Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant Read online

  ALSO BY DANIEL SILVA

  The Defector

  Moscow Rules

  The Secret Servant

  The Messenger

  Prince of Fire

  A Death in Vienna

  The Confessor

  The English Assassin

  The Kill Artist

  The Marching Season

  The Mark of the Assassin

  The Unlikely Spy

  Contents

  Prince of Fire

  The Messenger

  The Secret Servant

  Moscow Rules

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE - THE DOSSIER

  Chapter 1 - ROME: MARCH 4

  Chapter 2 - TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

  Chapter 3 - LONDON

  Chapter 4 - VENICE

  Chapter 5 - TEL AVIV: MARCH 10

  Chapter 6 - TEL AVIV: MARCH 20

  Chapter 7 - TEL AVIV

  PART TWO - THE COLLABORATOR

  Chapter 8 - NEAR AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE

  Chapter 9 - JERUSALEM

  Chapter 10 - JERUSALEM: MARCH 22

  Chapter 11 - JERUSALEM: MARCH 23

  Chapter 12 - TEL AVIV

  Chapter 13 - CAIRO: MARCH 31

  Chapter 14 - CAIRO

  PART THREE - THE GARE DE LYON

  Chapter 15 - MARSEILLES

  Chapter 16 - ROME

  Chapter 17 - BOSA, SARDINIA

  Chapter 18 - MARSEILLES

  Chapter 19 - SURREY, ENGLAND

  Chapter 20 - MARSEILLES

  Chapter 21 - MARSEILLES

  Chapter 22 - MARTIGUES, FRANCE

  Chapter 23 - JERUSALEM

  Chapter 24 - TROYES, FRANCE

  Chapter 25 - ST-DENIS, NORTHERN PARIS

  Chapter 26 - PARIS

  Chapter 27 - PARIS

  Chapter 28 - PARIS

  Chapter 29 - PARIS

  PART FOUR - SUMAYRIYYA

  Chapter 30 - PARIS

  Chapter 31 - FIUMICINO, ITALY

  Chapter 32 - JERUSALEM

  Chapter 33 - JERUSALEM

  Chapter 34 - TEL AVIV

  Chapter 35 - TEL MEGIDDO, ISRAEL

  Chapter 36 - TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

  Chapter 37 - AIX-EN-PROVENCE: FIVE MONTHS LATER

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Daniel Silva and His Novels

  Prince of Fire

  “A passionate, intelligently crafted entry that cements the series’ place among today’s top spy fiction. The structure is classic.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “[A] rare combination of fine characters, compelling writing, and suspenseful plotting that will reach out and grab readers. Silva moves the story along quickly, creating a frightening network of spies and counterspies. [His] plotting is ingenious and clear. Silva handles the twists and turns so well it’s a waste of time to try to guess where it’s going. It goes places readers can’t predict and then goes further.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “Daniel Silva . . . handles his theme of revenge—and its effect on those it touches—adroitly but without encroaching on the pure pleasure of reading a first-rate thriller.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Allon puts together a Mission: Impossible team of Israelis to pursue the scion of a family dynasty of Palestinian militants. But nothing is easy or uncomplicated in spy thrillers. Allon and his buds are sucked into an intricate web of deceit and double cross. Not to mention a lot of carnage.”

  —USA Today

  “Silva keeps getting better.”

  —Library Journal

  A Death in Vienna

  “[A] world-class practitioner of spy fiction . . . Silva is a skillful novelist who does justice to the often heartbreaking material without exploiting it.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Silva’s mastered the art of weaving provocative narrative, espionage, and foreign intrigue. Silva’s gift is to pressure the reader to read on, to absorb unspeakable truths, and to glimpse a James Bond-less espionage lifestyle. Life is shaken constantly, never stirred.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “A masterful and compelling tale of evil, treachery, and revenge, again showing why he’s at the top of thriller writers. A Death in Vienna goes to the top of the list of the year’s best.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Complex, compelling international espionage in the John le Carré vein.”

  —The News-Press (Fort Myers, FL)

  “Cool brilliance.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Provocative and deeply satisfying . . . stars one of the most intriguing protagonists in the genre. . . . A Death in Vienna isn’t just a masterfully constructed tale of memory and revenge. It demonstrates that thrillers can be more than entertainment.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “A thriller that’s not content to be just a thriller, as it delves into issues involving the Holocaust and its perpetrators and survivors.”

  —The Kansas City Star

  “Unfailingly entertaining . . . gripping [and] significant.”

  —The Raleigh News & Observer

  “A Death in Vienna completes Silva’s increasingly powerful trilogy about the unfinished business of the Holocaust. . . . The ending is haunting.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “Silva’s writing is perfect: just enough description to be precise and an undercurrent of tension that drives the action. As always, Allon’s cause is justice, regardless of the means, and we can’t help but rally behind him.”

  —Chattanooga Times-Free Press

  “Silva’s intricate plot takes Allon across much of the globe, from Argentina to Poland, from Vienna to the Vatican. . . . Silva writes with care and skill. He has a knack for local color, and Allon, his main character, is refreshingly human—world-weary, given to self-doubt, and seemingly always wrestling with an inner demon of some sort.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “An exciting and complex novel.”

  —Library Journal

  “[A] superbly crafted narrative of espionage and foreign intrigue. Action and suspense abound, but this is serious fiction with a serious purpose. Silva keeps the pressure on the reader as well as his characters as there are important lessons to be learned and vital history to be remembered.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Silva writes le Carré-style spy novels in which the action, despite careening across cities and continents, retains knife-edge -sharp suspense. . . . This finely wrought thriller reads like an exquisitely suspenseful chess game.”

  —Booklist

  More Praise for Daniel Silva and His Novels

  “Silva builds tension with breathtaking double and triple turns of plot.”

  —People

  “Each plot-twisting segment is marked by almost unbearable tension. . . . Silva’s unsmiling prose urges you on like a silencer poking at the small of your back.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “In the style of authors like Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.”

  —New York Law Journal

  “At the forefront of his generation of foreign intrigue specialists.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A terrific thriller . . . one of the best-drawn fictional assassins since The Day of the Jackal.”

  —The San Francisco Examiner

  “A strong, driving pace.”
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br />   —Chicago Tribune

  “[A] fast-moving bang-bang thriller.”

  —Los Angeles Daily News

  “A thrill-a-minute surefire bestseller.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First Signet Printing, February 2006

  Copyright © Daniel Silva, 2005

  eISBN: 9781440634345

  Excerpt from The Secret Servant copyright © Daniel Silva, 2007

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  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  For Neil Nyren, steady hand on the tiller,

  Patrick Matthiesen, who gave me Isherwood,

  and, as always, for my wife, Jamie, and

  my children, Lily and Nicholas

  If you live to seek revenge, dig a grave for two.

  ANCIENT JEWISH PROVERB

  PART ONE

  THE DOSSIER

  1

  ROME: MARCH 4

  There had been warning signs—the Shabbat bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left eighty-seven people dead; the bombing of an Istanbul synagogue, precisely one year later, that killed another twenty-eight—but Rome would be his coming-out party, and Rome would be the place where he left his calling card.

  Afterward, within the corridors and executive suites of Israel’s vaunted intelligence service, there was considerable and sometimes belligerent debate over the time and place of the conspiracy’s genesis. Lev Ahroni, the ever-cautious director of the service, would claim that the plot was hatched not long after the Israeli army knocked down Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah and stole his secret files. Ari Shamron, the legendary Israeli master spy, would find this almost laughable, though Shamron often disagreed with Lev simply as a matter of sport. Only Shamron, who had fought with the Palmach during the War of Independence and who tended to view the conflict as a continuum, understood intuitively that the outrage in Rome had been inspired by deeds dating back more than a half century. Eventually, evidence would prove both Lev and Shamron correct. In the meantime, in order to achieve peaceful working conditions, they agreed on a new starting point: the day a certain Monsieur Jean-Luc arrived in the hills of Lazio and settled himself in a rather handsome eighteenth-century villa on the shore of Lake Bracciano.

  As for the exact date and time of his arrival, there was no doubt. The owner of the villa, a dubious Belgian aristocrat called Monsieur Laval, said the tenant appeared at two-thirty in the afternoon on the final Friday of January. The courteous but intense young Israeli who called on Monsieur Laval at his home in Brussels wondered how it was possible to recall the date so clearly. The Belgian produced his lavish leather-bound personal calendar and pointed to the date in question. There, penciled on the line designated for two-thirty p.m., were the words: Meet M. Jean-Luc at Bracciano villa.

  “Why did you write Bracciano villa instead of just villa?” asked the Israeli visitor, his pen hovering over his open notebook.

  “To differentiate it from our St. Tropez villa, our Portuguese villa, and the chalet we own in the Swiss Alps.”

  “I see,” said the Israeli, though the Belgian found that his visitor’s tone lacked the humility adopted by most civil servants when confronted by men of great wealth.

  And what else did Monsieur Laval remember of the man who rented his villa? That he was punctual, intelligent, and extremely well-mannered. That he was strikingly good-looking, that his scent was noticeable but not obtrusive, that his clothing was expensive but restrained. That he drove a Mercedes car and had two large suitcases with gold buckles and a famous label. That he paid the entire month-long lease in advance and in cash, which Monsieur Laval explained was not unusual in that part of Italy. That he was a good listener who didn’t need to be told things twice. That he spoke French with the accent of a Parisian from a well-heeled arrondissement. That he seemed like a man who could handle himself well in a fight and who treated his women well. “He was of noble birth,” Laval concluded, with the certainty of one who knows of what he speaks. “He comes from a good bloodline. Write that in your little book.”

  Slowly, additional details would emerge about the man called Jean-Luc, though none conflicted with Monsieur Laval’s flattering portrait. He hired no cleaning woman and demanded the gardener arrive punctually at nine o’clock and leave by ten. He shopped in nearby market squares and attended Mass in the medieval lakeside village of Anguillara. He spent much time touring the Roman ruins of Lazio and seemed particularly intrigued by the ancient necropolis at Cerveteri.

  Sometime in late February—the date could never be reliably established—he vanished. Even Monsieur Laval could not be certain of the departure date, because he was informed after the fact by a woman in Paris who claimed to be the gentleman’s personal assistant. Though two weeks remained on the lease, the handsome tenant did not embarrass himself, or Monsieur Laval, by asking for a refund. Later that spring, when Monsieur Laval visited the villa, he was surprised to discover, in a crystal bowl on the dining room sideboard, a brief thank-you note, typewritten, along with a hundred euros to pay for broken wineglasses. A thorough search of the villa’s stemware collection, however, revealed nothing was missing. When Monsieur Laval tried to call Jean-Luc’s girl in Paris to return the money, he found that her telephone line had been disconnected.

  On the fringes of the Borghese gardens there are elegant boulevards and quiet leafy side streets that bear little resemblance to the scruffy, tourist-trodden thoroughfares of the city center. They are avenues of diplomacy a
nd money, where traffic moves at a nearly reasonable speed and where the blare of car horns sounds like a rebellion in distant lands. One such street is a cul-de-sac. It falls away at a gentle pitch and bends to the right. For many hours each day, it is in shadow, a consequence of the towering stone pines and eucalyptus that loom over the villas. The narrow sidewalk is broken by tree roots and perpetually covered by pine needles and dead leaves. At the end of the street is a diplomatic compound, more heavily fortified than most in Rome.

  Survivors and witnesses would recall the perfection of that late-winter morning: bright and clear, cold enough in the shadows to bring on a shiver, warm enough in the sun to unbutton a wool coat and dream of an alfresco lunch. The fact it was also a Friday served only to heighten the leisurely atmosphere. In diplomatic Rome, it was a morning to dawdle over a cappuccino and cornetto , to take stock of one’s circumstances and ponder one’s mortality. Procrastination was the order of the day. Many mundane meetings were canceled. Much routine paperwork was put off till Monday.