Gabriel went to the counter and helped himself to another portion. Then he doused both rice and meat in juice, until his plate was in jeopardy of brimming over. Behind his back, Chiara hissed in disapproval.
“There’s one more,” he said, gesturing toward the casserole.
“I still have five kilos to lose.”
“I like you the way you are.”
“Spoken like a true Italian husband.”
“I’m not Italian.”
“What language are you speaking to me right now?”
“It’s the food talking.”
Gabriel sat down again and laid siege to the veal. From the monitor came the short cry of a child. Chiara cocked a vigilant ear toward the device and listened intently, as if to the footsteps of an intruder. Then, after a satisfactory interlude of silence, she relaxed again.
“So you intend to take the case—is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m inclined to,” answered Gabriel judiciously.
Chiara shook her head slowly.
“What have I done now?”
“You’ll do anything to avoid taking over the Office, won’t you?”
“Not anything.”
“Running an operation isn’t exactly a nine-to-five job.”
“Neither is running the Office.”
“But the Office is in Tel Aviv. The operation is in Paris.”
“Paris is a four-hour flight.”
“Four and a half,” she corrected him.
“Besides,” Gabriel plowed on, “just because the operation starts in Paris, that doesn’t mean it will end there.”
“Where will it end?”
Gabriel tilted his head to the left.
“In Mrs. Lieberman’s apartment?”
“Syria.”
“Ever been?”
“Only to Majdal Shams.”
“That doesn’t count.”
Majdal Shams was a Druze town in the Golan Heights. Along its northern edge was a fence topped by swirls of razor wire, and beyond the fence was Syria. Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda affiliate, controlled the territory along the border, but a two-hour car ride to the northeast was ISIS and the caliphate. Gabriel wondered how the American president would feel if ISIS were two hours from Indiana.
“I thought,” said Chiara, “that we were going to stay out of the Syrian civil war. I thought we were going to sit by and do nothing while all our enemies killed each other.”
“The next chief of the Office feels that policy would be unwise in the long term.”
“Does he?”
“Have you ever heard of a man named Arnold Toynbee?”
“I have a master’s degree in history. Toynbee was a British historian and economist, one of the giants of his day.”
“And Toynbee,” said Gabriel, “believed there were two great pivot points in the world that influenced events far beyond their borders. One was the Oxus-Jaxartes Basin in modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, or Af-Pak as our friends in America are fond of calling it.”
“And the other?”
Again, Gabriel tilted his head to the left. “We hoped the problems of Syria would remain in Syria, but I’m afraid hope is not an acceptable strategy when it comes to national security. While we’ve been twiddling our thumbs, ISIS has been developing a sophisticated terror network with the ability to strike in the heart of the West. Maybe it’s led by a man who calls himself Saladin. Maybe it’s someone else. Either way, I’m going to tear the network to pieces, hopefully before they can strike again.”
Chiara started to respond but was interrupted by the cry of an infant. It was Irene; her two-note wail was as familiar to Gabriel as the sound of a French siren on a wet Paris night. He started to rise but Chiara was on her feet first.
“Finish your dinner,” she said. “I hear the food in Paris is terrible.”
Gabriel heard her voice next over the monitor, speaking soothingly in Italian to an infant who was no longer crying. Alone, he switched on the television and finished his supper while, four and a half hours to the northwest by airplane, Paris burned.
For thirty minutes she did not return. Gabriel saw to the dishes and wiped down the kitchen counters, thoroughly, so that Chiara would not feel it necessary to reprise his efforts, which was usually the case. He added coffee and water to the automatic maker and then stole softly down the hall to the master bedroom. There he found his wife and daughter, Chiara supine atop the bed, Irene prone across her breasts, both sleeping soundly.
Gabriel stood in the doorway, his shoulder leaning against the woodwork, and allowed his eyes to travel slowly across the walls of the room. They were hung with paintings—three paintings by Gabriel’s grandfather, the only three he had been able to track down, and several more by his mother. There was also a large portrait of a young man with prematurely gray temples and a gaunt, weary face haunted by the shadow of death. One day, thought Gabriel, his children would ask him about the troubled young man depicted in the portrait, and about the woman who had painted it. It was not a conversation he was looking forward to. Already, he feared their reaction. Would they pity him? Would they fear him? Would they think him a monster, a murderer? It was no matter; he had to tell them. It was better to hear the unhappy details of such a life from the lips of the man who had led it rather than from someone else. Mothers often portrayed fathers in too flattering a light. Obituaries rarely told the whole story, especially when their subjects led classified lives.
Gabriel lifted his daughter from Chiara’s breast and carried her into the nursery. He placed her gently in her crib, covered her with a blanket, and stood over her for a moment until he was sure she was settled. Finally, he returned to the master bedroom. Chiara was still sleeping soundly, watched over by the brooding young man in the portrait. It’s not me, he would tell his children. It’s just someone I had to become. I am not a monster or a murderer. You exist in this place, you sleep peacefully in this land tonight, because of people like me.
AT TWENTY MINUTES PAST TEN the following morning, Christian Bouchard was standing in the arrivals hall of Charles de Gaulle, a tan raincoat over his crisp suit, a paper sign in his hand. The sign read SMITH. Even Bouchard found it less than convincing. He was watching the conveyor belt of humanity flowing into the hall from passport control—the international peddlers of goods and services, the seekers of asylum and employment, the tourists who had come to see a country that no longer existed. It was the job of the DGSI to sift through this daily deluge, identify the potential terrorists and agents of foreign intelligence, and monitor their movements until they left French soil. It was a near-impossible task. But for men such as Christian Bouchard, it meant there was no shortage of work or opportunities for career advancement. For better or worse, security was one of the few growth industries in France.
Just then, Bouchard’s mobile vibrated in his coat pocket. It was a text message stating that the reason for his visit to Charles de Gaulle had just been admitted into France on an Israeli passport bearing the name Gideon Argov. Two minutes later Bouchard spotted the selfsame Monsieur