Prince of Fire

“My wife,” Arwish stammered. “The Jews made me—”

  Arafat waved his hand dismissively. “You sound like a child, Mahmoud. Don’t compound your humiliation by begging for your life.”

  Just then the door swung open, and two uniformed security men stepped into the room, guns at the ready. Arwish tried to get his sidearm out of its holster, but a rifle butt slammed into his kidney, and a burst of blindingpain sent him to the floor.

  “Today you die the death of a collaborator,” Arafat said. “A death fit for a dog.”

  The security men hauled Arwish to his feet and frog-marchedhim out of the office and down the stairs. Arafat went to the window and looked down into the courtyard as Arwish and the security men emerged into view. Anotherrifle butt to the kidney drove Arwish to the ground for a second time. Then the firing began. Slow and rhythmic, they started with the feet and worked their way slowly upward. The Mukata echoed with the poppingof the Kalashnikovs and the screams of the dying traitor. To Arafat it was a most satisfying sound—the sound of a revolution. The sound of revenge.

  When the screaming stopped there was one final shot to the head. Arafat drew the blind. One enemy had been dealt with. Soon another would meet with a similar fate. He switched off the lamp and sat there in the half-light, waiting for the next update.

  21

  MARSEILLES

  Later, when it was over, Dina would search in vain for any symbolism in the time Khaled chose to make his appearance.As for the exact words she used to convey this news to the teams, she had no memory of it, though they were captured for eternity on audiotape: “It’s him. He’s on the street. Heading south toward the park.” All those who heard Dina’s summons were struck by its composure and lack of emotion. So tranquil was her deliverythat for an instant Shamron did not comprehend what had just happened. Only when he heard the roar of Yaakov’s motorbike, followed by the sound of Gabriel’s rapid breathing, did he understand that Khaled was about to get his due.

  Within five seconds of hearing Dina’s voice, Yaakov and Gabriel had pulled on their helmets and were racing eastward at full throttle along the cours Belsunce. At the Place de la Préfecture, Yaakov leaned the bike hard to the right and sped across the square toward the entrance of the boulevard St-Rémy. Gabriel clung to Yaakov’s waist with his left hand. His right was shoved into his coat pocket and wrapped around the chunky grip of the Barak. It was just beginning to get light, but the street was still in shadow. Gabriel saw Khaled for the first time, walking along the pavement like a man late for an importantmeeting.

  The bike slowed suddenly. Yaakov had a decision to make—cross over to the wrong side of the street and approachKhaled from behind, or stay on the right side of the street and loop around for the kill. Gabriel spurred him to the right with a jab of the gun barrel. Yaakov twisted the throttle, and the bike shot forward. Gabriel fastened his eyes on Khaled. The Palestinian was walking faster.

  Just then a dark gray Mercedes car nosed out of a cross street and blocked their path. Yaakov slammed on the brakes to avoid a collision, then blew his horn and waved at the Mercedes to get out of the way. The driver, a young Arab-looking man, stared coldly back at Yaakov and punished him for his recklessness by inching slowly out of their path. By the time Yaakov was under way again, Khaled had turned the corner and disappeared from Gabriel’s sight.

  Yaakov sped to the end of the street and turned left, into the boulevard André Aune. It rose sharply away from the old port, toward the looming tower of the Church of Notre Dame de la Garde. Khaled had already crossed the street and at that moment was slipping into the entrance of a covered passageway. Gabriel had used the computer program to memorize the route of every street in the district. He knew that the passageway led to a flight of steeply pitched stone steps called the Montée de l’Oratoire. Khaled had rendered the motorbike useless.

  “Stop here,” Gabriel said. “Don’t move.”

  Gabriel leapt from his bike and, with his helmet still on his head, followed the path Khaled had taken. There were no lights in the passage, and for a few paces in the center Gabriel was in pitch darkness. At the opposite end he emerged back into the dusty pink light. The steps began—wide and very old, with a painted metal handrail down the middle. To Gabriel’s left was the khaki-colored stucco facade of an apartment house; to his right a tall limestone wall overhung with olive trees and flowering vines.

  The steps curved to the left. As Gabriel came around the corner he saw Khaled again. He was halfway to the top and bounding upward at a trot. Gabriel started to draw the Barak but stopped himself. At the top of the steps was another apartment building. If Gabriel missed Khaled, the errant round would almost certainly plunge into the building. He could hear voices through his earpiece: Dina asking Yaakov what was going on; Yaakov telling Dina about the car that had blocked their way and the flight of steps that had forced them to separate.

  “Can you see him?”

  “No.”

  “How long has he been out of sight?”

  “A few seconds.”

  “Where’s Khaled going? Why is he walking so far? Where’s his protection? I don’t like it. I’m going to tell him to back off.”

  “Leave him to it.”

  Khaled gained the top and disappeared from sight. Gabriel took the steps two at a time and arrived no more than ten seconds after Khaled had. Confronting him was a V-shaped intersection of two streets. One of them, the one to Gabriel’s right, ran up the hill directly toward the front of the church. It was empty of cars and pedestrians. Gabriel hurried to his left and looked up the second street. There was no sign of Khaled here either, only a pair of red taillights, receding rapidly into the distance.

  “Excuse me, monsieur. Are you lost?”

  Gabriel turned and raised the visor of his helmet. She was standing at the head of the stairs, young, no more than thirty, with large brown eyes and short dark hair. She had spoken to him in French. Gabriel responded in the same language.

  “No, I’m not lost.”

  “Perhaps you’re looking for someone?”

  And why are you, an attractive woman, speaking to a strange man wearing a motorcycle helmet? He took a step toward her. She held her ground, but Gabriel detected a trace of apprehension in her dark gaze.

  “No, I’m not looking for anyone.”

  “Are you sure? I could have sworn you were looking for someone.” She tilted her head slightly to one side. “Perhaps you’re looking for your wife.”

  Gabriel felt as though the back of his neck was ablaze. He looked at the woman’s face more carefully and realizedhe’d seen it before. She was the woman who’d come to the apartment with Khaled. His right hand tightened its grip on the Barak pistol.

  “Her name is Leah, isn’t it? She lives in a psychiatric hospital in the south of England—at least she used to. The Stratford Clinic, wasn’t that the name of it? She was registered under the name of Lee Martinson.”

  Gabriel lunged forward and seized the woman by the throat.

  “What have you done to her? Where is she?”

  “We have her,” the woman gasped, “but I don’t know where she is.”

  Gabriel pushed her backward, toward the top of the steps.

  “Where is she?” He repeated the question in Arabic. “Answer me! Don’t speak to me in French. Speak to me in your real language. Speak to me in Arabic.”

  “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “So you can speak Arabic. Where is she? Answer me, or you’re going down.”

  He pushed her a fraction of an inch closer to the edge. Her hand reached back for the handrail but found only air. Gabriel shook her once violently.

  “If you kill me, you’ll destroy yourself—and your wife. I’m your only hope.”

  “And if I do as you say?”

  “You’ll save her life.”

  “What about mine?”

  She left the question unanswered.

  “Tell the rest of your team to back off. Tell them to leave Marseilles i
mmediately. Otherwise we’ll tell the French that you’re here, and that will only make the situation worse.”

  He looked over her shoulder and saw Yaakov coming slowly up the steps toward him. Gabriel, with his left hand, signaled for him to stop. Just then Dina came on the air: “Let her go, Gabriel. We’ll find Leah. Don’t play it Khaled’s way.”

  Gabriel looked back into the girl’s eyes. “And if I tell them to back off ?”

  “I’ll take you to her.”

  Gabriel shook her again. “So you do know where she is?”

  “No, we’ll be told where to go. One destination at a time, very small steps. If we miss one deadline, your wife dies. If your agents try to follow us, your wife dies. If you kill me, your wife dies. If you do exactly what we say, she’ll live.”

  “And what happens to me?”

  “Hasn’t she suffered enough? Save your wife, Allon. Come with me, and do exactly as I say. It’s your only chance.”

  He looked down the steps and saw Yaakov shaking his head. Dina was whispering in his ear, “Please, Gabriel, tell her no.”

  He looked into her eyes. Shamron had trained him to read the emotions of others, to tell truthfulness from deception,and in the dark eyes of Khaled’s girl he saw only the abiding forthrightness of a fanatic, the belief that past suffering justified any act, no matter how cruel. He also noticed an unsettling tranquillity. She was trained, this girl, not merely indoctrinated. Her training would make her a worthy opponent, but it was her fanaticism that would leave her vulnerable.

  Did they really have Leah? He had no reason to doubt it. Khaled had destroyed an embassy in the heart of Rome. Surely he could manage to kidnap an infirm woman from an English mental hospital. To abandon Leah now, after all she had suffered, was unthinkable. Perhaps she would die. Perhaps they both would. Perhaps,if they were lucky, Khaled might permit them to die together.

  He had played it well, Khaled. He had never intended to kill Gabriel in Venice. The Milan dossier had been only the opening gambit in an elaborate plot to lure Gabriel here, to this spot in Marseilles, and to present him with a path he had no choice but to follow. Fidelity nudged him forward. He pulled her away from the edge of the stairs and released his grip on her throat.

  “Back off,” Gabriel said directly into his wrist-microphone.“Leave Marseilles.”

  When Yaakov shook his head, Gabriel snapped, “Do as I say.”

  A car came down the hill from the direction of the church. It was the Mercedes that had blocked their path a few minutes earlier on the boulevard St-Rémy. It stopped in front of them. The girl opened the back door and got in. Gabriel looked one final time at Yaakov, then climbed in after her.

  “He’s off the air,” Lev said. “His beacon has been stationaryfor five minutes.”

  His beacon, thought Shamron, is lying in a Marseilles gutter. Gabriel had vanished from their screens. All the planning, all the preparation, and Khaled had beaten them with the oldest of Arab ploys—a hostage.

  “Is it true about Leah?” Shamron asked.

  “London station has called the security officer several times. So far they haven’t been able to raise him.”

  “That means they’ve got her,” Shamron said. “And I suspect we have a dead security agent somewhere inside the Stratford Clinic.”

  “If that’s all true, a very serious storm is going to break in England in the next few minutes.” There was a bit too much composure in Lev’s voice for Shamron’s taste, but then Lev always did place a high premium on self-control. “We need to reach out to our friends in MI5 and the Home Office to keep things as quiet as possible for as long as possible. We also need to bring the Foreign Ministry into the picture. The ambassador will have to do some serious hand-holding.”

  “Agreed,” Shamron said, “but I’m afraid there’s something we have to do first.”

  He looked at his wristwatch. It was seven-twenty-eighta.m. local time, six-twenty-eight in France—twelve hours until the anniversary of the evacuation of Beit Sayeed.

  “But we can’t just leave him here,” Dina said.

  “He’s not here any longer,” Yaakov replied. “He’s gone. He was the one who made the decision to go with her. He gave us the order to evacuate and so has Tel Aviv. We have no other choice. We’re leaving.”

  “There must be something we can do to help him.”

  “You can’t be any help to him if you’re sitting in a French jail.”

  Yaakov raised his wrist-microphone to his lips and orderedthe Ayin teams to pull out. Dina went reluctantly down onto the dock and loosened the lines. When the last line was untied, she climbed back onto Fidelity and stood with Yaakov atop the flying bridge as he guided the vessel into the channel. As they passed the Fort of Saint Nicholas, she went back down the companionway to the salon. She sat down at the communications pod, typed in a command to access the memory, then set the time-code for six-twelve a.m. A few seconds later she heard her own voice.

  “It’s him. He’s on the street. Heading south toward the park.”

  She listened to it all again: Yaakov and Gabriel wordlesslymounting the bike; Yaakov firing the engine and accelerating away; the sound of the tires locking up and skidding along the asphalt of the boulevard St-Rémy; Gabriel’s voice, calm and without emotion: “Stop here. Don’t move.”

  Twenty seconds later, the woman: “Excuse me, monsieur.Are you lost?”

  STOP.

  How long had Khaled spent planning it? Years, she thought. He had dropped the clues for her to find, and she had followed them, from Beit Sayeed to Buenos Aires, from Istanbul to Rome, and now Gabriel was in their hands. They would kill him, and it was her fault.

  She pressed PLAY and listened again to Gabriel’s quarrelwith the Palestinian woman, then picked up the satellitephone and raised King Saul Boulevard on the secure link.

  “I need a voice identification.”

  “You have a recording?”

  “Yes.”

  “Quality?”

  Dina explained the circumstances of the intercept.

  “Play the recording, please.”

  She pressed PLAY.

  “If we miss one deadline, your wife dies. If your agents try to follow us, your wife dies. If you kill me, your wife dies. If you do exactly what we say, she’ll live.”

  STOP.

  “Stand by, please.”

  Two minutes later: “No match on file.”

  Martineau met Abu Saddiq one last time on the boulevardd’Athènes, at the base of the broad steps that led to the Gare Saint-Charles. Abu Saddiq was dressed in Western clothing: neat gabardine trousers and a pressed cotton shirt. He told Martineau a boat had just left the port at great haste.

  “What was it called?”

  Abu Saddiq answered.

  “Fidelity,” Martineau repeated. “An interesting choice.”

  He turned and started trudging up the steps, Abu Saddiq at his side. “The shaheeds have been given their final orders,” Abu Saddiq said. “They’ll proceed to their target as scheduled. Nothing can be done to stop them now.”

  “And you?”

  “The midday ferry to Algiers.”

  They arrived at the top of the steps. The train station was brown and ugly and in a state of severe disrepair. “I must say,” Abu Saddiq said, “that I will not miss this place.”

  “Go to Algiers, and bury yourself deep. We’ll bring you back to the West Bank when it’s safe.”

  “After today . . .” He shrugged. “It will never be safe.”

  Martineau shook Abu Saddiq’s hand. “Maa-salaamah.”

  “As-salaam alaykum, Brother Khaled.”

  Abu Saddiq turned and headed down the steps. Martineau entered the train station and paused in front of the departure board. The eight-fifteen TGV for Paris was departing from Track F. Martineau crossed the terminal and went onto the platform. He walked alongsidethe train until he found his carriage, then climbed aboard.

  Before going to his seat, he went to the toilet. H
e stood for a long time in front of the mirror, examining his own reflection in the glass. The Yves Saint Laurent jacket, the dark-blue end-on-end shirt, the designer spectacles—Paul Martineau, Frenchman of distinction, archaeologist of note. But not today. Today Martineau was Khaled, son of Sabri, grandson of Sheikh Asad. Khaled, avenger of past wrongs, sword of Palestine.

  The shaheeds have been given their final orders. Nothingcan be done to stop them now.

  Another order had been given. The man who would meet Abu Saddiq in Algiers that evening would kill him. Martineau had learned from the mistakes of his ancestors.He would never allow himself to be undone by an Arab traitor.

  A moment later he was sitting in his first-class seat as the train eased out of the station and headed north through the Muslim slums of Marseilles. Paris was 539 miles away, but the high-speed TGV would cover the distance in a little more than three hours. A miracle of Western technology and French ingenuity, Khaled thought. Then he closed his eyes and was soon asleep.

  22

  MARTIGUES, FRANCE

  The house was in a working-class Arab quarter on the southern edge of town. It had a red tile roof, a cracked stucco exterior, and a weedy forecourt littered with broken plastic toys in primary colors. Gabriel, when he was pushed through the broken front door, had expectedto find evidence of a family. Instead, he found a ransacked residence with rooms empty of furniture and walls stripped bare. Two men awaited him, both Arab, both well-fed. One held a plastic bag bearing the name of a discount department store popular with the French underclass. The other was swinging a rusted golf club, one-handed, like a cudgel.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  The girl had spoken to him in Arabic. Gabriel remainedmotionless with his hands hanging against the seam of his trousers, like a soldier at attention. The girl repeated the command, more forcefully this time. When Gabriel still made no response, the one who’d driven the Mercedes slapped him hard across the cheek.

  He removed his jacket and black pullover. The radio and the guns were already gone—the girl had taken those while they were still in Marseilles. She examined the scars on his chest and back, then ordered him to remove the rest of his clothing.