“You know where everything is. You practically live here now.”
Shamron muttered something in Polish about the ingratitude of children. Then he nudged himself off the stool and, leaning heavily on his cane, made his way into the kitchen. He managed to fill the teakettle with tap water but appeared perplexed by the various buttons and dials on the stove. Ari Shamron had twice served as the director of Israel’s secret intelligence service and before that had been one of its most decorated field officers. But now, in old age, he seemed incapable of the most basic of household tasks. Coffeemakers, blenders, toasters: these were a mystery to him. Gilah, his long-suffering wife, often joked that the great Ari Shamron, if left to his own devices, would find a way to starve in a kitchen filled with food.
Gabriel ignited the stove and then resumed his work. Shamron stood in the French doors, smoking. The stench of his Turkish tobacco soon overwhelmed the pungent odor of the solvent.
“Must you?” asked Gabriel.
“I must,” said Shamron.
“What are you doing in Jerusalem?”
“The prime minister wanted a word.”
“Really?”
Shamron glared at Gabriel through a cloud of blue-gray smoke. “Why are you surprised the prime minister would want to see me?”
“Because—”
“I am old and irrelevant?” Shamron asked, cutting him off.
“You are unreasonable, impatient, and at times irrational. But you have never been irrelevant.”
Shamron nodded in agreement. Age had given him the ability to at least see his own shortcomings, even if it had robbed him of the time needed to remedy them.
“How is he?” asked Gabriel.
“As you might imagine.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Our conversation was wide ranging and frank.”
“Does that mean you yelled at each other?”
“I’ve only yelled at one prime minister.”
“Who?” asked Gabriel, genuinely curious.
“Golda,” answered Shamron. “It was the day after Munich. I told her we had to change our tactics, that we had to terrorize the terrorists. I gave her a list of names, men who had to die. Golda wanted none of it.”
“So you yelled at her?”
“It was not one of my finer moments.”
“What did she do?”
“She yelled back, of course. But eventually she came around to my way of thinking. After that, I put together another list of names, the names of the young men I needed to carry out the operation. All of them agreed without hesitation.” Shamron paused, and then added, “All but one.”