“This is the end,” Gabriel said. “The last time. After this, it’s over.”

“For both of us, I’m afraid,” Shamron said. “You’ll come home, we’ll grow old together.”

“We’re already old.”

Shamron shrugged. “But not too old for one last fight.”

“We’ll see.”

“If you get the shot, don’t hesitate. Do your duty.”

“To whom?”

“To me, of course.”

Gabriel brought the dinghy around and headed out into the harbor. He looked over his shoulder once and glimpsed Shamron standing motionless on the quay with his arm raised in a gesture of farewell. When he turned a second time the old man was gone. Fidelity was already under way. Gabriel opened the throttle and followed after it.

18 MARSEILLES

18

MARSEILLES

WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF FIDELITY’S ARRIVAL in Marseilles, Gabriel had grown to loathe the doorway of the apartment house at 56 boulevard St-Rémy. He loathed the door itself. He loathed the latch and the frame. He detested the graystone of the building and iron bars on the ground-floor windows. He resented all those who trod past on the pavement, especially Arab-looking men in their mid-thirties. More than anything, though, he despised the other tenants: the distinguished gentleman in a Cardin blazer who practiced law from an office up the street; the gray-haired grande dame whose terrier shat first thing each morning on the pavement; and the woman named Sophie who shopped for a living and bore more than a passing resemblance to Leah.

They monitored the screen in shifts—one hour on, two hours off. Each adopted a unique posture for watching. Yaakov would smoke and scowl at the screen, as though, through sheer force of will, he could compel Khaled to appear on it. Dina would sit meditatively on the salon couch, legs crossed, hands on her knees, motionless except for the tapping of her right forefinger. And Gabriel, who was used to standing for hours on end before the object of his devotion, would pace slowly before the screen, his right hand to chin, his left hand supporting his right elbow, his head tilted to one side. Had Francesco Tiepolo from Venice appeared suddenly on board Fidelity, he would have recognized Gabriel’s pose, for it was the same one he adopted when contemplating whether a painting was finished.