Prince of Fire (15 page)

Gabriel nodded indifferently. “Where is Khaled al-Khalifa?”

The blotchy skin of Arafat’s face colored suddenly, and his lower lip began to tremble. Gabriel looked down and contemplated his tea. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Colonel Kemel shifting nervously in his seat. Arafat, when he spoke again, managed to keep his legendary temper in check.

“I take it you’re referring to the son of Sabri al-Khalifa?”

“Actually, he’s
your
son now.”

“My adopted son,” Arafat said, “because you murdered his father.”

“His father was killed on the field of battle.”

“He was murdered in cold blood on the streets of Paris.”

“It was Sabri who turned Paris into a battlefield, President Arafat, with your blessing.”

A silence fell between them. Arafat seemed to choose his next words carefully. “I always knew that, one day, you would come up with some sort of provocation to target Khaled for elimination. That’s why, after Sabri’s funeral, I sent the boy far away from here. I gave him a new life, and he took it. I haven’t seen or heard from Khaled since he was a young man.”

“We have evidence to suggest Khaled al-Khalifa was involved in the attack on our embassy in Rome.”

“Nonsense,” said Arafat dismissively.

“Since Khaled had nothing to do with Rome, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind telling us where we can find him.”

“As I said before, I don’t know where Khaled is.”

“What’s his name?”

A guarded smile. “I went to extraordinary lengths to protect the boy from you and your vengeful service. What on earth makes you think I would tell you his name now? Do you really believe that I would play the role of Judas Iscariot and hand over my son to you for trial and execution?” Arafat shook his head slowly. “We have many traitors in our midst, many who work right here in the Mukata, but I am not one of them. If you want to find Khaled, you’ll do it without my help.”

“There was a raid on a
pensione
in Milan shortly after the bombing. One of the men hiding there was named Daoud
Hadawi, a Palestinian who used to be a member of your Presidential Security Service.”

“So you say.”

“I would appreciate a copy of Hadawi’s personnel file.”

“Several hundred men work in the Presidential Security Service. If this man—” He faltered. “What was his name?”

“Daoud Hadawi.”

“Ah, yes, Hadawi.
If
he ever worked for the service, and
if
we still have a personnel file on him, I’ll be glad to give it to you. But I think the odds of us finding something are rather slim.”

“Really?”

“Let me make this clear to you,” Arafat said. “We Palestinians had nothing to do with the attack on your embassy. Maybe it was Hezbollah or Osama. Maybe it was neo-Nazis. God knows, you have many enemies.”

Gabriel placed his palms on the arms of the chair and prepared to stand. Arafat raised his hand. “Please, Jibril,” he said, using the Arabic version of Gabriel’s name. “Don’t leave yet. Stay a little longer.”

Gabriel, for the moment, relented. Arafat fidgeted with his kaffiyeh, then looked at Colonel Kemel and in quiet Arabic instructed him to leave them alone.

“You’ve not touched your tea, Jibril. Can I get you something else? Some sweets, perhaps.”

Gabriel shook his head. Arafat folded his tiny hands and regarded Gabriel in silence. He was smiling slightly. Gabriel had the distinct sense Arafat was enjoying himself.

“I know what you did for me in New York a few years ago. If it weren’t for you, Tariq might very well have killed me in that apartment. In another time you might have hoped for him
to succeed.” A wistful smile. “Who knows? In another time it might have been
you,
Jibril, standing there with a gun in your hand.”

Gabriel made no reply. Kill Arafat? In the weeks after Vienna, when he had been unable to picture anything but the charred flesh of his wife and the mutilated body of his son, he had thought about it many times. Indeed, at his lowest point, Gabriel would have gladly traded his own life for Arafat’s.

“It’s strange, Jibril, but for a brief time we were allies, you and I. We both wanted peace. We both needed peace.”

“Did you ever want peace, or was it all part of your phased strategy to destroy Israel and take the whole thing?”

This time it was Arafat who allowed a question to hang in the air unanswered.

“I owe you my life, Jibril, and so I will help you in this matter. There is no Khaled. Khaled is a figment of your imagination. If you keep chasing him, the real killers will escape.”

Gabriel stood abruptly, terminating the meeting. Arafat came out from behind the desk and placed his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders. Gabriel’s flesh seemed ablaze, but he did nothing to sever the Palestinian’s embrace.

“I’m glad we finally met formally,” Arafat said. “If you and I can sit down together in peace, perhaps there’s hope for us all.”

“Perhaps,” said Gabriel, though his tone revealed his pessimism.

Arafat released Gabriel and started toward the door, then stopped himself suddenly. “You surprise me, Jibril.”

“Why is that?”

“I expected you to use this opportunity to clear the air about Vienna.”

“You murdered my wife and son,” Gabriel said, deliberately misleading Arafat over Leah’s fate. “I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to ‘clear the air,’ as you put it.”

Arafat shook his head. “No, Jibril, I didn’t murder them. I ordered Tariq to kill you to avenge Abu Jihad, but I specifically told him that your family was not to be touched.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because you deserved it. You conducted yourself with a certain honor that night in Tunis. Yes, you killed Abu Jihad, but you made certain no harm came to his wife and children. In fact, you stopped on the way out of the villa to comfort Abu Jihad’s daughter and instruct her to look after her mother. Do you remember that, Jibril?”

Gabriel closed his eyes and nodded. The scene in Tunis, like the bombing in Vienna, hung in a gallery of memory that he walked each night in his dreams.

“I felt you deserved the same as Abu Jihad, to die a soldier’s death witnessed by your wife and child. Tariq didn’t agree with me. He felt you deserved a more severe punishment, the punishment of watching your wife and child die, so he planted the bomb beneath their car and made certain you were on hand to witness the detonation. Vienna was Tariq’s doing, not mine.”

The telephone on Arafat’s desk rang, tearing Gabriel’s memory of Vienna as a knife shreds canvas. Arafat turned suddenly and left Gabriel to see himself out. Colonel Kemel was waiting on the landing. He escorted Gabriel wordlessly through the debris of the Mukata. The harsh light, after the gloom of Arafat’s office, was nearly unbearable. Beyond the broken gate Yonatan Shamron was playing football with a few of the Palestinian guards. They climbed back into the armored jeep and
drove through streets of death. When they were clear of Ramallah, Yonatan asked Gabriel whether he had learned anything useful.

“Khaled al-Khalifa bombed our embassy in Rome,” Gabriel said with certainty.

“Anything else?”

Yes, he thought. Yasir Arafat had personally ordered Tariq al-Hourani to murder his wife and son.

G
ABRIEL
’
S BEDSIDE TELEPHONE RANG AT TWO
A
.
M
. It was Yaakov.

“Looks like your visit to the Mukata has stirred the hornet’s nest.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m outside in the street.”

The connection went dead. Gabriel sat up in bed and dressed in the dark.

“Who was that?” Chiara asked, her voice heavy with sleep.

Gabriel told her.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

He bent to kiss her forehead. Chiara’s arm rose from the blankets, curled around the back of his neck, and drew him to her mouth. “Be careful,” she whispered, her lips against his cheek.

A moment later he was buckled into the passenger seat of Yaakov’s unmarked Volkswagen Golf, racing westward across Jerusalem. Yaakov drove ludicrously fast, in true Sabra fashion, with the wheel in one hand and coffee and a cigarette in the other. The headlamps of the oncoming traffic threw an unkind light on the pockmarked features of his uncompromising face.

“His name is Mahmoud Arwish,” Yaakov said. “One of our most important assets inside the Palestinian Authority. He works in the Mukata. Very close to Arafat.”

“Who made the approach?”

“Arwish sent up a flare a couple of hours ago and said he wanted to talk.”

“About what?”

“Khaled, of course.”

“What does he know?”

“He wouldn’t say.”

“Why do you need me? Why isn’t he talking to his controller?”

“I’m his controller,” Yaakov said, “but the person he really wants to talk to is you.”

They had reached the western edge of the New City. To Gabriel’s right, bathed in the silver light of a newly risen moon, lay the flatlands of the West Bank. Old hands called it “Shabak country.” It was a land where the usual rules did not apply—and where the few conventions that did exist could be bent or broken whenever it was deemed necessary to combat Arab
terror. Men such as Yaakov were the mailed fist of Israeli security, foot soldiers who engaged in the dirty work of counterterrorism. Shabakniks had the power to arrest without cause and search without warrants, to shut down businesses and dynamite houses. They lived on nerves and nicotine, drank too much coffee and slept too little. Their wives left them, their Arab informants feared and hated them. Gabriel, though he had dispensed the ultimate sanction of the State, always considered himself fortunate that he had been asked to join the Office and not Shabak.

Shabak’s methods were sometimes at odds with the principles of a democratic state, and, like the Office, public scandals had damaged its reputation both at home and abroad. The worst was the infamous Bus 300 Affair. In April 1984, bus No. 300, en route from Tel Aviv to the southern city of Ashkelon, was hijacked by four Palestinians. Two were killed during the military rescue operation; the two surviving terrorists were led into a nearby wheat field and never seen again. Later it was revealed that the hijackers had been beaten to death by Shabak officers acting under orders from their director-general. A series of scandals followed in quick succession, each exposing some of Shabak’s most ruthless methods: violence, coerced confessions, blackmail, and deception. Shabak’s defenders were fond of saying that interrogations of suspected terrorists cannot be conducted over a pleasant cup of coffee. Its goals, regardless of the scandals, remained unchanged. Shabak was not interested in catching terrorists
after
blood was shed. It wanted to stop the terrorists
before
they could strike, and, if possible, to frighten young Arabs from ever going the way of violence.

Yaakov applied the brakes suddenly to avoid colliding with a slow-moving transit van. Simultaneously he flashed his lights
and pounded on the car horn. The van responded by changing lanes. As Yaakov shot past, Gabriel glimpsed a pair of Haredim conducting an animated conversation as though nothing had happened.

Yaakov tossed a
kippah
onto Gabriel’s lap. It was larger than most and loosely knitted, with an orange-and-amber pattern against a black background. Gabriel understood the significance of its design.

“We’ll cross the line as settlers, just in case anyone from PA Security or Hamas is watching the checkpoints.”

“Where are we from?”

“Kiryat Devorah,” Yaakov replied. “It’s in the Jordan Valley. We’re never going to set foot there.”

Gabriel held up the skullcap. “I take it we’re not terribly popular with the local population.”

“Let’s just say that the residents of Kiryat Devorah take their commitment to the Land of Israel quite seriously.”

Gabriel slipped the
kippah
onto his head and adjusted the angle. Yaakov briefed Gabriel as he drove: the procedures for crossing into the West Bank, the route they would take to the Arab village where Arwish was waiting, the method of extraction. When Yaakov finished, he reached into the backseat and produced an Uzi miniature submachine gun.

“I prefer this,” said Gabriel, holding up his Beretta.

Yaakov laughed. “This is the
West
Bank, not the
Left
Bank. Don’t be a fool, Gabriel. Take the Uzi.”

Gabriel reluctantly took the weapon and rammed a magazine of ammunition into the butt. Yaakov covered his head with a
kippah
identical to the one he’d given Gabriel. A few miles beyond Ben-Gurion Airport he exited the motorway and followed a two-lane road eastward toward the West Bank. The
Separation Fence, looming before them, cast a black shadow across the landscape.

At the checkpoint a Shabak man stood among the IDF soldiers. As Yaakov approached, the Shabak man murmured a few words to the soldiers and the Volkswagen was allowed to pass without inspection. Yaakov, clear of the checkpoint, raced along the moon-washed road at high speed. Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and saw a pair of headlights. The lights floated there for a time, then receded into the night. Yaakov seemed to take no notice of them. The second car, Gabriel suspected, belonged to a Shabak countersurveillance team.