“Well, I’m not leaving here without Zoe and Mikhail,” Lavon said. “And I don’t think any of the others will agree to leave, either.”

“They don’t have a choice. London has spoken.”

“Since when have you ever listened to Uzi?”

“The order didn’t come from Uzi.”

“Shamron?”

Gabriel nodded.

“I assume the order applies to you as well.”

“Of course.”

“And is it your intention to disregard it?”

“Absolutely.”

“I thought that would be your answer.”

“I recruited her, Eli. I trained her and I sent her in there. And there’s no way I’m going to let her end up like Rafael Bloch.”

Lavon could see there was no use arguing the point. “You know, Gabriel, none of this would have happened if I’d stopped you from going to Argentina. You’d be watching the sunset in Cornwall tonight with your pretty young wife instead of presiding over another deathwatch in yet another godforsaken hotel room.”

“If I hadn’t gone to Argentina, we would have never discovered that Saint Martin Landesmann built his empire upon the looted wealth of the Holocaust. And we would have never discovered that Martin was compounding his sins by doing business with a regime that talks openly about carrying out a second Holocaust.”

“All the more reason you should have an old friend watching your back tonight.”

“My old friend has been ordered to evacuate. Besides, I’ve given him enough gray hairs for two lifetimes.”

Lavon managed a fleeting smile. “Just do me a favor, Gabriel. Martin may have managed to beat us tonight. But whatever you do, don’t give him an opportunity to run up the score. I’d hate to lose my only brother over a shipload of centrifuges.”

Gabriel said nothing. Lavon placed his hands on either side of Gabriel’s head and closed his eyes. Then he kissed Gabriel’s cheek and slipped silently out the door.

THE MERCEDES-BENZ S-Class sedan with a sticker price far in excess of a hundred thousand dollars slid gracefully to the curb outside the Hôtel Métropole. It had been purchased in order to ferry a striking young couple to a glamorous party. Now it was being used as a lifeboat, certainly one of the most expensive in the long and storied history of the Israeli intelligence services. It paused long enough to collect Lavon, then swung an illegal U-turn and headed across the Pont du Mont-Blanc, the first leg of its journey toward the French border.