Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

Shamron lapsed into silence. He was seated with his arms folded across his chest and his head cocked slightly to one side, as though he had just heard a familiar voice outside in the street. Navot was seated next to him in an identical pose. But unlike Shamron, who was staring at Gabriel, Navot was gazing down at a plate of Viennese butter cookies with an expression of studied indifference. Gabriel shook his head slowly. It had been many months since his last operation with the Office, yet in his absence it seemed nothing had changed except the color of Navot’s hair.

“Hezbollah realized it had a serious long-term problem,” Navot said, picking up where Shamron had left off. “Since it could no longer count on the benevolence of its patrons, it had to develop an independent, reliable means of financing its operations. It didn’t take long for them to decide how to proceed.”

“Crime,” said Gabriel.

“Big-time crime,” said Navot, snatching one of the cookies from the tray. “Hezbollah is like the Gambino family on steroids. But they tend to operate like limpets.”

“Meaning they attach themselves to other criminal organizations?”

Navot nodded and treated himself to another cookie. “They’re involved in everything from the cocaine trade in South America to diamond smuggling in West Africa. They also do a brisk business in counterfeit goods ranging from Gucci handbags to pirated DVDs.”

“And they’re good at it,” Shamron added. “Hezbollah is now in possession of at least eighty thousand rockets and missiles capable of reaching every square inch of Israel. You can rest assured they didn’t get them by clipping coupons. Its rearmament is being funded in large part by a global crime wave. And Carlo is one of Hezbollah’s most reliable partners.”

“How did you find out about him?”

Shamron studied his hands before answering. “About six months ago, we were able to identify a senior operative in Hezbollah’s criminal fund-raising apparatus. His name is Muhammad Qassem. At the time, he was employed by something called the Lebanon Byzantine Bank. We lured him to Cyprus with a woman. Then we put him in a box and brought him back here.”

Shamron slowly crushed out his cigarette. “Under questioning, Qassem gave us chapter and verse on Hezbollah’s criminal enterprises, including its partnership with a heretofore unknown Italian organized crime figure named Carlo Marchese. According to Qassem, the relationship is multifaceted, but it’s centered on the trade in looted antiquities.”

“What does Hezbollah bring to the relationship?”

“You’re the expert in the dirty antiquities trade. You tell me.”

Gabriel recalled what General Ferrari had told him during their meeting in the Piazza di Sant’Ignazio, that the network was receiving looted goods from someone in the Middle East. “Hezbollah brings a steady stream of product to the relationship,” he said. “It’s active in some of the most archaeologically significant lands in the world. Southern Lebanon alone is a treasure trove of Phoenician, Greek, and Roman antiquities.”

“But those antiquities aren’t worth much unless they can be brought to market with an acceptable provenance,” Shamron said. “That’s where Carlo and his network come in. Apparently, both sides are doing quite well for themselves.”

“Does Carlo know who he’s doing business with?”

“Carlo is, as we say, a man of the world.”

“Who runs the Hezbollah side of the operation?”

“Qassem wasn’t able to tell us that.”

“Why haven’t you gone to the Italians with what you know?”

“We did,” replied Uzi Navot. “In fact, I did it personally.”

“What was their response?”

“Carlo has friends in high places. Carlo is close to the Vatican. We can’t touch a man like Carlo based on the word of a Hezbollah banker who was handled in a rather extrajudicial manner.”

“So you let it go.”

“We needed Italian cooperation on other issues,” Navot replied. “Since then, I’m afraid we’ve had only limited success in interdicting the flow of money from Hezbollah’s criminal networks. They’re incredibly adaptive and resistant to outside penetration. They also tend to operate in countries that are not exactly friendly to our interests.”

“Which means,” Shamron said, “your friend Carlo has presented us with a unique opportunity.” He stared at Gabriel through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “The question is, are you willing to help us?”

And there it was, thought Gabriel—the open door. As usual, Shamron had left him no choice but to walk through it.

“What exactly do you have in mind?”

“We’d like you to eliminate a major source of funding for an enemy who has sworn to wipe us off the face of the earth.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” said Shamron. “We think it would be best for everyone involved if you put Carlo Marchese out of business, too.”

THE NEXT DAY WAS A FRIDAY, which meant Jerusalem, God’s fractured citadel upon a hill, was more jittery than usual. Along the eastern rim of the Old City, from Damascus Gate to the Garden of Gethsemane, metal barricades sparkled in the sharp winter sun, watched over by hundreds of blue-uniformed Israeli police. Inside the walls, Muslim faithful crowded the portals to the Haram al-Sharif, Islam’s third-holiest site, waiting to see whether they would be permitted to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque. Due to a recent string of Hamas rocket attacks, the restrictions were tighter than usual. Females and middle-aged men were allowed to pass, but al-shabaab , the youth, were turned away. They seethed in the tiny courtyards along Lions’ Gate Street or outside the walls on the Jericho Road. There a bearded Salafist imam assured them that their days of humiliation were numbered, that the Jews, the former and current overlords of the twice-promised land, were once again living on borrowed time.

Gabriel paused to listen to the sermon and then set out along the footpath leading into the basin of the Kidron Valley. As he passed Absalom’s Tomb, he saw an extended family of Arabs coming toward him from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. The women all were veiled, and the eldest boy bore a striking resemblance to a Palestinian terrorist whom Gabriel had killed many years earlier on a quiet street in the heart of Zurich. The family was walking four abreast, leaving no room for Gabriel. Rather than provoke a religious incident, he stepped to the side of the path and allowed the family to pass, an act of public etiquette that elicited not so much as a glance or nod of thanks. The veiled women and the patriarch climbed the hill toward the walls of the Old City. The boys remained behind, in the makeshift radical mosque on the Jericho Road.

By now the amplified prayers from al-Aqsa were echoing across the valley, mingling with the tolling of church bells on the Mount of Olives. As two of the city’s three Abrahamic faiths engaged in a quarrel of profound beauty, Gabriel gazed across the endless headstones of the Jewish cemetery and debated whether he had the strength to visit the grave of his son, Daniel. Twenty years earlier, on a snowy January night in Vienna, Gabriel had wrenched the child’s lifeless body from the inferno of a bombed car. His first wife, Leah, miraculously survived the attack despite suffering catastrophic burns over most of her body. She lived now in a psychiatric hospital atop Mount Herzl, trapped in a prison of memory and a body destroyed by fire. Afflicted with a combination of post-traumatic stress syndrome and psychotic depression, she relived the bombing constantly. Occasionally, however, she experienced flashes of lucidity. During one such interlude, in the garden of the hospital, she had granted Gabriel permission to marry Chiara. Look at me, Gabriel. There’s nothing left of me. Nothing but a memory. It was just one of the visions that stalked Gabriel each time he walked the streets of Jerusalem. Here in a city he loved he could find no peace. He saw the endless conflict between Arab and Jew in every word and gesture, and heard it on the edge of every muezzin’s call to prayer. In the faces of children, he glimpsed the ghosts of the men he had killed. And from the gravestones of the Mount of Olives, he heard the last cries of a child sacrificed for a father’s sins.