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prepared for a photo shoot by a professional stylist. Chiara was executing one final adjustment to a pair of decorative pillows, two useless disks trimmed in white lace that Gabriel always hurled on the floor before climbing between the sheets. An overnight bag lay at the foot, along with a Beretta 9mm. Gabriel placed the weapon in the top drawer of the nightstand and lowered the volume on the radio.
    Chiara looked up, as if surprised by his presence. She was wearing faded blue jeans, a beige sweater, and suede boots that added two inches to her tall frame. Her riotous dark hair was constrained by a clasp at the nape of her neck and pulled forward over one shoulder. Her caramel-colored eyes were a shade darker than normal. It was not a good sign. Chiara’s eyes were a reliable barometer of her mood.
    “I didn’t hear you drive up.”
    “Maybe you shouldn’t play the radio so loudly.”
    “Why didn’t Margherita make the bed?”
    “I told her not to come in here while you were away.”
    “And of course you couldn’t be bothered.”
    “I couldn’t find the instructions.”
    She gave him a slow shake of the head to show her disappointment. “If you can restore Old Master paintings, Gabriel, you can make a bed. What did you do when you were a boy?”
    “My mother tried to force me.”
    “And?”
    “I slept on top of the bedding.”
    “No wonder Shamron recruited you.”
    “Actually, the Office psychologists found it revelatory. They said it displayed a spirit of independence and the ability to solve problems.”
    “So is that why you refuse to make it now? Because you want to demonstrate your independence?”
    Gabriel answered her with a kiss. Her lips were very warm.
    “How was Venice?”
    “Almost bearable. When the weather is cold and rainy, it’s almost possible to imagine Venice is still a real city. The Piazza di San Marco is overrun with tourists, of course. They drink their ten-euro cups of cappuccino and pose for photographs with those awful pigeons. Tell me, Gabriel, what kind of holiday is that?”
    “I thought the mayor drove the birdseed vendors out of business.”
    “The tourists feed them anyway. If they love the pigeons so much, maybe they should take them home as souvenirs. Do you know how many tourists came to Venice this year?”
    “Twenty million.”
    “That’s right. If each person took just one of those filthy birds, the problem would be solved within a few months.”
    It was odd to hear Chiara speak so harshly of Venice. Indeed, there was a time, not so long ago, when she would have never imagined a life outside the picturesque canals and narrow alleyways of her native city. The daughter of the city’s chief rabbi, she had spent her childhood in the insular world of the ancient ghetto, leaving just long enough to earn a master’s degree in history from the University of Padua. She returned to Venice after graduation and took a job at the small Jewish museum in the Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, and there she might have remained forever had she not been noticed by an Office talent spotter during a visit to Israel. The talent spotter introduced himself in a Tel Aviv coffeehouse and asked Chiara whether she was interested in doing more for the Jewish people than working in a museum in a dying ghetto. Chiara said she was and vanished into the secretive training program of the Office.
    A year later she resumed her old life, this time as an undercover agent of Israeli intelligence. Among her first assignments was to covertly watch the back of a wayward Office assassin named Gabriel Allon, who had come to Venice to restore Bellini’s San Zaccaria altarpiece. She revealed herself to him a short time later in Rome, after an incident involving gunplay and the Italian police. Trapped alone with Chiara in a safe flat, Gabriel had wanted desperately to touch her. He had waited until the case was resolved and they had returned to Venice. There, in a canal house in Cannaregio, they made love for the