The woman produced a brochure and opened it to the appropriate page. “It’s four bedrooms, Herr Kiever. Did you need something that large?”

“Actually, we might be having some company.”

“Then I suspect this will do brilliantly. It’s a bit pricey, twelve thousand a week, and I’m afraid there’s a two-week minimum.”

Gabriel shrugged, as if to say money was no object.

“No children and absolutely no pets. You don’t have a dog, do you?”

“Heavens no.”

“There’s a two-thousand-dollar security deposit as well, bringing the grand total to twenty-six thousand, payable in advance, of course.”

“When can we have it?”

She looked at her watch. “It’s ten-fifteen now. If we rush things along, we should be able to have you and your wife in by eleven-thirty at the latest.”

Gabriel smiled and handed her a credit card.

THOUGH THE ENGLISHWOMAN did not know it, the first guests arrived at the villa fifteen minutes after Gabriel and Dina had settled in. Their possessions were quite unlike those of ordinary visitors to the island. Mordecai brought a voice-activated receiver and a Nikon camera with a long lens, while Mikhail arrived with a nylon rucksack containing cellular phones, radios, and four handguns. An hour later they glimpsed their quarry for the first time when he strode onto the terrace, dressed in white shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt. Mordecai snapped several photos of him. Five minutes later, when al-Nasser emerged shirtless from the pool after a vigorous swim, he snapped several more. Gabriel examined the images on the computer but deemed them unworthy of sending to King Saul Boulevard for analysis.

At one in the afternoon the light on the voice-activated recorder turned from red to green. A burst of tone came over the line, followed by the sound of someone inside the house dialing a local number. After two rings the call was answered by a woman at La Gloriette restaurant. Gabriel closed his eyes in disappointment when the next voice on the line was that of Madame al-Nasser, requesting a lunch reservation for two o’clock. He briefly considered putting a team inside the restaurant but ruled it out after obtaining a description of the cramped beachside dining room. Mordecai, however, managed to take two more photographs of al-Nasser, one as he was climbing out of his car in the parking lot and a second as he was sipping a drink at his table. In both he was wearing dark sports sunglasses and a long-sleeved shirt. Gabriel dispatched them to King Saul Boulevard for analysis. One hour later, as al-Nasser and his wife were leaving the restaurant, King Saul Boulevard sent a flash over the secure link that the results were inconclusive.