The lights of the fishing boat disappeared into the port of Tiberias. Shamron seemed suddenly weary. “There will never be peace in this place, but then there never was. Ever since we stumbled into this land from Egypt and Mesopotamia, we’ve been fighting. Canaanites, Assyrians, Philistines, Romans, Amalekites. We deluded ourselves into believing our enemies had given up their dream of destroying us. We have prayed for impossible things. Peace without justice, forgiveness without restitution.” He looked provocatively at Gabriel. “Love without sacrifice.”
Gabriel stood and prepared to take his leave.
“What shall I tell the prime minister?”
“Tell him I have to think about it.”
“Operations is only a way station, Gabriel. One day you’ll be the chief. The Memuneh.”
“You’re the Memuneh, Ari. And you always will be.”
Shamron gave a satisfied laugh. “What shall I tell him, Gabriel?”
“Tell him I have nowhere else to go, either.”
THE TELEPHONE CALL from Julian Isherwood provided Gabriel with the excuse he’d been looking for to remove the last traces of Chiara from the flat. He contacted a charity for Russian immigrants and said he wished to make a donation. The following morning, two skinny boys from Moscow came and removed all the furniture from the living room: the couches and chairs, the end tables and lamps, the dining room table, even the decorative brass pots and ceramic dishes that Chiara had selected and placed with such care. The bedroom he left untouched, except for the sheets and the duvet, which still bore the vanilla scent of Chiara’s hair.
During the days that followed, Narkiss Street was visited by a succession of delivery trucks. The large white examination table arrived first, followed by the fluorescent and halogen lamps with adjustable stanchions. The venerable art supply shop of L. Cornelissen amp; Son, Great Russell Street, London, dispatched a shipment of brushes, pigment, medium, and varnish. A chemical firm in Leeds sent several cases of potentially dangerous solvents that aroused more than the passing interest of the Israeli postal authorities. From Germany came a costly microscope on a retractable arm; from a workshop in Venice two large oaken easels.
Daniel in the Lions’ Den, oil on canvas, dubiously attributed to Erasmus Quellinus, arrived the following day. It took Gabriel the better part of the afternoon to disassemble the sophisticated shipping crate, and only with Shamron’s help was he able to maneuver the enormous canvas onto the twin easels. The image of Daniel surrounded by wild beasts intrigued Shamron, and he stayed late into the evening as Gabriel, armed with cotton swabs and a basin of distilled water and ammonia, began the tedious task of scrubbing more than a century’s worth of dirt and grime from the surface of the painting.
To the degree possible he duplicated his work habits from Venice. He rose before it was light and resisted the impulse to switch on the radio, lest the daily toll of bloodshed and constant security alerts break the spell the painting had cast over him. He would remain in his studio all morning and usually worked a second shift late into the night. He spent as little time as possible at King Saul Boulevard; indeed he heard of Lev’s resignation on the car radio while driving from Narkiss Street to Mount Herzl to see Leah. During their visits together, her journeys to Vienna were shallower and shorter in duration. She asked him questions about their past.
“Where did we meet, Gabriel?”
“At Bezalel. You’re a painter, Leah.”
“Where were we married?”
“In Tiberias. On Shamron’s terrace overlooking the Sea of Galilee.”
“And you’re a restorer now?”
“I studied in Venice, with Umberto Conti. You used to visit me there every few months. You posed as a German girl from Bremen. Do you remember, Leah?”
One searing afternoon in June, Gabriel had coffee with Dr. Bar-Zvi in the staff canteen.
“Will she ever be able to leave this place?”
“No.”
“What about for short periods?”
“I don’t see why not,” the doctor said. “In fact, I think it sounds like a rather good idea.”
She came with a nurse the first few times. Then, as she grew more comfortable being away from the hospital, Gabriel brought her home alone. She sat in a chair in his studio and watched him work for hours on end. Sometimes her presence brought him peace, sometimes unbearable pain. Always, he wished he could set her upon his easel and re-create the woman he had placed in a car that snowy night in Vienna.
“Do you have any of my paintings?”
He showed her the portrait in the bedroom. When she asked who the model had been, Gabriel said it was him.
“You look sad.”
“I was tired,” he said. “I’d been gone for three years.”
“Did I really paint this?”
“You were good,” he said. “You were better than me.”
One afternoon, while Gabriel was retouching a damaged portion of Daniel’s face, she asked him why she had come to Vienna.
“We’d grown apart because of my work. I thought my cover was secure enough to bring you and Dani along. It was a foolish mistake, and you were the one to pay for it.”
“There was another woman, wasn’t there? A French girl. Someone who worked for the Office.”
Gabriel nodded once and returned to work on the face of Daniel. Leah pressed him for more. “Who did it?” she asked. “Who put the bomb in my car?”
“It was Arafat. I was supposed to die with you and Dani, but the man who carried out the mission changed the plan.”
“Is he alive, this man?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“And Arafat?”
Leah’s grasp on the present situation was tenuous at best. Gabriel explained that Yasir Arafat, Israel ’s mortal enemy, now lived a few miles away, in Ramallah.
“Arafat is here? How can that be?”
From the mouths of innocents, thought Gabriel. Just then he heard footfalls in the stairwell. Eli Lavon let himself into the flat without bothering to knock.
37 AIX-EN-PROVENCE: FIVE MONTHS LATER
THE FIRST STIRRINGS OF A MISTRAL WERE PROWLING the ravines and gorges of the Bouches-du-Rhône. Paul Martineau, climbing out of his Mercedes sedan, buttoned his canvas field coat and turned the collar up round his ears. Another winter had come to Provence. A few more weeks, he thought, then he’d have to shut down the dig until spring.
He retrieved his canvas rucksack from the trunk, then set out along the edge of the ancient stone wall of the hill fort. A moment later, at the point where the wall ended, he paused. About fifty meters away, near the edge of the hilltop, a painter stood before a canvas. It was not unusual to see artists working atop the hill; Cézanne himself had adored the commanding view over the Chaine de l’Étoile. Still, Martineau reckoned it would be wise to have a closer look at the man before starting to work.
He transferred his Makarov pistol from his rucksack to the pocket of his coat, then walked toward the painter. The man’s back was turned to Martineau. Judging from the attitude of his head he was gazing at the distant Mont Sainte-Victoire. This was confirmed for Martineau a few seconds later when he glimpsed the canvas for the first time. The work was very much in the style of Cézanne’s classic landscape. Actually, thought Martineau, it was an uncanny reproduction.
The artist was so engrossed in his work he seemed not to hear Martineau’s approach. Only when Martineau was standing at his back did he cease painting and glance over his shoulder. He wore a heavy woolen sweater and a floppy wide-brimmed hat that moved with the wind. His gray beard was long and unkempt, his hands were smeared with paint. Judging from his expression he was a man who did not enjoy being interrupted while he was working. Martineau was sympathetic.