Prince of Fire

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE - THE DOSSIER

  1 - ROME: MARCH 4

  2 - TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

  3 - LONDON

  4 - VENICE

  5 - TEL AVIV: MARCH 10

  6 - TEL AVIV: MARCH 20

  7 - TEL AVIV

  PART TWO - THE COLLABORATOR

  8 - NEAR AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE

  9 - JERUSALEM

  10 - JERUSALEM: MARCH 22

  11 - JERUSALEM: MARCH 23

  12 - TEL AVIV

  13 - CAIRO: MARCH 31

  14 - CAIRO

  PART THREE - THE GARE DE LYON

  15 - MARSEILLES

  16 - ROME

  17 - BOSA, SARDINIA

  18 - MARSEILLES

  19 - SURREY, ENGLAND

  20 - MARSEILLES

  21 - MARSEILLES

  22 - MARTIGUES, FRANCE

  23 - JERUSALEM

  24 - TROYES, FRANCE

  25 - ST-DENIS, NORTHERN PARIS

  26 - PARIS

  27 - PARIS

  28 - PARIS

  29 - PARIS

  PART FOUR - SUMAYRIYYA

  30 - PARIS

  31 - FIUMICINO, ITALY

  32 - JERUSALEM

  33 - JERUSALEM

  34 - TEL AVIV

  35 - TEL MEGIDDO, ISRAEL

  36 - TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

  37 - AIX-EN-PROVENCE: FIVE MONTHS LATER

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Daniel Silva and His Novels

  Prince of Fire

  “A passionate, intelligently crafted entry that cements the series’ place among today’s top spy fiction. The structure is classic.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “[A] rare combination of fine characters, compelling writing, and suspenseful plotting that will reach out and grab readers. Silva moves the story along quickly, creating a frightening network of spies and counterspies. [His] plotting is ingenious and clear. Silva handles the twists and turns so well it’s a waste of time to try to guess where it’s going. It goes places readers can’t predict and then goes further.” —Detroit Free Press

  “Daniel Silva . . . handles his theme of revenge—and its effect on those it touches—adroitly but without encroaching on the pure pleasure of reading a first-rate thriller.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “Allon puts together a Mission: Impossible team of Israelis to pursue the scion of a family dynasty of Palestinian militants. But nothing is easy or uncomplicated in spy thrillers. Allon and his buds are sucked into an intricate web of deceit and double cross. Not to mention a lot of carnage.” —USA Today

  “Silva keeps getting better.” —Library Journal

  A Death in Vienna

  “[A] world-class practitioner of spy fiction . . . Silva is a skillfulnovelist who does justice to the often heartbreaking materialwithout exploiting it.” —The Washington Post Book World

  “Silva’s mastered the art of weaving provocative narrative, espionage, and foreign intrigue. Silva’s gift is to pressure the reader to read on, to absorb unspeakable truths, and to glimpse a James Bond-less espionage lifestyle. Life is shaken constantly, never stirred.” —Chicago Sun-Times

  “A masterful and compelling tale of evil, treachery, and revenge, again showing why he’s at the top of thriller writers. A Death in Vienna goes to the top of the list of the year’s best.” —Rocky Mountain News

  "Complex, compelling international espionage in the John le Carré vein.” —The News-Press (Fort Myers, FL)

  “Cool brilliance.” —Chicago Tribune

  “Provocative and deeply satisfying . . . stars one of the most intriguing protagonists in the genre. . . . A Death in Vienna isn’t just a masterfully constructed tale of memory and revenge. It demonstrates that thrillers can be more than entertainment.” —The Miami Herald

  “A thriller that’s not content to be just a thriller, as it delves into issues involving the Holocaust and its perpetrators and survivors.” —The Kansas City Star

  “Unfailingly entertaining . . . gripping [and] significant.”

  —The Raleigh News & Observer

  “A Death in Vienna completes Silva’s increasingly powerful trilogy about the unfinished business of the Holocaust. . . . The ending is haunting.” —The Orlando Sentinel

  “Silva’s writing is perfect: just enough description to be preciseand an undercurrent of tension that drives the action. As always, Allon’s cause is justice, regardless of the means, and we can’t help but rally behind him.”

  —Chattanooga Times-Free Press

  “Silva’s intricate plot takes Allon across much of the globe, from Argentina to Poland, from Vienna to the Vatican. . . . Silva writes with care and skill. He has a knack for local color, and Allon, his main character, is refreshingly human—world-weary,given to self-doubt, and seemingly always wrestling with an inner demon of some sort.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “An exciting and complex novel.” —Library Journal

  “[A] superbly crafted narrative of espionage and foreign intrigue. Action and suspense abound, but this is serious fictionwith a serious purpose. Silva keeps the pressure on the reader as well as his characters as there are important lessons to be learned and vital history to be remembered.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Silva writes le Carré-style spy novels in which the action, despite careening across cities and continents, retains knife-edge-sharp suspense. . . . This finely wrought thriller reads like an exquisitely suspenseful chess game.” —Booklist

  More Praise for Daniel Silva and His Novels

  "Silva builds tension with breathtaking double and triple turns of plot.” —People

  "Each plot-twisting segment is marked by almost unbearabletension. . . . Silva’s unsmiling prose urges you on like a silencer poking at the small of your back.”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “In the style of authors like Frederick Forsyth and Ken Follett.” —New York Law Journal

  “At the forefront of his generation of foreign intrigue specialists.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A terrific thriller . . . one of the best-drawn fictional assassins since The Day of the Jackal.” —The San Francisco Examiner

  “A strong, driving pace.” —Chicago Tribune

  “[A] fast-moving bang-bang thriller.”

  —Los Angeles Daily News

  “A thrill-a-minute surefire bestseller.” —Kirkus Reviews

  ALSO BY DANIEL SILVA

  The Secret Servant

  The Messenger

  A Death in Vienna

  The Confessor

  The English Assassin

  The Kill Artist

  The Marching Season

  The Mark of the Assassin

  The Unlikely Spy

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,

  Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria

  3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin G
roup (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,

  New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  edition.

  First Signet Printing, February 2006

  Copyright © Daniel Silva, 2005

  Excerpt from The Secret Servant copyright © Daniel Silva, 2007

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying,recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblanceto actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishableby law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3434-5

  For Neil Nyren, steady hand on the tiller,

  Patrick Matthiesen, who gave me Isherwood,

  and, as always, for my wife, Jamie, and

  my children, Lily and Nicholas

  If you live to seek revenge, dig a grave for two.

  ANCIENT JEWISH PROVERB

  PART ONE

  THE DOSSIER

  1

  ROME: MARCH 4

  There had been warning signs—the Shabbat bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left eighty-seven people dead; the bombing of an Istanbul synagogue, precisely one year later, that killed another twenty-eight—but Rome would be his coming-out party, and Rome would be the place where he left his calling card.

  Afterward, within the corridors and executive suites of Israel’s vaunted intelligence service, there was considerableand sometimes belligerent debate over the time and place of the conspiracy’s genesis. Lev Ahroni, the ever-cautious director of the service, would claim that the plot was hatched not long after the Israeli army knocked down Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah and stole his secret files. Ari Shamron, the legendary Israeli master spy, would find this almost laughable, though Shamron often disagreed with Lev simply as a matter of sport. Only Shamron, who had fought with the Palmach during the War of Independence and who tended to view the conflict as a continuum, understood intuitively that the outrage in Rome had been inspired by deeds dating back more than a half century. Eventually, evidence would prove both Lev and Shamron correct. In the meantime, in order to achieve peaceful working conditions, they agreed on a new starting point: the day a certain Monsieur Jean-Lucarrived in the hills of Lazio and settled himself in a rather handsome eighteenth-century villa on the shore of Lake Bracciano.

  As for the exact date and time of his arrival, there was no doubt. The owner of the villa, a dubious Belgian aristocratcalled Monsieur Laval, said the tenant appeared at two-thirty in the afternoon on the final Friday of January.The courteous but intense young Israeli who called on Monsieur Laval at his home in Brussels wondered how it was possible to recall the date so clearly. The Belgianproduced his lavish leather-bound personal calendar and pointed to the date in question. There, penciled on the line designated for two-thirty p.m., were the words: Meet M. Jean-Luc at Bracciano villa.

  “Why did you write Bracciano villa instead of just villa?” asked the Israeli visitor, his pen hovering over his open notebook.

  “To differentiate it from our St. Tropez villa, our Portuguesevilla, and the chalet we own in the Swiss Alps.”

  “I see,” said the Israeli, though the Belgian found that his visitor’s tone lacked the humility adopted by most civil servants when confronted by men of great wealth.

  And what else did Monsieur Laval remember of the man who rented his villa? That he was punctual, intelligent,and extremely well-mannered. That he was strikinglygood-looking, that his scent was noticeable but not obtrusive, that his clothing was expensive but restrained. That he drove a Mercedes car and had two large suitcases with gold buckles and a famous label. That he paid the entire monthlong lease in advance and in cash, which Monsieur Laval explained was not unusual in that part of Italy. That he was a good listener who didn’t need to be told things twice. That he spoke French with the accent of a Parisian from a well-heeled arrondissement. That he seemed like a man who could handle himself well in a fight and who treated his women well. “He was of noble birth,” Laval concluded, with the certainty of one who knows of what he speaks. “He comes from a good bloodline. Write that in your little book.”

  Slowly, additional details would emerge about the man called Jean-Luc, though none conflicted with MonsieurLaval’s flattering portrait. He hired no cleaning woman and demanded the gardener arrive punctually at nine o’clock and leave by ten. He shopped in nearby market squares and attended Mass in the medieval lakesidevillage of Anguillara. He spent much time touring the Roman ruins of Lazio and seemed particularly intriguedby the ancient necropolis at Cerveteri.

  Sometime in late February—the date could never be reliably established—he vanished. Even Monsieur Laval could not be certain of the departure date, becausehe was informed after the fact by a woman in Paris who claimed to be the gentleman’s personal assistant. Though two weeks remained on the lease, the handsome tenant did not embarrass himself, or Monsieur Laval, by asking for a refund. Later that spring, when Monsieur Laval visited the villa, he was surprised to discover, in a crystal bowl on the dining room sideboard, a brief thank-you note, typewritten, along with a hundred euros to pay for broken wineglasses. A thorough search of the villa’s stemware collection, however, revealed nothing was missing. When Monsieur Laval tried to call Jean-Luc’s girl in Paris to return the money, he found that her telephone line had been disconnected.

  On the fringes of the Borghese gardens there are elegant boulevards and quiet leafy side streets that bear little resemblanceto the scruffy, tourist-trodden thoroughfares of the city center. They are avenues of diplomacy and money, where traffic moves at a nearly reasonable speed and where the blare of car horns sounds like a rebellion in distant lands. One such street is a cul-de-sac. It falls away at a gentle pitch and bends to the right. For many hours each day, it is in shadow, a consequence of the towering stone pines and eucalyptus that loom over the villas. The narrow sidewalk is broken by tree roots and perpetually covered by pine needles and dead leaves. At the end of the street is a diplomatic compound, more heavily fortified than most in Rome.

  Survivors and witnesses would recall the perfection of that late-winter morning: bright and clear, cold enough in the shadows to bring on a shiver, warm enough in the sun to unbutton a wool coat and dream of an alfrescolunch. The fact it was also a Friday served only to heighten the leisurely atmosphere. In diplomatic Rome, it was a morning to dawdle over a cappuccino and cornetto, to take stock of one’s circumstances and ponder one’s mortality. Procrastination was the order of the day. Many mundane meetings were canceled. Much routine paperwork was put off till Monday.

  On the little c
ul-de-sac near the Borghese gardens there were no outward signs of the catastrophe to come. The Italian police and security agents guarding the perimeterfortifications chatted lazily in the patches of brilliantsunshine. Like most diplomatic missions in Rome, it officially contained two embassies, one dealing with the Italian government, the second with the Vatican. Both embassies opened for business at their appointed times. Both ambassadors were in their offices.

  At ten-fifteen a tubby Jesuit waddled down the hill, a leather satchel in his hand. Inside was a diplomaticdémarche from the Vatican Secretariat of State, condemning the Israeli army’s recent incursion into Bethlehem. The courier deposited the document with an embassy clerk and puffed his way back up the hill. Afterward, the text would be made public, and its sharp language would prove a temporary embarrassment to the men of the Vatican. The courier’s timing would prove providential. Had he arrived five minutes later, he would have been vaporized, along with the original text of the démarche.

  Not so fortunate were the members of an Italian televisioncrew who had come to interview the ambassador on the current state of affairs in the Middle East. Or the delegation of local Jewish crusaders who had come to secure the ambassador’s public condemnation of a neo-Naziconference scheduled for the following week in Verona. Or the Italian couple, sickened by the new rise of European anti-Semitism, who were about to inquire about the possibility of emigrating to Israel. Fourteen in all, they were standing in a tight cluster at the business entrance, waiting to be body-searched by the embassy’s short-haired security toughs, when the white freight truck made a right turn into the cul-de-sac and began its death run toward the compound.

  Most heard the truck before they saw it. The convulsiveroar of its diesel engine was a violent intrusion on the otherwise still morning. It was impossible to ignore. The Italian security men paused in mid-conversation and looked up, as did the group of fourteen strangersgathered outside the entrance of the embassy. The tubby Jesuit, who was waiting for a bus at the opposite end of the street, lifted his round head from his copy of L’Osservatore Romano and searched for the source of the commotion.