Prince of Fire

by Daniel Silva

  Another tear. This time Gabriel wiped it away.

  “Why did he kill my mother and sisters, Gabriel? Was it because we stole his land? Was it because we were occupiers?No, it was because we wanted to make peace. If I hate them, you’ll forgive me. If I beg you to show Khaled no mercy, you’ll grant me leniency for my crimes. I’m Dina Sarid, the avenged remnant. I’m the sixth million.And if Khaled comes here tonight, don’t you dare let him get on that bus.”

  Lev had offered him use of a Jerusalem safe flat. Shamron had politely declined. Instead he’d instructed Tamara to find a folding camp bed in the storeroom and asked Gilah to send a suitcase with clean clothes and a shavingkit. Like Gabriel, he had slept little the past week. Some nights he would pace the hallways all hours or sit outside and smoke with the Shabak bodyguards. Mostly he lay on his folding cot, staring at the red glow of the digital clock on his desk and calculating the minutes that remained until the anniversary of Beit Sayeed’s destruction.He filled the empty hours by recalling operations past. The waiting. Always the waiting. Some officers were driven mad by it. For Shamron it was a narcotic, akin to the first pangs of intense love. The hot flashes, the sudden chills, the gnawing of the stomach—he had endured it countless times over the years. In the back alleys of Damascus and Cairo, in the cobbled streets of Europe, and in a derelict suburb of Buenos Aires, where he’d waited for Adolf Eichmann, stationmaster of the Holocaust, to step off a city bus and into the grasp of the very people he had tried to annihilate. A fitting way for it to end, Shamron thought. One last night vigil. One final wait for a telephone to ring. When finally it did, the harsh electronic tone sounded like music to his ears. He closed his eyes and allowed it to ring a second time. Then he reached out in the darkness and brought the receiver to his ear.

  The digital readout on the television monitor had said twelve-twenty-seven a.m. Technically it had been Yaakov’s shift, but it was the last night before the deadline, and no one was going to sleep. They had been seated on the couch in the salon, Yaakov in his usual confrontationalpose, Dina in a posture of meditation, and Gabriel as though he were awaiting word of an expected death. The boulevard St-Rémy had been quiet that night. The couple who had strolled past the door at twelve-twenty-sevenwere the first to appear in the camera shot in nearly fifteen minutes. Gabriel had looked at Dina, whose eyes had remained locked on the screen.

  “Did you see that?”

  “I saw it.”

  Gabriel stood and went to the console. He removed the cassette from the video recorder and put a fresh tape in its place. Then he placed the cassette in a playback deck and rewound the tape. With Dina looking over his shoulder, he pressed PLAY. The couple entered the shot and walked past the doorway without giving it a glance.

  Gabriel pressed STOP.

  “Look how he put the girl on his right side facing the street. He’s using her as a shield. And look at his right hand. It’s in the girl’s pocket, just like Sabri.”

  REWIND. PLAY. STOP.

  “My God,” Gabriel said, “he moves just like his father.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Gabriel went to the radio and raised the watcher outsidethe Palais de Justice.

  “Did you see that couple who just walked by the building?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Hold on.” A silence while the Ayin changed position.“Heading up the street, toward the gardens.”

  “Can you follow them?”

  “It’s dead quiet down here. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  “Damn it.”

  “Just a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “They’re turning around.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. They’re retracing their steps.”

  Gabriel looked up at the monitor just as they entered the shot again, this time from the opposite direction. Once again the woman was facing the street, and once again the man had his hand in the back pocket of her jeans. They stopped at the door of Number 56. The man drew a key from his pocket.

  19

  SURREY, ENGLAND

  At the Stratford Clinic it was just after ten in the eveningwhen Amira Assaf came out of the elevator and set off down the fourth-floor corridor. Rounding the first corner, she spotted the bodyguard, sitting on a chair outside Miss Martinson’s room. He looked up as Amira approached and closed the book he was reading.

  “I need to make sure she’s sleeping comfortably,” Amira said.

  The bodyguard nodded and got to his feet. He wasn’t surprised by Amira’s request. She’d been stopping by the room every night at this time for the past month.

  She opened the door and went inside. The bodyguard followed after her and closed the door behind him. A lamp, dimsmed to its lowest setting, was burning softly. Amira went to the side of the bed and looked down. Miss Martinson was sound asleep. Hardly a surprise—Amira had given her twice her usual dosage of sedative. She’d be out for several more hours.

  Amira adjusted the blankets, then opened the top drawer of the bedside table. The gun, a silenced Walther nine-millimeter, was precisely where she had left it earlierthat afternoon while Miss Martinson was still in the solarium. She seized the weapon by the grip, then spun round and leveled the gun at the bodyguard’s chest. He reached inside his jacket in a lightning-fast movement. Before his hand emerged, Amira fired twice, the double-tapof a trained killer. Both shots struck the upper chest. The bodyguard tumbled backward onto the floor. Amira stood over him and fired two more shots.

  She drew a series of deep breaths to quell the intense wave of nausea that washed over her. Then she went to the telephone and dialed an internal hospital extension.

  “Would you please ask Hamid to come up to Miss Martinson’s room? There’s some linen that needs to be collected before the truck leaves.”

  She hung up the phone, then took the dead man by the arms and dragged him into the bathroom. The carpetwas smeared with blood. Amira was not concerned by this. Her intention was not to conceal the crime, only to delay its discovery by a few hours.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Hamid.”

  She unlocked the door and opened it. Hamid wheeled in a laundry cart.

  “You all right?”

  Amira nodded. Hamid wheeled the cart next to the bed while Amira pulled away the blankets and sheets. Miss Martinson, frail and scarred, lay motionless. Hamid lifted her by her torso, Amira by her legs, and together they lowered her gently into the laundry cart. Amira concealed her beneath a layer of sheets.

  She went out into the corridor to make certain it was clear, then looked back at Hamid and motioned for him to join her. Hamid rolled the cart out of the room and started toward the elevator. Amira closed the door, then inserted her passkey into the lock and snapped it off.

  She met Hamid at the elevator and pressed the call button. The wait seemed an eternity. When finally the doors opened, they wheeled the cart into the empty chamber. Amira pressed the button for the ground floor and they sunk slowly downward.

  The ground-floor foyer was deserted. Hamid went out first and turned to the right, toward the doorway that led to the rear courtyard. Amira followed after him. Outside, a van was idling with its rear cargo doors open. On the side was stenciled the name of a local laundry supply company. The usual driver was lying in a stand of beech trees two miles from the hospital with a bullet in his neck.

  Hamid lifted the laundry bag out of the cart and placed it gently into the back of the van, then closed the doors and climbed into the front passenger seat. Amira watched the van roll off, then she went back inside and walked to the head nurse’s station. Ginger was on duty.

  “I’m not feeling terribly well tonight, Ginger. Think you can get by without me?”

  “No problem, luv. Need a ride?”

  Amira shook her head. “I can manage on the
bike. See you tomorrow night.”

  Amira went to the staff locker room. Before stripping off her uniform she hid the gun inside her backpack. Then she changed into jeans, a heavy woolen sweater, and a leather jacket. A moment later she was walking across the rear courtyard with her bag across her back.

  She climbed on the bike and started the engine, then accelerated out of the courtyard. As she rounded the back of the old mansion she glanced up at Miss Martinson’s window: one light burning softly, no sign of trouble. She raced along the drive and rolled to a stop at the guardhouse. The man on duty bid her a good night, then opened the gate. Amira turned onto the road and twisted the throttle. Ten minutes later she was racing along the A24 motorway, heading south to the sea.

  20

  MARSEILLES

  Gabriel slipped into his stateroom and closed the door. He went to the closet and peeled back a parcel of loose carpet, exposing the door of the floor safe. He worked the tumbler and lifted the lid. Inside were three hand-guns:a Beretta 92FS, a Jericho 941PS Police Special, and a Barak SP-21. Carefully he lifted each of the weaponsout and laid them on the bed. The Beretta and the Jericho were both nine-millimeter weapons. The magazinefor the Beretta had a fifteen-round capacity, the Jerichosixteen. The Barak—squat, black, and ugly—fired a larger and more destructive .45-caliber round, though it held only eight shots.

  He field-stripped the guns, beginning with the Berettaand ending with the Barak. Each weapon appeared in perfect working order. He reassembled and loaded the weapons, then tested the weight and balance of each, deliberatingover which to use. The hit was not likely to be a covert and quiet affair. It would probably take place on a busy street, perhaps in broad daylight. Making certain Khaled was dead was the first priority. For that, Gabriel needed power and reliability. He selected the Barak as his primary weapon and the Beretta 92FS as his backup. He also decided he would work without a silencer. A silencermade the weapon too difficult to conceal and too unwieldy to draw and fire. Besides, what was the point of using a silencer if the act was witnessed by a crowd of people on the street?

  He went into the bathroom and stood for a moment before the mirror, examining his face. Then he opened the medicine cabinet and removed a pair of scissors, a razor, and a can of shaving cream. He trimmed the beard down to stubble, then removed the rest with the razor. His hair was still dyed gray. Nothing to be done about that.

  He stripped off his clothes and showered quickly, then went back into the stateroom to dress. He pulled on his underwear and socks, then a pair of dark-blue denim trousers and rubber-soled suede brogues. He attached his radio unit to the waistband of his jeans on the left hip, then ran a wire to his ear and a second one to his left wrist. After securing the wires with strips of black tape, he pulled on a long-sleeved black shirt. The Beretta he shoved down the waistband of his jeans, at the small of his back. The Barak was compact enough to fit in the pocket of his leather jacket. His GPS tracking beacon, a small disk about the size of a one-euro coin, he slipped into the front pocket of his jeans.

  He sat on the end of the bed and waited. Five minuteslater there was a knock at the door. The clock read two-twelve a.m.

  “How certain are your experts?”

  The prime minister looked up at the bank of video monitors and waited for an answer. In one of the monitorswas Lev’s image. The director-general of Shabak, Moshe Yariv, occupied the second; General Amos Sharret,chief of Aman, the third.

  “There’s no doubt whatsoever,” replied Lev. “The man in the photo given to us by Mahmoud Arwish is the same man who just walked into the apartment building in Marseilles. All we need now is your approval for the final phase of the operation to commence.”

  “You have it. Give the order to Fidelity.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  “I assume you’ll be able to hear the radio traffic?”

  “Fidelity will send it to us via the secure link. We’ll maintain operational control until the final second.”

  “Send it here, too,” the prime minister said. “I don’t want to be the last to know.”

  Then he pressed a button on his desk, and the three screens turned to black.

  The motorbike was a Piaggio X9 Evolution, charcoal gray, with a twist-and-go throttle and a listed top speed of 160 kilometers per hour—though Yaakov, on a practice escape run the previous day, had topped out at 190. The saddle sloped severely downward from back to front so that the passenger sat several inches above the driver, which made it a perfect bike for an assassin, though surely its designers had not had that in mind when they’d conceived it. The engine, as usual, fired without hesitation. Yaakov headed toward the spot along the quay where the helmeted figure of Gabriel awaited him. Gabriel climbed onto the passenger seat and settled in.

  “Take me to the boulevard St-Rémy.”

  “You sure?”

  “One pass,” he said. “I want to see it.”

  Yaakov banked hard to the left and raced up the hill.

  It was a good building on the Corniche, with a marble floor in the lobby and an elevator that worked most of the time. The flats facing the street had a fine view of the Nile. The ones on the back looked down into the walled grounds of the American embassy. It was a building for foreigners and rich Egyptians, another world from the drab cinder-block tenement in Heliopolis where Zubair lived, but then being a policeman in Egypt didn’t pay much, even if you were a secret policeman working for the Mukhabarat.

  He took the stairs. They were wide and curved, with a faded runner held in place by tarnished brass fittings. The apartment was on the top floor, the tenth. Zubair cursed silently as he trod upward. Two packs of Cleopatracigarettes a day had ravaged his lungs. Three times he had to pause on a landing to catch his breath. It took him a good five minutes to reach the flat.

  He pressed his ear to the door and heard no sound from within. Hardly surprising. Zubair had followed the Englishman last night during a liquor-soaked excursion through the hotel bars and nightclubs along the river. Zubair was confident he was still sleeping.

  He reached into his pocket and came out with the key. The Mukhabarat had a fine collection: diplomats, dissidents, Islamists, and especially foreign journalists. He inserted the key into the lock and turned, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  The flat was cool and dark, the curtains tightly drawn against the early-morning sun. Zubair had been in the flat many times and found his way to the bedroom withoutbothering to switch on the lights. Quinnell slept soundly in sheets soaked with sweat. On the stagnant air hung the overpowering stench of whiskey. Zubair drew his gun and walked slowly across the room toward the foot of the bed. After a few paces his right foot fell upon something small and hard. Before he could relieve the downward pressure something snapped, emitting a sharp crack. In the deep silence of the room it sounded like a splintering tree limb. Zubair looked down and saw that he’d stepped on Quinnell’s wristwatch. The Englishman, in spite of his drunkenness, sat bolt-upright in bed. Shit, thought Zubair. He was not a professional assassin. He’d hoped to kill Quinnell in his sleep.

  “What the devil are you doing in here?”

  “I bring a message from our friend,” Zubair said calmly.

  “I don’t want anything more to do with him.”

  “The feeling is mutual.”

  “So then what in God’s name are you doing in my flat?”

  Zubair raised the gun. A moment later he let himself out of the flat and started back down the stairs. Halfway down he was breathing like a marathoner and sweating hard. He stopped and leaned against the balustrade. The damned Cleopatras. If he didn’t quit soon they’d be the death of him.

  Marseilles: five-twenty-two a.m. The door of the apartmenthouse swings open. A figure steps into the street. Dina’s verbal alert is heard in the Operations Center of King Saul Boulevard and in Jerusalem by Shamron and the prime minister. And it is also heard in the dirty esplanade along the cours Belsunce, where Gabriel and Yaakov are sitting on th
e edge of a stagnant fountain, surrounded by drug addicts and immigrants with nowhereelse to sleep.

  “Who is it?” Gabriel asks.

  “The girl,” Dina says, then she adds quickly: “Khaled’s girl.”

  “Which way is she going?”

  “North, toward the Place de la Préfecture.”

  There follows several empty seconds of dead air. In Jerusalem, Shamron is pacing the carpet in front of the prime minister’s desk and waiting anxiously for Gabriel’s order. “Don’t try it,” he murmurs. “If she spots the watcher, she’ll warn Khaled, and you’ll lose him. Let her go.”

  Ten more seconds pass before Gabriel’s voice comes back on the air.

  “It’s too risky,” he whispers. “Let her go.”

  In Ramallah the meeting broke up at dawn. Yasir Arafat was in high good humor. To those in attendance he seemed a bit like the Arafat of old, the Arafat who could argue ideology and strategy all night with his closest comrades, then sit down for a meeting with a head of state. As his lieutenants filed out of the room, Arafat motioned for Mahmoud Arwish to remain.

  “It’s begun,” Arafat said. “Now we can only hope that Allah has blessed Khaled’s sacred endeavor.”

  “It is your endeavor, too, Abu Amar.”

  “True,” said Arafat, “and it wouldn’t have been possiblewithout you, Mahmoud.”

  Arwish nodded cautiously. Arafat held him in his gaze.

  “You played your role well,” said Arafat. “Your clever deception of the Israelis almost makes up for your betrayalof me and the rest of the Palestinian people. I’m tempted to overlook your crime, but I cannot.”

  Arwish felt his chest tighten. Arafat smiled.

  “Did you really think your treachery would ever be forgiven?”