Part 6 (1/2)

He closed the book, returned it to the shelf, and studied Gabriel as if contemplating a rare coin or a cage bird. Gabriel returned the gaze without expression. He had expected another version of Bouchard, a slick, c.o.c.ky b.a.s.t.a.r.d who took wine with his midday meal and left the office promptly at five so he could spend an hour with his mistress before rus.h.i.+ng home to his wife. Therefore, Paul Rousseau was a pleasant surprise.

”It's a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said. ”I only wish the circ.u.mstances were different. Madame Weinberg was a friend, was she not?”

Gabriel was silent.

”Is something wrong?” asked Rousseau.

”I'll let you know when I see the van Gogh.”

”Ah, yes, the van Gogh. It's in the room at the end of the hall,” said Rousseau. ”But I suppose you already knew that.”

She had kept a key, Gabriel recalled, in the top drawer of the desk. Obviously, Rousseau and his men had not discovered it, because the lock had been dismantled. Otherwise, the room was as Gabriel remembered it: the same bed with a lace canopy, the same toys and stuffed animals, the same provincial dresser, above which hung the same painting, Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table, oil on canvas, by Vincent van Gogh. Gabriel had carried out the painting's only restoration, in a rambling Victorian safe house outside London, shortly before its sale-private, of course-to Zizi al-Bakari. His work, he thought now, had held up well. The painting was perfect except for a thin horizontal line near the top of the image that Gabriel had made no attempt to repair. The line was Vincent's fault; he had leaned another canvas against poor Marguerite before she was sufficiently dry. Zizi al-Bakari, a connoisseur of art as well as jihadist terror, had regarded the line as proof of the painting's authenticity-and of the authenticity of the beautiful young American woman, a Harvard-educated art historian, who had sold it to him.

Of this, Paul Rousseau knew nothing. He was staring not at the painting but at Gabriel, his cage bird, his curio. ”One wonders why she chose to hang it here rather than in her parlor,” he said after a moment. ”And why, in death, she chose to leave it to you, of all people.”

Gabriel lifted his eyes from the painting and fixed them squarely on the face of Paul Rousseau. ”Perhaps we should make one thing clear at the outset,” he said. ”We're not going to be closing out old accounts. Nor are we going to take any strolls down memory lane.”

”Oh, no,” Rousseau agreed hastily, ”we haven't time for that. Still, it would be an interesting exercise, if only for its entertainment value.”

”Be careful, Monsieur Rousseau. Memory lane is just around the next corner.”

”So it is.” Rousseau gave a capitulatory smile.

”We had a deal,” said Gabriel. ”I come to Paris, you give me the picture.”

”No, Monsieur Allon. First you help me find the man who bombed the Weinberg Center, and then I give you the painting. I was very clear with your friend Uzi Navot.” Rousseau looked quizzically at Gabriel. ”He is a friend of yours, is he not?”

”He used to be,” said Gabriel coolly.

They fell into a comfortable silence, each staring at the van Gogh, like strangers in a gallery.

”Vincent must have loved her very much to paint something so beautiful,” Rousseau said at last. ”And soon it will belong to you. I'm tempted to say you're a very lucky man, but I won't. You see, Monsieur Allon,” he said, smiling sadly, ”I've read your file.”

10.

RUE PAVeE, PARIS.

INTELLIGENCE SERVICES FROM DIFFERENT NATIONS do not cooperate because they enjoy it. They do so because, like divorced parents of small children, they sometimes find it necessary to work together for the greater good. Old rivalries do not vanish overnight. They slumber just beneath the surface, like the wounds of infidelities, forgotten anniversaries, and unmet emotional needs. The challenge for the two intelligence services is to create a zone of trust, a room where there are no secrets. Outside that room they are free to pursue their own interests. But once inside, each is compelled to lay bare its most cherished sources and methods for the other to see. Gabriel had much experience in this realm. A natural restorer, he had repaired the Office's relations with both the CIA and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. France, however, was a more difficult proposition. It had long been an important operational theater for the Office, especially for Gabriel, whose litany of secret sins on French soil was long. What's more, France was an unabashed supporter of many of Israel's most implacable foes. In short, the intelligence services of Israel and France did not like each other much.

It was not always so. France armed Israel in its infancy, and without French help Israel would have never developed the nuclear deterrent that allowed it to survive in the hostile Middle East. But in the 1960s, after the disastrous war in Algeria, Charles de Gaulle set out to repair France's strained relations with the Arab world-and when Israel, largely with French aircraft, launched the Six-Day War with a surprise attack on Egypt's airfields, de Gaulle condemned it. He referred to Jews as ”an elite people, sure of itself, domineering,” and the rupture was complete.

Now, over coffee in the salon of the Weinberg family apartment on the rue Pavee, Gabriel and Rousseau set out to repair, at least temporarily, the legacy of mistrust. Their first order of business was to hammer out a basic operational accord, a blueprint for how the two services would work together, a division of labor and authority, the rules of the road. It was to be a true partners.h.i.+p, though for obvious reasons Rousseau would retain preeminence over any aspects of the operation that touched French soil. In return, Gabriel would be granted complete and total access to France's voluminous files on the thousands of Islamic extremists living within its borders: the watch reports, the e-mail and phone intercepts, the immigration records. That alone, he would say much later, had been worth the price of admission.

There were b.u.mps in the road, but for the most part the negotiations went more smoothly than either Gabriel or Rousseau could have imagined. Perhaps it was because the two men were not so different. They were men of the arts, men of culture and learning who had devoted their lives to protecting their fellow citizens from those who would shed the blood of innocents over ideology or religion. Each had lost a spouse-one to illness, the other to terror-and each was well respected by their counterparts in Was.h.i.+ngton and London. Rousseau was no Gabriel Allon, but he had been fighting terrorists almost as long, and had the notches in his belt to prove it.

”There are some in the French political establishment,” said Gabriel, ”who would like to see me behind bars because of my previous activities.”

”So I've heard.”

”If I am to function here without cover, I require a doc.u.ment giving me blanket immunity, now and forever, amen.”

”I'll see what I can do.”

”And I'll see if I can find Saladin before he attacks again.”

Rousseau frowned. ”Too bad you weren't the one to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal.”

”Too bad,” agreed Gabriel.

By then, it was approaching four o'clock. Rousseau stood, yawned elaborately, stretched his arms wide, and suggested a walk. ”Doctor's orders,” he said. ”It seems I'm too fat for my own good.” They slipped from the entrance of Hannah Weinberg's apartment house and, with Bouchard and Gabriel's bodyguard in tow, walked along the Seine embankments toward Notre-Dame. They were a mismatched pair, the lumpy, tweedy former professor from the Sorbonne, the smallish figure in leather who seemed to float slightly above the surface of the paving stones. The sun was low in the western sky, blazing through a slit in the clouds. Rousseau shaded his eyes.

”Where do you intend to start?”

”The files, of course.”

”You'll need help.”

”Obviously.”

”How many officers do you intend to bring into the country?”

”The exact number I need.”

”I can give you a room in our headquarters on the rue de Grenelle.”

”I prefer something a bit more private.”

”I can arrange a safe house.”

”So can I.”

Gabriel paused at a news kiosk. On the front page of Le Monde were two photographs of Safia Bourihane, the Frenchwoman of Muslim heritage, the veiled killer from the caliphate. The headline was one word in length: CATASTROPHE!

”Whose catastrophe was it?” asked Gabriel.

”The inevitable inquiry will undoubtedly find that elements of my service made terrible mistakes. But are we truly to blame? We, the humble secret servants who stand with our fingers in the dike? Or does the blame lie elsewhere?”

”Where?”