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

It was the Arabs who had started the war, Gabriel wanted to say—Sheikh Asad al-Khalifa, warlord of Beit Sayeed, who’d opened the floodgates of blood with his terrorist attack on the Netanya-to-Jerusalem bus. But now was not the time to quibble over the historical record. The narrative of Sumayriyya had cast its spell over her, and Gabriel wanted to do nothing to break it.

  She turned her gaze toward him. “You’re thinking of something.”

  “I’m listening to your story.”

  “With one part of your brain,” she said, “but with the other you’re thinking of something else. Are you thinking about taking my gun? Are you planning your escape?”

  “There is no escape, Palestina—for either one of us. Tell me your story.”

  She looked out the window. “On the night of May 13, 1948, a column of armored Haganah vehicles set out up the coast road from Acre. Their action was code-named Operation Ben-Ami. It was part of Tochnit Dalet.” She looked at him. “Do you know this term, Tochnit Dalet? Plan D?”

  Gabriel nodded and thought of Dina, standing amid the ruins of Beit Sayeed. How long ago had it been? Only a month, but it seemed a lifetime ago.

  “The stated objective of Operation Ben-Ami was the reinforcement of several isolated Jewish settlements in the Western Galilee. The real objective, however, was conquest and annexation. In fact, the orders specifically called for the destruction of three Arab villages: Bassa, Zib, and Sumayriyya.”

  She paused, looked to see if her remarks had provoked any reaction, and resumed her lecture. Sumayriyya was the first of the three villages to die. The Haganah surrounded it before dawn and illuminated the village with the headlamps of their armored vehicles. Some of the Haganah men wore red checkered kaffiyehs. A village watchman saw the kaffiyehs and assumed that the attacking Jews were actually Arab reinforcements. He fired shots of celebration into the air and was immediately cut down by Haganah fire. The news that the Jews were disguised as Arabs sowed panic inside the village. The defenders of Sumayriyya fought bravely, but they were no match for the better-armed Haganah. Within a few minutes, the exodus had begun.

  “The Jews wanted us to leave,” she said. “They intentionally left the eastern side of the village unguarded to give us an escape route. We had no time to pack any clothing or even to take something to eat. We just started running. But still the Jews weren’t satisfied. They fired at us as we fled across the fields we had tilled for centuries. Five villagers died in those fields. The Haganah sappers went in right away. As we were running away, we could hear the explosions. The Jews were turning our Paradise into a pile of uninhabitable rubble.”

  The villagers of Sumayriyya took to the road and headed north, toward Lebanon. They were soon joined by the inhabitants of Bassa and Zib and several smaller villages to the east. “The Jews told us to go to Lebanon,” she said. “They told us to wait there for a few weeks until the fighting ended, then we would be allowed to return. Return? To what were we supposed to return? Our houses had been demolished. So we kept walking. We walked over the border, into exile. Into oblivion. And behind us the gates of Palestine were being forever barred against our return.”

  Reims: five o’clock.

  “Pull over,” she said.

  Gabriel guided the Mercedes onto the shoulder of the Autoroute. They sat in silence, the car shuddering in the turbulence of the passing traffic. Then the telephone. She listened, longer than usual. Gabriel suspected she was being given final instructions. Without so much as a word, she severed the connection, then dropped the phone back into her bag.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Paris,” she said. “Just as you suspected.”

  “Which way does he want me to go?”

  “The A4. Do you know it?”

  “I know it.”

  “It will take you into—”

  “—into southeast Paris. I know where it will take me, Palestina.”

  Gabriel accelerated back onto the motorway. The dashboard clock read five-oh-five. A road sign flashed past: PARIS 145. One hundred forty-five kilometers to Paris. Ninety-one miles.

  “Finish your story, Palestina.”

  “Where were we?”

  “Lebanon,” Gabriel said. “Oblivion.”

  “We camped in the hills. We foraged for food. We survived off the charity of our Arab brethren and waited for the gates of Palestine to be opened to us, waited for the Jews to make good on the promises they’d made to us the morning we’d fled Sumayriyya. But in June, Ben-Gurion said that the refugees could not come home. We were a fifth column that could not be allowed back, he said. We would be a thorn in the side of the new Jewish state. We knew then that we would never see Sumayriyya again. Paradise lost.”

  Gabriel looked at the clock. Five-ten p.m. Eighty miles to Paris.

  “We walked north, to Sidon. We spent the long, hot summer living in tents. Then the weather turned cold and the rains came, and still we were living in the tents. We called our new home Ein al-Hilweh. Sweet Spring. It was hardest on my grandfather. In Sumayriyya he’d been an important man. He’d tended his fields and his flock. He’d provided for his family. Now his family was surviving on handouts. He had a deed to his property but no land. He had the keys to his door but no house. He took ill that first winter and died. He didn’t want to live—not in Lebanon. My grandfather died when Sumayriyya died.”

  Five-twenty-five p.m. Paris: 62 miles.

  “My father was only a boy, but he had to assume responsibility for his mother and two sisters. He couldn’t work—the Lebanese wouldn’t permit that. He couldn’t go to school—the Lebanese wouldn’t allow that, either. No Lebanese social security, no Lebanese health care. And no way out, because we had no valid passports. We were stateless. We were nonpersons. We were nothing.”

  Five-thirty-eight p.m. Paris: 35 miles.

  “When my father married a girl from Sumayriyya, the remnants of the village gathered in Ein al-Hilweh for the wedding celebration. It was just like home, except the surroundings were different. Instead of Paradise, it was the open sewers and the cinder-block huts of the camp. My mother gave my father two sons. Every night he told them about Sumayriyya, so that they would never forget their true home. He told them the story of al-Nakba, the Catastrophe, and instilled in them the dream of al-Awda, the Return. My brothers would grow up to be fighters for Palestine. There was no choice in the matter. As soon as they were old enough to hold a gun, the Fatah started training them.”

  “And you?”

  “I was the last child. I was born in 1975, just as Lebanon was descending into civil war.”

  Five-forty-seven p.m. Paris: 25 miles.

  “We never thought they would come for us again. Yes, we’d lost everything—our homes, our village, our land—but at least we were safe in Ein al-Hilweh. The Jews would never come to Lebanon. Would they?”

  Five-fifty-two p.m. Paris: 19 miles.

  “Operation Peace for Galilee—that’s what they called it. My God, even Orwell couldn’t have come up with a better name. On June 4, 1982, the Israelis invaded Lebanon to finish off the PLO once and for all. To us it all seemed so familiar. An Israeli armored column heading north up the coast road, only now the coast road was in Lebanon instead of Palestine, and the soldiers were members of the IDF instead of the Haganah. We knew things were going to get bad. Ein al-Hilweh was known as Fatahland, capital of Diaspora Palestine. On June 8, the battle for the camp began. The Israelis sent in their paratroopers. Our men fought back with the courage of lions—alley to alley, house to house, from the mosques and the hospitals. Any fighter who tried to surrender was shot. The word went out: the battle for Ein al-Hilweh was to be a fight to the last man.

  “The Israelis changed their tactics. They used their aircraft and artillery to raze the camp, block by block, sector by sector. Then their paratroopers would sweep down and massacre our fighters. Every few hours the Israelis would pause and ask us to surrender. Each time the answer was the same: never. It went on like this for a week. I lost one b
rother on the first day of the battle, my other brother on the fourth day. On the last day of fighting, my mother was mistaken for a guerrilla as she crawled out of the rubble and was shot to death by the Israelis.

  “When it was finally over, Ein al-Hilweh was a wasteland. For the second time, the Jews had turned my home into rubble. I lost my brothers, I lost my mother. You ask me why I’m here. I’m here because of Sumayriyya and Ein al-Hilweh. This is what Zionism has meant to me. I have no choice but to fight.”

  “What happened after Ein al-Hilweh? Where did you go?”

  The girl shook her head. “I’ve told you enough already,” she said. “Too much.”

  “I want to hear the rest of it.”

  “Drive,” she said. “It’s almost time to see your wife.”

  Gabriel looked at the clock: six p.m. Ten miles to Paris.

  25

  ST-DENIS, NORTHERN PARIS

  Amira Assaf closed the door of the flat behind her. The corridor, a long gray cement tunnel, was in semidarkness, lit only by the occasional flickering fluorescent tube. She pushed the wheelchair toward the bank of elevators. A woman, Moroccan by the sound of her accent, was yelling at her two young children. Farther on, a trio of African boys was listening to American hip-hop music on a portable stereo. This is what remained of the French empire, she thought, a few islands in the Caribbean and the human warehouses of St-Denis.

  She came to the elevator and pressed the call button, then looked up and saw that one of the cars was heading her way. Thank God, she thought. It was the one part of the journey that was completely beyond her control—the rickety old elevators of the housing block. Twice during her preparation she’d been forced to hike down twenty-three floors because the elevators weren’t working.

  A bell chimed, and the doors screeched open. Amira wheeled the chair into the carriage and was greeted by the overwhelming stench of urine. As she sunk toward earth, she pondered the question of why the poor piss in their elevators. When the doors opened, she thrust the chair into the lobby and drew a deep breath. Not much better. Only when she was outside, in the cold fresh air of the quadrangle, did she escape the odor of too many people living too close together.

  There was something of the Third World village square in the broad quadrangle that lay at the center of the four large housing blocks—clusters of men, divided by their country of origin, chatting in the cool twilight; women bearing sacks of groceries; children playing football. No one took notice of the attractive young Palestinian woman pushing a wheelchair-bound figure of indeterminate sex and age.

  It took precisely seven minutes for her to get to the St-Denis station. It was a large station, a combination RER and Métro, and because of the hour, crowds were streaming out of the exits into the street. She entered the ticket hall and immediately spotted two policemen, the first evidence of the security alert. She had watched the news updates and knew security had been tightened at Métro and rail stations across the country. But did they know something about St-Denis? Were they looking for a disabled woman kidnapped the previous night from a psychiatric hospital in England? She kept walking.

  “Excuse me, mademoiselle.”

  She turned around: a station attendant, young and officious, with a neatly pressed uniform.

  “Where are you going?”

  The tickets were in her hand; she had to answer truthfully. “The RER,” she said, then added: “To the Gare de Lyon.”

  The attendant smiled. “There’s an elevator right over there.”

  “Yes, I know the way.”

  “Can I be of some help?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Please,” he said, “allow me.”

  Just her luck, she thought. One pleasant station attendant in the entire Métro system, and he was working St-Denis tonight. To refuse would look suspicious. She nodded and handed the attendant the tickets. He led her through the turnstile, then across the crowded hall to the elevator. They rode down in silence to the RER level of the station. The attendant led her to the proper platform. For a moment she feared he intended to stay until the train arrived. Finally, he bid her a good evening and headed back upstairs.

  Amira looked up at the arrivals board. Twelve minutes. She glanced at her watch, did the math. No problem. She sat on a bench and waited. Twelve minutes later the train swept into the station and came to a stop. The doors shot open with a pneumatic hiss. Amira stood and wheeled the woman into the carriage.

  26

  PARIS

  Where am I now? A train? And who is this woman? Is she the same one who worked at the hospital? I told Dr. Avery I didn’t like her, but he wouldn’t listen. She spent too much time around me. Watched me too much. You’re being delusional, Dr. Avery told me. Your reaction to her is part of your illness. Her name is Amira. She’s very kind and highly qualified. No, I tried to tell him, she’s watching me. Something’s going to happen. She’s a Palestinian girl. I can see it in her eyes. Why didn’t Dr. Avery listen to me? Or did I ever really try to tell him? I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure of anything. Look at the television, Gabriel. The missiles are falling on Tel Aviv again. Do you think Saddam has put chemicals on them this time? I can’t stand being in Vienna when missiles are falling on Tel Aviv. Eat your pasta, Dani. Look at him right now, Gabriel. He looks so much like you. This train feels like Paris, but I’m surrounded by Arabs. Where has this woman taken me? Why aren’t you eating, Gabriel? Are you feeling all right? You don’t look well. My God, your skin is burning. Are you ill? Look, another missile. Please, God, let it fall on an empty building. Don’t let it fall on my mother’s house. I want to get out of this restaurant. I want to go home and call my mother. I wonder what happened to that boy who came to the hospital to watch over me. How did I get here? Who brought me here? And where is this train going? Snow. God, how I hate this city, but the snow makes it beautiful. The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. Snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain down on Tel Aviv. Are you working tonight? How late will you be? Sorry, I don’t know why I bothered to ask. Shit. The car is covered with snow. Help me with the windows before you go. Make sure Dani is buckled into his seat tightly. The streets are slippery. Yes, I’ll be careful. Come on, Gabriel, hurry. I want to talk to my mother. I want to hear the sound of her voice. Give me a kiss, one last kiss, then turn and walk away. I love to watch you walk, Gabriel. You walk like an angel. I hate the work you do for Shamron, but I’ll love you always. Damn, the car won’t start. I’ll try again. Why are you turning around, Gabriel? Where is this woman taking me? Why are you shouting and running toward the car? Turn the key again. Silence. Smoke and fire. Get Dani out first! Hurry, Gabriel! Please, get him out! I’m burning! I’m burning to death! Where is this woman taking me? Help me, Gabriel. Please help me.

  27

  PARIS

  The Gare de Lyon is located in the twelfth arrondissement of Paris, a few streets to the east of the Seine. In front of the station is a large traffic circle, and beyond the circle, the intersection of two major avenues, the rue de Lyon and the boulevard Diderot. It was there, seated in a busy sidewalk café popular with travelers, that Paul Martineau waited. He finished the last of a thin glass of Côtes du Rhône, then signaled the waiter for a check. An interval of five minutes ensued before the bill appeared. He left money and a small tip, then set out toward the entrance of the station.

  There were several police cars in the traffic circle and two pairs of paramilitary police standing guard at the entrance. Martineau fell in with a small cluster of people and went inside. He was nearly into the departure hall when he felt a tap at his shoulder. He turned around. It was one of the policemen who’d been watching the main entrance.

  “May I see some identification, please?”

  Martineau drew his French national identity card from his wallet and handed it to the policeman. The policeman stared into Martineau’s face for a long moment before looking down at the card.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Aix.�
��

  “May I see your ticket, please?”

  Martineau handed it over.

  “It says here you’re supposed to return tomorrow.”

  “I changed my reservation this afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed to return early.” Martineau decided to show a bit of irritation. “Listen, what’s this all about? Are all these questions really necessary?”

  “I’m afraid so, Monsieur Martineau. What brought you to Paris?”

  Martineau answered: lunch with a colleague from Paris University, a meeting with a potential publisher.

  “You’re a writer?”

  “An archaeologist, actually, but I’m working on a book.”

  The policeman handed back the identification card.

  “Have a pleasant evening.”

  “Thank you.”

  Martineau turned and headed toward the terminal. He paused at the departure board, then climbed the stairs to Le Train Bleu, the famed restaurant overlooking the hall. The maître d’ met him at the door.

  “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Actually, I’m meeting someone at the bar. I believe she’s already here.”

  The maître d’ stepped aside. Martineau made his way to the bar, then to a table in a window overlooking the platforms. Seated there was an attractive woman in her forties with a streak of gray in her long, dark hair. She looked up as Martineau approached. He bent and kissed the side of her neck.

  “Hello, Mimi.”

  “Paul,” she whispered. “So lovely to see you again.”

  28

  PARIS

  Two blocks north of the Gare de Lyon: the rue Parrot. Six-fifty-three p.m.

  “Turn here,” the girl said. “Park the car.”

  “There’s no place to leave it. The street’s parked up.”