Daniel Silva - The Black Widow

He drank some of the earthy, peppery Syrah and contemplated Chiara and Raphael as though they were figures in his own private nativity. The child had released his hold on his mother’s breast and was lying drunken and sated in her arms. Chiara was staring down at him, her long curly hair, with its auburn and chestnut highlights, tumbling over one shoulder, her angular nose and jaw in semi-profile. Chiara’s was a face of timeless beauty. In it Gabriel saw traces of Arabia and North Africa and Spain and all the other places her ancestors had wandered before finding themselves in the ancient Jewish ghetto of Venice. It was there, ten years earlier, in a small office off the ghetto’s broad piazza, that Gabriel had seen her for the first time—the beautiful, opinionated, overeducated daughter of the city’s chief rabbi. Unbeknownst to Gabriel, she was also an Office field agent, a bat leveyha female escort officer. She revealed herself to him a short time later in Rome, after an incident involving gunplay and the Italian police. Trapped alone with Chiara in a safe flat, Gabriel had wanted desperately to touch her. He had waited until the case was resolved and they had returned to Venice. There, in a canal house in Cannaregio, they made love for the first time, in a bed prepared with fresh linen. It was like making love to a figure painted by the hand of Veronese.

She was far too young for him, and he was much too old to be a father again—or so he had thought until the moment his two children, first Raphael, then Irene, emerged in a blur from the incision in Chiara’s womb. Instantly, all that had come before seemed like stops along a journey to this place: the bombing in Vienna, the years of self-imposed exile, the long Hamlet-like struggle over whether it was proper for him to remarry and start another family. The shadow of Leah would always hang over this little home in the heart of Jerusalem, and the face of Daniel would always peer down on his half-siblings from his heavenly perch on the wall of the nursery. But after years of wandering in the wilderness, Gabriel Allon, the eternal stranger, the lost son of Ari Shamron, was finally home. He drank more of the blood-red Syrah and tried to compose the words he would use to tell Chiara that he was leaving for Paris because a woman she had never met had left him a van Gogh painting worth more than a hundred million dollars. The woman, like too many others he had met along his journey, was dead. And Gabriel was going to find the man responsible.

They call him Saladin …

Chiara placed a finger to her lips. Then, rising, she carried Raphael into the nursery. She returned a moment later and took the glass of wine from Gabriel’s hand. She lifted it to her nose and breathed deeply of its rich scent but did not drink.

“It won’t hurt them if you take a small sip.”

“Soon.” She returned the glass to Gabriel. “Is it finished?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I think it is.”

“That’s good.” She smiled. “What now?”

“Have you considered the possibility,” asked Chiara, “that this is all an elaborate plot by Uzi to hang on to his job a little longer?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“He swears it was all Paul Rousseau’s idea.”

Chiara skeptically folded the butter and the cheese into the risotto mixture. Then she spooned the rice onto two plates and to each added a thick slice of the osso buco Milanese.

“More juice,” said Gabriel. “I like the juice.”

“It’s not stew, darling.”

Gabriel tore away a crust of bread and swirled it along the bottom of the casserole pot.

“Peasant,” sneered Chiara.

“I come from a long line of peasants.”

“You? You’re as bourgeois as they come.”

Chiara dimmed the overhead lights, and they sat down at a small candlelit table in the kitchen.

“Why candles?” asked Gabriel.

“It’s a special occasion.”

“My last restoration.”

“For a while, I suppose. But you can always restore paintings after you retire as chief.”

“I’ll be too old to hold a brush.”

Gabriel poked the tines of his fork into the veal, and it fell from the thick bone. He prepared his first bite carefully, an equal amount of meat and risotto drenched in the rich marrowy juice, and slipped it reverently into his mouth.

“How is it?”

“I’ll tell you after I regain consciousness.”

The candlelight was dancing in Chiara’s eyes. They were the color of caramel and flecked with honey, a combination that Gabriel had never been able to reproduce on canvas. He prepared another bite of the risotto and veal but was distracted by an image on the television. Rioting had erupted in several Parisian banlieues after the arrest of several men on terrorism-related charges, none in direct connection with the attack on the Weinberg Center.

“ISIS must be enjoying this,” said Gabriel.

“The rioting?”

“It doesn’t look like rioting to me. It looks like …”

“What, darling?”

“An intifada.”

Chiara switched off the television and turned up the volume on the baby monitor. Designed by the Office’s Technology department, it had a heavily encrypted signal so that Israel’s enemies could not eavesdrop on the domestic life of its spy chief. For the moment it emitted only a low electrical hum.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to eat every bite of this delicious food. And then I’m going to soak up every last drop of juice in that pot.”

“I was talking about Paris.”

“Obviously, we have two choices.”

“You have two choices, darling. I have two children.”

Gabriel laid down his fork and stared levelly at his beautiful young wife. “Either way,” he said after a conciliatory silence, “my paternity leave is over. I can assume my duties as chief, or I can work with the French.”

“And thus take possession of a van Gogh painting worth at least a hundred million dollars.”

“There is that,” said Gabriel, picking up his fork again.

“Why do you suppose she decided to leave it to you?”

“Because she knew I would never do anything foolish with it.”

“Like what?”

“Put it up for sale.”

Chiara made a face.

“Don’t even think about it.”

“One can dream, can’t one?”

“Only about osso buco and risotto.”

Rising, Gabriel went to the counter and helped himself to another portion. Then he doused both rice and meat in juice, until his plate was in jeopardy of brimming over. Behind his back, Chiara hissed in disapproval.

“There’s one more,” he said, gesturing toward the casserole.

“I still have five kilos to lose.”

“I like you the way you are.”

“Spoken like a true Italian husband.”

“I’m not Italian.”

“What language are you speaking to me right now?”

“It’s the food talking.”

Gabriel sat down again and laid siege to the veal. From the monitor came the short cry of a child. Chiara cocked a vigilant ear toward the device and listened intently, as if to the footsteps of an intruder. Then, after a satisfactory interlude of silence, she relaxed again.

“So you intend to take the case—is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m inclined to,” answered Gabriel judiciously.

Chiara shook her head slowly.

“What have I done now?”

“You’ll do anything to avoid taking over the Office, won’t you?”

“Not anything.”

“Running an operation isn’t exactly a nine-to-five job.”