by Daniel Silva
The two men worked their way backward in time until they arrived at the Augustus Rolfe affair, Gabriel’s first foray into the deplorable conduct of the Swiss banks during the Second World War. He was careful to say nothing incriminatory, and even more careful not to betray Office sources or tradecraft. When pushed by Bittel to reveal more, he gently pushed back. And when threatened, he issued threats of his own. He offered no apology for his actions and sought no absolution. His was a confession without guilt or atonement. It was a business transaction, nothing more.
“Have I left anything out?” asked Bittel.
“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?”
Bittel closed the notebook and summoned a warder to take Gabriel back to his cell. A proper Swiss breakfast was waiting, along with a toiletry kit and a change of clothing. He ate while watching the morning news. Once again, there was no mention of his detainment. In fact, the only news from St. Moritz had to do with an important World Cup ski race.
After breakfast, he was escorted to the showers and told he had one hour to bathe and dress. Bittel was waiting when he returned to his cell. He had two aluminum attaché cases of Swiss manufacture. In one was the material Gabriel had requested. In the other were the fragments of the broken hydria. “If you prefer,” Bittel offered, “we can tell the French police we found it in an airport locker.”
“Thanks,” Gabriel said, “but I’ll take care of it.”
“Sooner rather than later,” Bittel admonished. “Let’s go. Your ride is here.”
They headed upstairs to the main lobby of the building. Outside a Mercedes sedan waited in the drive, its tailpipes gently smoking. Bittel shook Gabriel’s hand warmly, as if they had spent the night watching old movies together. Then Gabriel turned and ducked into the back of the car. Seated opposite, a mobile phone pressed to his ear, was Uzi Navot. He looked at the bandages on Gabriel’s face and frowned.
“Looks like they gave you a good going-over.”
“It was worth it.”
“What did you get?”
“A suitcase full of help from my new best friends in the DAP.”
“Good,” Navot said. “Because at this moment, we need all the help we can get.”
26
BERN, SWITZERLAND
GABRIEL AND NAVOT ASSUMED the Swiss had planted transmitters in both attaché cases, so they said nothing more until they were safely inside the Israeli Embassy. It was located in a brooding old house in the diplomatic quarter, on a narrow street that was closed to normal civilian traffic. In anticipation of their arrival, the staff had filled the secure communications room with finger sandwiches and Swiss chocolates. Navot swore softly to himself as he lowered his thick frame into a chair.
“When Shamron was running the Office, the local station chiefs always made certain to have a few packs of his Turkish cigarettes on hand. But whenever I arrive, they put out a platter of food. Sometimes I get the distinct impression I’m being fattened up for slaughter.”
“You’re the most popular chief since Shamron, Uzi. The troops adore you. More important, they respect you. And so does the prime minister.”
“But all that could change in the blink of an eye if I don’t get Iran right,” Navot said. “Thanks to you, we were able to slow them down for a while, but sabotage and assassinations won’t work forever. At some point in the near future, the Iranians will cross a red line, beyond which it will be impossible to stop them from becoming a nuclear power. I’m supposed to tell the prime minister when that’s about to happen. And if I’m wrong by so much as a few days, we’ll have no choice but to live under the threat of an Iranian bomb.” Navot looked at Gabriel seriously. “How would you like to have that hanging over your head?”
“I wouldn’t. That’s why I told Shamron to make you the chief instead of me.”
“Any chance you might reconsider?”
“I’m afraid I’d be a letdown after you, Uzi.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Navot pushed the tray of food toward Gabriel. “Eat something. You must be starving after everything you went through.”
“Actually, they took good care of me.”
“What did they feed you?”
Gabriel told him.
“Was it any good?”
“The raclette was delicious.”
“I’ve always loved raclette.”
“It’s potatoes smothered in cheese. What’s not to love?”
Navot plucked an egg and watercress sandwich from the tray and popped it into his mouth. “I’m sorry about having to leave you behind in St. Moritz, but I figured it would be easier to get one agent out of Swiss custody than nine. Thankfully, we had some help.”
“Who?”
“Your friends at the Vatican.”
“Donati?”
“Higher up.”
“Please don’t tell me you got His Holiness involved in this.”
“I’m afraid he involved himself,” Navot said.
“How?”
“He had Alois Metzler of the Swiss Guard place a few discreet calls to Bern. Once Metzler got involved, it was only a matter of time before they let you out. The Office was able to stay entirely on the sidelines.”
“I had to pay a toll to get out.”
“How heavy?”
Gabriel told him about the debriefing.
“Was any of what you said actually true?”
“A little.”
“Good boy.” Another sandwich disappeared into Navot’s mouth.
“I don’t suppose you’ve managed to identify the two people who arrived at the gallery before me.”
“Of course we have,” Navot said, brushing the crumbs from his fingertips. “The girl is a fresh-faced newcomer, but her boyfriend is well known to us. His name is Ali Montazeri.”
“Iranian?”
Navot nodded. “Ali is a proud alumnus of the Qods Force. He’s now employed by VEVAK as a hired gun and assassin. He’s responsible for the murder of dozens of Iranian dissidents in Europe and the Middle East. In fact, he actually tried to kill me once when I was working out of Paris.”
“Why would the Iranians send one of their best assassins to Switzerland to kill a Hezbollah operative?”
“Good question.” Navot was silent for a moment. “While you were eating veal and raclette in your Swiss jail cell, the Office was overwhelmed with a new wave of intelligence suggesting Hezbollah is about to hit us. We’re talking about something big, Gabriel.”
“How big?”
“Nine-eleven big,” said Navot. “Big enough to start a war. And based on what we’re seeing in southern Lebanon, it looks like Hezbollah is preparing for one. They’re deploying their battle-hardened fighters close to our border. Their missiles are on the move, too.”
“Do we know anything more about potential targets?”
“All the chatter still points to Europe, which is why the timing of David Girard’s death is so interesting. Dina has a funny feeling there might be a connection.”
“I get nervous when Dina has a funny feeling.”
“So do I.”
“How certain are you that the man who planted that bomb was Ali Montazeri?”
“One hundred percent.”
“I suppose we should probably tell our new friends the Swiss about this.”
“It would be the honorable thing to do,” Navot said. “But for the moment, I’d rather borrow a page from the Iranian playbook.”
“Which one?”
“Khod’eh.”
“Tricking one’s enemies into a misjudgment of one’s true position?”
“Correct.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“First we deceive the Iranians into thinking they got away with one in St. Moritz. Then we take that load of material the Swiss gave us back to King Saul Boulevard and put it in Dina’s hands.”
“There’s something else we should do,” said Gabriel.
“What’s that?”
&nb
sp; “Find someone to put that Greek vase back together.”
“Can’t you do it?”
“Apples and oranges.”
Navot looked down at the plate of sandwiches. “You sure you’re not hungry? They’re really quite good.”
“You go ahead, Uzi.”
“Maybe we should wrap them up for the ride home. The food on El Al isn’t what it used to be.”
They made the 12:45 flight out of Zurich’s Kloten Airport, and by half past five they were touching down at Ben Gurion. Navot’s armored Peugeot limousine was waiting on the tarmac, surrounded by twice the usual number of bodyguards. Leaning against the hood, her blue-jeaned legs crossed at the ankles, her arms folded beneath her breasts, was Chiara. She held Gabriel silently for a long time, her tearstained face buried against the side of his neck. Then she kissed his lips and gently touched the bandages on his cheeks.
“You look terrible.”
“Actually, I feel much worse.”
“I’d tell you to go home and get a few hours of sleep, but I’m afraid there isn’t time for that.”
“What’s wrong?”
She handed a slip of paper to Navot. He read it by the glow of the limousine’s headlamps.
“Hezbollah’s military commander is telling his forces to prepare for a massive Israeli retaliation within the next two weeks.” Navot squeezed the message into a ball. “That means it’s for real. They’re going to hit us, Gabriel. Very hard. And very soon.”
As it happened, Gabriel’s interrogator from the Swiss security service was true to his word, and then some. Eli Lavon likened the treasure trove of intelligence to the discovery of a hill town from a previously unknown civilization. What made it all the more remarkable, he said, was that it had been supplied by a service that had always been profoundly hostile to Israel’s interests, even its very existence. “Perhaps we’re not alone after all,” he told the team over dinner that night. “If the Swiss can open their doors to us in our hour of need, anything is possible.”
It seemed that David Girard, aka Daoud Ghandour, had popped up on the DAP’s internal radar not long after he was granted the bright red Swiss passport that allowed him to enter and leave the countries of the Middle East at will. Included in the material was the original memo from the chief of Onyx, Switzerland’s sophisticated electronic eavesdropping service, raising concerns about the phone and e-mail traffic of the Galleria Naxos, not to mention its financial transactions. The DAP was good enough to include the attached report, along with all subsequent updates from Onyx. When added to the intelligence already in the team’s possession, the material provided incontrovertible proof that Galleria Naxos had been little more than a fund-raising front for Hezbollah. Just as clear, however, was the link between the gallery and Carlo Marchese. The team was able to trace no fewer than fifty wire transfers that had flowed from David Girard, through the Lebanon Byzantine Bank, and eventually to accounts controlled by Carlo at the Vatican Bank. Here was the cordata that Gabriel had been looking for—the rope linking Carlo to the terrorists of Hezbollah. The Swiss had the proof all along. They simply didn’t possess the key to unlock the code.
For the moment, however, Carlo was of secondary concern to the team, because with each passing day it became evident that David Girard had been involved in more than just fund-raising. There was the phone call he made, six months earlier, to a number in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon that the Office had linked to a local Hezbollah chieftain. And the one he made, two weeks after that, to a number in Cairo linked to one of the numerous Hezbollah cells that had taken root in chaotic postrevolutionary Egypt. And the two hundred thousand dollars he paid to a dealer of Thai antiquities in Bangkok, a hotbed of Hezbollah activity in Southeast Asia.
“If I had to guess,” said Dina, “the late David Girard was a postman. He was using his job in the antiquities biz as cover to deliver secret mail to Hezbollah cells scattered around the world.”
“So why would the Iranians want him dead?”
“Maybe the mail he was carrying had something to do with the attack that’s coming. Or maybe . . .”
“What, Dina?”
“Maybe it had a Tehran postmark.”
In the end, it was not Swiss high technology that would provide the answer, but a good old-fashioned surveillance photograph. Snapped with a concealed camera, it showed David Girard riding a streetcar in Zurich, apparently alone. For three days, it hung on a cluttered wall in Room 456C, more for decoration than anything else, until Dina passed by it on her way to the file rooms and froze suddenly in her tracks. Ripping the photo from the wall, she stared not at Girard but at the lightly bearded figure seated next to him. The man’s head was turned away from Girard, as were his powerfully built shoulders, and the sun streaming through the streetcar’s windows appeared to set fire to the crystal of the heavy dive watch he was wearing on his right wrist. As a result, it drew Dina’s eyes to the back of his hand, and it was then she noticed the bandage. “It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s none other than the devil himself.”
They compared the photograph of the man on the Zurich streetcar to every known image they had of him in the library, but the computers said there was insufficient data to make a positive identification. Dina lifted her delicate chin resolutely and declared the computers mistaken. It was him; she was certain of it. She would stake her career on it. “Besides,” she added, “don’t look at the face. Look at the hand.” The hand that had been pierced by an Israeli round in Lebanon when he was helping to turn a ragtag bunch of Shiites into the world’s most formidable terrorist force. The hand that was drenched in blood. It was Massoud, she said. Massoud, the lucky one.
And so Gabriel marched her upstairs and allowed her to state her case directly to Uzi Navot. Her words drained the color from his face and caused his eyes to move involuntarily toward the latest stack of intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent. At the conclusion of the briefing, Navot asked for recommendations, and Gabriel gave him only one. There were obvious risks, he said, but they far outweighed the risks of doing nothing.
Navot hurried up the hill to Jerusalem to seek the approval of the prime minister, and within an hour he had his operational charter. All that remained was the obligatory courtesy call on the Americans, a job he happily assigned to Gabriel. “Whatever you do,” he said during the drive to Ben Gurion, “don’t ask for their permission. Just find out whether there are any landmines that are going to blow up in our face. This is not some faction of the PLO we are talking about. This is the fucking Persian Empire.”
27
HERNDON, VIRGINIA
IT HAD BEEN FARMLAND ONCE, but long ago it had been swallowed up by metropolitan Washington’s seemingly unstoppable westward expansion. Now the only things that grew there were large tract homes of shrinking value and wholesome-looking children who spent far too much time roaming the darkest corners of the Internet. The names of the meandering cul-de-sacs spoke of boundless American optimism—Sunnyside and Apple Blossom, Fairfield and Crest View—but they could not conceal the fact that America, Israel’s last friend in the world, had entered a state of decline.
The two-story brick home near the end of Stillwater Court differed from the adjacent residences only in that its windows were bulletproof. For many years, the neighbors had been led to believe that the man who lived there worked in one of the high-tech companies that lined the Dulles Corridor. Then came the promotion that required him to travel in an armored Escalade, and before long the neighbors realized they had a spy in their midst. But not just any spy; Adrian Carter was the chief of the National Clandestine Service, the CIA’s operational division. In fact, Carter had served in the post longer than any of his predecessors, a feat he attributed more to stubbornness than talent. But then, that was typical of Carter. One of the last Agency executives to come from New England Protestant stock, he believed vanity was a sin exceeded only by cheating at golf.
Despite the fact it was only March, a warm sun baked Gabriel�
��s neck as he crossed Carter’s broad lawn, a CIA minder at his side. Carter was waiting in the open doorway. He had the tousled, thinning hair of a university professor and a mustache that had gone out of fashion with disco music, Crock-Pots, and the nuclear freeze. His tan chinos were in need of a pressing. His cotton crewneck pullover was starting to fray at the elbow.
“Forgive me for dragging you to my home,” he said, shaking Gabriel’s hand, “but this is my first day off in a month, and I couldn’t face going to Langley or to one of our safe houses.”
“I’d be happy to never see the inside of another safe house again.”
“So why are you back?” Carter asked seriously. “And what the hell happened to your face?”
“I was standing too close to a Swiss antiquities gallery when a bomb exploded inside.”
“St. Moritz?”
Gabriel nodded.
“I knew this was going to be good.”
“You haven’t heard the best part yet.”
Carter smiled. “Come inside,” he said, closing the door behind them. “I sent my wife out for a long walk. And don’t worry. She took Molly with her.”
“Who’s Molly?”
“Woof, woof.”
A buffet lunch waited on the screened-in porch overlooking Carter’s green patch of the American dream. Gabriel dutifully filled his plate with cold cuts and pasta salad but left it untouched as he recounted the strange journey that had taken him from St. Peter’s Basilica to the home of America’s most senior spy. At the conclusion of the briefing, he handed over two photographs. The first showed Ali Montazeri and the El Greco girl departing the Galleria Naxos in St. Moritz. The second showed the gallery’s owner sitting in the carriage of a Zurich streetcar, apparently alone.
