Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

“Do you love this girl?” she asked suddenly, her gaze still straight ahead.

“Which girl?” asked Gabriel. And then, when he realized Leah was merely reliving the conversation that had dissolved their marriage, his heart gave a sideways lurch. “I love you,” he said softly, squeezing her frozen hands. “I’ll always love you, Leah.”

A smile briefly graced her lips. Then she looked directly at Gabriel for a moment with an expression of wifely disapproval. “You’re working for Shamron again,” she said.

“How can you tell?”

“I can see it in your eyes. You’re someone else.”

“I’m Gabriel,” he said.

“Only a part of you is Gabriel.” She turned her face toward the glass.

“Don’t go yet, Leah.”

She came back to him. “Who are you fighting this time? Black September?”

“There is no Black September anymore.”

“Who is it then?”

“Hezbollah,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation. “It’s Hezbollah, Leah.”

The name appeared to mean nothing to her. “Tell me about it,” she said.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s secret.”

“Like before?”

“Yes, Leah, like before.”

Leah frowned. She hated secrets. Secrets had destroyed her life.

“Where will you go this time?”

“Paris,” Gabriel replied truthfully.

Her expression darkened. “Why Paris?”

“There’s a man there who can help me.”

“A spy?”

“A thief.”

“What does he steal?”

“Paintings.”

She seemed genuinely troubled. “Why would a man like you want to work with someone who steals paintings?”

“Sometimes it’s necessary to work with bad people to accomplish good things.”

“Is this man bad?”

“Not really.”

“Tell me about him.”

Gabriel could see no harm in it, so he complied with her request. But after a moment, she appeared to lose interest, and her face turned once again toward the window.

“Look at the snow,” she said, gazing at the cloudless evening sky. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Yes, Leah, it’s beautiful.”

Her hands began to tremble. Gabriel closed his eyes.

When Gabriel returned to Narkiss Street, he found Chiara stretched on the couch in the half-light, a glass of red wine balanced on her abdomen. She offered him the wine and watched him carefully as he drank, as though searching for evidence of betrayal. Then she led him into the bedroom and wordlessly removed her clothing. Her body was feverishly warm. She made love as though it were for the last time.

“Take me with you to Paris.”

“No.”

She didn’t press the issue. She knew there was no point. Not after what had happened in Rome. And not after what had happened in Vienna before that.

“Did she remember you this time?”

“She remembered.”

“Which version of you?”

“Both,” he answered.

Chiara was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “Does she know you love me, Gabriel?”

“She knows.”

A pause. “ Do you?” she asked.

“What?”

“Love me.”

“Chiara . . .”

She turned her back to him. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment.

“For what?”

“The baby. If I hadn’t lost the baby, you wouldn’t be going to Paris without me.”

Gabriel made no reply. Chiara climbed slowly atop his body.

“Do you love me?” she asked again.

“More than anything.”

“Show me.”

“How?”

She kissed his lips and whispered, “Show me, Gabriel.”

ANTIQUITÉS SCIENTIFIQUES OCCUPIED A LONELY outpost at the end of rue de Miromesnil where tourists rarely ventured. There were some in the Parisian antiques trade who had urged its owner, the fastidious Maurice Durand, to relocate to the rue de Rivoli or perhaps even the Champs-Élysées. But Monsieur Durand had always resisted for fear he would spend his days watching overweight Americans pawing his precious antique microscopes, cameras, spectacles, barometers, and surveyors, only to depart the shop empty-handed. Besides, Durand had always preferred his tidy little life at the quiet end of the arrondissement. There was a good brasserie across the street where he took his coffee in the morning and drank his wine at night. And then there was Angélique Brossard, a seller of glass figurines who was always willing to change the sign in her window from OUVERT to FERMÉ whenever Durand came calling.

But there was another reason why Maurice Durand had resisted the lure of Paris’s busier streets. Antiquités Scientifiques, while reasonably profitable, operated largely as a front for his primary occupation. Durand specialized in conveying paintings and other objets d’art from homes, galleries, and museums into the hands of collectors who did not care about meddlesome details such as a clean provenance. There were some in law enforcement who might have described Durand as an art thief, though he would have quibbled with that characterization, for it had been many years since he had actually stolen a painting himself. He now operated solely as a broker in the process known as commissioned theft—or, as Durand liked to describe it, he managed the acquisition of paintings that were not technically for sale. His clients tended to be the sort of men who did not like to be disappointed, and Durand rarely failed them. Working with a stable of Marseille-based professional thieves, he had been the linchpin in some of history’s greatest art heists. Topping his list of achievements, at least in monetary terms, was Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear . Stolen from the Courtauld Gallery in London, it was now hanging in the palace of a Saudi sheikh who had a penchant for violence involving knives.

But it was Maurice Durand’s link to a lesser-known work— Portrait of a Young Woman , oil on canvas, by Rembrandt van Rijn—that had led to his unlikely alliance with the secret intelligence service of the State of Israel. After accepting a commission to steal the painting, Durand had discovered that hidden within it was a list of numbered Swiss bank accounts filled with looted assets from the Holocaust. The list had allowed Gabriel to blackmail a Swiss billionaire named Martin Landesmann into sending a shipment of sabotaged industrial centrifuges to his steady customers in the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the conclusion of the operation, Gabriel had decided to take no action against Durand lest the Office ever require the services of a professional thief.

All of which goes some way to explaining why, twenty-four hours after arriving in Paris, Eli Lavon presented himself at the entrance of the little shop at 106 rue de Miromesnil. The buzzer, when pressed, emitted an inhospitable howl. Then the deadbolts snapped open with a thud, and Lavon, shaking the rain from his sodden overcoat, slipped inside.

“Stolen anything lately, Monsieur Durand?”

“Not even a kiss, Monsieur Lavon.”

The two men appraised each other for a moment without speaking. They were roughly equals in height and build, but the similarities ended there. While Lavon wore an outfit he called Left Bank revolutionary chic, Durand was impeccably attired in a somber chalk-stripe suit and lavender necktie. His bald head shone like polished glass in the restrained overhead lighting. His dark eyes were expressionless and unblinking.

“How can I assist you?” he asked, as though helping Lavon was the last thing in the world he wished to do.

“I’m looking for something special,” Lavon replied.

“Well, then, you’ve certainly come to the right place.” Durand walked over to a display case filled with microscopes. “This just arrived,” he said, running his hand over one of the instruments. “It was made by Nachet & Sons of Paris in 1890. The optics and mechanics are all in good condition. So is the walnut case.”