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

  “Where is it?”

  “Behind the meeting house.”

  “Real or stone?”

  “Stone.”

  “The attitude?”

  “Face up.”

  Martineau stood. Then he placed his palms on either side of the narrow pit and, with a powerful thrust of his shoulders, pushed himself back up to the surface. He patted the reddish Provençal earth from his palms and smiled at Yvette. He was dressed, as usual, in faded denim jeans and suede boots that were cut a bit more stylishly than those favored by lesser archaeologists. His woolen pullover was charcoal gray, and a crimson handkerchief was knotted rakishly at his throat. His hair was dark and curly; his eyes were large and deep brown. A colleague had once remarked that in Paul Martineau’s face one could see traces of all the peoples who had once held sway in Provence—the Celts and the Gauls, the Greeks and the Romans, the Visigoths and the Teutons, the Franks and the Arabs. He was undeniably handsome. Yvette Debré had not been the first admiring graduate student to be seduced by him.

  Officially, Martineau was an adjunct professor of archaeology at the prestigious University of Aix-Marseilles III, though he spent most of his time in the field and served as an adviser to more than a dozen local archaeological museums scattered across the south of France. He was an expert on the pre-Roman history of Provence, and although only thirty-five, was regarded as one of the finest French archaeologists of his generation. His last paper, a treatise on the demise of Ligurian hegemony in Provence, had been declared the standard academic work on the subject. Currently he was in negotiation with a French publisher for a mass-market work on the ancient history of the region.

  His success, his women, and rumors of wealth had made him the source of considerable professional resentment and gossip. Martineau, though hardly talkative about his personal life, had never made a secret of his provenance. His late father, Henri Martineau, had dabbled in business and diplomacy and failed spectacularly at both. Martineau, upon the death of his mother, had sold the family’s large home in Avignon, along with a second property in the rural Vaucluse. He had been living comfortably on the proceeds ever since. He had a large flat near the university in Aix, a comfortable villa in the Lubéron village of Lacoste, and a small pied-à-terre in Montmartre in Paris. When asked why he had chosen archaeology, he would reply that he was fascinated by the question of why civilizations came and went and what brought about their demise. Others sensed in him a certain restiveness, a quiet fury that seemed to be calmed, at least temporarily, by physically plunging his hands into the past.

  Martineau followed the girl through the maze of excavation trenches. Located atop a mount overlooking the broad plain of the Chaine de l’Étoile, the site was an oppidum, or walled hill fort, built by the powerful Celto-Ligurian tribe known as the Salyes. Initial excavations had concluded that the fort contained two distinct sections, one for a Celtic aristocracy and another for what was thought to be a Ligurian underclass. But Martineau had put forward a new theory. The hasty addition of the poorer section of the fort had coincided with a round of fighting between the Ligurians and the Greeks near Marseilles. On this dig, Martineau had proven conclusively that the annex had been the equivalent of an Iron Age refugee camp.

  Now he sought to answer three questions: Why had the hill fort been abandoned after only a hundred years? What was the significance of the large number of severed heads, some real and some rendered in stone, that he had discovered in the vicinity of the central meeting house? Were they merely the battle trophies of a barbarian Iron Age people, or were they religious in nature, linked somehow to the mysterious Celtic “severed head” cult? Martineau suspected the cult may have had a hand in the hill fort’s rapid demise, which is why he had ordered the other members of the team to alert him the moment a “head” was discovered—and why he handled the excavations personally. He had learned through hard experience that no clue, no matter how insignificant, could be ignored. What was the disposition of the head? What other artifacts or fragments were found in the vicinity? Was there trace evidence contained in the surrounding soil? Such matters could not be left in the hands of a graduate student, even one as talented as Yvette Debré.

  They arrived at an excavation trench, about six feet in length and shoulder-width across. Martineau lowered himself in, careful not to disturb the surrounding earth. Protruding from the hard subsoil was the easily recognizable shape of a human nose. Martineau, from his back pocket, removed a small hand pick and a brush and went to work.

  For the next six hours he did not rise from his pit. Yvette sat cross-legged at the edge. Occasionally she offered him mineral water or coffee, which he also refused. Every few minutes one of the other team members would wander by and inquire about his progress. Their questions were met by silence. Only the sound of Martineau’s work emanated from the trench. Pick, pick, brush, brush, blow. Pick, pick, brush, brush, blow . . .

  Slowly the face rose toward him from the depths of the ancient soil, mouth drawn in final anguish, eyes closed in death. As the morning wore on he probed deeper into the soil and found, as he had expected, that the head was held by a hand. Those gathered on the edge of the excavation trench did not realize that for Paul Martineau, the face represented more than an intriguing artifact from the distant past. Martineau, in the dark soil, saw the face of his enemy—and one day soon, he thought, he too would be holding a severed head in the palm of his hand.

  The storm came down from the Rhône Valley at midday. The rain, cold and driven by a harsh wind, swept over the excavation site like a Vandal raiding party. Martineau climbed out of his trench and hastened up the hill, where he found the rest of his team sheltering in the lee of the ancient wall.

  “Pack up,” he said. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

  Martineau bid them good day and started toward the carpark. Yvette detached herself from the others and followed after him.

  “How about dinner tonight?”

  “I’d love to, but I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Another dreary faculty reception,” Martineau said. “The dean has demanded my presence.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Perhaps.” Martineau touched her hand. “See you in the morning.”

  On the opposite side of the wall was a grassy carpark. Martineau’s new Mercedes sedan stood out from the battered cars and motor scooters of the volunteers and the less noteworthy archaeologists working on the dig. He climbed behind the wheel and set out along the D14 toward Aix. Fifteen minutes later he was pulling into a parking space outside his apartment house, just off the cours Mirabeau, in the heart of the city.

  It was a fine eighteenth-century house, with an iron balcony on each window and a door on the left side of the facade facing the street. Martineau removed his post from the mailbox, then rode the small lift up to the fourth floor. It emptied into a small vestibule with a marble floor. The pair of Roman water vessels that stood outside his door were real, though anyone who asked about their origin was told they were clever reproductions.

  The apartment he entered seemed more suited to a member of the Aixois aristocracy than an archaeologist and part-time professor. Originally it had been two apartments, but Martineau, after the untimely accidental death of his widower neighbor, had won the right to combine them into a single flat. The living room was large and dramatic, with a high ceiling and large windows overlooking the street. The furnishings were Provençal in style, though less rustic than the pieces at his villa in Lacoste. On one wall was a landscape by Cézanne; on another a pair of sketches by Degas. A pair of remarkably intact Roman pillars flanked the entrance to a large study, which contained several hundred archaeological monographs and a remarkable collection of original field notes and manuscripts from some of the greatest minds in the history of the discipline. Martineau’s home was his sanctuary. He never invited colleagues here, only women—and lately only Yvette.

  He showered quickly and changed into clean clot
hing. Two minutes later he was behind the wheel of the Mercedes once more, speeding along the cours Mirabeau. He did not drive toward the university. Instead, he made his way across the city and turned onto the A51 Autoroute toward Marseilles. He had lied to Yvette. It was not the first time.

  Most Aixois tended to turn up their noses at Marseilles. Paul Martineau had always been seduced by it. The port city the Greeks had called Massalia was now the second largest in France, and it remained the point of entry for the majority of immigrants to the country, most of whom now came from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Divided roughly in half by the thunderous boulevard de la Canebière, it had two distinct faces. South of the boulevard, on the edge of the old port, lay a pleasant French city with broad pedestrian walks, exclusive shopping streets, and esplanades dotted with outdoor cafés. But to the north were the districts known as Le Panier and the Quartier Belsunce. Here it was possible to walk the pavements and hear only Arabic. Foreigners and native Frenchmen, easy prey for street criminals, rarely strayed into the Arab neighborhoods after dark.

  Paul Martineau had no such misgivings about his security. He left his Mercedes on the boulevard d’Anthènes, near the base of the steps that led to the St-Charles train station, and set out down the hill toward boulevard de la Canebière. Before reaching the thoroughfare he turned right, into a narrow street called rue des Convalescents. Barely wide enough to accommodate a car, it sloped downward toward the port, into the heart of the Quartier Belsunce.

  It was dark in the street, and Martineau, at his back, felt the first gusts of a mistral. The night air smelled of charcoal smoke and turmeric and faintly of honey. A pair of old men, seated on spindly chairs outside the doorway of a tenement house, shared a hubble-bubble water pipe and studied Martineau indifferently as he trod past. A moment later a soccer ball, deflated and nearly the color of the pavement, bounded toward him out of the darkness. Martineau put a foot on it and sent it adroitly back in the direction from which it came. It was scooped up by a sandaled boy, who, upon seeing the tall stranger in Western clothes, turned and vanished into the mouth of an alleyway. Martineau had a vision of himself, thirty years earlier. Charcoal smoke, turmeric, honey . . . For an instant he felt as though he was walking the streets of south Beirut.

  He came to the intersection of two streets. On one corner was a shwarma stand, on another a tiny café that promised Cuisine Tunisienne. A trio of teenage boys eyed Martineau provocatively from the doorway of the café. In French he wished them good evening, then lowered his gaze and turned to the right.

  The street was narrower than the rue des Convalescents, and most of the pavement was consumed by market stalls filled with cheap carpets and aluminum pots. At the other end was an Arab coffeehouse. Martineau went inside. At the back of the coffeehouse, near the toilet, was a narrow flight of unlit stairs. Martineau climbed slowly upward through the gloom. At the top was a door. As Martineau approached, it swung open suddenly. A man, clean-shaven and dressed in a galabia gown, stepped onto the landing.

  “Maa-salaamah,” he said. Peace be upon you.

  “As-salaam alaykum,” replied Martineau, as he slipped past the man and entered the apartment.

  9

  JERUSALEM

  Jerusalem is quite literally a city on a hill. It stands high atop the Judean Mountains and is reached from the Coastal Plain by a staircaselike road that climbs through the twisting mountain gorge known as the Sha’ar Ha’Gai. Gabriel, like most Israelis, still referred to it by its Arab name, the Bab al-Wad. He lowered the window of his Office Skoda and rested his arm in the opening. The evening air, cool and soft and scented with cypress and pine, tugged at his shirtsleeve. He passed the rusted carcass of an armored personnel carrier, a memorial relic of the fighting in 1948, and thought of Sheikh Asad and his campaign to sever the lifeline to Jerusalem.

  He switched on the radio, hoping to find a bit of music to take his mind off the case, but instead heard a bulletin that a suicide bomber had just struck a bus in the affluent Jerusalem neighborhood of Rehavia. He listened to the updates for a time; then, when the somber music began, he switched off the radio. Somber music meant fatalities. The more music, the higher the number of dead.

  Highway One changed suddenly from a four-lane motorway into a broad urban boulevard, the famed Jaffa Road that ran from the northwest corner of Jerusalem to the walls of the Old City. Gabriel followed the road to the left, then down a long, gentle sweep, past the chaotic New Central Bus Station. In spite of the bombing, commuters streamed across the road toward the entrance. Most had no choice but to board their bus and hope that tonight the roulette ball didn’t land on their number.

  He passed the entrance of the sprawling Makhane Yehuda Market. An Ethiopian girl in police uniform stood watch at a metal barricade, checking the bag of each person who entered. When Gabriel stopped for a traffic light, clusters of black-coated Haredi men drifted between the cars like swirling leaves.

  A series of turns brought him to Narkiss Street. There were no parking spaces to be had, so he left the car around the corner and walked slowly back to his apartment beneath the protective awning of the eucalyptus trees. He had a bittersweet memory of Venice, of gliding home upon the silken waters of a canal and tying his boat to the dock at the back of his house.

  The Jerusalem limestone apartment block was set back a few meters from the street and reached by a cement walkway through a tangled little garden. The foyer was lit by a greenish light and smelled heavily of new oilbased paint. He didn’t bother checking the mailbox—no one knew he lived there, and the utility bills went directly to an ersatz property management company run by Housekeeping.

  The block contained no elevator. Gabriel climbed the cement stairs wearily to the fourth floor and opened the door. The flat was large by Israeli standards—two bedrooms, a galley kitchen, a small study off the combination living room and dining room—but a far cry from the piano nobile of Gabriel’s canal house in Venice. Housekeeping had offered to sell it to him. The value of Jerusalem apartments seemed to sink with each suicide bombing, and at the moment it could be had for a good price. Chiara had decided not to wait for a deed to make it her own. With little else to do, she spent much of her time shopping and was steadily turning the functional but cheerless place into something like a home. A new rug had appeared since Gabriel had been home; so had a circular brass coffee table with a lacquered wood pedestal. He hoped she’d bought it somewhere reputable and not from one of those hucksters who sold Holy Land air in a bottle.

  He called Chiara’s name but received only silence in reply. He wandered down the hall to their bedroom. It had been furnished for operatives rather than lovers. Gabriel had pushed the twin beds together, but invariably he would awaken in the middle of the night to find himself falling into the crevasse, clinging to the edge of the precipice. At the foot of the bed rested a small cardboard box. Chiara had packed away most of their things; this was all that remained. He supposed the psychologist at King Saul Boulevard would have read deep analytical insight into his failure to unpack the box. The truth was far more prosaic—he’d been too busy at work. Still, it was depressing to think that his entire life could fit into this box, just as it is hard to fathom a small metallic urn can contain the ashes of a human being. Most of the things weren’t even his. They’d belonged to Mario Delvecchio, a role he had played for some time to moderate acclaim.

  He sat down and with his thumbnail sliced open the packing tape. He was relieved to find a small wooden case, the traveling restoration kit containing pigments and brushes that Umberto Conti had given him as a gift at the end of his apprenticeship. The rest was mainly rubbish, things with which he should have parted long ago: old check stubs, notes on restorations, a harsh review he’d received in an Italian art magazine for his work on Tintoretto’s Christ on the Sea of Galilee. He wondered why he’d bothered to read it, let alone keep it.

  At the bottom of the box he found a manila envelope no bigger than a checkbook. He loosened the flap an
d turned the envelope over. Out fell a pair of eyeglasses. They had belonged to Benjamin Stern, a former Office agent who’d been murdered. Gabriel could still make out Benjamin’s oily fingerprints on the dirty lenses.

  He started to place the glasses back into the envelope but noticed something lodged at the bottom. He turned it over and tapped on the base. An object fell to the floor, a strand of leather on which hung a piece of red coral shaped like a hand. Just then he heard Chiara’s footfalls on the landing. He scooped up the talisman and slipped it into his pocket.

  By the time he arrived in the front room, she’d managed to get the door open and was in the process of carrying several bags of groceries over the threshold. She looked up at Gabriel and smiled, as though surprised to find him there. Her dark hair was braided into a heavy plait, and the early spring Mediterranean sun had left a trace of color across her cheeks. She looked to Gabriel like a native-born Sabra. Only when she spoke Hebrew with her outrageous Italian accent did she betray her country of origin. Gabriel no longer spoke to her in Italian. Italian was the language of Mario, and Mario was dead. Only in bed did they speak to each other in Italian, and that was a concession to Chiara, who believed Hebrew was not a proper language for lovers.

  Gabriel closed the door and helped carry the plastic bags of groceries into the kitchen. They were mismatched, some white, some blue, a pinkish bag bearing the name of a well-known kosher butcher. He knew Chiara once again had ignored his admonition to stay out of the Makhane Yehuda Market.

  “Everything is better there, especially the produce,” she said defensively, reading the look of disapproval on his face. “Besides, I like the atmosphere. It’s so intense.”