Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant Page 29
The painter slipped the Beretta back into the waistband of his trousers and walked back to the spot where he’d been working. He dipped his brush in black paint and signed his name to the canvas, then turned and started up the slope of the hill. In the shadow of the ancient wall, he encountered a girl with short hair who bore a vague resemblance to Fellah al-Tamari. He bid her a good morning and climbed into the saddle of his motorcycle. A moment later he was gone.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PRINCE OF FIRE is a work of fiction. That said, it is based heavily on real events and was inspired in large measure by a photograph—a photograph of a young boy at the funeral of his father, a master terrorist killed by agents of Israeli intelligence in Beirut in 1979. The terrorist was Black September’s Ali Hassan Salameh, architect of the Munich Olympics massacre and many other acts of murder, and the man upon whose lap the boy sits in the photograph is none other than Yasir Arafat. Students of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will recognize that I borrowed much from Ali Hassan Salameh and his famous father to construct the fictional Asad and Sabri al-Khalifa. There are key differences between the Salamehs and the al-Khalifas, far too many to enumerate here. A search of the Coastal Plain will produce no evidence of a village called Beit Sayeed, for no such place exists. Tochnit Dalet was the real name of the plan to remove hostile Arab population centers from land allocated for the new State of Israel. There was once a village called Sumayriyya in the Western Galilee. Its destruction occurred as described in the pages of this novel. Black September was indeed a covert arm of Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, and the consequences of its brief, bloody reign of terror live on today. It was Black September that first demonstrated the utility of carrying out spectacular acts of terrorism on the international stage, and evidence of its influence is all around us. It can be seen in a school in Beslan, in the wreckage of four trains in Madrid, and in the empty space in lower Manhattan where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood.
Yasir Arafat fell ill and died as I was completing this novel. Had he chosen the path of peace instead of unleashing a wave of terror, it would have never been written, and thousands of people, Israeli and Palestinian, would still be alive today.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel, like the previous four books in the Gabriel Allon series, could not have been written without the assistance of David Bull. David truly is among the finest art restorers in the world, and his friendship and wisdom have enriched both my life and my work. Jeffrey Gold-berg, the brilliant correspondent of The New Yorker, generously shared with me his wealth of knowledge and experience and was kind enough to read my manuscript and offer several helpful suggestions. Aviva Raz Schechter of the Israeli embassy in Washington provided me with a unique window on Israel in a turbulent time. Louis Toscano twice read my manuscript, and it was made better by his sure editorial hand. My friend and literary agent, Esther Newberg of International Creative Management, read each of my early drafts and quietly pointed me in the right direction.
I consulted hundreds of books, articles, and Web sites while preparing this manuscript, far too many to cite here, but I would be remiss if I did not mention a few. I am deeply indebted to the great Israeli scholar Benny Morris, whose groundbreaking The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem helped to shape my views on the nature and scope of the Arab expulsions that took place in 1947 and 1948. Morris’s towering history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Righteous Victims, also proved to be an invaluable resource, as was Martin Gilbert’s Israel. My own impressions of contemporary Israeli society were sharpened by three works in particular: The Israelis by Donna Rosenthal, Still Life with Bombers by David Horowitz, and War Without End by Anton La Guardia. The Quest for the Red Prince by Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber is a telling account of the Salameh family’s violent history. It was Yaron Ezrahi of the Israeli Democracy Institute in Jerusalem, not the fictitious Colonel Yonatan Shamron, who first compared the Separation Fence to the Wailing Wall, and with far more eloquence and passion than I managed here. Those familiar with the Yom Kippur evening service will recognize that I have borrowed four lines of prayer, composed originally for the British edition of Gates of Repentance , and placed them in the mouth of Ari Shamron in the penultimate chapter.
None of this would be possible without the support and dedication of the remarkable team of professionals at Putnam: Carole Baron, Daniel Harvey, Marilyn Ducks-worth, and especially my editor, Neil Nyren. They are, quite simply, the very best at what they do.
Finally, my wife, Jamie Gangel, skillfully read each of my early drafts, served as a sounding board for my ideas, and, as always, helped drag me across the finish line. I cannot overstate her contribution, nor can I thank her enough.
The Messenger
The Messenger
DANIEL SILVA
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2006 by Daniel Silva
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 978-1-1012-1114-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Phyllis and Bernard Jacob, for many years of
guidance, love, and support. And as always, for my wife,
Jamie, and my children, Lily and Nicholas.
The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader.
—LAURENT MURAWIEC, RAND Corporation
Unless the ideological roots of the hatred that led to September 11 are addressed, the war on terrorism will not be won. It will be only a matter of time before the next Osama bin Laden emerges.
—DORE GOLD, Hatred’s Kingdom
We will control the land of the Vatican. We will control Rome and introduce Islam in it.
—SHEIKH MUHAMMAD BIN ABD AL-RAHMAN AL-ARIFI, Imam of the mosque at the King Fahd Defense Academy
Contents
PART ONE The Door of Death
1. London
2. Jerusalem
3. Jerusalem
4. Vatican City
5. Vatican City
6. Vati
can City
7. Rome
8. Venice
9. Jerusalem
PART TWO Dr. Gachet’s Daughter
10. Ein Kerem, Jerusalem
11. London
12. Tel Megiddo, Israel
13. London
14. The Marais, Paris
15. The Marais, Paris
16. McLean, Virginia
17. Georgetown
18. London
19. London
20. London
21. London
PART THREE The Night Journey
22. Harbor Island, Bahamas
23. Off the Bahamas
24. Gustavia, Saint-Barthélemy
25. Gustavia, Saint-Barthélemy
26. Pointe Mangin, Saint-Barthélemy
27. Gustavia Harbor, Saint-Barthélemy
28. CIA Headquarters
29. Off Saint Maarten
30. Saint Maarten
31. Kloten, Switzerland
32. Zurich
33. Zug, Switzerland
34. Canton Uri, Switzerland
35. Canton Uri, Switzerland
36. Zug, Switzerland
37. Vatican City
38. Rome
PART FOUR The Witness
39. Washington
40. Tiberias, Israel
41. Paris: August
42. Istanbul: August
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART ONE
The Door of Death
1.
London
IT WAS ALI MASSOUDI who unwittingly roused Gabriel Allon from his brief and restless retirement: Massoudi, the great Europhile intellectual and freethinker, who, in a moment of blind panic, forgot that the English drive on the left side of the road.
The backdrop for his demise was a rain-swept October evening in Bloomsbury. The occasion was the final session of the first annual Policy Forum for Peace and Security in Palestine, Iraq, and Beyond. The conference had been launched early that morning amid great hope and fanfare, but by day’s end it had taken on the quality of a traveling production of a mediocre play. Even the demonstrators who came in hope of sharing some of the flickering spotlight seemed to realize they were reading from the same tired script. The American president was burned in effigy at ten. The Israeli prime minister was put to the purifying flame at eleven. At lunchtime, amid a deluge that briefly turned Russell Square into a pond, there had been a folly having something to do with the rights of women in Saudi Arabia. At eight-thirty, as the gavel came down on the final panel, the two dozen stoics who had stayed to the end filed numbly toward the exits. Organizers of the affair detected little appetite for a return engagement next autumn.
A stagehand stole forward and removed a placard from the rostrum that read: GAZA IS LIBERATED—WHAT NOW? The first panelist on his feet was Sayyid of the London School of Economics, defender of the suicide bombers, apologist for al-Qaeda. Next was the austere Chamberlain of Cambridge, who spoke of Palestine and the Jews as though they were still the quandary of gray-suited men from the Foreign Office. Throughout the discussion the aging Chamberlain had served as a sort of Separation Fence between the incendiary Sayyid and a poor soul from the Israeli embassy named Rachel who had drawn hoots and whistles of disapproval each time she’d opened her mouth. Chamberlain tried to play the role of peacekeeper now as Sayyid pursued Rachel to the door with taunts that her days as a colonizer were drawing to an end.
Ali Massoudi, graduate professor of global governance and social theory at the University of Bremen, was the last to rise. Hardly surprising, his jealous colleagues might have said, for among the incestuous world of Middle Eastern studies, Massoudi had the reputation of one who never willingly relinquished a stage. Palestinian by birth, Jordanian by passport, and European by upbringing and education, Professor Massoudi appeared to all the world like a man of moderation. The shining future of Arabia, they called him. The very face of progress. He was known to be distrustful of religion in general and militant Islam in particular. In newspaper editorials, in lecture halls, and on television, he could always be counted on to lament the dysfunction of the Arab world. Its failure to properly educate its people. Its tendency to blame the Americans and the Zionists for all its ailments. His last book had amounted to a clarion call for an Islamic Reformation. The jihadists had denounced him as a heretic. The moderates had proclaimed he had the courage of Martin Luther. That afternoon he had argued, much to Sayyid’s dismay, that the ball was now squarely in the Palestinian court. Until the Palestinians part company with the culture of terror, Massoudi had said, the Israelis could never be expected to cede an inch of the West Bank. Nor should they. Sacrilege, Sayyid had cried. Apostasy.
Professor Massoudi was tall, a bit over six feet in height, and far too good-looking for a man who worked in close proximity to impressionable young women. His hair was dark and curly, his cheekbones wide and strong, and his square chin had a deep notch in the center. The eyes were brown and deeply set and lent his face an air of profound and reassuring intelligence. Dressed as he was now, in a cashmere sport jacket and cream-colored rollneck sweater, he seemed the very archetype of the European intellectual. It was an image he worked hard to convey. Naturally deliberate of movement, he packed his papers and pens methodically into his well-traveled briefcase, then descended the steps from the stage and headed up the center aisle toward the exit.
Several members of the audience were loitering in the foyer. Standing to one side, a stormy island in an otherwise tranquil sea, was the girl. She wore faded jeans, a leather jacket, and a checkered Palestinian kaffiyeh round her neck. Her black hair shone like a raven’s wing. Her eyes were nearly black, too, but shone with something else. Her name was Hamida al-Tatari. A refugee, she had said. Born in Amman, raised in Hamburg, now a citizen of Canada residing in North London. Massoudi had met her that afternoon at a reception in the student union. Over coffee she had fervently accused him of insufficient outrage over the crimes of the Americans and Jews. Massoudi had liked what he had seen. They were planning to have drinks that evening at the wine bar next to the theater in Sloane Square. His intentions weren’t romantic. It wasn’t Hamida’s body he wanted. It was her zeal and her clean face. Her perfect English and Canadian passport.
She gave him a furtive glance as he crossed the foyer but made no attempt to speak to him. Keep your distance after the symposium, he had instructed her that afternoon. A man in my position has to be careful about who he’s seen with. Outside he sheltered for a moment beneath the portico and gazed at the traffic moving sluggishly along the wet street. He felt someone brush against his elbow, then watched as Hamida plunged wordlessly into the cloudburst. He waited until she was gone, then hung his briefcase from his shoulder and set out in the opposite direction, toward his hotel in Russell Square.
The change came over him—the same change that always occurred whenever he moved from one life to the other. The quickening of the pulse, the sharpening of the senses, the sudden fondness for small details. Such as the balding young man, walking toward him beneath the shelter of an umbrella, whose gaze seemed to linger on Massoudi’s face an instant too long. Or the newsagent who stared brazenly into Massoudi’s eyes as he purchased a copy of the Evening Standard. Or the taxi driver who watched him, thirty seconds later, as he dropped the same newspaper into a rubbish bin in Upper Woburn Place.
A London bus overtook him. As it churned slowly past, Massoudi peered through the fogged windows and saw a dozen tired-looking faces, nearly all of them black or brown. The new Londoners, he thought, and for a moment the professor of global governance and social theory wrestled with the implications of this. How many secretly sympathized with his cause? How many would sign on the dotted line if he laid before them a contract of death?
In the wake of the bus, on the opposite pavement, was a single pedestrian: oilskin raincoat, stubby ponytail, two straight lines for eyebrows. Massoudi recognized him instantly. The young man had been at the conference�
�same row as Hamida but on the opposite side of the auditorium. He’d been sitting in the same seat earlier that morning, when Massoudi had been the lone dissenting voice during a panel discussion on the virtue of barring Israeli academics from European shores.
Massoudi lowered his gaze and kept walking, while his left hand went involuntarily to the shoulder strap of his briefcase. Was he being followed? If so, by whom? MI5 was the most likely explanation. The most likely, he reminded himself, but not the only one. Perhaps the German BND had followed him to London from Bremen. Or perhaps he was under CIA surveillance.
But it was the fourth possibility that made Massoudi’s heart bang suddenly against his rib cage. What if the man was not English, or German, or American at all? What if he worked for an intelligence service that showed little compunction about liquidating its enemies, even on the streets of foreign capitals. An intelligence service with a history of using women as bait. He thought of what Hamida had said to him that afternoon.