The English Girl: A Novel (Gabriel Allon) Read online

  But there were many other things about the running man that the French police, even in their wildest dreams, would never imagine to be true. They would never know, for example, that he was Gabriel Allon, the legendary Israeli spy and assassin who had been operating with impunity on French soil since he was a boy of twenty-two. Or that the man who had spirited him to safety after the bomb exploded was none other than Christopher Keller, the Corsican-based assassin about whom the French police had been hearing whispers for years. Or that the two men, once bitter rivals, had proceeded to a seaside villa near Cherbourg where a team of four Israeli operatives waited on standby. Keller had stayed at the villa only a few hours before returning quietly to Corsica, but Gabriel and Chiara remained there for a week while they waited for the many small cuts on Gabriel’s face to heal. On the morning of Madeline Hart’s funeral, they drove to Charles de Gaulle Airport and boarded an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. And by nightfall they were once again at the apartment in Narkiss Street.

  In Gabriel’s absence, Chiara had moved the painting and his supplies to the room that was supposed to be his studio. But the next morning, after she left for work at the museum, he promptly moved his things back to the sitting room. For three days he stood before the canvas almost without a break, from dawn each morning until late afternoon, when Chiara returned home. He tried to keep the memories of the nightmare in France at bay, but the subject matter of the painting, a beautiful young woman bathing in her garden, would not allow it. Madeline was in his thoughts constantly, especially on the fourth day, when he began work on the extensive losses to the hands of Susanna. Here he saw much evidence of Bassano’s luminous brushwork. Gabriel imitated it so immaculately it was nearly impossible to discern the original from the retouching. Indeed, in Gabriel’s humble opinion, he managed to outdo the master in places. He wished he could take credit for the high quality of his work, but he could not. It was Madeline who inspired him.

  He forced himself to take a break for lunch early each afternoon, but inevitably he ate at the computer, where he scoured the Internet for news about the French investigation into Madeline’s death. He knew the stories were far from complete, but it appeared the police were unaware of his involvement in the case. Nor could he find any evidence in the British press to suggest that Jonathan Lancaster might have been linked in any way to Madeline’s disappearance and death. It seemed that Lancaster and Jeremy Fallon had pulled off the impossible—and now, according to the polls, they were headed toward a landslide victory. Needless to say, neither man tried to contact Gabriel. Even Graham Seymour waited three long weeks before calling. From the background noise, Gabriel guessed he was using a public phone in Paddington Station.

  “Our mutual friend sends his regards,” Seymour said carefully. “He was wondering whether there’s anything you need.”

  “A new leather jacket,” said Gabriel with more good humor than he was feeling.

  “What size?”

  “Medium,” replied Gabriel, “with a hidden compartment for false passports and a weapon.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me how you managed to get away without being arrested?”

  “Someday, Graham.”

  Seymour fell silent as the station announcer called a train for Oxford. “He’s grateful,” he said finally, speaking of Lancaster again. “He knows you did everything you could.”

  “It just wasn’t enough to save her.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that they never intended to let her go?”

  “I have,” said Gabriel. “But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”

  “Is there anything else you want me to tell him?”

  “You might want to remind him that the kidnappers still have a copy of her video confession of the affair.”

  “No girl, no story.”

  If it had been Seymour’s intention to lift Gabriel’s spirits with the phone call, he failed miserably. In fact, in the days after, Gabriel’s mood grew darker still. Dreams disturbed his sleep. Dreams of running toward a car that receded farther into the distance with each stride. Dreams of fire and blood. In his subconscious, Madeline and Leah became indistinguishable, two women, one whom he had loved, another whom he had sworn to protect, both consumed by fire. He was despondent with grief. More than anything, though, he was gripped by an overwhelming sense of failure. He had given Madeline his word he would get her out alive. Instead, she had died a nightmarish death, bound and gagged in a coffin of fire. He only hoped she had been sedated at the time, that she had been oblivious to the pain and terror.

  But why had they killed her? Had Gabriel made a mistake during the drop that cost Madeline her life? Or had it always been their intention to kill her in front of Gabriel, so that he had no choice but to watch her burn? It was a question that Chiara posed one evening while they were walking along Ben Yehuda Street. Gabriel answered by telling her about the signadora’s vision, that she had seen an old enemy when peering into her magic potion of olive oil and water. Not an old enemy of Keller’s, but of Gabriel’s.

  “I never knew you had any enemies inside the criminal underworld of Marseilles.”

  “I don’t,” replied Gabriel. “At least, none that I know about. But maybe they were acting at the behest of someone else when they kidnapped Madeline.”

  “Like who?”

  “Someone who wanted to punish me for something I’d done in the past. Someone who wanted to humiliate me.”

  “Is there anything else the signadora said that you forgot to mention?”

  “When she is dead,” answered Gabriel. “Then you will know the truth.”

  It was a few minutes after nine o’clock by the time they returned to Narkiss Street, but Gabriel decided to spend some time at the easel. He slipped a copy of La Bohème into his paint-smudged portable CD player, lowered the volume to a whisper, and worked with a clarity of purpose that had eluded him since his return to Jerusalem. He did not hear when the opera reached its end, nor did he notice the sky beginning to lighten at his back. Finally, at dawn, he laid down his brush and stood motionless before the painting, his hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side.

  “Is it finished?” Chiara asked, watching him intently.

  “No,” replied Gabriel, still staring at the painting. “It’s just getting started.”

  30

  TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

  That evening was Shabbat. Shamron invited them to dinner at his home in Tiberias. It was not truly an invitation, for invitations can be politely declined. It was a commandment, chiseled into stone, inviolable. Gabriel spent the morning making arrangements to have the painting shipped to Julian Isherwood in London. Then he drove across Jerusalem to collect Chiara at the Israel Museum. As they sped down the Bab al-Wad, the staircase-like gorge linking Jerusalem to the Coastal Plain, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip unleashed a barrage of rockets that landed as far north as Ashdod. There were only minor injuries in the attack, but it snarled traffic across the narrow waist of the country as thousands of commuters were rushing home for the Sabbath. Only in Israel, thought Gabriel, as he waited an hour for the traffic to budge. It was good to be back home again.

  After finally reaching the flatlands of the Coastal Plain, they headed north to the Galilee, then eastward through a string of Arab towns and villages to Tiberias. Shamron’s honey-colored villa was a few miles outside the city, on a bluff overlooking the lake. To reach it required an ascent up a steeply sloped drive. As Gabriel and Chiara entered, it was Gilah who greeted them. Shamron was standing before the television, a phone pressed to his ear. His ugly metal spectacles were propped on his forehead, and he was pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. If they ever erected a statue of him, thought Gabriel, it would be cast in that pose.

  “Who is he talking to?” Gabriel asked of Gilah.

  “Who do you think?”

 
“The prime minister?”

  Gilah nodded. “Ari thinks we need to retaliate. The prime minister isn’t so sure.”

  Gabriel handed Gilah a bottle of wine, a Bordeaux-style red from the Judean Hills, and kissed her cheek. It was as smooth as velvet and smelled of lilac.

  “Tell him to get off the phone, Gabriel. He’ll listen to you.”

  “I’d rather take a direct hit from one of those Palestinian rockets.”

  Gilah smiled and led them into the kitchen. Lining the counters were platters of delicious-looking food; she must have been cooking all day. Gabriel tried to snatch a piece of Gilah’s famous eggplant with Moroccan spice, but she playfully patted the back of his hand.

  “How many people are you planning to feed?” he asked.

  “Yonatan and his family were supposed to come, but he can’t get away because of the attack.”

  Yonatan was Shamron’s eldest child. He was a general in the IDF, and there were rumors he was in the running to become the next chief of staff.

  “We’ll eat in a few minutes,” Gilah said. “Go sit with him for a while. He missed you terribly while you were away.”

  “I was only gone for two weeks, Gilah.”

  “At this stage of his life, two weeks is a long time.”

  Gabriel opened the wine, poured two glasses, and carried them into the next room. Shamron was no longer on the phone, but he was still staring at the television.

  “They just launched another barrage,” he said. “The rockets should start landing in just a few seconds.”

  “Is there going to be a response?”

  “Not now. But if this keeps up, we’ll have no choice but to act. The question is, what will Egypt do, now that it’s ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood? Will it stand idly by while we attack Hamas, which, after all, is a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood? Will the Camp David peace treaty hold?”

  “What does Uzi say?”

  “At the moment, the Office is unable to predict with certainty how the Egyptian leader will react if we go into Gaza. Which is why the prime minister, at least for the moment, is willing to do nothing while the rockets rain on his people.”

  Gabriel looked at the screen; rockets were beginning to fall. Then he switched off the television and led Shamron outside to the terrace. It was warmer here than in Jerusalem, and a soft wind from the Golan Heights was making patterns on the silvery surface of the lake. Shamron sat down in one of the wrought-iron chairs along the balustrade and immediately lit one of his foul-smelling cigarettes. Gabriel handed him a glass of wine and sat next to him.

  “It’s done nothing for my heart,” Shamron said after drinking some of the wine, “but I’ve become fond of it in my dotage. I suppose it reminds me of all the things I never had time for when I was young—wine, children, holidays.” He paused, then added, “Life.”

  “There’s still time, Ari.”

  “Spare me the banalities,” Shamron said. “Time is my enemy now, my son.”

  “So why are you wasting a minute of it involving yourself in politics?”

  “There’s a difference between politics and security.”

  “Security is merely an extension of politics, Ari.”

  “And if you were advising the prime minister on what to do about the missiles?”

  “It’s Uzi’s job to advise him, not mine.”

  Shamron let the subject drop for the moment. “I’ve been following the news from London with great interest,” he said. “It looks as though your friend Jonathan Lancaster is well on his way to victory.”

  “He is perhaps the luckiest politician on the planet.”

  “Luck is an important thing to have in life. I never had much of it. Neither did you, for that matter.”

  Gabriel said nothing.

  “Needless to say,” Shamron continued, “it is our fervent hope that current electoral trends continue and Lancaster prevails. If that is the case, we are confident he will be the most pro-Zionist British politician since Arthur Balfour.”

  “You’re a ruthless bastard.”

  “Someone has to be.” Shamron looked at Gabriel seriously for a moment. “I’m sorry I ever let you get mixed up in this business.”

  “You got exactly what you wanted,” Gabriel said. “Lancaster might as well be on the Office payroll. He’s the worst thing a leader can be. He’s compromised.”

  “It was his doing, not ours.”

  “That’s true,” said Gabriel. “But it was Madeline Hart who paid the price.”

  “You have to do your best to forget her.”

  “I’m afraid I said something to the kidnappers that makes that impossible.”

  “You threatened to kill them if they harmed her?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Death threats are like vows of endless love whispered in the heat of passion—easily made, soon forgotten.”

  “Not when they’re made by me.”

  Shamron crushed out his cigarette thoughtfully. “You surprise me, my son. But not Uzi. He predicted you would want to go after them, which is why he’s already taken it off the table.”

  “So I’ll do it without his support.”

  “That means you’ll be out there in the field on your own, with no Office resources and no Office protection.”

  Gabriel was silent.

  “And if I forbade you to go? Would you obey me?”

  “Yes, Abba.”

  “Really?” asked Shamron, surprised.

  Gabriel nodded in response.

  “And if I permitted you to find these men and give them the justice they deserve? What would I get in return?”

  “Must everything be a negotiation with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want.” Shamron paused, then added, “And the prime minister wants it, too.”

  Shamron drank some of the wine and then lit another cigarette.

  “These are consequential and turbulent times we are living through, and the challenges are only going to grow more serious. The decisions we make in the coming months and years will determine whether the enterprise succeeds or fails. How can you pass up the chance to shape history?”

  “I already have shaped history, Ari. Many, many times.”

  “So put your gun on the shelf and use that brain of yours to defeat our enemies. Steal their secrets. Recruit their spies and generals as agents. Confuse and confound them. By way of deception, my son, thou shalt do war.”

  Gabriel lapsed into silence. The sky above the Golan was turning blue-black with the coming night, and the lake was now nearly invisible. Shamron loved the view because it allowed him to keep watch on his distant enemies. Gabriel loved it because he had beheld it while reciting his marriage vows to Chiara. Now he was about to take a vow of another sort, a vow that would make an old man very happy.

  “I won’t be a party to any sort of palace coup,” Gabriel said at last. “Uzi and I have had our differences over the years, but we’ve become friends.”

  Shamron knew better than to speak. He had the interrogator’s gift of silence.

  “If the prime minister decides not to appoint Uzi to a second term,” Gabriel continued, “I will consider an offer to become the next chief of the Office.”

  “I need better odds than that.”

  “They’re the best you’re going to get.”

  “Negotiating with kidnappers has sharpened your edge.”

  “Yes, it has.”

  “Where do you plan to start?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “What will you do for money?”

  “I found a few thousand euros lying around a boat in Marseilles.”

  “Who did the boat belong to?”

  “A smuggler named Marcel Lacroix.”


  “Where is he now?”

  Gabriel told him.

  “Poor devil.”

  “More to follow.”

  “Just make sure you’re not one of them. I have plans for you.”

  “I said I would consider it, Ari. I haven’t agreed to anything.”

  “I know,” Shamron said. “But I also know that you would never mislead me to get something you wanted. You’re not like me. You have a conscience.”

  “So do you, Ari. That’s why you can’t sleep at night.”

  “Something tells me I’ll sleep well tonight.”

  “Don’t get carried away,” Gabriel said. “I still have to talk to Chiara about all this.”

  Shamron smiled.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Gabriel.

  “Whose idea do you think it was?”

  “You’re a ruthless bastard.”

  “Someone has to be.”

  But where to begin his search for Madeline’s killers? The most logical place was among the criminal organizations of Marseilles. He could locate associates of Marcel Lacroix and René Brossard, watch them, bribe them, interrogate them, hurt a few if necessary, until he learned the identity of the man who had called himself Paul. The man who had taken Madeline to lunch at Les Palmiers the day of her disappearance. The man who spoke French as though he had learned it from a tape. But there was one problem with that plan. If Gabriel went to Marseilles, he would surely cross paths with the French police. Besides, he thought, the man known as Paul was probably long gone by now. Therefore, he decided he would begin his search not with the perpetrators of the crime but with the two victims. Someone had known about the affair between Jonathan Lancaster and Madeline Hart. And someone had passed that information to the man known as Paul. Find that person, he reasoned, and he would find Paul.

  For now, though, Gabriel needed to find someone else first. Someone who had followed Lancaster’s rise to power. Someone who knew the dynamics of Lancaster’s relationship with Jeremy Fallon. Someone who knew where the bodies were buried. He found that person the following morning while reading the coverage of the British election campaign. It would be complicated, dangerous even. But if it produced information that led Gabriel to Madeline’s killers, it would be well worth the personal risk.