The Heist

“You might have told him the truth.”

“Which version of the truth?”

“You have one year until you take your oath, darling. After that, you’ll be at the prime minister’s beck and call, and the security of the state will be your responsibility. Your life will be one long meeting interspersed with the occasional crisis.”

“Which is why I turned down the job several times before finally accepting it.”

“But now it’s yours. And this is your last chance to take some well-deserved time off before we go back to Israel.”

“I tried to explain that to the general without going into all the sordid details. That’s when he threatened to leave Julian rotting in an Italian jail cell.”

“He had nothing on Julian. He was bluffing.”

“He might have been,” Gabriel conceded. “But what if some enterprising British reporter decided to do a little digging into Julian’s background? And what if the same enterprising reporter somehow discovered he was an asset of the Office? I would have never forgiven myself if I’d allowed him to be dragged through the mud. He’s always been there when I needed him.”

“Do you remember the time you asked him to take care of that Russian defector’s cat?”

“How could I forget? I never knew Julian was allergic to cats. He had a rash for a month.”

Chiara smiled. She placed the onion in a heavy skillet with olive oil and butter, quickly chopped a carrot, and added it, too.

“What are you making?”

“It’s a local meat dish called calandraca.”

“Where did you learn to make it?”

Chiara glanced at the ceiling, as if to say such knowledge was to be found in the air and the water of Italy. It wasn’t far from the truth.

“What can I do to help?” asked Gabriel.

“You can stop hovering over me.”

Gabriel carried the platter of bruschetta and the wine into the small sitting room. Before lowering himself onto the couch, he removed the gun from the small of his back and placed it carefully on the coffee table, atop a pile of bright magazines having to do with pregnancy and childbirth. The gun was a Beretta 9mm, and its walnut grip was stained with paint: a dab of Titian, a bit of Bellini, a drop of Raphael and Tintoretto. Soon he would no longer carry a weapon; others would carry weapons on his behalf. He wondered how it was going to feel to walk through the world unarmed. It would be akin, he thought, to leaving home without first putting on a pair of trousers. Some men wore neckties when they went to the office. Gabriel Allon carried a gun.

“I still don’t understand why the general needs you to find out who killed Jack Bradshaw,” Chiara called from the kitchen.

“He seems to think they were looking for something,” replied Gabriel, leafing through the pages of one of the magazines. “He’d like me to find it before they do.”

“Looking for what?”

“He didn’t go into specifics, but I suspect he knows more than he’s saying.”

“He usually does.”

Chiara placed cubes of lightly floured veal in the pan, and soon the apartment was filled with the savor of the browning meat. Next she added a few ounces of tomato sauce, white wine, and herbs that she measured out in the palm of her hand. Gabriel watched the running lights of a boat moving slowly over the black waters of the canal. Then, cautiously, he told Chiara he planned to leave for Lake Como first thing in the morning.

“When will you be back?” she asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On what I find inside Jack Bradshaw’s villa.”

Chiara was chopping potatoes on a wooden cutting board. As a result, her declaration that she intended to accompany Gabriel was scarcely audible over the clatter of the knife. Gabriel turned from the window and fixed her with a reproachful stare.

“What’s wrong?” she asked after a moment.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he replied evenly.

“It’s Lake Como. What could possibly happen?”

“Shall I give you a few examples?”

Chiara was silent. Gabriel turned to watch the boat moving up the canal again, but in his thoughts were images of a long and turbulent career. It was a career, oddly enough, that had played itself out in some of Europe’s most glamorous settings. He had killed in Cannes and Saint-Tropez and fought for his life on the streets of Rome and in the mountains of Switzerland. And once, many years earlier, he had lost a wife and son to a car bomb on a quaint street in the elegant First District of Vienna. No, he thought now, Chiara would not be coming with him to Lake Como. He would leave her here in Venice, in the care of her family and under the protection of the Italian police. And God help the general if he allowed anything to happen to her.

She was singing softly to herself, one of those silly Italian pop songs she so adored. She added the chopped potatoes to the pot, lowered the heat, and then joined Gabriel in the sitting room. General Ferrari’s file on Jack Bradshaw lay on the coffee table, next to the Beretta pistol. She reached for it, but Gabriel stopped her; he didn’t want her to see the mess that Jack Bradshaw’s killers had made of his body. She placed her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled of vanilla.

“How long before the calandraca is ready?” asked Gabriel.

“An hour or so.”

“I can’t wait that long.”

“Have another bruschetta.”

He did. So did Chiara. Then she lifted the glass of Bardolino to her nose but did not drink from it.

“It won’t hurt them if you take only a small sip.”

She returned the wineglass to the table and placed her hand over her womb. Gabriel placed his own hand next to hers, and for an instant he thought he could detect the hummingbird flutter of two fetal heartbeats. They’re mine, he thought, holding them tightly. And God help the man who ever tries to harm them.

6 (#ulink_6780786c-24bc-5652-bd86-06c8521d6ccd)

LAKE COMO, ITALY (#ulink_6780786c-24bc-5652-bd86-06c8521d6ccd)

NEXT MORNING, RESIDENTS OF THE United Kingdom awoke to the news that one of their countrymen, the expatriate businessman James “Jack” Bradshaw, had been found brutally murdered at his villa overlooking Lake Como. The Italian authorities offered up robbery as a possible motive, despite the fact that they had no evidence that anything at all had been stolen. General Ferrari’s name did not appear in the coverage; nor was there any mention that Julian Isherwood, the noted London art dealer, had discovered the body. All of the newspapers struggled to find anyone who had a kind word to say about Bradshaw. The Times managed to dredge up an old colleague from the Foreign Office who described him as “a fine officer,” but otherwise it seemed Bradshaw’s life was deserving of no eulogy. The photograph that popped up on the BBC looked at least twenty years old. It showed a man who did not like to have his picture taken.

There was another crucial fact missing from the coverage of Jack Bradshaw’s murder: Gabriel Allon, the legendary but wayward son of Israeli intelligence, had been quietly retained by the Art Squad to look into it. His investigation commenced at half past seven when he inserted a high-capacity flash drive into his notebook computer. Given to him by General Ferrari, the drive contained the contents of Jack Bradshaw’s personal computer. Most of the documents dealt with his business, the Meridian Global Consulting Group—a curious name, thought Gabriel, for Meridian appeared to have no other employees. The drive contained more than twenty thousand documents. In addition, there were several thousand telephone numbers and e-mail addresses that had to be checked out and cross-referenced. It was far too much material for Gabriel to review alone. He needed an assistant, a skilled researcher who knew something about criminal matters and, preferably, about Italian art.

“Me?” asked Chiara incredulously.

“Do you have a better idea?”

“Are you sure you want me to answer that?”

Gabriel made no reply. He could see there was something about the idea that appealed to Chiara. She was a natural solver of puzzles and problems.