“I didn’t get a chance to eat on the plane,” Navot said sheepishly. “Order me a coffee.”

Gabriel asked for another cappuccino, then looked at Navot. He was staring at the pastries again.

“Go ahead, Uzi. Bella will never know.”

“That’s what you think. Bella knows everything.”

Bella had worked as an analyst on the Office’s Syria Desk before taking a professorship in Levantine history at Ben-Gurion University. Navot, a veteran agent-runner and covert operative schooled in the art of manipulation, was incapable of deceiving her.

“Is the rumor true?” Gabriel asked.

“What rumor is that?”

“The one about you and Bella getting married. The one about a quiet wedding by the sea in Caesarea with only a handful of close friends and family in attendance. And the Old Man, of course. There’s no way the chief of Special Ops could get married without Shamron’s blessing.”

Special Ops was the dark side of a dark service. It carried out the assignments no one else wanted, or dared, to do. Its operatives were executioners and kidnappers; buggers and blackmailers; men of intellect and ingenuity with a criminal streak wider than the criminals themselves; multilinguists and chameleons who were at home in the finest hotels and salons in Europe or the worst back alleys of Beirut and Baghdad. Navot had never managed to get over the fact he had been given command of the unit because Gabriel had turned it down. He was competence to Gabriel’s brilliance, caution to Gabriel’s occasional recklessness. In any other service, in any other land, he would have been a star. But the Office had always valued operatives like Gabriel, men of creativity unbound by orthodoxy. Navot was the first to admit he was a mere field hand, and he had spent his entire career toiling in Gabriel’s shadow.

“Bella wanted the Office personnel kept to a minimum.” Navot’s voice had little conviction. “She didn’t want the reception to look like a gathering of spies.”

“Is that why I wasn’t invited?”

Navot devoted several seconds to the task of brushing a few crumbs into a tiny hillock. Gabriel made a mental note of it. Office behaviorists referred to such obvious delaying tactics as displacement activity.

“Go ahead, Uzi. You won’t hurt my feelings.”

Navot swept the crumbs onto the floor with the back of his hand and looked at Gabriel for a moment in silence. “You weren’t invited to my wedding because I didn’t want you at my wedding. Not after that stunt you pulled in Moscow.”

The girl placed the coffee in front of Navot and, sensing tension, retreated behind her glass barricade. Gabriel peered out the window at a trio of old men moving slowly along the pavement, heavily bundled against the sharp chill. His thoughts, however, were of a rainy August evening in Moscow. He was standing in the tired little square opposite the looming Stalinist apartment block known as the House on the Embankment. Navot was squeezing the life out of his arm and speaking quietly into his ear. He was saying that the operation to steal the private files of Russian arms dealer Ivan Kharkov was blown. That Ari Shamron, their mentor and master, had ordered them to retreat to Sheremetyevo Airport and board a waiting flight to Tel Aviv. That Gabriel had no choice but to leave behind his agent, Ivan’s wife, to face a certain death.

“I had to stay, Uzi. It was the only way to get Elena back alive.”

“You disobeyed a direct order from Shamron and from me, your direct, if nominal, superior officer. And you put the lives of the entire team in danger, including your wife’s. How do you think that made me look to the rest of the division?”

“Like a sensible chief who kept his head while an operation was going down the tubes.”

“No, Gabriel. It made me look like a coward who was willing to let an agent die rather than risk his own neck and career.” Navot poured three packets of sugar into his coffee and gave it a single angry stir with a tiny silver spoon. “And you know something? They would be right to say that. Everything but the part about being a coward. I’m not a coward.”

“No one would ever accuse you of running from a fight, Uzi.”

“But I do admit to having well-honed survival instincts. One has to in this line of work, not only in the field but at King Saul Boulevard, too. Not all of us are blessed with your gifts. Some of us actually need a job. Some of us even have our sights set on a promotion.”

Navot tapped the spoon against the rim of his cup and placed it in the saucer. “I walked into a real storm when I got back to Tel Aviv that night. They scooped us up at the airport and drove us straight to King Saul Boulevard. By the time we arrived, you’d already been missing for several hours. The Prime Minister’s Office was calling every few minutes for updates, and Shamron was positively homicidal. It’s a good thing he was in London; otherwise, he would have killed me with his bare hands. The working assumption was that you were dead. And I was the one who had allowed it to happen. We sat there for hours and waited for word. It was a bad night, Gabriel. I never want to go through another one like it.”

“Neither do I, Uzi.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Navot looked at the scar near Gabriel’s right eye. “By dawn, we’d all but written you off. Then a communications clerk burst into the Operations Room and said you’d just called in on the flash line-from Ukraine, of all places. When we heard your voice for the first time, it was pandemonium. Not only had you made it out of Russia alive with Ivan Kharkov’s darkest secrets, but you’d brought along a carload of defectors, including Colonel Grigori Bulganov, the highest-ranking FSB officer to ever come across the wire. Not bad for an evening’s work. Moscow was among your finest hours. But for me, it will be a permanent stain on an otherwise clean record. And you put it there, Gabriel. That’s why you weren’t invited to my wedding.”

“I’m sorry, Uzi.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For putting you in a difficult position.”

“But not for refusing a direct order?”

Gabriel was silent. Navot shook his head slowly.

“You’re a smug bastard, Gabriel. I should have broken your arm in Moscow and dragged you to the car.”

“What do you want me to say, Uzi?”

“I want you to tell me it will never happen again.”

“And if it does?”

“First I’ll break your arm. Then I’ll resign as chief of Special Ops, which will leave them with no other option but to give you the job. And I know how much you want that.”

Gabriel raised his right hand. “Never again, Uzi-in the field, or anywhere else.”

“Say it.”

“I’m sorry for what transpired between us in Moscow. And I swear I’ll never disobey another direct order from you.”

Navot appeared instantly mollified. Personal confrontation had never been his strong suit.

“That’s it, Uzi? You came all the way to Umbria because you wanted an apology?”

“And a promise, Gabriel. Don’t forget the promise.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Good.” Navot placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Because I want you to listen to me very carefully. We’re going to go back to your villa of flowers, and you’re going to pack your bags. Then we’re going to Rome to spend the night inside the embassy. Tomorrow morning, when the ten o’clock flight takes off from Fiumicino Airport for Tel Aviv, we’re going to be on it, second row of first class, side by side.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because Colonel Grigori Bulganov is gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“I mean gone, Gabriel. No longer among us. Vanished into thin air. Gone.”