IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when the flight from Heathrow Airport touched down in Venice. Gabriel, riding into town in a water taxi, stood in the cockpit with the driver, his back to the cabin door, watching the channel markers of the lagoon rising out of the mist like columns of defeated soldiers returning home from the front. Soon the edges of Cannaregio appeared. Gabriel felt a fleeting sense of tranquillity. Venice, crumbling, sagging, sodden Venice, always had that effect on him. She’s an entire city in need of restoration, Umberto Conti had said to him. Use her. Heal Venice, and she’ll heal you.

The taxi dropped him at the Palazzo Lezze. Gabriel walked westward across Cannaregio along the banks of a broad canal called the Rio della Misericordia. He came to an iron bridge, the only one in all of Venice. In the Middle Ages there had been a gate in the center of the bridge, and at night a Christian watchman had stood guard so that those imprisoned on the other side could not escape. Gabriel crossed the bridge and entered an underground sottoportego. At the other end of the passageway a broad square opened before him: the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, the center of the ancient ghetto of Venice. At its height it had been the cramped home to more than five thousand Jews. Now only twenty of the city’s four hundred Jews lived in the old ghetto, and most of those were elderly who resided in the Casa Israelitica di Riposo.

Gabriel made for the modern glass doorway at the opposite side of the square and went inside. To his right was the entrance to a small bookstore that specialized in books dealing with Jewish history and the Jews of Venice. It was warm and brightly lit, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the canal that encircled the ghetto. Behind the counter, seated atop a wooden stool in a cone of halogen light, was a girl with short blond hair. She smiled at him as he entered and greeted him by his work name.

“She left about an hour ago.”

“Really? Where is she?”

The girl shrugged elaborately. “Didn’t say.”

Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. Four-fifteen. He decided to put in a few hours on the Bellini before dinner.

“If you see her, tell her I’m at the church.”

“No problem. Ciao, Mario.”

He walked to the Rialto Bridge. One street over from the canal he turned to the left and headed for a small terra-cotta church. He paused. Standing at the entrance of the church, in the shelter of the lunette, was a man Gabriel recognized, an Office security agent named Rami. His presence in Venice could mean but one thing. He caught Gabriel’s eye and glanced toward the doorway. Gabriel slipped past and went inside.