She kept her eyes on the screen. “Because you’re worried he won’t come? Because you’re concerned you might not get a shot at him? Because you’re afraid we’ll all be caught and arrested?”

“I don’t like this work, Dina. I never have.”

“None of us do. If we did, they’d run us out of the service. We do it because we have no choice. We do it because they force us to do it. Tell me something, Gabriel. What would happen if tomorrow they decided to stop the bombings, and the stabbings and shootings? There would be peace, right? But they don’t want peace. They want to destroy us. The only difference between Hamas and Hitler is that Hamas lacks the power and the means to carry out an extermination of the Jews. But they’re working on it.”

“There’s a clear moral distinction between the Palestinians and the Nazis. There is a certain justice in Khaled’s cause. Only his means are abhorrent and immoral.”

“Justice? Khaled and his ilk could have had peace time and time again, but they don’t want it. His cause is our destruction. If you believe he wants peace, you’re deluding yourself.” She pointed toward the screen. “If he comes to that street, you have a right, indeed a moral duty, to make certain he never leaves there to kill and maim again. Do it, Gabriel, or so help me God, I’ll do it for you.”

“Would you really? Do you truly think you’d be capable of killing him in cold blood, right there on that street? Would it really be so easy for you to pull the trigger?”

She was silent for a time, her gaze fixed on the flickering screen of the television. “My father came from the Ukraine,” she said. “Kiev. He was the only member of his family to survive the war. The rest were marched out to Babi Yar and shot to death along with thirty thousand other Jews. After the war he came to Palestine. He took the Hebrew name Sarid, which means remnant. He married my mother, and together they had six children, one child for every million killed in the Shoah. I was the last. They named me Dina: avenged.”

The volume of the music rose suddenly, then died away. When it was gone, all that remained was the lapping of a wake against the hull of the yacht. Dina’s eyes narrowed suddenly, as if remembering physical pain. Her gaze remained on the image of the boulevard St-Rémy, but Gabriel could see that it was Dizengoff Street that occupied her thoughts.