Rami stepped outside the guardhouse and watched the old man pounding down the drive. He was bald and thick, with steel-rimmed spectacles. His face was dry and deeply creviced-like the Negev, thought Rami. As usual he wore khaki trousers and an ancient leather bomber jacket with a tear on the right breast, just below the armpit. Within the service there were two theories about the tear. Some believed the jacket had been pierced by a bullet during a reprisal raid into Jordan in the fifties. Others argued that it had been torn by the dying fingers of a terrorist whom Shamron garroted in a Cairo back alley. Shamron always insisted gruffly that the truth was much more prosaic-the jacket had been torn on the corner of a car door-but no one within the service took him seriously.
He walked as if he were anticipating an assault from behind, elbows out, head down. The Shamron shuffle, the walk that said, “Get the fuck out of my way or I’ll have your balls for breakfast.” Rami felt his pulse quicken at the sight of the old man. If Shamron told him to jump off a cliff, he’d jump. If the old man told him to stop in midair, he’d figure out some way to do it.
As Shamron drew closer, Rami caught sight of his face. The lines around his mouth were a little deeper. He was angry-Rami could see it in his eyes-but there seemed to be a hint of a smile across his arid lips. What the hell is he smiling about? Chiefs aren’t disturbed after midnight unless it’s urgent or very bad news. Then Rami hit upon the reason: the Phantom of Tiberias simply was relieved he had been spared another sleepless night with no enemies to fight.
Forty-five minutes later Shamron’s armored Peugeot slipped into the underground garage of a cheerless office block looming over King Saul Boulevard in northern Tel Aviv. He stepped into a private elevator and rode up to his office suite on the top floor. Queen Esther, his long-suffering senior secretary, had left a fresh packet of cigarettes on the desk next to a thermos bottle of coffee. Shamron immediately lit a cigarette and sat down.