The Confessor by Daniel Silva Read Free Book Online Page B

pulled down on the drawstring connected to the overhead light. A moth scattered, brushing Gabriel’s cheek. The woman nodded and receded silently down the hallway.
    Gabriel peered into the storage room. It was little more than a closet, some four feet wide and six feet deep, and it reeked of linseed oil and damp. A rusted bicycle frame with one wheel, a pair of ancient skis, unlabeled cardboard boxes stacked to a water-stained ceiling.
    He removed the broken bicycle and the skis, and began searching through the boxes of Benjamin’s things. In several he found bound stacks of yellowing papers and old spiral notebooks, the flotsam of a lifetime spent in the lecture halls and libraries of academia. There were boxes of dusty old books—the ones, Gabriel supposed, he deemed too unimportant to place on the shelves in his flat. Several more held copies of Conspiracy at Wannsee: A Reappraisal, Benjamin’s last book.
    The final box contained the purely personal. Gabriel felt like a trespasser. He wondered how he would feel if the roles were reversed, if Shamron had sent someone from the Office to rummage through his things. And what would they find? Only what Gabriel wanted them to see. Solvents and pigment, his brushes and his palette, a fine collection of monographs. A Beretta by his bedside.
    He drew a long breath and proceeded. Inside a cigar box he found a pile of tarnished medals and tattered ribbons and remembered that Benjamin had been something of a star runner at school. In an envelope were family photographs. Benjamin, like Gabriel, was an only child. His parents had survived the horrors of Riga only to be killed in a car accident on the road to Haifa. Next he found a stack of letters. The stationery was the color of honey and still smelled of lilac. Gabriel read a few lines and quickly put the letters aside. Vera . . . Benjamin’s only love. How many nights had he lain awake in some wretched safe flat, listening to Benjamin complain about how the beguiling Vera had ruined him for all other women? Gabriel was quite certain he hated her more than Benjamin had.
    The last item was a manila file folder. Gabriel lifted the cover and inside found a stack of newspaper clippings. His eyes flickered over the headlines. ELEVEN ISRAELI ATHLETES AND COACHES TAKEN HOSTAGE IN OLYMPIC VILLAGE  . . . TERRORISTS DEMAND RELEASE OF PALESTINIAN AND GERMAN PRISONERS  . . . BLACK SEPTEMBER  . . .
    Gabriel closed the file.
    A black-and-white snapshot slipped out. Gabriel scooped it off the floor. Two boys, blue jeans and rucksacks. A pair of young Germans spending a summer roaming Europe, or so it appeared. It had been taken in Antwerp near the river. The one on the left was Benjamin, forelock of wavy hair in his eyes, mischievous smile on his face, his arm flung around the young man standing at his side.
    Benjamin’s companion was serious and sullen, as though he couldn’t be bothered with something as trivial as a snapshot. He wore sunglasses, his hair was cropped short, and even though he was not much more than twenty years old, his temples were shot with gray. “The stain of a boy who’s done a man’s job,” Shamron had said. “Smudges of ash on the prince of fire.”
     
    GABRIEL WAS not pleased about the file of newspaper clippings on the Munich massacre, but there was no way he could smuggle so large an item past Detective Weiss. The snapshot was different. He wedged it into Herr Landau’s expensive wallet and slipped the wallet into his coat pocket. Then he sidestepped his way out of the storage room and closed the door.
    Frau Ratzinger was waiting in the corridor. Gabriel wondered how long she had been standing there but dared not ask. In her hand was a small padded shipping envelope. He could see that it was addressed to Benjamin and that it had been opened.
    The old woman held it out to him. “I thought you might want these,” she said in German.
    “What are they?”
    “Benjamin’s eyeglasses. He left them