A TRIO OF American students joined them beneath the shade of the tarpaulin. Lavon and Gabriel excused themselves and walked slowly around the perimeter of the dig. Gabriel told him everything, beginning with the dossier discovered in Milan and ending with the information Nabil Azouri had brought out of Ein al-Hilweh. Lavon listened without asking questions, but Gabriel could see, in Lavon’s clever brown eyes, that he was already making connections and searching for further avenues of exploration. He was more than just a skilled surveillance artist. Like Gabriel, Lavon was the child of Holocaust survivors. After the Wrath of God operation, he had settled in Vienna and opened a small investigative bureau called Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Operating on a shoestring budget, he had managed to track down millions of dollars in looted Jewish assets and had played a significant role in prying a multibillion-dollar settlement from the banks of Switzerland. Five months earlier a bomb had exploded at Lavon’s office. Lavon’s two assistants were killed; Lavon, seriously injured, had been in a coma for several weeks. The man who planted the bomb had been working for Erich Radek.

“So you think Fellah al-Tamari knew Khaled?”

“Without question.”

“It seems a bit out of character. To remain hidden all those years, he must have been a careful chap.”

“That’s true,” Gabriel said, “but he knew that Fellah would be killed in the bombing of the Gare de Lyon and that his secret would be protected. She was in love with him, and he lied to her.”

“I see your point.”

“But the most compelling piece of evidence that they knew each other comes from her father. Fellah told him to burn the letters and the photographs she’d sent over the years. That means Khaled must have been in them.”

“As Khaled?”

Gabriel shook his head. “It was more threatening than that. She must have mentioned him by his other name—his French name.”

“So you think Khaled met the girl under ordinary circumstances and recruited her sometime after?”

“That’s the way he’d play it,” Gabriel said. “That’s how his father would have played it, too.”

“They could have met anywhere.”

“Or they could have met somewhere just like this.”

“A dig?”

“She was an archaeology student. Maybe Khaled was, too. Or maybe he was a professor, like you.”

“Or maybe he was just some good-looking Arab guy she met in a bar.”

“We know her name, Eli. We know she was a student and that she studied archaeology. If we follow the trail of Fellah, it will lead us back to Khaled. I’m sure of it.”

“So follow the trail.”

“For obvious reasons, I can’t go back to Europe just yet.”

“Why not turn it over to the Office and let their searchers do the job?”