Within the corridors and conference rooms of King Saul Boulevard, these men and women were known by the code name Barak—the Hebrew word for lightning—because of their ability to gather and strike quickly. They had operated together, often under conditions of immense stress, on secret battlefields from Moscow to the Caribbean. But one member of the team was not present. Gabriel looked at Yossi and asked, “Where’s Mikhail?”

“He was on a leave of absence.”

“Where is he now?”

“Standing right behind you,” said a voice at Gabriel’s back.

Gabriel turned around. Propped against the jamb was a lanky figure with eyes the color of glacial ice and a fine-boned, bloodless face. Born in Moscow to a pair of dissident scientists, Mikhail Abramov had come to Israel as a teenager within weeks of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Once described by Shamron as “Gabriel without a conscience,” Mikhail had joined the Office after serving in the Sayeret Matkal special forces, where he had assassinated several of the top terrorist masterminds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. But he would forever be linked to Gabriel and Chiara by the terrifying hours they had spent together in the hands of Ivan Kharkov in a birch forest outside Moscow.

“I thought you were supposed to be in Cornwall,” Mikhail said.

“I got a little stir-crazy.”

“So I hear.”

“Are you up for this?”

Mikhail shrugged. “No problem.”

Mikhail took his usual seat in the back left corner while Gabriel surveyed the four walls. They were papered over with surveillance photos, street maps, and watch reports—all corresponding to the eleven names Gabriel had written on the chalk-board the previous summer. Eleven names of eleven former KGB agents, all of whom had been killed by Gabriel and Mikhail. Now Gabriel wiped the names from the board with the same ease he had wiped the Russians from the face of the earth and in their place adhered an enlarged photograph of Martin Landesmann. Then he settled atop a metal stool and told his team a story.