Prince of Fire (22 page)

Staff parking was in the rear courtyard. She propped the bike on its kickstand, then removed her backpack from the seat storage compartment and left her helmet in its place. Two girls were just coming off duty. Amira bid them good night, then used her badge to unlock the secure staff entrance. The time clock was mounted to the wall of the foyer. She found her card, third slot from the bottom, and punched in: 5:56
P
.
M
.

The locker room was a few paces down the hall. Amira went inside and changed into her uniform: white trousers, white shoes, and a peach-colored tunic that Dr. Avery believed was soothing to the patients. Five minutes later she reported for duty at the window of the head nurse’s station. Ginger Hall, peroxide blond and crimson-lipped, looked up and smiled.

“New haircut, Amira? Very fetching. My goodness, what I wouldn’t do for that thick raven hair of yours.”

“You can have it, along with the brown skin, the black eyes, and all the other shit that comes with it.”

“Ah, rubbish, petal. We’re all nurses here. Just doing our job and trying to make a decent living.”

“Maybe, but out there it’s different. What have you got for me?”

“Lee Martinson. She’s in the solarium. Get her back up to her room. Settle her in for the night.”

“That big bloke still hanging round her?”

“The bodyguard? Still here. Dr. Avery reckons he’ll be here awhile.”

“Why would a woman like Miss Martinson need a bodyguard?”

“Confidential, my sweet. Highly confidential.”

Amira set off down the corridor. A moment later she came to the entrance of the solarium. As she went inside the humidity greeted her like a wet blanket. Miss Martinson was in her wheelchair, staring at the blackened windows. The bodyguard, hearing Amira’s approach, got to his feet. He was a large, heavily built man in his twenties, with short hair and blue eyes. He spoke with a British accent, but Amira doubted he was truly British. She looked down at Miss Martinson.

“It’s getting late, sweetheart. Time to go upstairs and get ready for bed.”

She pushed the wheelchair out of the solarium, then along the corridor to the elevators. The bodyguard pressed the call button. A moment later they boarded a lift and rode silently upward to her room on the fourth floor. Before entering, Amira paused and looked at the guard.

“I’m going to bathe her. Why don’t you wait out here until I’m finished?”

“Wherever she goes, I go.”

“We do this
every
night. The poor woman deserves a bit of privacy.”

“Wherever she goes, I go,” he repeated.

Amira shook her head and wheeled Miss Martinson into her room, the bodyguard trailing silently after her.

F
OR TWO DAYS
G
ABRIEL WAITED FOR THEM TO
make contact. The hotel, small and ochre-colored, stood in the ancient port near the spot where the river Temo flowed into the sea. His room was on the top floor and had a small balcony with an iron rail. He slept late, took breakfast in the dining room, and spent mornings reading. For lunch he would eat pasta and fish in one of the restaurants in the port, then he would hike up the road to the beach north of town and spread his towel on the sand and sleep some more. After two days, his appearance had improved dramatically. He’d gained weight and strength, and the skin beneath his eyes no longer looked yellow-brown and jaundiced. He was even beginning to like the way he looked with the beard.

On the third morning the telephone rang. He listened to the instructions without speaking, then hung up. He showered and dressed and packed his bag, then went downstairs to breakfast. After breakfast he paid his bill and placed his bag in the trunk of the car he’d rented in Cagliari and drove north, about thirty miles, to the port town of Alghero. He left the car on the street where he’d been told to, then walked along a shadowed alleyway that emptied into the waterfront.

Dina was seated in a café on the quay, drinking coffee. She wore sunglasses, sandals, and a sleeveless dress; her shoulder-length dark hair shone in the dazzling light reflected by the sea. Gabriel descended a flight of stone steps on the quay and boarded a fifteen-foot dinghy with the word
Fidelity
written on the hull. He started the engine, a ninety-horsepower Yamaha, and untied the lines. Dina joined him a moment later and, in passable French, told him to make for the large white motor yacht anchored about a half-mile from the shoreline on the turquoise sea.

Gabriel guided the dinghy slowly out of the port, then, reaching the open water, he increased his speed and bounced toward the yacht over the gentle swells. As he drew near, Rami stepped onto the aft deck, dressed in khaki shorts and a white shirt. He climbed down to the swim step and was waiting there, hand outstretched, as Gabriel arrived.

The main salon, when they entered, looked like a substation of the team’s headquarters in the basement of King Saul Boulevard. The walls were hung with large-scale maps and aerial photographs, and the onboard electronics had been augmented with the sort of technical communications equipment Gabriel had not seen since the Abu Jihad assassination. Yaakov looked up from a computer terminal and extended his hand. Shamron,
dressed in khaki trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt, was seated at the galley table. He pushed his reading glasses onto his forehead and appraised Gabriel as though he were a document or another map. “Welcome to
Fidelity
,” he said, “combination command post and safe flat.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From a friend of the Office. It happened to be in Cannes. We took it out to sea and added the additional equipment we needed for our journey. We also changed the name.”

“Who chose it?”

“I did,” said Shamron. “It means loyalty and faithfulness—”

“—and a devotion to duty or to one’s obligations or vows,” Gabriel said. “I know what it means. I also know why you chose it—the same reason why you told Shimon Pazner to take me to the ruins of the embassy.”

“I thought it was important that you see it. Sometimes, when one is in the middle of an operation like this, the enemy can become something of an abstraction. It’s easy to forget his true nature. I thought you might need a bit of a reminder.”

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, Ari. I know the nature of my enemy, and I know what it means to be loyal.” Gabriel sat down at the table across from Shamron. “I hear Varash met after I came out of Cairo. I suppose their decision is fairly obvious.”

“Khaled was given his trial,” Shamron said, “and Varash delivered its verdict.”

Gabriel had carried out the sentences of such proceedings, but he had never actually been present at one. They
were
trials of sorts, but they were weighted profoundly in favor of the prosecution and conducted under conditions so secret that the accused did not even know they were taking place. The
defendants were granted no lawyers in this courtroom; their fates were decided not by a jury of their peers but of their mortal enemies. Evidence of guilt went unchallenged. Exculpatory evidence was never introduced. There were no transcripts and no means of appeal. Only one sentence was possible, and it was irrevocable.

“Since I’m the investigating officer, would you mind if I offer an opinion about the case?”

“If you must.”

“The case against Khaled is wholly circumstantial, and tenuous at best.”

“The trail of evidence is clear,” Shamron said. “And we started down that trail based on information given to us by a
Palestinian
source.”

“That’s what concerns me.”

Yaakov joined them at the table. “Mahmoud Arwish has been one of our top assets inside the Palestinian Authority for several years now. Everything he’s told us has been proven correct.”

“But even Arwish isn’t certain the man in that photograph is Khaled. The case is a house of cards. If one of the cards turns out not to be true, then the entire case collapses—and we end up with a dead man on a French street.”

“The one thing we know about Khaled’s appearance is that it was said he bore a striking resemblance to his grandfather,” Shamron said. “I’m the only person in this room who ever saw the sheikh face-to-face, and I saw him under circumstances that are impossible to forget.” Shamron held up the photograph for the others to see. “The man in this photograph could be Sheikh Asad’s twin brother.”

“That still doesn’t
prove
he’s Khaled. We are talking about killing a man.”

Shamron turned the photograph directly toward Gabriel. “Will you acknowledge that if this man walks into the apartment building at 56 boulevard St-Rémy, he is, in all likelihood, Khaled al-Khalifa?”

“I will acknowledge that.”

“So we put the building under watch. And we wait. And we hope he comes before the next massacre. If he does, we get his photograph as he enters the building. If our experts are damned sure he’s the same man, we put him out of business.” Shamron folded his arms across his chest. “Of course, there is one other method of identification—the same one we used during the Wrath of God operation.”

An image flashed in Gabriel’s memory.

“Excuse me, but are you Wadal Zwaiter?”

“No! Please, no!”

“It takes a very cool customer not to respond to his real name in a situation like that,” Shamron said. “And an even cooler one not to reach for his gun when confronted with a man who’s about to kill him. Either way, if it’s truly Khaled, he’ll identify himself, and your mind will be at peace when you pull the trigger.”

Shamron pushed his spectacles onto his forehead. “I want
Fidelity
in Marseilles by nightfall. Are you going to be on it?”

“W
E
’
LL USE THE
Wrath of God model,” Shamron began. “
Aleph, Bet, Ayin, Qoph.
It has two advantages. It will seem familiar to you and it works.”

Gabriel nodded.

“Out of necessity, we’ve made some minor alterations and combined some of the roles, but once the operation is set in
motion, it will feel the same to you. You, of course, are the
Aleph
, the gunman. The
Ayin
teams, the watchers, are already moving into place. If Khaled comes to that flat, two of the watchers will switch to the role of
Bet
and cover your escape route.”

“And Yaakov?”

“You two seem to have established something of a rapport. Yaakov will be your deputy team leader. On the night of the hit, should we be so fortunate, he will be your driver.”

“What about Dina?”

“Qoph,”
Shamron said. “Communications. She’ll consult with King Saul Boulevard on the identification of the target. She’ll also serve as Yaakov’s
bat leveyha.
You’ll remain concealed on the boat until the hit. When Khaled is down, everyone leaves town by separate routes and makes their way out of the country. You and Yaakov will travel to Geneva and fly home from there. Dina will take the boat out of port. Once she’s out in open waters, we’ll put a team aboard and bring it home.”

Shamron spread a map of central Marseilles over the table. “A slip has been reserved for you here”—he tapped the map with his stubby forefinger—“on the east side of the old port, along the Quai de Rive-Neuve. The boulevard St-Rémy is here”—another tap—“six streets to the east. It runs from the Place de la Préfecture, south to the Jardin Pierre Puget.”

Shamron placed a satellite photograph of the street atop the map.

“It is, quite frankly, a perfect street for us to operate. Number 56 is located here, on the east side of the street. It has only one entrance, which means that we won’t miss Khaled if he comes. As you can see from the photograph, the street is busy—
lots of traffic, people on the sidewalks, shops and offices. The entrance to Number 56 is visible from this large esplanade in front of the Palais de Justice. The park is home to a colony of derelicts. We’ve got a pair of watchers there now.”

Shamron adjusted the angle of the photograph.

“But here’s the best feature, the
payage
parking lot in the median. This space here is now occupied by a car rented by one of the watchers. We have five other cars. At this moment they’re all being fitted with miniature high-resolution cameras. The cameras transmit their images by scrambled wireless signal. You have the only decoder.”

Shamron nodded at Yaakov, who pressed a button. A large plasma-screen television rose slowly from the entertainment console.

“You’ll keep watch on the entrance from here,” Shamron said. “The watchers will rotate the cars at irregular intervals in case Khaled or one of his men keeps an eye on the
payage.
They’ve worked out the timing, so that when one car leaves, the next can pull into the same space.”

“Ingenious,” Gabriel murmured.

“Actually, it was Yaakov’s suggestion. He’s done this sort of thing in places where it’s much more difficult to conceal the surveillance teams.” Shamron lit a cigarette. “Show him the computer program.”

Yaakov sat down in front of a laptop computer and typed in a command. A virtual animation of the boulevard St-Rémy and the surrounding streets appeared on the screen.