Prince of Fire

reliving old cases, walking old battlefields and confronting enemies vanquished long ago. Last night had been different. He’d had a premonition of imminent disaster, an image so clear that he’d actually placed a call to the night desk of his old service to see if anything had happened. “Go back to sleep, Boss,” the youthful duty officer had said. “Everything’s fine.”
    His black Peugeot, armored and bulletproof, waited at the top of the drive. Rami, the dark-haired head of his security detachment, stood next to the open rear door. Shamron had made many enemies over the years, and because of the tangled demographics of Israel, many lived uncomfortably close to Tiberias. Rami, quiet as a lone wolf and far more lethal, rarely left his master’s side.
    Shamron paused for a moment to light a cigarette, a vile Turkish brand he’d been smoking since the Mandate days, then stepped off the veranda. He was short of stature, yet even in old age, powerful in build. His hands were leathery and liver-spotted and seemed to have been borrowed from a man twice his size. His face, full of cracks and fissures, looked like an aerial view of the Negev Desert. His remaining fringe of steel-gray hair was cropped so short as to be nearly invisible. Infamously hard on his eyeglasses, he had resigned himself to ugly frames of indestructible plastic. The thick lenses magnified blue eyes that were no longer clear. He walked as though anticipating an assault from behind, with his head down and his elbows out defensively. Within the corridors of King Saul Boulevard, the headquarters of his old service, the walk was known as “the Shamron shuffle.” He knew of the epithet and he approved.
    He ducked into the backseat of the Peugeot. The heavy car lurched forward and headed down the treacherously steep drive to the lakeshore. It turned right and sped toward Tiberias, then west, across the Galilee toward the Coastal Plain. Shamron’s gaze, for much of the journey, was focused on the scratched face of his wristwatch. Time was now his enemy. With each passing minute the perpetrators were slipping farther and farther away from the scene of the crime. Had they attempted an attack such as this in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, they would have been snared in a web of checkpoints and roadblocks. But it had occurred in Italy, not Israel, and Shamron was at the mercy of the Italian police. It had been a long time since the Italians had dealt with a major act of terrorism. What’s more, Israel’s link to the Italian government—its embassy—was in ruins. So, too, Shamron suspected, was a very important station of the Israeli secret service. Rome was the regional headquarters for southern Europe. It was led by a katsa named Shimon Pazner, a man whom Shamron had personally recruited and trained. It was quite possible the Office had just lost one of its most competent and experienced officers.
    The journey seemed to last an eternity. They listened to the news on Israel Radio, and with each update the situation in Rome seemed to grow worse. Three times, Shamron anxiously reached for his secure cellular phone and three times he snapped it back into its cradle without dialing a number. Leave them to it, he thought. They know what they’re doing. Because of you, they’re well-trained . Besides, it was no time for the special adviser to the prime minister on matters of security and terrorism to be weighing in with helpful suggestions.
    Special Adviser . . . How he loathed the title. It stank of ambiguity. He had been the Memuneh : the one in charge. He had seen his blessed service, and his country, through triumph and adversity. Lev and his band of young technocrats had regarded him as a liability and had banished him to the Judean wilderness of retirement. He would have remained there were it not for the lifeline thrown to him by the prime minister. Shamron, master manipulator and puppeteer, had learned that he could exercise nearly as much power from the prime minister’s office as he could from the executive suite of King Saul Boulevard. Experience had taught him to be patient. Eventually it would end up in his lap. It always seemed to.
    They began the ascent toward Jerusalem. Shamron could not make this remarkable drive without thinking of old battles. The premonition came to him again. Was it Rome he had seen the night before or something else? Something bigger than even Rome? An old enemy, he was sure of it. A dead man, risen from his past.
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