Despite Colonel Ellard’s warnings to the contrary, I had done no recce, had precious little information and no means of processing what I did know into actionable intelligence. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near Rachel’s office without first establishing a fireproof pattern of life. But the longer I waited, the more likely I was to be compromised. If I could be found in the Paris catacombs, I could be found anywhere. And so could she. An encrypted phone call made by Baaz from Paris to the university told me the one thing I needed to know: that she was in Tel Aviv. Any other enquiry risked tripping a wire, the consequences of which I could no more predict than I could control.

I turned right, counted three doors along and stopped. The cedar panelling was so highly polished that I could see my own face staring back at me around Rachel’s name plaque.

It wasn’t simply convincing her I hadn’t murdered Doc that mattered to me. I needed to persuade her I could keep her safe – that she needed to be kept safe. But I knew now they weren’t the only reasons I’d risked everything to be there. The shock of what I was about to do cleared my mind. For the first time I accepted what it meant to stand on the threshold of the last person on earth who could join my past to my present. I had come to her, not to plead my innocence, but to accept my guilt. When she had most needed me, I’d run away. Nearly three decades, a lifetime later, I’d come back to ask for absolution – not just for that act of abandonment but for all that I had become in its wake.

I took a deep breath and knocked, but there was no reply. I twisted the handle, pushed at the open door and crossed the Rubicon.

21

‘Doctor Lazarus, I presume.’

I stepped fully into the office before I saw her. She sat facing away from me in a wide-backed chair behind a desk by the window, staring out over the city. Glossy black hair crested the headrest. A banker’s lamp next to her laptop pooled light between us, the glare plunging the corners of the room into deep shadow. I held my breath, clung on to my words. Her accent was pure Israeli. No hint of Irish remained.

She spun the chair on its axis and faced the room. But her features were lost in the gloom above the green glass of the little lamp. It was only as I went to speak that I realized I had no idea what to say – and hadn’t, for years. My throat closed around her name and there was silence between us. I let my hands hang by my sides and peered into the darkness, as if I might find there the words I was looking for.