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

  The volume of the music rose suddenly, then died away. When it was gone, all that remained was the lapping of a wake against the hull of the yacht. Dina’s eyes narrowed suddenly, as if remembering physical pain. Her gaze remained on the image of the boulevard St-Rémy, but Gabriel could see that it was Dizengoff Street that occupied her thoughts.

  “On the morning of October 19, 1994, I was standing at the corner of Dizengoff and Queen Esther streets with my mother and two of my sisters. When the Number Five bus came, I kissed my mother and sisters and watched them climb on board. While the doors were open, I saw him.” She paused and turned her head to look at Gabriel. “He was sitting just behind the driver, with a bag at his feet. He actually looked at me. He had the sweetest face. No, I thought, it couldn’t be possible. Not the Number Five bus on Dizengoff Street. So I said nothing. The doors closed, and the bus started to drive away.”

  Her eyes clouded with tears. She folded her hands and laid them over the scar on her leg.

  “So what did this boy have in his bag—this boy who I saw but said nothing about? He had the shell of an Egyptian land mine, that’s what he had in the bag. He had twenty kilograms of military-grade TNT and bolts soaked with rat poison. The flash came first; then the sound of the explosion. The bus rose several feet into the air and crashed to the street again. I was knocked to the ground. I could see people screaming all round me, but I couldn’t hear anything—the blast wave had damaged my eardrums. I noticed a human leg lying in the street next to me. I assumed it was mine, but then I saw that both my legs were still attached. The leg had come from someone in the bus.”

  Gabriel, listening to her, thought suddenly of Rome; of standing next to Shimon Pazner and gazing at the wreckage of the embassy. Was Dina’s presence aboard Fidelity serendipitous, he wondered, or had she been placed here intentionally by Shamron as a living reminder about the importance of doing his duty?

  “The first policemen who came to the scene were sickened by the blood and the stench of burning flesh. They fell to their knees in the street and vomited. As I lay there, waiting for someone to help me, blood began to drip on me. I looked up and saw blood and scraps of flesh hanging on the leaves of the chinaberry trees. It rained blood that morning on Dizengoff Street. Then the rabbis from Hevra Kadisha arrived. They collected the largest body parts by hand, including those scraps of flesh in the trees. Then they used tweezers to pick up the smallest pieces. I watched rabbis pick up the remains of my mother and two sisters with tweezers and place them in a plastic bag. That’s what we buried. Scraps. Remnants.”

  She wrapped her arms around her legs and drew her knees beneath her chin. Gabriel sat on the couch next to her and settled his gaze on the screen to make certain they missed nothing. His hand reached out for hers. She took it as a tear spilled down her cheek.

  “I blamed myself. If I’d known that the sweet-looking boy was really Abdel Rahim al-Souwi, member of Hamas’s Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, I would have been able to warn them. If I’d known that Abdel’s brother had been killed in a shoot-out with the IDF in 1989, I would have understood why he was riding the Number Five bus in North Tel Aviv with a bag at his feet. I decided I would fight back, not with a gun, but with my brain. I vowed that next time I saw one of them, I would know, and I’d be able to warn the people before it was too late. That’s why I volunteered for the Office. That’s why I was able to make the connection between Rome and Beit Sayeed. I know them better than they know themselves.”

  Another tear. This time Gabriel wiped it away.

  “Why did he kill my mother and sisters, Gabriel? Was it because we stole his land? Was it because we were occupiers? No, it was because we wanted to make peace. If I hate them, you’ll forgive me. If I beg you to show Khaled no mercy, you’ll grant me leniency for my crimes. I’m Dina Sarid, the avenged remnant. I’m the sixth million. And if Khaled comes here tonight, don’t you dare let him get on that bus.”

  Lev had offered him use of a Jerusalem safe flat. Shamron had politely declined. Instead he’d instructed Tamara to find a folding camp bed in the storeroom and asked Gilah to send a suitcase with clean clothes and a shaving kit. Like Gabriel, he had slept little the past week. Some nights he would pace the hallways all hours or sit outside and smoke with the Shabak bodyguards. Mostly he lay on his folding cot, staring at the red glow of the digital clock on his desk and calculating the minutes that remained until the anniversary of Beit Sayeed’s destruction. He filled the empty hours by recalling operations past. The waiting. Always the waiting. Some officers were driven mad by it. For Shamron it was a narcotic, akin to the first pangs of intense love. The hot flashes, the sudden chills, the gnawing of the stomach—he had endured it countless times over the years. In the back alleys of Damascus and Cairo, in the cobbled streets of Europe, and in a derelict suburb of Buenos Aires, where he’d waited for Adolf Eichmann, stationmaster of the Holocaust, to step off a city bus and into the grasp of the very people he had tried to annihilate. A fitting way for it to end, Shamron thought. One last night vigil. One final wait for a telephone to ring. When finally it did, the harsh electronic tone sounded like music to his ears. He closed his eyes and allowed it to ring a second time. Then he reached out in the darkness and brought the receiver to his ear.

  The digital readout on the television monitor had said twelve-twenty-seven a.m. Technically it had been Yaakov’s shift, but it was the last night before the deadline, and no one was going to sleep. They had been seated on the couch in the salon, Yaakov in his usual confrontational pose, Dina in a posture of meditation, and Gabriel as though he were awaiting word of an expected death. The boulevard St-Rémy had been quiet that night. The couple who had strolled past the door at twelve-twenty-seven were the first to appear in the camera shot in nearly fifteen minutes. Gabriel had looked at Dina, whose eyes had remained locked on the screen.

  “Did you see that?”

  “I saw it.”

  Gabriel stood and went to the console. He removed the cassette from the video recorder and put a fresh tape in its place. Then he placed the cassette in a playback deck and rewound the tape. With Dina looking over his shoulder, he pressed PLAY. The couple entered the shot and walked past the doorway without giving it a glance.

  Gabriel pressed STOP.

  “Look how he put the girl on his right side facing the street. He’s using her as a shield. And look at his right hand. It’s in the girl’s pocket, just like Sabri.”

  REWIND. PLAY. STOP.

  “My God,” Gabriel said, “he moves just like his father.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Gabriel went to the radio and raised the watcher outside the Palais de Justice.

  “Did you see that couple who just walked by the building?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Hold on.” A silence while the Ayin changed position. “Heading up the street, toward the gardens.”

  “Can you follow them?”

  “It’s dead quiet down here. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Just a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “They’re turning around.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. They’re retracing their steps.”

  Gabriel looked up at the monitor just as they entered the shot again, this time from the opposite direction. Once again the woman was facing the street, and once again the man had his hand in the back pocket of her jeans. They stopped at the door of Number 56. The man drew a key from his pocket.

  19

  SURREY, ENGLAND

  At the Stratford Clinic it was just after ten in the evening when Amira Assaf came out of the elevator and set off down the fourth-floor corridor. Rounding the first corner, she spotted the bodyguard, sitting on a chair outside Miss Martinson’s room. He looked up as Amira approached and closed the book he was reading.

  “
I need to make sure she’s sleeping comfortably,” Amira said.

  The bodyguard nodded and got to his feet. He wasn’t surprised by Amira’s request. She’d been stopping by the room every night at this time for the past month.

  She opened the door and went inside. The bodyguard followed after her and closed the door behind him. A lamp, dimsmed to its lowest setting, was burning softly. Amira went to the side of the bed and looked down. Miss Martinson was sound asleep. Hardly a surprise—Amira had given her twice her usual dosage of sedative. She’d be out for several more hours.

  Amira adjusted the blankets, then opened the top drawer of the bedside table. The gun, a silenced Walther nine-millimeter, was precisely where she had left it earlier that afternoon while Miss Martinson was still in the solarium. She seized the weapon by the grip, then spun round and leveled the gun at the bodyguard’s chest. He reached inside his jacket in a lightning-fast movement. Before his hand emerged, Amira fired twice, the double-tap of a trained killer. Both shots struck the upper chest. The bodyguard tumbled backward onto the floor. Amira stood over him and fired two more shots.

  She drew a series of deep breaths to quell the intense wave of nausea that washed over her. Then she went to the telephone and dialed an internal hospital extension.

  “Would you please ask Hamid to come up to Miss Martinson’s room? There’s some linen that needs to be collected before the truck leaves.”

  She hung up the phone, then took the dead man by the arms and dragged him into the bathroom. The carpet was smeared with blood. Amira was not concerned by this. Her intention was not to conceal the crime, only to delay its discovery by a few hours.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Hamid.”

  She unlocked the door and opened it. Hamid wheeled in a laundry cart.

  “You all right?”

  Amira nodded. Hamid wheeled the cart next to the bed while Amira pulled away the blankets and sheets. Miss Martinson, frail and scarred, lay motionless. Hamid lifted her by her torso, Amira by her legs, and together they lowered her gently into the laundry cart. Amira concealed her beneath a layer of sheets.

  She went out into the corridor to make certain it was clear, then looked back at Hamid and motioned for him to join her. Hamid rolled the cart out of the room and started toward the elevator. Amira closed the door, then inserted her passkey into the lock and snapped it off.

  She met Hamid at the elevator and pressed the call button. The wait seemed an eternity. When finally the doors opened, they wheeled the cart into the empty chamber. Amira pressed the button for the ground floor and they sunk slowly downward.

  The ground-floor foyer was deserted. Hamid went out first and turned to the right, toward the doorway that led to the rear courtyard. Amira followed after him. Outside, a van was idling with its rear cargo doors open. On the side was stenciled the name of a local laundry supply company. The usual driver was lying in a stand of beech trees two miles from the hospital with a bullet in his neck.

  Hamid lifted the laundry bag out of the cart and placed it gently into the back of the van, then closed the doors and climbed into the front passenger seat. Amira watched the van roll off, then she went back inside and walked to the head nurse’s station. Ginger was on duty.

  “I’m not feeling terribly well tonight, Ginger. Think you can get by without me?”

  “No problem, luv. Need a ride?”

  Amira shook her head. “I can manage on the bike. See you tomorrow night.”

  Amira went to the staff locker room. Before stripping off her uniform she hid the gun inside her backpack. Then she changed into jeans, a heavy woolen sweater, and a leather jacket. A moment later she was walking across the rear courtyard with her bag across her back.

  She climbed on the bike and started the engine, then accelerated out of the courtyard. As she rounded the back of the old mansion she glanced up at Miss Martinson’s window: one light burning softly, no sign of trouble. She raced along the drive and rolled to a stop at the guardhouse. The man on duty bid her a good night, then opened the gate. Amira turned onto the road and twisted the throttle. Ten minutes later she was racing along the A24 motorway, heading south to the sea.

  20

  MARSEILLES

  Gabriel slipped into his stateroom and closed the door. He went to the closet and peeled back a parcel of loose carpet, exposing the door of the floor safe. He worked the tumbler and lifted the lid. Inside were three hand-guns: a Beretta 92FS, a Jericho 941PS Police Special, and a Barak SP-21. Carefully he lifted each of the weapons out and laid them on the bed. The Beretta and the Jericho were both nine-millimeter weapons. The magazine for the Beretta had a fifteen-round capacity, the Jericho sixteen. The Barak—squat, black, and ugly—fired a larger and more destructive .45-caliber round, though it held only eight shots.

  He field-stripped the guns, beginning with the Beretta and ending with the Barak. Each weapon appeared in perfect working order. He reassembled and loaded the weapons, then tested the weight and balance of each, deliberating over which to use. The hit was not likely to be a covert and quiet affair. It would probably take place on a busy street, perhaps in broad daylight. Making certain Khaled was dead was the first priority. For that, Gabriel needed power and reliability. He selected the Barak as his primary weapon and the Beretta 92FS as his backup. He also decided he would work without a silencer. A silencer made the weapon too difficult to conceal and too unwieldy to draw and fire. Besides, what was the point of using a silencer if the act was witnessed by a crowd of people on the street?

  He went into the bathroom and stood for a moment before the mirror, examining his face. Then he opened the medicine cabinet and removed a pair of scissors, a razor, and a can of shaving cream. He trimmed the beard down to stubble, then removed the rest with the razor. His hair was still dyed gray. Nothing to be done about that.

  He stripped off his clothes and showered quickly, then went back into the stateroom to dress. He pulled on his underwear and socks, then a pair of dark-blue denim trousers and rubber-soled suede brogues. He attached his radio unit to the waistband of his jeans on the left hip, then ran a wire to his ear and a second one to his left wrist. After securing the wires with strips of black tape, he pulled on a long-sleeved black shirt. The Beretta he shoved down the waistband of his jeans, at the small of his back. The Barak was compact enough to fit in the pocket of his leather jacket. His GPS tracking beacon, a small disk about the size of a one-euro coin, he slipped into the front pocket of his jeans.

  He sat on the end of the bed and waited. Five minutes later there was a knock at the door. The clock read two-twelve a.m.

  “How certain are your experts?”

  The prime minister looked up at the bank of video monitors and waited for an answer. In one of the monitors was Lev’s image. The director-general of Shabak, Moshe Yariv, occupied the second; General Amos Sharret, chief of Aman, the third.

  “There’s no doubt whatsoever,” replied Lev. “The man in the photo given to us by Mahmoud Arwish is the same man who just walked into the apartment building in Marseilles. All we need now is your approval for the final phase of the operation to commence.”

  “You have it. Give the order to Fidelity.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  “I assume you’ll be able to hear the radio traffic?”

  “Fidelity will send it to us via the secure link. We’ll maintain operational control until the final second.”

  “Send it here, too,” the prime minister said. “I don’t want to be the last to know.”

  Then he pressed a button on his desk, and the three screens turned to black.

  The motorbike was a Piaggio X9 Evolution, charcoal gray, with a twist-and-go throttle and a listed top speed of 160 kilometers per hour—though Yaakov, on a practice escape run the previous day, had topped out at 190. The saddle sloped severely downward from back to front so that the passenger sat several inches above the driver, which made it a pe
rfect bike for an assassin, though surely its designers had not had that in mind when they’d conceived it. The engine, as usual, fired without hesitation. Yaakov headed toward the spot along the quay where the helmeted figure of Gabriel awaited him. Gabriel climbed onto the passenger seat and settled in.

  “Take me to the boulevard St-Rémy.”

  “You sure?”

  “One pass,” he said. “I want to see it.”

  Yaakov banked hard to the left and raced up the hill.

  It was a good building on the Corniche, with a marble floor in the lobby and an elevator that worked most of the time. The flats facing the street had a fine view of the Nile. The ones on the back looked down into the walled grounds of the American embassy. It was a building for foreigners and rich Egyptians, another world from the drab cinder-block tenement in Heliopolis where Zubair lived, but then being a policeman in Egypt didn’t pay much, even if you were a secret policeman working for the Mukhabarat.

  He took the stairs. They were wide and curved, with a faded runner held in place by tarnished brass fittings. The apartment was on the top floor, the tenth. Zubair cursed silently as he trod upward. Two packs of Cleopatra cigarettes a day had ravaged his lungs. Three times he had to pause on a landing to catch his breath. It took him a good five minutes to reach the flat.

  He pressed his ear to the door and heard no sound from within. Hardly surprising. Zubair had followed the Englishman last night during a liquor-soaked excursion through the hotel bars and nightclubs along the river. Zubair was confident he was still sleeping.

  He reached into his pocket and came out with the key. The Mukhabarat had a fine collection: diplomats, dissidents, Islamists, and especially foreign journalists. He inserted the key into the lock and turned, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.