Prince of Fire Page 20

  “What about your Muslim modesty?”

  For his insolence he received a second blow to the face, this one with the back of the hand. Gabriel, his head swimming,stepped out of his shoes and peeled off his socks. Then he unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them off over his bare feet. A moment later he was standing before the four Arabs in his briefs. The girl reached out and snapped the elastic. “These, too,” she said. “Take them off.”

  They found his nakedness amusing. The men made comments about his penis while the woman made slow circuits about him and appraised his body as though he were a statue on a pedestal. It occurred to him that he was a legend to them, a beast who had come in the middle of the night and killed young warriors. Look at him, they seemed to be saying with their eyes. He’s so small, so ordinary. How could he have killed so many of our brothers?

  The girl grunted something in Arabic that Gabriel could not comprehend. The three men set upon his discarded clothing with box cutters and scissors and tore it to shreds. No seam, no hem, no collar survived their onslaught. Only God knew what they were lookingfor. A second beacon? A hidden radio transmitter? A devilish Jewish device that would render them all lifeless and permit him to escape at the time and place of his choosing? For a moment the girl observed this silliness with great seriousness, then she looked again at Gabriel. Twice more she circled his naked body, with one small hand pressed thoughtfully against her lips. Each time she passed before him, Gabriel looked directly into her eyes. There was something clinical in her gaze, somethingprofessional and analytical. He half expected her at any moment to produce a minicassette recorder and begin dictating diagnostic notes. Puckered scarring on upper left chest quadrant, result of the bullet fired into him by Tariq al-Hourani, Allah praise his glorious name. Sandpaper-like scarring across much of the back. Source of scarring unknown.

  The search of his clothing produced nothing but a pile of shredded cotton cloth and denim. One of the Arabs gathered up the scraps and tossed them on the fireplace grate, then doused them with kerosene and set them alight. As Gabriel’s clothing turned to ash they assembled around him once more, the girl facing him, the two big Arabs on either side, and the one who had served as the driver at his back. The Arab to his right was lazily swinging a golf club.

  There was a ritual to situations like these. The beating,he knew, was a part of it. The girl set it in motion with a ceremonial slap to his face. Then she stepped away and allowed the men to do the heavy lifting. A well-aimed strike with the golf club caused his knees to buckle and sent him to the floor. Then the real blows began, a barrage of kicks and punches that seemed to target every portion of his body. He avoided crying out. He did not want to give them the satisfaction, nor did he want to derail their plan by alerting the neighbors—not that anyone in this part of the city would care much about three men beating the daylights out of a Jew. It ended as suddenly as it began. In retrospect it was not so bad—indeed, he had endured worse at the hands of Shamron and his goons at the Academy. They went easy on his face, which told him that he needed to remain presentable.

  He had come to rest on his right side, with his hands protectively over his genitals and his knees to his chest. He could taste blood on his lips, and his left shoulder felt frozen in place, the result of having been stomped on several times in succession by the largest of the three Arabs. The girl tossed the plastic bag in front of his face and ordered him to get dressed. He made a forthright attempt at movement but could not seem to roll over or sit up or lift his hands. Finally, one of the Arabs seized him by the left arm and pulled him into a seated position.His injured shoulder revolted, and for the first time he groaned in pain. This, like his nudity, was an occasion for laughter.

  They helped him to dress. Clearly they had been expecting a bigger man. The neon yellow T-shirt with MARSEILLES! emblazoned across the chest was several sizes too large. The white chinos were too big in the waist and too long in the legs. The cheap leather slip-ons barely stayed on his feet.

  “Can you stand up?” the girl asked.

  “No.”

  “If we don’t leave now, you’ll be late for your next checkpoint. And if you’re late for your next checkpoint, you know what happens to your wife.”

  He rolled over onto his hands and knees and, after two failed attempts, managed to get to his feet. The girl gave him a push between the shoulder blades and sent him stumbling toward the door. He thought of Leah and wondered where she was. Zipped into a body bag? Locked into a car trunk? Hammered into a wooden crate? Did she know what was happening to her, or, mercifully, did she believe it was just another episode in her nightmare without end? It was for Leah that he remained upright and for Leah that he placed one foot in front of the other.

  The three men remained behind in the house. The girl walked a half step behind him, with a leather satchel over her shoulder. She gave him another shove, this time in the direction of the Mercedes. He stumbled forward, across the dusty forecourt strewn with toys. The overturned Matchbox cars, the rusted fire truck, the armless doll and headless toy soldier—to Gabriel it seemed like the carnage wrought by one of Khaled’s expertly crafted bombs. He went instinctively to the passenger side of the car.

  “No,” said the woman. “You’re going to drive.”

  “I’m in no condition.”

  “But you must,” she said. “Otherwise we’ll miss our deadline, and your wife will die.”

  Gabriel reluctantly climbed behind the wheel. The woman sat next to him. After closing the door, she reached inside the satchel and produced a weapon, a Tanfolgio TA-90, and aimed it at his abdomen.

  “I know you can take this from me anytime you wish,” she conceded. “If you choose such a course of action, it will do you no good. I assure you that I do not know the location of your wife, nor do I know our ultimatedestination. We’re going on this journey together, you and I. We’re partners in this endeavor.”

  “How noble of you.”

  She hit him across the cheek with the gun.

  “Be careful,” he said. “It might go off.”

  “You know France very well, yes? You’ve worked here. You’ve killed many Palestinians here.”

  Greeted by Gabriel’s silence, she hit him a second time. “Answer me! You’ve worked here, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve killed Palestinians here, yes?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you ashamed? Say it aloud.”

  “Yes,” he said, “I’ve killed Palestinians here. I killed Sabri here.”

  “So you know the roads of France well. You won’t need to waste time consulting a map. That’s a good thing, because we don’t have much time.”

  She gave him the keys. “Go to Nîmes. You have one hour.”

  “It’s a hundred kilometers, at least.”

  “Then I suggest you stop talking and start driving.”

  He went by way of Arles. The Rhône, silver-blue and swirling with eddies, slid beneath them. On the other side of the river, Gabriel pressed the accelerator towardthe floor and started the final run into Nîmes. The weather was perversely glorious: the sky cloudless and intensely blue, the fields ablaze with lavender and sunflowers, the hills awash with a light so pure it was possible for Gabriel to make out the lines and fissures of rock formations twenty miles in the distance.

  The girl sat calmly with her ankles crossed and the gun lying in her lap. Gabriel wondered why Khaled had chosen her to escort him to his death. Because her youth and beauty stood in sharp contrast to Leah’s ravaged infirmity? Or was it an Arab insult of some sort? Did he wish to further humiliate Gabriel by making him take orders from a beautiful young girl? Whatever Khaled’s motives, she was nonetheless thoroughly trained. Gabriel had sensed it during their first encounter in Marseilles and again at the house in Martigues—and he could see it now in her muscular arms and shoulders and in the way she handled the gun. But it was her hands that intrigued him most. She had the short, dirty fingernails of a potter or someone who wor
ked outdoors.

  She hit him again without warning. The car swerved, and Gabriel had to battle to get it under control again.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “You were looking at the gun.”

  “I was not.”

  “You’re thinking about taking it away from me.”

  “No.”

  “Liar! Jewish liar!”

  She raised the gun to strike him again, but his time Gabriel lifted his hand defensively and managed to deflectthe blow.

  “You’d better hurry,” she said, “or we won’t make it to Nîmes in time.”

  “I’m going nearly two hundred kilometers an hour. I can’t drive any faster without killing us both. Next time Khaled calls, tell him he’s going to have to extend the deadlines.”

  “Who?”

  “Khaled,” Gabriel repeated. “The man you’re workingfor. The man who’s running this operation.”

  “I’ve never heard of a man named Khaled.”

  “My mistake.”

  She studied him for a moment. “You speak Arabic very well. You grew up in the Jezreel Valley, yes? Not far from Afula. I’m told there are many Arabs there. People who refused to leave or be driven out.”

  Gabriel didn’t rise to her baiting. “You’ve never seen it?”

  “Palestine?” A flicker of a smile. “I’ve seen it from a distance,” she said.

  Lebanon, thought Gabriel. She’s seen it from Lebanon.

  “If we’re going to make this journey together, I should have a name to call you.”

  “I don’t have a name. I’m just a Palestinian. No name, no face, no land, no home. My suitcase is my country.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll call you Palestine.”

  “It’s not a proper name for a woman.”

  “All right, then I’ll call you Palestina.”

  She looked at the road and nodded. “You may call me Palestina.”

  A mile before Nîmes, she directed him into the gravel parking lot of a roadside store that sold earthenware planters and garden statuary. For five unbearable momentsthey waited in silence for her satellite telephone to ring. When it finally did, the electronic chime sounded to Gabriel like a fire alarm. The girl listened without speaking. From her blank expression Gabriel could not discern whether she’d been ordered to keep going or to kill him. She severed the connection and nodded toward the road.

  “Get on the Autoroute.”

  “Which direction?”

  “North.”

  “Where are we going?”

  A hesitation, then: “Lyon.”

  Gabriel did as he was told. As they neared the Autoroutetollbooth, the girl slipped the Tanfolgio into her satchel. Then she handed him some change for the toll. When they were back on the road, the gun came out again. She placed it on her lap. Her forefinger, with her short, dirty nail, lay noncommittally across the trigger.

  “What’s he like?”

  “Who?”

  “Khaled,” Gabriel said.

  “As I told you before, I don’t know anyone named Khaled.”

  “You spent the night with him in Marseilles.”

  “Actually, I spent the night with a man named MonsieurVéran. You’d better drive faster.”

  “He’s going to kill us, you know. He’s going to kill us both.”

  She said nothing.

  “Were you told that this was a suicide mission? Have you prepared yourself to die? Have you prayed and made a farewell videotape for your family?”

  “Please drive, and don’t talk anymore.”

  “We’re shaheeds, you and I. We’re going to die together—for different causes, mind you, but together.”

  “Please, shut up.”

  And there it was, he thought. The crack. Khaled had lied to her.

  “We’re going to die tonight,” he said. “At seven o’clock. He didn’t mention that to you?”

  Another silence. Her finger was moving over the surface of the trigger.

  “I guess he forgot to tell you,” Gabriel resumed. “But then it’s always been that way. It’s the poor kids who die for Palestine, the kids from the camps and the slums. The elite just give the orders from their villas in Beirut and Tunis and Ramallah.”

  She swung the gun toward his face again. This time he snatched it and twisted it from her grasp.

  “When you hit me with this, it makes it hard to drive.”

  He held out the gun to her. She took it and placed it back in her lap.

  “We’re shaheeds, Palestina. We’re driving toward destruction,and Khaled is giving us directions. Seven o’clock, Palestina. Seven o’clock.”

  On the road between Valence and Lyon, he pushed Leah from his mind and thought of nothing but the case. Instinctively, he approached it as though it were a painting. He stripped away the varnish and dissolved the paint, until there was nothing left but the fragmentarycharcoal lines of the underdrawing; then he began building it back up again, layer by layer, tone and texture.For the moment he was unable to affix a reliable authentication. Was Khaled the artist, or had Khaled been only an apprentice in the workshop of the Old Master himself, Yasir Arafat? Had Arafat ordered it to avenge the destruction of his power and authority, or had Khaled undertaken the work on his own to avenge the death of a father and grandfather? Was it another battle in the war between two peoples or just an outbreakin the long-simmering feud between two families, the al-Khalifas and the Shamron-Allons? He suspected it was a combination of both, an intersection of shared needs and goals. Two great artists had cooperated on a single work—Titian and Bellini, he thought. The Feast of the Gods.

  The date of the painting’s commission remained elusiveto him as well, though. Of one thing he was sure: the work had taken several years and much blood to produce. He had been deceived, and skillfully so. They all had. The dossier found in Milan had been planted by Khaled in order to lure Gabriel into the search. Khaled had dropped a trail of clues and wound the clock, so that Gabriel had had no choice but to desperately pursuethem. Mahmoud Arwish, David Quinnell, Mimi Ferrere—they’d all been a part of it. Gabriel saw them now, silent and still, as minor figures at the edges of a Bellini, allegorical in nature but supportive of the focal point. But what was the point? Gabriel knew that the painting was unfinished. Khaled had one more coup in store, one more spectacular of blood and fire. Somehow Gabriel had to survive it. He was certain the clue to his survival lay somewhere along the path he’d already traveled.And so, as he raced northward toward Lyon, he saw not the Autoroute but the case—every minute, every setting, every encounter, oil on canvas. He would survive it, he thought, and someday he would come back to Khaled on his own terms. And the girl, Palestina, would be his doorway.

  “Pull over to the side of the road.”

  Gabriel did as he was told. They were a few miles from the center of Lyon. This time, only two minutes elapsed before the telephone rang.

  “Get back on the road,” she said. “We’re going to Chalon. It’s a—”

  “I know where Chalon is. It’s just south of Dijon.”

  He waited for an opening in the traffic, then acceleratedback onto the Autoroute.

  “I can’t decide whether you’re a very courageous man or a fool,” she said. “You could have walked away from me in Marseilles. You could have saved yourself.”

  “She’s my wife,” he said. “She’ll always be my wife.”

  “And you’re willing to die for her?”

  “You’re going to die for her, too.”

  “At seven o’clock?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you make up this time? Why seven o’clock?”

  “You don’t know anything about the man you’re working for, do you? I feel sorry for you, Palestina. You’re a very foolish girl. Your leader has betrayed you, and you’re the one who’ll pay the price.”

  She lifted the gun to hit him again, but thought betterof it. Gabriel kept his eyes on the road. The door was ajar.

  They stopped f
or gas south of Chalon. Gabriel filled the tank and paid with cash given to him by the girl. When he was behind the wheel again, she ordered him to park next to the toilets.

  “I’ll be back.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  She was gone only a moment. Gabriel slid the car into gear, but the girl removed the satellite phone from her bag and ordered him to wait. It was two-fifty-five p.m.

  “We’re going to Paris,” he said.

  “Oh, really?”

  “He’ll send us one of two ways. The Autoroute splits at Beaune. If we take that cutoff, we can head straight into the southern suburbs. Or we can stay to the east— Dijon to Troyes, Troyes to Reims—and come in from the northeast.”

  “You seem to know everything. Tell me which way he’s going to send us.”

  Gabriel made a show of consulting his watch.

  “He’ll want to keep us moving, and he won’t want us at the target too early. I’m betting for the eastern route. I say he sends us to Troyes and tells us to wait there for instructions. He’ll have options if he sends us to Troyes.”

  Just then the telephone rang. She listened in silence, then severed the connection.

  “Get back on the Autoroute,” she said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just drive,” she said.

  He asked for permission to turn on the radio.

  “Sure,” she said affably.

  He pressed the power button, but nothing happened. A slight smile appeared on her lips.

  “Nicely played,” said Gabriel.

  “Thank you.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Surely you’re joking.”

  “Actually, I’m quite serious.”

  “I’m Palestina,” she said. “I have no choice.”

  “You’re wrong. You do have a choice.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re trying to wear me down with your suggestions of death and suicide.You think you can make me have a change of heart, that you can make me lose my nerve.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. We’ve been fighting each other for a long time. I know that you’re intensely courageous and that you rarely lose your nerve. I just want to know why: Why are you here? Why not get married and raise a family? Why not live your life?”