The Black Widow Read online

SERAINCOURT, FRANCE

  ONE DAY,” SAID GABRIEL, “they’re going to write a book about you.”

  “It’s funny,” replied Natalie, “but Saladin told me the same thing.”

  They were walking along a footpath in the garden of the château. A bit of light leaked from the French doors of the sitting room, but otherwise it was dark. A storm had come and gone during the many hours of her debriefing, and the gravel was wet beneath their feet. Natalie shivered. The air was chill with the promise of autumn.

  “You’re cold,” said Gabriel. “We should go back inside.”

  “Not yet. There’s something I wanted to tell you in private.”

  Gabriel stopped and turned to face her.

  “He knows who you are.”

  “Saladin?” He smiled. “I’m flattered but not surprised. I have quite a following in the Arab world.”

  “There’s more, I’m afraid. He knows about your connection to Hannah Weinberg. And he suspects that you are very much alive.”

  This time, he did not dismiss her words with a smile.

  “What does it mean?” asked Natalie.

  “It means that our suspicions about Saladin being a former Iraqi intelligence officer are almost certainly correct. It also means he’s probably connected to certain elements in Saudi Arabia. Who knows? Perhaps he’s receiving support from them.”

  “But ISIS wants to destroy the House of Saud and incorporate the Arabian Peninsula into the caliphate.”

  “In theory.”

  “So why would the Saudis support ISIS?”

  “You are now our foremost expert on ISIS. You tell me.”

  “Saudi Arabia is a classic straddling state. It combats Sunni extremism while at the same time nurturing it. They’re like a man holding a tiger by the ears. If the man lets go of the tiger, it will devour him.”

  “You were obviously paying attention during those long lectures at the farm. But you left out one other important factor, and that’s Iran. The Saudis are more afraid of Iran than they are of ISIS. Iran is Shiite. And ISIS, for all its evil, is Sunni.”

  “And from the Saudi perspective,” continued Natalie, “a Sunni caliphate is far preferable to a Shiite Crescent that stretches from Iran to Lebanon.”

  “Exactly.” Again, he smiled. “You’re going to make a fine intelligence officer. Actually,” he corrected himself, “you already are.”

  “A fine intelligence officer wouldn’t have saved the life of a monster like Saladin.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “Did I?”

  “We’re not like them, Natalie. If they want to die for Allah, we will help them in any way we can. But we will not sacrifice ourselves in the process. Besides,” he added after a moment, “if you had killed Saladin, Abu Ahmed al-Tikriti would have taken his place.”

  “So why bother to kill any of them if another will rise?”

  “It is a question with which we wrestle all the time.”

  “And the answer?”

  “What choice do we have?”

  “Maybe we should bomb that house.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “Why?”

  “You tell me.”

  She considered the question carefully before answering. “Because they would suspect that the woman who saved Saladin—the woman he called Maimonides—was a spy who had revealed the location of the house to her handlers.”

  “Very good. And you can be certain they moved him the minute you crossed into Turkey.”

  “Were you watching?”

  “Our satellite had been retasked to follow you.”

  “I saw al-Tikriti use a phone several times.”

  “That phone is now off the air. I’ll ask the Americans to review their satellite and cellular data. It’s possible they’ll be able to retrace Saladin’s movements, but unlikely. They’ve been looking for al-Baghdadi for a long time without success. In a case like this we need to know where Saladin is going to be, not where he’s been.” With a sidelong glance he asked, “Is there any chance he might have already died of his wounds?”

  “There’s always a chance. But I’m afraid he had a very good doctor.”

  “That’s because she was Jewish. Everyone knows that all the best doctors are Jewish.”

  She smiled.

  “You dispute this?”

  “No. It’s just that Saladin said the same thing.”

  “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

  They walked in silence for a moment, the gravel of the pathway crunching beneath their feet, watched over by Greek and Roman statuary. Apollo emerged spectrally from the darkness. For an instant Natalie was once more in Palmyra.

  “What now?” she asked at last.

  “We wait for Saladin to summon you. And we stop the next attack.”

  “What if they don’t choose me for the team?”

  “They’ve invested a great deal of time and effort in you. Almost as much as we have,” he added.

  “How long will we have to wait?”

  “A week, a month . . .” He shrugged. “Saladin has been at this for a long time, a thousand years in fact. He’s obviously a patient man.”

  “I can’t keep living as Leila Hadawi.”

  He said nothing.

  “How are my parents?”

  “Worried, but fine.”

  “Do they know I went to Syria?”

  “No. But they know you’re safe.”

  “I wish to make one demand.”

  “Anything,” he said. “Within reason, of course.”

  “I wish to see my parents.”

  “Impossible,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “Please,” she pleaded. “Just for a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes?”

  “Yes, that’s all. I just want to hear the sound of my mother’s voice. I want my father to hold me.”

  He made a show of thought. “I think that can be arranged.”

  “Really? How soon?”

  “Now,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  He pointed toward the facade of the house, toward the light spilling from the French doors. Natalie turned and scampered childlike down the darkened garden path. She was beautiful, thought Gabriel, even when she was crying.

  46

  PARIS—TIBERIAS, ISRAEL

  THE REMAINDER OF SEPTEMBER PASSED without a nibble, and so did the entire month of October, which in Paris was drenched with sun and warmer than usual, much to the delight of the surveillance artists, the operation’s unsung heroes. By the first week of November, the team was beset by something approaching abject panic. Even the normally placid Paul Rousseau was beside himself, but then Rousseau was to be forgiven. He had a chief and a minister breathing down his neck, and a president who was too politically weak to survive another attack on French soil. The president would soon be leaving for Washington for a meeting with his American counterpart, and for that Rousseau was eternally grateful.

  Natalie soldiered on, but clearly she was growing weary of her double life in the dreary banlieue. There were no more team gatherings; they communicated with her only by text. Status checks invariably elicited a terse response. She was fine. She was well. She was bored. She was lonely. On her days off from the clinic, she escaped the banlieue by RER train and ran the watchers ragged on the streets of central Paris. During one such visit she was accosted by a Frenchwoman of National Front persuasion who took exception to her hijab. Natalie returned fire and instantly the two women were nose to nose on a busy street corner. Were it not for the gendarme who pulled them apart, they might very well have come to blows.

  “An admirable performance,” Paul Rousseau told Gabriel that evening at Alpha Group’s headquarters on the rue de Grenelle. “Let us hope Saladin was watching.”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel. “Let us hope.”

  But was he even alive? And if he was, had he lost faith in the woman who had saved him? This was their greatest f
ear, that Saladin’s operational train had left the station and Dr. Leila Hadawi had not been issued a ticket. In the meantime, the system was blinking red. European capitals, including Paris, were on high alert, and in Washington the Department of Homeland Security reluctantly raised its threat level, though publicly the president continued to play down the danger. The fact that warnings came and went with no attack seemed to bolster his case that the group did not possess the capability to carry out a major terror spectacular on the American homeland. A climate change accord was signed, a famous pop star released a long-awaited album, China’s stock market collapsed, and soon the world forgot. But the world did not know what Gabriel and Natalie and the rest of the team knew. Somewhere in Iraq or Syria was a man called Saladin. He was not a raving lunatic; he was a man of reason, a Sunni nationalist, quite possibly a former spy. He had suffered two serious shrapnel wounds to the right side of his body, one in the chest, the other to the thigh. If he was ambulatory, he would almost certainly require a cane or crutches to walk. The scars would make him easily identifiable. So, too, would his ambition. He planned to carry out an attack of such severity that the West would have no choice but to invade the Islamic caliphate. The armies of Rome and the men with black flags and long hair and beards would clash in a place called Dabiq, on the plains of northern Syria. The men who flew black flags would prevail, thus unleashing a chain of apocalyptic events that would bring about the appearance of the Mahdi and the end of days.

  But even in the sacred city of Jerusalem, Saladin’s ultimate target, attention wandered. Several months had passed since Gabriel was to have assumed control of the Office, and even the prime minister, who had been complicit in the delay, was losing patience. He had an ally in Ari Shamron, who never supported the delay in the first place. Frustrated, Shamron rang a compliant journalist and told him—anonymously, of course—that a change in leadership at the Office was imminent, days rather than weeks. He also suggested that the prime minister’s choice for a new chief would be surprising, to say the least. There followed a round of intense media speculation. Many names were floated, though the name Gabriel Allon was mentioned only in passing and with sadness. Gabriel was the chief who never was. Gabriel was dead.

  But he was not dead, of course. He was jetlagged, he was anxious, he was worried that his meticulously planned and executed operation had been in vain, but he was very much alive. On a Friday afternoon in mid-November he returned to Jerusalem after several days in Paris, hoping to spend a quiet weekend with his wife and children. But within minutes of his arrival, Chiara informed him that they were all expected for dinner that evening at Shamron’s villa in Tiberias.

  “Not a chance,” said Gabriel.

  “It’s Shabbat,” replied Chiara. She said nothing more. She was the daughter of the chief rabbi of Venice. In Chiara’s world, Shabbat was the ultimate trump card. No further argument was necessary. The case was closed.

  “I’m too tired. Call Gilah and tell her we’ll do it another night.”

  “You call her.”

  Which he did. The conversation was brief, less than a minute.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said it’s Shabbat.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No. She said Ari isn’t doing well.”

  “He’s been sick all autumn. You’ve been too busy to notice, and Gilah didn’t want to worry you.”

  “What is it this time?”

  She shrugged. “Your abba is getting old, Gabriel.”

  To move the Allon family was no easy feat. The children’s car seats had to be buckled into the back of Gabriel’s SUV, and an additional vehicle added to the motorcade. It barreled down the Bab al-Wad at rush hour, sped northward up the Coastal Plain, and then raced westward across the Galilee. Shamron’s honey-colored villa stood atop a rocky bluff overlooking the lake. At the base of the drive was a small guardhouse where a security detail kept watch behind a metal gate. It was like entering a forward military base in a hostile land.

  It was precisely three minutes before sunset when the motorcade rumbled to a stop outside the entrance of the villa. Gilah Shamron was standing on the steps, tapping her wristwatch to indicate that time was running short if they were going to light the candles in time. Gabriel carried the children inside while Chiara saw to the food she had spent the afternoon preparing. Gilah, too, had spent the day cooking. There was enough to feed a multitude.

  Chiara’s description of Shamron’s failing health had left Gabriel expecting the worst, and he was deeply relieved to find Shamron looking rather well. Indeed, if anything, his appearance had improved since Gabriel saw him last. He was dressed, as usual, in a white oxford cloth shirt and pressed khaki trousers, though tonight he had added a navy cardigan against the November chill. Little remained of his hair and his skin was pale and translucent, but his blue eyes shone brightly behind his ugly steel spectacles when Gabriel entered with a child in each arm. Shamron raised his liver-spotted hands—hands that were far too large for so small a man—and without apprehension Gabriel entrusted them with Raphael. Shamron held the child as though he were a live grenade and whispered nonsense into his ear in his murderous Polish accent. When Raphael emitted a peal of laughter, Gabriel was instantly glad he had come.

  He had been raised in a home without religion, but as always, when Gilah drew the light of the Sabbath candles to her eyes while reciting the blessing, he thought it the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Shamron then recited the blessings of the bread and the wine in the Yiddish intonations of his youth, and the meal commenced. Gabriel had yet to take his first bite when Shamron attempted to quiz him on the operation, but Gilah adroitly changed the subject to the children. Chiara briefed them on the latest developments—the dietary changes, the growth and weight gain, the attempts at speech and movement. Gabriel had caught only passing glimpses of the changes during the many months of the operation. In a few weeks’ time they would gather again in Tiberias to celebrate the children’s first birthday. He wondered whether Saladin would allow him to attend the party.

  For the most part, though, he tried to forget the operation long enough to enjoy a quiet evening in the company of his family. He didn’t dare turn off his phone, but he didn’t check for updates from Paris, either. It wasn’t necessary. He knew that in a few minutes Natalie would be leaving the clinic on the Avenue Victor Hugo, in the banlieue of Aubervilliers. Perhaps she would go to her café for something to eat or drink, or perhaps she would repair directly to her flat for another evening alone. Gabriel felt a stab of guilt—Natalie, he thought, should be passing the Sabbath in the company of her family, too. He wondered how much longer she could go on. Long enough, he hoped, for Saladin to come calling.

  Shamron was quiet at dinner, for small talk had never been his strong suit. After finishing his coffee, he pulled on his old leather bomber jacket and led Gabriel outside to the terrace. It looked east toward the silvery surface of the lake and the looming black mass of the Golan Heights. Behind them was Mount Arbel, with its ancient synagogue and cave fortresses, and on the southeastern slope was a small town by the same name. The town had once been an Arab village called Hittin, and long before that, a thousand years ago, it had been known as Hattin. It was there, a stone’s throw from the spot where Gabriel and Shamron now stood, that Saladin, the real Saladin, had laid waste to the armies of Rome.

  Shamron ignited a pair of gas heaters to take the sharp chill off the air. Then, after fending off a halfhearted attack by Gabriel, he ignited one of his Turkish cigarettes, too. They sat in a pair of chairs at the edge of the terrace, Gabriel at Shamron’s right hand, his phone resting on the small table between them. A minaret moon floated above the Golan Heights, shining its benevolent light on the lands of the caliphate. From behind them, through an open door, came the voices of Gilah and Chiara and the chirp and laughter of the children.

  “Have you noticed,” asked Shamron, “how much your son looks like Daniel?”

  “It’s
difficult not to.”

  “It’s shocking.”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel, his eyes on the moon.

  “You’re a lucky man.”

  “Am I really?”

  “It’s not often we are given a second chance at happiness.”

  “But with happiness,” said Gabriel, “comes guilt.”

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about. I was the one who recruited you. And I was the one who allowed you to take your wife and child with you to Vienna. If there’s anyone who should feel guilty,” said Shamron gravely, “it’s me. And I’m reminded of my guilt each time I gaze into your son’s face.”

  “And every time you put on that old jacket.”

  Shamron had torn the left shoulder of the jacket while hastily climbing into the back of his car on the night of the bombing in Vienna. He had never repaired it—it was Daniel’s tear. From behind them came the soft voices of women and the laughter of a child, which one Gabriel could not tell. Yes, he thought, he was happy. But not an hour of a day went by when he did not hold the lifeless body of his son, or pull his wife from behind the wheel of a burning car. Happiness was his punishment for having survived.

  “I enjoyed the article about the coming change in leadership at the Office.”

  “Did you?” Even Shamron seemed pleased by the change in subject. “I’m glad.”

  “That was low, Ari, even by your standards.”

  “I’ve never believed in fighting cleanly. That’s why I’m a spy instead of a soldier.”

  “It was disruptive,” said Gabriel.

  “That’s why I did it.”

  “Does the prime minister know you were behind it?”

  “Who do you think asked me to do it in the first place?” Shamron raised his cigarette to his lips with a tremulous hand. “This situation,” he said disdainfully, “has gone on long enough.”

  “I’m running an operation.”

  “You can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

  “Your point?”

  “I was an operational chief,” answered Shamron, “and I expect you to be an operational chief, too.”

  “The minute Saladin’s network makes contact with Natalie, we’ll have to go on a war footing. I can’t be worrying about personnel matters and parking privileges while trying to stop the next attack.”