Navot brought the painting the next morning, wrapped in an old quilt he had taken from Hannah’s apartment. Gabriel considered sending it back to Tel Aviv by courier, but in the end decided to carry it out of France himself. He removed it from the frame, then pried the canvas off the stretcher. As he rolled it carefully he thought of Isaac Weinberg the night before Jeudi Noir. This time, instead of being hidden beneath a floorboard, it was tucked securely into the false lining of Gabriel’s suitcase. Navot drove him to the Gare du Nord.
“An agent from London Station will be waiting for you at Waterloo,” Navot said. “He’ll run you out to Heathrow. El Al is expecting you. They’ll make sure you have no problems with your baggage.”
“Thanks, Uzi. You won’t be making my travel arrangements much longer.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Things didn’t go well with Amos?”
“He’s hard to read.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he needs a few days to think it over.”
“You didn’t expect him to offer it to you on the spot, did you?”
“I don’t know what I expected.”
“Don’t worry, Uzi. You’ll get the job.”
Navot pulled over to the side of the street a block from the station.
“You’ll put in a good word for me at King Saul Boulevard, won’t you, Gabriel? Amos likes you.”
“What gave you that impression?”
“I could just tell,” he said. “Everyone likes you.”
Gabriel climbed out, took his suitcase from the backseat, and disappeared into the station. Navot waited at the curb until five minutes after Gabriel’s scheduled departure, then pulled out into the traffic and drove away.
THE APARTMENT WAS in darkness when Gabriel arrived. He switched on a halogen lamp and was relieved to see his studio was still intact. Chiara was sitting up in bed as he entered their room. Her hair was newly washed and drawn back from her face by a velvet elastic band. Gabriel removed it and loosened the buttons of her nightgown. The painting lay next to them as they made love. “You know,” she said, “most men just come home from Paris with an Hermès scarf and some perfume.”
The telephone rang at midnight. Gabriel answered it before it could ring a second time. “I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said a moment later, then hung up the phone.
“Who was that?” Chiara asked.
“Adrian Carter.”
“What did he want?”
“He wants me to come to Washington right away.”
“What’s in Washington?”
“A girl,” said Gabriel. “Carter’s found the girl.”
16.
HOW WAS THE FLIGHT?”
“Eternal.”
“It’s the autumn jet-stream patterns,” Carter said pedantically. “It adds at least two hours to flights from Europe to America.”
“ Israel isn’t in Europe, Adrian. Israel is in the Middle East.”
“Really?”
“You can ask your director of intelligence. He’ll clear up the confusion for you.”
Carter gave Gabriel a contemptuous look, then returned his eyes to the road. They were driving toward Washington along the Dulles Access Road in Carter’s battered Volvo. Carter was wearing a corduroy sport jacket with patches on the elbows. It reinforced his professorial image. All that was missing was the canvas book bag and the NPR coffee mug. He was driving well below the posted speed limit and making repeated glances into his rearview mirror.
“Are we being followed?” Gabriel asked.
“Traffic cops,” said Carter. “They’re fanatical on this road. Any problems at passport control?”
“None,” Gabriel said. “In fact, they seemed very happy to see me.”
It was something Gabriel had never understood about America -the geniality of its border policemen. He’d always found something reassuring in the bored surliness of the Israelis who stamped passports at Ben-Gurion Airport. American customs agents were far too cordial.
He looked out the window. They had left the Dulles Access Road and were driving now through McLean. He’d been to Virginia just once before, a brief visit to a CIA safe house deep in the horse country near Middleburg. He found McLean to be an archetypal American suburb, neat and prosperous but somehow lifeless. They skirted the downtown commercial district, then entered a residential section with large tract homes. The developments had names like Merrywood and Colonial Estates. A road sign floated toward them: GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE.
“You’re not actually thinking about taking me into Headquarters, are you?”
“Of course not,” Carter said. “We’re going into the District.”
The District, Gabriel knew, was the way Washingtonians referred to their little village on the Potomac. They crossed a highway overpass and entered an area of rolling hills and dense woods. Gabriel, through the trees, glimpsed great houses overlooking the river.
“What’s her name?”
“Sarah Bancroft,” Carter replied. “Her father was a senior executive in the international division of Citibank. For the most part Sarah was raised in Europe. She’s comfortable abroad in a way that most Americans aren’t. She speaks languages. She knows which fork to use when.”
“Education?”
“She came back here for college. Did a bachelor’s in art history at Dartmouth, then a stretch at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. I take it you’re familiar with the Courtauld?”
Gabriel nodded. It was one of the world’s most prestigious schools of art. Its graduates included an art dealer from St. James’s named Julian Isherwood.
“After the Courtauld she did her doctorate at Harvard,” Carter said. “Now she’s a curator at the Phillips Collection in Washington. It’s a small museum near-”
“I know the Phillips Collection, Adrian.”
“Sorry,” Carter said earnestly.
A large whitetail deer darted from the trees and crossed their path. Carter let his foot off the gas and watched the animal bound silently away through the darkening woods.
“Who brought her to your attention?” Gabriel asked, but Carter made no response. He was hunched over the wheel now and scanning the trees along the edge of the road for more deer. “Where there’s one,” he said, “there’s usually another.”
“Just like the terrorists,” Gabriel said. He repeated his question.
“She applied to join us a few months after 9/11,” Carter said. “She’d just finished her Ph.D. She looked interesting on paper, so we brought her in and gave her to the psychiatrists in Personnel. They put her through the wringer and didn’t like what they saw. Too independent-minded, they said. Maybe even a bit too smart for her own good. When we turned her down, she landed at the Phillips.”
“So you’re offering me one of your rejects?”
“The word hardly applies to Sarah Bancroft.” Carter reached into the pocket of his corduroy blazer and handed Gabriel a photograph. Sarah Bancroft was a strikingly beautiful woman, with shoulder-length blond hair, wide cheekbones, and large eyes the color of a cloudless summer sky.
“How old?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Why isn’t she married?”
Carter hesitated a moment.
“Why isn’t she married, Adrian?”
“She had a boyfriend while she was at Harvard, a young lawyer named Ben Callahan. It ended badly.”
“What happened to Ben?”
“He boarded a flight to Los Angeles at Logan Airport on the morning of September 11, 2001.”
Gabriel held out the photograph toward Carter. “Zizi’s not going to be interested in hiring someone touched by 9/11. You brought me here for nothing, Adrian.”