Page 117 of The Other Woman

“And you neveraskedhim what happened?”

“We tried,” said Lavon.

“And Rebecca?”

“Not a peep. It was one of the worst flights of my life, and I’ve had some bad ones.”

They were in Lavon’s little hutch of an office. It was filled with shards of pottery and ancient coins and tools. In his spare time, Lavon was one of Israel’s most prominent archaeologists.

“Let us assume,” said Navot, “that Gabriel was the one who killed the two hoods.”

“Let’s,” agreed Lavon.

“So how did the girl end up dead? And how did Gabriel know that Rebecca was going to be there? And why in God’s name did she stop for a shovel?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“You’re an archaeologist.”

“All I know,” said Lavon, “is that the chief of the Office is lucky to be alive. If it had been you...”

“They’d be carving my name on a memorial wall.”

If anyone deserved to have their name on a wall, thought Lavon, it was the man who had found Rebecca Manning, but he would accept no accolades. His only reward was the odd evening at home with his wife and two young children, but even they sensed something was troubling him. Late one night Irene interrogated him at length as he sat at the edge of her bed. He lied so poorly, not even the child believed him. “Stay with me, Abba,” she commanded in her peculiar mix of Italian and Hebrew when Gabriel tried to leave. Then she said, “Please never let me go.”

Gabriel remained in the nursery until Irene was sleeping soundly. In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of Galilean shiraz and sat at the little café table glumly watching the news from London while Chiara prepared their supper. On the screen, Graham Seymour was slouched in the back of a limousine leaving Downing Street, where he had offered to resign over the scandal that had befallen the Secret Intelligence Service on his watch. Prime Minister Lancaster had refused to accept it—at least for the moment, according to one anonymously quoted Downing Street aide. There were calls for the obligatory parliamentary investigation and, worse yet, an independent inquiry of the sort conducted into MI6’s faulty intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And what about Alistair Hughes? howled the media. Was his death in sleepy Bern somehow linked to Rebecca Manning’s treachery? Was he a Russian spy, too? Was there a Third Man lurking? In short, it was exactly the sort of public spectacle Seymour had hoped to avoid.

“How long can he keep it secret?” asked Chiara.

“Which part?”

“The identity of Rebecca Manning’s father.”

“I suppose that depends on how many people inside MI6 know she refers to herself as Rebecca Philby.”

Chiara placed a bowl ofspaghetti al pomodorobefore Gabriel. He whitened it with grated cheese but hesitated before taking a first bite. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said at last, “about what happened that morning along the banks of the river.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea.”

“Do you?”

“You were somewhere you ought not to have been, alone, with no backup or bodyguards. Fortunately, you had the sense to slip a gun into your pocket on your way out the safe house door.”

“A big one,” said Gabriel.

“Forty-fives were never your preference.”

“Too loud,” said Gabriel. “Too messy.”

“The illegal was killed with a nine-millimeter,” Chiara pointed out.

“Eva,” said Gabriel. “At least that was her Brazilian name. She never told us her real name.”

“I suppose Rebecca killed her.”

“I suppose she did.”

“Why?”