by Daniel Silva
The cell was small—smaller, perhaps, than any room in which Reema had ever set foot. Her cot consumed most of the space. The walls were white and smooth and cold, and in the ceiling a light burned always. Reema had no concept of time, even day or night. She slept when she was tired, which was often, and dreamed of her old life. She had taken it all for granted, the unimaginable wealth and luxury, and now it was gone.
They did not chain her to the floor the way they did in the American movies her father used to allow her to watch. Nor did they gag her or bind her hands and feet or force her to wear a hood—only for a few hours, during the long drive after she was taken. Once she was safely in the cell, they were the ones to cover their faces. There were four in all. Reema could tell them apart by their size and shape and the color of their eyes. Three were men, one was a woman. None were Arabs.
Reema did her best to hide her fear but made no attempt to conceal the fact she was bored out of her mind. She asked for a television to watch her favorite programs. Her captors, in writing, refused. She asked for a computer to play games, or an iPod and headphones to listen to music, but again her request was denied. Finally, she asked for a pen and a pad. Her plan was to record her experiences in a story, something she might show to Miss Kenton after she was released. The woman appeared to consider Reema’s appeal carefully, but when her next meal arrived, there was a terse note of rejection. Reema ate the dreadful food nonetheless, for she was too famished to carry on with her hunger strike. Afterward, they allowed her to use the toilet, and when she returned to the cell the bucket was gone. It seemed all was right in Reema’s tiny world.
She thought of Miss Kenton often. Reema had fooled them all—Miss Halifax, Herr Schröder, the mad Spanish woman who tried to teach Reema to paint like Picasso—but not Miss Kenton. She had been standing in the window of the staff room on the afternoon Reema left the school for the last time. The attack had happened in France, on the road between Annecy and her father’s château. Reema remembered a van parked along the side of the road, a man changing a tire. A car had smashed into theirs, an explosion had blown open the doors. Salma, the bodyguard who pretended to be Reema’s mother, had been shot. So had the driver and all the other bodyguards in the Range Rover. Reema they forced into the back of the van. They covered her head with a hood and gave her a shot to make her sleep, and when she woke she was in the small white room. The smallest room she had ever seen in her life.
But why had they abducted her? In the movies, the kidnappers always wanted money. Reema’s father had all the money in the world. It meant nothing to him. He would pay the kidnappers what they wanted, and Reema would be released. And then her father would send out men to find the kidnappers and kill them all. Or perhaps her father might kill one or two himself. To Reema he was very kind, but she had heard about the things he did to people who opposed him. He would show no mercy to the people who kidnapped his only child.
And so Princess Reema bint Khalid Abdulaziz Al Saud endured the many indignities of her captivity with as much grace as possible, secure in the knowledge she would soon be released. She ate their dreadful food without complaint and behaved herself when they took her down the darkened corridor to the toilet. After one visit she returned to her cell to find a pen and a notebook lying at the foot of her cot. You’re dead, she wrote on the first page. Dead, dead, dead . . .
14
Jerusalem–Paris
Though Princess Reema did not know it, her father had already retained the services of a dangerous and sometimes violent man to find her. He passed the remainder of that night in the company of an old friend for whom sleep was no longer possible. And at dawn, after kissing his sleeping wife and children, he traveled by motorcade to Ben Gurion Airport, where yet another flight awaited him. His name did not appear on the passenger manifest. As usual, he was the last to board. A seat had been reserved for him in first class. The seat next to it, as was customary, was empty.
A flight attendant offered him a preflight beverage. He requested tea. Then he asked for the passenger in 22B to be invited to take the seat next to him. Ordinarily, the flight attendant would have explained that passengers from economy class were not allowed in the aircraft’s forward cabin, but she offered no objection. The flight attendant knew who the man was. Everyone in Israel did.
The flight attendant headed aft, and when she returned, she was accompanied by a woman of forty-three with blond hair and blue eyes. A murmur arose in the first-class cabin as the woman lowered herself into the seat next to the man who had boarded the plane last.
“Did you really think my security department would allow me to get on a plane without first reviewing every name on the manifest?”
“No,” replied Sarah Bancroft. “But it was worth a try.”
“You deceived me. You asked me about my travel plans, and I foolishly told you the truth.”
“I was trained by the best.”
“How much of it do you remember?”
“All of it.”
Gabriel smiled sadly. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
It was a few minutes after four o’clock when the flight landed in Paris. Gabriel and Sarah cleared passport control separately—Gabriel falsely, Sarah under her real name—and reunited in the busy arrivals hall of Terminal 2A. There they were met by a courier from Paris Station, who handed Gabriel the key to a car. It was waiting on the second level of the short-term car park.
“A Passat?” Sarah dropped into the passenger seat. “Couldn’t they have given us something a little more exciting?”
“I don’t want exciting. I want reliability and anonymity. It’s also rather fast.”
“When was the last time you drove a car?”
“Earlier this year, when I was in Washington working on the Rebecca Manning case.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
“Not with the car.” Gabriel opened the glove box. Inside was a Beretta 9mm pistol with a walnut grip.
“Your favorite,” remarked Sarah.
“Transport thinks of everything.”
“What about bodyguards?”
“They make it hard to operate effectively.”
“Is it safe for you to be in Paris without a security detail?”
“That’s what the Beretta is for.”
Gabriel reversed out of the space and followed the ramp to the lower level. He paid the attendant in cash and did his best to shield his face from the security camera.
“You’re not fooling anyone. The French are going to figure out that you’re in the country.”
“It’s not the French I’m worried about.”
Gabriel followed the A1 through the gathering dusk to the northern fringes of Paris. Night had fallen by the time they arrived. The rue la Fayette bore them westward across the city, and the Pont de Bir-Hakeim carried them over the Seine to the fifteenth arrondissement. Gabriel turned onto the rue Nélaton and stopped at a formidable security gate manned by heavily armed officers of the National Police. Behind the gate stood a charmless modern office block. A small sign warned that the building belonged to the Interior Ministry and was under constant video surveillance.
“It reminds me of the Green Zone in Baghdad.”
“These days,” said Gabriel, “the Green Zone is safer than Paris.”
“Where are we?”
“The headquarters of the Alpha Group. It’s an elite counter- terrorism unit of the DGSI.” The direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, or DGSI, was France’s internal security service. “The French created the Alpha Group not long after you left the Agency. It used to be hidden inside a beautiful old building on the rue de Grenelle.”
“The one that was destroyed by that ISIS car bomb?”
“The bomb was in a van. And I was inside the building when it exploded.”
“Of course you were.”
“So was Paul Rousseau, Alpha Group’s chief. I introduced you to him at my swearing-in party.”
“He looked m
ore like a professor than a French spy.”
“He was once, actually. He’s one of France’s foremost scholars of Proust.”
“What’s the Alpha Group’s role?”
“Human penetration of jihadist networks. But Rousseau has access to everything.”
A uniformed officer approached the car. Gabriel gave him two pseudonymous names, one male, the other female, both French and both inspired by the novels of Dumas, a particularly Rousseauian touch. The Frenchman was waiting in his new lair on the top floor. Unlike the other offices in the building, Rousseau’s was somber and wood-paneled and filled with books and files. Like Gabriel, he preferred them to digital dossiers. He was dressed in a crumpled tweed jacket and a pair of gray flannel trousers. His ever-present pipe belched smoke as he shook Gabriel’s hand.
“Welcome to our new Bastille.” Rousseau offered his hand to Sarah. “So good to see you again, Madame Bancroft. When we met in Israel, you told me you were a museum curator from New York. I didn’t believe it then, and I surely don’t believe it now.”
“It’s true, actually.”
“But obviously there’s more to the story. Where Monsieur Allon is concerned, there usually is.” Rousseau released Sarah’s hand and contemplated Gabriel over his reading glasses. “You were rather vague on the phone this morning. I assume this isn’t a social call.”
“I heard you recently had a bit of unpleasantness in the Haute-Savoie.” Gabriel paused, then added, “A few miles west of Annecy.”
Rousseau raised an eyebrow. “What else have you heard?”
“That your government chose to cover up the incident at the request of the victim’s father, who happens to own the largest château in the region. He also happens to be—”
“The future king of Saudi Arabia.” Rousseau lowered his voice. “Please tell me you didn’t have anything to do—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Paul.”
The Frenchman nibbled thoughtfully at the stem of his pipe. “The unpleasantness, as you call it, was quickly designated a criminal act rather than an act of terrorism. Therefore, it fell outside the purview of the Alpha Group. It is none of our affair.”
“But you must have been at the table during the first hours of the crisis.”
“Of course.”
“You also have access to all the information and intelligence gathered by the National Police and the DGSI.”
Rousseau pondered Gabriel at length. “Why is the abduction of the crown prince’s daughter of interest to the State of Israel?”
“Our interest is humanitarian in nature.”
“A refreshing change of pace. On whose behalf have you come?”
“The future king of Saudi Arabia.”
“My goodness,” said Rousseau. “How the world has changed.”
15
Paris
It soon became apparent that Paul Rousseau did not approve of his government’s decision to conceal the abduction of Princess Reema. It had been made easier, he said, by the remote location—the intersection of two rural roads, the D14 and the D38, west of Annecy. As it happened, the first person on the scene was a retired gendarme who lived in a nearby village. The next to arrive were the crown prince himself and his usual retinue of bodyguards. They surrounded the two vehicles of the princess’s motorcade, along with a third vehicle that had been abandoned by the kidnappers. To subsequent passersby it looked like a serious traffic accident involving wealthy men from the Middle East.
“Hardly an unusual occurrence in France,” said Rousseau.
The retired gendarme was sworn to secrecy, he continued, as were the officers who took part in a rapid nationwide search for the princess. Rousseau offered the assistance of the Alpha Group but was informed by his chief and his minister that his services were not required.
“Why not?”
“Because His Royal Highness told my minister that his daughter’s abduction was not the work of terrorists.”
“How could he have known that so quickly?”
“You’d have to ask him. But the logical explanation is—”
“He already knew who was behind it.”
They were gathered around a stack of files piled on Rousseau’s conference table. He opened one and removed a single photograph, which he placed before Gabriel and Sarah. A Range Rover riddled with bullet holes, a smashed Mercedes Maybach, a crumbled Citroën estate car. The corpses of the dead Saudi bodyguards had been removed. Their blood, however, was spattered over the interior of the Range Rover and the Maybach. There was a lot of blood, thought Gabriel, especially in the backseat of the limousine. He wondered whether some of it had been shed by the princess.
“There was at least one other vehicle involved, a Ford Transit van.” Rousseau pointed toward the grassy verge along the D14. “It was parked right here. Maybe the driver was looking under the hood or pretending to change a tire when the motorcade approached. Or maybe he didn’t bother.”
“How do you know it was a Ford Transit?”
“In a minute.” Rousseau pointed toward the smashed front end of the Citroën. “There were no witnesses, but the tire marks and the collision damage paint an accurate picture of what happened. The motorcade was heading west on the D14 toward the crown prince’s château. The Citroën was headed north on the D38. Obviously, it didn’t stop at the intersection. Based on the tire marks, the driver of the Maybach swerved to avoid the collision, but the Citroën struck the driver’s side of the limousine with enough force to damage the armor plating and force it off the road. The driver of the Range Rover slammed on his brakes and came to a stop behind the Maybach. In all likelihood, the four bodyguards were killed instantly. The ballistics and forensic analysis indicate the gunshots came from the direction of both the Citroën and the Ford Transit.”
“How did they get the girl out of an armor-plated car with bulletproof windows?”
Rousseau removed a second photograph from the file. It showed the passenger side of the Maybach. The armor-plated doors had been blown open—rather expertly, thought Gabriel. The Office could not have done it any better.
“I assume your forensics experts analyzed the blood inside the Maybach.”
“It came from two people, the male driver and the female bodyguard. Like the four bodyguards from the Range Rover, they were killed by nine-millimeter rounds. The markings on the shell casings are consistent with an HK MP5 or one of its variants.”
Rousseau produced another photograph. A Ford Transit, light gray. The photograph had been taken at night. The flash of the camera had illuminated a small patch of dry, rocky earth. It was not, thought Gabriel, the soil of the north of France.
“Where did they find it?”
“On a deserted road outside the village of Vielle-Aure. It’s—”
“In the Pyrenees a few miles from the Spanish border.”
“Sometimes I forget how well you know our country.” Rousseau pointed at one of the van’s tires. “It was a perfect match for the tracks found at the scene of the kidnapping.”
Gabriel studied the photograph of the van. “I assume it was stolen.”
“Of course. So was the Citroën.”
“Was there any blood in the storage compartment?”
Rousseau shook his head.
“What about DNA?”
“A great deal.”
“Any of it belong to Princess Reema?”
“We asked for a sample and were told in no uncertain terms we couldn’t have one.”
“By Khalid?”
Rousseau shook his head. “We’ve had no direct contact with the crown prince since he left France. All communication now flows through a certain Monsieur al-Madani of the Saudi Embassy in Paris.”
Sarah looked up suddenly. “Rafiq al-Madani?”
“You know him?”
Sarah made no reply.
“It is my assumption, Miss Bancroft, that you are either a current or former officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. Needless to say, your secrets ar
e safe within these walls.”
“Rafiq al-Madani served at the Saudi Embassy in Washington for several years as the representative of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. It’s one of the official conduits the House of Saud uses to spread Wahhabism around the globe.”
Rousseau smiled charitably. “Yes, I know.”
“The FBI didn’t care much for al-Madani,” said Sarah. “And neither did the Counterterrorism Center at Langley. We didn’t like the company he’d kept before coming to Washington. And the FBI didn’t like some of the projects he was funding in America. The State Department quietly asked Riyadh to find work for him elsewhere. And much to our surprise, the Saudis agreed to our request.”
“Unfortunately,” said Rousseau, “they sent him to Paris. From the moment he arrived, he’s been funneling Saudi money and support to some of the most radical mosques in France. In our opinion, Rafiq al-Madani is a hard-liner and a true believer. He is also quite close to His Royal Highness. He is a frequent visitor to the prince’s château, and last summer he spent several days aboard his new yacht.”
“I take it al-Madani is a target of DGSI surveillance,” said Gabriel.
“Intermittent.”
“Do you suppose he knew Khalid’s daughter was going to school across the border in Geneva?”
Rousseau shrugged. “It’s hard to say. The crown prince told almost no one, and security at the school was very tight. It was handled by a man named Lucien Villard. He’s French, not Swiss. He used to work for the Service de la Protection.”
“Why was a veteran of an elite unit like the SDLP running security at a private school in Geneva?”
“Villard didn’t leave the service on the best of terms. There were rumors he was having an affair with the president’s wife. When the president found out about it, he had him fired. Apparently, Villard took the girl’s abduction quite hard. He resigned his post a few days later.”
“Where is he now?”
“Still in Geneva, I suppose. I can get you an address if you—”
“Don’t bother.” Gabriel contemplated the three photographs arrayed on the table.
