“What would you like to eat?”
“Anything.”
That afternoon, in French class, Matilde felt as though the teacher was speaking to her from very far away. Images from earlier that afternoon on the table flashed in front of her eyes. It was still hard for her to believe that she had experienced them at the Mercure offices, just steps away from Thérèse and Victoire. She smiled involuntarily, remembering how the orgasm seemed to finish Eliah off. She supposed that if he had given in to the power that she had seen building up in his face, muscles and between his legs, he would have exploded in bellowing that could be heard in the lobby on the ground floor. She looked at her classmates, concentrating on the professor and the blackboard. She felt her spirits lift surprisingly and had a sudden urge to yell out, “I just made love with the most wonderful man in the world! I, Matilde Martínez, made love.” Later, during the break, she plucked up the courage to ask Juana, “Could you please tell me how to do beautiful things to Eliah? In bed,” she clarified.
“Have you blown him yet? Oh, don’t blush, Mat! Have you blown him yet?” Matilde shook her head. “It’s important to learn how to do it well. It drives them crazy. If you don’t blow him, then he’ll find someone else who will. That’s the way it is, don’t look at me like that. Remind me that we need to buy bananas.”
At six thirty, Al-Saud came to pick them up from the institute with Leila. He was increasingly worried about the gloominess on Rue Vitruve, the poorly lit entrance to the Lycée des Langues Vivantes and the dubious feel of the neighborhood.
Leila, who was sitting in the passenger seat, got out of the Aston Martin and ran to hug Matilde. She immediately made friends with Juana. When they went over to the car, Leila hurried to her seat next to Al-Saud.
“Leila, get out. That’s Matilde’s seat.” She refused to budge, crossing her arms and pouting. “You have to sit in the back,” he insisted impatiently.
“Leave her be. I’ll get in the back.”
“No, Matilde.”
“Please, Eliah, don’t say anything to her. I’ll go in the back.”
“You and I are going to have to have a conversation tonight,” Al-Saud threatened, which only made Leila’s angry face worse; by now her arms were almost crossed at her neck.
Matilde sat behind Al-Saud and ran her hands through his rough beard. She whispered into his left ear.
“See? This is the best spot because from here I can touch you as much as I want. Where are we going?” She asked in a louder voice and in French.
“We’re going shopping,” he explained in the same language. “Today is Tuesday and Leila wants to go to her favorite marché, although I don’t know if she deserves it.”
“What does marché mean?” Juana wanted to know.
“Market,” Al-Saud explained, “the kind where you can get anything.”
Matilde reached out, brushed a lock of hair from Leila’s forehead and stroked her cheek, which was still red from anger. The girl didn’t take long to give in. She grabbed her hand and kissed it a few times, on the palm and the back. Al-Saud looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
The market on Place Maubert, on Boulevard Saint-Germain, was a celebration of colors, aromas and sounds. It was packed with stalls, decorated with white-and-green striped awnings, that displayed everything from African masks and artisanal chocolates to shellfish and fruits and vegetables; the variety was overwhelming. Matilde felt calm and happy as Al-Saud led her silently by the hand. They bought some chocolate bonbons filled with dried fruit that made all three of them sigh with pleasure. It was fascinating to watch Leila haggle just by gesturing and making faces at the vendors; they all knew her and called her by name. Al-Saud didn’t say a thing; he limited himself to taking out his wallet and paying when the haggling was over. Juana remembered to buy bananas.
When they got to the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, they found Marie and Agneska busy getting dinner ready. They were both surprised by the appearance of Matilde and Juana, and their mouths gaped wide when they saw the boss kissing the blonde girl before shutting himself in his study. They were apprehensive and shy, but relaxed immediately when they found that the young ladies treated them as equals and saw them helping Leila put away the shellfish, vegetables and mountains of other things they had bought; they even helped set the table for all the guests, since Alamán, Peter, Mike and Tony all showed up a little while later on and announced that they would be staying for dinner.
Alamán hugged Matilde when he saw her and whispered into her ear, “Do you know whose birthday is this Saturday?” Matilde shook her head. “Eliah’s.”
Her heart leaped in her chest. Her expression made Alamán laugh, because she suddenly smiled and her silver eyes shone. Matilde did a quick calculation: Eliah’s birthday was the seventh of February. She got on her tiptoes and kissed Alamán on the cheek.
“Thank you for telling me,” she whispered.
On the other side of the room, Eliah pulled Juana away to talk to her in confidence.
“I want to buy Matilde a watch.”
“Perfect.”
“What do you think of a Rolex?”
“Not a good idea.” Seeing Al-Saud’s surprise, she explained, “Look, stud, Mat is the best person on the planet, no exaggeration, but the poor thing is also pretty weird. Up until she was fifteen, she lived in a palace with fifty rooms and a dozen servants tending to her. She was sort of like the Empress Sisi: extremely spoiled by her father. She lived in luxury and opulence when she was little, and she was very unhappy. She relates that world with superficial things and vanity, and she looks down on it. Or just ignores it. I think you’d have more chance of pleasing her if you bought her a high-quality watch that isn’t so lavish. Ostentation repulses her.”
Peter Ramsay’s partiality to Leila was obvious to Matilde. The Englishman rarely took his eyes off her and insisted on speaking to her in his badly pronounced French. She smiled at him, flirted with him and answered with signs. It worried her that he was married. Eliah had told her that Ramsay’s wife lived in London and that he visited her every once in a while. In his own words, in English, his marriage “was a little bit strange.”
Mike and Tony were competing for Juana’s attention, but she was more interested in Al-Saud’s exotic house than in his partners. Matilde took her on a tour, with Leila holding on to her hand, taking advantage of a moment when the men had absented themselves to talk business. Proudly, as though she was the mistress of the house, she passed through the rooms, pointing out the Art Nouveau details. She shivered when she remembered what Al-Saud had said to her on Sunday night before setting off for Rue Toullier: “I want us to make love in every room in this house. As a kind of ritual baptism,” he’d explained.
Claude Masséna saw Al-Saud come into the base, followed by Alamán and his three partners. Since he had uncovered the intrigue devised to hire and keep him as the head of systems at Mercure, but especially since he suspected that Zoya had taken part in the conspiracy, he had been filled with fury and hatred. Sometimes he was convinced that Al-Saud was one of Zoya’s clients, which was why he had been leaving her building on Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré that night. Convincing himself of this suspicion was difficult; Al-Saud didn’t need a prostitute to satisfy his sexual appetite. Plus, in this sordid world, there were no coincidences.
He was especially exasperated by his dependence on Zoya. He needed her even though he knew she was a traitor and a bitch. Sometimes he thought about getting a gun and shooting her in the head to end the torment, but then he regretted the thought as soon as he tried to envision his life without her.
Mike Thorton summoned them to the map room. A transparent screen came down from the ceiling and projected a map of Cairo, which Al-Saud used to illustrate the details of the mission they would carry out in two days. Masséna was careful not to make eye contact with his boss; he was afraid that he would reveal his betrayal. He now worked for the Israeli secret service. He believed him perfectly capable of re
ading his mind just by looking into his eyes.
Tony assigned roles and the orders among the employees. Peter Ramsay explained the plan to elude the ring of Mossad agents surrounding Bouchiki. They spoke about Diana and Dingo, who had traveled to Cairo that morning to take their places in the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel. Everything was ready.
“How will Bouchiki give Diana the information?” Masséna asked.
“You don’t need to know that,” Al-Saud answered. “You have all the information you need. Get to work.”
Hours later, Masséna headed to the telephone booth he used to communicate with his new bosses, which was located in the Alma-Marceau métro station. Ariel Bergman answered with a sleepy voice.
“Picasso? It’s Salvador Dalí.” He greeted him using his code name.
“I’m listening,” said Bergman.
Gérard Moses entered his apartment on Rue Charles Martel in the Belgian city of Herstal. He didn’t particularly like Herstal; he had chosen it for its proximity to the Fabrique Nationale arms factory, one of the oldest in Europe and one of his best clients. They would pay him a fortune for the new accessory he was designing, which he had named the “shooting control unit,” and which could sharpen the aim of a grenade shot from a rocket launcher down to a margin of error of a few inches. He had no doubt that his invention would cause a big stir at the next arms exposition in Berlin.
Though he had been out of Herstal for some time—after Paris, he had spent a few days in Baghdad—it still struck him as strange that his answering machine had five new messages; nobody called him. Eliah’s voice caught him off-guard and his legs gave way from under him. He sat on the armchair next to the answering machine and listened to the messages again and again, crying. He dried his tears with the cuff of his sleeve and tried to compose himself. Udo would get there soon, and he didn’t want to reveal his weakness. He took a few sips of Laphroaig, his favorite whiskey, to bolster his courage. He was furious with his right-hand man and was going to let him know. For some reason that Jürkens couldn’t quite to explain, he had managed to screw up the meeting with Roy Blahetter; the fool hadn’t been at the restaurant in the Ritz at the agreed time and wasn’t responding to e-mails. The opportunity to get his hands on the plans for a new uranium centrifuge had vanished again. And Saddam Hussein was starting to lose patience.
He hated Blahetter for many reasons: for his youth, his beauty, his sanity and healthy body, but above all for being more brilliant than him. What was his IQ? He didn’t know, and he regretted not having tested him when they were working together at MIT. He had never come across a nuclear engineer who knew his field so well and who moved within it so freely and confidently. Blahetter was a god of nuclear energy. His revolutionary uranium centrifuge was proof enough. Of course, Gérard had presented it to the Iraqis as his own invention, even publishing an article in Science and Technology outlining the principles used in the construction according to the notes and designs he had stolen from Blahetter at MIT. He had nonetheless needed to spend days convincing the Iraqi engineers that the machine was feasible. The Iraqis weren’t stupid; they knew a lot about the operation of traditional centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Enriching uranium meant separating fissile isotope 235, which was what was needed to construct nuclear bombs, from uranium 238, which is what the mineral is mostly made up of. The separation process is complex because both isotopes have similar masses; the centrifuge, consequently, needs to be very high power and it still needs a large quantity of time.
And time was what Saddam Hussein didn’t have. To enrich enough uranium to build a bomb, the Iraqis would need hundreds of centrifuges working collectively for three years. Before the Gulf War, Saddam had had an abundance of the technology, mostly German, but at this point he had to start from zero. His ambition to make himself a nuclear power hadn’t lessened with defeat; on the contrary, it had become an obsession. He needed Blahetter’s centrifuge (even though the rais thought it was Gérard Moses’s) to enrich the requisite amount of uranium in a few weeks and build enough bombs to give him the power to destroy his worst enemies: the United States and Israel, which was just a North American proxy. The rais knew that the United States hadn’t landed their final blow. Someday, not too far off, they would come back to settle what they had started in January 1991. And he would be ready for them.
Blahetter’s centrifuge was so innovative—reducing the process from years to weeks—that Gérard still marveled at it. Apart from its main advantage—the reduction of time—the centrifuge had ingenious solutions to problems that had been keeping nuclear engineers up at night since World War II. For example, to protect the friction rotor, Blahetter suggested that it run in a vacuum, and to give it the highest possible rotation speed and eliminate vibrations, he proposed constructing the centrifuge not out of aluminum but maraging steel with a high nickel content to make it lighter and more resistant. Moses knew that he had experimented with this steel in his family’s metallurgy factories in Córdoba, Argentina, and that the tests had been successful.
This marvelous human invention that had been so close to falling into his hands had slipped away again thanks to Udo Jürkens’s incompetence. Blahetter hadn’t contacted him again; he didn’t even know if he was still in Paris. And he, Gérard Moses, was unable to finish the project with the information he had, he didn’t know how to do it, though he had certainly tried. He needed Blahetter’s final designs.
The doorbell rang. It was Udo. With his metallic, inhuman voice, he immediately announced, “Boss, I have good news about Blahetter.” Gérard Moses looked at him suspiciously. “I just left the private investigator following Al-Saud.”
“What does that have to do with Blahetter?”
“Please, sit down and I’ll explain. On Saturday night, Al-Saud went to a building on Avenue Charles Floquet, number twenty-nine. He arrived with Céline,” he added, and showed him a photo in which Eliah appeared in a black coat with Céline on his arm. “A few hours later he left the building with another woman.” He held out a new photograph in which Matilde appeared.
“She looks very young,” Gérard thought out loud, and, when Jürkens didn’t resume his speech, he looked up to prompt him. “What happened with this girl?”
“He brought her to his house.”
“To what house?”
“His house on Avenue Elisée Reclus.”
“Impossible!” Gérard said angrily. “He never brings his whores to the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus. He told me himself: it’s his sanctuary. Nobody gets inside except those he trusts absolutely, except those who are very important…” The words hung in the air.
“The girl spent the night and all of Sunday. Al-Saud brought her to her house, on Rue Toullier, where the investigator returned the next day to continue his investigation. At around two in the afternoon, the girl and another young woman came out of the building.” He pushed a third photograph across the table with his index finger. “Blahetter was waiting for them.”
Gérard Moses stood up with the photograph and went over to the natural light filtering in through the window. Yes, it was Blahetter. Blahetter grabbing the arm of the girl who had entered Eliah’s sanctuary.
“Please, Udo, tell me that the private investigator followed Blahetter.”
“He did, boss. Since he already knew where to find the blonde girl, he decided that it wouldn’t be a problem to divert the surveillance for a moment to concentrate on the man who was harassing her. He thought it might be of use to us.”
“What was Medes doing there?” Moses asked suddenly and pointed to the photograph that captured the moment when the chauffeur came between Blahetter and Matilde. “Why is Medes in this photo?” he insisted, furiously.
“I don’t know, boss. I didn’t even notice Al-Saud’s chauffeur.”
Moses didn’t know who to concentrate on, Blahetter or this young girl and the implications of her appearance in Al-Saud’s life. He poured out another measure of Laphroaig and downed it.
“Let’s forget about the girl for a minute. Tell me about Blahetter.”
“Blahetter realized that the private investigator was following him. He went into the Louvre and lost him in a crowd of tourists.”
“Merde! Didn’t we hire a professional? How could he give himself away like that?”
“According to the investigator, Blahetter was very alert, as if he was expecting to be followed. Plus, he’s a brilliant man, as we know.” Seeing the expression on Moses’s face, Udo wished he had kept his mouth shut. “But there’s no doubt that he’ll go back to Rue Toullier. Sooner or later, he’ll be there.”
“Pay the private investigator what he’s owed and fire him. From now on, you’re in charge of this matter.”
“Yes, boss.”
The next day, Al-Saud went to pick up Matilde from the institute at around 6:20. They hadn’t met at midday because they were both too busy: Matilde was studying for an exam and Eliah had the mission in Cairo. As he turned the corner, he frowned and cursed upon seeing her standing alone at the door. She looked so vulnerable on the dim, remote solitary street that Al-Saud almost tried to forbid her from going back to the Lycée des Langues Vivantes. He got out of the sports car and hugged her on the sidewalk. She was so tiny that her torso disappeared next to his arms and his chest. Matilde looked up and Al-Saud kissed her delicately.
“Why are you alone? Where’s Juana?”
“She went with a group of classmates to have a drink.”
Al-Saud shook his wrist until his Rolex Submariner appeared from under the cuff of his camel-hair jacket.
“It’s early, it’s not even six thirty yet. Why are you outside?”
“We had an exam today. Whenever we finished, we could leave. I finished at six fifteen. I’ve only been here for a little while, waiting for you.”
“Let’s go, let’s get in the car,” he urged her.
Once they were safe in the tinted car, he didn’t turn on the engine but stared at her. He wanted to say so many things that he didn’t dare. Don’t go to the Congo. Don’t keep coming here, I’ll teach you French or I’ll pay a professional to teach you at home. At home. In our home. Because the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus is as much yours as it is mine. It’s already not the same without you, Matilde, my love. What have you done to me? A Horse of Fire loves his liberty, it’s his most prized possession. Now I’m chaining myself to you and I don’t mind at all. Matilde held his gaze sweetly. She lifted her hand and ran the back of her finger over his jawline.