5

       FIUMICINO AIRPORT, ROME

       WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE MY flight is delayed?” asked Chiara.

      “It could be a mechanical problem,” replied Gabriel.

      “It could be,” she repeated without conviction.

      They were seated in a quiet corner of a first-class departure lounge. It didn’t matter the city, thought Gabriel, they were all the same. Unread newspapers, tepid bottles of suspect pinot grigio, CNN International playing silently on a large flat-panel television. By his own calculation, Gabriel had spent one-third of his career in places like this. Unlike his wife, he was extraordinarily good at waiting.

      “Go ask that pretty girl at the information desk why my flight hasn’t been called,” she said.

      “I don’t want to talk to the pretty girl at the information desk.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because she doesn’t know anything, and she’ll simply tell me something she thinks I want to hear.”

      “Why must you always be so fatalistic?”

      “It prevents me from being disappointed later.”

      Chiara smiled and closed her eyes; Gabriel looked at the television. A British reporter in a helmet and flak jacket was talking about the latest airstrike on Gaza. Gabriel wondered why CNN had become so enamored with British reporters. He supposed it was the accent. The news always sounded more authoritative when delivered with a British accent, even if not a word of it was true.

      “What’s he saying?” asked Chiara.

      “Do you really want to know?”

      “It’ll help pass the time.”

      Gabriel squinted to read the closed captioning. “He says an Israeli warplane attacked a school where several hundred Palestinians were sheltering from the fighting. He says at least fifteen people were killed and several dozen more seriously wounded.”

      “How many were women and children?”

      “All of them, apparently.”

      “Was the school the real target of the air raid?”

      Gabriel typed a brief message into his BlackBerry and fired it securely to King Saul Boulevard, the headquarters of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. It had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Employees referred to it as the Office and nothing else.

      “The real target,” he said, his eyes on the BlackBerry, “was a house across the street.”

      “Who lives in the house?”

      “Muhammad Sarkis.”

      “The Muhammad Sarkis?”

      Gabriel nodded.

      “Is Muhammad still among the living?”

      “I’m afraid not.”

      “What about the school?”

      “It wasn’t hit. The only casualties were Sarkis and members of his family.”

      “Maybe someone should tell that reporter the truth.”

      “What good would it do?”

      “More fatalism,” said Chiara.

      “No disappointment.”

      “Please find out why my flight is delayed.”

      Gabriel typed another message into his BlackBerry. A moment later came the response.

      “One of the Hamas rockets landed close to Ben-Gurion.”

      “How close?” asked Chiara.

      “Too close for comfort.”

      “Do you think the pretty girl at the information desk knows my destination is under rocket fire?”

      Gabriel was silent.

      “Are you sure you want to go through with it?” asked Chiara.

      “With what?”

      “Don’t make me say it aloud.”

      “Are you asking whether I still want to be the chief at a time like this?”

      She nodded.

      “At a time like this,” he said, watching the images of combat and explosions flickering on the screen, “I wish I could go to Gaza and fight alongside our boys.”

      “I thought you hated the army.”

      “I did.”

      She tilted her head toward him and opened her eyes. They were the color of caramel and flecked with gold. Time had left no marks on her beautiful face. Were it not for her swollen abdomen and the band of gold on her finger, she might have been the same young girl he had first encountered a lifetime ago, in the ancient ghetto of Venice.

      “Fitting, isn’t it?”

      “What’s that?”

      “That the children of Gabriel Allon should be born in a time of war.”

      “With a bit of luck, the war will be over by the time they’re born.”

      “I’m not so sure about that.” Chiara glanced at the departure board. The status box for Flight 386 to Tel Aviv read DELAYED. “If my plane doesn’t leave soon, they’re going to be born here in Italy.”

      “Not a chance.”

      “What would be so wrong with that?”

      “We had a plan. And we’re sticking to the plan.”

      “Actually,” she said archly, “the plan was for us to return to Israel together.”

      “True,” said Gabriel, smiling. “But events intervened.”

      “They usually do.”

      Seventy-two hours earlier, in an ordinary parish church near Lake Como, Gabriel and Chiara had discovered one of the world’s most famous stolen paintings: Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. The badly damaged canvas was now at the Vatican, where it was awaiting restoration. It was Gabriel’s intention to conduct the early stages himself. Such was his unique combination