The Heist (22 page)

He couldn’t tell whether her question was sincere or malicious. He decided to answer it honestly. “Chiara thinks we need to live close to King Saul Boulevard,” he said, “but I’d rather stay in Jerusalem.”

“It’s a long drive.”

“I won’t be the one doing the driving.”

Her face tightened.

“I’m sorry, Bella. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

She didn’t respond directly. “I’ve never really liked it up there in Jerusalem. It’s a little too close to God for my taste. I like it down here in my little secular suburb.”

A silence fell between them. They both knew the real reason Gabriel preferred Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

“I’m sorry I never sent you and Chiara a note about the pregnancy.” She managed a brief smile. “God knows the two of you deserve some happiness after everything you’ve been through.”

Gabriel nodded and murmured something appropriate. Bella had never sent a note, he thought, because her anger wouldn’t allow it. She had a vindictive streak. It was one of her most endearing qualities.

“I think we should talk, Bella.”

“I thought we were.”

“Really talk,” he said.

“It might be better if we behaved like characters in one of those drawing-room mysteries on the BBC. Otherwise, I’m liable to say something I’ll regret later.”

“There’s a reason why those programs are never set in Israel. We don’t talk like that.”

“Maybe we should.”

She picked up a plate and began filling it with food for Gabriel.

“I’m not hungry, Bella.”

She dropped the plate on the table. “I’m angry with you, damn it.”

“I got that impression.”

“Why are you stealing Uzi’s job?”

“I’m not.”

“What would you call it?”

“I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

“You could have told them no.”

“I tried. It didn’t work.”

“You should have tried harder.”

“It wasn’t my fault, Bella.”

“I know, Gabriel. Nothing’s ever your fault.”

She looked out at the waterworks in her garden. They seemed to momentarily calm her.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw you,” she said at last. “You were walking alone along a hallway inside King Saul Boulevard, not long after Tunis. You looked exactly the way you look now, those green eyes, those gray temples. You were like an angel, Israel’s angel of vengeance. Everyone loved you. Uzi worshipped you.”

“Let’s not get carried away, Bella.”

She acted as though she hadn’t heard him. “And then Vienna happened,” she resumed after a moment. “It was a cataclysm, a disaster of biblical proportions.”

“We’ve all lost loved ones, Bella. We’ve all grieved.”

“That’s true, Gabriel. But Vienna was different. You were never the same after Vienna. None of us were.” She paused, then added, “Especially Shamron.”

Gabriel followed Bella’s gaze into the glare of the garden, but for a moment he was striding across a sun-bleached courtyard at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. It was September 1972, a few days after the murder of eleven Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics. Seemingly from nowhere there appeared a small iron bar of a man with hideous black spectacles and teeth like a steel trap. The man didn’t offer a name, for none was necessary. He was the one they spoke of only in whispers. The one who had stolen the secrets that led to Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War. The one who had plucked Adolf Eichmann, managing director of the Holocaust, from an Argentine street corner.

Shamron
. . .

“Ari blamed himself for what happened to you in Vienna,” Bella was saying. “And he never quite forgave himself, either. He treated you like a son after that. He let you come and go as you pleased. But he never gave up hope that one day you would come home and take control of his beloved Office.”

“Do you know how many times I turned the job down?”

“Enough so that Shamron eventually gave it to Uzi. He got the job as a consolation prize.”

“Actually, I was the one who suggested Uzi become the next chief.”

“As though the job was yours to bestow.” She smiled bitterly. “Did Uzi ever tell you that I advised him not to take the job?”

“No, Bella. He never mentioned it.”

“I always knew it would end like this. You should have exited the stage gracefully and stayed in Europe. But what did you do? You inserted a shipment of compromised centrifuges into the Iranian nuclear supply chain and destroyed four secret enrichment facilities.”

“That operation occurred on Uzi’s watch.”

“But it was
your
operation. Everyone at King Saul Boulevard knows it was yours, and so does everyone at Kaplan Street.”

Kaplan Street was the location of the prime minister’s office. By all accounts, Bella was an all-too-frequent visitor. Gabriel always suspected her influence at King Saul Boulevard went beyond the furnishings in her husband’s office.

“Uzi’s been a good chief,” she said. “A damn good chief. He had only one fault. He wasn’t you, Gabriel. He’ll
never
be you. And for that, he’s being thrown to the side of the road.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“Haven’t you done enough already?”

From inside the house came the ringing of a telephone. Bella showed no interest in answering it.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I want to talk to you about Uzi’s future.”

“Thanks to you, he doesn’t have one.”

“Bella . . .”

She refused to be mollified, not yet. “If you have something to say about Uzi’s future, you should probably talk to Uzi.”

“I thought it would be more productive if I went over his head.”

“Don’t try to flatter me, Gabriel.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

She clicked the nail of her forefinger against the tabletop. It had a new coat of polish.

“He told me about the conversation you had in London when you were looking for that kidnapped girl. Needless to say, I didn’t think much of your proposal.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s no precedent for it. Once a chief’s term is over, the chief is shown gently into the night, never to be heard from again.”

“Tell that to Shamron.”

“Shamron is different.”

“So am I.”

“What exactly are you proposing?”

“We run the Office together. I’ll be the chief, and Uzi will be my deputy.”

“It’ll never work.”

“Why not?”

“Because it will leave the impression that you’re not quite up to the job.”

“No one thinks that.”

“Appearances matter.”

“You have me confused with someone else, Bella.”

“Who’s that?”

“Someone who cares about appearances.”

“And if he agrees?”

“He’ll have an office next door to mine. He’ll be involved in every key decision, every important operation.”

“What about his salary?”

“He’ll keep his full salary, not to mention his car and his security detail.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because I need him, Bella.” He paused, then added, “You, too.”

“Me?”

“I want you to come back to the Office.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock. Uzi and I are going to run an op against the Syrians. We need your help.”

“What kind of op?”

When Gabriel told her, she smiled sadly. “It’s too bad Uzi didn’t think of that,” she said. “He might still be the chief.”

They spent the next hour in Bella’s garden negotiating the terms of her return to King Saul Boulevard. Afterward, she saw him outside and into the back of his official car.

“It looks good on you,” she said through the open door.

“What’s that, Bella?”

She smiled and said, “I’ll see you in the morning, Gabriel.” Then she turned away and was gone. A bodyguard closed the car door; another climbed into the front passenger seat. Gabriel realized suddenly he was unarmed. He sat there for a moment debating where to go next. Then he glanced into the rearview mirror and gave the driver an address in West Jerusalem. He had one more piece of unpleasant business to attend to before going home. He had to tell a ghost he was going to be a father again.

T
HE TINY CIRCULAR DRIVE OF
the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital vibrated beneath the weight of Gabriel’s three-vehicle motorcade. He alighted from the back of his limousine and, after a terse word with the head of his security detail, entered the hospital alone. Waiting in the lobby was a bearded, rabbinical-looking doctor in his late fifties. He was smiling pleasantly, despite the fact that, as usual, he had been given little warning of Gabriel’s pending arrival. He extended his hand and looked out at the commotion in the normally quiet entrance of Israel’s most private facility for the long-term mentally disabled.

“It seems your life is about to change again,” said the doctor.

“In more ways than one,” replied Gabriel.

“For the better, I hope.”

Gabriel nodded and then told the doctor about the pregnancy. The doctor smiled, but only for a moment. He had witnessed Gabriel’s long struggle over whether to remarry. Fatherhood, he knew, was going to be a mixed blessing.

“And twins, no less. Well,” the doctor added, remembering to smile again, “you’re certainly—”

“I need to tell her,” Gabriel said, cutting him off. “I’ve put it off long enough.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“It is.”

“She won’t understand, not fully.”

“I know.”

The doctor knew better than to pursue the matter further. “It might be better if I stay with you,” he said. “For both your sakes.”

“Thank you,” answered Gabriel, “but I have to do it alone.”

The doctor turned without a word and led Gabriel along a corridor of Jerusalem limestone, to a common room where a few of the patients were staring blankly at a television. A pair of large windows overlooked a walled garden. Outside, a woman sat alone in the shade of a stone pine, with the stillness of a gravestone.

“How is she?” asked Gabriel.

“She misses you. It’s been a long time since you’ve come to see her.”

“It’s hard.”

“I understand.”

They stood for a moment at the window, not speaking, not moving.

“There’s something you should know,” the doctor said finally. “She never stopped loving you, even after the divorce.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” said the doctor. “But you deserve to know the truth.”

“So does she.”

Another silence.

“Twins, eh?”

“Twins.”

“Boy or girl?”

“One of each.”

“Maybe you could let her spend a little time with them.”

“First things first, Doctor.”

“Yes,” said the doctor as Gabriel entered the garden alone. “First things first.”

She was seated in her wheelchair with the twisted remnants of her hands resting in her lap. Her hair, once long and dark like Chiara’s, was now cut institutional short and shot with gray. Gabriel kissed the cool, firm scar tissue of her cheek before lowering himself onto the bench next to her. She stared sightlessly into the garden, unaware of his presence. She was getting older, he thought. They were all getting older.

“Look at the snow, Gabriel,” she said suddenly. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

He looked at the sun burning in a cloudless sky. “Yes, Leah,” he said absently. “It’s beautiful.”

“The snow absolves Vienna of its sins,” she said after a moment. “The snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain down on Tel Aviv.”

They were some of the last words Leah had spoken to him the night of the bombing in Vienna. She suffered from a particularly acute combination of psychotic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. At times, she experienced moments of lucidity, but for the most part she remained a prisoner of the past. Vienna played ceaselessly in her mind like a loop of videotape that she was unable to pause: the last meal they shared together, their last kiss, the fire that killed their only child and burned the flesh from Leah’s body. Her life had shrunk to five minutes; and she had been reliving it, over and over again, for more than twenty years.

“I thought you’d forgotten about me, Gabriel.”

Her head turned slowly, and for now there was a flash of recognition in her eyes. Her voice, when she spoke again, sounded shockingly like the voice he had first heard many years ago, calling to him from across a studio at Bezalel.

“When was the last time you were here?”

“I came to see you on your birthday.”

“I don’t remember.”

“We had a party, Leah. All the other patients came. It was lovely.”

“I’m lonely here, Gabriel.”

“I know, Leah.”

“I have no one. No one but you, my love.”

He felt as though he had lost the ability to draw air into his lungs. Leah reached out and placed her hand in his.

“You have no paint on your fingers,” she said.

“I haven’t worked for a few days.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I have time,” she said. “I have nothing but time.”

She turned away from him and stared into the garden. The light was receding from her eyes.

“Don’t go, Leah. There’s something I have to tell you.”

She came back to him. “Are you restoring a painting now?” she asked.

“Veronese,” he replied.

“Which one?”

He told her.

“So you’re living in Venice again?”

“For a few more months.”

She smiled. “Do you remember when we lived in Venice together, Gabriel? It was when you were serving your apprenticeship with Umberto Conti.”

“I remember, Leah.”

“Our apartment was so small.”

“That’s because it was a room.”

“They were wonderful days, weren’t they, Gabriel? Days of art and wine. We should have stayed in Venice together, my love. Things would have turned out differently if you hadn’t gone back to the Office.”

Gabriel didn’t respond. He wasn’t capable of speech.

“Your wife is from Venice, is she not?”

“Yes, Leah.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Yes, Leah, she’s very pretty.”