Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant

by Daniel Silva

“Just a moment. I’ll see if Mr. Quinnell can see you now.”

  The Sudanese disappeared through a set of tall double doors. A moment turned to two, then three. Gabriel wandered to the window and peered into the street. A waiter from the coffeehouse on the corner was presenting the Mukhabarat man with a glass of tea on a small silver tray. Gabriel heard the Sudanese behind him and turned round. “Mr. Quinnell will see you now.”

  The room into which Gabriel was shown had the air of a Roman parlor gone to seed. The wood floor was rough for want of polish; the crown molding was nearly invisible beneath a dense layer of dust and grit. Two of the four walls were given over to bookshelves lined with an impressive collection of works dealing with the history of the Middle East and Islam. The large wood desk was buried beneath piles of yellowed newspapers and unread post.

  The room was in shadow, except for a trapezoid of harsh sunlight, which slanted through the half-open French doors and shone upon a scuffed suede brogue belonging to one David Quinnell. He lowered one half of that morning’s Al-Ahram, the government-run Egyptian daily, and fixed Gabriel in a lugubrious stare. He wore a wrinkled shirt of white oxford cloth and a tan jacket with epaulettes. A lank forelock of gray-blond hair fell toward a pair of beady bloodshot eyes. He scratched a carelessly shaved chin and lowered the volume on his radio. Gabriel, even from a distance of several paces, could smell last night’s whiskey on his breath.

  “Any friend of Rudolf Heller is a friend of mine.” Quinnell’s dour expression did not match his jovial tone. Gabriel had the impression he was speaking for an audience of Mukhabarat listeners. “Herr Heller told me you might be calling. What can I do for you?”

  Gabriel placed a photograph on the cluttered desktop—the photo Mahmoud Arwish had given him in Hadera.

  “I’m here on holiday,” Gabriel said. “Herr Heller suggested I look you up. He said you could show me something of the real Cairo. He said you know more about Egypt than any man alive.”

  “How kind of Herr Heller. How is he these days?”

  “As ever,” said Gabriel.

  Quinnell, without moving anything but his eyes, looked down at the photograph.

  “I’m a bit busy at the moment, but I think I can be of help.” He picked up the photograph and folded it into his newspaper. “Let’s take a walk, shall we? It’s best to get out before they turn up the heat.”

  “Your office is under surveillance.”

  They were walking along a narrow, shadowed alleyway lined with shops and vendors. Quinnell paused to admire a bolt of blood-colored Egyptian cotton.

  “Sometimes,” he said indifferently, “all the hacks are under watch. When one has a security apparatus as large as the Egyptians’, it has to be used for something.”

  “Yes, but you’re no ordinary hack.”

  “True, but they don’t know that. To them, I’m just a bitter old English shit, trying to scratch a living from the printed word. We’ve managed to reach something of an accommodation. I’ve asked them to tidy up my flat when they finish searching it, and they’ve actually done a rather good job of it.”

  Quinnell released the cloth and struck out precariously down the alleyway. Gabriel, before setting off after him, glanced over his shoulder and glimpsed Members Only listlessly examining an Arabian copper coffeepot.

  Quinnell’s face, by the time Gabriel caught up with him, was already flushed with the late-morning heat. He’d been a star once, the roving correspondent for an important London daily, the sort of reporter who parachutes into the world’s hot spots and leaves before the story turns dull and the public begins to lose interest. Undone by too much drink and too many women, he’d come to Israel on assignment during the first intifada and had washed ashore on the Isle of Shamron. Over a private dinner in Tiberias, Shamron had probed and found weakness—a mountain of debt, a secret Jewish past concealed behind a sneering, drunken English exterior. By the time coffee was served on the terrace, Shamron had made his play. It would be a partnership, Shamron had promised, for Shamron regarded as his “partner” any man he could seduce or blackmail into doing his bidding. Quinnell would use his impressive array of Arab sources to provide Shamron with information and entrée. Occasionally he would print a piece of Shamron’s black propaganda. In return, Quinnell’s equally impressive debt would be quietly retired. He would also receive a few exclusive pieces of news designed to polish his fading reputation, and a publisher would be found for the book he’d always longed to write, though Shamron never revealed how he’d known Quinnell had a manuscript in his drawer. The marriage was consummated, and Quinnell, like Mahmoud Arwish, set himself on a path of betrayal for which the punishment was professional death. As public penance for his private sins, Quinnell had gone over completely to the Arab side. On Fleet Street he was referred to as the Voice of Palestine—apologist for the suicide bombers and Islamofascists. The Imperialist, oil-guzzling West and its bastard child Israel had reaped what it had sown, Quinnell often ranted. There will be no security in Piccadilly until there is justice in Palestine. He was Al-Jazeera’s favorite Western commentator and much in demand on the Cairo party circuit. Yasir Arafat once called him “a courageous man who dares to write the truth—the only man in the West who truly understands the Arab street.”

  “There’s a place in Zamalek you should try. It’s called Mimi’s. Good food, good music.” Quinnell paused and added provocatively: “An interesting crowd.”

  “Who’s Mimi?”

  “Mimi Ferrere. She’s something of a fixture on the Zamalek social scene. Came here nearly twenty years ago and never left. Everyone knows Mimi, and Mimi knows everyone.”

  “What brought her to Cairo?”

  “The Harmonic Convergence.”

  Quinnell, met by Gabriel’s blank look, explained.

  “A bloke named Jose Arguelles wrote a book some time ago called The Mayan Factor. He claimed to have found evidence in the Bible and Aztec and Mayan calendars indicating that August 1987 was a critical juncture in the history of mankind. The world could go one of two ways. It could enter a new age or be destroyed. To avoid destruction, 144,000 people had to gather at so-called power centers around the globe and resonate positive energy. Mimi came to the pyramids, along with several thousand other lost souls. She was quite a looker back then. Still is, if you ask me. She married a rich Egyptian and settled on Zamalek. The marriage lasted about a week and a half. When it fell apart, Mimi needed money, so she opened the café.”

  “Where is she from?”

  Quinnell shrugged his shoulders. “Mimi’s from everywhere. Mimi’s a citizen of the world.”

  “What’s the crowd like?”

  “Expats, mainly. A few smart tourists. Arabs with money who still like the West. There’s a fellow I see there from time to time. His name is Tony.”

  “Tony? You’re sure?”

  “That’s what he calls himself. Handsome devil.” Quinnell handed Gabriel the newspaper. “Don’t go too early. The place doesn’t start to get going until midnight. And watch your step around Mimi. She might be a New Age fruitcake, but she doesn’t miss a trick.”

  Mr. Katubi booked a table for Herr Johannes Klemp at Mimi’s Wine and Jazz Bar for ten o’clock that evening. At nine Gabriel came down from his room and, forsaking the taxi stand, set out across the Tahrir Bridge toward Gezira Island. Reaching the island, he turned right and headed north on the riverfront road, along the fringe of the old sporting club where British colonialists had played cricket and drunk gin while the empire collapsed around them.

  A string of luxury high-rise apartment buildings appeared on his left, the first evidence he had entered the most sought-after address in Cairo. Foreigners lived here; so did wealthy Egyptians who took their cues not from Islam but from the trendsetters of New York and London. It was relatively clean in Zamalek, and the incessant noise of Cairo was just a discontented grumble from the other bank of the river. One could sip cappuccinos in the coffee bars and speak French in the exclusive boutiques. It was a
n oasis, a place where the rich could pretend they were not surrounded by a sea of unimaginable poverty.

  Mimi’s occupied the ground floor of an old house just off July 26th Street. The art deco neon sign was in English, as was the entirely vegetarian menu, which was displayed under glass and framed in hand-painted wood. Next to the menu hung a large poster with a photograph of the evening’s featured entertainment, five young men with silk scarves and much jewelry. It was the sort of place Gabriel would normally enter only at gunpoint. Herr Klemp squared his shoulders and went inside.

  He was greeted by a dark-skinned woman dressed in orange satin pajamas and a matching head wrap. She spoke to him in English, and he responded in kind. Hearing the name “Johannes Klemp,” she smiled warily, as though she had been forewarned by Mr. Katubi to expect the worst, and led him to a table near the band-stand. It was a low, Arabesque piece, surrounded by brightly colored, overstuffed lounge chairs. Gabriel had the distinct impression he would not be spending the evening alone. His fears were realized twenty minutes later when he was joined by three Arabs. They ordered champagne and ignored the morose-looking German with whom they were sharing a table.

  It was a pleasant room, long and oval-shaped, with rough whitewashed plaster walls and swaths of silk hanging from the high ceiling. The air smelled of Eastern spice and sandalwood incense and vaguely of hashish. Along the edge of the room, and barely visible in the subdued light, were several domed alcoves, where patrons could eat and drink in relative privacy. Gabriel picked at a plate of Arab appetizers and looked in vain for anyone resembling the man in the photograph.

  True to Quinnell’s word, the music didn’t start till eleven. The first act was a Peruvian who wore a sarong and played Incan-influenced New Age pieces on a nylon-stringed guitar. Between numbers he told fables of the high Andes in nearly impenetrable English. At midnight came the featured entertainers of the evening, a group of Moroccans who played atonal Arab jazz in keys and rhythms no Western ear could comprehend. The three Arabs paid no attention to the music and spent the evening in liquor-lubricated conversation. Herr Klemp smiled and applauded in appreciation of admirable solos, yet Gabriel heard none of it, for all his attention was focused on the woman holding court at the end of the bar.

  She was quite a looker back then, Quinnell had said. Still is, if you ask me.

  She wore white Capri pants and a satin blouse of pale blue tied at her slender waist. Viewed from behind, she might have been mistaken for a girl in her twenties. Only when she turned, revealing the wrinkles around her eyes and the streak of gray in her dark hair, did one realize she was a middle-aged woman. She wore bangles on her wrists and a large silver pendant around her long neck. Her skin was olive-complected and her eyes nearly black. She greeted everyone in the same manner, with a kiss on each cheek and a whispered confidence. Gabriel had seen many versions of her before, the woman who moves from villa to villa and party to party, who stays permanently tanned and permanently thin and cannot be bothered with a husband or children. Gabriel wondered what on earth she was doing in Cairo.

  The Moroccan quintet took a break and threatened to return in ten minutes. The houselights came up slightly, as did the volume of the conversation. The woman detached herself from the bar and began working the room, moving effortlessly from table to table, alcove to alcove, as a butterfly floats from one flower to the next. Old acquaintances she greeted with kisses and a whisper. New friends were treated to a long handshake. She spoke to them in Arabic and English, in Italian and French, in Spanish and respectable German. She accepted compliments like a woman used to receiving them and left no turbulence in her wake. For the men, she was an object of cautious desire; for the women, admiration.

  She arrived at the table of Herr Klemp as the band was filing back onto the stage for a second set. He stood and, bowing slightly at the waist, accepted her proffered hand. Her grip was firm, her skin cool and dry. Releasing his hand, she pushed a stray lock of hair from her face and regarded him playfully with her brown eyes. Had he not seen her give the same look to every other man in the room, he might have assumed she was flirting with him.

  “I’m so glad you could join us this evening.” She spoke to him in English and in the confiding tone of a hostess who had thrown a small dinner party. “I hope you’re enjoying the music. Aren’t they wonderful? I’m Mimi, by the way.”

  And with that she was gone. Gabriel turned his gaze toward the stage, but in his mind he was back in Natan Hofi’s underground lair, listening to the recordings of the mysterious woman with a friend named Tony.

  I’m Mimi, by the way.

  No, you’re not, thought Gabriel. You’re Madeleine. And Alexandra. And Lunetta. You’re the Little Moon.

  Next morning Mr. Katubi was standing at his post in the lobby when the telephone purred. He glanced at the caller ID and exhaled heavily. Then he lifted the receiver slowly, a sapper defusing a bomb, and brought it to his ear.

  “Good morning, Herr Klemp.”

  “It is indeed, Mr. Katubi.”

  “Do you require assistance with your bags?”

  “No assistance required, Katubi. Change in plans. I’ve decided to extend my stay. I’m enchanted by this place.”

  “How fortunate for us,” Mr. Katubi said icily. “For how many additional nights will you require your room?”

  “To be determined, Katubi. Stay tuned for further updates.”

  “Staying tuned, Herr Klemp.”

  14

  CAIRO

  “I never signed up for anything like this,” Quinnell said gloomily. It was after midnight; they were in Quinnell’s tired little Fiat. Across the Nile, central Cairo stirred restlessly, but Zamalek at that hour was quiet. It had taken two hours to get there. Gabriel was certain no one had followed them.

  “You’re sure about the flat number?”

  “I’ve been inside,” Quinnell said. “Not in the capacity I’d hoped, mind you, just one of Mimi’s parties. She lives in flat 6A. Everyone knows Mimi’s address.”

  “You’re sure she doesn’t have a dog?”

  “Just an angora cat with a weight problem. I’m sure a man who claims to be a friend of the great Herr Heller will have no problem dealing with an obese cat. I, on the other hand, have to contend with the seven-foot Nubian doorman. How did that happen?”

  “You’re one of the world’s finest journalists, Quinnell. Surely you can deceive a doorman.”

  “True, but this isn’t exactly journalism.”

  “Think of it as an English schoolboy prank. Tell him the car’s died. Tell him you need help. Give him money. Five minutes, and not a minute longer. Understood?”

  Quinnell nodded.

  “And if your friend from the Mukhabarat shows up?” Gabriel asked. “What’s the signal?”

  “Two short horn blasts, followed by a long one.”

  Gabriel climbed out of the car, crossed the street, and descended a flight of stone steps leading to a quay along the waterfront. He paused for a moment to watch the graceful, angular sail of a felucca gliding slowly upriver. Then he turned and walked south, Herr Klemp’s smart leather satchel hanging from his right shoulder. After a few paces the upper floors of Mimi’s apartment house came into view above the rise—an old Zamalek building, whitewashed, with large terraces overlooking the river.

  A hundred yards beyond the building another flight of steps rose toward the street. Gabriel, before mounting them, looked down the river to see if he had been followed but found the quay deserted. He climbed the steps and crossed the street, then made his way to the entrance of a darkened alleyway that ran along the back of the apartment houses. Had it been his first time there, he might not have found his destination, but he had walked the alley in daylight and knew with certainty that one hundred and thirty normal paces would bring him to the service entrance of Mimi Ferrere’s building.

  Painted on the dented metal door, in Arabic script, were the words DO NOT ENTER. Gabriel glanced at his wristwatch. The walk from the c
ar, as expected, had taken four minutes and thirty seconds. He tried the latch and found that it was locked, as it had been earlier that day. He removed the pair of thin metal tools from the side pocket of the satchel and crouched so that the latch was at eye level. Within fifteen seconds the lock had surrendered.

  He eased open the door and looked inside. A short, cement-floored corridor stretched before him. At the other end was a half-open door, which gave onto the lobby. Gabriel stole forward and concealed himself behind the second door. From the other side he could hear the voice of David Quinnell, offering the Nubian doorman twenty pounds to push his disabled car from the street. When the conversation fell silent, Gabriel peered around the edge of the door, just in time to see the robes of the Nubian flowing into the darkness.

  He entered the lobby and paused at the mailboxes. The box for apartment 6A bore the label: M. FERRERE. He mounted the staircase and climbed up to the sixth floor. The door was flanked by a pair of potted palms. Gabriel pressed his ear to the wood and heard no sound from within. From his pocket he removed a device disguised as an electric razor and ran it around the edge of the door. A small light glowed green, which meant the device had detected no evidence of an electronic security system.

  Gabriel slipped the apparatus back into his pocket and inserted his old-fashioned lockpick into the keyhole. Just as he began to work, he heard female voices filtering up the stairwell from below. He proceeded calmly, his fingertips registering subtle changes in tension and torque, while another part of his mind turned over the possibilities. The building had eleven floors. The chances were slightly better than even that the women on the stairs were heading for the sixth floor or higher. He had two options: abandon his work for the moment and head down the stairs toward the lobby, or seek refuge on an upper floor. Both plans had potential pitfalls. The women might find the presence of a strange foreigner in the building suspicious, and if they happened to live on the top floor, he might find himself trapped with no route of escape.