They drove to the Garden of Gethsemane and then followed the narrow, winding path up the slope of the Mount of Olives. Gabriel entered the cemetery alone and walked through the sea of headstones, until he arrived at the grave of Daniel Allon, born September 27, 1988, died January 13, 1991. Died on a snowy night in the First District of Vienna, in a blue Mercedes automobile that was blown to bits by a bomb. The bomb had been planted by a Palestinian master terrorist named Tariq al-Hourani, on the direct orders of Yasir Arafat. Gabriel had not been the target; that would have been too lenient. Tariq and Arafat had wanted to punish him by forcing him to watch the death of his wife and child, so that he would spend the rest of his life grieving, like the Palestinians. Only one element of the plot had failed. Leah had survived the inferno. She lived now in a psychiatric hospital atop Mount Herzl, trapped in a prison of memory and a body destroyed by fire. Afflicted with a combination of post-traumatic stress syndrome and psychotic depression, she relived the bombing constantly. Occasionally, however, she experienced flashes of lucidity. During one such interlude, she had granted Gabriel permission to marry Chiara. Look at me, Gabriel. There’s nothing left of me. Nothing but a memory.
Gabriel glanced at his wristwatch again. Not the date but the time. There was time for one last good-bye. One final torrent of tears. One final apology for failing to search the car for a bomb before allowing Leah to start the engine. Then he staggered from the garden of stone, on the day that used to be his favorite of the year, and climbed into the back of an Office sedan that was driven by a boy of twenty-five.
The boy had the good sense not to speak a word during the journey to the airport. Gabriel entered the terminal like a normal traveler but then went to a room reserved for Office personnel, where he waited for his flight to be called. As he settled into his first-class seat, he felt a wholly unprofessional urge to phone Chiara. Instead, using techniques taught to him in his youth by Shamron, he walled her from his thoughts. For now, there was no Chiara. Or Daniel. Or Leah. There was only Madeline Hart, the kidnapped mistress of British prime minister Jonathan Lancaster. As the plane rose into the darkening sky, she appeared to Gabriel, in oil on canvas, as Susanna bathing in her garden. And leering at her over the wall was a man with an angular face and a small, cruel mouth. The man without a name or country. The forgotten man.
7
CORSICA
The
Corsicans say that, when approaching their island by boat, they can smell its
unique scrubland vegetation long before they glimpse its rugged coastline rising
from the sea. Gabriel experienced no such revelation of Corsica, for he
journeyed to the island by air, arriving on the morning’s first flight from
Orly. It was only when he was behind the wheel of a rented Peugeot, heading
south from the airport at Ajaccio, that he caught his first whiff of gorse,
briar, rockrose, and rosemary spilling down from the hills. The Corsicans called
it the macchia. They cooked with it, heated their
homes with it, and took refuge in it in times of war and vendetta. According to
Corsican legend, a hunted man could take to the macchia and, if he wished, remain undetected there forever. Gabriel
knew just such a man. It was why he wore a red coral hand on a strand of leather
around his neck.
After a half hour of driving, Gabriel left the
coast road and headed inland. The scent of the macchia grew stronger, as did the walls surrounding the small hill
towns. Corsica, like the ancient land of Israel, had been invaded many
times—indeed, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Vandals had plundered
Corsica so mercilessly that most of the island’s inhabitants fled the coasts and
retreated into the safety of the mountains. Even now, the fear of outsiders
remained intense. In one isolated village, an old woman pointed at Gabriel with
her index and little fingers in order to ward off the effects of the occhju, the evil eye.
Beyond the village, the road was little more than a
single-lane track bordered on both sides by thick walls of macchia. After a mile he came to the entrance of a private estate.
The gate was open but in the breach stood an off-road vehicle occupied by a pair
of security guards. Gabriel switched off the engine and, placing his hands atop
the steering wheel, waited for the men to approach. Eventually, one climbed out
and came slowly over. He had a gun in one hand and another shoved into the
waistband of his trousers. With only a movement of his thick eyebrows, he
inquired about the purpose of Gabriel’s visit.
“I wish to see the don,” Gabriel said in
French.
“The don is a very busy man,” the guard replied in
the Corsican dialect.
Gabriel removed the talisman from his neck and
handed it over. The Corsican smiled.
“I’ll see what I can do.”