Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant Read online

  He decided to keep working. He thought of the drills he’d done at the Academy, of Shamron standing over his shoulder, exhorting him to work as though his life and the lives of his team depended on it. He could hear the clatter of their high heels now, and when one of the women squealed with laughter his heart gave a sideways lurch.

  When finally the last pin gave way, Gabriel put his hand on the latch and felt the gratifying sensation of movement. He pushed open the door and slipped inside, then closed it again just as the women were reaching the landing. He leaned his back against the door and, with only his lockpick as a weapon, held his breath as they passed in laughter. For an instant he hated them for their frivolity.

  He locked the door. From the satchel he removed a cigar-sized Maglite and shone the narrow beam about the flat. He was standing in a small entrance hall, beyond which was the sitting room. Cool and white, with low comfortable furniture and an abundance of colorful pillows and throws, it reminded Gabriel vaguely of Mimi’s nightclub. He moved slowly forward but stopped suddenly when the light fell upon a pair of neon yellow eyes. Mimi’s fat cat lay curled atop an ottoman. It looked at Gabriel without interest, then rested its chin on its paws and closed its eyes.

  He had a list of targets, organized in order of importance. Highest in priority were Mimi’s telephones. He found the first in the sitting room, resting atop an end table. The second he located on the nightstand in the bedroom; the third in the room she used as an office. To each he attached a miniature device known in the lexicon of the Office as a glass, a transmitter that would provide coverage of both the telephone and the room around it. With a range of roughly a thousand yards it would permit Gabriel to use his suite at the Intercontinental as a listening post.

  In the office he also found the second item on his target list, Mimi’s computer. He sat down, powered on the computer, and inserted a compact disk into the drive. The software engaged automatically and began collecting the data stored on the hard drive: mailboxes, documents, photographs, even audio and video files.

  While the files downloaded, Gabriel had a look round the rest of the office. He leafed through a stack of post, opened desk drawers, glanced at the files. The absence of time permitted nothing more than a cursory examination of the items, and Gabriel found nothing that leapt to his attention.

  He checked the progress of the download, then stood up and played the beam of the Maglite around the walls. One was covered with several framed photographs. Most showed Mimi with other beautiful people. In one he saw a younger version of Mimi, her shoulders wrapped in a kaffiyeh. In the background stood the pyramids of Giza. They, like her face, were washed in sienna by the sinking sun—Mimi, New Age idealist, trying to save the world from destruction through the power of positive thinking.

  A second photograph caught Gabriel’s eye: Mimi, her head resting on a lavender-colored pillow, staring directly into the camera lens. Her cheek was pressed to the face of a man feigning sleep. A hat was pulled down over his eyes, so that only his nose, mouth, and chin were visible—enough of the face, Gabriel knew, for the experts in facial recognition to make a positive identification. He produced a small digital camera from Herr Klemp’s satchel and took a photograph of the photograph.

  He walked back to the desk and saw that the download was complete. He removed the disk from the drive and shut down the computer. Then he glanced at his wristwatch. He’d been inside the flat for seven minutes, two minutes longer than he’d planned. He dropped the disk into his satchel, then went to the front door, pausing for a moment to make certain the landing was empty before letting himself out.

  The stairwell was deserted, as was the lobby except for the Nubian doorman, who wished Gabriel a pleasant evening as he slipped past and went into the street. Quinnell, a picture of indifference, was sitting on the hood of his car, smoking a cigarette. Like a good professional, he kept his eyes to the ground as Gabriel turned to the left and started walking toward the Tahrir Bridge.

  The next morning Herr Klemp fell ill. Mr. Katubi, after receiving a disagreeably detailed description of the symptoms, diagnosed the disorder as bacterial in nature and predicted the onslaught would be violent but brief. “Cairo has betrayed me,” Herr Klemp complained. “I was seduced by her, and she repaid my affection with vengeance.”

  Mr. Katubi’s forecast of a swift recovery proved erroneous. The storm in Herr Klemp’s bowels raged on for many days and nights. Doctors were summoned, medication was prescribed, but nothing seemed to work. Mr. Katubi set aside his hard feelings for Herr Klemp and personally assumed responsibility for his care. He prescribed a time-proven potion of boiled potatoes sprinkled with lemon juice and salt and delivered the concoction himself three times daily.

  Illness softened Herr Klemp’s demeanor. He was pleasant to Mr. Katubi and even apologetic to the maids who had to clean his appalling bathroom. Sometimes, when Mr. Katubi entered the room, he would find Herr Klemp seated in the armchair next to the window, gazing wearily toward the river. He spent most of his time, though, stretched listlessly on the bed. To relieve the boredom of captivity he listened to music and German-language news on his shortwave radio, on tiny earphones so as not to disturb the other guests. Mr. Katubi found himself missing the old Johannes Klemp. Sometimes he would look up from his outpost in the lobby and long to see the cantankerous German pounding across the marble floor with his coattails flapping and his jaw steeled for confrontation.

  One morning, a week to the day after Herr Klemp had first taken ill, Mr. Katubi knocked on Herr Klemp’s door and was surprised by the vigorous voice that ordered him to come in. He slipped his passkey into the lock and entered. Herr Klemp was packing his bags.

  “The storm has ended, Katubi.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “As certain as one can be in a situation like this.”

  “I’m sorry Cairo treated you so badly, Herr Klemp. I suppose the decision to extend your stay turned out to be a mistake.”

  “Perhaps, Katubi, but then I’ve never been one to dwell on the past, and neither should you.”

  “It is the Arab disease, Herr Klemp.”

  “I suffer from no such affliction, Katubi.” Herr Klemp placed his shortwave radio into his bag and closed the zipper. “Tomorrow is another day.”

  It was raining in Frankfurt that evening—the Lufthansa pilot had made that abundantly clear. He’d spoken of the rain while they were still on the ground in Cairo, and twice during the flight he’d provided them tedious updates. Gabriel had latched onto the pilot’s plodding voice, for it had given him something to do besides stare at his wristwatch and calculate the hours until Khaled’s next massacre of innocents. As they neared Frankfurt he leaned his head against the glass and looked out, hoping to glimpse the first lights of the south German plain, but instead he saw only blackness. The jetliner plunged into the cloud, and his window was awash with horizontal streaks of rainwater—and Gabriel, in the scampering droplets, saw Khaled’s teams moving into position for their next strike. Then suddenly the runway appeared, a sheet of polished black marble rising slowly to receive them, and they were down.

  In the terminal he went to a telephone kiosk and dialed the number for a freight forwarding company in Brussels. He identified himself as Stevens, one of his many telephone names, and asked to speak to a Mr. Parsons. He heard a series of clicks and hums, then a female voice, distant and with a slight echo. The girl, Gabriel knew, was at that moment seated on the Operations Control desk at King Saul Boulevard.

  “What do you require?” she asked.

  “Voice identification.”

  “You have a recording?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quality?”

  Gabriel, using Hebrew terms no listener could comprehend, tersely relayed to the girl the technical means with which he had captured and recorded the subject’s voice.

  “Play the recording, please.”

  Gabriel pressed PLAY and held his recorder up to the mouthpiece of the receiver.
Male voice, perfect French.

  “It’s me. Give me a ring when you have a chance. Nothing urgent. Ciao.”

  He lowered the tape player and placed the receiver against his ear.

  “No match on file,” said the woman.

  “Compare to unidentified voiceprint 698/D.”

  “Stand by.” Then, a moment later: “It’s a match.”

  “I need a telephone number ID.”

  Gabriel located the second intercept, then pressed PLAY and held the recorder up to the phone again. It was the sound of Mimi Ferrere making an international call from the phone in her office. When the last number had been dialed, Gabriel pressed PAUSE.

  The woman at the other end of the line recited the number: 00 33 91 54 67 98. Gabriel knew that 33 was the country code for France and that 91 was the city code for Marseilles.

  “Run it,” he said.

  “Stand by.”

  Two minutes later the woman said: “The telephone is registered to a Monsieur Paul Véran, 56 boulevard St-Rémy, Marseilles.”

  “I need another voice identification.”

  “Quality?”

  “Same as before.”

  “Play the recording.”

  Gabriel pressed PLAY, but this time the voice was drowned out by the sound of a security announcement, in German, blaring from the speaker above his head: Achtung! Achtung! When it was over, he pressed PLAY again. This time the voice, a woman’s, was clearly audible.

  “It’s me. Where are you? Call me when you can. Much love.”

  STOP.

  “No match on file.”

  “Compare to unidentified voiceprint 572/B.”

  “Stand by.” Then: “It’s a match.”

  “Please note, subject goes by the name Mimi Ferrere. Her address is 24 Brazil Street, apartment 6A, Cairo.”

  “I’ve added it to the file. Elapsed time of this call four minutes, thirty-two seconds. Anything else?”

  “I need you to pass a message to Ezekiel.”

  Ezekiel was the telephone code word for the Operations directorate.

  “Message?”

  “Our friend is spending time in Marseilles, at the address you gave me.”

  “Number 56 boulevard St-Rémy?”

  “That’s right,” Gabriel said. “I need instructions from Ezekiel on where to proceed.”

  “You’re calling from Frankfurt airport?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m terminating this call. Move to another location and call back in five minutes. I’ll have instructions for you then.”

  Gabriel hung up the phone. He went to a newsstand, bought a German magazine, then walked a short distance through the terminal to another kiosk of telephones. Same number, same patter, same girl in Tel Aviv.

  “Ezekiel wants you to go to Rome.”

  “Rome? Why Rome?”

  “You know I can’t answer that.”

  It was no matter. Gabriel knew the answer.

  “Where should I go?”

  “The apartment near the Piazza di Spagna. Do you know it?”

  Gabriel did. It was a lovely safe flat at the top of the Spanish Steps, not far from the Church of the Trinità dei Monti.

  “There’s a flight from Frankfurt to Rome in two hours. We’re booking a seat for you.”

  “Do you want my frequent-flyer number?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Have a safe trip,” said the girl, and the line went dead.

  PART THREE

  THE GARE DE LYON

  15

  MARSEILLES

  For the second time in ten days Paul Martineau made the drive from Aix-en-Provence to Marseilles. Once again he entered the coffeehouse on the small street off the rue des Convalescents and climbed the narrow stairs to the flat on the first floor, and once again he was greeted on the landing by the gowned figure who spoke to him quietly in Arabic. They sat, propped on silk pillows, on the floor of the tiny living room. The man slowly loaded hashish into a hubble-bubble and touched a lighted match to the bowl. In Marseilles he was known as Hakim el-Bakri, a recent immigrant from Algiers. Martineau knew him by another name, Abu Saddiq. Martineau did not refer to him by that name, just as Abu Saddiq did not call Martineau by the name he’d been given by his real father.

  Abu Saddiq drew heavily on the mouthpiece of the pipe, then inclined it in Martineau’s direction. Martineau took a long pull at the hashish and allowed the smoke to drift out his nostrils. Then he finished the last of his coffee. A veiled woman took away his empty cup and offered him another. When Martineau shook his head, the woman slipped silently from the room.

  He closed his eyes as a wave of pleasure washed over his body. The Arab way, he thought—a bit of smoke, a cup of sweet coffee, the subservience of a woman who knew her place in life. Though he had been raised a proper Frenchman, it was Arab blood that flowed in his veins and Arabic that felt most comfortable on his tongue. The poet’s language, the language of conquest and suffering. There were times when the separation from his people was almost too painful to bear. In Provence he was surrounded by people like himself, yet he could not touch them. It was as if he had been condemned to wander among them, as a damned spirit drifts among the living. Only here, in Abu Saddiq’s tiny flat, could he behave as the man he truly was. Abu Saddiq understood this, which was why he seemed in no hurry to get around to business. He loaded more hashish into the water pipe and struck another match.

  Martineau took another draw from the pipe, this one deeper than the last, and held the smoke until it seemed his lungs might burst. Now his mind was floating. He saw Palestine, not with his own eyes but as it had been described to him by those who had actually seen it. Martineau, like his father, had never set foot there. Lemon trees and olive groves—that was what he imagined. Sweet springs and goats pulling on the tan hills of the Galilee. A bit like Provence, he thought, before the arrival of the Greeks.

  The image disintegrated, and he found himself wandering across a landscape of Celtic and Roman ruins. He came to a village, a village on the Coastal Plain of Palestine. Beit Sayeed, they had called it. Now there was nothing but a footprint in the dusty soil. Martineau, in his hallucination, fell to his knees and with his spade clawed at the earth. It surrendered nothing, no tools or pottery, no coins or human remains. It was as if the people had simply vanished.

  He forced open his eyes. The vision dissipated. His mission would soon be over. The murders of his father and grandfather would be avenged, his birthright fulfilled. Martineau was confident he would not spend his final days as a Frenchman in Provence but as an Arab in Palestine. His people, lost and scattered, would be returned to the land, and Beit Sayeed would rise once more from its grave. The days of the Jews were numbered. They would leave like all those who had come to Palestine before them—the Greeks and Romans, the Persians and the Assyrians, the Turks and the British. One day soon, Martineau was convinced, he would be searching for artifacts amid the ruins of a Jewish settlement.

  Abu Saddiq was pulling at his shirtsleeve and calling him by his real name. Martineau turned his head slowly and fixed Abu Saddiq in a heavy-lidded gaze. “Call me Martineau,” he said in French. “I’m Paul Martineau. Doctor Paul Martineau.”

  “You were far away for a moment.”

  “I was in Palestine,” Martineau murmured, his speech heavy with the drug. “Beit Sayeed.”

  “We’ll all be there soon,” Abu Saddiq said.

  Martineau treated himself to a smile—not one of arrogance but of quiet confidence. Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Rome—three attacks, each flawlessly planned and executed. The teams had delivered their explosives to the target and had vanished without a trace. In each operation, Martineau had concealed himself with archaeological work and had operated through a cutout. Abu Saddiq was handling the Paris operation. Martineau had conceived and planned it; Abu Saddiq, from his coffeehouse in the Quartier Belsunce, moved the chess pieces at Martineau’s command. When it was over Abu Saddiq woul
d suffer the same fate as all those Martineau had used. He had learned from the mistakes of his ancestors. He would never allow himself to be undone by an Arab traitor.

  Abu Saddiq offered Martineau the pipe. Martineau lifted his hand in surrender. Then, with a slow nod of his head, he instructed Abu Saddiq to get on with the final briefing. For the next half hour Martineau remained silent while Abu Saddiq spoke: the locations of the teams, the addresses in Paris where the suitcase bombs were being assembled, the emotional state of the three shaheeds. Abu Saddiq stopped talking while the veiled woman poured more coffee. When she was gone again Abu Saddiq mentioned that the last member of the team would arrive in Marseilles in two days’ time.

  “She wants to see you,” Abu Saddiq said. “Before the operation.”

  Martineau shook his head. He knew the girl—they had been lovers once—and he knew why she wanted to see him. It was better they not spend time together now. Otherwise Martineau might have second thoughts about what he had planned for her.

  “We stay to the original plan,” he said. “Where do I meet her?”

  “The Internet café overlooking the harbor. Do you know it?”

  Martineau did.

  “She’ll be there at twelve-thirty.”

  Just then, from the minaret of a mosque up the street, the muezzin summoned the faithful to prayer. Martineau closed his eyes as the familiar words washed over him.

  God is most great. I testify that there is no god but God. I testify that Muhammad is the Prophet of God. Come to prayer. Come to success. God is most great. There is no god but God.

  Martineau, when the call to prayer had ended, stood and prepared to take his leave.

  “Where’s Hadawi?” he asked.

  “Zurich.”

  “He’s something of a liability, wouldn’t you say?”

  Abu Saddiq nodded. “Should I move him?”

  “No,” said Martineau. “Just kill him.”