Prince of Fire (33 page)

Gabriel told Navot about the disabled car radio. “The first time I sensed any increase in security was the moment I was walking into the station.” He swallowed some of the wine. “How much did the prime minister tell them?”

Navot relayed to Gabriel what details of the conversation he knew.

“How did they explain my presence in Marseilles?”

“They said you were looking for someone in connection with the Rome bombing.”

“Khaled?”

“I don’t think they went into specifics.”

“Something tells me we need to get our stories straight. Why did they wait so long to alert the French?”

“They were hoping you’d turn up, obviously. They also needed to make sure all the members of the Marseilles team had left French soil.”

“Had they?”

Navot nodded.

“I suppose we could consider ourselves lucky the prime minister went on the record with Élysée Palace.”

“Why is that?”

Gabriel told Navot about the three
shaheeds.
“We were at the same table in Cairo together. I’m sure someone made a very nice photograph of the occasion.”

“A setup?”

“Designed to make it look as though I was somehow involved in the conspiracy.”

Navot inclined his head in the direction of the living room. “Will she eat anything?”

“Let her sleep.”

Navot slid an omelet onto a plate and placed it in front of Gabriel.

“Specialty of the house: mushrooms, Gruyère, fresh herbs.”

“I haven’t eaten in thirty-six hours. When I’m finished with the eggs, I plan on eating the plate.”

Navot began breaking more eggs into his mixing bowl. His work was interrupted by the flashing red light atop the telephone. He snatched up the receiver, listened for a moment, then murmured a few words in Hebrew and rang off. Gabriel looked up from his food.

“What was that?”

“King Saul Boulevard. The escape plan will be ready in an hour.”

A
S IT TURNED OUT
, they had only forty minutes to wait for the plan. It was transmitted to the safe flat by way of secure fax—three sheets of Hebrew text, composed in Naka, the field code of the Office. Navot, seated next to Gabriel at the kitchen table, handled the decryption.

“There’s an El Al charter on the ground in Warsaw right now,” Navot said.

“Polish Jews visiting the old country?”

“Actually, visiting the scene of the crime. It’s a packaged tour of the death camps.” Navot shook his head. He had been at Treblinka that night with Gabriel and Radek and had walked among the ashes at the side of the murderer. “Why anyone would want to go to such a place is beyond me.”

“When does the flight depart?”

“Tomorrow night. One of the passengers will be asked to
volunteer for a rather special assignment—traveling home on a false Israeli passport from a different point of departure.”

“And Leah will take her place on the charter?”

“Exactly.”

“Does King Saul Boulevard have a candidate?”

“Three, actually. They’re making the final decision now.”

“How will they explain Leah’s condition?”

“Illness.”

“How will we get her to Warsaw?”

“We?”
Navot shook his head. “You’re going home by a different route: overland to Italy, then a nighttime pickup on the beach at Fiumicino. Apparently you’re familiar with that spot?”

Gabriel nodded. He knew the beach well. “So how does Leah get to Warsaw?”

“I’ll take her.” Navot saw the reluctance in Gabriel’s eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to your wife. I’ll accompany her home on the flight. Three doctors are on the tour. She’ll be in good hands.”

“And when she gets to Israel?”

“A team from the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital will be ready to receive her.”

Gabriel spent a moment thinking it over. He was in no position to raise objections to the plan.

“How will I get over the border?”

“Do you remember the Volkswagen van we used in the Radek affair?”

Gabriel did. It had a hidden compartment beneath the rear foldout bed. Radek, drugged and unconscious, had been concealed there when Chiara had driven him over the Austrian-Czech border.

“I brought it back to Paris after the operation,” Navot said. “It’s stored in a garage over in the seventeenth.”

“Did you delouse it?”

Navot laughed. “It’s clean,” he said. “More important, it’ll get you over the border and down to Fiumicino.”

“Who’s taking me to Italy?”

“Moshe can handle it.”

“
Him?
He’s a kid.”

“He knows how to handle himself,” Navot said. “Besides, who better than Moses to lead you home to the Promised Land?”

“T
HERE
’
S THE SIGNAL
. T
WO SHORT FLASHES FOLLOWED
by a long one.”

Moshe flicked the wipers and leaned forward over the wheel of the Volkswagen. Gabriel sat placidly in the passenger seat. He was tempted to tell the kid to relax but decided instead to let him enjoy the moment. Moshe’s previous assignments had involved stocking the pantries of safe flats and cleaning up the mess after the agents had left town. A midnight rendezvous on a rainswept Italian beach was going to be the highlight of his association with the Office.

“There it is again,” the
bodel
said. “Two short flashes—”

“—followed by a long one. I heard you the first time.” Gabriel clapped the kid on the back. “Sorry, it’s been a long
couple of days. Thanks for the ride. Be careful on the way home, and use—”

“—a different border crossing,” he said. “I heard you the first four times.”

Gabriel climbed out of the van and crossed the carpark overlooking the beach, then he saddle-stepped a short stone wall and struck out across the sand to the water’s edge. He waited there, the waves lapping over his shoes, and watched the dinghy drawing closer. A moment later he was seated in the prow, with his back to Yaakov and his eyes on
Fidelity.

“You shouldn’t have gone,” Yaakov shouted over the buzz of the outboard.

“If I’d stayed in Marseilles, I would have never got Leah back.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe Khaled would have played the game differently.”

Gabriel twisted his head round. “You’re right, Yaakov. He
would
have played it differently. First he would have killed Leah and left her body on some road in the south of England. Then he would have sent his three
shaheeds
into the Gare de Lyon and turned it into rubble.”

Yaakov backed off on the throttle. “That was the dumbest move I’ve ever seen,” Yaakov said, then, in a concessionary tone, he added: “And by far the bravest. They’d better pin a medal on you when we get back to King Saul Boulevard.”

“I fell into Khaled’s trap. They don’t pin medals on officers who walk into traps. They leave them in the desert to be picked over by the vultures and the scorpions.”

Yaakov brought the dinghy to the stern of
Fidelity.
Gabriel climbed out onto the swim platform and scaled the ladder up the aft deck. Dina awaited him there. She was wearing a heavy
sweater, and the wind was tossing about her dark hair. She rushed forward and threw her arms around his neck.

“Her voice,” Gabriel said. “I want to hear the sound of her voice.”

D
INA LOADED THE TAPE
and pressed
PLAY
.

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

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

“Where is she? 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.”

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

Gabriel pressed
STOP
, then
REWIND
, then
PLAY
.

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

STOP
.
REWIND
.
PLAY
.

“I’m your only hope.”

STOP
.

He looked up at Dina. “Did you run it through the database?”

She nodded. “No match on file.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabriel said. “I have something better than her voice.”

“What’s that?”

“Her story.”

He told Dina how the girl’s story of pain and loss had
virtually tumbled out of her during the final miles before Paris. How her family had come from Sumayriyya in the Western Galilee; how they had been driven out during Operation Ben-Ami and forced into exile in Lebanon.

“Sumayriyya? It was a small place, wasn’t it? A thousand people?”

“Eight hundred, according to the girl. She seemed to know her history.”

“Not everyone from Sumayriyya obeyed the orders to flee,” Dina said. “Some of them stayed behind.”

“And some of them managed to sneak back across the border before it was sealed. If her grandfather was truly a village elder, someone would remember him.”

“But even if we’re able to learn the girl’s name, what good will it do? She’s dead. How can she help us find Khaled?”

“She was in love with him.”

“She told you this?”

“I just know it.”

“How perceptive of you. What else do you know about this girl?”

“I remember how she looked,” he said. “I remember
exactly
how she looked.”

T
HE NOTEPAD
of unlined paper she found on the flying bridge; the two ordinary lead pencils in the junk drawer of the galley. He settled himself on the couch and worked by the glow of a halogen reading lamp. Dina tried to peer over his shoulder, but he cast her a severe look and sent her out onto the windswept deck to wait until he had finished. She stood at the
rail and watched the lights of the Italian coast growing faint on the horizon. Ten minutes later she returned to the salon and found Gabriel asleep on the couch. The portrait of the dead girl lay next to him. Dina switched off the lamp and let him sleep on.

T
HE
I
SRAELI FRIGATE
appeared off
Fidelity
’s starboard side in the afternoon of the third day. Two hours after that, Gabriel, Yaakov, and Dina were touching down on the helipad of a secure air base north of Tel Aviv. An Office greeting party awaited them. They stood in a circle and looked ill at ease, like strangers at a funeral. Lev was not among them, but then Lev could never be bothered with something as commonplace as greeting agents returning from dangerous missions. Gabriel, as he stepped off the helicopter, was relieved to see the armored Peugeot turning through the gates and coming across the tarmac at high speed. Without a word he separated himself from the others and made for the car.

“Where are you going, Allon?” shouted one of Lev’s men.

“Home.”

“The boss wants to see you now.”

“Then maybe he should have canceled a meeting or two and come here to greet us personally. Tell Lev I’ll try to squeeze him in tomorrow morning. I have to move a couple of things around. Tell him that.”

The rear door of the Peugeot swung open, and Gabriel climbed inside. Shamron regarded him silently. He seemed to have aged noticeably during Gabriel’s absence. His next cigarette was lit by a hand that shook more than usual. As the car lurched forward, he placed a copy of
Le Monde
in Gabriel’s lap. Gabriel looked down and saw two pictures of himself—one in
the Gare de Lyon, moments before the explosion, and the other at Mimi Ferrere’s nightclub in Cairo, seated with the three
shaheeds.

“It’s all very speculative,” Shamron said, “and therefore more damaging as a result. The suggestion is that you were somehow involved in the plot to bomb the train station.”

“And what might my motivation be?”

“To discredit the Palestinians, of course. Khaled carried off quite a coup. He managed to bomb the Gare de Lyon and blame us for the deed.”

Gabriel read the first few paragraphs of the story. “He obviously has friends in high places—Egyptian and French intelligence to name two. The Mukhabarat was watching me from the moment I set foot in Cairo. They photographed me in the nightclub, and after the bombing they sent that photograph to the French DST. Khaled orchestrated the whole thing.”