“They paused at the entrance. Denise was drunk and laughing. She was looking down, into her purse, looking for the key. Sabri was telling her to hurry up. He wanted to get her clothes off again. I could have done it there, but there were too many people on the street, so I slowed down and waited for her to find the damned key. I passed by them as she slid it into the lock. Sabri looked at me again, and I looked back. They stepped into the passageway. I turned and caught the door before it could close. Sabri and the girl were in the middle of the courtyard by now. He heard my footfall and turned around. His hand was coming out of his coat pocket and I could see the butt. Sabri carried a Stechkin. It was a gift from a friend in the KGB. I hadn’t drawn my gun yet. Shamron’s rule, we called it. ‘We do not walk around in the street like gangsters with our guns drawn,’ Shamron always said. ‘One second, Gabriel. That’s all you’ll have. One second. Only a man with truly gifted hands can get his gun off his hip and into firing position in one second.’ ”

Gabriel looked around the room and held the gaze of each team member briefly before resuming.

“The Beretta had an eight-shot magazine, but I discovered that if I packed the rounds in tightly, I could squeeze in ten. Sabri never got his gun into position. He was turning to face me as I fired. His target profile was reduced—I think my first and second shots hit him in the left arm. I moved forward and put him on the ground. The girl was screaming, hitting me across the back with her handbag. I put ten shots in him, then released the magazine and rammed my backup into the butt. It had only one round, the eleventh. One round for every Jew Sabri murdered at Munich. I put the barrel into his ear and fired. The girl collapsed over his body and called me a murderer. I went back through the passageway, out into the street. A motorcycle pulled up. I climbed on the back.”

ONLY YAAKOV, who had seen his share of killing operations in the Occupied Territories, dared break the silence that had descended over the room. “What do Asad al-Khalifa and his boy Sabri have to do with Rome?”

Gabriel looked at Dina, and with his eyes posed the same question. Dina removed the photograph of Sabri and replaced it with the one showing Khaled at his father’s funeral.