Professor Stern?”

“What are you”, he grimaced in pain, “talking about?”

“It’s very simple. Do you wish to confess your sins?”

“You’re the murderer,” Benjamin Stern said deliriously.

The assassin smiled. The gun swung up again, and he fired two shots into the professor’s chest. Benjamin Stern felt his body convulse but was spared further pain. He remained conscious for a few seconds, long enough to see his killer kneel down at his side and to feel the cool touch of his thumb against his damp forehead. He was mumbling something. Latin? Yes, the professor was certain of it.

“Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”

The professor looked into his killer’s eyes. “But I’m a Jew,” he murmured.

“It doesn’t matter,” the assassin said.

Then he placed the Stechkin against the side of Benjamin Stern’s head and fired one last shot.

Reprinted from The Confessor by Daniel Silva by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright© 2003, Daniel Silva. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

The Confessor is carefully researched, and the historical information doesn’t slow the slam-bang pace. It’s one of those rare books that sweep you into forgetting to eat or sleep. Daniel Silva has now indisputably joined the ranks of Graham Greene and John Le Carré.”
—Washingtonian

Many books and plays have questioned Pope Pius XII’s silence and lack of action during the Holocaust. Silva goes beyond easy assumptions, using newly uncovered documents to create a darker scenario. That darkness is increasingly tinged with sadness, as Allon moves through present-day Jewish communities in Munich, Venice and Rome where nothing seems to have been changed by the deaths and denials of history. At the end of The Confessor, after many scenes of thumping action, passionate words, hot pursuit and cold revenge, what will probably stay with you longest are the quiet moments where the reasons for Pope Paul VII’s convictions are revealed. It’s a different kind of thrill than you might expect from a commercial thriller, but it certainly leaves a tingle.”
—The Chicago Tribune

Accomplished … as elegantly written as its predecessors … a compelling piece of fiction, one that manages to be both superior entertainment and a hard look at serious issues.”
—The Washington Post

This is the third spy thriller featuring Gabriel Allon, art restorer and reluctant Israeli agent, following The Kill Artist and The English Assassin, and it is utterly compelling reading…. Silva’s searing portrait of a church under siege by its own corrupt bureaucracy and corporate publicity machine is particularly resonant. An uncommonly intelligent thriller told with elegant precision.”
—Booklist

Silva, who here loads new excitement into the word thriller, will touch nerves with this hypothetical exploration of the Church’s silence…. The Vatican, Venice, and Munich are perfectly drawn as the settings for these dark acts of ambition, greed, and revenge, as are the characters, whom you’d scarcely believe live only on the page.”
—Library Journal

“Most suspense fiction is dismissed by critics as lightweight. One-dimensional superheroes perform near-impossible feats and save the nation from disaster. Throw in a love scene, about three fights and a little high-tech jargon, and that’s it. Daniel Silva’s books are an exception. His protagonists are flawed, and their approach to their bloody jobs is pragmatic rather than heroic…. There’s nothing simple, nothing black-and-white, about the mystery Gabriel must eventually solve. The book’s conclusion is satisfying, but not entirely triumphant. You’ll enjoy reading it.”
—The Dallas Star-Telegram

The Confessor is a tightly worded, elegant book, not as concerned with the horrific details of the spy-and-shoot genre as it is with big ideas, unsettling suggestions, and the elusive nature of redemption. Silva moves coldly through the evil found in the story, the people who committed and continue to commit atrocious deeds. He finds his warmth in the survivors, those who refuse to forget the unjustly executed, people who restore order and grace, even as their actions chip away at their own souls. The Confessor is ambitious, worldly, and deeply personal.”
—The Modesto Bee

Eye-popping…. As Silva’s tale unfolds, the reader’s interest is riveted on the exciting developments. The author’s skill enables him to depict a tale of intrigue that compels the reader eagerly to turn the pages of this fast-paced shocker. It has a special brief and a clear purpose that goes beyond the substantial entertainment it provides. Set in Europe during the immediate future, The Confessor unmasks the unsavory past of the Catholic Church while simultaneously presenting those elements of the church that are a contemporary force for good in the world…. All these elements research, journalism, and religious identity combine with superb writing skill to produce best-selling novels that properly command attention.”
—The Jewish Press

Silva shines a harsh light on the role of the Vatican during World War II, at the very least turning a blind eye to the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews. The Confessor is another thrilling example of how Silva manages to keep mining gold from the world’s dirty secrets.”
—The Orlando Sentinel

Every author tries to write good books – Silva actually does it. Nothing is overdone, not the invincibility of Allon nor the power of the bad guys. I read every page with delight. Others may have done it, but Silva has done it much better.”
—Roanoke Times

The plot of The Confessor is complex, yes, but it’s so believable that, by the end of the book, you will be wondering how much of this might really have happened, or might happen yet. It’s a fine, absorbing read-especially if you’d like something that feels current and will occupy your mind so thoroughly that, for a while, you can forget about what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
—Bookreporter.com

Another polished and entertaining thriller from the prolific Silva … powered by steady pacing, keen detail, and a strong, ironic finish.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Silva writes thrillers that are intelligent and action-packed.”
—The Rocky Mountain News

Silva … will keep readers enthralled.”
—Publishers Weekly

I’m a big fan of Daniel Silva’s twisting, turning tales of modern-day assassins and spies who are molded by the past and present. I don’t want to spoil the fun of the author, who delights in keeping you guessing up the very last pages. So if you’re a fan, too, just trust me and get the book. Another riveting tale.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://fabcare.com/tag/complete/ PART ONE

http://bfnionizers.com/wp-login.php The Man From Café central

1

VIENNA

THE OFFICE IS hard to find, and intentionally so. Located near the end of a narrow, curving lane, in a quarter of Vienna more renowned for its nightlife than its tragic past, the entrance is marked only by a small brass plaque bearing the inscription Wartime Claims and Inquiries. The security system, installed by an obscure firm based in Tel Aviv, is formidable and highly visible. A camera glowers menacingly from above the door. No one is admitted without an appointment and a letter of introduction. Visitors must pass through a finely tuned magnetometer. Purses and briefcases are inspected with unsmiling efficiency by one of two disarmingly pretty girls. One is called Reveka, the other Sarah.

Once inside, the visitor is escorted along a claustrophobic corridor lined with gunmetal-gray filing cabinets, then into a large typically Viennese chamber with pale floors, a high ceiling, and bookshelves bowed beneath the weight of countless volumes and file folders. The donnish clutter is appealing, though some are unnerved by the green-tinted bulletproof windows overlooking the melancholy courtyard.

The man who works there is untidy and easily missed. It is his special talent. Sometimes, as you enter, he is standing atop a library ladder rummaging for a book. Usually he is seated at his desk, wreathed in cigarette smoke, peering at the stack of paperwork and files that never seems to diminish. He takes a moment to finish a sentence or jot a loose minute in the margin of a document, then he rises and extends his tiny hand, his quick brown eyes flickering over you. “Eli Lavon,” he says modestly as he shakes your hand, though everyone in Vienna knows who runs Wartime Claims and Inquiries.

Were it not for Lavon’s well-established reputation, his appearance-a shirtfront chronically smeared with ash, a shabby burgundy-colored cardigan with patches on the elbows and a tattered hem-might prove disturbing. Some suspect he is without sufficient means; others imagine he is an ascetic or even slightly mad. One woman who wanted help winning restitution from a Swiss bank concluded he was suffering from a permanently broken heart. How else to explain that he had never been married? The air of bereavement that is sometimes visible when he thinks no one is looking? Whatever the visitor’s suspicions, the result is usually the same. Most cling to him for fear he might float away.

He points you toward the comfortable couch. He asks the girls to hold his calls, then places his thumb and forefinger together and tips them toward his mouth. Coffee, please. Out of earshot the girls quarrel about whose turn it is. Reveka is an Israeli from Haifa, olive-skinned and black-eyed, stubborn and fiery. Sarah is a well-heeled American Jew from the Holocaust studies program at Boston University, more cerebral than Reveka and therefore more patient. She is not above resorting to deception or even outright lies to avoid a chore she believes is beneath her. Reveka, honest and temperamental, is easily outmaneuvered, and so it is usually Reveka who joylessly plunks a silver tray on the coffee table and retreats in a sulk.

Lavon has no set formula for how to conduct his meetings. He permits the visitor to determine the course. He is not averse to answering questions about himself and, if pressed, explains how it came to be that one of Israel’s most talented young archaeologists chose to sift through the unfinished business of the Holocaust rather than the troubled soil of his homeland. His willingness to discuss his past, however, goes only so far. He does not tell visitors that, for a brief period in the early 1970s, he worked for Israel’s notorious secret service. Or that he is still regarded as the finest street surveillance artist the service has ever produced. Or that twice a year, when he returns to Israel to see his aged mother, he visits a highly secure facility north of Tel Aviv to share some of his secrets with the next generation. Inside the service he is still referred to as “the Ghost.” His mentor, a man called Ari Shamron, always said that Eli Lavon could disappear while shaking your hand. It was not far from the truth.

He is quiet around his guests, just as he was quiet around the men he stalked for Shamron. He is a chain smoker, but if it bothers the guest he will refrain. A polyglot, he listens to you in whatever language you prefer. His gaze is sympathetic and steady, though behind his eyes it is sometimes possible to detect puzzle pieces sliding into place. He prefers to hold all questions until the visitor has completed his case. His time is precious, and he makes decisions quickly. He knows when he can help. He knows when it is better to leave the past undisturbed.

Should he accept your case, he asks for a small sum of money to finance the opening stages of his investigation. He does so with noticeable embarrassment, and if you cannot pay he will waive the fee entirely. He receives most of his operating funds from donors, but Wartime Claims is hardly a profitable enterprise and Lavon is chronically strapped for cash. The source of his funding has been a contentious issue in certain circles of Vienna, where he is reviled as a troublesome outsider financed by international Jewry, always sticking his nose into places it doesn’t belong. There are many in Austria who would like Wartime Claims to close its doors for good. It is because of them that Eli Lavon spends his days behind green bulletproof glass.

On a snow-swept evening in early January, Lavon was alone in his office, hunched over a stack of files. There were no visitors that day. In fact it had been many days since Lavon had accepted appointments, the bulk of his time being consumed by a single case. At seven o’clock, Reveka poked her head through the door. “We’re hungry,” she said with typical Israeli bluntness. “Get us something to eat.” Lavon’s memory, while impressive, did not extend to food orders. Without looking up from his work, he waved his pen in the air as though he were writing-Make me a list, Reveka.

A moment later, he closed the file and stood up. He looked out his window and watched the snow settling gently onto the black bricks of the courtyard. Then he pulled on his overcoat, wrapped a scarf twice around his neck, and placed a cap atop his thinning hair. He walked down the hall to the room where the girls worked. Reveka’s desk was a skyline of German military files; Sarah, the eternal graduate student, was concealed behind a stack of books. As usual, they were quarreling. Reveka wanted Indian from a take-away just on the other side of the Danube Canal; Sarah craved pasta from an Italian café on the Kärntnerstrasse. Lavon, oblivious, studied the new computer on Sarah’s desk.

“When did that arrive?” he asked, interrupting their debate.

“This morning.”

“Why do we have a new computer?”

“Because you bought the old one when the Hapsburgs still ruled Austria.”

“Did I authorize the purchase of a new computer?”

The question was not threatening. The girls managed the office. Papers were placed beneath his nose, and usually he signed them without looking.

“No, Eli, you didn’t approve the purchase. My father paid for the computer.”

Lavon smiled. “Your father is a generous man. Please thank him on my behalf.”

The girls resumed their debate. As usual it resolved in Sarah’s favor. Reveka wrote out the list and threatened to pin it to Lavon’s sleeve. Instead, she stuffed it into his coat pocket for safekeeping and gave him a little shove to send him on his way. “And don’t stop for a coffee,” she said. “We’re starving.”

It was almost as difficult to leave Wartime Claims and Inquiries as it was to enter. Lavon punched a series of numbers into a keypad on the wall next to the entrance. When the buzzer sounded, he pulled open the interior door and stepped into the security chamber. The outer door would not open until the inner door had been closed for ten seconds. Lavon put his face to the bulletproof glass and peered out.

On the opposite side of the street, concealed in the shadows at the entrance of a narrow alleyway, stood a heavy-shouldered figure with a fedora hat and mackintosh raincoat. Eli Lavon could not walk the streets of Vienna, or any other city for that matter, without ritualistically checking his tail and recording faces that appeared too many times in too many disparate situations. It was a professional affliction. Even from a distance, and even in the poor light, he knew that he had seen the figure across the street several times during the last few days.

He sorted through his memory, almost as a librarian would sort through a card index, until he found references to previous sightings. Yes, here it is. The Judenplatz, two days ago. It was you who was following me after I had coffee with that reporter from the States. He returned to the index and found a second reference. The window of a bar along the Sterngasse. Same man, without the fedora hat, gazing casually over his pilsner as Lavon hurried through a biblical deluge after a perfectly wretched day at the office. The third reference took him a bit longer to locate, but he found it nonetheless. The Number Two streetcar, evening rush. Lavon is pinned against the doors by a florid-faced Viennese who smells of bratwurst and apricot schnapps. Fedora has somehow managed to find a seat and is calmly cleaning his nails with his ticket stub. He is a man who enjoys cleaning things, Lavon had thought at the time. Perhaps he cleans things for a living.

Lavon turned round and pressed the intercom. No response. Come on, girls. He pressed it again, then looked over his shoulder. The man in the fedora and mackintosh coat was gone.

A voice came over the speaker. Reveka.

“Did you lose the list already, Eli?”

Lavon pressed his thumb against the button.

“Get out! Now!”

A few seconds later, Lavon could hear the trample of footfalls in the corridor. The girls appeared before him, separated by a wall of glass. Reveka coolly punched in the code. Sarah stood by silently, her eyes locked on Lavon’s, her hand on the glass.

He never remembered hearing the explosion. Reveka and Sarah were engulfed in a ball of fire, then were swept away by the blast wave. The door blew outward. Lavon was lifted like a child’s toy, arms spread wide, back arched like a gymnast. His flight was dreamlike. He felt himself turning over and over again. He had no memory of impact. He knew only that he was lying on his back in snow, in a hailstorm of broken glass. “My girls,” he whispered as he slid slowly into blackness. “My beautiful girls.”

–from A Death In Vienna by Daniel Silva, copyright © 2004 Daniel Silva, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted with permission from the publisher

[A] world-class practitioner of spy fiction…Silva is a skillful novelist who does justice to the often heartbreaking material without exploiting it.”
—The Washington Post Book World

Silva’s mastered the art of weaving provocative narrative, espionage and foreign intrigue. Silva’s gift is to pressure the reader to read on; to absorb unspeakable truths and to glimpse a James Bond-less espionage lifestyle. Life is shaken constantly, never stirred.”
—Chicago Sun-Times

A masterful and compelling tale of evil, treachery and revenge, again showing why he’s at the top of the list of thriller writers. A Death in Vienna goes to the top of the list of the year’s best.”
—Rocky Mountain News

Complex, compelling international espionage in the John le Carré vein.”
—The News-Press (Fort Myers, FL)

Cool brilliance.”
—Chicago Tribune

Provocative and deeply satisfying…stars one of the most intriguing protagonists in the genre… A Death in Viennaisn’t just a masterfully constructed tale of memory and revenge. It demonstrates that thrillers can be more than entertainment.”
—The Miami Herald

A thriller that’s not content to be just a thriller, as it delves into issues involving the Holocaust and its perpetrators and survivors.”
—The Kansas City Star

Unfailingly entertaining…gripping [and] significant.”
—The Raleigh News & Observer

A Death in Vienna completes Silva’s increasingly powerful trilogy about the unfinished business of the Holocaust…The ending is haunting.”
—The Orlando Sentinel

Silva’s writing is perfect: just enough description to be precise and an undercurrent of tension that drives the action. As always, Allon’s cause is justice, regardless of the means, and we can’t help but rally behind him.”
—Chattanooga News-Free Press

Silva’s intricate plot takes Allon across much of the globe, from Argentina to Poland, from Vienna to the Vatican…Silva writes with care and skill. He has a knack for local color, and Allon, his main character, is refreshingly human-world-weary, given to self-doubt and seemingly always wrestling with an inner demon of some sort.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

An exciting and complex novel.”
—Library Journal

[A] superbly crafted narrative of espionage and foreign intrigue. Action and suspense abound, but this is serious fiction with a serious purpose. Silva keeps the pressure on the reader as well as his characters as there are important lessons to be learned and vital history to be remembered.”
—Publishers Weekly

Silva writes le Carré-style spy novels in which the action, despite careening across cities and continents, retains knife-edge-sharp suspense…This finely wrought thriller reads like an exquisitely suspenseful chess game.”
—Booklist

Chapter 1
ROME: MARCH 4

THERE HAD BEEN WARNING SIGNS-THE SHABBAT bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left eighty-seven people dead; the bombing of an Istanbul synagogue, precisely one year later, that killed another twenty-eight-but Rome would be his coming-out party, and Rome would be the place where he left his calling card.

Afterward, within the corridors and executive suites of Israel’s vaunted intelligence service, there was considerable and sometimes belligerent debate over the time and place of the conspiracy’s genesis. Lev Ahroni, the ever-cautious director of the service, would claim that the plot was hatched not long after the Israeli army knocked down Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah and stole his secret files. Ari Shamron, the legendary Israeli master spy, would find this almost laughable, though Shamron often disagreed with Lev simply as a matter of sport. Only Shamron, who had fought with the Palmach during the War of Independence and who tended to view the conflict as a continuum, understood intuitively that the outrage in Rome had been inspired by deeds dating back more than a half century. Eventually, evidence would prove both Lev and Shamron correct. In the meantime, in order to achieve peaceful working conditions, they agreed on a new starting point: the day a certain Monsieur Jean-Luc arrived in the hills of Lazio and settled himself in a rather handsome eighteenth-century villa on the shore of Lake Bracciano.

As for the exact date and time of his arrival, there was no doubt. The owner of the villa, a dubious Belgian aristocrat called Monsieur Laval, said the tenant appeared at two-thirty in the afternoon on the final Friday of March. The courteous but intense young Israeli who called on Monsieur Laval at his home in Brussels wondered how it was possible to recall the date so clearly. The Belgian produced his lavish leather-bound personal calendar and pointed to the date in question. There, penciled on the line designated for 2:30 P.M., were the words: Meet M. Jean-Luc at Bracciano villa.

“Why did you write Bracciano villa instead of just villa?” asked the Israeli visitor, his pen hovering over his open notebook.

“To differentiate it from our St. Tropez villa, our Portuguese villa, and the chalet we own in the Swiss Alps.”

“I see,” said the Israeli, though the Belgian found that his visitor’s tone lacked the humility adopted by most civil servants when confronted by men of great wealth.

And what else did Monsieur Laval remember of the man who rented his villa? That he was punctual, intelligent, and extremely well-mannered. That he was strikingly good-looking, that his scent was noticeable but not obtrusive, that his clothing was expensive but restrained. That he drove a Mercedes car and had two large suitcases with gold buckles and a famous label. That he paid the entire monthlong lease in advance and in cash, which Monsieur Laval explained was not unusual in that part of Italy. That he was a good listener who didn’t need to be told things twice. That he spoke French with the accent of a Parisian from a well-heeled arrondissement. That he seemed like a man who could handle himself well in a fight and who treated his women well. “He was of noble birth,” Laval concluded, with the certainty of one who knows of what he speaks. “He comes from a good bloodline. Write that in your little book.”

Slowly, additional details would emerge about the man called Jean-Luc, though none conflicted with Monsieur Laval’s flattering portrait. He hired no cleaning woman and demanded the gardener arrive punctually at nine o’clock and leave by ten. He shopped in nearby market squares and attended Mass in the medieval lakeside village of Anguillara. He spent much time touring the Roman ruins of Lazio and seemed particularly intrigued by the ancient necropolis at Cerveteri.

Sometime in the middle of March-the date could never be reliably established-he vanished. Even Monsieur Laval could not be certain of the departure date, because he was informed after the fact by a woman in Paris who claimed to be the gentleman’s personal assistant. Though two weeks remained on the lease, the handsome tenant did not embarrass himself, or Monsieur Laval, by asking for a refund. Later that spring, when Monsieur Laval visited the villa, he was surprised to discover, in a crystal bowl on the dining room sideboard, a brief thank-you note, typewritten, along with a hundred euros to pay for broken wineglasses. A thorough search of the villa’s stemware collection, however, revealed nothing was missing. When Monsieur Laval tried to call Jean-Luc’s girl in Paris to return the money, he found that her telephone line had been disconnected.

ON THE FRINGES of the Borghese gardens there are elegant boulevards and quiet leafy side streets that bear little resemblance to the scruffy, tourist-trodden thoroughfares of the city center. They are avenues of diplomacy and money, where traffic moves at a nearly reasonable speed and where the blare of car horns sounds like a rebellion in distant lands. One such street is a cul-de-sac. It falls away at a gentle pitch and bends to the right. For many hours each day, it is in shadow, a consequence of the towering stone pine and eucalyptus that loom over the villas. The narrow sidewalk is broken by tree roots and perpetually covered by pine needles and dead leaves. At the end of the street is a diplomatic compound, more heavily fortified than most in Rome.

Survivors and witnesses would recall the perfection of that late-winter morning: bright and clear, cold enough in the shadows to bring on a shiver, warm enough in the sun to unbutton a wool coat and dream of an alfresco lunch. The fact it was also a Friday served only to heighten the leisurely atmosphere. In diplomatic Rome, it was a morning to dawdle over a cappuccino and cornetto, to take stock of one’s circumstances and ponder one’s mortality. Procrastination was the order of the day. Many mundane meetings were canceled. Much routine paperwork was put off till Monday.

On the little cul-de-sac near the Borghese gardens there were no outward signs of the catastrophe to come. The Italian police and security agents guarding the perimeter fortifications chatted lazily in the patches of brilliant sunshine. Like most diplomatic missions in Rome, it officially contained two embassies, one dealing with the Italian government, the second with the Vatican. Both embassies opened for business at their appointed times. Both ambassadors were in their offices.

At ten-fifteen a tubby Jesuit waddled down the hill, a leather satchel in his hand. Inside was a diplomatic démarche from the Vatican Secretariat of State, condemning the Israeli army’s recent incursion into Bethlehem. The courier deposited the document with an embassy clerk and puffed his way back up the hill. Afterward, the text would be made public, and its sharp language would prove a temporary embarrassment to the men of the Vatican. The courier’s timing would prove providential. Had he arrived five minutes later, he would have been vaporized, along with the original text of the démarche.

Not so fortunate were the members of an Italian television crew who had come to interview the ambassador on the current state of affairs in the Middle East. Or the delegation of local Jewish crusaders who had come to secure the ambassador’s public condemnation of a neo-Nazi conference scheduled for the following week in Verona. Or the Italian couple, sickened by the new rise of European anti-Semitism, who were about to inquire about the possibility of emigrating to Israel. Fourteen in all, they were standing in a tight cluster at the business entrance, waiting to be body-searched by the embassy’s short-haired security toughs, when the white freight truck made a right turn into the cul-de-sac and began its death run toward the compound.

Most heard the truck before they saw it. The convulsive roar of its diesel engine was a violent intrusion on the otherwise still morning. It was impossible to ignore. The Italian security men paused in mid-conversation and looked up, as did the group of fourteen strangers gathered outside the entrance of the embassy. The tubby Jesuit, who was waiting for a bus at the opposite end of the street, lifted his round head from his copy of L’Osservatore Romano and searched for the source of the commotion.

The gentle slope of the street helped the truck gather speed at an astonishing rate. As it rounded the bend, the massive load in its cargo container pushed the truck heavily onto two wheels. For an instant it seemed it might topple. Then somehow it righted itself and began the final straight-line plunge toward the compound.

The driver was briefly visible through the windshield. He was young and clean-shaven. His eyes were wide, his mouth agape. He seemed to be standing atop the gas pedal, and he seemed to be shouting at himself. For some reason the wipers were on.

The Italian security forces reacted immediately. Several took cover behind the reinforced concrete barriers. Others dived for the protection of the steel-and-glass guard posts. Two officers could be seen pouring automatic fire toward the marauding truck. Sparks exploded on the grille, and the windshield shattered, but the truck continued unhindered, gathering speed until the point of impact. Afterward, the government of Israel would commend the heroism shown by the Italian security services that morning. It would be noted that none fled their positions, though if they had, their fate would have been precisely the same.

The explosion could be heard from St. Peter’s Square to the Piazza di Spagna to the Janiculum Hill. Those on the upper floors of buildings were treated to the remarkable sight of a red-and-orange fireball rising over the northern end of the Villa Borghese, followed quickly by a pitch-black mushroom cloud of smoke. Windows a mile from the blast point were shattered by the thunderclap of the shock wave, including the stained-glass windows in a nearby church. Plane trees were stripped of their leaves. Birds died in mid-flight. Geologists at a seismic monitoring station first feared that Rome had been shaken by a moderate earthquake.

None of the Italian security men survived the initial blast. Nor did any of the fourteen visitors waiting to be admitted to the mission, or the embassy personnel who happened to be working in offices closest to the spot where the truck exploded.

Ultimately, though, it was the second vehicle that inflicted the most loss of life. The Vatican courier, who had been knocked to the ground by the force of the blast, saw the car turn into the cul-de-sac at high speed. Because it was a Lancia sedan, and because it was carrying four men and traveling at a high rate of speed, he assumed it was a police vehicle responding to the bombing. The priest got to his feet and started toward the scene through the dense black smoke, hoping to be of assistance to the wounded and the dead alike. Instead he saw a scene from a nightmare. The doors of the Lancia opened simultaneously, and the four men he assumed to be police officers began firing into the compound. Survivors who staggered from the burning wreckage of the embassy were mercilessly cut down.

The four gunmen ceased firing at precisely the same time, then clambered back into the Lancia. As they sped away from the burning compound, one of the terrorists aimed his automatic weapon at the Jesuit. The priest made the sign of the cross and prepared himself to die. The terrorist just smiled and disappeared behind a curtain of smoke.

Chapter 2
TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER THE LAST SHOT WAS FIRED in Rome, the secure telephone rang in the large, honey-colored villa overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Ari Shamron, the twice former director-general of the Israeli secret service, now special adviser to the prime minister on all matters dealing with security and intelligence, took the call in his study. He listened in silence for a moment, his eyes closed tightly in anger. “I’m on my way,” he said, and hung up the phone.

Turning around, he saw Gilah standing in the doorway of the study. She was holding his leather bomber jacket in her hand, and her eyes were damp with tears.

“It just came on the television. How bad?”

“Very bad. The prime minister wants me to help him prepare a statement to the country.”

“Then you shouldn’t keep the prime minister waiting.”

She helped Shamron into his jacket and kissed his cheek. There was simple ritual in this act. How many times had he separated from his wife after hearing that Jews had been killed by a bomb? He had lost count long ago. He had resigned himself, late in life, that it would never end.

“You won’t smoke too many cigarettes?”

“Of course not.”

“Try to call me.”

“I’ll call when I can.”

He stepped out the front door. A blast of cold wet wind greeted him. A storm had stolen down from the Golan during the night and laid siege to the whole of the Upper Galilee. Shamron had been awakened by the first crack of thunder, which he had mistaken for a gunshot, and had lain awake for the rest of the night. For Shamron, sleep was like contraband. It came to him rarely and, once interrupted, never twice in the same night. Usually he found himself wandering the secure file rooms of his memory, reliving old cases, walking old battlefields and confronting enemies vanquished long ago. Last night had been different. He’d had a premonition of imminent disaster, an image so clear that he’d actually placed a call to the night desk of his old service to see if anything had happened. “Go back to sleep, Boss,” the youthful duty officer had said. “Everything’s fine.”

His black Peugeot, armored and bulletproof, waited at the top of the drive. Rami, the dark-haired head of his security detachment, stood next to the open rear door. Shamron had made many enemies over the years, and because of the tangled demographics of Israel, many lived uncomfortably close to Tiberias. Rami, quiet as a lone wolf and far more lethal, rarely left his master’s side.

Shamron paused for a moment to light a cigarette, a vile Turkish brand he’d been smoking since the Mandate days, then stepped off the veranda. He was short of stature, yet even in old age, powerful in build. His hands were leathery and liver-spotted and seemed to have been borrowed from a man twice his size. His face, full of cracks and fissures, looked like an aerial view of the Negev Desert. His remaining fringe of steel-gray hair was cropped so short as to be nearly invisible. Infamously hard on his eyeglasses, he had resigned himself to ugly frames of indestructible plastic. The thick lenses magnified blue eyes that were no longer clear. He walked as though anticipating an assault from behind, with his head down and his elbows out defensively. Within the corridors of King Saul Boulevard, the headquarters of his old service, the walk was known as “the Shamron shuffle.” He knew of the epithet and he approved.

He ducked into the backseat of the Peugeot. The heavy car lurched forward and headed down the treacherously steep drive to the lakeshore. It turned right and sped toward Tiberias, then west, across the Galilee toward the Coastal Plain. Shamron’s gaze, for much of the journey, was focused on the scratched face of his wristwatch. Time was now his enemy. With each passing minute the perpetrators were slipping farther and farther away from the scene of the crime. Had they attempted an attack such as this in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, they would have been snared in a web of checkpoints and roadblocks. But it had occurred in Italy, not Israel, and Shamron was at the mercy of the Italian police. It had been a long time since the Italians had dealt with a major act of terrorism. What’s more, Israel’s link to the Italian government-its embassy-was in ruins. So, too, Shamron suspected, was a very important station of the Israeli secret service. Rome was the regional headquarters for southern Europe. It was led by a katsa named Shimon Pazner, a man whom Shamron had personally recruited and trained. It was quite possible the Office had just lost one of its most competent and experienced officers.

The journey seemed to last an eternity. They listened to the news on Israel Radio, and with each update the situation in Rome seemed to grow worse. Three times, Shamron anxiously reached for his secure cellular phone and three times he snapped it back into its cradle without dialing a number. Leave them to it, he thought. They know what they’re doing. Because of you, they’re well-trained. Besides, it was no time for the special adviser to the prime minister on matters of security and terrorism to be weighing in with helpful suggestions.

Special Adviser . . . How he loathed the title. It stank of ambiguity. He had been the Memuneh: the one in charge. He had seen his blessed service, and his country, through triumph and adversity. Lev and his band of young technocrats had regarded him as a liability and had banished him to the Judean wilderness of retirement. He would have remained there were it not for the lifeline thrown to him by the prime minister. Shamron, master manipulator and puppeteer, had learned that he could exercise nearly as much power from the prime minister’s office as he could from the executive suite of King Saul Boulevard. Experience had taught him to be patient. Eventually it would end up in his lap. It always seemed to.

They began the ascent toward Jerusalem. Shamron could not make this remarkable drive without thinking of old battles. The premonition came to him again. Was it Rome he had seen the night before or something else? Something bigger than even Rome? An old enemy, he was sure of it. A dead man, risen from his past.

THE OFFICE OF the Israeli prime minister is located at 3 Kaplan Street, in the Kiryat Ben-Gurion section of West Jerusalem. Shamron entered the building through the underground parking garage, then went up to his office. It was small but strategically located on the hallway that led to the prime minister’s, which allowed him to see when Lev, or any of the other intelligence and security chiefs, were making their way into the inner sanctum for a meeting. He had no personal secretary, but shared a girl named Tamara with three other members of the security staff. She brought him coffee and switched on the bank of three televisions.

“Varash is scheduled to meet in the prime minister’s office at five o’clock.”

Varash was the Hebrew-language acronym for the Committee of the Heads of the Services. It included the director-general of Shabak, the internal security service; the commander of Aman, military intelligence; and, of course, the chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service, which was referred to only as “the Office.” Shamron, by charter and reputation, had a permanent seat at the table.

“In the meantime,” Tamara said, “he wants a briefing in twenty minutes.”

“Tell him a half hour would be better.”

“If you want a half hour, you tell him.”

Shamron sat down at his desk and, remote in hand, spent the next five minutes scanning the world’s television media for as many overt details as he could. Then he picked up the telephone and made three calls, one to an old contact at the Italian Embassy named Tommaso Naldi; the second to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, located a short distance away on Yitzhak Rabin Boulevard; and the third to Office headquarters on King Saul Boulevard.

“He can’t talk to you now,” said Lev’s secretary. Shamron had anticipated her reaction. It was easier to get through an army checkpoint than Lev’s secretary.

“Put him on the phone,” Shamron said, “or the next call will be from the prime minister.”

Lev kept Shamron waiting five minutes.

“What do you know?” Shamron asked.

“The truth? Nothing.”

“Do we have a Rome station any longer?”

“Not to speak of,” said Lev, “but we do have a Rome katsa. Pazner was in Naples on business. He just checked in. He’s on his way back to Rome now.”

Thank God, thought Shamron. “And the others?”

“It’s hard to tell. As you might imagine, the situation is rather chaotic.” Lev had a grating passion for understatement. “Two clerks are missing, along with the communications officer.”

“Is there anything in the files that might be compromising or embarrassing?”

“The best we can hope for is that they went up in smoke.”

“They’re stored in cabinets built to withstand a missile strike. We’d better get to them before the Italians do.”

Tamara poked her head inside the door. “He wants you. Now.”

“I’ll see you at five o’clock,” Shamron said to Lev, and rang off.

He collected his notes, then followed Tamara along the corridor toward the prime minister’s office. Two members of his Shabak protective detail, large boys with short-cropped hair and shirts hanging outside their trousers, watched Shamron’s approach. One of them stepped aside and opened the door. Shamron slipped past and went inside.

The shades were drawn, the room cool and in semidarkness. The prime minister was seated behind his large desk, dwarfed by a towering portrait of the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl that hung on the wall at his back. Shamron had been in this room many times, yet it never failed to quicken his pulse. For Shamron this chamber represented the end of a remarkable journey, the reconstitution of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Birth and death, war and Holocaust-Shamron, like the prime minister, had played a leading role in the entire epic. Privately, they regarded it as their State, their creation, and they guarded it jealously against all those-Arab, Jewish, or Gentile-who sought to weaken or destroy it.

The prime minister, without a word, nodded for Shamron to sit. Small at the head and very wide at the waist, he looked rather like a formation of volcanic rock. His stubby hands lay folded on the desktop; his heavy jowls hung over his shirt collar.

“How bad, Ari?”

“By the end of the day, we’ll have a clearer picture,” Shamron said. “I can say one thing for certain. This will go down as one of the worst acts of terrorism ever committed against the State, if not the worst.”

“How many dead?”

“Still unclear.”

“The ambassadors?”

“Officially, they’re still listed as unaccounted for.”

“And unofficially?”

“It’s believed they’re dead.”

“Both?” Shamron nodded. “And their deputies.”

“How many dead for certain?”

“The Italians report twelve police and security personnel dead. At the moment, the Foreign Ministry is confirming twenty-two personnel killed, along with thirteen family members from the residence complex. Eighteen people remain unaccounted for.”

“Fifty-two dead?”

“At least. Apparently there were several visitors standing at the entrance waiting to be admitted to the building.”

“What about the Office station?”

Shamron repeated what he’d just learned from Lev. Pazner was alive. Three Office employees were feared to be among the dead.

“Who did it?”

“Lev hasn’t reached any-”

“I’m not asking Lev.”

“The list of potential suspects, unfortunately, is long. Anything I might say now would be speculation, and at this point, speculation does us no good.”

“Why Rome?”

“Hard to say,” Shamron said. “Perhaps it was just a target of opportunity. Maybe they saw a weakness, a chink in our armor, and they decided to exploit it.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“No, Prime Minister.”

“Could it have something to do with that affair at the Vatican a couple of years ago-that business with Allon?”

“I doubt it. All the evidence thus far suggests it was a suicide attack carried out by Arab terrorists.”

“I want to make a statement after Varash meets.”

“I think that would be wise.”

“And I want you to write it for me.”

“If you wish.”

“You know about loss, Ari. We both do. Put some heart into it. Tap that reservoir of Polish pain you’re always carrying around with you. The country will need to cry tonight. Let them cry. But assure them that the animals who did this will be punished.”

“They will, Prime Minister.”

Shamron stood.

“Who did this, Ari?”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

“I want his head,” the prime minister said savagely. “I want his head on a stick.”

“And you shall have it.”

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS would pass before the first break in the case, and it would come not in Rome but in the northern industrial city of Milan. Units of the Polizia di Stato and Carabinieri, acting on a tip from a Tunisian immigrant informant, raided a pensione in a workers’ quarter north of the city center where two of the four surviving attackers were thought to be hiding. The men were no longer there, and based on the condition of the room, they had fled in a hurry. Police discovered a pair of suitcases filled with clothing and a half-dozen cellular telephones, along with false passports and stolen credit cards. The most intriguing item, however, was a compact disk sewn into the lining of one of the bags. Italian investigators at the national crime laboratory in Rome determined that the disk contained data but were unable to penetrate its sophisticated security firewall. Eventually, after much internal debate, it was decided to approach the Israelis for help.

And so it was that Shimon Pazner received his summons to the headquarters of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica, Italy’s Intelligence and Democratic Security Service. He arrived a few minutes after ten in the evening and was shown immediately into the office of the deputy chief, a man named Martino Bellano. They were a mismatched pair: Bellano, tall and lean and dressed as though he had just stepped off the pages of an Italian fashion magazine; Pazner, short and muscular with hair like steel wool and a crumpled sports jacket. “A pile of yesterday’s laundry” is how Bellano would describe Pazner after the encounter, and in the aftermath of the affair, when it became clear that Pazner had behaved less than forthrightly, Bellano routinely referred to the Israeli as “that kosher shylock in a borrowed blazer.”

On that first evening, however, Bellano could not have been more solicitous of his visitor. Pazner was not the type to elicit sympathy from strangers, but as he was shown into Bellano’s office, his eyes were heavy with exhaustion and a profound case of survivor’s guilt. Bellano spent several moments expressing his “profound grief” over the bombing before getting round to the reason for Pazner’s late-night summons: the computer disk. He placed it ceremoniously on the desktop and slid it toward Pazner with the tip of a manicured forefinger. Pazner accepted it calmly, though later he would confess to Shamron that his heart was beating a chaotic rhythm against his breastbone.

“We’ve been unable to pick the lock,” Bellano said. “Perhaps you’ll have a bit more luck.”

“We’ll do our best,” replied Pazner modestly.

“Of course, you’ll share with us any material you happen to find.”

“It goes without saying,” said Pazner as the disk disappeared into his coat pocket.

Another ten minutes would elapse before Bellano saw fit to conclude the meeting. Pazner remained stoically in his seat, gripping the arms of his chair like a man in the throes of a nicotine fit. Those who witnessed his departure down the grandiose main corridor took note of his unhurried pace. Only when he was outside, descending the front steps, was there any hint of urgency in his stride.

Within hours of the attack, a team of Israeli bomb specialists, regrettably well-experienced in their trade, had arrived in Rome to begin the task of sifting the wreckage for evidence of the bomb’s composition and origin. As luck would have it, the military charter that had borne them from Tel Aviv was still on the apron at Fiumicino. Pazner, with Shamron’s approval, commandeered the plane to take him back to Tel Aviv. He arrived a few minutes after sunrise and walked directly into the arms of an Office greeting party. They headed immediately to King Saul Boulevard, driving at great haste but with no recklessness, for the cargo was too precious to risk on that most dangerous element of Israeli life: its roadways. By eight that morning, the computer disk was the target of a coordinated assault by the best minds of the service’s Technical division, and by nine the security barriers had been successfully breached. Ari Shamron would later boast that the Office computer geniuses cracked the code in the span of an average Italian coffee break. Decryption of the material took another hour, and by ten a printout of the disk’s contents was sitting on Lev’s immaculate desk. The material remained there for only a few moments, because Lev immediately tossed it into a secure briefcase and headed to Kaplan Street in Jerusalem to brief the prime minister. Shamron, of course, was at his master’s side.

“Someone needs to bring him in,” said Lev. He spoke with the enthusiasm of a man offering his own eulogy. Perhaps, thought Shamron, that was precisely how he felt, for he viewed the man in question as a rival, and Lev’s preferred method of dealing with rivals, real or potential, was exile. “Pazner is heading back to Italy tonight. Let him take along a team from Extraction.”

Shamron shook his head. “He’s mine. I’ll bring him home.” He paused. “Besides, Pazner has something more important to do at the moment.”

“What’s that?”

“Telling the Italians we couldn’t break the lock on that disk, of course.”

Lev made a habit of never being the first to leave the room, and so it was with great reluctance that he uncoiled himself from his chair and moved toward the exit. Shamron looked up and saw that the prime minister’s eyes were on him.

“He’ll have to stay here until this blows over,” the prime minister said.

“Yes, he will,” agreed Shamron.

“Perhaps we should find something for him to do to help pass the time.”

Shamron nodded once, and it was done.

A passionate, intelligently crafted entry that cements the series’ place among today’s top spy fiction. The structure is classic.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[A] TENSE CAT-AND-MOUSE PLOT.”
—The New Yorker

“AN INTRICATE WEB OF DECEIT AND DOUBLE-CROSS.”
—USA Today

A STORY THAT SEEMS RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES…CHILLING SUSPENSE.”
—Booklist

[A] rare combination of fine characters, compelling writing and suspenseful plotting that will reach out and grab readers. Silva moves the story along quickly, creating a frightening network of spies and counterspies. [His] plotting is ingenious and clear. Silva handles the twists and turns so well it’s a waste of time to try to guess where it’s going. It goes places readers can’t predict and then goes further.”
—Detroit Free Press

Daniel Silva…handles his theme of revenge-and its effect on those it touches-adroitly but without encroaching on the pure pleasure of reading a first-rate thriller.”
—Rocky Mountain News

Allon puts together a Mission: Impossible team of Israelis to pursue the scion of a family dynasty of Palestinian militants. But nothing is easy or uncomplicated in spy thrillers. Allon and his buds are sucked into an intricate web of deceit and double-cross. Not to mention a lot of carnage.”
—USA Today

Silva keeps getting better.”
—Library Journal

Chapter 1
London

IT WAS ALI MASSOUDI who unwittingly roused Gabriel Allon from his brief and restless retirement: Massoudi, the great Europhile intellectual and freethinker, who, in a moment of blind panic, forgot that the English drive on the left side of the road.

The backdrop for his demise was a rain-swept October evening in Bloomsbury. The occasion was the final session of the first annual Policy Forum for Peace and Security in Palestine, Iraq, and Beyond. The conference had been launched early that morning amid great hope and fanfare, but by day’s end it had taken on the quality of a traveling production of a mediocre play. Even the demonstrators who came in hope of sharing some of the flickering spotlight seemed to realize they were reading from the same tired script. The American president was burned in effigy at ten. The Israeli prime minister was put to the purifying flame at eleven. At lunchtime, amid a deluge that briefly turned Russell Square into a pond, there had been a folly having something to do with the rights of women in Saudi Arabia. At eight-thirty, as the gavel came down on the final panel, the two dozen stoics who had stayed to the end filed numbly toward the exits. Organizers of the affair detected little appetite for a return engagement next autumn.

A stagehand stole forward and removed a placard from the rostrum that read: GAZA IS LIBERATED-WHAT NOW? The first panelist on his feet was Sayyid of the London School of Economics, defender of the suicide bombers, apologist for al-Qaeda. Next was the austere Chamberlain of Cambridge, who spoke of Palestine and the Jews as though they were still the quandary of gray-suited men from the Foreign Office. Throughout the discussion the aging Chamberlain had served as a sort of Separation Fence between the incendiary Sayyid and a poor soul from the Israeli embassy named Rachel who had drawn hoots and whistles of disapproval each time she’d opened her mouth. Chamberlain tried to play the role of peacekeeper now as Sayyid pursued Rachel to the door with taunts that her days as a colonizer were drawing to an end.

Ali Massoudi, graduate professor of global governance and social theory at the University of Bremen, was the last to rise. Hardly surprising, his jealous colleagues might have said, for among the incestuous world of Middle Eastern studies, Massoudi had the reputation of one who never willingly relinquished a stage. Palestinian by birth, Jordanian by passport, and European by upbringing and education, Professor Massoudi appeared to all the world like a man of moderation. The shining future of Arabia, they called him. The very face of progress. He was known to be distrustful of religion in general and militant Islam in particular. In newspaper editorials, in lecture halls, and on television, he could always be counted on to lament the dysfunction of the Arab world. Its failure to properly educate its people. Its tendency to blame the Americans and the Zionists for all its ailments. His last book had amounted to a clarion call for an Islamic Reformation. The jihadists had denounced him as a heretic. The moderates had proclaimed he had the courage of Martin Luther. That afternoon he had argued, much to Sayyid’s dismay, that the ball was now squarely in the Palestinian court. Until the Palestinians part company with the culture of terror, Massoudi had said, the Israelis could never be expected to cede an inch of the West Bank. Nor should they. Sacrilege, Sayyid had cried. Apostasy.

Professor Massoudi was tall, a bit over six feet in height, and far too good looking for a man who worked in close proximity to impressionable young women. His hair was dark and curly, his cheekbones wide and strong, and his square chin had a deep notch in the center. The eyes were brown and deeply set and lent his face an air of profound and reassuring intelligence. Dressed as he was now, in a cashmere sport jacket and cream-colored rollneck sweater, he seemed the very archetype of the European intellectual. It was an image he worked hard to convey. Naturally deliberate of movement, he packed his papers and pens methodically into his well-traveled briefcase, then descended the steps from the stage and headed up the center aisle toward the exit.

Several members of the audience were loitering in the foyer. Standing to one side, a stormy island in an otherwise tranquil sea, was the girl. She wore faded jeans, a leather jacket, and a checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh round her neck. Her black hair shone like a raven’s wing. Her eyes were nearly black, too, but shone with something else. Her name was Hamida al-Tatari. A refugee, she had said. Born in Amman, raised in Hamburg, now a citizen of Canada residing in North London. Massoudi had met her that afternoon at a reception in the student union. Over coffee she had fervently accused him of insufficient outrage over the crimes of the Americans and Jews. Massoudi had liked what he had seen. They were planning to have drinks that evening at the wine bar next to the theater in Sloane Square. His intentions weren’t romantic. It wasn’t Hamida’s body he wanted. It was her zeal and her clean face. Her perfect English and Canadian passport.

She gave him a furtive glance as he crossed the foyer but made no attempt to speak to him. Keep your distance after the symposium, he had instructed her that afternoon. A man in my position has to be careful about who he’s seen with. Outside he sheltered for a moment beneath the portico and gazed at the traffic moving sluggishly along the wet street. He felt someone brush against his elbow, then watched as Hamida plunged wordlessly into the cloudburst. He waited until she was gone, then hung his briefcase from his shoulder and set out in the opposite direction, toward his hotel in Russell Square.

The change came over him-the same change that always occurred whenever he moved from one life to the other. The quickening of the pulse, the sharpening of the senses, the sudden fondness for small details. Such as the balding young man, walking toward him beneath the shelter of an umbrella, whose gaze seemed to linger on Massoudi’s face an instant too long. Or the newsagent who stared brazenly into Massoudi’s eyes as he purchased a copy of the Evening Standard. Or the taxi driver who watched him, thirty seconds later, as he dropped the same newspaper into a rubbish bin in Upper Woburn Place.

A London bus overtook him. As it churned slowly past, Massoudi peered through the fogged windows and saw a dozen tired-looking faces, nearly all of them black or brown. The new Londoners, he thought, and for a moment the professor of global governance and social theory wrestled with the implications of this. How many secretly sympathized with his cause? How many would sign on the dotted line if he laid before them a contract of death?

In the wake of the bus, on the opposite pavement, was a single pedestrian: oilskin raincoat, stubby ponytail, two straight lines for eyebrows. Massoudi recognized him instantly. The young man had been at the conference-same row as Hamida but on the opposite side of the auditorium. He’d been sitting in the same seat earlier that morning, when Massoudi had been the lone dissenting voice during a panel discussion on the virtue of barring Israeli academics from European shores.

Massoudi lowered his gaze and kept walking, while his left hand went involuntarily to the shoulder strap of his briefcase. Was he being followed? If so, by whom? MI5 was the most likely explanation. The most likely, he reminded himself, but not the only one. Perhaps the German BND had followed him to London from Bremen. Or perhaps he was under CIA surveillance.

But it was the fourth possibility that made Massoudi’s heart bang suddenly against his rib cage. What if the man was not English, or German, or American at all? What if he worked for an intelligence service that showed little compunction about liquidating its enemies, even on the streets of foreign capitals. An intelligence service with a history of using women as bait. He thought of what Hamida had said to him that afternoon.

“I grew up in Toronto, mostly. ”

“And before that? ”

“Amman when I was very young. Then a year in Hamburg. I’m a Palestinian, Professor. My home is a suitcase.”

Massoudi made a sudden turn off Woburn Place, into the tangle of side streets of St. Pancras. After a few paces he slowed and looked over his shoulder. The man in the oilskin coat had crossed the street and was following after him.

HE QUICKENED his pace, made a series of turns, left and right. Here a row of mews houses, here a block of flats, here an empty square littered with dead leaves. Massoudi saw little of it. He was trying to keep his orientation. He knew London’s main thoroughfares well enough, but the backstreets were a mystery to him. He threw all tradecraft to the wind and made regular glances over his shoulder. Each glance seemed to find the man a pace or two closer.

He came to an intersection, looked left, and saw traffic rushing along the Euston Road. On the opposite side, he knew, lay King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations. He turned in that direction, then, a few seconds later, glanced over his shoulder. The man had rounded the corner and was coming after him.

He began to run. He had never been much of an athlete, and years of academic pursuits had robbed his body of fitness. The weight of the laptop computer in his briefcase was like an anchor. With each stride the case banged against his hip. He secured it with his elbow and held the strap with his other hand, but this gave his stride an awkward galloping rhythm that slowed him even more. He considered jettisoning it but clung to it instead. In the wrong hands the laptop was a treasure trove of information. Personnel, surveillance photographs, communications links, bank accounts…

He stumbled to a stop at the Euston Road. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw his pursuer still plodding methodically toward him, hands in his pockets, eyes down. He looked to his left, saw empty asphalt, and stepped off the curb.

The groan of the lorry horn was the last sound Ali Massoudi ever heard. At impact the briefcase broke free of him. It took flight, turned over several times as it hovered above the road, then landed on the street with a solid thud. The man in the oilskin raincoat barely had to break stride as he bent down and snared it by the strap. He slipped it neatly over his shoulder, crossed the Euston Road, and followed the evening commuters into King’s Cross.

Chapter 2
Jerusalem

THE BRIEFCASE HAD REACHED Paris by dawn, and by eleven it was being carried into an anonymous-looking office block on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. There the professor’s personal effects were hastily inspected, while the hard drive of his laptop computer was subjected to a sustained assault by a team of technical wizards. By three that afternoon the first packet of intelligence had been forwarded to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, and by five a manila file folder containing the most alarming material was in the back of an armored Peugeot limousine heading toward Narkiss Street, a quiet leafy lane not far from the Ben Yehuda Mall.

The car stopped in front of the small apartment house at Number 16. Ari Shamron, the twice former chief of the Israeli secret service, now special adviser to the prime minister on all matters dealing with security and intelligence, emerged from the backseat. Rami, the black-eyed chief of his personal security detail, moved silently at his heels. Shamron had made countless enemies during his long and turbulent career, and because of Israel’s tangled demographics, many were uncomfortably close. Shamron, even when he was inside his fortresslike villa in Tiberias, was surrounded always by bodyguards.

He paused for a moment on the garden walkway and looked up. It was a dowdy little building of Jerusalem limestone, three floors in height, with a large eucalyptus tree in front that cast a pleasant shadow over the front balconies. The limbs of the tree were swaying in the first cool wind of autumn, and from the open window on the third floor came the sharp odor of paint thinner.

Shamron, as he entered the foyer, glanced at the mailbox for apartment number three and saw it was absent a nameplate. He mounted the stairs and tramped slowly upward. He was short of stature and was dressed, as usual, in khaki trousers and a scuffed leather jacket with a tear in the right breast. His face was full of cracks and fissures, and his remaining fringe of gray hair was cropped so short as to be nearly invisible. His hands were leathery and liver-spotted and seemed to have been borrowed from a man twice his size. In one was the file.

The door was ajar when he arrived on the third-floor landing. He placed his fingers against it and gently pushed. The flat he entered had once been meticulously decorated by a beautiful Italian-Jewish woman of impeccable taste. Now the furniture, like the beautiful Italian woman, was gone, and the flat had been turned into an artist’s studio. Not an artist, Shamron had to remind himself. Gabriel Allon was a restorer-one of the three or four most sought-after restorers in the world. He was standing now before an enormous canvas depicting a man surrounded by large predatory cats. Shamron settled himself quietly on a paint-smudged stool and watched him work for a few moments. He had always been mystified by Gabriel’s ability to imitate the brushstrokes of the Old Masters. To Shamron it was something of a parlor trick, just another of Gabriel’s gifts to be utilized, like his languages or his ability to get a Beretta off his hip and into firing position in the time it takes most men to clap their hands.

“It certainly looks better than when it first arrived,” Shamron said, “but I still don’t know why anyone would want to hang it his home.”

“It won’t end up in a private home,” Gabriel said, his brush to the canvas. “This is a museum piece.”

“Who painted it?” Shamron asked abruptly, as though inquiring about the perpetrator of a bombing.

“Bohnams auction house in London thought it was Erasmus Quellinus,” Gabriel said. “Quellinus might have laid the foundations, but it’s clear to me that Rubens finished it for him.” He moved his hand over the large canvas. “His brushstrokes are everywhere.”

“What difference does it make?”

“About ten million pounds,” Gabriel said. “Julian is going to do very nicely with this one.”

Julian Isherwood was a London art dealer and sometime secret servant of Israeli intelligence. The service had a long name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Men like Shamron and Gabriel referred to it as the Office and nothing more.

“I hope Julian is giving you fair compensation.”

“My restoration fee, plus a small commission on the sale.”

“What’s the total?”

Gabriel tapped his brush against his palette and resumed working.

“We need to talk,” Shamron said.

“So talk.”

“I’m not going to talk to your back.” Gabriel turned and peered at Shamron once more through the lenses of his magnifying visor. “And I’m not going to talk to you while you’re wearing those things. You look like something from my nightmares.”

Gabriel reluctantly set his palette on the worktable and removed his magnifying visor, revealing a pair of eyes that were a shocking shade of emerald green. He was below average in height and had the spare physique of a cyclist. His face was high at the forehead and narrow at the chin, and he had a long bony nose that looked as though it had been carved from wood. His hair was cropped short and shot with gray at the temples. It was because of Shamron that Gabriel was an art restorer and not one of the finest painters of his generation-and why his temples had turned gray virtually overnight when he was in his early twenties. Shamron had been the intelligence officer chosen by Golda Meir to hunt down and assassinate the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Massacre, and a promising young art student named Gabriel Allon had been his primary gunman.

He spent a few moments cleaning his palette and brushes, then went into the kitchen. Shamron sat down at the small table and waited for Gabriel to turn his back before hurriedly lighting one of his foul-smelling Turkish cigarettes. Gabriel, hearing the familiar click-click of Shamron’s old Zippo lighter, pointed toward the Rubens in exasperation, but Shamron made a dismissive gesture and defiantly raised the cigarette to his lips. A comfortable silence settled between them while Gabriel poured bottled water into the teakettle and spooned coffee into the French press. Shamron was content to listen to the wind moving in the eucalyptus trees outside in the garden. Devoutly secular, he marked the passage of time not by the Jewish festivals but by the rhythms of the land-the day the rains came, the day the wildflowers exploded in the Galilee, the day the cool winds returned. Gabriel could read his thoughts. Another autumn, and we’re still here. The covenant had not been revoked.

“The prime minister wants an answer.” Shamron’s gaze still was focused on the tangled little garden. “He’s a patient man, but he won’t wait forever.”

“I told you that I’d give him an answer when I was finished with the painting.”

Shamron looked at Gabriel. “Does your arrogance know no bounds? The prime minister of the State of Israel wants you to be chief of Special Operations, and you put him off over some five-hundred year-old piece of canvas.”

“Four hundred.”

Gabriel carried the coffee to the table and poured two cups. Shamron scooped sugar into his and gave it a single violent stir.

“You said yourself the painting is nearly finished. What is your answer going to be?”

“I haven’t decided.”

“May I offer you a piece of helpful advice?”

“And if I don’t want your advice?”

“I’d give it to you anyway.” Shamron squeezed the life out of his cigarette butt. “You should accept the prime minister’s offer before he makes it to someone else.”

“Nothing would make me happier.”

“Really? And what will you do with yourself?” Greeted by silence, Shamron pressed on. “Allow me to paint a picture for you, Gabriel. I’ll do the best I can. I’m not gifted like you. I don’t come from a great German-Jewish intellectual family. I’m just a poor Polish Jew whose father sold pots from the back of a handcart.”

Shamron’s murderous Polish accent had grown thicker. Gabriel couldn’t help but smile. He knew that whenever Shamron played the downtrodden Jew from Lvov, something entertaining was certain to follow.

“You have nowhere else to go, Gabriel. You said it yourself when we offered you the job the first time. What will you do when you’re finished with this Rubens of yours? Do you have any more work lined up?” Shamron’s pause was theatrical in nature, for he knew the answer was no. “You can’t go back to Europe until you’re officially cleared in the bombing of the Gare de Lyon. Julian might send you another painting, but eventually that will end, too, because the packing and shipping costs will cut into his already tenuous bottom line. Do you see my point, Gabriel?”

“I see it very clearly. You’re trying to use my unfortunate situation as a means of blackmailing me into taking Operations.”

“Blackmail? No, Gabriel. I know the meaning of blackmail, and God knows I’ve been known to use it when it suits my needs. But this is not blackmail. I’m trying to help you.”

“Help?”

“Tell me something, Gabriel: What do you plan to do for money?”

“I have money.”

“Enough to live like a hermit, but not enough to live.” Shamron lapsed into a momentary silence and listened to the wind. “It’s quiet now, isn’t it? Tranquil almost. It’s tempting to think it can go on like this forever. But it can’t. We gave them Gaza without demanding anything in return, and they repaid us by freely electing Hamas to be their rulers. Next they’ll want the West Bank, and if we don’t surrender it in short order, there’s going to be another round of bloodletting, much worse than even the second intifada. Trust me, Gabriel, one day soon it will all start up again. And not just here. Everywhere. Do you think they’re sitting on their hands doing nothing? Of course not. They’re planning the next campaign. They’re talking to Osama and his friends, too. We now know for a fact that the Palestinian Authority has been thoroughly penetrated by al-Qaeda and its affiliates. We also know that they are planning major attacks against Israel and Israeli targets abroad in the very near future. The Office also believes the prime minister has been targeted for assassination, along with senior advisers.”

“You included?”

“Of course,” Shamron said. “I am, after all, the prime minister’s special adviser on all matters dealing with security and terrorism. My death would be a tremendous symbolic victory for them.”

He looked out the window again at the wind moving in the trees. “It’s ironic, isn’t it? This place was supposed to be our sanctuary. Now, in an odd way, it’s left us more vulnerable than ever. Nearly half the world’s Jews live in this tiny strip of land. One small nuclear device, that’s all it would take. The Americans could survive one. The Russians might barely notice it. But us? A bomb in Tel Aviv would kill a quarter of the country’s population- maybe more.”

“And you need me to prevent this apocalypse? I thought the Office was in good hands these days.”

“Things are definitely better now that Lev has been shown the door. Amos is an extraordinarily competent leader and administrator, but sometimes I think he has a bit too much of the soldier in him.”

“He was chief of both the Sayeret Matkal and Aman. What did you expect?”

“We knew what we were getting with Amos, but the prime minister and I are now concerned that he’s trying to turn King Saul Boulevard into an outpost of the IDF. We want the Office to retain its original character.”

“Insanity?”

“Boldness,” countered Shamron. “Audacity. I just wish Amos would think a little less like a battlefield commander and a little more like . . .” His voice trailed off while he searched for the right word. When he found it, he rubbed his first two fingers against his thumb and said, “Like an artist. I need someone by his side who thinks more like Caravaggio.”

“Caravaggio was a madman.”

“Exactly.”

Shamron started to light another cigarette, but this time Gabriel managed to stay his hand before he’d struck his lighter. Shamron looked at him, his eyes suddenly serious.

“We need you now, Gabriel. Two hours ago the chief of Special Operations handed Amos his letter of resignation.”

“Why?”

“London.” Shamron looked down at his captured hand. “May I have that back?”

Gabriel let go of the thick wrist. Shamron rolled the unlit cigarette between his thumb and forefinger.

“What happened in London?” Gabriel asked.

“I’m afraid we had a bit of a mishap there last night.”

“A mishap? When the Office has a mishap, someone usually ends up dead.”

Shamron nodded in agreement. “Well, at least there’s something to be said for consistency.”

“DOES THE NAME Ali Massoudi mean anything to you?”

“He’s professor of something or other at a university in Germany,” Gabriel replied. “Likes to play the role of an iconoclast and a reformer. I actually met him once.”

Shamron’s eyebrows went up in surprise. “Really? Where?”

“He came to Venice a couple of years ago for a big Middle East symposium. As part of their stipend the participants got a guided tour of the city. One of their stops was the Church of San Zaccaria, where I was restoring the Bellini altarpiece.”

For several years Gabriel had lived and worked in Venice under the name Mario Delvecchio. Six months earlier he had been forced to flee the city after being discovered there by a Palestinian masterterrorist named Khaled al-Khalifa. The affair had ended at the Gare de Lyon, and in the aftermath Gabriel’s name and secret past had been splashed across the French and European press, including an exposé in The Sunday Times that referred to him as “Israel’s Angel of Death.” He was still wanted for questioning by the Paris police, and a Palestinian civil rights group had filed a lawsuit in London alleging war crimes.

“And you actually met Massoudi?” Shamron asked incredulously. “You shook his hand?”

“As Mario Delvecchio, of course.”

“I suppose you didn’t realize that you were shaking hands with a terrorist.”

Shamron stuck the end of the cigarette between his lips and struck his Zippo. This time Gabriel didn’t intervene.

“Three months ago we got a tip from a friend at the Jordanian GID that Professor Ali Massoudi, that great moderate and reformer, was actually a talent scout for al-Qaeda. According to the Jordanians, he was looking for recruits to attack Israeli and Jewish targets in Europe. Peace conferences and anti-Israel demonstrations were his favorite hunting grounds. We weren’t surprised by that part. We’ve known for some time that the peace conferences have become a meeting place for al-Qaeda operatives and European extremists of both the left-wing and right-wing variety. We decided it would be wise to put Professor Massoudi under watch. We got to the telephone in his apartment in Bremen, but the yield was disappointing, to put it mildly. He was very good on the phone. Then about a month ago, London Station chipped in with a timely piece of information. It seems the Cultural section of the London embassy had been asked to provide a warm body for something called the Policy Forum for Peace and Security in Palestine, Iraq, and Beyond. When Cultural asked for a list of the other participants, guess whose name appeared on it?”

“Professor Ali Massoudi.”

“Cultural agreed to send a representative to the conference, and Special Ops set its sights on Massoudi.”

“What kind of operation was it?”

“Simple,” Shamron said. “Catch him in the act. Compromise him. Threaten him. Turn him around. Can you imagine? An agent inside the al-Qaeda personnel department? With Massoudi’s help we could have rolled up their European networks.”

“So what happened?”

“We put a girl on his plate. She called herself Hamida al-Tatari. Her real name is Aviva and she’s from Ramat Gan, but that’s neither here nor there. She met Massoudi at a reception. Massoudi was intrigued and agreed to meet her again later that evening for a more lengthy discussion of the current state of the world. We followed Massoudi after the last session of the conference, but Massoudi apparently spotted the watcher and started to run. He looked the wrong way while crossing the Euston Road and stepped in front of a delivery truck.”

Gabriel winced.

“Fortunately we didn’t come away completely empty-handed,” Shamron said. “The watcher made off with Massoudi’s briefcase. Among other things it contained a laptop computer. It seems Professor Ali Massoudi was more than just a talent spotter.”

Shamron placed the file folder in front of Gabriel and, with a terse nod of his head, instructed Gabriel to open the cover. Inside he found a stack of surveillance photographs: St. Peter’s Square from a dozen different angles; the façade and interior of the Basilica; Swiss Guards standing watch at the Arch of Bells. It was clear the photos had not been taken by an ordinary tourist, because the cameraman had been far less interested in the visual aesthetics of the Vatican than the security measures surrounding it. There were several snapshots of the barricades along the western edge of the square and the metal detectors along Bernini’s Colonnade-and several more of the Vigilanza and Carabinieri who patrolled the square during large gatherings, including close-ups of their side arms. The final three photographs showed Pope Paul VII greeting a crowd in St. Peter’s Square in his glass-enclosed popemobile. The camera lens had been focused not on the Holy Father but on the plainclothes Swiss Guards walking at his side. Gabriel viewed the photos a second time. Based on the quality of the light and the clothing worn by the crowds of pilgrims, it appeared that they had been taken on at least three separate occasions. Repeated photographic surveillance of the same target, he knew, was a hallmark of a serious al-Qaeda operation. He closed the file and held it out to Shamron, but Shamron wouldn’t accept it. Gabriel regarded the old man’s face with the same intensity he’d studied the photographs. He could tell there was more bad news to come.

“Technical found something else on Massoudi’s computer,” Shamron said. “Instructions for accessing a numbered bank account in Zurich-an account we’ve known about for some time, because it’s received regular infusions of money from something called the Committee to Liberate al-Quds.” Al-Quds was the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

“Who’s behind it?” Gabriel asked.

“Saudi Arabia,” said Shamron. “To be more specific, the interior minister of Saudi Arabia, Prince Nabil.”

Inside the Office, Nabil was routinely referred to as the Prince of Darkness for his hatred of Israel and the United States and his support of Islamic militancy around the globe.

“Nabil created the committee at the height of the second intifada,” Shamron continued. “He raises the money himself and personally oversees the distribution. We believe he has a hundred million dollars at his disposal, and he’s funneling it to some of the most violent terror groups in the world, including elements of al-Qaeda.”

“Who’s giving Nabil the money?”

“Unlike the other Saudi charities, the Committee for the Liberation of al-Quds has a very small donor base. We think Nabil raises the money from a handful of Saudi multimillionaires.”

Shamron peered into his coffee for a moment. “Charity,” he said, his tone disdainful. “A lovely word, isn’t it? But Saudi charity has always been a two edged sword. The Muslim World League, the International Islamic Relief Organization, the al-Haramayn Islamic Foundation, the Benevolence International Foundation-they are to Saudi Arabia what the Comintern was to the old Soviet Union. A means of propagating the faith. Islam. And not just any form of Islam. Saudi Arabia’s puritanical brand of Islam. Wahhabism. The charities build mosques and Islamic centers around the world and madrassas that churn out the Wahhabi militants of tomorrow. And they also give money directly to the terrorists, including our friends in Hamas. The engines of America run on Saudi oil, but the networks of global Islamic terrorism run largely on Saudi money.”

“Charity is the third pillar of Islam,” Gabriel said. “zakat.”

“And a noble quality,” Shamron said, “accept when the zakat ends up in the hands of murderers.”

“Do you think Ali Massoudi was connected to the Saudis by more than money?”

“We may never know because the great professor is no longer with us. But whomever he was working for clearly has his sights set on the Vatican- and someone needs to tell them.”

“I suspect you have someone in mind for the job.”

“Consider it your first assignment as chief of Special Ops,” Shamron said. “The prime minister wants you to step into the breach.Immediately.”

“And Amos?”

“Amos has another name in mind, but the prime minister and I have made it clear to him who we want in the job.”

“My own record is hardly free of scandal, and unfortunately the world now knows about it.”

“The Gare de Lyon affair?” Shamron shrugged. “You were lured into it by a clever opponent. Besides, I’ve always believed that a career free of controversy is not a proper career at all. The prime minister shares that view.”

“Maybe that’s because he’s been involved in a few scandals of his own.”Italian soil-”

“There’s no need for you to go to Rome,” Shamron said, cutting him off. “Rome is coming to you.”

“Donati?”

Shamron nodded.

“How much did you tell him?”

“Enough for him to ask Alitalia if he could borrow a plane for a few hours,” Shamron said. “He’ll be here first thing in the morning. Show him the photographs. Tell him as much as you need to in order to impress upon him that we think the threat is credible.”

“And if he asks for help?”

Shamron shrugged. “Give him whatever he needs.”

Silva, a master craftsman, offers a perfect blend of all that matters most in fiction — a significant theme, believable and engaging characters, authentic settings, and an engrossing plot — -detailed in precise prose that flows with seductive ease. Unlike other thriller writers who rely on tricks and seemingly endless (and ultimately unrealistic) twists for effect, Silva builds suspense through realistic threats, harrowing situations, and gripping action.”
—Library Journal, starred review

An engrossing and beautifully written contemporary spy thriller.”
—Booklist

Bestseller Silva continues to warrant comparisons to John le Carré, as shown by his latest thriller starring Israeli art restorer and spymaster Gabriel Allon…. The way Silva resolves his plot will keep readers right where he wants them: on the edges of their seats.”
—Publishers Weekly

1
Amsterdam

It 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, stately old Amsterdam murmured that golden late-autumn afternoon. Today we give thanks for having been born blameless and Dutch.

Solomon Rosner did not share the sentiments of his countrymen, but then he seldom did. Though he earned a living as a professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, it was Rosner’s Center for European Security Studies that occupied the lion’s share of his time. His legion of detractors saw evidence of deception in the name, for Rosner served not only as the center’s director but was its only scholar in residence. Despite those obvious shortcomings, the center had managed to produce a steady stream of authoritative reports and articles detailing the threat posed to the Netherlands by the rise of militant Islam within its borders. Rosner’s last book, The Islamic Conquest of the West, had argued that Holland was now under a sustained and systematic assault by jihadist Islam. The goal of this assault, he maintained, was to colonize the Netherlands and turn it into a majority Muslim state, where, in the not-too-distant future, Islamic law, or sharia, would reign supreme. The terrorists and the colonizers were two sides of the same coin, he warned, and unless the government took immediate and drastic action, everything the freethinking Dutch held dear would soon be swept away.

The Dutch literary press had been predictably appalled. Hysteria, said one reviewer. Racist claptrap, said another. More than one took pains to note that the views expressed in the book were all the more odious given the fact that Rosner’s grandparents had been rounded up with a hundred thousand other Dutch Jews and sent off to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. All agreed that what the situation required was not hateful rhetoric like Rosner’s but tolerance and dialogue. Rosner stood steadfast in the face of the withering criticism, adopting what one commentator described as the posture of a man with his finger wedged firmly in the dike. Tolerance and dialogue by all means, Rosner responded, but not capitulation. “We Dutch need to put down our Heinekens and hash pipes and wake up,” he snapped during an interview on Dutch television. “Otherwise, we’re going to lose our country.”

The book and surrounding controversy had made Rosner the most vilified and, in some quarters, celebrated man in the country. It had also placed him squarely in the sights of Holland’s homegrown Islamic extremists. Jihadist websites, which Rosner monitored more closely than even the Dutch police, burned with sacred rage over the book, and more than one forecast his imminent execution. An imam in the neighborhood known as the Oud West instructed his flock that “Rosner the Jew must be dealt with harshly” and pleaded for a martyr to step forward and do the job. The feckless Dutch interior minister responded by proposing that Rosner go into hiding, an idea Rosner vigorously refused. He then supplied the minister with a list of ten radicals he regarded as potential assassins. The minister accepted the list without question, for he knew that Rosner’s sources inside Holland’s extremist fringe were in most cases far better than those of the Dutch security services.

At noon on that Friday in December, Rosner was hunched over his computer in the second-floor office of his canal house at Groenburgwal 2A. The house, like Rosner himself, was stubby and wide, and tilted forward at a precarious angle, which some of the neighbors saw as fitting, given the political views of its occupant. If it had one serious drawback it was its location, for it stood not fifty yards from the bell tower of the Zuiderkirk church. The bells tolled mercilessly each day, beginning at the stroke of noon and ending forty-five minutes later. Rosner, sensitive to interruptions and unwanted noise, had been waging a personal jihad against them for years. Classical music, white-noise machines, soundproof headphones—all had proven useless in the face of the onslaught. Sometimes he wondered why they were rung at all. The old church had long ago been turned into a government housing office, a fact that Rosner, a man of considerable faith, saw as a fitting symbol of the Dutch morass. Confronted by an enemy of infinite religious zeal, the secular Dutch had turned their churches into bureaus of the welfare state. A church without faithful, thought Rosner, in a city without God.

At ten minutes past twelve he heard a faint knock and looked up to find Sophie Vanderhaus leaning against the doorjamb with a batch of files clutched to her breast. A former student of Rosner’s, she had come to work for him after completing a graduate degree on the impact of the Holocaust on postwar Dutch society. She was part secretary and research assistant, part nursemaid and surrogate daughter. She kept his office in order and typed the final drafts of all his reports and articles. She was the minder of his impossible schedule and tended to his appalling personal finances. She even saw to his laundry and made certain he remembered to eat. Earlier that morning she had informed him that she was planning to spend a week in Saint-Maarten over the New Year. Rosner, upon hearing the news, had fallen into a profound depression.

“You have an interview with De Telegraaf in an hour,” she said. “Maybe you should have something to eat and focus your thoughts.”

“Are you suggesting my thoughts lack focus, Sophie?”

“I’m suggesting nothing of the sort. It’s just that you’ve been working on that article since five-thirty this morning. You need something more than coffee in your stomach.”

“It’s not that dreadful reporter who called me a Nazi last year?”

“Do you really think I’d let her near you again?” She entered the office and started straightening his desk. “After the interview with De Telegraaf, you go to the NOS studios for an appearance on Radio One. It’s a call-in program, so it’s sure to be lively. Do try not to make any more enemies, Professor Rosner. It’s getting harder and harder to keep track of them all.”

“I’ll try to behave myself, but I’m afraid my forbearance is now gone forever.”

She peered into his coffee cup and pulled a sour face. “Why do you insist on putting out your cigarettes in your coffee?”

“My ashtray was full.”

“Try emptying it from time to time.” She poured the contents of the ashtray into his rubbish bin and removed the plastic liner. “And don’t forget you have the forum this evening at the university.”

Rosner frowned. He was not looking forward to the forum. One of the other panelists was the leader of the European Muslim Association, a group that campaigned openly for the imposition of sharia in Europe and the destruction of the State of Israel. It promised to be a deeply unpleasant evening.

“I’m afraid I’m coming down with a sudden case of leprosy,” he said.

“They’ll insist that you come anyway. You’re the star of the show.”

He stood and stretched his back. “I think I’ll go to Café de Doelen for a coffee and something to eat. Why don’t you have the reporter from De Telegraaf meet me there?”

“Do you really think that’s wise, Professor?”

It was common knowledge in Amsterdam that the famous café on the Staalstraat was his favorite haunt. And Rosner was hardly inconspicuous. Indeed, with his shock of white hair and rumpled tweed wardrobe, he was one of the most recognizable figures in Holland. The geniuses in the Dutch police had once suggested he utilize some crude disguise while in public, an idea Rosner had likened to putting a hat and a false mustache on a hippopotamus and calling it a Dutchman.

“I haven’t been to the Doelen in months.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s any safer.”

“I can’t live my life as a prisoner forever, Sophie.” He gestured toward the window. “Especially on a day like today. Wait until the last possible minute before you tell the reporter from De Telegraaf where I am. That will give me a jump on the jihadists.”

“That isn’t funny, Professor.” She could see there was no talking him out of it. She handed him his mobile phone. “At least take this so you can call me in an emergency.”

Rosner slipped the phone into his pocket and headed downstairs. In the entry hall he pulled on his coat and trademark silk scarf and stepped outside. To his left rose the spire of the Zuiderkirk; to his right, fifty yards along a narrow canal lined with small craft, stood a wooden double drawbridge. The Groenburgwal was a quiet street for the Old Side: no bars or cafés, only a single small hotel that never seemed to have more than a handful of guests. Directly opposite Rosner’s house was the street’s only eyesore, a modern tenement block with a lavender-and-lime pastel exterior. A trio of housepainters dressed in smudged white coveralls was squatting outside the building in a patch of sunlight.

Rosner glanced at the three faces, committing each to memory, before setting off in the direction of the drawbridge. When a sudden gust of wind stirred the bare tree limbs along the embankment, he paused for a moment to bind his scarf more tightly around his neck and watch a plump Vermeer cloud drift slowly overhead. It was then that he noticed one of the painters walking parallel to him along the opposite side of the canal. Short dark hair, a high flat forehead, a heavy brow over small eyes: Rosner, connoisseur of immigrant faces, judged him to be a Moroccan from the Rif Mountains. They arrived at the drawbridge simultaneously. Rosner paused again, this time to light a cigarette he did not want, and watched with relief as the man turned to the left. When he disappeared round the next corner, Rosner headed in the opposite direction toward the Doelen.

He took his time making his way down the Staalstraat, now dawdling in the window of his favorite pastry shop to gaze at that day’s offerings, now sidestepping to avoid being run down by a pretty girl on a bicycle, now pausing to accept a few words of encouragement from a ruddy-faced admirer. He was about to step through the entrance of the café when he felt a tug at his coat sleeve. In the few remaining seconds he had left to live, he would be tormented by the absurd thought that he might have prevented his own murder had he resisted the impulse to turn around. But he did turn around, because that is what one does on a glorious December afternoon in Amsterdam when one is summoned in the street by a stranger.

He saw the gun only in the abstract. In the narrow street the shots reverberated like cannon fire. He collapsed onto the cobblestones and watched helplessly as his killer drew a long knife from the inside of his coveralls. The slaughter was ritual, just as the imams had decreed it should be. No one intervened—hardly surprising, thought Rosner, for intervention would have been intolerant—and no one thought to comfort him as he lay dying. Only the bells spoke to him. A church without faithful, they seemed to be saying, in a city without God.