In London, Israeli agent Gabriel Allon rents an apartment in Sussex Gardens, telling the landlady, Fiona Barrows, that he is an art restorer. The apartment provides a direct view into the apartment of his target, Yusef al-Tawfiki, a Palestinian agent working for the terrorist Tariq. Gabriel conducts physical surveillance on Yusef, who demonstrates professional countersurveillance awareness. Posing as a boorish French writer, Gabriel watches Yusef from a nearby restaurant, memorizing details of his interactions and contacts.

While waiting for Yusef to return to his apartment one night, Gabriel has a vivid flashback to an operation 12 years earlier in Tunis. He recalls leading a commando team to assassinate the PLO’s chief of operations, Abu Jihad. Before entering the villa, he killed Abu Jihad’s driver sleeping in a Mercedes outside. Inside, a Tunisian security guard appeared; Gabriel shot him several times through the chest, then twice in the face after he refused to reveal Abu Jihad’s location. He then found Abu Jihad watching intifada footage on television and shot him twice in the chest and twice more in the head. In the hallway afterward, he ordered Abu Jihad’s wife and children back to their room. On the escape boat, he was so shaken that he threw his gun into the sea.

After the Tunis flashback quiets, Gabriel thinks of the Vecellio and Peel, and for the first time that day thinks of Dani, his son. Yusef eventually returns to his apartment with a woman at three o’clock in the morning, and Gabriel resolves to begin electronic surveillance the following day.

In Amsterdam, a young bar worker and heroin user named Inge van der Hoff returns to her houseboat. Her new lover, a woman named Leila, has been staying with her for two weeks. Inge finds Leila packing a suitcase; Leila claims she must suddenly go home to care for her ill father, having spoken to her brother in Paris. Before leaving, Leila asks Inge if a male friend of hers named Paul can stay on the houseboat for a few days. To persuade the hesitant Inge, Leila gives her a small bag of heroin. Inge immediately injects the drug and loses consciousness, the last thing she sees being Leila slipping out the door and floating across the deck of the houseboat.

Gabriel brings in Randall Karp, a former CIA technical expert, to set up surveillance on Yusef’s apartment. Karp dismisses using a laser microphone and instead plans to bug Yusef’s phone line directly from the building’s main interface box. He also intends to use a system called Tempest to remotely read Yusef’s computer monitor. To get full room audio coverage, however, they will need to plant a bug inside the apartment. When Karp asks how they will gain access, Gabriel replies that Yusef “likes girls” (162).

That night, Gabriel and Karp go to the Kebab Factory, the restaurant where Yusef works, to bug the phone line there. While Karp works, two drunk men confront Gabriel, who swiftly and brutally disables them before checking to ensure they are still alive. Back at the surveillance apartment, Karp confirms the bug on the restaurant’s phone is functioning correctly.

Tariq is in Amsterdam, planning to assassinate David Morgenthau, a wealthy American-Jewish businessman with ties to the Israeli government. His agent, Leila, has already conducted surveillance on the Morgenthau home. As Tariq walks to the houseboat where he will be staying, he reflects on the news that Gabriel Allon has been tasked with hunting him. Tariq welcomes the confrontation, planning to lure Gabriel into a trap. He is confident his small, loyal organization is impenetrable and recalls a past success in which he used a fake defector to assassinate an Israeli intelligence officer working under diplomatic cover from the Israeli embassy in Madrid.

At the houseboat, Tariq meets Inge, the young woman Leila arranged for him to stay with. He finds her pathetic, but has sex with her to avoid raising suspicion. Afterward, he suffers one of his recurring, debilitating headaches, a symptom of his severe underlying illness.

Jacqueline is at her villa in Valbonne, where she reflects on her declining modeling career. She goes for an intense bicycle ride, fueled by anger at the photographer Michel Duval. In the village, she sees a vacant property and imagines opening her own ballet school, which would allow her to return to her true identity as Sarah Halévy and leave modelling behind. She knows she needs more money to make this dream a reality.

Back at her villa, a message from her agent, Marcel, informs her that a man using the code name Jean-Claude is on his way to see her about a job. Jacqueline is shaken, realizing she is being reactivated by the Israeli intelligence service. The narrative flashes back to her recruitment by Ari Shamron, who appealed to her Jewish identity and the memory of her murdered grandparents. He trained her as a bat leveyha (female assistant agent) for missions that included “honey trap” operations, where she seduced enemies of Israel. After several successful operations, Shamron flew her to Tel Aviv, presented her with a secret citation, and told her she was finished, warning that her next target might suspect her and that she might end up dead. She begged him for one last assignment and he reluctantly agreed, sending her three months later to assist Gabriel Allon in Tunis.

The CIA’s executive director, Adrian Carter, meets with Ari Shamron in Tel Aviv. Carter states that American intelligence suspects Tariq was behind the recent Paris embassy bombing. He warns Shamron that the US government wants Tariq captured and tried, not assassinated by Israel, as a reprisal could derail the peace process. Carter also reminds Shamron of agreements prohibiting unsanctioned Israeli operations on allied foreign soil. Shamron falsely assures him that no such operation is planned.

Immediately after, Shamron briefs the Israeli prime minister. He believes Carter suspects something, but that he lacks concrete evidence. The prime minister asks if Shamron can execute the mission against Tariq without the CIA discovering it. When Shamron confirms he can, the prime minister orders him to proceed.

Gabriel arrives at Jacqueline’s villa and explains that he is back with the Office to hunt Tariq. He needs her help to get inside the London apartment of one of Tariq’s agents, Yusef, to plant a bug. He asks her to meet Yusef, get invited back to his apartment, and make a copy of his keys. Jacqueline initially refuses, but Gabriel persuades her by saying she is the only one he can trust for the job. Recognizing her leverage, she demands and receives a payment of $50,000.

Jacqueline calls her agent to cancel her upcoming work. As they drive north, Gabriel briefs her on Yusef, a radicalized Palestinian from a refugee camp in Lebanon. They stop in a remote location where Gabriel tests her marksmanship with her Beretta pistol. She shoots perfectly, after which he destroys the weapon and scatters the pieces to eliminate any evidence.

Tariq makes his final preparations to kill the Morgenthaus. He buys a train ticket to Antwerp, purchases a lethal dose of heroin, and orders a large bouquet of flowers. At the houseboat, he gives the flowers to Inge before preparing a heroin dose three times the normal strength. She injects it and falls backward, convulsing violently. Tariq makes coffee in the galley while waiting for her to finish dying.

Just as Tariq is about to leave, Inge’s brother, Maarten, arrives unexpectedly. He discovers his sister’s body and, enraged, accuses Tariq of giving her the drugs. Tariq debates with himself on how to proceed without drawing attention to himself. When Maarten lunges at him, Tariq shoots him through the eye with a single bullet from his Makarov. Realizing the gunshot might attract attention, Tariq flees, disposing of his suitcase in a canal. He considers aborting the mission but is driven to continue by the memory of his own brother’s assassination. He proceeds to the Morgenthau residence, poses as a flower deliveryman to get inside, and kills the maid with a silenced pistol before waiting for the couple to return.

Shamron meets Gabriel in Paris and confirms that Tariq was responsible for the murders of the Morgenthaus and their maid in Amsterdam. Police discovered the bodies of Inge and her brother, Maarten, on a houseboat; ballistic matching of the slug from Maarten to those taken from the Morgenthaus and the maid confirmed the same gun was used in all four killings. Shamron reiterates the CIA’s warning and advises Gabriel to be cautious.

Gabriel then travels to London and surprises the art dealer Julian Isherwood, who is furious that Gabriel abandoned the restoration of a valuable Vecellio painting. Gabriel asks Isherwood to provide a cover job for Jacqueline by hiring her as his secretary who uses the name Dominique. Isherwood reluctantly agrees after Gabriel promises to finish the restoration.

Gabriel settles Jacqueline into a drab safehouse in London for her cover identity as Dominique Bonard. That evening, they have a painful conversation about their shared past. Gabriel reveals that he is hunting Tariq as personal vengeance for the bombing in Vienna that killed his son Dani and catastrophically maimed his wife Leah. Their killing was, he reveals, a retaliation for Gabriel’s assassination of Tariq’s own brother. Jacqueline confesses her long-held guilt over their affair in Tunis, believing it led to the tragedy. Gabriel absolves her, taking full responsibility for having “behaved foolishly” (224). When she asks why he confessed the affair to his wife, he explains that he could not live with the lie and needed forgiveness. He then leaves abruptly and Jacqueline breaks down crying.

While driving, Gabriel is annoyed with himself for revealing so much. He reflects on his emotional isolation: Shamron had made him the destroyer, and he had turned himself back into the healer, able to experience beauty only in art and only by repairing damage inflicted by uncaring owners and the passage of time. He was not capable, however, of healing himself. He realizes he confided in Jacqueline because she already knows his secrets, but he feels conflicted about sending her to seduce another man.

Jacqueline begins her cover job as Dominique, taking the crowded Underground to Julian Isherwood’s gallery. Gabriel follows at a distance to confirm she is not being watched before telling her she is “clean” (230). Isherwood, who is late and flustered, is immediately charmed by her. He gives her a tour of the gallery, including the impressive upstairs viewing room, and is stunned when she perfectly memorizes the long security code on her first try.

Meanwhile, at his surveillance post, Gabriel and Karp intercept a phone call for Yusef at the Kebab Factory. The caller arranges to meet Yusef that evening at a bar. Gabriel listens to the recording so many times that Karp begs him to stop, analyzing it for any indication of a trap, before calling the number for Isherwood Fine Arts to set the plan in motion.