“What about the Office station?”

Shamron repeated what he’d just learned from Lev. Pazner was alive. Three Office employees were feared to be among the dead.

“Who did it?”

“Lev hasn’t reached any-”

“I’m not asking Lev.”

“The list of potential suspects, unfortunately, is long. Anything I might say now would be speculation, and at this point, speculation does us no good.”

“Why Rome?”

“Hard to say,” Shamron said. “Perhaps it was just a target of opportunity. Maybe they saw a weakness, a chink in our armor, and they decided to exploit it.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“No, Prime Minister.”

“Could it have something to do with that affair at the Vatican a couple of years ago-that business with Allon?”

“I doubt it. All the evidence thus far suggests it was a suicide attack carried out by Arab terrorists.”

“I want to make a statement after Varash meets.”

“I think that would be wise.”

“And I want you to write it for me.”

“If you wish.”

“You know about loss, Ari. We both do. Put some heart into it. Tap that reservoir of Polish pain you’re always carrying around with you. The country will need to cry tonight. Let them cry. But assure them that the animals who did this will be punished.”

“They will, Prime Minister.”

Shamron stood.

“Who did this, Ari?”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

“I want his head,” the prime minister said savagely. “I want his head on a stick.”

“And you shall have it.”

Forty-eight hours would pass before the first break in the case, and it would come not in Rome but in the northern industrial city of Milan. Units of the Polizia di Stato and Carabinieri, acting on a tip from a Tunisian immigrant informant, raided a pensione in a workers’ quarter north of the city center where two of the four surviving attackers were thought to be hiding.