“Was she an artist too?”
“She was much better than I am.”
“Was she beautiful?”
“She was very beautiful. Now she has scars.”
“We all have scars, Gabriel.”
“Not like Leah.”
“Why did the Palestinian plant the bomb beneath the car?”
“Because I killed his brother.”
Before she could ask another question, a Volvo truck pulled into the parking lot and flashed its lights. Gabriel started the car and followed it to the edge of a pine grove outside the town. The driver hopped down from the cab and quickly pulled open the rear door. Gabriel and Anna got out of their car, Anna holding the small safe-deposit box, Gabriel the one containing the paintings. He paused briefly to hurl the car keys deep into the trees.
The container of the truck was filled with office furniture: desks, chairs, bookshelves, file cabinets. The driver said, “Go to the front of the cabin, lie down on the floor, and cover yourself with those extra freight blankets.”
Gabriel went first, clambering over the furniture, the deposit box in his arms. Anna followed. At the front of the cabin, there was just enough room for them to sit with their knees beneath their chins. When Anna was in place, Gabriel covered them both with the blanket. The darkness was absolute.
The truck teetered onto the road, and for several minutes they sped along the motorway. Gabriel could feel the tire spray on the undercarriage. Anna began to hum softly.
“What are you doing?”
“I always hum when I’m scared.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” he said. “So what were you humming?”
“ ‘The Swan’ from The Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns.”
“Will you play it for me sometime?”
“No,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because I never play for my friends.”
TEN minutes later: the border. The truck joined a queue of vehicles waiting to make the crossing into Germany. It crept forward a few inches at a time: accelerate, brake, accelerate,brake. Their heads rolled back and forth like a pair of children’s toys. Each touch of the brake produced a deafening screech of protest; each press of the throttle another blast of poisonous diesel fumes. Anna leaned her cheek against his shoulder and whispered, “Now I thinkI’m going to be sick.” Gabriel squeezed her hand.
ON the other side of the border another car was waiting, a dark-blue Ford Fiesta with Munich registration. Ari Shamron’s truck driver dropped them and continued on his synthetic journey to nowhere. Gabriel loaded the safe-deposit boxes into the trunk and started driving-the E41 to Stuttgart, the E52 to Karlsruhe, the E35 to Frankfurt. Once during the night he stopped to telephone Tel Aviv on an emergency line, and he spoke briefly with Shamron.
At 2A.M. they arrived in the Dutch market town of Delft, a few miles inland from the coast. Gabriel could drive no farther. His eyes burned, his ears were ringing with exhaustion. In eight hours, a ferry would leave from Hoek van Holland for the English port of Harwich, and Gabriel and Anna would be on it, but for now he needed a bed and a few hours of rest, so they drove through the streets of the old town looking for a hotel.
He found one, on the Vondelstraat, within sight of the spire of the Nieuwe Kerk. Anna handled the formalities at the front desk while Gabriel waited in the tiny parlor with the two safe-deposit boxes. A moment later, they were escorted up a narrow staircase to an overheated room with a peaked ceiling and a gabled window, which Gabriel immediately opened.
He placed the boxes in the closet; then he pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. Anna slipped into the bathroom, and a moment later Gabriel heard the comforting sound of water splashing against enamel. The cold night air blew through the open window. Scented with the North Sea, it caressed his face. He permitted himself to close his eyes.
A few minutes later Anna came out of the bathroom. A burst of light announced her arrival; then she reached out and threw the wall switch, and the room was in darkness again, except for the weak glow of streetlamps seeping through the window.
“Are you awake?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you going to sleep on the floor, the way you did in Vienna?”
“I can’t move.”
She lifted the blanket and crawled into bed next to him.
Gabriel said, “How did you know the password was ‘adagio’?”
“Albinoni’s “Adagio” was one of the first pieces I learned to play. For some reason, it remained my father’s favorite.” Her lighter flared in the darkness. “My father wanted forgiveness for his sins. He wanted absolution. He was willing to turn to you for that but not to me. Why didn’t my father ask me for forgiveness?”
“He probably didn’t think you’d give it to him.”
“It sounds as though you speak from experience. Has your wife ever forgiven you?”
“No, I don’t think she has.”
“And what about you? Have you ever forgiven yourself?”
“I wouldn’t call it forgiveness.”
“What would you call it?”
“Accommodation. I’ve reached accommodation with myself.”
“My father died without absolution. He probably deserved that. But I want to finish what he set out to do. I want to get those paintings back and send them to Israel.”
“So do I.”
“How?”
“Go to sleep, Anna.”
Which she did. Gabriel lay awake, waiting for the dawn, listening to the gulls on the canal and the steady rhythm of Anna’s breathing. No demons tonight, no nightmares-the guiltless sleep of a child. Gabriel did not join her. He wasn’t ready to sleep yet. When the paintings were locked away in Julian Isherwood’s vault-then he would sleep.
Part Three
32
ON THE EVE of the Second World War, General Henri Guisan, the commander in chief of Switzerland ’s armed forces, announced a desperate plan to deal with an invasion by the overwhelmingly superior forces of Nazi Germany. If the Germans come, Guisan said, the Swiss Army would withdraw to the natural fortress of the Alpine Redoubt and blow up the tunnels. And there they would fight, in the deep valleys and on the high mountain ice fields, to the last man. It had not come to that, of course. Hitler realized early in the war that a neutral Switzerland would be more valuable to him than a Switzerland in chains and under occupation. Still, the general’s heroic strategy for dealing with the threat of invasion lives on in the imagination of the Swiss.
Indeed, it was on Gerhardt Peterson’s mind the following afternoon as he skirted Lucerne and the Alps loomed before him, shrouded in cloud. Peterson could feel his heart beat faster as he pressed the accelerator and his big Mercedes roared up the first mountain pass. Peterson came from Inner Switzerland, and he could trace his lineage back to the tribesmen of the Forest Cantons. He took a certain comfort in the knowledge that people with his blood had roamed these mountain valleys at the same time a young man called Jesus of Nazareth was stirring up trouble at the other end of the Roman Empire. He became uneasy whenever he ventured too far from the security of his Alpine Redoubt. He remembered an official visit to Russia he had made a few years earlier. The limitless quality of the countryside had played havoc with his senses. In his Moscow hotel room, he had suffered his first and only bout of insomnia. When he returned home, he went straight to his country house and spent a day hiking along the mountain trails above Lake Lucerne. That night he slept.