The Order (Gabriel Allon #20) - Daniel Silva Page 0,72

that evening in Munich. Yes, he had lured Andreas Estermann to Café Adagio for what he thought was a meeting with an old acquaintance. But it was Estermann, not Gabriel and his team, who had selected the place of his abduction. Fortunately, Estermann chose well. There was no traffic camera to record his disappearance, and no witness other than a dachshund in the window of an adjacent apartment building.

Ninety minutes later, after a brief stop in the countryside west of Munich for a change of license plates, the van returned to the safe house near the Englischer Garten. Bound and blindfolded, Andreas Estermann was transferred to a makeshift holding cell in the basement. Typically, Gabriel would have left him there for a day or two to ponder his fate while deprived of sight, sound, and sleep. Instead, at half past ten, he instructed Natalie to hasten Estermann’s return to consciousness. She injected him with a mild stimulant along with a little something to take the edge off. Something to distort his sense of reality. Something to loosen his tongue.

Consequently, Estermann offered no resistance when Mordecai and Oded secured him to a metal chair outside the holding cell. On the opposite side of a table, flanked by Yaakov Rossman and Eli Lavon, sat Gabriel. Behind him was a tripod-mounted Solaris phone. Blindfolded, Estermann knew none of this. He only knew that he was in a great deal of trouble. The matter before him, however, was easily resolved. All that was required was his signature on a statement. A bill of particulars. Names and numbers.

At 10:34 p.m., Estermann’s inquisitor spoke for the first time. The camera captured the expression on the portion of the German’s face not concealed by the blindfold. Later, the video would be analyzed by the specialists at King Saul Boulevard. All were in agreement on one point. It was a look of profound relief.

THOUGH CURSED WITH A FLAWLESS memory, Gabriel sometimes found it hard to accurately recall his mother’s face. Two of her self-portraits hung in his bedroom in Jerusalem. Each night before he drifted off to sleep, he saw her as she had seen herself, a tormented figure rendered in the manner of the German Expressionists.

Like many young women who survived the Holocaust, she struggled with the demands of caring for a child. She was prone to melancholia and violent mood swings. She could not show pleasure on festive occasions and did not partake of rich food or drink. She wore a bandage always on her left arm, over the faded numbers tattooed into her skin. 29395 … She referred to them as her mark of Jewish weakness. Her emblem of Jewish shame.

Painting, like motherhood, was an ordeal for her. Gabriel used to sit on the floor at her feet, scribbling in his sketchpad, while she labored at her easel. To distract herself, she used to tell stories of her childhood in Berlin. She spoke to Gabriel in German, in her thick Berlin accent. It was Gabriel’s first language, and even now it was the language of his dreams. His Italian, while fluent, bore the faint but unmistakable trace of a foreigner’s intonation. But not his German. No matter where he traveled in the country, no one ever assumed he was anything but a native speaker of the language, one who had been raised in the center of Berlin.

Andreas Estermann clearly assumed that was the case as well, which prompted his misplaced expression of relief. It faded quickly once Gabriel explained why he had been taken into custody. Gabriel did not identify himself, though he implied he was a secret member of the Order of St. Helena who had been asked by Herr Wolf and Bishop Richter to investigate certain financial irregularities that had recently come to their attention. These irregularities concerned the existence of a bank account in the principality of Liechtenstein. Gabriel recited the current balance and the dates on which deposits had been made. Then he read aloud the text messages Estermann had exchanged with his private banker, Herr Hassler, lest Estermann entertain any thought of wriggling off the hook.

Next Gabriel turned his attention to the source of the money that Estermann had embezzled from the Order. It was money, he said, that was supposed to have been delivered to the cardinal-electors who had agreed to vote for the Order’s candidate at the coming conclave. At the mention of the prelate’s name, Estermann gave a start and then spoke for the first time. With