The Heist Read online

  Gabriel resisted the impulse to remind Shamron that they were not truly father and son. “We’re expecting you to be there, Ari.”

  Shamron smiled. “Have you decided where you’re going to live after they’re born?”

  “It’s funny,” replied Gabriel, “but Bella asked me the same thing.”

  “I heard it was an interesting conversation.”

  “How did you know I went to see her?”

  “Uzi told me.”

  “I thought he wasn’t taking your calls.”

  “It seems the great thaw has begun. It’s one of the few advantages of failing health,” he added. “All the petty grievances and broken promises seem to fall away as one gets closer to the end.”

  The limbs of the eucalyptus tree swayed with the first breeze of the evening. The air was cooling by the minute. Gabriel had always loved the way it turned cold in Jerusalem at night, even in summer. He wished he had the power to freeze this moment a little longer. He looked at Shamron, who was tapping his cigarette thoughtfully against the rim of an ashtray.

  “It took a great deal of courage for you to sit down with Bella. And shrewdness, too. It proves I was right about one thing all along.”

  “What’s that, Ari?”

  “That you have the makings of a great chief.”

  “Sometimes I wonder whether I’m about to make my first mistake.”

  “By keeping Uzi on in some capacity?”

  Gabriel nodded slowly.

  “It’s risky,” Shamron agreed. “But if there’s anyone who can pull it off, it’s you.”

  “No advice?”

  “I’m through giving you advice, my son. I am the worst thing a man can be, old and obsolete. I am a bystander. I am underfoot.” Shamron looked at Gabriel and frowned. “Feel free to disagree with me at any time.”

  Gabriel smiled but said nothing.

  “Uzi tells me things got a bit heated between you and Bella,” Shamron said.

  “It reminded me of the interrogation I went through that night in the Empty Quarter.”

  “The worst night of my life.” Shamron thought about it for a moment. “Actually,” he said, “it was the second worst.”

  He didn’t have to say which night ranked above it. He was talking about Vienna.

  “I think Bella is more upset about all this than Uzi is,” he continued. “I’m afraid she’s grown rather accustomed to the trappings of power.”

  “Whatever gave you that impression?”

  “The way she’s clinging to them. She blames me for everything, of course. She thinks I planned this all along.”

  “You did.”

  Shamron made a face that fell somewhere between a grimace and a smile.

  “No denials?” asked Gabriel.

  “None,” replied Shamron. “I had my fair share of triumphs, but when all is said and done, yours is the career against which all others will be measured. It’s true I played favorites, especially after Vienna. But my faith in you was rewarded with a string of operations that were far beyond the talents of someone like Uzi. Surely even Bella realizes that.”

  Gabriel made no reply. He was watching a boy of ten or eleven riding a bicycle along the quiet street.

  “And now,” Shamron was saying, “it appears you may have found a way into the finances of the butcher boy from Damascus. With a bit of luck, it will go down as the first great triumph of the Gabriel Allon era.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in luck.”

  “I don’t.” Shamron ignited another cigarette; then, with a flip of his wrist, he closed his lighter with a sharp snap. “The butcher boy has the cruelty of his father but lacks his father’s cleverness, which makes him very dangerous. At this point, it’s all about the money. It’s what’s holding the clan together. It’s why the loyalists remain loyal. It’s why children are dying by the thousands. But if you could actually get control of the money . . .” He smiled. “The possibilities would be endless.”

  “Do you really have no advice for me?”

  “Keep the butcher boy in power for as long as he remains even remotely palatable. Otherwise, the next few years will be very interesting for you and your friends in Washington and London.”

  “So this is how the Great Arab Awakening ends?” asked Gabriel. “We cling to a mass murderer because he’s the only one who can save Syria from al-Qaeda?”

  “Far be it from me to say I told you so, but I predicted the Arab Spring would end disastrously, and it has. The Arabs are not yet ready for true democracy, not at a time when radical Islam is in ascendance. The best we can hope for is decent authoritarian regimes in places like Syria and Egypt.” Shamron paused, then added, “Who knows, Gabriel? Perhaps you can find some way to convince the ruler to educate his people properly and treat them with the dignity they deserve. Maybe you can compel him to stop gassing children.” “There’s one other thing I want from him.”

  “The Caravaggio?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “First you find the money,” said Shamron, crushing out his cigarette. “Then you find the painting.”

  Gabriel said nothing more. He was watching the boy on the bicycle gliding in and out of the long shadows at the end of the street. When the child was gone, he tilted his face toward the Jerusalem sky. Look at the snow, he thought. Isn’t it beautiful?

  31

  JERUSALEM

  THE TOLLING OF CHURCH BELLS woke Gabriel from a dreamless sleep. He lay motionless for a moment, not altogether certain where he was. Then he saw Leah’s brooding portrait staring down at him from the wall and realized he was in his bedroom in Narkiss Street. He slipped from beneath the sheets, quietly, so as not to wake Chiara, and padded into the kitchen. The only evidence of the previous evening’s dinner party was the heavy, sweet smell of flowers wilting in their vases. On the spotless counter stood a French press coffee maker and a tin of Lavazza. Gabriel placed the kettle atop the stove and stood over it while waiting for the water to boil.

  He drank his coffee outside on the terrace and read the morning papers on his BlackBerry. Then he crept into the bathroom to shave and shower. When he emerged, Chiara was still sleeping soundly. He opened the closet and stood there for a moment, debating what to wear. A suit, he decided, was inappropriate; it might send the message to the troops that he was already in charge. In the end he settled for his usual attire: a pair of faded blue jeans, a cotton pullover, and a leather jacket. Shamron had had his uniform, he thought, and so would he.

  A few minutes after eight o’clock, he heard his motorcade disturb the quiet of Narkiss Street. He kissed Chiara softly and then headed downstairs to his waiting limousine. It bore him eastward across Jerusalem to the Dung Gate, the main entrance to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. He skirted the metal detectors and, flanked by his bodyguards, set out across the open plaza toward the Western Wall, the much-disputed remnant of the ancient retaining barrier that had once surrounded the great Temple of Jerusalem. Above the Wall, shimmering in the early-morning sunlight, was the golden Dome of the Rock, Islam’s third-holiest shrine. There were many aspects to the Israeli-Arab conflict, but Gabriel had concluded it all came down to this—two faiths locked in a death struggle over the same parcel of a sacred land. There could be periods of quiet, months or even years with no bombs or blood; but Gabriel feared there would never be true peace.

  The portion of the Western Wall visible from the plaza was 187 feet wide and 62 feet high. The actual western retaining wall of the Temple Mount plateau, however, was much larger, descending 42 feet below the plaza and stretching more than a quarter mile into the Muslim Quarter, where it was concealed behind residential structures. After years of politically and religiously charged archaeological excavations, it was now possible to walk nearly the entire length of the wall via the Western Wall Tunnel, an underground passageway running from the plaza to the Via Dolorosa.

  The entrance to the tunnel was on the left side of the plaza, not far from Wilson’s Arch. Gabriel slippe
d through the modern glass doorway and, trailed by his bodyguards, descended a flight of aluminum stairs into the basement of time. A newly paved walkway ran along the base of the wall. He followed it past the massive Herodian ashlars until he arrived at a section of the tunnel complex that was concealed by a curtain of opaque plastic. Beyond the curtain was a rectangular excavation pit where a single figure, a small man of late middle age, picked at the soil in a cone of soft white light. He seemed oblivious to Gabriel’s presence, which was not the case. It would be easier to surprise a squirrel than Eli Lavon.

  Another moment elapsed before Lavon looked up and smiled. He had wispy, unkempt hair and a bland, almost featureless face that even the most gifted portrait artist would have struggled to capture on canvas. Eli Lavon was a ghost of a man, a chameleon who was easily overlooked and soon forgotten. Shamron had once said he could disappear while shaking your hand. It wasn’t far from the truth.

  Gabriel had first worked with Lavon on Wrath of God, the secret Israeli intelligence operation to hunt down and kill the perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre. In the Hebrew-based lexicon of the team, Lavon had been an ayin, a tracker and surveillance artist. For three years he had stalked the terrorists of Black September across Europe and the Middle East, often in dangerously close proximity. The work left him with numerous stress disorders, including a notoriously fickle stomach that troubled him to this day.

  When the unit disbanded in 1975, Lavon settled in Vienna, where he opened a small investigative unit called Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Operating on a shoestring budget, he managed to track down millions of dollars’ worth of looted Holocaust assets and played a significant role in prying a multibillion-dollar settlement from the banks of Switzerland. The work won him few admirers in Vienna, and in 2003 a bomb exploded in his office, killing two young female employees. Heartbroken, he returned to Israel to pursue his first love, which was archaeology. He now served as an adjunct professor at Hebrew University and regularly took part in digs around the country. He had spent the better part of two years sifting through the soil in the Western Wall Tunnel.

  “Who are your little friends?” he asked, glancing at the bodyguards standing along the edge of the excavation pit.

  “I found them wandering lost in the plaza.”

  “They’re not making a mess, are they?”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  Lavon looked down and resumed his work.

  “What have you got there?” asked Gabriel.

  “A bit of loose change.”

  “Who dropped it?”

  “Someone who was upset by the fact the Persians were about to conquer Jerusalem. It was obvious he was in a hurry.”

  Lavon reached out and adjusted the angle of his work lamp. The bottom of the trench shone with embedded pieces of gold.

  “What are they?” asked Gabriel.

  “Thirty-six gold coins from the Byzantine era and a large medallion with a menorah. They prove there were Jews living on this spot before the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 638. For most biblical archaeologists, this would be the find of a lifetime. But not for me.” Lavon looked at Gabriel and added, “Or you, either.”

  Gabriel glanced over his shoulder at the ashlars of the Wall. A year earlier, in a secret chamber 167 feet beneath the surface of the Temple Mount, he and Lavon had discovered twenty-two pillars from Solomon’s Temple of Jerusalem, thus proving beyond doubt that the ancient Jewish sanctuary, described in Kings and Chronicles, had in fact existed. They had also discovered a massive bomb that, had it detonated, would have brought down the entire sacred plateau. The pillars now stood in a high-security exhibit at the Israel Museum. One had required special cleaning before it could be displayed, for it was stained with Lavon’s blood.

  “I got a call from Uzi last night,” Lavon said after a moment. “He told me you might be stopping by.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “He mentioned something about a lost Caravaggio and a company called LXR Investments. He said you were interested in acquiring it, along with the rest of Evil Incorporated.”

  “Can it be done?”

  “There’s only so much you can do from the outside. Eventually, you’re going to need help from someone who can provide the keys to the kingdom.”

  “So we’ll find him.”

  “We?” When Gabriel made no reply, Lavon leaned down and began picking at the soil around one of the ancient coins. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Exactly what you’re doing right now,” replied Gabriel. “But I want you to use a computer and a balance sheet instead of a hand trowel and a brush.”

  “These days, I prefer a trowel and a brush.”

  “I know, Eli, but I can’t do it without you.”

  “There’s not going to be any rough stuff, is there?”

  “No, Eli, of course not.”

  “You always say that, Gabriel.”

  “And?”

  “There’s always rough stuff.”

  Gabriel reached down and disconnected the lamp from its power source. Lavon worked in the darkness for a moment longer. Then he rose to his feet, brushed his hands against his trousers, and climbed out of the pit.

  A lifelong bachelor, Lavon kept a small apartment in the Talpiot district of Jerusalem, just off the Hebron Road. They stopped there long enough for him to change into clean clothing and then headed down the Bab al-Wad to King Saul Boulevard. After entering the building “black,” they made their way down three flights of stairs and followed a windowless corridor to a doorway marked 456C. The room on the other side had once been a dumping ground for obsolete computers and worn-out furniture, often used by the night staff as a clandestine meeting place for romantic trysts. It was now known throughout King Saul Boulevard only as Gabriel’s Lair.

  The keyless cipher lock was set to the numeric version of Gabriel’s date of birth, reputedly the Office’s most closely guarded secret. With Lavon peering over his shoulder, he punched the code into the keypad and pushed open the door. Waiting inside was Dina Sarid, a small, dark-haired woman who carried herself with an air of early widowhood. A human database, she was capable of reciting the time, place, perpetrators, and casualty toll of every act of terrorism committed against Israeli and Western targets. Dina had once told Gabriel that she knew more about the terrorists than they knew about themselves. And Gabriel had believed her.

  “Where are the others?” he asked.

  “Stuck in Personnel.”

  “What’s the holdup?”

  “Apparently, the division heads are in revolt.” Dina paused, then added, “That’s what happens to an intelligence service when word gets around that the chief isn’t long for this world.”

  “Maybe I should go upstairs and have a word with the division heads.”

  “Give it a few minutes.”

  “How bad has it been?”

  “I’ve put together a list of al-Qaeda operatives who’ve set up shop next door in Syria—serious global jihadists who need to be taken out of circulation permanently. And guess what happens every time I propose an operation?”

  “Nothing.”

  Dina nodded slowly. “We’re frozen in place,” she said. “We’re treading water at a time we can least afford it.”

  “Not any more, Dina.”

  Just then, the door swung open, and Rimona Stern entered the room. Mikhail Abramov came loping in next, followed a few minutes later by Yaakov Rossman, who looked as though he hadn’t slept in a month. Soon after there appeared a pair of all-purpose field hands named Mordecai and Oded, followed lastly by Yossi Gavish, a tall, balding figure dressed in corduroy and tweed. Yossi was a top officer in Research, which is how the Office referred to its analytical division. Born in the Golders Green section of London, he had studied at Oxford and still spoke Hebrew with a pronounced English accent.

  Within the corridors and conference rooms of King Saul Boulevard, the eight men and women gathered in the subterranean room were known by the
code name Barak, the Hebrew word for lightning, for their uncanny ability to gather and strike quickly. They were a service within a service, a team of operatives without equal or fear. Throughout their existence, it had sometimes been necessary to admit outsiders into their midst—a British investigative journalist, a Russian billionaire, the daughter of a man they killed—but never before had they allowed another agent of the Office to join their fraternity. Therefore, they were all surprised when, at the stroke of ten, Bella Navot appeared in the doorway. She was dressed for the boardroom in a gray pantsuit and was clutching a batch of files to her breast. She stood in the threshold for a moment, as if waiting for an invitation to enter, before settling wordlessly next to Yossi at one of the communal worktables.

  If the team was made uneasy by Bella’s presence, they gave no sign of it as Gabriel rose to his feet and walked over to the last chalkboard in all of King Saul Boulevard. On it was written three words: BLOOD NEVER SLEEPS. He erased them with a single swipe of his hand and in their place wrote three letters: LXR. Then he recounted for the team the remarkable series of events that had hastened their reunion, beginning with the murder of a British spy turned art smuggler named Jack Bradshaw and ending with the note Bradshaw had left for Gabriel in his vault at the Geneva Freeport. In death, Bradshaw had tried to atone for his sins by giving Gabriel the identity of the man who was acquiring stolen paintings by the truckload: the murderous ruler of Syria. He had also supplied Gabriel with the name of the front company the ruler had used for his purchases: LXR Investments of Luxembourg. Surely LXR was but a small star in a galaxy of global wealth, much of which was carefully hidden beneath layers of shells and front companies. But a network of wealth, like a network of terrorists, had to have a skilled operational mastermind in order to function. The ruler had entrusted his family’s money to Kemel al-Farouk, the bodyguard of the ruler’s father, the henchman who tortured and killed at the regime’s behest. But Kemel couldn’t manage the money himself, not with the NSA and its partners monitoring his every move. Somewhere out there was a man of trust—a lawyer, a banker, a relative—who had the power to move those assets at will. They were going to use LXR as a way to track him down. And Bella Navot was going to guide them every step of the way.