Prince of Fire (26 page)

“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 realized he’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 immediately. 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.

“H
E
’
S OFF THE AIR
, ” Lev said. “His beacon has been stationary for 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 7:28
A
.
M
. local time, 6:28 in France—twelve hours until the anniversary of the evacuation of Beit Sayeed.

“B
UT 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 ordered the
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 6:12
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 wordlessly mounting 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 quarrel with the Palestinian woman, then picked up the satellite phone 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.”

M
ARTINEAU MET
Abu Saddiq one last time on the boulevard d’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 8:15 TGV for Paris was departing from Track F. Martineau crossed the terminal and went onto the platform. He walked alongside the train until he found his carriage, then climbed aboard.

Before going to his seat, he went to the toilet. He 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. Nothing can 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.

T
HE HOUSE WAS IN A WORKING
-
CLASS
A
RAB 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 expected to 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 remained motionless 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.

“What about your Muslim modesty?”

For his insolence he received a second blow to the face, this one with the back of the hand. Gabriel, his head swimming, stepped out of his shoes and peeled off his socks. Then he unbuttoned his jeans and pulled them off over his bare feet. A moment later he was standing before the four Arabs in his briefs. The girl reached out and snapped the elastic. “These, too,” she said. “Take them off.”