Prince of fire ga-5

by Daniel Silva

  “You’d better hurry,” she said, “or we won’t make it to Nimes in time.”

  “I’m going nearly two hundred kilometers an hour. I can’t drive any faster without killing us both. Next time Khaled calls, tell him he’s going to have to extend the deadlines.”

  “Who?”

  “Khaled,” Gabriel repeated. “The man you’re working for. The man who’s running this operation.”

  “I’ve never heard of a man named Khaled.”

  “My mistake.”

  She studied him for a moment. “You speak Arabic very well. You grew up in the Jezreel Valley, yes? Not far from Afula. I’m told there are many Arabs there. People who refused to leave or be driven out.”

  Gabriel didn’t rise to her baiting. “You’ve never seen it?”

  “Palestine?” A flicker of a smile. “I’ve seen it from a distance,” she said.

  Lebanon, thought Gabriel. She’s seen it from Lebanon.

  “If we’re going to make this journey together, I should have a name to call you.”

  “I don’t have a name. I’m just a Palestinian. No name, no face, no land, no home. My suitcase is my country.”

  “Fine,” he said, “I’ll call you Palestine.”

  “It’s not a proper name for a woman.”

  “All right, then I’ll call you Palestina.”

  She looked at the road and nodded. “You may call me Palestina.”

  A mile before Nimes, she directed him into the gravel parking lot of a roadside store that sold earthenware planters and garden statuary. For five unbearable moments they waited in silence for her satellite telephone to ring. When it finally did, the electronic chime sounded to Gabriel like a fire alarm. The girl listened without speaking. From her blank expression Gabriel could not discern whether she’d been ordered to keep going or to kill him. She severed the connection and nodded toward the road.

  “Get on the Autoroute.”

  “Which direction?”

  “North.”

  “Where are we going?”

  A hesitation, then: “Lyon.”

  Gabriel did as he was told. As they neared the Autoroute tollbooth, the girl slipped the Tanfolgio into her satchel. Then she handed him some change for the toll. When they were back on the road, the gun came out again. She placed it on her lap. Her forefinger, with her short, dirty nail, lay noncommittally across the trigger.

  “What’s he like?”

  “Who?”

  “Khaled,” Gabriel said.

  “As I told you before, I don’t know anyone named Khaled.”

  “You spent the night with him in Marseilles.”

  “Actually, I spent the night with a man named Monsieur Veran. You’d better drive faster.”

  “He’s going to kill us, you know. He’s going to kill us both.”

  She said nothing.

  “Were you told that this was a suicide mission? Have you prepared yourself to die? Have you prayed and made a farewell videotape for your family?”

  “Please drive, and don’t talk anymore.”

  “We’re shaheeds, you and I. We’re going to die together-for different causes, mind you, but together.”

  “Please, shut up.”

  And there it was, he thought. The crack. Khaled had lied to her.

  “We’re going to die tonight,” he said. “At seven o’clock. He didn’t mention that to you?”

  Another silence. Her finger was moving over the surface of the trigger.

  “I guess he forgot to tell you,” Gabriel resumed. “But then it’s always been that way. It’s the poor kids who die for Palestine, the kids from the camps and the slums. The elite just give the orders from their villas in Beirut and Tunis and Ramallah.”

  She swung the gun toward his face again. This time he snatched it and twisted it from her grasp.

  “When you hit me with this, it makes it hard to drive.”

  He held out the gun to her. She took it and placed it back in her lap.

  “We’re shaheeds, Palestina. We’re driving toward destruction, and Khaled is giving us directions. Seven o’clock, Palestina. Seven o’clock.”

  On the road between Valence and Lyon, he pushed Leah from his mind and thought of nothing but the case. Instinctively, he approached it as though it were a painting. He stripped away the varnish and dissolved the paint, until there was nothing left but the fragmentary charcoal lines of the underdrawing; then he began building it back up again, layer by layer, tone and texture. For the moment he was unable to affix a reliable authentication. Was Khaled the artist, or had Khaled been only an apprentice in the workshop of the Old Master himself, Yasir Arafat? Had Arafat ordered it to avenge the destruction of his power and authority, or had Khaled undertaken the work on his own to avenge the death of a father and grandfather? Was it another battle in the war between two peoples or just an outbreak in the long-simmering feud between two families, the al-Khalifas and the Shamron-Allons? He suspected it was a combination of both, an intersection of shared needs and goals. Two great artists had cooperated on a single work-Titian and Bellini, he thought. The Feast of the Gods.

  The date of the painting’s commission remained elusive to him as well, though. Of one thing he was sure: the work had taken several years and much blood to produce. He had been deceived, and skillfully so. They all had. The dossier found in Milan had been planted by Khaled in order to lure Gabriel into the search. Khaled had dropped a trail of clues and wound the clock, so that Gabriel had had no choice but to desperately pursue them. Mahmoud Arwish, David Quinnell, Mimi Ferrere-they’d all been a part of it. Gabriel saw them now, silent and still, as minor figures at the edges of a Bellini, allegorical in nature but supportive of the focal point. But what was the point? Gabriel knew that the painting was unfinished. Khaled had one more coup in store, one more spectacular of blood and fire. Somehow Gabriel had to survive it. He was certain the clue to his survival lay somewhere along the path he’d already traveled. And so, as he raced northward toward Lyon, he saw not the Autoroute but the case-every minute, every setting, every encounter, oil on canvas. He would survive it, he thought, and someday he would come back to Khaled on his own terms. And the girl, Palestina, would be his doorway.

  “Pull over to the side of the road.”

  Gabriel did as he was told. They were a few miles from the center of Lyon. This time, only two minutes elapsed before the telephone rang.

  “Get back on the road,” she said. “We’re going to Chalon. It’s a-”

  “I know where Chalon is. It’s just south of Dijon.”

  He waited for an opening in the traffic, then accelerated back onto the Autoroute.

  “I can’t decide whether you’re a very courageous man or a fool,” she said. “You could have walked away from me in Marseilles. You could have saved yourself.”

  “She’s my wife,” he said. “She’ll always be my wife.”

  “And you’re willing to die for her?”

  “You’re going to die for her, too.”

  “At seven o’clock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you make up this time? Why seven o’clock?”

  “You don’t know anything about the man you’re working for, do you? I feel sorry for you, Palestina. You’re a very foolish girl. Your leader has betrayed you, and you’re the one who’ll pay the price.”

  She lifted the gun to hit him again, but thought better of it. Gabriel kept his eyes on the road. The door was ajar.

  They stopped for gas south of Chalon. Gabriel filled the tank and paid with cash given to him by the girl. When he was behind the wheel again, she ordered him to park next to the toilets.

  “I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  She was gone only a moment. Gabriel slid the car into gear, but the girl removed the satellite phone from her bag and ordered him to wait. It was 2:55 P.M.

  “We’re going to Paris,” he said.

  “Oh, really?”

  “He’ll send
us one of two ways. The Autoroute splits at Beaune. If we take that cutoff, we can head straight into the southern suburbs. Or we can stay to the east-Dijon to Troyes, Troyes to Reims-and come in from the northeast.”

  “You seem to know everything. Tell me which way he’s going to send us.”

  Gabriel made a show of consulting his watch.

  “He’ll want to keep us moving, and he won’t want us at the target too early. I’m betting for the eastern route. I say he sends us to Troyes and tells us to wait there for instructions. He’ll have options if he sends us to Troyes.”

  Just then the telephone rang. She listened in silence, then severed the connection.

  “Get back on the Autoroute,” she said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just drive,” she said.

  He asked for permission to turn on the radio.

  “Sure,” she said affably.

  He pressed the power button, but nothing happened. A slight smile appeared on her lips.

  “Nicely played,” said Gabriel.

  “Thank you.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Surely you’re joking.”

  “Actually, I’m quite serious.”

  “I’m Palestina,” she said. “I have no choice.”

  “You’re wrong. You do have a choice.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re trying to wear me down with your suggestions of death and suicide. You think you can make me have a change of heart, that you can make me lose my nerve.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. We’ve been fighting each other for a long time. I know that you’re intensely courageous and that you rarely lose your nerve. I just want to know why: Why are you here? Why not get married and raise a family? Why not live your life?”

  Another smile, this one mocking. “Jews,” she said. “You think you have a patent on pain. You think you have the market cornered on human suffering. My Holocaust is as real as yours, and yet you deny my suffering and exonerate yourself of guilt. You claim my wounds are self-inflicted.”

  “So tell me your story.”

  “Mine is a story of Paradise lost. Mine is a story of a simple people forced by the civilized world to give up their land so that Christendom could alleviate its guilt over the Holocaust.”

  “No, no,” Gabriel said. “I don’t want a propaganda lecture. I want to hear your story. Where are you from?”

  “A camp,” she said, then added: “A camp in Lebanon.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “I’m not asking where you were born, or where you grew up. I’m asking you where you’re from.”

  “I’m from Palestine.”

  “Of course you are. Which part?”

  “The north.”

  “That explains Lebanon. Which part of the north?”

  “The Galilee.”

  “Western? Upper?”

  “The Western Galilee.”

  “Which village?”

  “It’s not there anymore.”

  “What was it called?”

  “I’m not allowed to-”

  “Did it have a name?”

  “Of course it had a name.”

  “Was it Bassa?”

  “No.”

  “What about Zib?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it was Sumayriyya?”

  She made no reply.

  “So, it was Sumayriyya.”

  “Yes,” she said. “My family came from Sumayriyya.”

  “It’s a long way to Paris, Palestina. Tell me your story.”

  23

  JERUSALEM

  When Varash convened again, they did so in person in the office of the prime minister. Lev’s update took only a moment, since nothing much had changed since the last time they’d met by video conference. Only the clock had advanced. It was now five in the afternoon in Tel Aviv, and four o’clock in Paris. Lev wanted to sound the alarm.

  “We have to assume that in three hours, there is going to be a major terrorist attack in France, probably in Paris, and that one of our agents is going to be in the middle of it. Given the situation, I’m afraid we have no recourse but to tell the French.”

  “But what about Gabriel and his wife?” said Moshe Yariv of Shabak. “If the French issue a nationwide alert, Khaled might very well view it as an excuse to kill them both.”

  “He doesn’t need an excuse,” Shamron said. “That’s precisely what he intends to do. Lev is right. We have to tell the French. Morally, and politically, we have no other choice.”

  The prime minister shifted his large body uneasily in his chair. “But I can’t tell them that we sent a team of agents to Marseilles to kill a Palestinian terrorist.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Shamron said. “But any way we play our hand, the outcome is going to be bad. We have an agreement with the French not to operate on their soil without consulting them first. It’s an agreement we violate all the time, with the tacit understanding of our brethren in the French services. But a tacit understanding is one thing, and getting caught red-handed is quite another.”

  “So what do I tell them?”

  “I recommend staying as close to the truth as possible. We tell them that one of our agents has been abducted by a Palestinian terror cell operating out of Marseilles. We tell them the agent was in Marseilles investigating the bombing of our embassy in Rome. We tell them that we have credible evidence suggesting that Paris is going to be the target of an attack this evening at seven. Who knows? If the French sound the alarm loudly enough, it might force Khaled to postpone or cancel his attack.”

  The prime minister looked at Lev. “What’s the status of the rest of the team?”

  “Fidelity is out of French territorial waters, and the rest of the team members have all crossed international borders. The only one still on French soil is Gabriel.”

  The prime minister punched a button on his telephone console. “Get the French president on the line. And get a translator as well. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”

  The President of the French Republic was at that moment meeting with the German chancellor in the ornate Lounge of Portraits in the Elysee Palace. An aide-de-camp slipped quietly into the room and murmured a few words directly into his ear. The French leader could not hide his irritation at being interrupted by a man he loathed.

  “Does it have to be now?”

  “He says it’s a security matter of the highest priority.”

  The president stood and looked down at his guest. “Will you excuse me, Chancellor?”

  Tall and elegant in his dark suit, the Frenchman followed his aide into a private anteroom. A moment later the call was routed through.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Prime Minister. I take it this isn’t a social call?”

  “No, Mr. President, it isn’t. I’m afraid I have become aware of a grave threat against your country.”

  “I assume this threat is terrorist in nature?”

  “It is, indeed.”

  “How imminent? Weeks? Days?”

  “Hours, Mr. President.”

  “Hours? Why am I being told of this only now?”

  “We’ve just become aware of the threat ourselves.”

  “Do you know any operational details?”

  “Only the time. We believe a Palestinian terror cell intends to strike at seven this evening. Paris is the most likely target, but we can’t say for certain.”

  “Please, Mr. Prime Minister. Tell me everything you know.”

  The prime minister spoke for two minutes. When he was finished, the French president said, “Why do I get the sense I’m being told only part of the story?”

  “I’m afraid we know only part of the story.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us you were pursuing a suspect on French soil?”

  “There wasn’t time for a formal consultation, Mr. President. It fell into the category of a hot pursuit.”

  “And what about the Italian
s? Have you informed them that you have a suspect in a bombing that took place on Italian soil?”

  “No, Mr. President, we haven’t.”

  “What a surprise,” the Frenchman said. “Do you have photographs that might help us identify any of the potential bombers?”

  “I’m afraid we do not.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to send along a photo of your missing agent.”

  “Under the circumstances-”

  “I thought that would be your answer,” the Frenchman said. “I’m dispatching my ambassador to your office. I’m confident he will receive a full and frank briefing on this entire matter.”

  “He will indeed, sir.”

  “Something tells me there will be fallout from this affair, but first things first. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Good luck, Mr. President.”

  The French leader slammed down the phone and looked at his aide. “Convene the Group Napoleon immediately,” he said. “I’ll deal with the chancellor.”

  Twenty minutes after hanging up, the president of France was taking his usual seat at the cabinet table in the Salon Murat. Gathered around him were the members of Group Napoleon, a streamlined team of senior intelligence and security officials and cabinet ministers, designed for dealing with imminent threats to the French homeland. Seated directly across the expansive table was the prime minister. Between the two men was an ornate double-faced brass clock. It read 4:35 P.M.

  The president opened the meeting with a concise recounting of what he had just learned. There followed several minutes of somewhat heated discussion, for the source of the information, the Israeli prime minister, was a distinctly unpopular man in Paris. In the end, though, every member of the group concluded that the threat was too credible to ignore. “Obviously, gentlemen, we need to increase the threat level and take precautions,” the president said. “How high do we go?”

  In the aftermath of al-Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the government of France devised a four-tiered color-coded system similar to that of the United States. On that afternoon the level stood at Orange, the second level, with only Yellow being lower. The third level, Red, would automatically close vast stretches of French airspace and put in place additional security precautions in the transit systems and at French landmarks such as the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. The highest level, Scarlet, would virtually shut down the country, including its water supply and power grid. No member of Group Napoleon was prepared to do that based on a warning from the Israelis. “The target of the attack is likely to be Israeli or Jewish in nature,” said the interior minister. “Even if it’s on the scale of Rome, it doesn’t justify increasing the level to Scarlet.”