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Zusatztext “ The Messenger ’s blood-spattered! true-to-life backdrop pumps up this thrill ride of a story! but its underlying messages about fundamentalism! revenge! oil dependency and cultural differences are what will keep you awake at night.”— USA Today “Exhibits Silva’s usual intelligence! style and research...Silva uncorks another! even more dramatic climax.”— The Washington Post Book World “The enigmatic Gabriel Allon remains one of the most intriguing heroes of any thriller series! a wonderfully nuanced! endlessly fascinating creation…Entertaining and well written.”— The Philadelphia Inquirer “Silva [is] the modern-day Robert Ludlum! and his lead character Gabriel Allon should remind readers of Jason Bourne (without the amnesia! of course).”— Florida Times-Union “Gripping details…Silva maintains tension and suspense with a story that travels all over the world.”— The Denver Post “So entertaining… a spider web of a plot.”— The Baltimore Sun Informationen zum Autor Daniel Silva Klappentext On the trail of a deadly al-Qaeda operative, Gabriel Allon returns in a spellbinding story of deception, power, and revenge by the #1 New York Times bestselling "world-class practitioner of spy fiction" (Washington Post). Gabriel Allon-art restorer and spy-is about to face the greatest challenge of his life. An al-Qaeda suspect is killed in London, and photographs are found on his computer-photographs that lead Israeli intelligence to suspect that al-Qaeda is planning one of its most audacious attacks ever, aimed straight at the heart of the Vatican. Allon and his colleagues soon find themselves in a deadly duel of wits against one of the most dangerous men in the world-a hunt that will take them across Europe to the Caribbean and back. But for them, there may not be enough of anything: enough time, enough facts, enough luck. All Allon can do is set his trap-and hope that he is not the one caught in it. Chapter 1 London IT WAS ALI MASSOUDI who unwittingly roused Gabriel Allon from his brief and restless retirement: Massoudi, the great Europhile intellectual and freethinker, who, in a moment of blind panic, forgot that the English drive on the left side of the road. The backdrop for his demise was a rain-swept October evening in Bloomsbury. The occasion was the final session of the first annual Policy Forum for Peace and Security in Palestine, Iraq, and Beyond. The conference had been launched early that morning amid great hope and fanfare, but by day’s end it had taken on the quality of a traveling production of a mediocre play. Even the demonstrators who came in hope of sharing some of the flickering spotlight seemed to realize they were reading from the same tired script. The American president was burned in effigy at ten. The Israeli prime minister was put to the purifying flame at eleven. At lunchtime, amid a deluge that briefly turned Russell Square into a pond, there had been a folly having something to do with the rights of women in Saudi Arabia. At eight-thirty, as the gavel came down on the final panel, the two dozen stoics who had stayed to the end filed numbly toward the exits. Organizers of the affair detected little appetite for a return engagement next autumn. A stagehand stole forward and removed a placard from the rostrum that read: GAZA IS LIBERATED—WHAT NOW? The first panelist on his feet was Sayyid of the London School of Economics, defender of the suicide bombers, apologist for al-Qaeda. Next was the austere Chamberlain of Cambridge, who spoke of Palestine and the Jews as though they were still the quandary of gray-suited men from the Foreign Office. Throughout the discussion the aging Chamberlain had served as a sort of Separation Fence between the incendiary Sayyid and a poor soul from the Israeli embassy named Ra...
