It was the same question Shamron had posed to him that windswept afternoon in October, when he had come to Narkiss Street to haul Gabriel out of exile. A year, he should have said to Shamron that day. And then he wouldn’t be here, in a safe house in Surrey, about to send a beautiful American girl into the heart of Jihad Incorporated.

“I’ve removed the surface dirt and pressed the creases back into place with a warm, damp spatula,” Gabriel said. “Now I have to finish the inpainting and apply a light coat of varnish—just enough to bring out the warmth of Vincent’s original colors.”

“I wasn’t talking about the painting.”

He looked up from his palette. “I suppose that depends entirely on you.”

“I’m ready when you are,” she said.

“Not quite.”

“What happens if Zizi doesn’t bite? What happens if he doesn’t like the painting—or me?”

“No serious collector with money like Zizi is going to turn down a newly discovered van Gogh. And as for you, he won’t have much choice in the matter. We’re going to make you irresistible.”

“How?”

“There are some things it’s better you not know.”

“Like what happens to Ahmed bin Shafiq if I see him?”

He added pigment to a puddle of medium and mixed it with a brush. “You know what happens to Ahmed bin Shafiq. I made that very clear to you in Washington the night we met.”

“Tell me everything,” she said. “I need to know.”

Gabriel lowered his visor and lifted his brush to the canvas. When he spoke again, he spoke not to Sarah but to Marguerite. “We’ll watch him. We’ll listen to him if we can. We’ll take his photograph and get his voice on tape and send it to our experts for analysis.”

“And if your experts determine it’s him?”

“At a time and place of our choosing, we’ll put him down.”

“Put him down?”

“Assassinate him. Kill him. Liquidate him. You choose the word that makes you most comfortable, Sarah. I’ve never found one.”

“How many times have you done this?”

He put his face close to the painting and murmured, “Many times, Sarah.”

“How many have you killed? Ten? Twenty? Has it solved the problem of terrorism? Or has it just made things worse? If you find Ahmed bin Shafiq and kill him, what will it accomplish? Will it end, or will another man step forward and take his place?”

“Eventually another murderer will take his place. In the meantime, lives will be saved. And justice will be done.”

“Is it really justice? Can justice really be done with a silenced pistol or a booby-trapped car?”