by Daniel Silva
“We have evidence to suggest Khaled al-Khalifa was involved in the attack on our embassy in Rome.”
“Nonsense,” said Arafat dismissively.
“Since Khaled had nothing to do with Rome, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind telling us where we can find him.”
“As I said before, I don’t know where Khaled is.”
“What’s his name?”
A guarded smile. “I went to extraordinary lengths to protect the boy from you and your vengeful service. What on earth makes you think I would tell you his name now? Do you really believe that I would play the role of Judas Iscariot and hand over my son to you for trial and execution?” Arafat shook his head slowly. “We have many traitors in our midst, many who work right here in the Mukata, but I am not one of them. If you want to find Khaled, you’ll do it without my help.”
“There was a raid on a pensione in Milan shortly after the bombing. One of the men hiding there was named Daoud Hadawi, a Palestinian who used to be a member of your Presidential Security Service.”
“So you say.”
“I would appreciate a copy of Hadawi’s personnel file.”
“Several hundred men work in the Presidential Security Service. If this man-” He faltered. “What was his name?”
“Daoud Hadawi.”
“Ah, yes, Hadawi. If he ever worked for the service, and if we still have a personnel file on him, I’ll be glad to give it to you. But I think the odds of us finding something are rather slim.”
“Really?”
“Let me make this clear to you,” Arafat said. “We Palestinians had nothing to do with the attack on your embassy. Maybe it was Hezbollah or Osama. Maybe it was neo-Nazis. God knows, you have many enemies.”
Gabriel placed his palms on the arms of the chair and prepared to stand. Arafat raised his hand. “Please, Jibril,” he said, using the Arabic version of Gabriel’s name. “Don’t leave yet. Stay a little longer.”
Gabriel, for the moment, relented. Arafat fidgeted with his kaffiyeh, then looked at Colonel Kemel and in quiet Arabic instructed him to leave them alone.
“You’ve not touched your tea, Jibril. Can I get you something else? Some sweets, perhaps.”
Gabriel shook his head. Arafat folded his tiny hands and regarded Gabriel in silence. He was smiling slightly. Gabriel had the distinct sense Arafat was enjoying himself.
“I know what you did for me in New York a few years ago. If it weren’t for you, Tariq might very well have killed me in that apartment. In another time you might have hoped for him to succeed.” A wistful smile. “Who knows? In another time it might have been you, Jibril, standing there with a gun in your hand.”
Gabriel made no reply. Kill Arafat? In the weeks after Vienna, when he had been unable to picture anything but the charred flesh of his wife and the mutilated body of his son, he had thought about it many times. Indeed, at his lowest point, Gabriel would have gladly traded his own life for Arafat’s.
“It’s strange, Jibril, but for a brief time we were allies, you and I. We both wanted peace. We both needed peace.”
“Did you ever want peace, or was it all part of your phased strategy to destroy Israel and take the whole thing?”
This time it was Arafat who allowed a question to hang in the air unanswered.
“I owe you my life, Jibril, and so I will help you in this matter. There is no Khaled. Khaled is a figment of your imagination. If you keep chasing him, the real killers will escape.”
Gabriel stood abruptly, terminating the meeting. Arafat came out from behind the desk and placed his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders. Gabriel’s flesh seemed ablaze, but he did nothing to sever the Palestinian’s embrace.
“I’m glad we finally met formally,” Arafat said. “If you and I can sit down together in peace, perhaps there’s hope for us all.”
“Perhaps,” said Gabriel, though his tone revealed his pessimism.
Arafat released Gabriel and started toward the door, then stopped himself suddenly. “You surprise me, Jibril.”
“Why is that?”
“I expected you to use this opportunity to clear the air about Vienna.”
“You murdered my wife and son,” Gabriel said, deliberately misleading Arafat over Leah’s fate. “I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to ‘clear the air,’ as you put it.”
Arafat shook his head. “No, Jibril, I didn’t murder them. I ordered Tariq to kill you to avenge Abu Jihad, but I specifically told him that your family was not to be touched.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Because you deserved it. You conducted yourself with a certain honor that night in Tunis. Yes, you killed Abu Jihad, but you made certain no harm came to his wife and children. In fact, you stopped on the way out of the villa to comfort Abu Jihad’s daughter and instruct her to look after her mother. Do you remember that, Jibril?”
Gabriel closed his eyes and nodded. The scene in Tunis, like the bombing in Vienna, hung in a gallery of memory that he walked each night in his dreams.
“I felt you deserved the same as Abu Jihad, to die a soldier’s death witnessed by your wife and child. Tariq didn’t agree with me. He felt you deserved a more severe punishment, the punishment of watching your wife and child die, so he planted the bomb beneath their car and made certain you were on hand to witness the detonation. Vienna was Tariq’s doing, not mine.”
The telephone on Arafat’s desk rang, tearing Gabriel’s memory of Vienna as a knife shreds canvas. Arafat turned suddenly and left Gabriel to see himself out. Colonel Kemel was waiting on the landing. He escorted Gabriel wordlessly through the debris of the Mukata. The harsh light, after the gloom of Arafat’s office, was nearly unbearable. Beyond the broken gate Yonatan Shamron was playing football with a few of the Palestinian guards. They climbed back into the armored jeep and drove through streets of death. When they were clear of Ramallah, Yonatan asked Gabriel whether he had learned anything useful.
“Khaled al-Khalifa bombed our embassy in Rome,” Gabriel said with certainty.
“Anything else?”
Yes, he thought. Yasir Arafat had personally ordered Tariq al-Hourani to murder his wife and son.
11
JERUSALEM: MARCH 23
Gabriel’s bedside telephone rang at two A.M. It was Yaakov.
“Looks like your visit to the Mukata has stirred the hornet’s nest.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m outside in the street.”
The connection went dead. Gabriel sat up in bed and dressed in the dark.
“Who was that?” Chiara asked, her voice heavy with sleep.
Gabriel told her.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
He bent to kiss her forehead. Chiara’s arm rose from the blankets, curled around the back of his neck, and drew him to her mouth. “Be careful,” she whispered, her lips against his cheek.
A moment later he was buckled into the passenger seat of Yaakov’s unmarked Volkswagen Golf, racing westward across Jerusalem. Yaakov drove ludicrously fast, in true Sabra fashion, with the wheel in one hand and coffee and a cigarette in the other. The headlamps of the oncoming traffic threw an unkind light on the pockmarked features of his uncompromising face.
“His name is Mahmoud Arwish,” Yaakov said. “One of our most important assets inside the Palestinian Authority. He works in the Mukata. Very close to Arafat.”
“Who made the approach?”
“Arwish sent up a flare a couple of hours ago and said he wanted to talk.”
“About what?”
“Khaled, of course.”
“What does he know?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Why do you need me? Why isn’t he talking to his controller?”
“I’m his controller,” Yaakov said, “but the person he really wants to talk to is you.”
They had reached the western
edge of the New City. To Gabriel’s right, bathed in the silver light of a newly risen moon, lay the flatlands of the West Bank. Old hands called it “Shabak country.” It was a land where the usual rules did not apply-and where the few conventions that did exist could be bent or broken whenever it was deemed necessary to combat Arab terror. Men such as Yaakov were the mailed fist of Israeli security, foot soldiers who engaged in the dirty work of counterterrorism. Shabakniks had the power to arrest without cause and search without warrants, to shut down businesses and dynamite houses. They lived on nerves and nicotine, drank too much coffee and slept too little. Their wives left them, their Arab informants feared and hated them. Gabriel, though he had dispensed the ultimate sanction of the State, always considered himself fortunate that he had been asked to join the Office and not Shabak.
Shabak’s methods were sometimes at odds with the principles of a democratic state, and, like the Office, public scandals had damaged its reputation both at home and abroad. The worst was the infamous Bus 300 Affair. In April 1984, bus No. 300, en route from Tel Aviv to the southern city of Ashkelon, was hijacked by four Palestinians. Two were killed during the military rescue operation; the two surviving terrorists were led into a nearby wheat field and never seen again. Later it was revealed that the hijackers had been beaten to death by Shabak officers acting under orders from their director-general. A series of scandals followed in quick succession, each exposing some of Shabak’s most ruthless methods: violence, coerced confessions, blackmail, and deception. Shabak’s defenders were fond of saying that interrogations of suspected terrorists cannot be conducted over a pleasant cup of coffee. Its goals, regardless of the scandals, remained unchanged. Shabak was not interested in catching terrorists after blood was shed. It wanted to stop the terrorists before they could strike, and, if possible, to frighten young Arabs from ever going the way of violence.
Yaakov applied the brakes suddenly to avoid colliding with a slow-moving transit van. Simultaneously he flashed his lights and pounded on the car horn. The van responded by changing lanes. As Yaakov shot past, Gabriel glimpsed a pair of Haredim conducting an animated conversation as though nothing had happened.
Yaakov tossed a kippah onto Gabriel’s lap. It was larger than most and loosely knitted, with an orange-and-amber pattern against a black background. Gabriel understood the significance of its design.
“We’ll cross the line as settlers, just in case anyone from PA Security or Hamas is watching the checkpoints.”
“Where are we from?”
“Kiryat Devorah,” Yaakov replied. “It’s in the Jordan Valley. We’re never going to set foot there.”
Gabriel held up the skullcap. “I take it we’re not terribly popular with the local population.”
“Let’s just say that the residents of Kiryat Devorah take their commitment to the Land of Israel quite seriously.”
Gabriel slipped the kippah onto his head and adjusted the angle. Yaakov briefed Gabriel as he drove: the procedures for crossing into the West Bank, the route they would take to the Arab village where Arwish was waiting, the method of extraction. When Yaakov finished, he reached into the backseat and produced an Uzi miniature submachine gun.
“I prefer this,” said Gabriel, holding up his Beretta.
Yaakov laughed. “This is the West Bank, not the Left Bank. Don’t be a fool, Gabriel. Take the Uzi.”
Gabriel reluctantly took the weapon and rammed a magazine of ammunition into the butt. Yaakov covered his head with a kippah identical to the one he’d given Gabriel. A few miles beyond Ben-Gurion Airport he exited the motorway and followed a two-lane road eastward toward the West Bank. The Separation Fence, looming before them, cast a black shadow across the landscape.
At the checkpoint a Shabak man stood among the IDF soldiers. As Yaakov approached, the Shabak man murmured a few words to the soldiers and the Volkswagen was allowed to pass without inspection. Yaakov, clear of the checkpoint, raced along the moon-washed road at high speed. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and saw a pair of headlights. The lights floated there for a time, then receded into the night. Yaakov seemed to take no notice of them. The second car, Gabriel suspected, belonged to a Shabak countersurveillance team.
A sign warned that Ramallah lay four kilometers ahead. Yaakov turned off the road, onto a dirt track that ran through the bed of an ancient wadi. He doused his headlamps and navigated the wadi with only the amber glow of his parking lights. After a moment he brought the car to a stop.
“Open the glove box.”
Gabriel did as he was told. Inside was a pair of kaffiyehs.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Cover your face,” Yaakov said. “All of it, the way they do.”
Yaakov, in a practiced motion, bound his head in the kaffiyeh and tied it at his throat, so that his face was concealed except for a thin slit for his eyes. Gabriel did the same. Yaakov started driving again, plunging along the darkened wadi with both hands wrapped around the wheel, leaving Gabriel with the uncomfortable feeling he was seated next to an Arab militant on a suicide run. A mile farther on, they came to a narrow paved road. Yaakov turned onto the road and followed it north.
The village was small, even by West Bank standards, and gripped by an air of sudden desertion-a collection of squat, dun-colored houses crouched around the narrow spire of a minaret, with scarcely a light burning anywhere. In the center of the village lay a small market square. There were no other cars and no pedestrians, only a flock of goats nosing amid fallen produce.
The house where Yaakov stopped was on the northern edge. The window facing the street was shuttered. One of the shutters hung aslant from a broken hinge. A few feet from the front door was a child’s tricycle. The bike was pointed toward the door, which meant the meeting was still on. Had it been pointed in the opposite direction, they would have been forced to abort and head for the backup location.
Yaakov snatched an Uzi submachine gun from the floorboard and climbed out of the car. Gabriel did the same, then pulled open the rear passenger-side door, just as Yaakov had instructed. He turned his back to the house and watched the street for any sign of movement. “If anyone approaches the car while I’m inside, shoot in their direction,” Yaakov had said. “If they don’t get the message, put them on the ground.”
Yaakov hurdled the tricycle and drove his right foot against the door. Gabriel heard the crack of splintering wood but kept his eyes trained on the street. From inside came the sound of a voice shouting in Arabic. Gabriel recognized it as Yaakov’s. The next voice was unfamiliar to him.
A light appeared in a nearby cottage, then another. Gabriel released the safety on his Uzi and slipped his forefinger inside the trigger guard. He heard footfalls behind him and turned in time to see Yaakov leading Arwish through the broken door, hands in the air, face shrouded by a black hood, an Uzi pressed to the back of his head.
Gabriel turned his gaze once more toward the street. A man, dressed in a pale gray galabia, had stepped outside his cottage and was shouting at Gabriel in Arabic. Gabriel, in the same language, ordered him to stay back, but the Palestinian advanced closer. “Shoot at him!” Yaakov snapped, but Gabriel calmly held fire.
Yaakov shoved Arwish headlong into the back of the car. Gabriel scrambled in after him and drove the informant toward the floor. Yaakov ran around the front of the car to the driver’s side door, pausing long enough to spray a volley of rounds a few yards from the feet of the Palestinian villager, who scurried back into the shelter of his house.
Yaakov jumped behind the wheel, then reversed down the narrow street. Reaching the market square, he turned around and sped through the village. The gunfire and the roaring of the car engine had alerted the villagers to trouble. Faces appeared in windows and doorways, but no one dared challenge them.
Gabriel kept watch out the rear window until the village vanished into the darkness. A moment later Yaakov was once again racing along the rutted wadi, this time in the opposite direction. The collaborato
r was still pressed to the floor, wedged into the narrow space between the backseat and the front.
“Let me up, you jackass!”
Gabriel pressed his forearm against the side of the Arab’s neck and subjected his body to a rough and thorough search for weapons or explosives. Finding nothing, he pulled the Arab onto the seat and tore away the black hood. A single eye glared malevolently back at him-the eye of Yasir Arafat’s translator, Colonel Kemel.
The city of Hadera, an early Zionist farm settlement turned drab Israeli industrial town, lies on the Coastal Plain halfway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. In a working-class section of the city, adjacent to a sprawling tire factory, stands a row of wheat-colored apartment buildings. One of the buildings, the one nearest the factory, stinks always of burning rubber. On the top floor of this building is a Shabak safe flat. For most officers it is a meeting place of last resort. Yaakov actually preferred it. The acrid smell, he believed, lent an air of urgency to the proceedings, for few men who came here wished to linger long. But then Yaakov was driven by other ghosts. His great-grandparents, Russian Jews from Kovno, had been among the founders of Hadera. They had turned a worthless malarial swamp into productive farmland. For Yaakov, Hadera was truth. Hadera was Israel.
The flat was devoid of comfort. The sitting room was furnished with folding metal chairs, and the linoleum floor was buckled and bare. On the kitchen counter stood a cheap plastic electric kettle; in the rust-stained basin a quartet of dirty cups. Mahmoud Arwish, alias Colonel Kemel, had turned down Yaakov’s rather disingenuous offer of tea. He had also requested that Yaakov leave the lights off. The neatly pressed uniform he’d been wearing that morning at the Mukata had been replaced by a pair of gabardine trousers and a white cotton shirt, which glowed softly in the moonlight streaming through the window. Between the two remaining fingers of his right hand rested one of Yaakov’s American cigarettes. With the other hand he was massaging the side of his neck. His single eye was fixed on Gabriel, who had forsaken his folding chair and was seated on the floor with his back propped against the wall and his legs crossed before him. Yaakov was a formless shadow against the window.
