by Daniel Silva
Gabriel ordered wine but drank none of it. He ordered a salad and a bowl of pasta, but the odor of food nauseated him. The girl was well schooled in Office doctrine. She was carrying him. She flirted with the waiter. She talked to a couple at another table. She devoured her food and part of Gabriel’s. She held his hand. Once again Gabriel found uncomfortable comparisons with Leah. Her scent. The flecks of gold in her nearly black eyes. The way her long hands floated when she spoke. Gabriel looked out the window at the pavement of the rue St-Denis, but in his mind he was back in Vienna, sitting with Leah and Dani in the trattoria in the Jewish Quarter.
He was sweating. He could feel cold water running down the groove at the center of his back, sweat running over his ribs. The Beretta was in the front pocket of his parka, the parka hanging over the back of his chair, so that Gabriel could feel the comforting weight of the gun pressing against his thigh. The girl was talking—“Maybe we should get away,” she was saying. “The Caribbean, St. Bart’s, someplace warm with good food and wine.” Gabriel was listening to her with one corner of his mind—he was nodding at appropriate times and even managed a few words now and again—but for the most part he was visualizing how he would kill Tariq. He took no pleasure from these thoughts. He engaged in them not out of rage or a desire to inflict punishment but in the same way he might plot a tacking maneuver through a particularly difficult stretch of wind and water; or the way he might mend a bare spot in a five-hundred-year-old canvas.
He visualized what would happen after Tariq was down. Deborah would look after herself. Gabriel was responsible for Jacqueline. He would grab her and move away from the body as quickly as possible. One of Yadin’s men would pick them up on the rue St-Denis in a rental car, a green Ford, and they would head toward the airport. They would switch cars once along the way. At the airport they would go directly to the private aviation terminal and board Benjamin Stone’s jet. If things went according to plan, he would be back in Israel by the following afternoon.
If they didn’t . . .
Gabriel pushed the image of failure from his mind.
Just then his cell phone chirped softly. He brought it to his ear, listened without speaking. He severed the connection, handed the telephone to the girl, stood up, pulled on his coat. The Beretta banged against his hip. He reached into the pocket of the parka, held the gun by its grip.
He had paid the check ahead of time so he wouldn’t cause a scene when the time came to leave. The girl led the way through the restaurant. Gabriel was burning. Outside, he slipped and nearly fell climbing the stairs. The girl caught his arm and steadied him. When they reached the sidewalk there was no sign of Tariq and Jacqueline. Gabriel turned and faced the girl. He kissed her on the cheek, then brought his mouth close to her ear. “Tell me when you see them.”
He buried his face against the side of the girl’s neck. Her hair covered his face. She smelled shockingly of Leah. He held her with his left hand. His right was still in his coat pocket, wrapped around the grip of the Beretta.
He rehearsed it one last time. It played out in his head like an Academy lecture. Turn around, walk directly toward him. Don’t hesitate or loiter, just walk. Get close, draw the gun with your right hand, start shooting. Don’t think about the bystanders, think only of the target. Become the terrorist. Cease being the terrorist only when he is dead. The spare clip is in your left pocket if you need it. Don’t get caught. You are a prince. You are more valuable than anyone else. Do anything to avoid capture. If a policeman challenges you, kill the policeman. Under no circumstances are you to allow yourself to be arrested.
“There they are.”
She gave him a slight push to separate their bodies. Gabriel turned and started across the street, taking his eyes off Tariq just long enough to make certain he wasn’t walking into the path of a car. His hand was making the gun wet. He could hear nothing except his own breathing and the hiss of blood rushing through his inner ears. Jacqueline looked up. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second; then she abruptly looked away. Tariq took her by the elbow.
As Gabriel pulled the Beretta from his pocket, a car careened around the corner and accelerated toward him. He had no choice but to quickly step out of the way. Then the car skidded to a halt, with Gabriel on one side and Tariq and Jacqueline on the other.
The rear door facing Tariq flew open. He pulled Jacqueline forward and forced her into the car. Her handbag fell from her shoulder and tumbled into the street. Tariq smiled wolfishly at Gabriel and climbed into the backseat next to Jacqueline.
The car sped away. Gabriel crossed the street and picked up Jacqueline’s purse. Then he went back to the restaurant and collected the girl. Together they walked up the rue St-Denis. Gabriel opened Jacqueline’s purse and thumbed through the contents. Inside was her wallet, her passport, some makeup, and the gold lighter Shamron had given her at the gallery.
“You should have taken the shot, Gabriel!”
“I didn’t have a shot!”
“You had a shot over the roof of that car!”
“Bullshit!”
“You had a shot, but you hesitated!”
“I hesitated because if I had missed that shot over the roof of the car, the bullet would have ended up in the restaurant across the street, and you might have a dead bystander on your hands.”
“You never used to consider the possibility of missing.”
The van accelerated away from the curb. Gabriel was seated on the floor of the rear cargo bay, the girl opposite him, knees beneath her chin, eyeing him intently. Gabriel closed his eyes and tried to think calmly for a moment. It was a complete disaster. Jacqueline was gone. She had no passport, no identification, and, more important, no tracking beacon. They’d had one major advantage over Tariq: the ability to know where she was all the time. Now that advantage had vanished.
He pictured the sequence of events: Tariq and Jacqueline leaving the restaurant; the car appearing out of nowhere; Tariq pushing Jacqueline into the backseat; Tariq’s wolfish smile.
Gabriel closed his eyes and saw the ghostly image of Tariq beckoning him forward with a Van Dyck hand. He knew all along, thought Gabriel. He knew it was me coming for him on the rue St-Denis. He led me there.
Shamron was talking again. “Your first responsibility was to Jacqueline. Not to someone in a bistro behind her. You should have taken the shot, regardless of the consequences!”
“Even if I’d managed to hit him, Jacqueline still would be gone. She was in the car, the engine was running. They were going to take her, and there was nothing I could have done to stop it.”
“You should have fired at the car. We might have been able to trap them on that street.”
“Is that what you wanted? A gunfight in the middle of Montreal? A shoot-out? You would have had another Lillehammer on your hands. Another Amman. Another disaster for the Office.”
Shamron turned around, glared at Gabriel, then stared straight ahead.
Gabriel said, “What now, Ari?”
“We find them.”
“How?”
“We have a very good idea where they’re going.”
“We can’t find Tariq in the States alone.”
“What are you suggesting, Gabriel?”
“We need to alert the Americans that he’s probably coming their way. We need to tell the Canadians too. Maybe they can prevent him from taking her across the border. If we get lucky they might be able to stop them before they reach the border.”
“Tell the Americans and the Canadians? Tell them what, exactly? Tell them that we intended to assassinate a Palestinian on Canadian soil? Tell them that we botched the job, and now we’d like their help cleaning up the mess? I don’t think that would go over very well in Ottawa or Washington.”
“So what do we do? Sit on our hands and wait?”
“No, we go to America, and we tighten security around the prime minister. Tariq didn’t come all this way for nothing. Eventually he has to make his move.”
�
��And what if his target isn’t the prime minister?”
“The security of the prime minister is my only concern at this point.”
“I’m sure Jacqueline would be pleased to know this.”
“You know what I mean, Gabriel. Don’t play word games with me.”
“You’ve forgotten one thing, Ari. She doesn’t have a passport any longer.” Gabriel held up her handbag. “It’s here. How are they going to get her across the border without a passport?”
“Obviously, Tariq’s made other arrangements.”
“Or maybe he doesn’t intend to take her across the border. Maybe he’s going to kill her first.”
“That’s why you should have taken the shot, Gabriel.”
40
SABREVOIS, QUEBEC
Jacqueline had tried to follow the road signs. Route 40 through Montreal. Route 10 across the river. Route 35 into the countryside. Now this: Route 133, a two-lane provincial road stretching across the tabletop of southern Quebec. Strange how quickly cosmopolitan Montreal had given way to this vast empty space. A brittle moon floated above the horizon, ringed by a halo of ice. Wind-driven snow swirled across the asphalt like a sandstorm. Occasionally an object floated out of the gloom. A grain silo poking above the snow cover. A dimly lit farmhouse. A blacked-out agricultural supply store. Ahead she saw neon lights. As they drew closer she could see that the lights formed the outlines of women with enormous breasts: a strip joint in the middle of nowhere. She wondered where they got the girls. Maybe they enjoyed watching their sisters and girlfriends dance topless. Desolation, she thought. This is why the word was created.
After an hour of driving they were just a few miles from the U.S. border. She thought: How’s he going to take me across when my passport and the rest of my things are lying back on the rue St-Denis in Montreal?
My passport and the cigarette lighter with the beacon . . .
It had all happened so quickly. After spotting Gabriel she had looked away and prepared herself for what she thought would happen next. Then the car appeared, and he pushed her inside so roughly that her handbag fell from her grasp. As the car sped away she yelled at him to go back and let her get her bag, but he ignored her and told the driver to go faster. It was then that Jacqueline noticed the woman she knew as Leila was driving the car. A few blocks away they switched cars. The driver was the same man who had left his briefcase for Tariq in the underground coffee bar. This time they drove several blocks to the part of Montreal known as Outremont. There they switched cars one last time. Now Tariq was driving.
He was sweating. Jacqueline could see the shine on his skin in the lime-colored glow of the dashboard lights. His face had turned deathly white, dark circles beneath his eyes, right hand shaking.
“Would you like to explain to me what happened back there in Montreal?”
“It was a routine security precaution.”
“You call that routine? If it was so routine, why didn’t you let me go back and get my purse?”
“From time to time I find myself under surveillance by Israeli intelligence and by their friends in the West. I’m also monitored by my enemies within the Palestinian movement. My instincts told me that someone was watching us in Montreal.”
“That charade cost me my handbag and everything in it.”
“Don’t worry, Dominique. I’ll replace your things.”
“Some things can’t be replaced.”
“Like your gold cigarette lighter?”
Jacqueline felt a stab of pain in her abdomen. She remembered Yusef toying with the lighter on the way to the council flat in Hounslow. Christ, he knows. She changed the subject. “Actually, I was thinking about my passport.”
“Your passport can be replaced too. I’ll take you to the French consulate in Montreal. You’ll tell them that it was lost or stolen, and they’ll issue a new one.”
No, they’ll discover it was forged, and I’ll end up in a Canadian jail.
“Why do these people watch you?”
“Because they want to know where I’m going and who I am meeting with.”
“Why?”
“Because they don’t want me to succeed.”
“What are you trying to accomplish that would make them so concerned?”
“I’m just trying to bring a little justice to the so-called peace process. I don’t want my people to accept a sliver of our ancestral land just because the Americans and a handful of Israelis are willing to let us have it now. They offer us crumbs that fall from their table. I don’t want the crumbs, Dominique. I want the entire loaf.”
“Half a loaf is better than nothing.”
“I respectfully disagree.”
A highway sign floated out of the swirling snow. The border was three miles ahead.
Jacqueline said, “Where are you taking me?”
“To the other side.”
“So how do you intend to get me across the border without a passport?”
“We’ve made other arrangements.”
“Other arrangements? What kind of other arrangements?”
“I have another passport for you. A Canadian passport.”
“How did you get a Canadian passport?”
Another sign: the border was now two miles ahead.
“It’s not yours, of course.”
“Hold on a minute! Yusef promised you wouldn’t ask me to do anything illegal.”
“You’re not doing anything illegal. It’s an open border, and the passport is perfectly valid.”
“It might be valid, but it’s not mine!”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s not yours. No one’s going to question you.”
“I’m not going to enter the United States on a false passport! Stop the car! I want out!”
“If I let you out here you’ll freeze to death before you ever reach safety.”
“Then drop me somewhere! Just let me out!”
“Dominique, this is why we brought you from London: to help me get across this border.”
“You lied to me! You and Yusef!”
“Yes, we found it necessary to mislead you slightly.”
“Slightly!”
“But none of that matters now. What matters is that I need to get across this border, and I need your help.”
The border was now a mile away. Ahead she could see the bright white lights of the crossing. She wondered what to do. She supposed she could simply tell him no. Then what would he do? Turn around, kill her, dump her body into the snow, and cross the border on his own. She considered deceiving him: saying yes and then alerting the officer at the crossing point. But Tariq would just kill her and the border patrolman. There would be an investigation, the Office’s role in the affair would come to light. It would be an embarrassing fiasco for Ari Shamron. She had only one option. Play the game a little longer and find some way to alert Gabriel.
She said, “Let me see the passport.”
He handed it to her.
She opened it and looked at the name: Hélène Sarrault. Then she looked at the photograph: Leila. The likeness was vague but convincing.
“You’ll do it?”
Jacqueline said, “Keep driving.”
He entered the plaza at the border crossing and braked to a halt. A border patrolman stepped out of his booth and said, “Good evening. Where are you headed this evening?”
Tariq said, “Burlington.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“My sister is ill, I’m afraid.”
“Sorry to hear that. How long are you planning to stay?”
“One day, two at the most.”
“Passports, please.”
Tariq handed them across. The officer opened them and examined the photographs and the names. Then he looked into the car and glanced at each of their faces.
He closed the passports and handed them back. “Have a pleasant stay. And drive carefully. Weather report says there’s a big storm coming in later tonight.”
Tariq took the passports
, dropped the car into gear, and drove slowly across the border into Vermont. He placed the passports in his pocket and a moment later, when they were well clear of the border, he removed a Makarov pistol and placed the barrel against the side of her head.
41
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Yasir Arafat sat behind the desk in the presidential suite at the Madison Hotel, making his way through a stack of paperwork, listening to the late-evening traffic hissing along the damp pavement of Fifteenth Street. He paused for a moment, popped a Tunisian date into his mouth, then swallowed a few spoonfuls of yogurt. He was fastidious about his diet, did not smoke or consume alcohol, and never drank coffee. It had helped him survive a demanding revolutionary lifestyle that might have destroyed other men.
Because he was expecting no more visitors that evening, he had changed out of his uniform into a blue tracksuit. His bald head was bare, and as usual he had several days’ growth on his pouchy face. He wore reading glasses, which magnified his froglike eyes. His thick lower lip jutted out, giving him the appearance of a child on the verge of tears.
He possessed a near-photographic memory for written material and faces, which allowed him to work through the stack of documents quickly, pausing now and then to scribble notes in the margins of memoranda or sign his name. He was now in charge of the Gaza Strip and a large portion of the West Bank, a development that had seemed impossible only a few years earlier. His Palestinian Authority was responsible for the mundane details of ordinary governance, like trash collection and schools. It was a far cry from the old days, when he had been the world’s most famous guerrilla.
He set aside the remainder of his work and opened a document bound in a leather cover. It was a copy of the interim agreement he was to sign the following day at the United Nations in New York. The agreement was yet another incremental step toward the fulfillment of his life’s work: the establishment of a Palestinian state. It was much less than he had wanted when he set out on this path—back then he had dreamed of the destruction of Israel—but it was the best he was going to get. There were some within the movement who wished him failure, some who even wished him death. The rejectionists, the dreamers. If they’d had their way, the Palestinians would be forever condemned to the refugee camps of the diaspora.