Navot caught the waiter’s eye and ordered an extra-large bowl of borscht and a glass of kosher red wine. Gabriel frowned and looked out the window. A steady rain was drumming against the paving stones of the rue des Rosiers, and it was nearly dark. He had wanted to meet Navot someplace other than the most famous delicatessen in the most visible Jewish district of Paris, but Navot had insisted on Jo Goldenberg, based on his long-held belief that the best place to hide a pine tree was in a forest.

“This place is making me nervous,” Gabriel murmured. “Let’s take a walk.”

“In this weather? Forget it. Besides, no one is going to recognize you in that getup. Even I nearly didn’t notice you when you came through the door.”

Gabriel looked at the ghostly face reflected in the glass. He wore a dark corduroy flat cap, contact lenses that turned his green eyes to brown, and a false goatee that accentuated his already narrow features. He had traveled to Paris on a German passport bearing the name Heinrich Kiever. After arriving at the Gare du Nord he’d spent two hours walking the Seine embankments, checking his tail for surveillance. In his shoulder bag was a worn volume of Voltaire he’d purchased from a bouquiniste on the Quai Montebello.

He turned his head and looked at Navot. He was a heavy-shouldered man, several years younger than Gabriel, with short strawberry-blond hair and pale blue eyes. In the lexicon of the Office, he was a katsa, an undercover field operative and case officer. Armed with an array of languages, a roguish charm, and a fatalistic arrogance, he had penetrated Palestinian terrorist cells and recruited agents in Arab embassies scattered across western Europe. He had sources in nearly all the European security and intelligence services and oversaw a vast network of sayanim. He could always count on getting the best table in the grill room at the Ritz in Paris because the maître d’hôtel was a paid informant, as was the chief of the maid staff. He was dressed now in a gray tweed jacket and black rollneck sweater, for his identity in Paris was one Vincent Laffont, a freelance travel writer of Breton descent who spent most of his time living out of a suitcase. In London he was known as Clyde Bridges, European marketing director of an obscure Canadian business-software firm. In Madrid he was a German of independent means who idled away the hours in cafés and bars and traveled to relieve the burdens of a restless and complex soul.

Navot reached into his briefcase and produced a manila file folder, which he placed on the table in front of Gabriel. “There’s the owner of your van Gogh,” he said. “Have a look.”