Behind the desk, elfin and sickly looking, sat Arafat himself. He wore a pressed uniform and a black-and-white checkered kaffiyeh. As usual, it was draped over his right shoulder and secured to the front of his uniform in such a way that it resembled the land of Palestine—Arafat’s version of Palestine, Gabriel noted, for it looked very much like the State of Israel. His hand, when he gestured for Gabriel to sit, shook violently, as did his pouting lower lip when he asked Gabriel whether he wished to have tea. Gabriel knew enough of Arab custom to realize that a refusal would get things off on the wrong foot, so he readily accepted the tea and watched, with a certain amount of pleasure, as Arafat dispatched Colonel Kemel to fetch it.

Alone for the first time, they eyed each other silently over the small desk. The shadow of their last encounter hung over them. It had taken place in the study of a Manhattan apartment, where Tariq al-Hourani, the same man who had planted a bomb beneath Gabriel’s car in Vienna, had tried to murder Arafat for his supposed “betrayal” of the Palestinian people. Tariq, before fleeing the apartment house, had put a bullet into Gabriel’s chest, a wound that very nearly killed him.

Seated now in Arafat’s presence, Gabriel’s chest ached for the first time in many years. No single person, other than perhaps Shamron, had influenced the course of Gabriel’s life more than Yasir Arafat. For thirty years they had been swimming together in the same river of blood. Gabriel had killed Arafat’s most trusted lieutenants;Arafat had ordered the “reprisal” against Gabriel in Vienna. But were Leah and Dani the targets or had the bomb actually been meant for him? Gabriel had been obsessed by the question for thirteen years. Arafat certainly knew the answer. It was one of the reasons why Gabriel had so readily accepted Shamron’s suggestion to visit Ramallah.

“Shamron said you wished to discuss an important matter with me,” Arafat said. “I agreed to see you only as a courtesy to him. We are the same age, Shamron and I. History threw us together in this land, and unfortunately we have fought many battles. Sometimes I got the better of him, sometimes he bested me. Now we are both growing old. I had hopes we might see a few days of peace before we died. My hopes are fading.”

If that was the case, thought Gabriel, why then did you walk away from a deal that would have given you a state in Gaza and 97 percent of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as its capital? Gabriel knew the answer, of course. It was evidenced in the cloth map of “Palestine” Arafat wore on his shoulder. He’d wanted it all.