Gabriel cast his eyes downward, as if he were reading the words carved into the table.

“So why do Eichmann and Radek deserve the trappings of justice,” he said finally, “but the Palestinians from Black September only vengeance?”

“You would have made a fine Talmudic scholar, Gabriel.”

“And you’re avoiding my question.”

“Obviously, there was a measure of pure vengeance in our decision to target the Black September terrorists, but it was more than that. They posed a continuing threat. If we didn’t kill them, they would kill us. It was war.”

“Why not arrest them, put them on trial?”

“So they could spout their propaganda from an Israeli court?” Shamron shook his head slowly. “They already did that”-he raised his hand and pointed to the tower rising over the Olympic Park-“right here in this city, in front of all the world’s cameras. It wasn’t our job to give them another opportunity to justify the massacre of innocents.”

He lowered his hand and leaned across the table. It was then that he told Gabriel of the prime minister’s wishes. His breath froze before him as he spoke.

“I don’t want to kill an old man,” Gabriel said.

“He’s not an old man. He wears an old man’s clothing and hides behind an old man’s face, but he’s still Erich Radek, the monster who killed a dozen men at Auschwitz because they couldn’t identify a piece of Brahms. The monster who killed two girls by the side of a Polish road because they wouldn’t deny the atrocities of Birkenau. The monster who opened the graves of millions and subjected their corpses to one final humiliation. Infirmity does not forgive such sins.”

Gabriel looked up and held Shamron’s insistent gaze. “I know he’s a monster. I just don’t want to kill him. I want the world to know what this man did.”

“Then you’d better be ready to do battle with him.” Shamron glared at his wristwatch. “I’m bringing in someone to help you prepare. In fact, he should be arriving shortly.”

“Why am I being told about this now? I thought I was the one making all the operational decisions.”

“You are,” Shamron said. “But sometimes I have to show you the way. That’s what old men are for.”

NEITHER GABRIEL NOR Shamron believed in harbingers or omens. If they had, the operation that brought Moshe Rivlin from Yad Vashem to the safe house in Munich would have cast doubt on the team’s ability to carry out the task before them.

Shamron wanted Rivlin approached quietly. Unfortunately, King Saul Boulevard entrusted the job to a pair of apprentices fresh from the Academy, both markedly Sephardic in appearance. They decided to contact Rivlin while he walked home from Yad Vashem to his apartment near the Yehuda Market. Rivlin, who had grown up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn and was still vigilant when walking the streets, quickly noticed that he was being followed by two men in a car. He assumed them to be Hamas suicide bombers or a pair of street criminals. When the car pulled alongside him and the passenger asked for a word, Rivlin broke into a lopsided run. To everyone’s surprise, the tubby archivist proved himself to be an elusive prey, and he evaded his captors for several minutes before finally being cornered by the two Office agents in Ben Yehuda Street.

He arrived at the safe flat in Lehel late that evening, bearing two suitcases filled with research material and a chip on his shoulder over the way his summons had been handled. “How do you expect to snatch a man like Erich Radek if you can’t grab one fat archivist? Come on,” he said, pulling Gabriel into the privacy of the back bedroom. “We have a lot of ground to cover and not much time to do it.”

ON THE SEVENTH DAY, Adrian Carter came to Munich. It was a Wednesday; he arrived at the safe flat in the late afternoon, as the dusk was turning to dark. The passport in the pocket of his Burberry overcoat still said Brad Cantwell. Gabriel and Shamron were just returning from an outing in the English Gardens and were bundled in their hats and scarves. Gabriel had dispatched the rest of the team members to their final staging positions, so the safe flat was empty of Office personnel. Only Rivlin remained. He greeted the deputy director of the CIA with his shirttail out and his shoes off and called himself Yaacov. The archivist had adapted well to the discipline of the operation.

Gabriel made the tea. Carter unbuttoned his coat and led himself on a preoccupied tour of the flat. He spent a long time in front of the maps. Carter believed in maps. Maps never lied to you. Maps never told you what they thought youwanted to hear.

“I like what you’ve done with the place, Herr Heller.” Carter finally removed his overcoat. “Neocontemporary squalor. And the smell. I’m sure I know it. Carry-out from the Wienerwald down the block, if I’m not mistaken.”

Gabriel handed him a mug of tea with the string from the bag still dangling over the edge of the rim. “Why are you here, Adrian?”

“I thought I’d pop over to see if I could be of help.”

“Bullshit.”

Carter cleared a spot on the couch and sat down heavily, a salesman at the end of a long and fruitless road trip. “Truth be told, I’m here at the behest of my director. It seems he’s getting a serious case of preoperative jitters. He feels we’re out on a limb together and you boys are the ones holding the chainsaw. He wants the Agency to be brought into the picture.”

“Meaning?”

“He wants to know the game plan.”

“You know the game plan, Adrian. I told you the game plan in Virginia. It hasn’t changed.”

“I know the broad strokes of the plan,” Carter said. “Now I’d like to see the fine print.”

“What you’re saying is that your director wants to review the plan and sign off on it.”

“Something like that. He also wants me standing on the sidelines with Ari when it goes down.”

“And if we tell him to go to hell?”

“I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance someone will whisper a warning in Erich Radek’s ear, and you’ll lose him. Play ball with the director, Gabriel. It’s the only way you’ll get Radek.”

“We’re ready to move, Adrian. Now is not the time for helpful suggestions from the seventh floor.”

Shamron sat down next to Carter. “If your director had an ounce of brains, he’d stay as far away from this as possible.”

“I tried to explain that to him-not in those terms, mind you, but something close. He’d have none of it. He came from Wall Street, our director. He likes to think of himself as a hands-on, take-charge sort of fellow. Always knew what every division of the company was doing. Tries to run the Agency the same way. And as you know, he’s also a friend of the president. If you cross him, he’ll call the White House, and it’ll be over.”

Gabriel looked to Shamron, who gritted his teeth and nodded. Carter got his briefing. Shamron remained seated for a few minutes, but soon he was up and pacing the room, a chef whose secret recipes are being given to a competitor up the street. When it was finished, Carter took a long time loading the bowl of his pipe with tobacco.

“Sounds to me as if you gentlemen are ready,” he said. “What are you waiting for? If I were you, I’d put it in motion before my hands-on director decides he wants to be part of the snatch team.”

Gabriel agreed. He picked up the telephone and dialed Uzi Navot in Zurich.