“Radio silence from Moscow. No word from Alexei.”

By then, it was approaching two o’clock. The skies were low and leaden; a few flakes of snow were blowing sideways beyond the windows of the safe flat. Except for Nazari’s interrogation, Gabriel had been a prisoner of its rooms, hidden from view, shielded from the memories lurking just outside his door. It was Keller who suggested a walk. He helped Gabriel into his coat, wrapped a scarf around his neck, and pulled a hat low over his brow. Then he gave him a gun, a .45-caliber Glock, a man stopper, a weapon of mass destruction.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Shoot any Russian who asks you for directions.”

“What if I run into an Iranian?”

“Go,” said Keller.

By the time Gabriel stepped from the building, the snow was dropping from the sky straight and steady, and the pavements looked like sugar-dusted Viennese cakes. He walked blindly for a few moments, not bothering to check whether he was being followed. Vienna had long ago made a mockery of his tradecraft. He loved its beauty, he hated its history. He was envious of it. He pitied it.

The safe flat was located in Vienna’s Second District. Before the war it had been so heavily Jewish that the Viennese derisively referred to it as the Mazzesinsel, or the Matzo Island. Gabriel crossed the Ringstrasse, leaving the Second District for the First, and paused outside Café Central, where he had once encountered a man named Erich Radek, a former SS officer who had been ordered by Adolf Eichmann to conceal evidence of the Holocaust. Then he walked the short distance to Radek’s stately old mansion, from which a team of Office agents had plucked the war criminal and started him on the first leg of a journey that would end in an Israeli jail cell. Gabriel stood alone at the gate as the snow whitened his shoulders. The exterior of the house was worn and cracked, and the curtains hanging in the unwashed windows appeared threadbare. It seemed no one wanted to reside in the home of the murderer. Perhaps, thought Gabriel, there was hope for them after all.

From Radek’s fading mansion, he made his way through the Jewish Quarter to the Stadttempel. Two years earlier, in the narrow street outside the synagogue’s entrance, he and Mikhail Abramov had killed a team of Hezbollah terrorists who were planning to carry out a Sabbath-night massacre. The rest of the world had been led to believe that two members of EKO Cobra, Austria’s elite tactical police unit, had killed the terrorists. There was even a plaque outside the synagogue commemorating their bravery. Reading it, Gabriel smiled in spite of himself. It was as it should be, he thought. In both intelligence work and restoration, his goal was the same. He wished to come and go without being seen, to leave no trace of himself. For better or worse, it had not always worked out that way. And now he was dead.

After leaving the synagogue, Gabriel walked to a nearby building that had once housed a small investigative organization called Wartime Claims and Inquiries. The man who had run it, one Eli Lavon, had fled Vienna several years earlier, after a bomb destroyed the office and killed his two young female assistants. As Gabriel set off again, he noticed that Lavon was following him. He paused in the street and with a nearly imperceptible movement of his head instructed Lavon to join him. The watcher appeared sheepish. He didn’t like being spotted by his target, even if the target had known him since he was a boy.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked Lavon in German.

“I heard a silly rumor,” replied Lavon in the same language, “that the future chief of the Office was walking around Vienna without a bodyguard.”

“Where did you hear something like that?”

“Keller told me. I’ve been following you since you left the safe flat.”

“Yes, I know.”

“No, you don’t.” Lavon smiled. “You really should be more careful, you know. You have a lot to live for.”

They walked along the quiet street, the snow muffling the sound of their footfalls, until they came to a small square. Gabriel’s heart tolled like an iron bell in his chest, and his legs seemed suddenly like deadweight. He tried to walk on, but the memories pulled him to a stop. He recalled struggling with the straps of his son’s car seat, and the faint taste of wine on his wife’s lips. And he could hear an engine hesitate because a bomb was pulling power from the battery. Too late, he had tried to warn her not to turn the key a second time. Then, in a flash of brilliant white, his world had been destroyed. Now, finally, his restoration was nearly complete. He thought of Chiara, and for an instant he hoped that Alexei Rozanov would not rise to the bait. Lavon seemed to know what Gabriel was thinking. He usually did.

“My offer still stands,” he said quietly.

“What offer is that?”

“Leave Alexei to us,” answered Lavon. “It’s time for you to go home now.”

Gabriel moved slowly forward and stopped on the very spot where the car had burned down to a blackened skeletal ruin. Despite the bomb’s compact size, it had produced an unusually intense explosion and fire.

“Have you had a chance to look at Quinn’s file?” he asked.

“Interesting reading,” replied Lavon.

“Quinn was at Ras al Helal in the mid-eighties. You remember Ras al Helal, don’t you, Eli? It was that camp in eastern Libya, the one near the sea. The Palestinians trained there, too.” Gabriel peered over his shoulder. “Tariq was there.”

Lavon said nothing. Gabriel stared at the snow-covered cobbles. “He arrived in eighty-five. Or was it eighty-six? He’d been having trouble with his bombs. Detonation failures, problems with his fuses and his timers. But when he emerged from Libya again . . .”

Gabriel’s voice trailed off.

“It was a bloodbath,” said Lavon.

Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Do you suppose they knew each other?” he asked finally.

“Quinn and Tariq?”

“Yes, Eli.”

“I can’t imagine they didn’t.”

“Maybe it was Quinn who helped Tariq solve the problems he was having.” Gabriel paused, then added, “Maybe it was Quinn who designed the bomb that destroyed my family.”

“You settled that account a long time ago.”

Gabriel glanced over his shoulder at Lavon, but Lavon was no longer listening. He was staring at the screen of his BlackBerry.

“What does it say?” asked Gabriel.

“It seems Alexei Rozanov would like to have a word with Nazari after all.”

“When?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Where?”

Lavon held up the BlackBerry. Gabriel peered at the screen and then tilted his face to the falling snow. Isn’t it beautiful? he thought. The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. The snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain down on Tel Aviv.

49

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

IT WAS A FEW MINUTES after eleven in the morning when Katerina Akulova stepped from Rotterdam’s central train station. She entered a waiting taxi and in rather good Dutch instructed the driver to take her to the Hotel Nordzee. The street upon which it stood was more residential than commercial, and the hotel had the air of a run-down sea cottage that had been put to more prosperous use. Katerina went to the reception desk. The clerk, a young Dutch woman, seemed surprised to see her.

“Gertrude Berger,” said Katerina. “My friend checked in yesterday. Mr. McGinnis.”

The woman frowned at her computer terminal. “Actually,” she said, “your room is unoccupied.”

“Are you sure?”

The woman gave the serene smile she reserved for the most inane questions. “But a gentleman did leave something for you earlier this morning.” She handed over a letter-size envelope with the Hotel Nordzee insignia in the upper left corner.

“Do you know what time he left it?”