“Of course weddings are operations.” He brought his fist down on the arm of the chair. “Chiara has had to put up with considerable dithering and nonsense on your part. If I were you, I’d plan the wedding myself and surprise her.”

“She’s an Italian Jew, Ari. She has something of a temper and doesn’t like surprises.”

“All women like surprises, you dolt.”

Gabriel had to admit he liked the idea. “I’ll need help,” he said.

“So we’ll get you some help.”

“Where?”

Shamron smiled. “Silly boy.”

They were the dark side of a dark service, the ones who did the jobs no one else wanted, or dared, to do. But never before in the storied history of Special Ops had they ever planned a wedding, at least not a real one.

They gathered the following morning in Room 456C, Gabriel’s subterranean lair at King Saul Boulevard: Yaakov and Yossi, Dina and Rimona, Mordecai and Oded, Mikhail and Eli Lavon. Gabriel walked to the front of the room and tacked a photograph of Chiara to his bulletin board. “Ten days from now, I am going to marry this woman,” he said. “The wedding must be everything she wants and she must not know or suspect a thing. We must work quickly and we will make no mistakes.”

Like all good operations it started with intelligence gathering. They scoured her bridal magazines for telltale markings and interrogated Gabriel carefully about everything she had ever said to him. Alarmed by the poor quality of his answers, Dina and Rimona scheduled a crash luncheon meeting with Chiara the following afternoon at a trendy Tel Aviv restaurant. They returned to King Saul Boulevard slightly drunk but armed with all the information they needed to proceed.

The following morning Gabriel and Chiara were awakened at Narkiss Street by an officer from Personnel who informed Chiara that she was alarmingly overdue for a complete physical. There was an opening that morning, said the man from Personnel. Could she come to King Saul Boulevard immediately? Having nothing better to do that day, she complied with the request and by ten o’clock was being subjected to rather close scrutiny by two Office-affiliated physicians—one of whom was not a physician at all but a tailor from Identity. He was less interested in matters such as blood pressure and heart rate and more concerned with the length of her arms and legs and the size of her waist and bust. Later that afternoon he slipped down to Room 456C to ask Gabriel whether he was to leave room in the garment for a weapon. Gabriel said that would not be necessary.