Messenger

  The Sikorsky settled over Alexandra’s stern and sank slowly toward the helipad. Sarah saw something else: Zizi in the exhibition room of Julian’s gallery, warning her that no one could slip a forgery past him, in business or in art. I’m not a forgery, she told herself as she climbed out of the helicopter. I’m Sarah Bancroft. I used to be a curator at the Phillips Collection in Washington. Now I work for Isherwood Fine Arts in London. I’ve forgotten more about art than you’ll ever know. I don’t want your job or your money. In fact, I don’t want anything to do with you.

  BIN TALAL showed her to her quarters. They were larger than her flat in Chelsea: a sprawling bedroom with separate seating area, a marble bathroom with sunken tub and Jacuzzi, a sweeping private deck which at that moment was lit by the setting sun. The Saudi laid her bag on the king-size bed like a hotel bellman and started to pull at the zipper. Sarah tried to stop him.

  “That’s not necessary. I can see to my own bag, thank you.”

  “I’m afraid it is necessary, Miss Sarah.”

  He lifted the top and started removing her things.

  “What are you doing?”

  “We have rules, Miss Sarah.” The profound courtesy was now absent from his voice. “It’s my job to make certain the guests adhere to those rules. No alcohol, no tobacco, and no pornography of any kind.” He held up an American fashion magazine she’d picked up at the airport in Miami. “I’m afraid I have to confiscate this. Do you have any alcohol?”

  She shook her head. “And no cigarettes either.”

  “You don’t smoke?”

  “Occasionally, but I don’t make a habit of it.”

  “I’ll need your mobile phone until you leave Alexandra.”

  “Why?”

  “Because guests aren’t allowed to use cellular telephones aboard this craft. Besides, they won’t function because of the ship’s electronics.”

  “If it won’t function, then what’s the use of confiscating it?”

  “I assume your cell phone has the ability to take photographs as well as record and store video and audio clips?”

  “That’s what the little man said who sold it to me, but I never use it that way.”

  He held out his enormous hand. “Your telephone, please. I can assure you it will be well cared for.”

  “I have work to do. I can’t be cut off from the world.”

  “You’re more than welcome to use our shipboard satellite phone system.”

  And you’ll be listening in, won’t you?

  She dug her phone from her handbag, switched off the power, and surrendered it to him.

  “Now your camera, please. Mr. al-Bakari does not like cameras around when he is trying to relax. It is against the rules to photograph him, his employees, or any of his guests.”

  “Are there other guests besides me?”

  He ignored her question. “Did you bring a BlackBerry or any other kind of PDA?”

  She showed it to him. He held out his hand.

  “If you read my e-mail, so help me—”

  “We have no desire to read your e-mail. Please, Miss Sarah, the sooner we get this over with, the sooner you can settle in and relax.”

  She handed him the BlackBerry.

  “Did you bring an iPod or any other type of personal stereo?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Mr. al-Bakari believes personal stereos are rude and inconsiderate. Your room contains a state-of-the-art audio and visual entertainment system. You won’t need your own.”

  She gave him the iPod.

  “Any other electronics?”

  “A hair dryer.”

  He held out his hand.

  “You can’t take a girl’s hair dryer.”

  “You have one in your bathroom that’s compatible with the ship’s electrical system. In the meantime, let me have yours, just so there’s no confusion.”

  “I promise not to use it.”

  “Your hair dryer, please, Miss Sarah.”

  She pulled the hair dryer from her suitcase and gave it to him.

  “Mr. al-Bakari has left a gift for you in the closet. I’m sure he would be flattered if you wore it to dinner. It’s scheduled for nine o’clock this evening. I suggest you try to sleep until then. You’ve had a long day—and then there’s the time difference, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you like to be awakened at eight o’clock?”

  “I can manage on my own. I brought a travel alarm clock.”

  He smiled humorlessly. “I’ll need that, too.”

  MUCH TO HER surprise she did sleep. She dreamt nothing and woke in darkness, unsure of where she was. Then a puff of warm sea wind caressed her breast, like the breath of a lover, and she realized she was aboard Alexandra and that she was utterly alone. She lay very still for a moment, wondering if they were looking at her. Assume they’re watching your every move and listening to your every word, Eli had told her. She pictured another scene taking place somewhere aboard the ship. Wazir bin Talal downloading every e-mail from her BlackBerry. Wazir bin Talal running a check on every number dialed from her mobile telephone. Wazir bin Talal tearing apart her hair dryer and her iPod and her travel alarm clock, looking for bugs and tracking devices. But there were no bugs or tracking devices, for Gabriel had known they would ransack her possessions the moment she entered their camp. In a situation like this, Sarah, simple is best. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way. Telephone codes. Physical recognition signals.

  She raised her wristwatch to her face and saw it was five minutes to eight. She closed her eyes again and allowed the breeze to flow over her body. Five minutes later the bedside telephone purred softly. She reached out in the darkness and brought the receiver to her ear.

  “I’m awake, Mr. bin Talal.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that.”

  The voice wasn’t bin Talal’s. It was Zizi’s.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. al-Bakari. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Obviously,” he said pleasantly. “Did you manage to get a little rest?”

  “I think so.”

  “And your flight?”

  “It was fine, sir.”

  “Can we make a deal?”

  “That depends entirely on the deal, Mr. al-Bakari.”

  “I would prefer it if you called me Zizi. It’s what my friends call me.”

  “I’ll try.” Then she added playfully: “Sir.”

  “I look forward to seeing you at dinner, Sarah.”

  The connection went dead. She hung up the phone and went onto the sundeck. It was very dark now. A fingernail moon hung low on the horizon, and the sky was a blanket of wet shimmering stars. She looked toward the stern and saw a pair of winking emerald navigation lights hovering several miles in the distance. There were more lights off the prow. She remembered what Eli had said during her street training. Sometimes the easiest way to tail a man is to walk in front of him. She supposed the same applied to watching at sea.

  She went back into her room, shed her clothing, and padded into the bathroom. Avert your eyes, Wazir, she thought. No pornography. She bathed in Zizi’s hedonistic Jacuzzi tub and listened to Keith Jarrett on Zizi’s state-of-the-art audio system. She wrapped herself in Zizi’s terry-cloth robe and dried her hair with Zizi’s hair dryer. She applied makeup to her face, just enough to erase the effects of the transatlantic journey, and as she arranged her hair loosely about her shoulders she thought briefly of Gabriel.

  “How do you like to wear your hair, Sarah?”

  “Down, mostly.”

  “You have very nice cheekbones. A very graceful neck. You should think about wearing your hair up from time to time. Like Marguerite.”

  But not tonight. When she was satisfied with her appearance she went into the bedroom and opened the closet door. Lying on one of the shelves was a gift-wrapped box. She removed the paper and lifted the lid. Inside was an ivory-colored crushed-silk pantsuit and silk camisole. It fit her perfectly, ju
st like everything else. She added the Harry Winston watch, the Bulgari earrings, the Mikimoto pearls, and the Tiffany bracelet. At five minutes to nine she left the room and made her way to the afterdeck. Try to forget we even exist. Be Sarah Bancroft, and nothing can go wrong.

  ZIZI GREETED her lavishly.

  “Sarah! So lovely to see you again. Everyone, this is Sarah. Sarah, this is everyone. There are too many names for you to remember at once, unless you’re one of those people who’s extremely good with names. I suggest we do it slowly. Please sit down, Sarah. You’ve had a very long day. You must be famished.”

  He settled her near the end of the long table and went to his own place at the opposite end. An Abdul was seated to her right and Herr Wehrli the banker to her left. Across from her was Mansur, the chief of the travel department, and Herr Wehrli’s skittish wife, who seemed to find the entire spectacle appalling. Next to Frau Wehrli sat Jean-Michel, the personal trainer. His long blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he was gazing at Sarah with unabashed interest, much to the distress of his wife, Monique. Farther along the table sat Rahimah and her beautiful boyfriend, Hamid, who was an Egyptian film star of some sort. Nadia sat proprietarily next to her father. Several times during the long meal, Sarah cast her eyes in Zizi’s direction only to find Nadia glaring back at her. Nadia, she suspected, was going to be as much of a problem as bin Talal.

  Zizi, after reliably establishing that Sarah did not speak Arabic, decreed that the languages of the night were French and English. Their conversation was frighteningly banal. They talked of clothing and films, restaurants that Zizi liked to commandeer and a hotel in Nice that he was thinking about buying. The war, terrorism, the plight of the Palestinians, the American president—none of these seemed to exist. Indeed, nothing seemed to exist beyond the rails of Alexandra or the boundaries of Zizi’s empire. Zizi, sensing that Sarah was being left out, asked her once again to explain how she had found the van Gogh. When she refused to rise to his baiting, he smiled wolfishly and said, “One day I’ll get it out of you.” And Sarah, for the first time, felt a sickening rush of complete terror.

  During the dessert course he rose from his place and pulled a chair alongside hers. He was dressed in a cream-colored linen suit, and the tops of his pudgy cheeks were colored red from the sun.

  “I trust you found the food to your liking.”

  “It was delicious. You must have been cooking all afternoon.”

  “Not me,” he said modestly. “My chefs.”

  “You have more than one?”

  “Three, actually. We have a crew and staff of forty. They work exclusively for me, regardless of whether Alexandra is at sea or waiting in port. You’ll get to know them during our trip. If you need something, don’t hesitate to ask. I take it your accommodations are satisfactory?”

  “More than satisfactory, Mr. al-Bakari.”

  “Zizi,” he reminded her. He toyed with a strand of ebony prayer beads. “Mr. bin Talal told me you were upset by some of our rules and security procedures.”

  “Perhaps taken by surprise would be a better description. I wish you would have told me in advance. I would have packed lighter.”

  “Mr. bin Talal can be somewhat fanatical in his devotion to my security. I apologize for his behavior. That said, Sarah, when one enters the world of AAB Holdings, one has to adhere to certain rules—for the safety of everyone.” He flicked his wrist, and wrapped his prayer beads around the first two fingers of his right hand. “Did you have a chance to think about my offer?”

  “I still don’t know what it is.”

  “But you are interested. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Let’s just say I’m intrigued, and I’m willing to discuss the matter further.”

  “You are a shrewd businesswoman, Sarah. I admire that. Enjoy the sun and the sea. We’ll talk in a few days when you’ve had a chance to relax.”

  “A few days? I have to get back to London.”

  “Julian Isherwood got along without you for many years, Sarah. Something tells me he’ll survive while you take a much deserved vacation with us.”

  And with that he went back to his own end of the table and sat down next to Nadia. “Welcome to the family,” said Herr Wehrli. “He likes you very much. When you negotiate your salary, be unreasonable. He’ll pay whatever you want.”

  DINNER THAT EVENING aboard Sun Dancer had been far less extravagant and the conversation far more animated. They did not avoid topics such as war and terrorism. Indeed they embraced them wholeheartedly and argued about them long past midnight. At the end of the evening there was another quarrel, this one about whose night it was to do the dishes. Dina and Rimona claimed exemption on the grounds that they had performed the task the last night in Surrey. Gabriel, in one of his few command decisions of the day, inflicted the task on the new boys: Oded and Mordecai, two experienced all-purpose fieldhands, and Mikhail, a gunman on loan to the Office from the Sayeret Matkal. He was a Russian-born Jew with bloodless skin and eyes the color of glacial ice. “A younger version of you,” Yaakov had said. “Good with a gun, but no conscience. He practically took down the command structure of Hamas by himself.”

  Their accommodations lacked the grandeur of Alexandra’s, and no one was granted the privilege of private quarters. Gabriel and Lavon, veterans of manhunts past, bunked together in the prow. Lavon was used to Gabriel’s erratic operational sleeping habits and was not surprised the following morning when he woke before dawn to find Gabriel’s bed unoccupied. He climbed out of his bunk and went up to the deck. Gabriel was standing at the prow, coffee in hand, his gaze fixed on the smudge of light on the distant horizon. Lavon went back to his bunk and slept two more hours. When he returned to the deck, Gabriel was standing in the exact same spot, staring out at the empty sea.

  Off the Bahamas

  HER DAYS QUICKLY ACQUIRED SHAPE.

  She would rise early each morning and linger in a drowsy half-sleep in the enormous bed, listening to Alexandra slowly stirring to life around her. Then, usually around seven-thirty, she would ring the steward and order her morning coffee and brioche, which would come on a tray, always with a fresh flower, five minutes later. If there was no rain she would take her breakfast in the shade of her starboard-facing private sundeck. Alexandra was on a southeasterly heading, steaming without haste toward an unnamed destination, and usually Sarah could just make out the low, flat islands of the Bahamian chain in the distance. Zizi’s suite was one level above her. Some mornings she could hear him on the telephone, closing the day’s first deals.

  After breakfast she would place two calls to London on the shipboard system. First she would dial her apartment in Chelsea and, invariably, would find two or three ersatz voice messages left by the Office. Then she would call the gallery and speak to Chiara. Her soft, Italian-accented English was like a lifeline. Sarah would pose questions about pending deals; Chiara would then read Sarah’s telephone messages. Contained in the seemingly benign patter was vital information: Sarah telling Chiara that she was safe and that there was no sign of Ahmed bin Shafiq; Chiara telling Sarah that Gabriel and the others were close by and that she was not alone. Hanging up on Chiara was the hardest part of Sarah’s day.

  By then it was usually ten o’clock, which meant that Zizi and Jean-Michel were finished working out and the gym was now free to other staff and guests. The rest of them were a sedentary lot; Sarah’s only company each morning was Herr Wehrli, who would torment himself on the elliptical machine for a few minutes before retiring to the sauna for a proper Swiss sweat. Sarah would run thirty minutes on the treadmill, then row for thirty more. She had been on the Dartmouth crew, and within a few days began to see definition in her shoulders and back that hadn’t been there since Ben’s death.

  After her workout Sarah would join the other women on the foredeck for a bit of sun before lunch. Nadia and Rahimah remained distant, but the wives gradually warmed to her, especially Frau Wehrli and Jihan, the fair-haired young J
ordanian wife of Hassan, Zizi’s communications specialist. Monique, Jean-Michel’s wife, spoke rarely to her. Twice Sarah peered over the top of her paperback novel and saw Monique glaring at her, as though she were plotting to shove Sarah over the rail when no one else was looking.

  Lunch was always a slow, lengthy affair. Afterward the ship’s crew would bring Alexandra to a stop for what Zizi referred to as the afternoon jet-ski derby. For the first two days Sarah remained safely on the deck, watching while Zizi and his executives leaped and plunged through the swells. On the third day he convinced her to take part and personally gave her a lesson in how to operate her craft. She sped away from Alexandra’s stern, then killed the engine and gazed for a long time at the pinprick of white on the horizon behind them. She must have strayed too far, because a few moments later Jean-Michel came alongside her and gestured for her to return to the mother ship. “One hundred meters is the boundary,” he said. “Zizi’s rules.”

  His day was rigorously scheduled. A light breakfast in his room. Phone calls. Exercise with Jean-Michel in the gym. A late-morning meeting with staff. Lunch. The jet-ski derby. Another meeting with staff that usually lasted until dinner. Then, after dinner, phone calls late into the night. On the second day the helicopter departed Alexandra at ten in the morning and returned an hour later with a delegation of six men. Sarah examined their faces as they filed into Zizi’s conference room and concluded that none of them was Ahmed bin Shafiq. Later, an Abdul volunteered three of their names, which Sarah stored in her memory for later retrieval. That afternoon she encountered Zizi alone in one of the lounges and asked him whether they could discuss his job offer.