“He seems to have bigger headaches than a few boys from west Amsterdam.”

“He does.”

“We’re going to have to bring the Dutch into the picture at some point.”

“As soon as Eli is finished purging Rosner’s archives, we’ll summon the Dutch liaison officer in Tel Aviv and have a quiet word with him.”

“Just make sure we protect our source. He’s someone we need to slip in our back pocket for a rainy day.”

“Don’t worry—it will be a very quiet word.”

“My plane arrives in Amsterdam in the early afternoon. If Eli and I work through the night, we should be finished by morning.”

“I’m afraid Eli will have to finish the job without you. You’re not going back to Amsterdam.”

“Where am I going?”

“Home,” said Shamron. “A bodel will collect you in an hour and take you to Heathrow. And don’t get off the plane looking like something the cat dragged in, the way you usually do. We’re having dinner together tonight at Kaplan Street.”

Kaplan Street was the address of the Prime Minister’s Office.

“Why are we having dinner there?”

“If it’s all the same with you, I’d rather not discuss our highest affairs of state and intelligence while the eavesdroppers of MI5 and GCHQ are trying to listen in.”

“It’s a secure phone.”

“There’s no such thing,” Shamron said. “Just make sure you’re on that plane. If you get stuck in traffic, call me from the car. I’ll have El Al hold the plane for you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

The line went dead. Gabriel placed the receiver back in the cradle. We’re having dinner together tonight at Kaplan Street… He supposed he knew what the topic of conversation would be. Apparently Amos didn’t have long to live. He looked at the television screen. Three telegenic young people were engaged in a deeply serious discussion about the sexual antics of Britain’s most famous footballer. Gabriel groped for the remote control and instead found Samir’s legal pad. Then he remembered waking in the middle of the night and gazing at the image—not the pine trees and the sand dunes but the pattern of crisscrossing lines.

He looked at it again now. Gabriel had been blessed with near-perfect visual recall, a skill enhanced by his study of art history and his work as a restorer. He had hundreds of thousands of paintings stored in the file rooms of his memory and could authenticate a work simply by examining a few brushstrokes. He was convinced the lines were not random but part of a pattern—and he was certain he had seen the pattern somewhere before.