The Black Widow

by Daniel Silva

  “She’s twenty-nine years old and was born in France,” Bouchard was saying. “Even so, she’s always described herself as a Muslim first and a Frenchwoman second.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Lucien.”

  Lucien Jacquard was the chief of the DGSI’s counterterrorism division. Nominally, Alpha Group was under his control. In practice, however, Rousseau reported over Jacquard’s head to the chief. To avoid potential conflicts, he briefed Jacquard on active Alpha Group cases but jealously guarded the names of his sources and the unit’s operational methods. Alpha Group was essentially a service within a service, one that Lucien Jacquard wished to bring firmly under his control.

  “How much does he have on her?” asked Rousseau, still staring into the eyes of the woman.

  “She popped up on Lucien’s radar about three years ago.”

  “Why?”

  “Her boyfriend.”

  Bouchard placed another photograph on the desk. It showed a man in his early thirties with cropped dark hair and the wispy beard of a devout Muslim.

  “Algerian?”

  “Tunisian, actually. He was the real thing. Good with electronics. Computers, too. He spent time in Iraq and Yemen before making his way to Syria.”

  “Al-Qaeda?”

  “No,” said Bouchard. “ISIS.”

  Rousseau looked up sharply. “Where is he now?”

  “Paradise, apparently.”

  “What happened?”

  “Killed in a coalition air strike.”

  “And the woman?”

  “She traveled to Syria last year.”

  “How long was she there?”

  “At least six months.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Obviously, she did a bit of weapons training.”

  “And when she returned to Paris?”

  “Lucien put her under surveillance. And then . . .” Bouchard shrugged.

  “He dropped it?”

  Bouchard nodded.

  “Why?”

  “The usual reasons. Too many targets, too few resources.”

  “She was a ticking time bomb.”

  “Lucien didn’t think so. Apparently, she cleaned up her act when she came back to France. She wasn’t associating with known radicals, and her Internet activity was benign. She even stopped wearing the hijab.”

  “Which is exactly what she was told to do by the man who masterminded the attack. She was obviously part of a sophisticated network.”

  “Lucien concurs. In fact, he advised the minister that it’s only a matter of time before they hit us again.”

  “How did the minister take the news?”

  “By ordering Lucien to turn over all his files to us.”

  Rousseau permitted himself a brief smile at the expense of his rival. “I want everything, Christian. Especially the watch reports after her return from Syria.”

  “Lucien promised to send the files over first thing in the morning.”

  “How good of him.” Rousseau looked down at the photograph of the woman they were calling “la veuve noire”—the black widow. “Where do you suppose she is?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say she’s back in Syria by now, along with her accomplice.”

  “One wonders why they didn’t wish to die for the cause.” Rousseau gathered up the three photographs and returned them to his deputy. “Any other news?”

  “An interesting development regarding the Weinberg woman. It seems her art collection included a lost painting by Vincent van Gogh.”

  “Really?”

  “And guess who she decided to leave it to.”

  By his expression, Rousseau made it clear he was in no mood for games, so Bouchard quickly supplied the name.

  “I thought he was dead.”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Why didn’t he attend the funeral?”

  “Who’s to say he didn’t?”

  “Have we told him about the painting?”

  “The ministry would prefer that it remain in France.”

  “So the answer is no?”

  Bouchard was silent.

  “Someone should remind the ministry that four of the victims of the Weinberg Center bombing were citizens of the State of Israel.”

  “Your point?”

  “I suspect we’ll be hearing from him soon.”

  Bouchard withdrew, leaving Rousseau alone. He dimmed his desk lamp and pressed the play button on his bookshelf stereo system, and in a moment the opening notes of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in E Minor crept into the silence. Traffic moved along the rue de Grenelle, and to the east, rising above the Seine embankments, glowed the lights of the Eiffel Tower. Rousseau saw none of it; in his thoughts he was watching a young man moving swiftly across a courtyard with a gun in his outstretched hand. He was a legend, this man, a gifted deceiver and assassin who had been fighting terrorists longer than even Rousseau. It would be an honor to work with him rather than against him. Soon, Rousseau thought with certainty. Soon . . .

  3

  BEIRUT

  THOUGH PAUL ROUSSEAU DID NOT know it then, the seeds for just such an operational union had already been sown. For on that very same evening, as Rousseau was walking toward his sad little bachelor’s apartment on the rue Saint-Jacques, a car was speeding along Beirut’s seafront Corniche. The car was black in color, German in manufacture, and imposing in size. The man in back was long and lanky, with pale, bloodless skin and eyes the color of glacial ice. His expression projected a sense of profound boredom, but the fingers of his right hand, which were tapping lightly on the armrest, betrayed the true state of his emotions. He wore a pair of slim-fitting jeans, a dark woolen pullover, and a leather jacket. Beneath the jacket, wedged inside the waistband of the trousers, was a 9mm Belgian-made pistol he had collected from a contact at the airport—there being no shortage of weapons, large or small, in Lebanon. In his breast pocket was a billfold filled with cash, along with a well-traveled Canadian passport that identified him as David Rostov. Like most things about the man, the passport was a lie. His real name was Mikhail Abramov, and he was employed by the secret intelligence service of the State of Israel. The service had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Men such as Mikhail referred to it as the Office and nothing else.

  He looked into the rearview mirror and waited for the eyes of the driver to meet his. The driver’s name was Sami Haddad. He was a Maronite, a former member of the Lebanese Forces Christian militia, and a longtime contract employee of the Office. He had the gentle forgiving eyes of a priest and the swollen hands of a prizefighter. He was old enough to remember when Beirut was the Paris of the Middle East—and old enough to have fought in the long civil war that had torn the country to pieces. There was nothing Sami Haddad didn’t know about Lebanon and its dangerous politics, and nothing he couldn’t lay his hands on in a hurry—weapons, boats, cars, drugs, girls. He had once procured a mountain lion on short notice because the target of an Office recruitment, an alcoholic prince from a Gulf Arab dynasty, admired predatory cats. His loyalty to the Office was beyond question. So were his instincts for trouble.

  “Relax,” said Sami Haddad, finding Mikhail’s eyes in the mirror. “We’re not being followed.”

  Mikhail peered over his shoulder at the lights of the traffic following them along the Corniche. Any one of the cars might have contained a team of killers or kidnappers from Hezbollah or one of the extreme jihadist organizations that had taken root in the Palestinian refugee camps of the south—organizations that made al-Qaeda seem like dowdy old Islamic moderates. It was his third visit to Beirut in the past year. Each time, he had entered the country with the same passport, protected by the same cover story. He was David Rostov, an itinerant businessman of Russian-Canadian descent who acquired illicit antiquities in the Middle East for a largely European clientele. Beirut was one of his favorite hunting grounds, for in Beirut anything was possible. He had once
been offered a seven-foot Roman statue, remarkably intact, of a wounded Amazon. The cost of the piece was $2 million, shipping included. Over endless cups of sweet Turkish coffee, he convinced the seller, a prominent dealer from a well-known family, to drop his price by half a million. And then he walked away, earning for himself the reputation of both a shrewd negotiator and a tough customer, which was a good reputation to have in a place like Beirut.

  He checked the time on his Samsung mobile. Sami Haddad noticed. Sami noticed everything.

  “What time is he expecting you?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “Late.”

  “Money never sleeps, Sami.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Shall we go straight to the hotel, or do you want to take a drive first?”

  “Your call.”

  “Let’s go to the hotel.”

  “Let’s take a drive.”

  “No problem.”

  Sami Haddad turned off the Corniche into a street lined with colonial French buildings. Mikhail knew it well. Twelve years earlier, while serving in the Sayeret Matkal special forces, he had killed a terrorist from Hezbollah as he lay sleeping in the bed of a safe house. To be a member of such an elite unit was the dream of every Israeli boy, and it was a particularly noteworthy achievement for a boy from Moscow. A boy who had to fight every day of his life because his ancestors happened to be Jewish. A boy whose father, an important Soviet academic, had been locked away in a psychiatric hospital because he dared to question the wisdom of the Party. The boy had arrived in Israel at the age of sixteen. He had learned to speak Hebrew in a month and within a year had lost all traces of a Russian accent. He was like the millions who had come before him, the early Zionist pioneers who had fled to Palestine to escape the persecution and pogroms of Eastern Europe, the human wrecks who came spilling out of the death camps after the war. He had shed the baggage and the weakness of his past. He was a new person, a new Jew. He was an Israeli.

  “We’re still clean,” said Sami Haddad.

  “Then what are you waiting for?” replied Mikhail.

  Sami wound his way back to the Corniche and headed to the marina. Rising above it were the twin glass-and-steel towers of the Four Seasons Hotel. Sami guided the car into the drive and looked into the mirror for instructions.

  “Call me when he arrives,” said Mikhail. “Let me know whether he has a friend.”

  “He never goes anywhere without a friend.”

  Mikhail collected his briefcase and overnight bag from the opposite seat and opened the door.

  “Be careful in there,” said Sami Haddad. “Don’t talk to strangers.”

  Mikhail climbed out and, whistling tunelessly, breezed past the valets into the lobby. A dark-suited security man eyed him warily but allowed him to enter without a search. He crossed a thick carpet that swallowed his footfalls and presented himself at the imposing reception desk. Standing behind it, illuminated by a cone of overhead light, was a pretty black-haired woman of twenty-five. Mikhail knew that the woman was a Palestinian and that her father, a fighter from the old days, had fled Lebanon with Arafat in 1982, long before she was born. Several other employees of the hotel also had troubling connections. Two members of Hezbollah worked in the kitchen, and there were several known jihadis in housekeeping. Mikhail reckoned that approximately ten percent of the staff would have killed him if informed of his true identity and occupation.

  He smiled at the woman, and the woman smiled coolly in return.

  “Good evening, Mr. Rostov. So good to see you again.” Her painted nails clattered on a keyboard while Mikhail grew lightheaded from the stench of overripe azaleas. “We have you for just one night.”

  “A pity,” said Mikhail with another smile.

  “Do you require assistance with your luggage?”

  “I can manage.”

  “We’ve upgraded you to a deluxe sea-view room. It’s on the fourteenth floor.” She handed him his packet of room keys and gestured toward the elevators like a flight attendant pointing out the location of the emergency exits. “Welcome back.”

  Mikhail carried his bag and briefcase into the elevator foyer. An empty carriage waited, its doors open. He stepped inside and, grateful for the solitude, pressed the call button for the fourteenth floor. But as the doors were closing, a hand poked through the breach and a man entered. He was thickset, with a heavy ridge over his brow and a jawbone built to take a punch. His eyes met Mikhail’s briefly in the reflection of the doors. A nod was exchanged, but no words passed between them. The man pressed the button for the twentieth floor, almost as an afterthought, and picked at his thumbnail as the carriage rose. Mikhail pretended to check his e-mail on his mobile and while doing so surreptitiously snapped the blunt-headed man’s photograph. He forwarded the photo to King Saul Boulevard, the location of the Office’s anonymous Tel Aviv headquarters, while walking along the corridor to his room. A glance around the door frame revealed no evidence of tampering. He swiped his card key and, bracing himself for attack, entered.

  The sound of Vivaldi greeted him—a favorite of arms smugglers, heroin dealers, and terrorists the world over, he thought as he switched off the radio. The bed had already been turned down, a chocolate lay on the pillow. He went to the window and saw the roof of Sami Haddad’s car parked along the Corniche. Beyond was the marina, and beyond the marina the blackness of the Mediterranean. Somewhere out there was his back door. He was no longer allowed to come to Beirut without an offshore escape hatch. The next chief had plans for him—or so he had heard through the Office grapevine. For a secure institution, it was a notoriously gossipy place.

  Just then, Mikhail’s mobile blossomed with light. It was a message from King Saul Boulevard stating that the computers could not identify the man who had joined him in the elevator. It advised him to proceed with caution, whatever that meant. He drew the blackout shade and the curtains and switched off the room lights one by one until the darkness was absolute. Then he sat at the foot of the bed, his gaze focused on the thin strip of light at the bottom of the door, and waited for the phone to ring.

  It was not unusual for the source to be late. He was, as he reminded Mikhail at every opportunity, a very busy man. Therefore, it was no surprise that ten o’clock came and went with no call from Sami Haddad. Finally, at quarter past, the mobile flared.

  “He’s entering the lobby. He has two friends, both armed.”

  Mikhail killed the call and remained seated for an additional ten minutes. Then, gun in hand, he moved to the entrance hall and placed his ear against the door. Hearing nothing outside, he returned the gun to the small of his back and stepped into the corridor, which was deserted except for a single male member of the housekeeping staff. Upstairs, the roof bar was the usual scene—rich Lebanese, Emiratis in their flowing white kanduras, Chinese businessmen flushed with drink, drug dealers, whores, gamblers, adventure seekers, fools. The sea wind toyed with the hair of the women and made wavelets in the pool. The throbbing music, spun by a professional DJ, was a sonic crime against humanity.

  Mikhail made his way to the farthest corner of the rooftop, where Clovis Mansour, scion of the Mansour antiquities-dealing dynasty, sat alone on a white couch facing the Mediterranean. He was posed as if for a magazine shoot, with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigarette smoldering in the other. He wore a dark Italian suit and a white open-neck shirt that was handmade for him by his man in London. His gold wristwatch was the size of a sundial. His cologne hung around him like a cloak.

  “You’re late, habibi,” he said as Mikhail lowered himself onto the couch opposite. “I was about to leave.”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  Mikhail surveyed the interior of the bar. Mansour’s two bodyguards were picking at a bowl of pistachios at an adjacent table. The man from the elevator was leaning against the balustrade. He was pretending to admire the view of the sea while holding a mobile phone to his ear.

  “Know him?” asked Mikhail.r />
  “Never seen him before. Drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s better if you drink.”

  Mansour flagged down a passing waiter and ordered a second glass of champagne. Mikhail drew a buff-colored envelope from his coat pocket and placed it on the low table.

  “What’s that?” asked Mansour.

  “A token of our esteem.”

  “Money?”

  Mikhail nodded.

  “I don’t work for you because I need the money, habibi. After all, I have plenty of money. I work for you because I want to stay in business.”

  “My superiors prefer it if money changes hands.”

  “Your superiors are cheap blackmailers.”

  “I’d look inside the envelope before calling them cheap.”

  Mansour did. He raised an eyebrow and slipped the envelope into the breast pocket of his suit jacket.

  “What have you got for me, Clovis?”

  “Paris,” said the antiquities dealer.

  “What about Paris?”

  “I know who did it.”

  “How?”

  “I can’t say for certain,” said Mansour, “but it’s possible I helped him pay for it.”

  4

  BEIRUT—TEL AVIV

  IT WAS HALF PAST TWO in the morning by the time Mikhail finally returned to his room. He saw no evidence to suggest it had been disturbed in his absence; even the little foiled chocolate lay at precisely the same angle atop his pillow. After sniffing it for traces of arsenic, he nibbled at a corner thoughtfully. Then, in an uncharacteristic fit of nerves, he hauled every piece of furniture that wasn’t bolted down into the entrance hall and piled it against the door. His barricade complete, he opened the curtains and the blackout shade and searched for his bolt-hole among the shipping lights in the Mediterranean. Instantly, he reproached himself for entertaining such a thought. The escape hatch was to be utilized only in cases of extreme emergency. Possession of a piece of intelligence did not fall into that category, even if the piece of intelligence had the potential to prevent another catastrophe like Paris.