6
" Grudgingly, she approved the commission, provided he use only child-safe paints and that the work be done within twenty-four hours. Gabriel hurried off to a nearby paint store with his bodyguards in tow and returned in short order with the necessary supplies. With a few strokes of a roller—an instrument he had never used before—he obliterated Chiara’s work beneath a fresh layer of pale blue paint. It remained too wet to work more that evening, so he rose early the next morning and swiftly decorated the wall in a bank of glowing Titianesque clouds. Lastly, he added a small child angel, a boy, who was peering downward over the edge of the highest cloud on the scene below. The figure was borrowed from Veronese’s Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints. With tears in his eyes and a trembling hand, Gabriel gave the angel the face of his son as it appeared on the night of his death. Then he signed his name and the date, and it was done. "
― Daniel Silva , The English Spy (Gabriel Allon, #15)
8
" a temporary solution to the city’s sectarian bloodletting. Now they were a permanent feature of its geography—indeed, their number, length, and scale had actually increased since the signing of the Good Friday accords. On Springfield Road the barricade was a transparent green fence about ten meters in height. But on Cupar Way, a particularly tense part of the Ardoyne, it was a Berlin Wall–like structure topped by razor wire. Residents on both sides had covered it in murals. One likened it to the separation fence between Israel and the West Bank. “Does this look like peace to you?” asked Keller. “No,” answered Gabriel. “It looks like home.” Finally, at half past one, Keller turned into Stratford Gardens. Number 8, like its neighbors, was a two-level redbrick house with a white door and a single window on each floor. Weeds flourished in the forecourt; a green rubbish bin lay toppled by the wind. Keller pulled to the curb and switched off the engine. "
― Daniel Silva , The English Spy (Gabriel Allon, #15)
