THAT SAME EVENING A CEASE-FIRE between Israel and Hamas collapsed and war resumed in the Gaza Strip. As Gabriel’s flight approached Tel Aviv, flares and tracer fire lit the southern horizon. One Hamas rocket streaked dangerously close to Ben-Gurion Airport but was blown from the sky by an Iron Dome antimissile battery. Inside the terminal all appeared normal except for a group of Christian package tourists who huddled transfixed around a television monitor. No one noticed the deceased future chief of Israeli intelligence as he moved though the concourse, an overnight bag over his shoulder. At passport control he bypassed the long line and slipped through a door reserved for Office field personnel returning from missions abroad. Four Office security agents were drinking coffee in the waiting room on the other side. They led him along a brightly lit corridor to a secure door, beyond which two American-made SUVs idled in the predawn dark. Gabriel slid into the back of one. The closing of the armor-plated door made his ears pop.

On the opposite seat lay a copy of the overnight intelligence digest, courtesy of Uzi Navot. Gabriel opened the cover as the motorcade turned onto Highway 1 and started up the Bab al-Wad, the staircase-like gorge separating the Coastal Plain from Jerusalem. Its pages read like a catalogue of horrors from a world gone mad. The Arab Spring had turned into the Arab Calamity. Radical Islam now controlled a swath of territory that stretched from Afghanistan to Nigeria, an accomplishment that even Bin Laden would have never dreamed possible. It might have been funny were it not so dangerous—and so utterly predictable. The American president had allowed the old order to topple without a viable alternative in place, a reckless act with no precedent in modern statecraft. And for some reason he had chosen this moment in time to throw Israel to the wolves. Uzi was lucky, thought Gabriel, as he closed the digest. Uzi had managed to keep his finger in the dike. Now it would be left to Gabriel to build the ark. For the flood was coming, and there was nothing that could be done to stop it.

By the time they reached the fringes of Jerusalem, the stars were melting and the skies above the West Bank were beginning to lighten. Morning traffic moved along the Jaffa Road, but Narkiss Street slept on under the watch of an Office security detail. Eli Lavon had not been exaggerating about its size. There were teams at either end of the street and another outside the little limestone apartment house at Number 16. As Gabriel moved up the garden walk, he realized he had no key in his possession. It was no matter; Chiara had left the door unlocked. He set his bag on the floor in the entrance foyer. Then, after noticing the immaculate condition of the sitting room, he picked it up again and carried it down the hall.