“Twelve on the Bishop Richter scale. But I’m afraid there’s a complication involving someone close to the previous pope. I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.”

“When will you be here?”

“I need to tie up one or two loose ends before I leave. And don’t even think about setting foot outside the Jesuit Curia until I get there.”

Gabriel killed the connection.

“Tell me something,” asked Lavon. “What’s it like to be you?”

“Exhausting.”

“Why don’t you sleep for a couple of hours while we pack up?”

“I’d love to. But I have one more question I’d like to ask our newest asset.”

“What’s that?”

Gabriel told him.

“That’s two questions,” said Lavon.

Smiling, Gabriel carried Estermann’s phone downstairs. The German was drinking coffee at the interrogation table, watched over by Mikhail and Oded. He was unshaven, and his right cheek was bruised. With a razor and a bit of makeup, he would be as good as new.

Warily, he watched as Gabriel sat down in the chair opposite. “What is it now?”

“We’re going to clean you up. Then we’re going to take a drive.”

“Where?”

Gabriel stared at Estermann blankly.

“There’s no way you’ll get past the guards at the checkpoint.”

“I won’t have to. You’ll do it for me.”

“It won’t work.”

“For your sake, it better. But before we leave, I’d like you to answer one more question.” Gabriel placed Estermann’s phone on the table. “Why did you go to Bonn after you spoke to Stefani Hoffmann? And why did you switch off your phone for two hours and fifty-seven minutes?”

“I didn’t go to Bonn.”

“Your phone says you did.” Gabriel tapped the screen. “It says you left Café du Gothard at two thirty-four p.m. and that you reached the outskirts of Bonn around seven fifteen, which is rather good time, I must say. At that point, you switched off your phone. I want to know why.”

“I told you, I didn’t go to Bonn.”

“Where did you go?”

The German hesitated. “I was in Grosshau. It’s a little farming village a few miles to the west.”

“What’s in Grosshau?”

“A cottage in the woods.”

“Who lives there?”

“A man named Hamid Fawzi.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s a creation of my cyber unit.”

“Is he the reason bombs are going off in Germany?”

“No,” said Estermann. “I am.”

43

COLOGNE, GERMANY

GERHARDT SCHMIDT WAS NOT KNOWN for working long hours. Typically, he arrived at Bf V headquarters in Cologne with a minute or two to spare before the ten a.m. senior staff meeting, and barring some emergency he was in the backseat of his official limousine no later than five. Most nights he stopped at one of the city’s better watering holes for a drink. But only one. Everything in moderation, that was Schmidt’s personal maxim. It would be chiseled on his tombstone.

The bombings in Berlin and Hamburg had proven detrimental to Schmidt’s salubrious daily schedule. That morning he was at his desk at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock, a time when ordinarily he would still be in bed with coffee and the papers. Consequently, when his secure phone pulsed with an incoming call from Tel Aviv at eight fifteen, he was there to answer it.

He had been expecting to hear the voice of Gabriel Allon, the legendary director-general of the Israeli secret intelligence service. Instead, it was Uzi Navot, Allon’s deputy, who bade Schmidt a pleasant morning in perfect German. Schmidt had a grudging respect for Allon, but Navot he loathed. For many years the Israeli had worked undercover in Europe, running networks and recruiting agents, including three who worked for the Bf V.

Within a few seconds, however, Schmidt was deeply remorseful he had ever uttered an unkind word—indeed, that he had ever entertained a slanderous thought—about the man at the other end of the secure line. It seemed the Israelis, as was often the case, had tapped into a vein of magic intelligence, this time regarding the new cell wreaking havoc in Germany. Navot was predictably evasive about how he had acquired this intelligence. It was a mosaic, he claimed, a blend of human sources and electronic intercepts. Lives were at stake. The clock was ticking.

Whatever the source of the information, it was highly specific. It concerned a property in Grosshau, a tiny farming hamlet located on the edge of the dense German forest known as the Hürtgenwald. The property was owned by something called OSH Holdings, a Hamburg-based concern. There were two structures, a traditional German farmhouse and an outbuilding fashioned of corrugated metal. The farmhouse was largely unfurnished. In the outbuilding, however, was a ten-year-old Mitsubishi light-duty cargo truck loaded with two dozen drums of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane, and Tovex, the makings of an ANNM bomb.

The truck was registered to a Hamid Fawzi, a refugee, originally from Damascus, who had settled in Frankfurt after Syria erupted into civil war. Or so claimed his social media pages, which were updated frequently. An engineer by training, Fawzi worked as an IT specialist for a German consulting firm, which was also owned by OSH Holdings. His wife, Asma, wore a full-face veil whenever she left their apartment. They had two children, a daughter named Salma and a boy named Mohammad.

According to Navot’s intelligence, a single operative was scheduled to arrive at the property that morning at ten o’clock. He could not say whether it would be Hamid Fawzi. He was quite certain, however, about the target: the immensely popular Cologne Christmas market now under way at the historic cathedral.

Gerhardt Schmidt had a long list of questions he wanted to ask Navot, but there wasn’t time for anything more than an expression of profound gratitude. After hanging up, he immediately rang the interior minister, who in turn rang the chancellor, along with Schmidt’s counterpart at the Bundespolizei. The first officers arrived at the farmhouse at eight thirty. A few minutes after nine, they were joined by four teams from GSG 9, Germany’s elite tactical and counterterrorism unit.

The officers made no attempt to enter the outbuilding, which was sealed with a heavy-duty lock. Instead, they concealed themselves in the surrounding woods and waited. At ten a.m. sharp, a Volkswagen Passat estate car came bumping up the property’s rutted drive. The man behind the wheel wore dark glasses and a woolen watch cap. His hands were gloved.

He parked the Volkswagen outside the farmhouse and walked over to the outbuilding. The GSG 9 officers waited until he had opened the lock before emerging from the cover of the trees. Startled, the man reached inside his coat, apparently for a weapon, but wisely stopped when he saw the size of the force arrayed against him. This came as something of a surprise to the GSG 9 officers. They had been trained to expect jihadist terrorists to fight to the death.

The officers were surprised a second time when, after handcuffing the man, they removed his dark glasses and woolen cap. Blond and blue-eyed, he looked as though he had stepped off a Nazi propaganda poster. A rapid search found him to be in possession of a Glock 9mm pistol, three mobile phones, several thousand euros in cash, and an Austrian passport issued in the name Klaus Jäger. The Bundespolizei immediately contacted their brethren in Vienna, who knew Jäger well. He was a former Austrian police officer who had been relieved of duty for consorting with known neo-Nazis.