The Order (Gabriel Allon #20) - Daniel Silva Page 0,4

visit. It would be perfect, she thought. The proverbial two birds with one stone.

But when? August was out of the question. It was far too hot and humid, and the city would be submerged beneath a sea of package tourists, the selfie-snapping hordes who followed snarling guides around the city for an hour or two before gulping down an overpriced cappuccino at Caffè Florian and returning to their cruise ships. But if they waited until, say, November, the weather would be cool and clear and they would have the sestiere largely to themselves. It would give them a chance to ponder their future without the distraction of the Office or daily life in Israel. Gabriel had informed the prime minister that he would serve only a single term. It was not too early to begin thinking about how they were going to spend the rest of their lives and where they were going to raise their children. Neither of them was getting any younger, Gabriel especially.

She did not inform him of her plans, as it would only invite a lengthy oration concerning all the reasons why the State of Israel would collapse if he took so much as a single day off from work. Instead, she conspired with Uzi Navot, the deputy director, to select the dates. Housekeeping, the Office division that acquired and managed safe properties, saw to the accommodations. The local police and intelligence services, with whom Gabriel was very close, agreed to handle the security.

All that remained was the project to keep Gabriel busy. In late October, Chiara rang Francesco Tiepolo, owner of the region’s most prominent restoration firm.

“I have just the thing. I’ll e-mail a photo.”

Three weeks later, after a particularly contentious meeting of Israel’s fractious Cabinet, Gabriel returned home to find the Allon family’s bags packed.

“You’re leaving me?”

“No,” said Chiara. “We’re going on vacation. All of us.”

“I can’t possibly—”

“It’s taken care of, darling.”

“Does Uzi know?”

Chiara nodded. “And so does the prime minister.”

“Where are we going? And for how long?”

She answered.

“What will I do with myself for two weeks?”

Chiara handed him the photograph.

“There’s no way I can possibly finish it.”

“You’ll do as much as you can.”

“And let someone else touch my work?”

“It won’t be the end of the world.”

“You never know, Chiara. It just might be.”

THE APARTMENT OCCUPIED the piano nobile of a crumbling old palazzo in Cannaregio, the northernmost of Venice’s six traditional sestieri. It had a grand salon, a large kitchen filled with modern appliances, and a terrace overlooking the Rio della Misericordia. In one of the four bedrooms, Housekeeping had established a secure link to King Saul Boulevard, complete with a tentlike structure—in the jargon of the Office, it was known as a chuppah—that allowed Gabriel to speak on the phone without fear of electronic eavesdropping. Carabinieri officers in plain clothes kept watch outside on the Fondamenta dei Ormesini. With their consent, Gabriel carried a 9mm Beretta pistol. So did Chiara, who was a much better shot than he.

A few paces along the embankment was an iron bridge—the only one in Venice—and on the opposite side of the canal was a broad square called the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo. There was a museum, a bookstore, and the offices of the Jewish community. The Casa Israelitica di Riposo, a rest home for the elderly, occupied the northern flank. Next to it was a stark bas-relief memorial to the Jews of Venice who, in December 1943, were rounded up, interned in concentration camps, and later murdered at Auschwitz. Two heavily armed carabinieri kept watch over the memorial from a fortified kiosk. Of the two hundred and fifty thousand people who still made the sinking islands of Venice their home, only the Jews required round-the-clock police protection.

The apartment buildings lining the campo were the tallest in Venice, for in the Middle Ages their occupants had been forbidden by the Church to reside anywhere else in the city. On the uppermost floors of several of the buildings were small synagogues, now meticulously restored, that had once served the communities of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews who dwelled beneath. The ghetto’s two functioning synagogues were located just to the south of the campo. Both were clandestine; there was nothing in their outward appearance to suggest they were Jewish houses of worship. The Spanish Synagogue had been founded by Chiara’s ancestors in 1580. Unheated, it was open from Passover to the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Levantine Synagogue, located across a tiny square, served the community