With a glance toward the Golan Heights, Shamron said, “I’m not sure you have much of a choice.”
The child stirred in Gabriel’s arms and then settled into sleep once more. Shamron twirled his old Zippo lighter in his fingertips. Two turns to the right, two turns to the left . . .
“Is this how you expected it would end?” he asked after a moment.
“How what would end?”
“You and me.” Shamron looked at Gabriel and added, “Us.”
“What are you talking about, Ari?”
“I’m old, my son. I’ve been clinging to life for this night. Now that it’s over, I can go.” He smiled sadly. “It’s late, Gabriel. I’m very tired.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Ari. I need you.”
“No, you don’t,” replied Shamron. “You are me.”
“Funny how it worked out that way.”
“You seem to think it was serendipitous. But it wasn’t. It was all part of a plan.”
“Whose plan?”
“Maybe it was mine, maybe it was God’s.” Shamron shrugged. “What difference does it make? We are on the same side when it comes to you, God and me. We are accomplices.”
“Who has the final say?”
“Who do you think?” Shamron laid his large hand across Raphael. “Do you remember the day I came for you in Cornwall?”
“Like it was yesterday.”
“You drove like a madman through the hedgerows of the Lizard. We had omelets in that little café atop the cliffs. You treated me,” Shamron added with a note of bitterness, “like a debt collector.”
“I remember,” said Gabriel distantly.
“How do you suppose your life would have turned out if I hadn’t come that day?”
“Just fine.”
“I doubt it. You’d still be restoring paintings for Julian and sailing that old ketch down the Helford to the sea. You would never have come back to Israel or met Chiara. And you wouldn’t be holding that beautiful child in your arms right now.”
Gabriel did not take issue with Shamron’s characterization. He had been a lost soul that day, a broken and bitter man.
“It wasn’t all bad, was it?” asked Shamron.
“I could have lived my entire life without seeing the inside of Lubyanka.”
“What about that dog in the Swiss Alps that tried to tear your arm off?”
“I got him in the end.”
“And that motorcycle you crashed in Rome? Or the antiquities gallery that blew up in your face in St. Moritz?”
“Good times,” said Gabriel darkly. “But I lost a lot of friends along the way.”
“Like Hannah Weinberg.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Like Hannah.”
“Perhaps a bit of old-fashioned vengeance is in order.”
“The deal is done.”
“Who’s going to handle it?”
“I’d like to see to it personally, but it’s probably not a wise move at the moment.”
Shamron smiled. “You’re going to be a great chief, my son.”
80
BETHNAL GREEN, LONDON
IN EVERY OPERATION THERE ARE loose threads, small problems that for one reason or another slip through the cracks. Jalal Nasser, talent spotter, recruiter, long arm of Saladin, fell into that category. An arrest was out of the question; a trial would expose not only Gabriel’s operation but the incompetence of the British and French security services as well. Nor was deportation an option. Were he to return to Jordan, he would have gone straight to the cellars of the Fingernail Factory—and then, in all likelihood, to an unmarked grave in a potter’s field. Such an outcome might have been acceptable during the earliest days of the global war on terror, but now that cooler, more civilized heads had prevailed, it was unthinkable. There would be international outrage, perhaps a lawsuit or even criminal prosecution of the spymasters involved. “Collateral damage,” intoned Fareed Barakat gravely. “And you know how His Majesty feels about collateral damage.”
There was a simple solution, a Shamronian solution. All that was required was the connivance of the native service, which, for the above stated reasons, was not difficult to obtain. In fact, the agreement was reached during a private interlude in Shamron’s kitchen, on the night of the party. Much later, it would be regarded as Gabriel’s first official decision as chief.
The other party to the agreement was Graham Seymour of MI6. The operation could not go forward, however, without the cooperation of Amanda Wallace, Seymour’s counterpart at MI5. He secured it over martinis in Amanda’s Thames House office. It wasn’t a difficult sale; MI5’s watchers had long ago grown weary of chasing Jalal through the streets of London. For Amanda, it was little more than a manpower decision. By moving Jalal off her plate, she would have additional resources to deploy against her primary target, the Russians.
“But no messes,” she cautioned.
“No,” agreed Seymour, shaking his gray head vigorously. “No messes, indeed.”
Within forty-eight hours, Amanda terminated all surveillance of the subject in question, which later, during the inevitable inquiry, she would describe as mere coincidence. Graham Seymour then rang Gabriel at King Saul Boulevard and informed him that the field was his. Secretly, he wished it were so, but that wouldn’t have been appropriate, not for a chief. That night he drove Mikhail to Ben Gurion Airport and placed him aboard a flight for London. Inside Mikhail’s false Russian passport, Gabriel had concealed a note. It was three words in length, the three words of Shamron’s eleventh commandment.
Don’t get caught . . .
Jalal Nasser spent his final day in London in much the same way he had spent the previous hundred, seemingly unaware of the fact he was blown to kingdom come. He shopped in Oxford Street, he loitered in Leicester Square, he prayed in the East London Mosque. Afterward, he had tea with a promising recruit. Gabriel forwarded the recruit’s name to Amanda Wallace. It was, he thought, the least he could do.