by Daniel Silva
“He all but confirmed it.”
“He had a gun pointed at his head at the time.”
“I believe he was telling us the truth about the safe house. But the rest was a lie.”
“You don’t think he organized it by himself?”
“Al-Madani is a small cog. Others are involved in the plot against me.”
“Perhaps we should interrogate him again and find out who they are.” Gabriel glanced into the rearview mirror. Mikhail, Keller, and Sarah were a couple of hundred meters behind them. “What are you going to do about the bodies?”
“Rest assured, the bodies will disappear.”
“Make your gun disappear, too.”
“It wasn’t mine, it was Rafiq’s.”
“But it’s got your fingerprints all over it.” After a silence, Gabriel said, “You shouldn’t have killed them, Khalid. I’m now implicated in their murders. Sarah, too.”
“No one will ever know.”
“But you know. And you can hold it over me whenever it suits you.”
“It wasn’t my intention to compromise you.”
“Given your track record for rash behavior, I’m inclined to believe you.”
Khalid glanced at the phone again. “Was it my imagination, or was Rafiq not surprised by your presence at my home?”
“You noticed that, too?”
“Someone clearly told him you were involved in the search for Reema.”
“A couple hundred members of your royal court saw me in Saudi Arabia the other night.”
“I’m afraid I never go anywhere alone.”
“You’re alone now, Khalid.”
“With you, of all people.” His smile was brief. “I must say, my art adviser didn’t seem shocked by the sight of a little blood.”
“She doesn’t faze easily, not after what Zizi al-Bakari did to her.”
“What happened, exactly?”
Gabriel decided there was no harm in telling him; it was a long time ago. “When Zizi figured out that Sarah was a CIA agent on loan to the Office, he handed her over to an al-Qaeda cell to be interrogated and executed.”
“But you were able to save her.”
“And in the process,” said Gabriel, “I prevented a Saudi-financed plot to assassinate the pope.”
“You’ve lived quite a life.”
“And yet what do I have to show for it? I don’t have a palace in the Haute-Savoie.”
“Or the second-largest superyacht in the world,” Khalid pointed out.
“Or a Leonardo.”
“It seems I don’t have a Leonardo, either.”
“Why do you need all of it?” asked Gabriel.
“It makes me happy.”
“Does it really?”
“Not all of us are as lucky as you. You are a man of extraordinary gifts. You don’t need toys to make you happy.”
“One or two would be nice.”
“What do you want? I’ll give you anything.”
“I want to see you holding your daughter in your arms again.”
“Can’t you drive any faster?” asked Khalid impatiently.
“No, I can’t.”
“Then let me drive.”
“Not without training wheels.”
Khalid gazed at the darkened countryside. “Do you think she’ll be there?”
“Yes,” said Gabriel with more certainty than he intended.
“And if she’s not?”
Gabriel was silent.
“Do you know what my uncle Abdullah told me? He said a daughter can be replaced, but not a king.”
The drone of the engine filled the silence. After a moment, Gabriel noticed that Khalid was working a set of prayer beads with the fingers of his left hand. “Are those al-Madani’s?”
“I left mine at the Dorchester.”
“Surely, there’s an Islamic prohibition against using the prayer beads of a man you just murdered.”
“No,” said Khalid. “Not that I’m aware of.”
The courier was waiting at the edge of a moonlit field in the commune of Saint-Sulpice. The nylon sports bag he delivered to Gabriel contained two Uzi Pro compact submachine pistols, a pair of .45-caliber Jerichos, and a Beretta 9mm. Gabriel gave the Uzis and the Jerichos to Mikhail and Keller and kept the Beretta for himself.
“Nothing for me?” asked Khalid when they were moving again.
“You’re not going anywhere near that house.”
By the time they reached Bordeaux, Gabriel could see a fiery sun rising in his rearview mirror. They headed south along the Bay of Biscay and crossed the Spanish border without a check of their passports. The weather was capricious, golden sunlight one minute, black skies and windblown rain the next.
“Have you spent much time in Spain?” asked Khalid.
“I had occasion to visit Seville recently.”
“It was a Muslim city once.”
“At the rate things are going, it will be a Muslim city again.”
“There were Jews in Seville, too.”
“And we all know how that ended.”
“One of history’s great acts of injustice,” said Khalid. “And five centuries later, you did the same thing to the Palestinians.”
“Would you like to discuss how many people the Al Saud killed and displaced while establishing control over the Arabian Peninsula?”
“We were not a colonial entity.”
“Neither were we.”
They were approaching San Sebastián, the resort city the Basques referred to as Donostia. Bilbao was the next major city, but before they reached it Gabriel turned south, into the Basque interior. In a village called Olarra he stopped by the side of the highway long enough for Sarah to join them. She crawled into the backseat, her hair in disarray, her eyes heavy with fatigue. Mikhail and Keller turned onto a side road and vanished from their view.
“I should be with your men,” said Khalid.
“You’d only get in their way.” Gabriel glanced at Sarah. “Do you still think the secret world is more interesting?”
“Is there coffee in the secret world?”
Villaro, the town the Basques called Areatza, was a few miles farther to the south. It was not a popular tourist destination, but there were several small hotels in the town center and a café on the plaza. Gabriel, in decent Spanish, ordered.
“Is there a language you don’t speak?” asked Khalid when the waitress was gone.
“Russian.”
Through the window of the café Khalid watched the shifting light in the plaza and the little tornadic gusts chasing newsprint around the arcades. “I’ve never seen a day like this before. So beautiful and so foul at the same time.”
Gabriel and Sarah exchanged a glance as three young women, their hair blown by the wind, came in out of the cold. Their leggings were torn, their noses were pierced, they had tattoos on their hands and many bangles and bracelets on their wrists that clattered and clanged as they collapsed into three chairs at a table near the bar. They were known to the waitress, who remarked on their lack of sobriety. They were at the end of their day, thought Gabriel, not the beginning.
“Look at them,” said Khalid contemptuously. “They look like witches. I suppose this is what we have to look forward to in Saudi Arabia.”
“You should be so lucky.”
Al-Madani’s iPhone, muted, lay at the center of the table, next to Gabriel’s BlackBerry. Khalid was rubbing a thumb over the prayer beads.
“Maybe you should put those things away,” said Gabriel.
“They’re comforting.”
“They make you look like a Saudi prince who’s wondering whether he’s ever going to see his daughter again.”
Khalid slipped the beads into his pocket as their breakfast arrived. “Those girls are looking at me.”
“They probably think you’re attractive.”
“Do they know who I am?”
“Not a chance.”
Khalid picked up al-Madani’s iPhone. �
�I don’t understand why they never responded.”
Just then, Gabriel’s BlackBerry flared with an incoming message.
“What does it say?”
“They located the house.”
“When are they going in?”
Gabriel returned the BlackBerry to the tabletop as a sudden rain hammered on the paving stones of the plaza.
“Now.”
29
Areatza, Spain
Mikhail had studied an ordinary commercial satellite image of the house during the long night of driving. Viewed from overhead, it was a perfect square with a red tile roof—one level or two, he could not tell—set in the middle of a clearing and reached by a long private track. Viewed through the lens of the monocular from the shelter of the wood, it was a modest but well-maintained two-story dwelling with recently painted blue shutters, all of which were tightly closed. There were no vehicles in the drive and no smell of coffee or cooking on the cold, thin air of morning. A large Belgian shepherd, a particularly ill-tempered breed, thrashed at the end of its long tether like a fish on a hook. It was barking inconsolably, a deep sonorous bark that seemed to make the trees vibrate.
“Can you imagine living next door to that?” asked Keller.
“Some people have no manners.”
“Why do you suppose it’s so upset?”
“Maybe it heard through the grapevine that Gabriel was in town. You know how dogs feel about him.”
“He doesn’t get on well with canines?”
Mikhail shook his head gravely. “Gasoline and a match.” The dog barked without pause. “Why hasn’t anyone come out of the house to see what all the fuss is about?”
“Maybe the damn thing barks all the time.”
“Or maybe it’s the wrong house.”
“We’re about to find out.”
Keller jerked the slide on the Uzi Pro and went silently into the clearing, the gun in his outstretched hand, Mikhail a few paces behind. The dog was now fully alert to their presence and so enraged that Keller feared it might snap the wire lead.
It was about ten meters, the lead, which gave the dog dominion over the front door. Keller went to the back of the house. Here, too, the shutters were tightly closed, and a blind was drawn over the paned-glass window in the rear door.
Keller applied a few ounces of pressure to the latch. It was locked. Gabriel could have opened it in ten seconds flat, but neither Keller nor Mikhail possessed his uncanny skill with a simple lock pick. Besides, an elbow through the glass was much faster.
The act itself produced less sound than he had feared—the initial crunch of glass followed by the tinkle of the shards falling to a tile floor. Keller reached through the empty pane, turned the latch, and with Mikhail at his back burst into the house.
The text message hit Gabriel’s BlackBerry two minutes later. He thrust a few banknotes into the palm of the waitress and hurried into the plaza with Sarah and Khalid. The Range Rover was around a corner. Khalid maintained his composure until they were inside and the doors were closed. Gabriel tried to talk him out of going to the house, but it was no use; Khalid insisted on seeing the place where they had held his daughter. Gabriel couldn’t blame him. If he were in Khalid’s position, he would want to see it, too.
They could hear the mad barking of the dog as they came into the clearing. Keller was standing in the drive. He led them through the back door, over the broken glass, and down a flight of stairs to the cellar. A professional-grade padlock lay on the floor outside a metal door, next to a plastic bucket, pale blue. Khalid gagged at the odor as he entered the cell.
It was a small room with bare white walls, scarcely large enough for the cot. Atop the soiled bedding was an instant photograph and a notebook. The photograph was a different version of the one the kidnappers had sent to the Saudi Embassy in Paris. The notebook was filled with the looping handwriting of a twelve-year-old girl. It was all the same, page after page.
You’re dead . . . Dead, dead, dead . . .
30
Paris–Jerusalem
The aides and bodyguards Khalid had abandoned at the Dorchester were waiting in the VIP lounge at Paris–Le Bourget. They reclaimed their crown prince as though receiving stolen contraband and hustled him aboard his private plane. An Israeli Embassy car took Gabriel and the others to nearby Charles de Gaulle. Inside the terminal they went their separate ways. Keller returned to London, Sarah to New York. Gabriel and Mikhail had to wait two hours for an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. Having nothing better to do, Gabriel informed CIA director Morris Payne that the American president’s favorite leader in the Arab world was about to abdicate in order to save his daughter’s life. Payne pressed Gabriel for the source of his information. Gabriel, as usual, played hard to get.
It was early evening when he and Mikhail arrived at Ben Gurion. They headed straight for King Saul Boulevard, where Gabriel spent an hour in Uzi Navot’s office, clearing away the operational and administrative debris that had accumulated during his absence. In his fashionable striped dress shirt and trendy rimless eyewear, Navot looked as though he had just stepped from the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company. At Gabriel’s request, he had turned down a high-paying job at a defense contractor in California to remain at the Office as deputy director. Navot’s demanding wife, Bella, had never forgiven Gabriel. Or her husband, for that matter.
“The analysts are making good progress on the Tehran documents,” explained Navot. “There’s no evidence of an active program, but we’ve got them cold on their previous work, both warheads and delivery systems.”
“How soon can we go public?”
“What’s the rush?”
“In a few hours’ time, the mullahs are going to be celebrating Khalid’s demise. A regional change of subject might help.”
“It won’t change the fact your boy is going down.”
“He was never my boy, Uzi. He was the prime minister’s.”
“He wants to see you.”
“I can’t face it. I’ll call him from the car.”
Gabriel placed the call as his motorcade was making the ascent up the Bab al-Wad, into the Judean Mountains. The prime minister took the news about as well as Morris Payne. Khalid was the linchpin of a regional strategy to isolate Iran, normalize relations with the Sunni Arab regimes, and reach a peace deal with the Palestinians on terms favorable to Israel. Gabriel supported the overall goals of the strategy, but he had warned the prime minister repeatedly that the crown prince was an erratic and unstable actor who would prove to be his own worst enemy.
“It seems you got your wish,” said the prime minister in his baritone voice.
“With all due respect, that is a mischaracterization of my position.”
“Can we intervene?”
“Believe me, I tried.”
“When will it happen?”
“Before midnight Riyadh time.”
“Will he go through with it?”
“I can’t imagine he won’t. Not after what I saw today.”
It was a few minutes after nine o’clock when Gabriel’s motorcade rumbled into Narkiss Street. Usually, the children were asleep by that hour, but much to Gabriel’s surprise they flung themselves into his arms as he came through the door. Raphael, a future painter, displayed his latest work. Irene read a story she had composed with the help of her mother. The notebook in which it was written was identical to the one they had found in Princess Reema’s crude cell in the Basque Country of Spain.
You’re dead . . . Dead, dead, dead . . .
Gabriel volunteered to put the children to bed, an operation that proved no more successful than his attempt to find Khalid’s daughter. When he emerged from their room, he found Chiara removing an orange casserole dish from the oven. He recognized the savor. It was osso buco, one of his favorites. They ate at the small café-style table in the kitchen, a bottle of Galilean Shiraz and Gabriel’s BlackBerry between them. The television played silently on the counter. Chiara was puzzled by her husba
nd’s choice of a channel.
“Since when do you watch Al Jazeera?”
“They have excellent sources inside Saudi Arabia.”
“What’s happening?”
“An earthquake.”
Except for a couple of vaguely worded text messages, Gabriel had had no contact with Chiara since the morning he departed for Paris. Now he told her everything that had transpired. He did so in Italian, the language of their marriage. Chiara listened intently. She loved nothing more than to hear about Gabriel’s exploits in the field. His stories gave her a connection, however tenuous, to the life she had given up to become a mother.
“It must have been quite a surprise.”
“What’s that?”
“Finding Sarah on your flight to Paris.” She glanced at the television. There were scenes of the latest eruption of violence along the border of the Gaza Strip. Israel, it seemed, was entirely to blame. “They don’t seem to know that anything unusual is going on.”
“They will soon.”
“How will it unfold?”
“The crown prince will tell his father the king that he has no choice but to abdicate. His father, who has twenty-eight other children by four different wives, will undoubtedly take issue with his son’s decision.”
“Who will succeed King Mohammed now?”
“That depends on who was behind the plot to force Khalid from power.” Gabriel checked the time. It was 9:42 in Jerusalem, 10:42 in Riyadh. “He’s cutting it rather close.”
“Maybe he’s having second thoughts.”
“Once he steps down, he loses everything. He probably won’t be able to remain in Saudi Arabia. He’ll be just another prince in exile.”
“I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the royal court right now.”
“Would you really?” Gabriel picked up his BlackBerry and dialed the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard. A few minutes later the BlackBerry began to emit the sound of an old man shouting in Arabic.
“What is he saying?”
“A child can be replaced, but not a king.”
It was half past eleven in Riyadh when Al Arabiya, the state-run Saudi news channel, interrupted its usual late-evening fare with an urgent announcement from the palace. The newscaster appeared stricken as he read it. His Royal Highness Prince Khalid bin Mohammed Abdulaziz Al Saud had abdicated, thus relinquishing his claim to the throne. The Allegiance Council, a body of senior princes that determines who among them will rule next, planned to convene soon to appoint a replacement. For the moment, however, Saudi Arabia’s terminally ill and mentally incompetent absolute monarch had no chosen successor.
