The street called Hohe Bleichen stretched from the Marriott Hotel to the fringes of the busy Axel-Springer-Platz. It was part Bond Street and part Rodeo Drive; it was modern Germany at its prosperous best. Ralph Lauren occupied a wedding cake of a building at the northern end. Prada and Dibbern china stood shoulder to shoulder a little farther to the south. And next to the luxury shoemaker Ludwig Reiter was Die Bank, the marble temple of dining so beloved by Hamburg’s financial and commercial elite. Red banners with the restaurant’s scribble of an insignia hung from the facade. Sculpted pillars guarded its entrance.

By then, it was a few minutes after one p.m., and the running battle of the lunch rush was at its most pitched. Gabriel entered alone and found a place at the gold-plated bar. He forced himself to drink a glass of rosé while he reacquainted himself with the sight lines of the restaurant’s interior. Then he paid his bill in cash and went into the street again. It was narrow, with only a handful of parking spaces. The traffic flow was north to south. Directly opposite the restaurant was a tiny triangular esplanade where Keller sat on the edge of a concrete planter. Gabriel joined him.

“Well?” he asked.

“Nice place,” answered Keller.

“For what?”

“Anything you decide.” Keller looked up the length of the street. “These exclusive shops all close early. At nine o’clock this place will be very quiet. At eleven it’ll be dead.” He glanced at Gabriel and added, “No pun intended.”

Gabriel was silent.

“It’s five steps from the entrance of the restaurant to the curb,” said Keller. “I could put him down from right here and be gone before his body hit the concrete.”

“So could I,” answered Gabriel. “But it’s possible I might need to go over a couple of small points with him first.”

“Quinn?”

Gabriel rose without another word and led Keller southward across the Neustadt to St. Michael’s Church. In the shadow of its soaring clock tower was a green park surrounded by stubby apartment houses. They entered one, a modern building with a smoked-glass atrium, and rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Gabriel knocked lightly on the door of 4D, and a tall academic-looking man named Yossi Gavish admitted them. Rimona Stern and Dina Sarid were peering into the screens of laptop computers at the dining room table, and in the sitting room Mordecai and Oded, a pair of all-purpose field hands, were leaning over a large-scale map of Hamburg. Dina looked up and smiled, but otherwise no one acknowledged Gabriel’s presence as he entered. He removed his coat and went to the window. The clock tower of St. Michael’s told him it was ten minutes past two o’clock. It was good to be home again, he thought. It was good to be alive.

51

PICCADILLY, LONDON