“Why would you write such a thing?”
“Because we lost Kirov.”
“Are you to blame?”
“I don’t think so.”
Gabriel picked up the envelope and fed it into his shredder. “Is anyone else thinking about tendering their resignation?”
“Rimona.”
Rimona Stern was the head of Collections. As such, she was responsible for running Office agents worldwide. Gabriel snatched up the receiver of his internal phone and dialed her office.
“Get down here. And bring Yossi.”
Gabriel rang off and a moment later Rimona came rushing through the door. She had sandstone-colored hair, childbearing hips, and a notoriously short temper. She came by it naturally; her uncle was Ari Shamron. Gabriel had known Rimona since she was a child.
“Yaakov says you have something for me,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your letter of resignation. Let me have it.”
“I haven’t written it yet.”
“Don’t bother, I won’t accept it.”
Gabriel looked at Yossi Gavish, who was now leaning in the doorway. He was tall and balding and tweedy and carried himself with a donnish detachment. He had been born in the Golders Green section of London and had earned a first-class degree at Oxford before immigrating to Israel. He still spoke Hebrew with a pronounced English accent and received regular shipments of tea from a shop in Piccadilly.
“What about you, Yossi? Are you thinking about resigning, too?”
“Why should I get the sack? I’m only an analyst.”
Gabriel smiled briefly in spite of himself. Yossi was no mere analyst. He was the chief of the entire department, which, in the lexicon of the Office, was known as Research. Oftentimes, he did not know the identities of highly placed assets, only their code names and pseudonyms, but he was among the small circle of officers who had been granted unlimited access to Kirov’s file.
“No more talk about resignation. Do you hear me?” asked Gabriel. “Besides, if anyone’s going to lose his job, it’s me.”
“You?” asked Yossi.
“Didn’t you read the newspapers? Haven’t you been watching television?” Gabriel’s gaze drifted to the video wall. “They’re baying for my blood.”
“This too shall pass.”
“Maybe,” admitted Gabriel, “but I’d like you to increase my chances of survival.”
“How?”
“By bringing me the name of the person who signed Kirov’s death warrant.”
“It wasn’t me,” quipped Yaakov.
“I’m glad we cleared that up.” Gabriel looked at Rimona. “How about you? Did you betray Kirov to the Russians?”
Rimona frowned.
“Or maybe it was you, Yossi. You always struck me as the treacherous type.”
“Don’t look at me, I’m only an analyst.”
“Then go back to your office and start analyzing. And bring me that name.”
“It’s not something that can be done quickly. It’s going to take time.”
“Of course.” Gabriel sat down at his desk. “You have seventy-two hours.”
The rest of the day passed with a torture-chamber slowness; there seemed to be no end to it. There was always one more question for which Gabriel had no answer. He consoled himself by attempting to console others. He did so in small gatherings, for unlike the headquarters of the CIA or MI6, King Saul Boulevard had no formal auditorium. It was Shamron’s doing. He believed that spies should never congregate in their place of work, either for purposes of celebration or for mourning. Nor did he approve of American-style motivational speeches. The threats facing Israel, he said, were incentive enough.
In late afternoon, as vermilion light flooded Gabriel’s room, he received a summons from the prime minister. He cleared his desk of several routine matters, checked in on a pair of ongoing operations, and at half past eight climbed, exhausted, into his motorcade for the drive to Kaplan Street in Jerusalem. Like all visitors to the prime minister’s office, he was forced to surrender his mobile phone before entering. The anti-eavesdropping box into which he placed the device was known as the “beehive,” and the secure area beyond was the “fishbowl.” The prime minister greeted Gabriel cordially but with a distinct coolness. An inquiry involving his personal finances was threatening to unravel his premiership, the longest since David Ben-Gurion’s. The last thing he needed now was a scandal involving his intelligence service.
Ordinarily, Gabriel and the prime minister adjourned to the comfortable seating area for briefings or private discussions, but on that evening the prime minister chose to remain at his desk beneath the portrait of Theodor Herzl, founder of the nineteenth-century Zionist movement that led to the reconstitution of Jewish rule over a portion of historic Palestine. Under Herzl’s unremitting gaze, Gabriel relayed the facts as he knew them to be. The prime minister listened impassively, as motionless as the man in the photograph over his shoulder.
“Do you know how I spent my day?” he asked when Gabriel had finished.
“I can only imagine.”
“Eighteen of my foreign counterparts took it upon themselves to phone me directly. Eighteen! That’s the most in a single day since our last war in Gaza. And all of them asked the same question. How could I be so reckless as to permit my celebrated intelligence chief to gun down a Russian intelligence officer in the heart of Vienna?”
“You did no such thing. Nor did I.”
“I tried to explain that, and not a single one believed me.”
“I’m not sure I would have believed you, either,” admitted Gabriel.
“Even my friend in the White House was skeptical. Some nerve,” murmured the prime minister. “He’s in more trouble than I am. And that’s saying something.”
“I don’t suppose Jonathan Lancaster called.”
The prime minister shook his head. “But the chancellor of Austria kept me on the phone for almost an hour. He told me he had incontrovertible proof we were behind the Russian’s murder. He also asked me whether we wanted the body of our assassin back.”
“Did he elaborate on the evidence?”
“No. But it didn’t sound like he was bluffing. He made it clear that diplomatic sanctions are on the table.”
“How serious?”
“Expulsions. Maybe
