After leaving the airport, Yusef moves evasively through Paris by taxi, Métro, and on foot to ensure he is not being followed. He arrives at an apartment building in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, where he is admitted by a stout man with strawberry blond hair.

Meanwhile, at the Office headquarters in Tel Aviv, Mordecai, the second-most-senior officer, confronts Lev, the head of Operations, about the sudden disappearance of the entire Ottawa station staff. Mordecai explains that when he tried to call the station chief, Zvi Yadin, about a minor expense issue, he found no one was there. Lev feigns ignorance and, upon learning Shamron is in Europe, instructs Mordecai to locate him.

Leila drives Jacqueline from the Montreal airport through a snowstorm to the Queen Elizabeth hotel. Inside, Tariq watches them from the hotel bar. He is aware that Shamron’s agents are likely surveilling the area and reflects on his impending death from a brain tumor, which he plans to use as his most powerful weapon. He approaches Jacqueline, introducing himself as Lucien Daveau, and they go up to his suite.

In the room, Jacqueline activates the tracking beacon hidden in the gold cigarette lighter given to her by Shamron. Tariq questions her motives for undertaking the mission, and she maintains her cover story, claiming she is acting out of love for Yusef. He insists she check her London voicemail on speakerphone; she receives messages from her supposed mother, from Julian Isherwood, and from Gabriel. Tariq notes the third caller was not Yusef, raising his suspicion. He agrees to take her shopping for warmer clothes.

Zvi Yadin, the Ottawa station chief, meets Gabriel and Shamron at the Montreal airport and gives Gabriel a Beretta target pistol inside a stainless steel combat case. Yadin reports that Leila handed Jacqueline off to Tariq (using the alias Lucien Daveau) at the hotel and then departed. Yadin’s team of four, including a new agent named Deborah, is conducting surveillance. He also warns Shamron that Lev is asking questions about the Ottawa station’s unauthorized absence.

While shopping in an underground mall, Tariq moves evasively and, at an espresso bar, he acquires a briefcase containing a weapon. Meanwhile, Gabriel uses a credit card-style key concealed inside a folded tourist map—passed to him by a sayan on the hotel’s concierge staff—to enter Tariq’s room and plant a surveillance device on the telephone.

At their command post in the Sheraton hotel, the team listens to the bugged phone and reviews surveillance footage, which allows Shamron to positively identify Tariq. They learn that Tariq and Jacqueline are going to dinner at a restaurant on rue St-Denis, a busy, bohemian street. Shamron decides this is the ideal location to assassinate Tariq and orders the team to prepare.

Tariq and Jacqueline ride an escalator to underground Montreal, walk to a Métro station, and ride east to the rue St-Denis. Gabriel and Deborah position themselves at a restaurant across the street, while other team members wait in nearby getaway cars. As Tariq and Jacqueline exit after their meal, Gabriel moves to intercept and kill him. Just as he draws his weapon, a car screeches to a halt between them. Tariq shoves Jacqueline into the vehicle, and her handbag—containing her passport and the lighter with the tracking beacon—falls into the street. Before the car speeds off, Tariq gives Gabriel a mocking smile.

Gabriel retrieves the purse. In the team’s van, Shamron furiously criticizes Gabriel for hesitating and not taking the shot. Gabriel defends his actions, arguing that a shot was too risky and would have endangered bystanders. With Jacqueline abducted and the tracking device lost, the operation is a failure. Shamron declares that their priority now is to get to the United States to protect the Israeli prime minister. Gabriel voices his fear that without a passport, Jacqueline is now a liability whom Tariq is likely to kill.

After leaving Montreal and switching cars several times, Tariq drives Jacqueline south toward the US border. He appears ill and sweaty. He dismisses his evasive maneuvers in the city as a “routine security precaution” but reveals that he was aware of her tracking device in the gold lighter (404). When Jacqueline panics about crossing the border without a passport, Tariq produces a Canadian passport in the name of Hélène Sarrault bearing Leila’s photograph, which is a passable likeness. Feeling she has no other option, Jacqueline agrees to use it. They cross into Vermont without incident. A few miles past the border, Tariq pulls out a Makarov pistol and holds it to her head.

In his Washington, DC, hotel suite, PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat receives a surprise late-night invitation to the White House from US President James Beckwith. During their private meeting, they discuss the recent assassinations of Israeli officials, agreeing that Tariq is the likely culprit. Arafat reveals a critical piece of intelligence: Tariq is dying from a severe brain tumor, a fact he has already shared with Ari Shamron. Arafat voices his suspicion that Shamron may be playing a double game, suggesting that some factions within Israeli intelligence might not be opposed to Tariq disrupting the peace process. As he leaves, Arafat confirms he will be attending a reception at the New York home of Douglas Cannon, a former US ambassador. President Beckwith gives him a final, ominous warning to “watch your back” (416).

While driving, Tariq reveals that he knows Jacqueline is an Israeli agent who works for Gabriel Allon. He brutally beats her with his gun when she denies it. Her resistance finally broken, Jacqueline stops denying her identity and focuses on finding a way to survive and warn Gabriel.

Tariq explains that his organization discovered her identity through a flaw in her cover story, comparing photographs of her with those of a woman who worked with Gabriel in Tunis, and that Yusef was knowingly luring her into a trap from the beginning. He tells her his new plan is to use her as bait to draw Gabriel into an ambush. They drive through the night and arrive at dawn in a Brooklyn neighborhood. Tariq leads her into a second-floor apartment on Parkville Avenue, where Leila is waiting to secure her.

Shamron briefs the Israeli prime minister in New York about the failed operation in Montreal and assigns Gabriel to the prime minister’s security detail. In the Brooklyn safe house, Tariq disguises himself as a waiter named Emilio Gonzales. He tells Jacqueline, who is now spread-eagled on the bed with her wrists and ankles secured by four sets of handcuffs and her mouth gagged with heavy electrical tape, that he will have Leila impersonate her on the secure phone line to lure Gabriel to a specific location. After Tariq leaves, Leila taunts and tortures Jacqueline by pouring hot tea on her stomach.

Realizing Leila intends to kill her, Jacqueline devises a plan. She pretends she needs to use the bathroom and, once inside, secretly arms herself with a metal nail file. When Leila leads her back to the bed, Jacqueline attacks, stabbing Leila in the face and neck. Leila drops her gun. As the wounded Leila lunges at her, Jacqueline retrieves the weapon and shoots her dead.

Disguised as a waiter, Tariq infiltrates a party by carrying in a case of champagne and claiming to be a last-minute hire. Meanwhile, Jacqueline steps over Leila’s body, dials her London number, enters an additional code, gives the security word to a calm operator, and is connected to Shamron. She tells him she killed Leila with a nail file and a gun and that Tariq is disguised as a waiter—but she does not know where Tariq is going. As she is on the phone, a man armed with a baseball bat breaks down the apartment door. Jacqueline shoots and kills him. Shamron gives her an address and instructs her to walk to Coney Island Avenue to be picked up.

Gabriel, who is nearby with the prime minister’s security detail, receives the alert from Shamron. He commandeers a car and speeds to the location. He finds Jacqueline on the street, visibly traumatized. He pulls her into the car, and as he holds her, she breaks down.

Tariq is disguised as a waiter at a party in the Fifth Avenue apartment of Douglas Cannon. He sees Yasir Arafat’s motorcade arrive and prepares to act. His plan is nearly thwarted when a supervisor relegates him to kitchen duty after a guest spills wine on his jacket. Tariq bypasses the order by preparing a plate of Tunisian dates, a favorite of Arafat’s, and uses it as a pretense to approach him.

Gabriel, reasoning during dinner that Tariq’s plan to lure him away from the target means the target must be somewhere Gabriel would not naturally be, phones Shamron and asks where Arafat is. Realizing Tariq is there disguised as a waiter, he races to the apartment. Just as Tariq closes in, an aide gives Arafat a warning, and he retreats to a private study. Tariq deceives a bodyguard and follows Arafat inside. There, Arafat recognizes Tariq and engages him in a tense psychological dialogue, appealing to their shared history and warning him that assassination will tarnish his legacy. Tariq relents and leaves the room.

Gabriel and Jacqueline burst into the party. Jacqueline spots Tariq escaping through the kitchen. Tariq ambushes Gabriel in a service stairwell, shooting him in the chest. As Gabriel collapses, Jacqueline pursues Tariq down 17 flights of stairs. She corners him in a lower corridor and shoots him dead. Moments later, Shamron arrives, takes the gun from her, and demands to be taken to the wounded Gabriel.

Several months later, Gabriel is recovering in a Jerusalem safehouse. Shamron summons him for dinner in Tiberias and informs him that Lev has resigned. He offers Gabriel the now-vacant position of Chief of Operations, which Gabriel declines. Shamron reports that they have smoothed things over with the Americans, who were furious about the unauthorized operation, and says he is convinced it was CIA agent Adrian Carter who leaked the story to the press. He urges Gabriel to focus on his own healing, telling him it is time to “restore yourself” (471), and agrees to call off the agents who have been watching him.

Freed from surveillance, Gabriel travels around Israel. He then visits Jacqueline in Herzliya, where he asks her to recount Tariq’s confession from their drive to New York. Still feeling the story is incomplete, he leaves for Tel Aviv. At a café, he reads a newspaper report that Benjamin Stone is missing and presumed drowned, then spots Yusef on the street. He confronts Yusef at gunpoint, and Yusef reveals he works for Shamron.

Gabriel immediately drives to Shamron’s villa and confronts him. Shamron confesses the entire operation was an elaborate deception: The real Yusef died years ago, and Shamron’s agent, an orphan, assumed his identity to become a deep-cover mole in Tariq’s organization. Shamron used his own agent, Yusef, and Jacqueline as unwitting pawns to lure Tariq into a trap. He justifies the extreme measures as necessary to eliminate Tariq’s network and restore the Office’s reputation. When Gabriel returns to his apartment, he finds an envelope from Shamron containing a plane ticket to London, new passports, and cash.

Sometime later, Gabriel returns to his secluded cottage in Port Navas, Cornwall, in the early hours of the morning. Peel, who is staying nearby, is awakened by the sound of Gabriel’s MG. From his window, Peel watches the car pull up to the cottage. He flashes his torch twice and the car’s headlights flash back in response. Reassured by the stranger’s return, Peel goes back to bed and falls peacefully asleep.