Prince of Fire Page 16

  Pazner hung up. Gabriel climbed out of bed and stood beneath the shower for a long time, debating whether to shave his beard. In the end he decided to trim it instead. He dressed in one of Herr Klemp’s dark suits and went to the Via Veneto for coffee. One hour after hanging up with Pazner he was walking along a shaded gravel footpath toward the steps of the galleria. The Rome katsa sat on a marble bench in the forecourt, smoking a cigarette.

  “Nice beard,” said Pazner. “Christ, you look like hell.”

  “I needed an excuse to stay in my hotel room in Cairo.”

  “How’d you do it?”

  Gabriel answered: a common pharmaceutical product that, when ingested instead of used properly, had a disastrousbut temporary effect on the gastrointestinal tract.

  “How many doses did you take?”

  “Three.”

  “Poor bastard.”

  They headed north through the gardens—Pazner like a man marching to a drum only he could hear, Gabriel at his side, weary from too much travel and too many worries. On the perimeter of the park, near the botanicalgardens, was the entrance to the cul-de-sac. For days after the bombing the world’s media had camped out in the intersection. The ground was still littered with their cigarette ends and crushed Styrofoam coffee cups. It looked to Gabriel like a patch of farmland after the annualharvest festival.

  They entered the street and made their way down the slope of the hill, until they arrived at a temporary steel barricade, watched over by Italian police and Israeli security men. Pazner was immediately admitted, along with his bearded German acquaintance.

  Once beyond the fence they could see the first signs of damage: the scorched stone pine stripped clean of their needles; the blown-out windows in the neighboringvillas; the pieces of twisted debris lying about like scraps of discarded paper. A few more paces and the bomb crater came into view, ten feet deep at least and surrounded by a halo of burnt pavement. Little remained of the buildings closest to the blast point; deeper in the compound, the structures remained standing, but the sides facing the explosion had been sheared away, so that the effect was of a child’s dollhouse. Gabriel glimpsed an intact office with framed photographs still propped on the desk and a bathroom with a towel still hanging from the rod. The air was heavy with the stench of ash and, Gabriel feared, the lingering scent of burning flesh. From deep within the compound came the scrape and grumble of backhoes and bulldozers. The crime scene, like the corpse of a murder victim, had given up its final clues. Now it was time for the burial.

  Gabriel stayed longer than he’d thought he would. No past wound, real or perceived, no grievance or politicaldispute justified an act of murder on this scale. Pazner was right—the very sight of it moved him to intense anger. But there was something else, something more than anger. It made him hate. He turned and started walking back up the hill. Pazner followed silently after him.

  “Who told you to bring me here?”

  “It was my idea.”

  “Who?”

  “The old man,” Pazner said quietly.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  Gabriel stopped. “Why, Shimon?”

  “Varash met last night after you checked in from Frankfurt. Go back to the safe flat. Wait there for further instructions. Someone will be in touch soon.”

  And with that‚ Pazner crossed the street and disappearedinto the Villa Borghese.

  But he did not return to the safe flat. Instead, he headed in the opposite direction, into the residential districts of north Rome. He found the Via Trieste and followed it west, until he arrived, ten minutes later, in an untidy little square called the Piazza Annabaliano.

  Little about it had changed in the thirty years since Gabriel had first seen it—the same stand of melancholy trees in the center of the square, the same dreary shops catering to customers of the working classes. And at the northern edge, wedged between two streets, was the same apartment house, shaped like a slice of pie, with the point facing the square and the Bar Trieste on the ground floor. Zwaiter used to stop in the bar to use the telephone before heading upstairs to his room.

  Gabriel crossed the square, picking his way through the cars and motorbikes parked haphazardly in the center,and entered the apartment house through a doorway marked ENTRANCE C. The foyer was cold and in darkness. The lights, Gabriel remembered, operated on a timer to save electricity. Surveillance of the building had noted that residents, including Zwaiter, rarely bothered to switch them on—a fact that would prove to be an operationalasset for Gabriel, because it had virtually assured him the advantage of working in the dark.

  Now he paused in front of the elevator. Next to the elevator was a mirror. Surveillance had neglected to mention it. Gabriel, seeing his own reflection in the glass that night, had nearly drawn his Beretta and fired. Instead he had calmly reached into his jacket pocket for a coin and was holding it out toward the payment slot on the elevator when Zwaiter, dressed in a plaid jacket and clutching a paper sack containing a bottle of fig wine, walked through Entrance C for the last time.

  “Excuse me, but are you Wadal Zwaiter?”

  “No! Please, no!”

  Gabriel had allowed the coin to fall from his fingertips.Before it had struck the floor he had drawn his Beretta and fired the first two shots. One of the rounds pierced the paper sack before striking Zwaiter in the chest. Blood and wine had mingled at Gabriel’s feet as he poured fire into the Palestinian’s collapsing body.

  Now he looked into the mirror and saw himself as he had been that night, a boy angel in a leather jacket, an artist who had no comprehension of how the act he was about to commit would forever alter the course of his life. He had become someone else. He had remained someone else ever since. Shamron had neglected to tell him that would happen. He had taught him how to draw a gun and fire in one second, but he had done nothing to prepare him for what would happen afterward. Engaging the terrorist on his terms, on his battlefield, comes at a terrible price. It changes the men who do it, along with the society that dispatches them. It is the terrorist’s ultimate weapon. For Gabriel, the changes were visible as well. By the time he’d staggeredinto Paris for his next assignment, his temples were gray.

  He looked into the mirror again and saw the bearded figure of Herr Klemp looking back at him. Images of the case flashed through his mind: a flattened embassy, his own dossier, Khaled . . . Was Shamron right? Was Khaled sending him a message? Had Khaled chosen Rome becauseof what Gabriel had done thirty years ago, on this very spot?

  He heard the soft shuffle of footfalls behind him—an old woman, dressed in the black of widowhood, clutchinga plastic sack of groceries. She stared directly at him. Gabriel, for an instant, feared she somehow remembered him. He bid her a pleasant morning and went back out into the sunlit piazza.

  He felt suddenly feverish. He walked for a time on the Via Trieste, then flagged down a taxi and asked the driver to take him to the Piazza di Spagna. Entering the safe flat he saw a copy of that morning’s La Repubblica newspaper lying on the floor of the entrance hall. On page six was a large advertisement for an Italian sports car. Gabriel looked at the ad carefully and saw that it had been cut from another edition of the newspaper and glued over the corresponding page. He trimmed away the edges of the page and discovered, hidden between the two pages, a sheet of paper containing the coded text of the message. After reading it he burned it in the kitchen sink and went out again.

  On the Via Condotti he bought a new suitcase and spent the next hour purchasing clothing appropriate to his next destination. He returned to the safe flat long enough to pack his new bag, then went to lunch at Nino on the Via Borgognona. At two o’clock he took a taxi to Fiumicino airport, and at five-thirty he boarded a flight to Sardinia.

  As Gabriel’s plane was taxiing toward the runway, Amira Assaf rolled up to the front gate of the Stratford Clinic and showed her ID badge to the security guard. He inspected it carefully, then waved her onto the grounds. She twisted the throttl
e of her motorbike and sped down the quarter-mile gravel drive toward the mansion. Dr. Avery was just leaving for the night, racing toward the gate in his big silver Jaguar. Amira tapped her horn and waved, but he ignored her and swept past in a shower of dust and gravel.

  Staff parking was in the rear courtyard. She propped the bike on its kickstand, then removed her backpack from the seat storage compartment and left her helmet in its place. Two girls were just coming off duty. Amira bid them good night, then used her badge to unlock the secure staff entrance. The time clock was mounted to the wall of the foyer. She found her card, third slot from the bottom, and punched in: five-fifty-six a.m.

  The locker room was a few paces down the hall. Amira went inside and changed into her uniform: white trousers, white shoes, and a peach-colored tunic that Dr. Avery believed was soothing to the patients. Five minutes later she reported for duty at the window of the head nurse’s station. Ginger Hall, peroxide blond and crimson-lipped, looked up and smiled.

  “New haircut, Amira? Very fetching. My goodness, what I wouldn’t do for that thick raven hair of yours.”

  “You can have it, along with the brown skin, the black eyes, and all the other shit that comes with it.”

  “Ah, rubbish, petal. We’re all nurses here. Just doing our job and trying to make a decent living.”

  “Maybe, but out there it’s different. What have you got for me?”

  “Lee Martinson. She’s in the solarium. Get her back up to her room. Settle her in for the night.”

  “That big bloke still hanging round her?”

  “The bodyguard? Still here. Dr. Avery reckons he’ll be here awhile.”

  “Why would a woman like Miss Martinson need a bodyguard?”

  “Confidential, my sweet. Highly confidential.”

  Amira set off down the corridor. A moment later she came to the entrance of the solarium. As she went inside the humidity greeted her like a wet blanket. Miss Martinsonwas in her wheelchair, staring at the blackened windows. The bodyguard, hearing Amira’s approach, got to his feet. He was a large, heavily built man in his twenties, with short hair and blue eyes. He spoke with a British accent, but Amira doubted he was truly British. She looked down at Miss Martinson.

  “It’s getting late, sweetheart. Time to go upstairs and get ready for bed.”

  She pushed the wheelchair out of the solarium, then along the corridor to the elevators. The bodyguard pressed the call button. A moment later they boarded a lift and rode silently upward to her room on the fourth floor. Before entering, Amira paused and looked at the guard.

  “I’m going to bathe her. Why don’t you wait out here until I’m finished?”

  “Wherever she goes, I go.”

  “We do this every night. The poor woman deserves a bit of privacy.”

  “Wherever she goes, I go,” he repeated.

  Amira shook her head and wheeled Miss Martinson into her room, the bodyguard trailing silently after her.

  17

  BOSA, SARDINIA

  For two days Gabriel waited for them to make contact. The hotel, small and ochre-colored, stood in the ancient port near the spot where the river Temo flowed into the sea. His room was on the top floor and had a small balcony with an iron rail. He slept late, took breakfast in the dining room, and spent mornings reading. For lunch he would eat pasta and fish in one of the restaurants in the port; then he would hike up the road to the beach north of town and spread his towel on the sand and sleep some more. After two days, his appearance had improved dramatically. He’d gained weight and strength, and the skin beneath his eyes no longer looked yellow-brown and jaundiced. He was even beginning to like the way he looked with the beard.

  On the third morning the telephone rang. He listened to the instructions without speaking, then hung up. He showered and dressed and packed his bag, then went downstairs to breakfast. After breakfast he paid his bill and placed his bag in the trunk of the car he’d rented in Cagliari and drove north, about thirty miles, to the port town of Alghero. He left the car on the street where he’d been told to, then walked along a shadowed alleyway that emptied into the waterfront.

  Dina was seated in a café on the quay, drinking coffee.She wore sunglasses, sandals, and a sleeveless dress; her shoulder-length dark hair shone in the dazzling light reflected by the sea. Gabriel descended a flight of stone steps on the quay and boarded a fifteen-foot dinghy with the word Fidelity written on the hull. He started the engine, a ninety-horsepower Yamaha, and untied the lines. Dina joined him a moment later and, in passableFrench, told him to make for the large white motor yacht anchored about a half-mile from the shoreline on the turquoise sea.

  Gabriel guided the dinghy slowly out of the port, then, reaching the open water, he increased his speed and bounced toward the yacht over the gentle swells. As he drew near, Rami stepped onto the aft deck, dressed in khaki shorts and a white shirt. He climbed down to the swim step and was waiting there, hand outstretched, as Gabriel arrived.

  The main salon, when they entered, looked like a substation of the team’s headquarters in the basement of King Saul Boulevard. The walls were hung with large-scalemaps and aerial photographs, and the onboard electronicshad been augmented with the sort of technical communications equipment Gabriel had not seen since the Abu Jihad assassination. Yaakov looked up from a computer terminal and extended his hand. Shamron, dressed in khaki trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt, was seated at the galley table. He pushed his reading glasses onto his forehead and appraised Gabriel as though he were a document or another map. “Welcome to Fidelity,” he said, “combination command post and safe flat.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “From a friend of the Office. It happened to be in Cannes. We took it out to sea and added the additional equipment we needed for our journey. We also changed the name.”

  “Who chose it?”

  “I did,” said Shamron. “It means loyalty and faithfulness—”

  “And a devotion to duty or to one’s obligations or vows,” Gabriel said. “I know what it means. I also know why you chose it—the same reason why you told Shimon Pazner to take me to the ruins of the embassy.”

  “I thought it was important that you see it. Sometimes,when one is in the middle of an operation like this, the enemy can become something of an abstraction. It’s easy to forget his true nature. I thought you might need a bit of a reminder.”

  “I’ve been doing this for a long time, Ari. I know the nature of my enemy, and I know what it means to be loyal.” Gabriel sat down at the table across from Shamron. “I hear Varash met after I came out of Cairo. I suppose their decision is fairly obvious.”

  “Khaled was given his trial,” Shamron said, “and Varash delivered its verdict.”

  Gabriel had carried out the sentences of such proceedings,but he had never actually been present at one. They were trials of sorts, but they were weighted profoundly in favor of the prosecution and conducted under conditions so secret that the accused did not even know they were taking place. The defendants were granted no lawyers in this courtroom; their fates were decided not by a jury of their peers but of their mortal enemies. Evidence of guilt went unchallenged. Exculpatory evidence was never introduced. There were no transcripts and no means of appeal. Only one sentence was possible, and it was irrevocable.

  “Since I’m the investigating officer, would you mind if I offer an opinion about the case?”

  “If you must.”

  “The case against Khaled is wholly circumstantial, and tenuous at best.”

  “The trail of evidence is clear,” Shamron said. “And we started down that trail based on information given to us by a Palestinian source.”

  “That’s what concerns me.”

  Yaakov joined them at the table. “Mahmoud Arwish has been one of our top assets inside the Palestinian Authorityfor several years now. Everything he’s told us has been proven correct.”

  “But even Arwish isn’t certain the man in that photographis Khale
d. The case is a house of cards. If one of the cards turns out not to be true, then the entire case collapses—and we end up with a dead man on a French street.”

  “The one thing we know about Khaled’s appearance is that it was said he bore a striking resemblance to his grandfather,” Shamron said. “I’m the only person in this room who ever saw the sheikh face-to-face, and I saw him under circumstances that are impossible to forget.” Shamron held up the photograph for the others to see. “The man in this photograph could be Sheikh Asad’s twin brother.”

  “That still doesn’t prove he’s Khaled. We are talking about killing a man.”

  Shamron turned the photograph directly toward Gabriel.“Will you acknowledge that if this man walks into the apartment building at 56 boulevard St-Rémy, he is, in all likelihood, Khaled al-Khalifa?”

  “I will acknowledge that.”

  “So we put the building under watch. And we wait. And we hope he comes before the next massacre. If he does, we get his photograph as he enters the building. If our experts are damned sure he’s the same man, we put him out of business.” Shamron folded his arms across his chest. “Of course, there is one other method of identification—the same one we used during the Wrath of God operation.”

  An image flashed in Gabriel’s memory.

  “Excuse me, but are you Wadal Zwaiter?”

  “No! Please, no!”

  “It takes a very cool customer not to respond to his real name in a situation like that,” Shamron said. “And an even cooler one not to reach for his gun when confrontedwith a man who’s about to kill him. Either way, if it’s truly Khaled, he’ll identify himself, and your mind will be at peace when you pull the trigger.”

  Shamron pushed his spectacles onto his forehead. “I want Fidelity in Marseilles by nightfall. Are you going to be on it?”

  “We’ll use the Wrath of God model,” Shamron began. “Aleph, Bet, Ayin, Qoph. It has two advantages. It will seem familiar to you and it works.”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Out of necessity, we’ve made some minor alterations and combined some of the roles, but once the operation is set in motion, it will feel the same to you. You, of course, are the Aleph, the gunman. The Ayin teams, the watchers, are already moving into place. If Khaled comes to that flat, two of the watchers will switch to the role of Bet and cover your escape route.”