Jacqueline returns to her apartment and gives Gabriel a full report, including the make of Yusef’s phone and clock radio. She hands over a mascara case containing imprints of Yusef’s three keys. She explains that Yusef became suspicious when he saw her near his keys, but she allayed his fears and agreed to see him again that night. Gabriel plans to use the date as an opportunity to plant bugs in the apartment. He passes the key imprints to a courier and buys duplicate electronic devices. At the listening post, Karp outfits the duplicates with transmitters while Gabriel carefully marks the new phone’s keypad with ink to match the original.

Meanwhile, Yusef meets with Tariq’s associate, Kemel Azouri, on Cheyne Walk. Yusef, using the codename Mr. Taylor, reports his suspicions about Jacqueline. Kemel instructs him to continue the relationship with her.

Yusef picks Jacqueline up from the Isherwood gallery, causing her employer, Julian Isherwood, to flee in alarm. In the gallery, Yusef tests Jacqueline’s art knowledge and presses her about being in love with another man. He abruptly changes their dinner plans, insisting they eat at his apartment. Panicked but not wanting to arouse suspicion, Jacqueline agrees.

While they are en route, Gabriel breaks into Yusef’s apartment using the newly made keys. He successfully swaps the telephone for a bugged duplicate. In the bedroom, he is disturbed by an image of Jacqueline in Yusef’s bed and realizes his professional mission is becoming personal. Just as he is about to switch the clock radio, his spotter, Karp, calls to warn him that Yusef and Jacqueline are returning unexpectedly. Gabriel hastily programs the new clock radio’s settings to match the original and exits the apartment just in time, passing the couple on the stairs. Yusef notices Jacqueline’s involuntary flinch upon seeing Gabriel and watches him walk away from the street below.

In Lisbon, Kemel meets with Tariq al-Hourani, who is disguised as a dockworker. Kemel reports that Yusef’s apartment has likely been bugged by Israeli intelligence. Tariq sees this as an opportunity and instructs Kemel to leave the bug in place and have Yusef continue his relationship with Jacqueline. He asks Kemel to get him a photograph of her. Tariq then outlines a plan that Kemel believes will be fatal for Tariq. Unconcerned, Tariq replies that this is the best news he has heard in a long time.

The operation falls into a dull routine as Gabriel listens to Yusef’s daily life, including his attempted political indoctrination of Jacqueline. After 10 days with no useful intelligence, Gabriel fears the operation is compromised. He meets Ari Shamron in Paris and demands that they withdraw Jacqueline. Shamron refuses, arguing that Yusef is attempting to recruit her, which could provide a valuable opening. He dismisses Gabriel’s threat to quit.

On the train back to London, Gabriel reflects on the immense psychological toll of his past operations, particularly the Black September assassinations, and how the fear of being hunted never goes away. He then drives to a psychiatric hospital in Surrey to visit his wife, Leah. She has been catatonic and severely scarred since a car bomb in Vienna killed their son and left her institutionalized. As he prepares to leave, Leah, who has not acknowledged him in years, unexpectedly reaches out and touches his face. Gabriel wonders if she senses the strain of his current mission or the presence of Jacqueline in his life.

Kemel returns to Lisbon with a photograph of Jacqueline. In his apartment, Tariq reveals how he first identified Gabriel Allon. After Gabriel assassinated Tariq’s brother, Mahmoud, a German student who was with Mahmoud at the time later recognized Gabriel in surveillance photos from the 1988 assassination of Abu Jihad in Tunis. Further investigation of the Tunis surveillance tapes revealed Gabriel’s accomplice: A “French girlfriend” (291). Tariq produces a photo of this woman; he and Kemel confirm she is Jacqueline.

Knowing his operative’s girlfriend is an Israeli agent, Tariq finalizes his plan. He will use Jacqueline as his traveling companion for an upcoming operation in New York, where he intends to sabotage the peace process by assassinating the Israeli prime minister and Yasser Arafat. He sees this as the perfect trap to lure and kill Gabriel at the same time. As Kemel leaves, Tariq remarks that Gabriel’s important mistake was not killing the German witness years ago—an error he would not have made.

Back in London, Jacqueline decides she wants out of the operation, feeling depressed by the charade with Yusef and Gabriel’s emotional distance. That night, however, Yusef tells her a new, horrifying version of how he got the scar on his back. He claims that during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Israeli soldiers allowed Christian Phalangist militias to slaughter Palestinians. He graphically describes witnessing his mother’s rape and mutilation and his infant sister’s dismemberment before the militiamen flayed his back and left him for dead. The story makes Jacqueline physically ill. Yusef then receives a cryptic phone call summoning him to a meeting at Lancaster Gate the following day.

The next morning, a shaken Jacqueline confronts Gabriel, who confirms the massacre story is true but dismisses its relevance. When she insists on quitting, their argument turns personal. She accuses him of using her, and he reveals that his affair with her in Tunis led to the confession that put his wife and son in Vienna, where Tariq’s bomb killed them. He ends by asking if she can continue the mission.

Gabriel and Karp conduct surveillance from a van as Yusef meets an unknown contact in Hyde Park. Due to background noise, they only capture fragments of the conversation. The key phrases they record are references to a “next assignment,” needing someone to “meet him” at Charles de Gaulle airport for a trip to a “final destination,” and checking on “her…in Paris” (309). The contact’s final, clear words are, “Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you” (310). That evening, Yusef asks Jacqueline for a favor. The next day, she receives a note from Gabriel telling her he is going to Paris and that she should not leave the gallery.

On the train to Paris, Gabriel analyzes the fragmented tape, concluding that Tariq’s organization has investigated Jacqueline’s cover story. He meets Shamron and his abrasive Paris station chief, Uzi Navot, at a safehouse. They listen to a recording of Yusef recruiting Jacqueline. He asks her to pose as the lover of an important Palestinian leader and accompany him on a trip, starting at Charles de Gaulle Airport, to an undisclosed location. After some resistance, she agrees to consider it.

Shamron is thrilled, seeing this as their chance to get to Tariq. Gabriel, however, is convinced this is a trap. Shamron overrules him, arguing that they can control the outcome. He dismisses Gabriel’s suggestion to arrest Tariq at the airport, stating he wants Tariq to “disappear quietly” without involving the French or leaving him alive to become a martyr. Shamron informs Gabriel the Israeli prime minister is awaiting his final decision to proceed.

Gabriel and Shamron meet Jacqueline at the gallery and brief her on the mission. Shamron assures Jacqueline of her safety and gives her a gold lighter containing a tracking beacon. After he makes a patriotic appeal, Gabriel provides her with operational details. Her secure contact method will be to call her own answering machine in London, which will be secretly routed to Israeli intelligence, allowing them to trace her location. He instructs her to argue with Yusef one last time before agreeing to the mission to make her compliance more believable. He then grimly details how he will have to kill Tariq up close and tells her not to watch.

After the briefing, Shamron reveals he is going to see Benjamin Stone, a wealthy British-Jewish businessman. He convinces an intrigued Stone to lend him his private jet for the following day, allowing them to follow Tariq from Paris without raising suspicion.

Driven by her love for Gabriel and a sense of duty, Jacqueline goes to Yusef’s apartment. Following Gabriel’s instructions, she stages a final, convincing argument before agreeing to the mission. After she accepts, Yusef takes her from the apartment. They switch cars and are driven toward Heathrow. In the car, Yusef notices her new gold lighter and questions her suspiciously about its inscription. She deflects his questions by claiming it was a gift from a former lover. Yusef then reveals their destination is a safe house and that she will meet the Palestinian leader—whose cover name is Lucien Daveau—in Paris.

Shamron receives word that they have stopped for the night at a council estate in Hounslow. Unsettled, Gabriel leaves the listening post, telling Shamron he has personal business to attend to. As he departs, he suspects Shamron has a team following him.

Yusef takes Jacqueline to a spartan, unfurnished apartment in a grim Hounslow council estate. He claims the location is for security against surveillance by MI5 and Israeli intelligence. While Yusef makes calls on a mobile phone, Jacqueline lies down fully clothed and drifts into an uneasy sleep.

Meanwhile, Gabriel appears at Julian Isherwood’s home late at night. He informs Isherwood that Jacqueline will not be returning and urges him not to sell his financially troubled gallery. To prevent the sale, Gabriel gives him a rucksack containing £100,000 in cash, explaining it is an “insurance policy” from Shamron and Benjamin Stone to keep the gallery solvent until Gabriel can finish restoring the valuable painting for Isherwood. Before Gabriel leaves, Isherwood tells him that Jacqueline is “the real thing” (356) and warns him not to make the mistake of his life by letting her go.