The Cellist by Daniel Silva

66Narkiss Street, Jerusalem

For a month after his return to Israel, he remained hidden away in his apartment in Narkiss Street, surrounded by a small army of security men. Most of his neighbors viewed the additional barriers and checkpoints as a small price to pay to live in close proximity to a national treasure, but a few chafed under the restrictions. There was even a small band of heretics who wondered, not without some justification, whether the shooting in Washington had really happened. After all, they pointed out, he had once misled his enemies, and his fellow countrymen, into believing he was dead. Another grand deception on his part was hardly beyond the realm of possibility.

The skeptics hastily withdrew their objections, however, on the day he made his first appearance. The occasion was a much-anticipated meeting with the prime minister at Kaplan Street. The video of his arrival shocked the country. Yes, he was still strikingly handsome, but his hair was a touch grayer, and it was evident from his deliberate movements that his body had been invaded by a large-caliber bullet.

He met with the prime minister for more than an hour. Afterward, the two men fielded questions from reporters. It was the prime minister, as usual, who did most of the talking. No, he answered bluntly, there would be no changes in leadership at King Saul Boulevard at this time. Day-to-day control of the Office would remain in the hands of deputy director Uzi Navot until Gabriel was sufficiently recovered. His doctors had set a tentative date of June 1 for his return to duty, which would leave seven months on his term. He had informed the prime minister he would not serve a second term and had suggested a possible successor. The prime minister, when asked for his reaction, described the candidate as “an interesting choice.”

Unbeknownst to the Israeli public, Gabriel and the prime minister used the meeting to add their signatures to a document known as a Red Page, an authorization for the use of lethal force. It was executed a week later in downtown Tehran. A man on a motorcycle, a limpet mine, another dead Iranian nuclear scientist. Regional analysts interpreted the operation as a pointed message to Israel’s enemies that the Office was functioning normally, and for once the analysts were right. The new administration in Washington, which was trying to lure the Iranians back to the nuclear negotiating table, offered only a muted expression of disapproval. Gabriel’s near-death experience on Inauguration Day, declared the analysts, had paid dividends at the White House and the State Department.

Much to Chiara’s dismay, Gabriel insisted on overseeing the assassination from the ops center at King Saul Boulevard. But for the most part, he made the Office come to him. Uzi Navot was a frequent visitor to Narkiss Street, as were Yossi Gavish, Eli Lavon, Rimona Stern, Yaakov Rossman, and Mikhail Abramov. Once or twice a week they gathered in the sitting room, or around one of Chiara’s lavish dinners, to review current operations and plan new ones. Occasionally, they pressed Gabriel to reveal the name he had whispered into the ear of the prime minister, but he steadfastly refused. They were confident, however, that he would never entrust the Office to an outsider, which meant that one of them would have the misfortune of following in the footsteps of a legend.

But it was clear the legend was not himself. He tried to hide the pain from his troops, and from his wife and children, but sometimes the smallest movement brought a grimace to his face. His weekly visit to Hadassah Medical Center rarely passed without one of the doctors remarking that he was lucky to be alive. Had the slug entered his chest a few millimeters lower, he would have bled to death before the ambulance arrived. A few millimeters lower still, they declared, and he would have died instantly.

They prescribed for him a set of exercises to regain his strength. He read stacks of classified documents instead. And when he felt up to it, he painted. The works were filled with power and emotion, the sort of paintings for which he would have been known had he become an artist instead of an assassin. One was a portrait of a madwoman clutching a gun.

“It’s much better than she deserves,” said Chiara.

“It’s total crap.”

“You’re too hard on yourself.”

“It runs in the family.”

It was then, standing before his easel, that he told Chiara for the first time how he had heard his mother’s voice as he was dying. And how he had tried to convince the madwoman depicted in the painting, a congresswoman from America’s heartland, to lay down her gun.

“Did she say anything to you?”

“She called me a bloodsucker. And it was quite obvious she believed it to be true. I almost felt sorry for her. Even if I’d had a gun . . .”

Chiara finished the thought for him. “You’re not sure you would have been able to use it.”

Despite the subject matter, Chiara thought the painting was of sufficient quality for hanging, but Gabriel consigned it to the storage facility where he kept his mother’s paintings and works by his first wife, Leah. Near the end of April, as Israel’s aggressive national vaccination campaign allowed much of the country to reopen, he was allowed to visit her for the first time in more than a year. The hospital where she resided was atop Mount Herzl, near the ruins of the old Arab village of Deir Yassin. Afflicted with a combination of acute post-traumatic stress syndrome and psychotic depression, she had no knowledge of the global pandemic, or of Gabriel’s near-fatal shooting in Washington. Seated beneath an olive tree in the cool of the walled garden, they relived, word for word, a conversation they had had on a snowy night in Vienna thirty years earlier. She once again asked Gabriel to make certain Dani was strapped into his car seat properly. Now, as then, Gabriel assured her the child was safe.

Emotionally drained by the encounter, he took Chiara and the children to Focaccia on Rabbi Akiva Street, the Allon family’s favorite restaurant in Jerusalem. Their photographs were soon trending on social media along with a lengthy discussion of Gabriel’s order, chicken livers and mashed potatoes. Haaretz, Israel’s most authoritative daily, felt compelled to publish several hundred words on the sighting, including quotes from two of Israel’s most prominent physicians. The general consensus was that Gabriel was starting to look a bit more like himself again.

The next night they made a long-delayed pilgrimage to Tiberias to celebrate Shabbat with the Shamrons. Over dinner, Ari upbraided Gabriel for allowing himself to be shot by an American congresswoman—“The indignity of it! How could you have been so careless?”—before turning his attention to the future. Not surprisingly, he had been talking to the prime minister about Gabriel’s succession plan. The prime minister was intrigued by the idea of appointing a woman but was not sure whether Rimona was ready for the job. Shamron reckoned it was a fifty-fifty proposition at best, though he was confident that, with dogged persistence, he would be able to drag her across the finish line.

“Unless . . .”

“Unless what, Ari?”

“I can convince you to stay for a second term.”

Even the children laughed at the suggestion.

At the conclusion of dinner, Shamron asked Gabriel to join him on the terrace overlooking the Sea of Galilee. After settling into a chair along the balustrade, he ignited a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette with his old Zippo lighter and returned to the subject of Gabriel’s brush with death in Washington.

“Another first on your part,” Shamron pointed out. “You are the only chief in the history of the Office to have killed in the line of duty. And now you are the only one to have been shot.”

“Do I get a citation for that sort of thing?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it.” Shamron shook his head slowly. “I hope it was worth it.”

“It’s quite possible I saved the new president’s life. He won’t forget that.”

“And what about the other members of his administration?”

“They’re only Democrats, Ari. It isn’t as if Hezbollah is going to be running the State Department.”

“But can we count on them?”

“The president and his team?”

“No,” said Shamron. “The Americans.”

“The president has assured his traditional European allies that America is back, but they’re not yet convinced. Not after what they went through the last four years. And the attack on the Capitol has made them even more skeptical.”

“As well it should,” replied Shamron. “Who were these creatures who vandalized that beautiful building? What do they want?”

“They say they want their country back.”

“From whom?” asked Shamron, incredulous. “Have they not read their history? Do they not know what happens when a nation tears itself apart? Do they not realize how lucky they are to live in a democracy?”

“They don’t believe in democracy anymore.”

“They will if it vanishes.”

“Not if their side is in control.”

“An authoritarian regime in the United States? A ruling family? Fascism?”

“These days we call it majoritarianism.”

“How polite,” remarked Shamron. “But what about the minorities?”

“Their votes won’t count.”

“How will they manage that?”

“You know the old saying about elections, Ari. It’s not about the voting, it’s about the counting.”

“Your friend from Moscow figured that out a long time ago.” Shamron crushed out his cigarette. “I assume you’re planning to retaliate?”

“The Americans are doing that for me.”

“There are sanctions,” said Shamron knowingly, “and then there are sanctions, if you understand my point.”

“I’ve been working on and off for the Office since I was twenty-two, Ari. I know what you mean when you refer to sanctions. In fact, I’m old enough to remember when we used to refer to an assassination as negative treatment.”

Shamron lifted a hand in inquiry. “Well?”

“After giving the matter careful consideration, I’m inclined to let it go.”

Shamron glared at Gabriel as though he had questioned the existence of the creator. “But you must respond.”

“Do you know how many Russians I’ve killed or kidnapped since the outbreak of our private little war? Even I’m not sure I can count them all. Besides, I took something more important from him than his life.”

“His money?”

Gabriel nodded. “And I proved to the Russian people that he’s nothing but a thief. Who knows? With a bit of luck, the next government citadel to be stormed by its own people will be the Kremlin.”

“A popular uprising in Russia?”

“It’s his biggest fear.”

“My biggest fear,” said Shamron, “is that soon after you move to Italy, I will read a story in the newspaper about your body being fished from a Venetian canal. Which is why you must delay your departure until the situation has settled.”

“How long do you think that will take?”

“Ten or fifteen years.” Shamron gave a mischievous smile. “Just to be on the safe side.”

“Chiara and the children are leaving the day after my term expires, with or without me.”

“Has it been that bad?”

“Washington was the final straw.”

“But not the final act, I hope.”

“I promised my wife that I would spend my last years on earth making her happy. I intend to keep that promise.”

“And what about your happiness?” asked Shamron.

Gabriel made no reply.

“Do you still grieve for them?”

“Every minute of every day.”

“Is there any room in your heart for me?”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“I trained you to lie better than that, my son.” Shamron was silent for a moment. “Do you remember that day in September when I came for you?”

“Like it was yesterday.”

“I wish we could do it all over again.”

“Life doesn’t work that way, Ari.”

“Yes,” he said. “Isn’t that a shame.”