by Daniel Silva
Keller said nothing.
“Where are they?”
Keller glanced toward the west.
“Spain?”
“Not quite that far. I’ll take you there, just the two of us.”
“No, you won’t.” Zakaria picked up his mobile and with a second text summoned the Citroën. “Change in plan.”
“I don’t like changes.”
“Change is good, habibi. It keeps everyone on their toes.”
11
Grasse, France
Keller, as instructed, sat in the passenger seat, with Nouredine Zakaria directly behind him. The Moroccan wondered aloud whether Keller might want to place his hands on the dashboard, a suggestion Keller rejected with a few choice Corsican obscenities and a murmured proverb. Zakaria didn’t bother to ask whether Keller had a gun. Keller was posing as an arms dealer, after all. Zakaria probably assumed he had an RPG in his back pocket.
The Citroën stopped once on the outskirts of Nice, long enough for another North African to slide into the backseat. He was a smaller version of Zakaria, a year or two younger perhaps, with a deep scar along one cheek. In all likelihood, Keller was now surrounded by three career criminals with ties to ISIS. As a result, he spent the next several minutes choreographing the complex sequence of moves that would be required to extricate himself from the car if the deal went sideways.
There was disagreement over the path they should take from Nice to their destination. Zakaria wanted to use the A8 Autoroute, but Keller convinced him the two-lane D4 was a better option. They picked it up at its source, along the beach near the airport, and followed it into the foothills of the Maritime Alps, through Biot and Valbonne and, finally, to the outskirts of Grasse. Keller glanced into the side-view mirror. It appeared that no other members of the gang were following. He took no comfort in this realization. The final exchange of money for goods was the most dangerous part of any criminal deal. It was not unusual for one of the parties, buyer or seller, to end up with a bullet in his head.
The Orsati Olive Oil Company warehouse in Grasse served as its primary distribution center for all of Provence. Even so, like most Orsati facilities, it was easily missed. It stood on a dusty road called the Chemin de la Madeleine, in an industrial quarter northeast of the town’s historic center. Keller punched the code into the keypad at the front gate and entered the property on foot, followed by the Citroën. Next he opened the warehouse door and led Zakaria and the one with the scar on his cheek inside. Zakaria was clutching a stainless steel attaché case. Presumably, it contained a sum of sixty thousand euros—three thousand euros for each black-market weapon. Keller thought it a rather fair price. He threw a switch and, overhead, a row of fluorescent lights flickered to life. They illuminated several hundred wooden crates. Three contained weapons, the rest Orsati olive oil.
“Well played,” said the Moroccan.
“This is the part,” replied Keller, “where you show me the money.”
He had expected the usual wrangle over protocol. Instead, Zakaria placed the attaché case on the concrete floor, opened the combination latches, and lifted the lid. Tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds, all bound by rubber bands. Keller lifted one of the bundles to his nose. It smelled faintly of hashish.
Keller closed the attaché case and nodded toward the far corner of the warehouse. Zakaria and the second Moroccan hesitated and then started walking, with Keller a few steps behind, the attaché case dangling from his left hand. Eventually, they came to a neat stack of rectangular crates. With a nod, Keller instructed Zakaria to remove the lid from the topmost. Inside were five AK-47s of Belarusan manufacture. The Moroccan removed one of the guns and inspected it carefully. It was obvious he knew his way around firearms.
“We’re going to need ammunition. I’m interested in acquiring five thousand rounds. Is that sufficient for your organization?”
“I should think so.”
“I was hoping that would be your answer.”
The Moroccan returned the Kalashnikov to the crate. Then he handed Keller a slip of paper, folded in half.
“What’s this?”
“Consider it a small demonstration of goodwill.”
Keller unfolded the paper and saw a few lines of French script rendered in red ink. He looked up sharply.
“Why?” he asked.
“To prove to me that you are not a cop.” The Moroccan paused, then added, “Or a spy.”
“Do I look like a spy to you?”
“Appearances,” said Zakaria, “can be deceiving.” His gaze settled on the second Moroccan, the one with the scar on his face. “Prove it to me, monsieur. Prove that you are really an arms dealer and not a French spy.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then it is highly unlikely you will leave this place alive.”
The second Moroccan was standing a few feet from Keller’s right shoulder, Zakaria directly in front of him, next to the crates. Smiling, Keller allowed the slip of paper to fall from his fingertips. By the time it had fluttered to the floor, he had drawn the Tanfoglio from the small of his back. He aimed it at the face of Nouredine Zakaria.
“Very impressive,” said the Moroccan. “And all the while holding the money. But perhaps you don’t read so well.”
“I read just fine. My hearing is quite good, too. And I’m certain you just threatened me. Big mistake, habibi.” Keller paused, then said, “Fatal, actually.”
Zakaria glanced nervously at the second Moroccan, who made a fumbling attempt to draw a weapon from inside his coat. Keller’s arm swung forty-five degrees to the right, and without hesitation he pulled the trigger of the Tanfoglio twice. The tap-tap of a trained professional. Both shots struck the Moroccan in the center of the forehead. Then the arm swung back to its original position. Had Zakaria remained motionless, he might have presented Keller with a quandary over how to proceed. Instead, he attempted to draw a weapon as well, thus making Keller’s decision instinctual. Tap-tap . . . Another dead Moroccan.
Keller returned the Tanfoglio to the waistband of his trousers. Then he retrieved the slip of paper from the warehouse floor and read again the words Nouredine Zakaria had written in red ink.
Kill my friend or I will kill you.
Change in plan, thought Keller. He placed the attaché case on the warehouse floor next to the bodies and went outside, where the third Moroccan sat behind the wheel of the Citroën. Keller rapped a knuckle against the driver’s-side window, and the glass slid down.
“I thought I heard shots,” said the Moroccan.
“Your friend Nouredine insisted on testing the merchandise.” Keller opened the door. “Come inside, my friend. He has something he wants you to see.”
Keller spent that night in a small hotel near the Old Port of Cannes and in the morning hired a car to take him to Marseilles. It was a few minutes after ten when he arrived; he entered the Société Générale in the Place de la Joliette and requested access to his safe-deposit box. The batteries of his computer and mobile phone were long dead. He recharged both on the TGV to Paris and discovered in his in-box several unread messages from Vauxhall Cross, the tone of which rose in an ascending scale of alarm. He waited until he was safely aboard his second train, a London-bound Eurostar, before informing his controller he was homeward bound. He doubted his reception would be pleasant.
There were no further messages from Vauxhall Cross until his train drew into St. Pancras International. It was then he received a bland six-word transmission stating that he would be met in the arrivals hall. His welcoming committee turned out to be Nigel Whitcombe, Graham Seymour’s youthful-looking aide-de-camp, food taster, and general factotum. Whitcombe spoke not a word as he drove Keller from Euston Street to a terrace of sooty postwar houses near the Stockwell Tube station. As Keller headed up the garden walk, clutching a stainless steel attaché case that contained sixty thousand euros of ISIS money, he composed the verbal report he would soon deliver to his chief. He had managed to find the ISIS ope
rative known as the Scorpion and, as instructed, had tried to go into business with him. Regrettably, the first transaction had not gone as planned, and three members of an ISIS cell were now dead. Other than that, his first assignment as an officer of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service had been rather uneventful.
12
Stockwell, London
“Couldn’t you have missed?”
“I tried,” answered Keller. “But the damn fools jumped in front of my bullets.”
“Why were you even carrying a gun?”
“I considered bringing a bunch of daffodils, but I thought a gun would be better for my cover. After all, they were under the impression I sold them for a living.”
“Where is it now?”
“The gun? Back on Corsica, I suppose.”
“And the bodies?”
“A few miles to the west.”
Seymour gazed disconsolately around the little sitting room. It was furnished with all the charm of an airport departure lounge. The safe house was hardly one of MI6’s crown jewels—there were much grander Service properties in tony Mayfair and Belgravia—but Seymour used this one frequently owing to its proximity to Vauxhall Cross. The automatic recording system had long ago been disabled. Even so, he checked the power module to make certain the system had not been switched on by mistake. It was located in a cabinet in the galley kitchen. The lights and signal meters were darkened and lifeless.
He closed the cabinet and looked at Keller. “Did they really have to die?”
“They weren’t exactly pillars of the community, Graham. Besides, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. It was them or me.”
“I’d advise your friend the don to give that warehouse a thorough scrubbing. Blood lingers, you know.”
“Have you been watching CSI again?”
Seymour made no reply.
“The French police would never dare look in that warehouse,” said Keller, “because they’re on the don’s payroll. That’s the way it works in the real world. That’s why the bad guys never get caught. At least the smart ones.”
“But occasionally,” said Seymour, “even spies get caught. And when it involves murder, they sometimes go to jail.”
“Define murder.”
“The unlawful killing of another—”
“‘If we’d wanted to be in the Boy Scouts, we would have joined the Boy Scouts.’”
Seymour raised an eyebrow. “T. S. Eliot?”
“Richard Helms.”
“My father loathed him.”
“If you’d wanted the job handled by the book,” said Keller, “you would have given it to a career officer who had his eye on a controllerate. But you sent me instead.”
“I asked you to infiltrate the cell by posing as a Corsican arms dealer. I’m quite certain I never mentioned anything about killing three ISIS terrorists on French soil.”
“It wasn’t my intention going in. But let’s not pretend to be troubled by my methods, Graham. We’re beyond all that. We go back too far.”
“We do indeed,” said Seymour quietly. “All the way to a farmhouse in South Armagh.”
He opened another cabinet door and pulled down a bottle of Tanqueray and a second bottle of tonic. Next he opened the refrigerator and peered inside. It was empty except for two dried-out limes. Their skins were the color of a paper sack.
“Heresy.”
“What’s that?”
“A gin and tonic without lime.” Seymour grabbed a handful of ice from the freezer and divided it between two smudged tumblers. “Your actions are not without consequences. Chief among them is the fact that the one and only link between the attack and Saladin’s network is now lying on the bottom of the Mediterranean.”
“Where he won’t be able to kill anyone else.”
“Sometimes a live terrorist is more useful than a dead one.”
“Sometimes,” agreed Keller grudgingly. “What’s your point?”
“My point,” said Seymour, handing Keller his drink, “is that we now have no choice but to share Nouredine Zakaria’s name with our friends in French intelligence.”
“And what do we tell the French about Nouredine’s current whereabouts?”
“As little as possible.”
“If you don’t mind,” said Keller, “I think I’ll skip that meeting.”
“Actually, I have no intention of talking to them, either.”
“Who are you planning to send?”
When Graham Seymour spoke the name, Keller smiled.
“Does he know about any of this?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re a devious bastard.”
“It’s in our blood.” Seymour sipped his drink and frowned. “Didn’t they teach you anything down at the Fort?”
13
King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
If there was an official record of the affair, which there certainly was not, it would have revealed the fact that Gabriel Allon spent much of that same evening in the Op Center of King Saul Boulevard. Of Christopher Keller’s sojourn to France—or the meeting at the Stockwell safe house—he knew nothing. He had eyes only for the video display monitors, where a convoy of four cargo trucks was moving west from Damascus toward the border with Lebanon. On one screen was an overhead shot from an Israeli Ofek 10 spy satellite floating high above Syria. On another, the view was from an IDF surveillance camera high atop Mount Hermon. Both were utilizing infrared technology. As a result, the engines of the trucks glowed white and hot against a black background. The Office had it on the highest authority that the convoy contained chemical weapons bound for Hezbollah, payment in kind for the radical Shiite group’s support of the embattled Syrian regime. For obvious reasons, the weapons could not be allowed to reach their intended destination, which was a Hezbollah storage depot in the Beqaa Valley.
The Op Center was far smaller than its Anglo and American counterparts, more Spartan and utilitarian, a secret warrior’s chamber. There was a chair reserved for the chief and a second for his deputy. Both men, however, were on their feet, Navot with his heavy arms folded across his chest, Gabriel with a hand to his chin and his head tilted slightly to one side. His green eyes were fixed on the shot from the Ofek. He had no assets on the ground, no operatives in harm’s way. Still, he was tense and unsettled. This is what it means to be the chief, he thought. The terrible burden of command. Nor did he care for the aerial high-tech trappings of tonight’s operation. He much preferred to deal with his enemies at a meter rather than a mile.
All at once a memory was upon him. It was October 1972, the Piazza Annibaliano in Rome, his first mission. An angel of vengeance waiting by the coin-operated elevator, a Palestinian terrorist with the blood of eleven Israeli coaches and athletes on his hands.
“Excuse me, but are you Wadal Zwaiter?”
“No! Please, no!”
The distinctive ring of the chief’s phone hauled Gabriel back to the present. Navot reached for it instinctively, but stopped. Smiling, Gabriel lifted the receiver to his ear, listened in silence, and rang off. Afterward, he and Navot stood side by side, Boaz and Jachin, each contemplating a screen.
Finally, Gabriel said, “The IAF is going to hit them the minute they cross the border.”
Navot nodded thoughtfully. Waiting until the convoy was in Lebanon would eliminate the risk of hitting any Russian or Syrian forces, thus reducing the likelihood of starting World War III.
“What were you thinking about just now?” Navot asked after a moment.
“The operation,” answered Gabriel, surprised.
“Bullshit.”
“How could you tell?”
“You were pulling a trigger with your right forefinger.”
“Was I?”
“Eleven times.”
Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Rome,” he said at last. “I was thinking about Rome.”
“Why now?”
“Why ever?”
“I thought you shot him with your
left hand.”
Gabriel watched the four-truck convoy moving steadily westward. At ten minutes past nine o’clock Tel Aviv time, it crossed into Lebanon.
“Uh-oh,” said Navot.
“Should have checked navigation,” quipped Gabriel.
There was a crackle over the secure communications net, and a few seconds later a pair of missiles flashed across the screen, left to right. Viewed through the infrared cameras, the resulting explosions were so bright Gabriel had to turn away. When he looked up again, he saw a single burning man running from the shattered convoy. He only wished it was Saladin. No, he thought coldly as he slipped from the Op Center. Better a meter than a mile.
Gabriel stopped in his office to collect his coat and briefcase before heading down to the underground garage and sliding into the back of his armored SUV. As he was nearing the outskirts of West Jerusalem his secure phone rang. It was Kaplan Street; the prime minister wanted a word. For ninety minutes, over a dinner of kung pao chicken and egg rolls, he held Gabriel captive, interrogating him on current operations and estimates. Iran was his primary obsession, with the new administration in Washington a close second. His relationship with the last American president had been disastrous. The new president had promised closer ties between Washington and Israel and was even threatening to formally relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that would likely ignite a firestorm of protest in the Arab and Islamic worlds. There were elements in the prime minister’s coalition who wanted to seize upon the favorable conditions by rapidly expanding Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Annexation was in the air. Gabriel was a voice of caution. As chief of the Office, he needed the help of Arab intelligence services in Amman and Cairo to protect Israel’s periphery. What’s more, he was making important inroads with the Saudis and the Sunni emirates of the Gulf, who feared the Persians more than Jews. The last thing he wanted now was a unilateral move on the Palestinian front.
