The Defector Read Online Free

nothing now but his supplies, a pair of powerful halogen lamps, and a small portable stereo. La Bohème issued from its speakers, the volume lowered to the level of a whisper. He was a man with many enemies, and, unlike Guido Reni, they were not figments of his imagination. It was why he listened to his music softly—and why he always carried a loaded Beretta 9mm pistol. The grip was stained with paint: a dab of Titian, a bit of Bellini, a drop of Ra phael and Veronese.
    Despite the hour, he worked with energy and focus and managed to complete his work as the final notes of the opera faded into silence. He cleaned his brushes and palette, then reduced the power on the lamps. In the half-light, the background receded into darkness and the four figures glowed softly. Standing before the painting, one hand pressed to his chin, head tilted to one side, he planned his next session. In the morning he would begin work on the uppermost henchman, a figure in a red cap holding a spike in one hand and a mallet in the other. He felt a certain grim kinship with the executioner. In other lifetimes, concealed by other names, he had performed a similar service for his masters in Tel Aviv.
    He switched off the lamps and climbed the stone steps to his room. The bed was empty; Chiara, his wife, had been in Venice for the last three days visiting her parents. They had endured long separations because of work, but this was the first of their own choosing. A loner by nature and obsessive in his work habits, Gabriel had expected her brief absence would be easy to bear. In truth, he had been miserable without her. He took a peculiar comfort in these feelings. It was normal for a happily married man to miss his wife. For Gabriel Allon—a child of Holocaust survivors, a gifted artist and restorer, an assassin and spy—life had been anything but normal.
    He sat down on Chiara’s side of the bed and picked through the stack of reading material on her nightstand. Fashion magazines, journals on interior design, Italian editions of popular American murder mysteries, a book on child rearing—intriguing, he thought, since they were childless and, as far as he knew, weren’t expecting one. Chiara had begun carefully to broach the topic. Gabriel feared it would soon become a point of contention in their marriage. The decision to remarry had been torturous enough. The idea of having another child, even with a woman he loved as much as Chiara, was for the moment incomprehensible. His only son had been killed by a terrorist bomb in Vienna and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Leah, his first wife, had survived the explosion and resided now in a psychiatric hospital atop Mount Herzl, locked in a prison of memory and a body ravaged by fire. It was because of Gabriel’s work that his loved ones had suffered this fate. He had vowed he would never bring into the world another child who could be targeted by his enemies.
    He slipped off his sandals and crossed the stone floor to the writing desk. An icon shaped like an envelope winked at him from the screen of the laptop computer. The message had arrived several hours ago. Gabriel had been doing his best not to think about it because he knew it could have come from only one place. Ignoring it forever, however, was not an option. Better to get it over with. Reluctantly, he clicked on the icon, and a line of gibberish appeared on the screen. Typing a password into the proper window, the encryption melted away, leaving a few words in clear text:
    MALACHI REQUESTS MEETING. PRIORITY RESH.
    Gabriel frowned. Malachi was the code word for the chief of Special Operations. Priority Resh was reserved for time-sensitive situations, usually those involving questions of life and death. He hesitated, then typed in a reply. It took just ninety seconds for the response to arrive:
    MALACHI LOOKS FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.
    Gabriel switched off the computer and climbed into the empty bed. Malachi looks forward to seeing