The New Girl Page 18

  “At least it’s not another damn Passat,” she said as she slid into the passenger seat.

  Mikhail followed the airport exit ramp to the autobahn and headed into Charlottenburg. Sarah knew the neighborhood well. While still at the CIA, she had spent six months in Berlin working with the German BfV against an al-Qaeda cell plotting another 9/11 from an apartment on Kantstrasse. Mikhail had secretly visited Sarah several times during her assignment.

  “It’s good to be back,” said Sarah provocatively. “I’ve always enjoyed Berlin.”

  “Especially in late winter.” The guardrails were spattered with dirty snow, and at half past eight in the morning the sky was still dark. “I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky she isn’t living in Oslo.”

  “Who?”

  Mikhail didn’t answer.

  “Were you there when Reema was killed?”

  “Close enough,” answered Mikhail. “Keller, too.”

  “Is he in Berlin?”

  “Keller?” Mikhail shot her a sidelong glance. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious, that’s all.”

  “Christopher is otherwise engaged at the moment. It’s just the three of us again.”

  “Where’s Gabriel?”

  “The safe flat.”

  Mikhail turned onto Bundesstrasse and followed it to the Tiergarten. There was a demonstration at the Brandenburg Gate, a couple of hundred people, mainly in their twenties, wearing jeans and Scandinavian-style woolen sweaters. They looked like Green Party stalwarts or peace protesters. Their signs, however, betrayed their true political convictions.

  “They’re from a group called Generation Identity,” explained Mikhail. “They look quite harmless, but they espouse the same ideology as the skinheads and the rest of the neo-Nazis.”

  He made a right turn into Ebertstrasse and lapsed into silence as they passed Berlin’s stark Holocaust memorial, with its twenty-seven hundred slabs of gray concrete arranged on a plot of land the size of a city block. Sarah had taken Mikhail to the memorial during one of his secret visits to Berlin. It had ruined the weekend.

  At Potsdamer Platz, once a Cold War wasteland, now a glass-and-steel monument to German economic might, Mikhail headed eastward into the district of Mitte. He made a series of consecutive right turns, a time-tested countersurveillance maneuver, before abruptly pulling to the curb on Kronenstrasse and switching off the engine.

  “How much do you know about Gabriel’s family?” he asked.

  “The basics, I suppose.”

  “He’s a German Jew, our Gabriel. Even though he was born in Israel, he learned to speak German before Hebrew. That’s why he has such a pronounced Berlin accent. He picked it up from his mother.” Mikhail pointed toward a modern apartment block with windows that shone like polished onyx. “When she was a child, she lived in a building that stood right there. In the autumn of 1942, she was shipped to Auschwitz in a cattle car along with the rest of her family. She was the only one to survive.”

  A tear spilled onto Sarah’s cheek. “Is there a reason you wanted me to see this?”

  “Because the safe flat is right there.” Mikhail pointed toward the building opposite. “Gabriel took out a long-term lease when he became chief.”

  “Does he come often?”

  “To Berlin?” Mikhail shook his head. “He hates the place.”

  “So why are we here?”

  “Hanifa,” answered Mikhail as he opened the car door. “We’re here because of Hanifa.”

  42

  Berlin

  It was 8:15 p.m. when Hanifa Khoury, a veteran field producer for the German state broadcaster ZDF, stepped onto the damp pavements of Unter den Linden. A cold wind blew through the leafless trees that gave the famous boulevard its name. Shivering, Hanifa wrapped a black-and-white checkered keffiyeh tightly around her neck. Unlike most Germans, she did not wear the garment for reasons of fashion or anti-Israeli politics; Hanifa was of Palestinian lineage. Her eyes scanned the street in both directions. Having worked as a journalist throughout the Middle East, she was adept at spotting surveillance, especially when carried out by fellow Arabs. She saw nothing suspicious. In fact, it had been several weeks since she had noticed anyone watching her. Perhaps, she thought, they had finally decided to leave her alone.

  She followed Unter den Linden to Friedrichstrasse and turned left. Near the old Checkpoint Charlie was the café-bar where she used to meet Omar after work. An attractive woman, blond, early forties, was sitting at their usual table, the one in the back corner with an unobstructed view of the front door. She was reading a volume of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, the bard of the Palestinian national movement. As Hanifa approached, the woman lifted her eyes from the page, smiled, and looked down again.

  Hanifa stopped suddenly. “Are you enjoying it?”

  The woman was slow in responding. “I’m sorry,” she said in English. “I don’t speak German.”

  The accent was unmistakably American. Hanifa considered feigning incomprehension and finding a table as far away from the attractive blond woman as possible—or perhaps, she thought, in another café altogether. The only people Hanifa despised more than Americans were Israelis, though at times, depending on the whims of American policy in the Middle East, it was a close contest.

  “The book,” she said, this time in English. “I asked whether you were enjoying it.”

  “Can one truly enjoy such painful verse?”

  The remark surprised Hanifa, pleasantly. “I met him not long before he died.”

  “Darwish? Really?”

  “I produced one of the last interviews he ever gave.”

  “You’re a journalist?”

  Hanifa nodded. “ZDF. And you?”

  “At the moment I’m on an extended holiday.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Hardly.”

  “You’re an American?”

  “I’m afraid so.” The woman contemplated the black-and-white keffiyeh around Hanifa’s neck. “I hope that’s not a problem.”

  “Why would it be?”

  “We’re not terribly popular right now.” The woman placed the book upon the table so Hanifa could see the open page. “Are you familiar with this one?”

  “Of course. It’s very famous.” Hanifa recited the poem’s opening words from memory. “‘Here on the slopes of hills, facing the dusk and the cannon of time . . .’” She smiled. “It sounds much better in the original Arabic.”

  “You’re from Palestine?”

  “My parents were from the Upper Galilee. They were expelled to Syria in 1948 and eventually came here.” Hanifa lowered her voice and asked archly, “I hope that’s not a problem.”

  The woman smiled.

  Hanifa glanced at the empty chair. “Are you waiting for someone?”

  “As a general proposition, yes. But not at the moment.”

  “May I join you?”

  “Please.”

  Hanifa sat down and introduced herself.

  “What a beautiful name,” said the woman. Then she extended her hand. “I’m Sarah Bancroft.”

  For the next ninety minutes, alone in the safe flat on Kronenstrasse, Gabriel suffered through a discourse on the subject of Israel and the Jews, delivered by one Hanifa Khoury, journalist, exile, widow of the martyr Omar Nawwaf. She left no wound unopened: the Holocaust, the flight and expulsion of the Palestinian people, the horror of Sabra and Shatila, the Oslo peace process, which she declared a dangerous folly. On that much, at least, she and Gabriel were in complete agreement.

  The source of the audio was the phone that Sarah had laid on the table immediately after sitting down at the café. Its camera was aimed toward the ceiling. Gabriel occasionally glimpsed Hanifa’s hands as she described her plan to bring peace to Palestine. She declared the idea of two states, one for Jews, the other for Arabs, a dead letter. The only just solution, she said, was a single binational state, with a full and irrevocable “right of return” for all five million registere
d Palestinian refugees.

  “But wouldn’t that mean an end to the Jewish state?” asked Sarah.

  “Yes, of course. But that’s the point.”

  Hanifa then treated Gabriel to a reading of poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, the voice of Palestinian suffering and Israeli oppression, before finally asking her newfound American acquaintance why she had decided to take an extended holiday in Berlin, of all places. Sarah recited the story that Gabriel had composed that afternoon. It concerned the disastrous dissolution of a childless marriage. Humiliated and brokenhearted, Sarah had decided to spend a few months in a city where no one knew her. A friend had offered his Berlin pied-à-terre. It was around the corner from the café, she explained, on Kronenstrasse.

  “And what about you?” asked Sarah. “Are you married?”

  “Only to my work.”

  “Your name is familiar.”

  “It’s quite common, actually.”

  “Your face is familiar, too. It’s almost as if we’ve met before.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  By then, it was half past nine. Hanifa announced she was famished. She suggested they order something to eat, but Sarah insisted they have dinner at her apartment instead. The cupboard was bare, but they could grab a couple of bottles at Planet Wein and some crunchy shrimp rolls from Sapa Sushi.

  “I prefer Izumi,” said Hanifa.

  “Izumi it is.”

  Sarah paid for the two bottles of chilled Austrian Grüner Veltliner; Hanifa, for the sushi. A few minutes later, Gabriel glimpsed them walking side by side along Kronenstrasse. He closed his laptop computer, doused the lights, and sat down on the couch. “Don’t scream,” he said softly. “Whatever you do, Hanifa, please don’t scream.”

  43

  Berlin

  Hanifa Khoury did not scream, but she dropped the bag of takeaway sushi and emitted a sharp gasp that the neighbors might well have heard had Mikhail not closed the door behind her. Startled by the sound, she glared at him for a moment before turning her gaze once more to Gabriel. A range of expressions passed like the shadow of a cloud over her face. The last was an unmistakable look of recognition.

  “My God, it’s—”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel, cutting her off. “It’s me.”

  She reached for the door, but Mikhail was leaning against it in the manner of a man waiting for a bus. Then she dug a phone from her handbag and tried to dial a number.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” said Gabriel. “The service is terrible in this building.”

  “Or maybe you’re blocking it so I can’t call for help.”

  “You’re perfectly safe, Hanifa. In fact, you’re much safer now than you’ve been in some time.”

  Gabriel glanced at Mikhail, who plucked the phone from Hanifa’s grasp. Next he took her handbag and searched its contents.

  “What’s he looking for?”

  “A suicide vest, an AK-47 . . .” Gabriel shrugged. “The usual.”

  Mikhail kept the phone but returned the handbag. Hanifa looked at Sarah. “Is she Israeli, too?”

  “What else would she be?”

  “She speaks English like an American.”

  “The diaspora gives us a decided advantage when recruiting officers.”

  “The Jews are not the only people who were scattered to the four winds.”

  “No,” agreed Gabriel. “The Palestinians have suffered, too. But they have never been the target of an organized campaign of physical annihilation like the Shoah. That is why we must have a state of our own. We cannot count on Germans or Poles or Hungarians or Latvians to protect us. That is history’s lesson.”

  Gabriel spoke these words not in English but in German. Hanifa replied in the same language. “Is that why you’ve kidnapped me? To once again throw the Holocaust in my face to justify turning me into an exile?”

  “We haven’t kidnapped you.”

  “The Bundespolizei might see it differently.”

  “They might,” replied Gabriel. “But I have a very good relationship with the chief of the BfV, mainly because I provide him with a great deal of intelligence about threats to German security. Oh, I suppose you could cause me a bit of embarrassment, but you would be missing out on an important opportunity.”

  “What kind of opportunity?”

  “To change the course of events in the Middle East.”

  She regarded him inquiringly. Her eyes were almost black and prominently lidded. It was like being contemplated by Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer. “How?” she asked at last.

  “By giving me the story Omar was working on before he was killed.” Receiving no answer, Gabriel said, “Omar wasn’t murdered in that consulate because of the things he was writing on social media. He was killed because he tried to warn Khalid about a plot against him.”

  “Says who?”

  “Khalid.”

  Hanifa’s eyes narrowed. “As usual,” she said bitterly, “Khalid is mistaken.”

  “How so?”

  “Omar wasn’t the one who tried to warn him about the plot.”

  “Who was it?”

  Hanifa hesitated, then said, “It was me.”

  44

  Berlin

  The sushi lay scattered over the floor of the entrance hall, so Mikhail went downstairs to the local Persian takeaway and picked up several orders of grilled meat and rice. They ate at the flat’s small rectangular table, which was set against a window overlooking Kronenstrasse. Gabriel sat with his back to the street, with Hanifa Khoury, his new recruit, at his left hand. Throughout the meal, she scarcely looked in Sarah’s direction. It was obvious she had not forgiven her for using a volume of Mahmoud Darwish, Palestine’s literary treasure, as bait to ensnare her. It was obvious, too, that she did not believe Sarah to be a citizen of the state she wished to inundate beneath a sea of returning Palestinian exiles.

  All Hanifa Khoury had to do to prove her point was to ask Sarah to speak a few words in Hebrew. Instead, she used the occasion to berate the legendary chief of Israeli intelligence for the crimes he and his people had committed against hers. Gabriel suffered through the tirade largely in silence. He had learned long ago that most debates over the Arab-Israeli conflict quickly took on the quality of a cat chasing its own tail. Besides, he did not want to lose Hanifa as a temporary ally. The Jews had prevailed in the contest for Palestine, the Arabs had lost. They had been outsmarted and outfought at every turn. They had been ill served by their leaders. Hanifa was entitled to her pain and anger, though her lecture might have been more tolerable had it not been delivered in German in the city where Hitler and the Nazis had conceived and executed their plan to rid Europe of the Jews. There was nothing to be done about the setting. The great roulette wheel of providence had placed Gabriel Allon and Hanifa Khoury, both children of Palestine, in Berlin that night.

  Over coffee and baklava, Hanifa attempted to draw out Gabriel on some of his exploits. And when he gently fended her off, she trained her rhetorical fire on the Americans and their disastrous intervention in Iraq. She had entered Baghdad behind the advancing Coalition forces and had chronicled Iraq’s rapid descent into insurgency and sectarian civil war. In the autumn of 2003, during the bloody Ramadan Offensive, she met a tall, handsome Saudi journalist in the bar of the Palestine Hotel, where she had taken up residence. The Saudi, while not well known to most Western reporters, was one of the most influential and best-sourced journalists in the Arab world.

  “His name,” she said, “was Omar Nawwaf.”

  They were both single and, truth be told, both a little frightened. The Palestine Hotel was located outside the American Green Zone and was a frequent target of the insurgents. Indeed, on that very night, it came under sustained mortar fire. Hanifa took shelter in Omar’s room. She returned the next night, which was peaceful, and the night after that as well. They soon fell desperately in love, though they quarreled often about the American presence in Iraq.

  “Omar believed Saddam was a menace and a monster who ne
eded to be removed, even if it had to be done with American troops. He also accepted the proposition that the establishment of a democracy in the heart of the Arab world would inevitably spread freedom to the rest of the region. I thought the Iraq adventure would end in disaster. I was right, of course.” She smiled sadly. “Omar didn’t like that. He was a secular, Western-looking Saudi, but he was still a Saudi, if you know what I mean.”

  “He didn’t like being proven wrong by a woman?”

  “And a Palestinian woman at that.”

  For a brief moment, however, it appeared Omar had been right after all. Beginning in early 2011, the popular uprising known as the Arab Spring swept the region. Oppressive regimes crumbled in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya, and a full-fledged civil war erupted in Syria. The old ancestral monarchies fared better, but in Saudi Arabia there were violent clashes. Dozens of demonstrators were shot or executed. Hundreds were jailed, including many women.

  “During the Arab Spring,” said Hanifa, “Omar was no longer a mere correspondent. He was the editor in chief of the Arab News. Privately, he hoped His Majesty would meet the same fate as Mubarak or even Gadhafi. But he knew that if he pushed too hard, the Al Saud would shut down the paper and throw him into jail. He had no choice but to editorially support the regime. He even signed his name to a column criticizing the protesters as foreign-inspired hooligans. After that, he fell into a deep depression. Omar never forgave himself for sitting out the Arab Spring.”

  Hanifa tried to convince Omar to leave Saudi Arabia and settle with her in Germany, where he would be free to write whatever he wanted without fear of arrest. And in early 2016, as the Saudi economy stagnated under the pressure of falling oil prices, he finally agreed. He changed his mind a few weeks later, however, after meeting a rising young Saudi prince named Khalid bin Mohammed.

  “It was not long after Khalid’s father ascended to the throne. Khalid was already the minister of defense, deputy prime minister, and chairman of the economic planning council, but he was not yet the crown prince and the heir apparent. He invited Omar to his palace one afternoon for an off-the-record briefing. Omar arrived, as instructed, at four o’clock. It was well past midnight when he left.”