by Daniel Silva
“No, we’ll be told where to go. One destination at a time, very small steps. If we miss one deadline, your wife dies. If your agents try to follow us, your wife dies. If you kill me, your wife dies. If you do exactly what we say, she’ll live.”
“And what happens to me?”
“Hasn’t she suffered enough? Save your wife, Allon. Come with me, and do exactly as I say. It’s your only chance.”
He looked down the steps and saw Yaakov shaking his head. Dina was whispering in his ear. “Please, Gabriel, tell her no.”
He looked into her eyes. Shamron had trained him to read the emotions of others, to tell truthfulness from deception, and in the dark eyes of Khaled’s girl he saw only the abiding forthrightness of a fanatic, the belief that past suffering justified any act, no matter how cruel. He also noticed an unsettling tranquillity. She was trained, this girl, not merely indoctrinated. Her training would make her a worthy opponent, but it was her fanaticism that would leave her vulnerable.
Did they really have Leah? He had no reason to doubt it. Khaled had destroyed an embassy in the heart of Rome. Surely he could manage to kidnap an infirm woman from an English mental hospital. To abandon Leah now, after all she had suffered, was unthinkable. Perhaps she would die. Perhaps they both would. Perhaps, if they were lucky, Khaled might permit them to die together.
He had played it well, Khaled. He had never intended to kill Gabriel in Venice. The Milan dossier had been only the opening gambit in an elaborate plot to lure Gabriel here, to this spot in Marseilles, and to present him with a path he had no choice but to follow. Fidelity nudged him forward. He pulled her away from the edge of the stairs and released his grip on her throat.
“Back off,” Gabriel said directly into his wrist-microphone. “Leave Marseilles.”
When Yaakov shook his head, Gabriel snapped, “Do as I say.”
A car came down the hill from the direction of the church. It was the Mercedes that had blocked their path a few minutes earlier on the boulevard St-Remy. It stopped in front of them. The girl opened the back door and got in. Gabriel looked one final time at Yaakov, then climbed in after her.
“He’s off the air, ” Lev said. “His beacon has been stationary for five minutes.”
His beacon, thought Shamron, is lying in a Marseilles gutter. Gabriel had vanished from their screens. All the planning, all the preparation, and Khaled had beaten them with the oldest of Arab ploys-a hostage.
“Is it true about Leah?” Shamron asked.
“London station has called the security officer several times. So far they haven’t been able to raise him.”
“That means they’ve got her,” Shamron said. “And I suspect we have a dead security agent somewhere inside the Stratford Clinic.”
“If that’s all true, a very serious storm is going to break in England in the next few minutes.” There was a bit too much composure in Lev’s voice for Shamron’s taste, but then Lev always did place a high premium on self-control. “We need to reach out to our friends in MI5 and the Home Office to keep things as quiet as possible for as long as possible. We also need to bring the Foreign Ministry into the picture. The ambassador will have to do some serious hand-holding.”
“Agreed,” Shamron said, “but I’m afraid there’s something we have to do first.”
He looked at his wristwatch. It was 7:28 A.M. local time, 6:28 in France-twelve hours until the anniversary of the evacuation of Beit Sayeed.
“But we can’t just leave him here,” Dina said.
“He’s not here any longer,” Yaakov replied. “He’s gone. He was the one who made the decision to go with her. He gave us the order to evacuate and so has Tel Aviv. We have no other choice. We’re leaving.”
“There must be something we can do to help him.”
“You can’t be any help to him if you’re sitting in a French jail.”
Yaakov raised his wrist-microphone to his lips and ordered the Ayin teams to pull out. Dina went reluctantly down onto the dock and loosened the lines. When the last line was untied, she climbed back onto Fidelity and stood with Yaakov atop the flying bridge as he guided the vessel into the channel. As they passed the Fort of Saint Nicholas, she went back down the companionway to the salon. She sat down at the communications pod, typed in a command to access the memory, then set the time-code for 6:12 A.M. A few seconds later she heard her own voice.
“It’s him. He’s on the street. Heading south toward the park.”
She listened to it all again: Yaakov and Gabriel wordlessly mounting the bike; Yaakov firing the engine and accelerating away; the sound of the tires locking up and skidding along the asphalt of the boulevard St-Remy; Gabriel’s voice, calm and without emotion: “Stop here. Don’t move.”
Twenty seconds later, the woman: “Excuse me, monsieur, are you lost?”
STOP.
How long had Khaled spent planning it? Years, she thought. He had dropped the clues for her to find, and she had followed them, from Beit Sayeed to Buenos Aires, from Istanbul to Rome, and now Gabriel was in their hands. They would kill him, and it was her fault.
She pressed PLAY and listened again to Gabriel’s quarrel with the Palestinian woman, then picked up the satellite phone and raised King Saul Boulevard on the secure link.
“I need a voice identification.”
“You have a recording?”
“Yes.”
“Quality?”
Dina explained the circumstances of the intercept.
“Play the recording, please.”
She pressed PLAY.
“If we miss one deadline, your wife dies. If your agents try to follow us, your wife dies. If you kill me, your wife dies. If you do exactly what we say, she’ll live.”
STOP.
“Stand by, please.”
Two minutes later: “No match on file.”
Martineau met Abu Saddiq one last time on the boulevard d’Athenes, at the base of the broad steps that led to the Gare Saint-Charles. Abu Saddiq was dressed in Western clothing: neat gabardine trousers and a pressed cotton shirt. He told Martineau a boat had just left the port at great haste.
“What was it called?”
Abu Saddiq answered.
“Fidelity,” Martineau repeated. “An interesting choice.”
He turned and started trudging up the steps, Abu Saddiq at his side. “The shaheeds have been given their final orders,” Abu Saddiq said. “They’ll proceed to their target as scheduled. Nothing can be done to stop them now.”
“And you?”
“The midday ferry to Algiers.”
They arrived at the top of the steps. The train station was brown and ugly and in a state of severe disrepair. “I must say,” Abu Saddiq said, “that I will not miss this place.”
“Go to Algiers, and bury yourself deep. We’ll bring you back to the West Bank when it’s safe.”
“After today…” He shrugged. “It will never be safe.”
Martineau shook Abu Saddiq’s hand. “Maa-salaamah.”
“As-salaam alaykum, Brother Khaled.”
Abu Saddiq turned and headed down the steps. Martineau entered the train station and paused in front of the departure board. The 8:15 TGV for Paris was departing from Track F. Martineau crossed the terminal and went onto the platform. He walked alongside the train until he found his carriage, then climbed aboard.
Before going to his seat, he went to the toilet. He stood for a long time in front of the mirror, examining his own reflection in the glass. The Yves Saint Laurent jacket, the dark-blue end-on-end shirt, the designer spectacles-Paul Martineau, Frenchman of distinction, archaeologist of note. But not today. Today Martineau was Khaled, son of Sabri, grandson of Sheikh Asad. Khaled, avenger of past wrongs, sword of Palestine.
The shaheeds have been given their final orders. Nothing can be done to stop them now.
Another order had been given. The man who would meet Abu Saddiq in Algiers that evening would kill him. Martineau had learned from the mistakes o
f his ancestors. He would never allow himself to be undone by an Arab traitor.
A moment later he was sitting in his first-class seat as the train eased out of the station and headed north through the Muslim slums of Marseilles. Paris was 539 miles away, but the high-speed TGV would cover the distance in a little more than three hours. A miracle of Western technology and French ingenuity, Khaled thought. Then he closed his eyes and was soon asleep.
22
MARTIGUES, FRANCE
The house was in a working-class arab quarter on the southern edge of town. It had a red tile roof, a cracked stucco exterior, and a weedy forecourt littered with broken plastic toys in primary colors. Gabriel, when he was pushed through the broken front door, had expected to find evidence of a family. Instead, he found a ransacked residence with rooms empty of furniture and walls stripped bare. Two men awaited him, both Arab, both well-fed. One held a plastic bag bearing the name of a discount department store popular with the French underclass. The other was swinging a rusted golf club, one-handed, like a cudgel.
“Take off your clothes.”
The girl had spoken to him in Arabic. Gabriel remained motionless with his hands hanging against the seam of his trousers, like a soldier at attention. The girl repeated the command, more forcefully this time. When Gabriel still made no response, the one who’d driven the Mercedes slapped him hard across the cheek.
He removed his jacket and black pullover. The radio and the guns were already gone-the girl had taken those while they were still in Marseilles. She examined the scars on his chest and back, then ordered him to remove the rest of his clothing.
“What about your Muslim modesty?”
For his insolence he received a second blow to the face, this one with the back of the hand. Gabriel, his head swimming, stepped out of his shoes and peeled off his socks. Then he unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them off over his bare feet. A moment later he was standing before the four Arabs in his briefs. The girl reached out and snapped the elastic. “These, too,” she said. “Take them off.”
They found his nakedness amusing. The men made comments about his penis while the woman made slow circuits about him and appraised his body as though he were a statue on a pedestal. It occurred to him that he was a legend to them, a beast who had come in the middle of the night and killed young warriors. Look at him, they seemed to be saying with their eyes. He’s so small, so ordinary. How could he have killed so many of our brothers?
The girl grunted something in Arabic that Gabriel could not comprehend. The three men set upon his discarded clothing with box cutters and scissors and tore it to shreds. No seam, no hem, no collar survived their onslaught. Only God knew what they were looking for. A second beacon? A hidden radio transmitter? A devilish Jewish device that would render them all lifeless and permit him to escape at the time and place of his choosing? For a moment the girl observed this silliness with great seriousness, then she looked again at Gabriel. Twice more she circled his naked body, with one small hand pressed thoughtfully against her lips. Each time she passed before him, Gabriel looked directly into her eyes. There was something clinical in her gaze, something professional and analytical. He half expected her at any moment to produce a minicassette recorder and begin dictating diagnostic notes. Puckered scarring on upper left chest quadrant, result of the bullet fired into him by Tariq al-Hourani, Allah praise his glorious name. Sand-paper-like scarring across much of the back. Source of scarring unknown.
The search of his clothing produced nothing but a pile of shredded cotton cloth and denim. One of the Arabs gathered up the scraps and tossed them on the fireplace grate, then doused them with kerosene and set them alight. As Gabriel’s clothing turned to ash they assembled around him once more, the girl facing him, the two big Arabs on either side, and the one who had served as the driver at his back. The Arab to his right was lazily swinging a golf club.
There was a ritual to situations like these. The beating, he knew, was a part of it. The girl set it in motion with a ceremonial slap to his face. Then she stepped away and allowed the men to do the heavy lifting. A well-aimed strike with the golf club caused his knees to buckle and sent him to the floor. Then the real blows began, a barrage of kicks and punches that seemed to target every portion of his body. He avoided crying out. He did not want to give them the satisfaction, nor did he want to derail their plan by alerting the neighbors-not that anyone in this part of the city would care much about three men beating the daylights out of a Jew. It ended as suddenly as it began. In retrospect it was not so bad-indeed, he had endured worse at the hands of Shamron and his goons at the Academy. They went easy on his face, which told him that he needed to remain presentable.
He had come to rest on his right side, with his hands protectively over his genitals and his knees to his chest. He could taste blood on his lips, and his left shoulder felt frozen in place, the result of having been stomped on several times in succession by the largest of the three Arabs. The girl tossed the plastic bag in front of his face and ordered him to get dressed. He made a forthright attempt at movement but could not seem to roll over or sit up or lift his hands. Finally, one of the Arabs seized him by the left arm and pulled him into a seated position. His injured shoulder revolted, and for the first time he groaned in pain. This, like his nudity, was an occasion for laughter.
They helped him to dress. Clearly they had been expecting a bigger man. The neon-yellow T-shirt with MARSEILLES! emblazoned across the chest was several sizes too large. The white chinos were too big in the waist and too long in the legs. The cheap leather slip-ons barely stayed on his feet.
“Can you stand up?” the girl asked.
“No.”
“If we don’t leave now, you’ll be late for your next checkpoint. And if you’re late for your next checkpoint, you know what happens to your wife.”
He rolled over onto his hands and knees and, after two failed attempts managed to get to his feet. The girl gave him a push between the shoulder blades and sent him stumbling toward the door. He thought of Leah and wondered where she was. Zipped into a body bag? Locked into a car trunk? Hammered into a wooden crate? Did she know what was happening to her, or, mercifully, did she believe it was just another episode in her nightmare without end? It was for Leah that he remained upright and for Leah that he placed one foot in front of the other.
The three men remained behind in the house. The girl walked a half step behind him, with a leather satchel over her shoulder. She gave him another shove, this time in the direction of the Mercedes. He stumbled forward, across the dusty forecourt strewn with toys. The overturned Matchbox cars, the rusted fire truck, the armless doll and headless toy soldier-to Gabriel it seemed like the carnage wrought by one of Khaled’s expertly crafted bombs. He went instinctively to the passenger side of the car.
“No,” said the woman. “You’re going to drive.”
“I’m in no condition.”
“But you must,” she said. “Otherwise we’ll miss our deadline, and your wife will die.”
Gabriel reluctantly climbed behind the wheel. The woman sat next to him. After closing the door, she reached inside the satchel and produced a weapon, a Tanfolgio TA-90, and aimed it at his abdomen.
“I know you can take this from me anytime you wish,” she conceded. “If you choose such a course of action, it will do you no good. I assure you that I do not know the location of your wife, nor do I know our ultimate destination. We’re going on this journey together, you and I. We’re partners in this endeavor.”
“How noble of you.”
She hit him across the cheek with the gun.
“Be careful,” he said, “it might go off.”
“You know France very well, yes? You’ve worked here. You’ve killed many Palestinians here.”
Greeted by Gabriel’s silence, she hit him a second time. “Answer me! You’ve worked here, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve killed Palestinians here, yes?”
He no
dded.
“Are you ashamed? Say it aloud.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ve killed Palestinians here. I killed Sabri here.”
“So you know the roads of France well. You won’t need to waste time consulting a map. That’s a good thing, because we don’t have much time.”
She gave him the keys. “Go to Nimes. You have one hour.”
“It’s a hundred kilometers, at least.”
“Then I suggest you stop talking and start driving.”
He went by way of Arles. The Rhone, silver-blue and swirling with eddies, slid beneath them. On the other side of the river. Gabriel pressed the accelerator toward the floor and started the final run into Nimes. The weather was perversely glorious: the sky cloudless and intensely blue, the fields ablaze with lavender and sunflowers, the hills awash with a light so pure it was possible for Gabriel to make out the lines and fissures of rock formations twenty miles in the distance.
The girl sat calmly with her ankles crossed and the gun lying in her lap. Gabriel wondered why Khaled had chosen her to escort him to his death. Because her youth and beauty stood in sharp contrast to Leah’s ravaged infirmity? Or was it an Arab insult of some sort? Did he wish to further humiliate Gabriel by making him take orders from a beautiful young girl? Whatever Khaled’s motives, she was nonetheless thoroughly trained. Gabriel had sensed it during their first encounter in Marseilles and again at the house in Martigues-and he could see it now in her muscular arms and shoulders and in the way she handled the gun. But it was her hands that intrigued him most. She had the short, dirty fingernails of a potter or someone who worked outdoors.
She hit him again without warning. The car swerved, and Gabriel had to battle to get it under control again.
“Why did you do that?”
“You were looking at the gun?”
“I was not.”
“You’re thinking about taking it away from me.”
“No.”
“Liar! Jewish liar!”
She raised the gun to strike him again, but his time Gabriel lifted his hand defensively and managed to deflect the blow.
