Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

As Gabriel entered the apartment, he smelled the unmistakable aroma of eggplant with Moroccan spice, the specialty of Shamron’s long-suffering wife, Gilah. She was standing in the kitchen next to Chiara, a flowered apron around her waist. Chiara wore a loose-fitting blouse with an embroidered neckline. Her hair hung about her shoulders, and her lips, when kissed, tasted of honey. She adjusted the knot of Gabriel’s tie before kissing him again. Then she nodded toward the television and said, “It seems you and your friend have caused quite a stir.”

Gabriel looked at the screen and saw himself, following a few feet behind the pope as he emerged from the Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem. A news analyst in London was talking about a wholesale realignment of the Vatican’s policies toward the State of Israel. As Gabriel switched from news channel to news channel, it was more of the same. It seemed His Holiness Pope Paul VII had fundamentally altered the dynamic of the conflict in the Middle East, with the Vatican now squarely on the side of the Israelis in the conflict against Iran and radical Islam. And what made it all the more remarkable, the commentators agreed, was that the Vatican had managed to conceal the Holy Father’s intentions prior to his departure from Rome.

Gabriel switched off the television and went into the bedroom to change. Then, after accepting two glasses of Shiraz from Chiara, he headed out onto the little terrace. Shamron was in the process of lighting a cigarette. Gabriel plucked it from his lips before sitting.

“You really have to stop, Ari.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re killing you.”

“I’d rather die from smoking than by the hand of one of my enemies.”

“There are other options, you know.” Frowning, Gabriel crushed out the cigarette and handed Shamron a glass of wine. “Drink it, Ari. They say it’s good for the heart.”

“I put mine in storage when I joined the Office. And now that I’m in possession of it again, it’s giving me no end of grief.” He drank some of the wine as a breath of wind moved in the eucalyptus tree. “Do you remember what I said to you when I gave you this flat?”

“You told me to fill it with children.”

“You have a good memory.”

“Not as good as yours.”

“Mine isn’t what it once was, which I suppose is fortuitous. I’ve done many things in my life I’d rather forget, most of them involving you.” He looked at Gabriel seriously and asked, “Did it help at all?”

“What?”

“Vienna.”

“I didn’t do it for myself. I did it so someone else wouldn’t have to bury a child or visit a loved one in a psychiatric hospital.”

“You just answered my question in the affirmative,” Shamron said. “I’m only sorry we had to send Massoud back to Tehran. He deserved to die an ignoble death.”

“We did the next best thing by burning him.”

“I only wish the flames could have been real instead of allegorical.” Shamron drank some of his wine and asked Gabriel what it was like being on the Temple Mount.

“It’s changed since my last visit.”

“Did you feel close to God?”

“Too close.”

Shamron smiled. “The visit didn’t go exactly as planned, at least from the mufti’s point of view. But from ours . . .” Shamron’s voice trailed off. “The pope’s words of support couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. And we have you to thank for it.”

“They were his words, Ari, not mine.”

“But I’m not sure he would have spoken them if it wasn’t for your friendship. I just hope he stands by us when the inevitable becomes a reality.”

“You mean an attack on Iran?”

Shamron nodded.

“How much longer do we have?”

“Your friend Uzi will have to make that decision. But if I had to guess, it will be some time in the next year. In my opinion,” Shamron added, “we’ve waited too long already.”

“But even you’re not sure whether an attack on their facilities will be successful.”

“But I am certain of what will happen if we do nothing,” Shamron said. “It’s not a nuclear attack that I fear the most. It’s that our enemies will use the protection of an Iranian nuclear umbrella to make our daily lives unlivable. Rockets from Gaza, rockets from Lebanon, entire sections of the country left uninhabitable. Then what? People get nervous. They slowly start to leave. And then the beautiful country that I helped to create and defend collapses.”

“It’s possible you’re being too pessimistic.”

“Actually,” Shamron said, “I was giving you my best-case scenario.”

“And the worst case?”

He turned his head a few degrees and gazed in the direction of the Old City. “It could all go up in a ball of fire, like the night Titus laid siege to the Second Temple.”

The sound of Chiara’s laughter filtered from the kitchen onto the terrace. It softened Shamron’s dark mood.

“Have there been any developments on the child front?”

“The pope is praying for us.”

“So am I,” Shamron said. “I read an interesting article about infertility not long ago. It said frequent travel can sometimes interfere with conception. It also said that the couple should remain at home as often as possible, surrounded by family and loved ones.”

“Have you no shame?”

“None whatsoever.” Shamron smiled and placed a hand on Gabriel’s arm. “Are you happy, my son?”

“I will be as soon as I put His Holiness back on his airplane.”

“I assume you’re planning to accompany him?”

Gabriel nodded. “I need to have a word with Carlo Marchese. I also have to finish that Caravaggio.”

“Never a dull moment.”

“Actually, I’d kill for one.”

“And when you’re finished in Rome? What then?”

Gabriel smiled. “Drink your wine, Ari. They say it’s good for the heart.”

As Shamron predicted, the pope’s remarks during his visit to the Temple Mount did not go over well in the Muslim world. On Al Jazeera that evening, one commentator after another branded them an affront that could not go unanswered. Watching the coverage from his office, Imam Hassan Darwish found the outrage mildly amusing. He knew that in just a few hours’ time, the pope’s words would seem like a bit of loose talk by an old man in white. With his eyes fixed on the screen, he reached for the phone and dialed. The man he knew as Mr. Farouk answered instantly.

“Yes?”

“Deliver the Korans to the address I gave you.”

“Allahu Akbar . ”

Darwish replaced the receiver and headed across the esplanade to the Dome of the Rock—not to the main hall of the shrine, but to the cave just beneath the Foundation Stone known as the Well of Souls. There he knelt on a musty prayer rug, listening to the wailing of the dead. Soon they would be free, he thought, because soon there would be no Well of Souls. In fact, if Allah allowed everything to go according to plan, there would be nothing at all.

IT WAS GOOD FRIDAY, which meant Jerusalem, God’s fractured citadel upon a hill, was in a state of near hysteria. In the predominantly Jewish districts of the New City, the morning proceeded with the usual last-minute preparations for the coming Shabbat. But in East Jerusalem, thousands of Muslims were making their way to the Haram al-Sharif for Friday prayers, while at the same time, a multitude of Catholics from around the world were preparing to commemorate the crucifixion of Christ with the man they believed to be his representative on earth. Not surprisingly, police and medical personnel reported an unusual surge in cases of Jerusalem Syndrome, the sudden religious psychosis brought on by exposure to the city’s countless sacred sites. In one incident, a guest of the King David Hotel appeared in the lobby wearing only a bedsheet, proclaiming the end of days was near.