Page 168 of Portrait of an Unknown Woman

Not surprisingly, Ray Bennett chose not to inform Leonard Silk that the number for his personal mobile phone had fallen into the hands of the world’s most famous retired spy. Consequently, Silk took no action to protect his device from attack. It came as he was headed uptown on First Avenue—a stealth zero-click invasion carried out by the Israeli-made malware known as Proteus. Like countless other victims before him, including numerous heads of state, Silk was unaware his device had been compromised.

Within minutes the phone was spewing a geyser of valuable information. Of immediate interest to Yuval Gershon were the GPS location data and the call history. On his own initiative, Gershon attacked a second device before calling Gabriel. It was eight fifteen in New York. Gabriel was barreling along Broadway through Lower Manhattan. The two men spoke in Hebrew to ensure that nothing was lost in translation.

“He left the Pierre at six forty-four. By the way, that was the exact time Ray Bennett led your girl out the service door. Something tells me it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“Where did he go?”

“East Thirty-Fourth Street Heliport. He was there until seven fifty-two.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back in his apartment on Sutton Place. Number fourteen, in case you’re wondering. Sixteenth floor, if I had to guess.”

“Any interesting calls?”

“Executive Jet Services. It’s a charter company based at MacArthur Airport on Long Island.”

“I know where MacArthur is, Yuval.”

“Do you know when Silk made the calls?”

“Maybe you should tell me.”

“The first call was at four twenty-three this afternoon. He called again about twenty minutes ago.”

“Sounds to me as if someone is planning to take a trip.”

“Someone is. Silk called him twice. The last call was around seven o’clock. I lit him up a few minutes ago. There’s no data on the phone, which means it’s probably a burner. But I was able to get a fix on his location.”

“Where is he?”

“The eastern shore of the North Haven Peninsula.”

“Twelve feet above sea level?”

“How did you guess?”

“Message me if he so much as twitches.”

Gabriel rang off and looked at Sarah.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He said that we should probably charter a helicopter.”

Sarah dialed.

The offices ofVanity Fairmagazine were located on the twenty-fifth floor of One World Trade Center. Gabriel dropped Evelyn Buchanan on West Street near the 9/11 memorial, then followed the Battery Park Underpass to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport. He squeezed the Nissan into an empty space in the small staff parking lot, gave the attendant $500 in cash to keep the vehicle for the night, and led Sarah into the terminal. Their chartered Bell 407 waited at the end of the L-shaped pier. It departed at 9:10 p.m. and raced eastward, into the cooling twilight.