“I had a meeting with the prime minister. That’s about the extent of it.”
“It didn’t go well?”
“He didn’t offer me Chinese food. I took it as a bad sign.”
Chiara aimed the remote at the screen and pressed the power button. She wore a pair of stretch jeans that flattered her long slender legs, and a sweater the color of clotted cream, upon which her dark hair, with its shimmering auburn and chestnut highlights, tumbled riotously. Her eyes were the color of caramel and flecked with gold. At present, they were appraising Gabriel with thinly veiled pity. He could only imagine how he looked to her. The stress of the field had always been unkind to his appearance. His first operation, Wrath of God, had left him with gray hair at the age of twenty-five. He had gone swiftly downhill after that.
“Where are the children?” he asked.
“Out with friends. They told us not to wait up.” She raised an eyebrow provocatively. “We have the place all to ourselves. Perhaps you’d like to drag me to bed and have your way with me.”
Gabriel was sorely tempted; it had been a long time since Gabriel had made love with his beautiful young wife. There was no time for it. Chiara had two children to raise, and Gabriel a country to protect. They saw one another for a few minutes each morning and, if they were lucky, for an hour or so in the evening when Gabriel returned from work. He had use of an Office safe flat in Tel Aviv for those nights when events didn’t permit him to make the long drive to Jerusalem. He hated it, the flat. It reminded him of what his life had been like before Chiara. The Office had brought them together. And now it was conspiring to keep them apart.
“Do you think it’s possible,” he asked, “that the children slipped back into the apartment without your knowing it?”
“Anything’s possible. Why don’t you check?”
Gabriel moved silently to the door of the children’s room and entered. Before departing for Vienna, he had traded out their cribs for a pair of junior beds, which meant they were free to move nocturnally about the apartment at will. For now, though, they were sleeping soundly beneath a mural of Titianesque clouds that Gabriel had painted after a blood-soaked confrontation with the Russian secret service.
He leaned down and kissed Raphael’s forehead. The child’s face, lit by a shaft of light from the half-open door, looked shockingly like Gabriel’s. He had even been cursed with Gabriel’s green eyes. Irene, however, looked more like Gabriel’s mother, for whom she was named. Chiara was the forgotten ingredient of the children’s genetic recipe. Time would change that, thought Gabriel. A beauty like Chiara’s could not be suppressed forever.
“Is that you, Abba?”
It was Irene. Raphael could sleep through a bomb blast, but Irene, like Gabriel, was easily woken. He thought she had the makings of a perfect spy.
“Yes, sweetheart,” he whispered. “It’s me.”
“Stay for a while.”
Gabriel sat down at the edge of her bed.
“Pat my back,” she commanded, and he laid his hand gently on the warm fabric of her pajamas. “Did you have a good trip?”
“No,” he answered honestly.
“I saw you on television.”
“Did you?”
“You looked very serious.”
“Where did you learn a word like that?”
“Like what?”
“Serious.”
“From Mama.”
Such was the language of the Allon household. The children referred to Gabriel as “Abba,” the Hebrew world for father, but Chiara they called only “Mama.” They were learning Hebrew and Italian simultaneously, along with German. As a result, they spoke a language only their parents could possibly comprehend.
“Where did you go, Abba?”
“Nowhere interesting.”
“You always say that.”
“Do I?”
