‘She bought pictures from me. Horses. Always horses. She said they reminded her of home. The man who runs Gallery 7, the bar the matches come from. Avraham Landau. He buys from me. That’s his number.’

‘And he introduced you to Rachel?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded vigorously. ‘We talked. I talked too much about the past. She came back last month, asked me to add the number to that bill. To remove the serial number on it and add that one. I don’t know why. Please. I don’t know any more. That’s it. I swear.’

‘Say your prayers,’ I said, ‘to your God.’

We locked eyes.

‘Bad people,’ he said. ‘She told me the money, that money, came from bad people – people who wanted to kill her.’

‘And that’s why the Shabak was here?’

‘No, I swear. They were never here. Never. Just Rachel. She was scared. Terrified. She said they would kill her. I gave her passports. Fake ones. So she and the old guy could get out. She was crazy. Insane. Nothing she said made any sense.’

‘What, exactly,’ I placed the tip of the barrel against the frown lines between his eyes, ‘was she saying?’

‘Please, Max. Please. They’ll kill me.’

‘So will I.’ I adjusted my grip on the SIG. ‘Keep talking.’

‘She told me that …’

His shoulders slumped; his hands fell by his sides. He didn’t seem to be able to get the words out. He was as frightened of telling me what she’d said as he was of having a gun in his face. Time was running out. I lowered the pistol.

‘That what, Moshe?’

‘That she had looked upon the Destroyer.’

‘Who?’ Baaz asked, incredulous.

I turned my head to look at him. He’d stopped walking towards the stairs once Moshe had started talking and was staring at both of us. He was in shock, overwhelmed by the violence, the weirdness of what was happening.

‘The Destroyer,’ Moshe said. ‘The one Ha’Shem sent to kill the enemies of Israel.’

‘You mean,’ I said slowly, ‘she told you that she had seen Death?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, wiping the blood out of his eye, ‘that is exactly what I mean.’

‘And she used that word? The “Destroyer”?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘She used a Hebrew name, the folk name, from the Zohar. It means “the Helper of … Ha’Shem”.’

‘All right,’ I said, tucking the SIG back into my jeans, ‘and what folk name is that?’

He looked up at me. Tears and blood streamed from his eyes.

‘Azrael,’ he said. ‘The archangel.’

26

‘She was your girlfriend, wasn’t she?’

I looked into the dregs of my beer and then up at Baaz. We were back on the terrace of The Lemon Tree hotel in Tel Aviv. He was sitting upright, hands outstretched, like a puppy waiting for a treat.

‘Not exactly.’

‘I knew it. And we’re trying to save her.’