For two days, he enjoyed the sights and flavors of Tel Aviv, admiring the scenery, the women, the live-for-today ethos that seemed to animate the place. It had a gay living-on-the-bull’s-eye quality to it, familiar from Saigon toward the end. They probably felt the same in Troy. He developed a liking for pomegranate juice and soda taken on the hotel veranda with the Med a blue pool in one direction and, in the other, scrub mountains sustaining what appeared to be thousands of apartments, all of this in splendid sunshine. Only occasionally did the percussion of what might have been an explosion jar his eardrums. Sometimes, but not always, sirens. He felt his face darkening in the rays from above, and his own step turning jaunty.

On the third night, his phone rang. It was not Gershon.

“You will be picked up tomorrow at nine,” the voice informed him, then vanished.

And indeed at 9 a black Citroën pulled up, driven by a boy.

“Mr. Swagger?”

“Yep.”

“If you please . . .”

The car wound through town and eventually made it to the suburbs, where, after a bit, it seemed to set a course toward a black cube of a building, looking all sci-fi in the light, gleamless, obdurate, implacable. He knew it was Mossad headquarters, a six-story glass block whose dark surface evoked the idea of being watched from the inside while remaining impenetrable from the outside.

Security was thorough, his documents vetted, his body scanned, even the labels on his clothes checked. The boy stayed with him the whole way, ultimately depositing him on the sixth floor in a shabby conference room, where he was awaited by what appeared to be a committee.

Gold didn’t bother to introduce him to them or them to him. Names were irrelevant. The men were as somber as Gold, some bearded, some not. All had the game written on faces that might not have smiled in the past few years. Each of them had a folder in hand, and Gold seemed to be in charge.

“Sergeant Swagger, my colleagues and I will put certain questions before you. We do so in the interest of efficiency and probity. In some cases, you may think they are hostile. You might be right. I’ve asked my colleagues to divide themselves between advocacy and prosecution. No disrespect is meant, so please take nothing personally. Especially from Cohen.”

“Who’s Cohen?” asked Bob.

“I’m Cohen,” said a small man with bright, combative eyes and a disorganized goatee.

“For some reason, our Director tolerates Cohen and his poor attempts at humor. Perhaps it’s a lesson for us as to what not to become. Anyway: Cohen?”

“Are you fucking Mrs. McDowell?” asked Cohen.

Swagger knew trouble when he saw it.

“No,” he said.

“Have you ever dreamed of her naked?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Does she have large or small breasts?”

“I have no idea.”

“Would you consider her a sensual woman?”

“Do you find grief sensual?”