Obsession (Year of Fire)

by Florencia Bonelli

  She brushed the thick hair above the bandage, a slight contact that became an energy that rushed up through the nerve terminals in her hand, giving her goose bumps on her arm, and ended up as a tickle in her throat. She closed her eyes and buried her fingers in the mat of hair until she reached the warm, hard skin. She didn’t dare to open her eyes when she felt his hand close around her wrist, and she stifled a moan when she realized he was kissing the veins and running the tip of his tongue up her palm, tracing out her lifeline. Sándor! she exclaimed to herself, surprised and frightened by what this man could provoke in her with a simple caress. She was throbbing between her legs, she didn’t know if she would be able to walk normally.

  “Yasmín,” he whispered. “Regarde-moi, s’il te plait.”

  She opened her eyelids fearfully. Sándor’s sky-blue eyes were shining through a web of little red veins under the thick, black eyebrows. Her desire for him confused her, and she wasn’t able to say a word. The invented explanations became worthless as she suddenly realized that they were the fruit of her immature personality. She lifted her left hand, the one he wasn’t holding, and brushed back the hair that had drooped down over his forehead.

  “Sándor,” she mumbled, “forgive me.”

  He gave her a smile that made her legs tremble. No smile had ever caused her this sensation of weakness or the burning that lashed at her skin under her Lycra tights.

  “That must be the first time you’ve ever apologized,” he commented without bitterness, and she smiled, ashamed but also happy to hear his thick, slightly hoarse voice, and his clumsy pronunciation. “I’m flattered.”

  Diana, Leila and Eliah came in without knocking, and Yasmín gave a start and wrenched her hand out of Sándor’s grip. He held it for a second and then let go with an accusing look.

  “What are you doing here?” Al-Saud wondered. “Where are your bodyguards?”

  “I told them to wait for me in the car.”

  “Yasmín! After what you went through yesterday, why are you still pushing your luck?”

  “Oh, Eliah, quit bugging me!” She flounced over to the seat where she had left her coat and purse and went back to the bed. “I’ll see you later, Sándor. I’m happy to see you looking better.”

  “See you later, Miss Yasmín.”

  “Let’s go.” Al-Saud hustled her out. “I’ll walk you to the car.”

  “What was she doing here?” Diana asked impatiently once Eliah and Yasmín left the room. “How can she still be bothering you?”

  “She came to see how I was. Hello, Leila,” he said, and his sister smiled and gave him a conspiratorial look that bore no resemblance to her childishness of the last few years.

  “Hello, Sanny,” she answered him in the end, and Sándor reached out his hand until Leila held it. Diana came over and put her hand on top of those of her siblings. Nobody spoke.

  * * *

  * * *

  CHAPTER 20

  * * *

  * * *

  As the days passed, Eliah Al-Saud observed Matilde’s progress after the attack in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. Just as the bruise on her cheek changed colors as it healed, her spirit also passed through different stages. At first she was overcome by panic; she startled easily, woke up in the middle of the night, was afraid to go out and didn’t argue when Eliah told her that she couldn’t return to the institute until Markov, the bodyguard banished by President Taylor, got to Paris to replace Sándor.

  Markov’s skill was guaranteed. As an ex-member of the Spetsnaz GRU, the elite Russian military intelligence service, feared for the ferocity of its selection process—it was rumored that several recruits died during the months of training—he possessed superior skill and knowledge. Alamán and Peter showed him photographs of Udo Jürkens and got him up to date with what they knew about him, from his preference for weapons used in war to his taste for shooting dumdum bullets and his passion for chemical weapons, so the Russian was forewarned about the caliber of enemy he was facing.

  Diana hadn’t forgiven herself for having failed in hand-to-hand combat with Udo Jürkens, so she went out to the estate in Rouen, where she spent several days training with Takumi sensei until Al-Saud ordered her to return to Paris, because Markov, her new colleague, was ready to take over the job. Diana had hoped that Dingo would be assigned to guard Matilde, and was as distant, unfriendly and cold toward the ex-Spetsnaz GRU officer as possible.

  One morning Matilde woke up crying from a nightmare and Al-Saud held her until she calmed down.

  “Please try and stay calm. The broadcasts of the Identi-Kit on the news bulletins must have sent him running. There’s nowhere in France that he wouldn’t be in danger of being recognized.”

  “They might send someone else to kill me,” she suggested, and Al-Saud told her that that wouldn’t happen, although he admitted to himself it was perfectly plausible.

  In spite of the anxiety demonstrated by her statement, that night Matilde started to recover her equilibrium. Al-Saud felt a great relief, because the idea that Matilde would have to seek treatment from Dr. Brieger, Leila’s psychiatrist, had been in his mind for the last few days and depressed him; he didn’t want her to need medication to help her sleep or lift her spirits. Resuming her classes at the institute helped, as routine helped to bring order to her life and emotions. Little by little, she started to leave the house, smile, speak in a firmer voice without mumbling, cook with Leila and eat with more of an appetite. Her paleness disappeared with the bruising, and the violet circles around her eyes grew fainter, giving way to her habitual translucent brilliance. As Matilde and Juana had fallen behind after missing a week at the institute, they had to redouble their efforts to catch up with their colleagues and this also helped to distract them.

  Four days after the attack, on the morning of Tuesday, March 3, Sándor was discharged and settled in the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus so that Leila could take care of him. Matilde wasn’t surprised that Yasmín suddenly became an assiduous visitor, even though she hadn’t come once the whole time she had been cohabiting with Eliah. Nor was she surprised by Yasmín’s change in attitude. In the past she had been aggressive and haughty, but now she displayed a sweet, kind personality. Matilde noticed that the change reached even the most profound aspects of her personality; she seemed more timid, less rebellious, more thoughtful and perhaps even a little sad and depressed.

  The impact in the media caused by Lars Meijer’s article took on unexpected dimensions. The international community was shaken by the revelations in the article published on Wednesday, February 25. Political television and radio programs, magazines and newspapers solicited interviews from the Dutch journalist, who was fielding daily offers to take a post as a correspondent at many different publications. Meijer sensed that he was at the height of his success and fame and yet wasn’t able to enjoy it. It was urgent that he finish the investigation, but he needed the material that Al-Saud had promised him. Demonstrating the existence of toxic substances during the Bijlmer disaster had become a personal quest for him. He wondered what information he would be given and when. Although he had tried to get in touch with Al-Saud, he turned out to be elusive—he generally didn’t answer his calls or e-mails and his secretaries rejected Meijer’s inquiries.

  In fact, Al-Saud wasn’t planning to hand anything further to Lars Meijer. If everything went according to his plans, Meijer would never mention the relationship between Israel and chemical weapons in any media outlet in the world again. That was why he needed to meet with the European head of Mossad. On the morning of Monday, March 2, after receiving Vladimir Chevrikov’s call, Al-Saud went to see him at his apartment.

  “What news?”

  “Vincent Pellon just called me. He says that Ariel Bergman, the European head of Mossad, has agreed to meet with you.”

  “Fine. Tell Pellon Thursday.”

  “Thursday, March fifth?”

  “That’s right,” Al-Saud ratified. “On that day, a car
will pick Bergman up at ten at night at the end of the Pont Alexandre III across from Les Invalides, in front of the Charlemagne column. He should be unarmed, without microphones or recorders.”

  Ariel Bergman wrapped his scarf around his neck. The wind whipped off the Seine, and cold burrowed into the tiniest cracks. Although he was bundled up, he felt naked without his Beretta, the regulation weapon of Mossad agents. He wasn’t carrying anything except clothes and his identification. They had thought about the possibility of putting a transmitter under his skin, and dismissed it immediately, suspecting that Al-Saud would have the technology to detect it. They agreed to his demands because they had no choice. Bouchiki’s photographs were going around the world, causing tumult in Tel Aviv. After the first article, on February 25, the NRC Handelsblad had published one more, with new photographs and more facts. Nobody knew exactly how many aces Meijer was hiding up his sleeve.

  In Israel, the prime minister was shouting demands left and right and making the members of the cabinet and Mossad’s director nervous. The previous year’s Convention on Chemical Weapons, organized by the UN, had been discredited in the face of Israel’s flagrant failure to comply, and the secretary general was pressuring the government to provide an explanation. The prime minister suggested the line of argument that although they had signed the Convention on Chemical Weapons, they still hadn’t ratified it, which exempted them from justifying their actions. His advisers suggested that he not mention this argument in public.

  Bergman sighed. He was tired. The consequences of this damn aerial accident from 1996 followed him around like a curse and, above all, distracted him from more relevant matters, such as the sudden appearance of Mohamed Abu Yihad on the European arms trafficking scene, for example. One of the Prince of Marbella’s partners, they were both part of Saddam Hussein’s world and apparently interested in stocking up on weapons, nuclear fuels and red mercury. There was also the disturbing reappearance of a demon from the past, the German terrorist Ulrich Wendorff, and the suspicious movements of a few members of the armed branch of Hamas, the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades, which led him to suspect that its head, Anuar Al-Muzara, was planning a new, deadly attack. Anuar Al-Muzara, he thought to himself with admiration and fury. He was the most slippery, intelligent enemy he had ever faced. Where was he hiding? They didn’t have a clue.

  With these questions dancing around him, Bergman felt trapped in a political tug-of-war that would end the day he put a price on Al-Saud’s silence. He wondered how the UN secretary general would react if they found laboratories producing chemical weapons in Iraq. Maybe, he thought sardonically, they could hire Al-Saud to uncover them in the heart of Baghdad or Tikrit.

  A Peugeot 405, with tinted windows on all sides, including the windshield, stopped with the motor still running in front of the Charlemagne column at the end of Pont Alexandre III. Bergman consulted his TAG Heuer: ten p.m. One of the rear doors opened in an invitation the Mossad agent wasn’t in a position to decline.

  From a Range Rover parked a few yards away on the Quai d’Orsay, the katsas Diuna Kimcha and Mila Cibin watched their boss getting into a Peugeot 405, which crossed Pont Alexandre III heading away from L’Hôtel National des Invalides toward Avenue Winston Churchill. The Range Rover pulled out and followed it. Behind the tinted glass, in the backseat of the Peugeot, a man searched and blindfolded Bergman. They could tell that the vehicle was equipped with electronic countermeasures, because when they got near the Peugeot, their listening devices only played static. Moreover, the electronics experts in the base at the basement of the Israeli embassy warned them that a disruptive electromagnetic signal was being emitted by the Peugeot, preventing the satellite from tracking them. At that moment, the mission depended on Kimcha’s skill at the wheel of the Jeep, so as not to not lose sight of the car carrying Bergman away.

  The Peugeot 405 went under the viaduct on Avenue Général Lemonnier, where the entrance to the underground parking lot of the Louvre was located.

  “They’ve gone into the parking lot,” Cibin realized when he didn’t see them emerge from the other end of the viaduct. “It’ll be difficult to find them there! Damn bastards!”

  It was getting late, but the place was full of cars. When the katsas finally came upon the Peugeot 405, it was empty.

  Bergman, his eyes still blindfolded, was sitting in the back of an Audi A8, which brought him to the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, where they entered through the garage on Rue Maréchal Harispe. The katsa squeezed his eyes shut under the blindfold to sharpen his sense of hearing. He identified the noise of a car elevator that went down one, two, three floors, judging by the three lurching sounds; the pitch of a scanner registering a hand or an eye, he didn’t know which; the buzz of an elevator; the five short beeps of a code being pressed into a keypad and a long, sharp one as the door opened. He was surprised by the silence of his guides; they hadn’t exchanged a word nor had they said anything to him. As soon as he set foot in the room, he was hit by a pleasant aroma, something like orange or bergamot, and he inhaled the clean, fresh air. He counted fifty yards from the entrance to his final destination. A door closed behind him and hands gently pressed down on his shoulders, urging him to take a seat. Another, or perhaps the same set of hands, he couldn’t tell, took off the blindfold. It took him a few seconds of blinking to get used to the soft light shining in his face.

  “Thank you for accepting our invitation,” a masculine voice said politely in English.

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” Bergman admitted, more out of humor than anger.

  Three figures were standing outside of the pool of light. Bergman recognized them immediately: Eliah Al-Saud, Michael Thorton and Anthony Hill, the majority shareholders in Mercure Inc. Peter Ramsay was missing, but he owned fewer shares in the company. Still, Bergman suspected that he wasn’t far away; the ex-member of The Firm must have monitored his transfer to the site.

  “You already know who we are,” Michael Thorton continued. “We don’t need to introduce ourselves. We believe that your agents tried to follow us some time ago, which means that Mossad has identified us.”

  Bergman offered a condescending smile.

  “Yes,” he admitted, “I know you. Lately you’ve been giving me quite a headache.”

  Hill and Thorton laughed briefly; Al-Saud remained impassive. He was quite a lot younger than his partners and he was just as attractive in person as he had been in the photographs. He stayed somewhat removed, standing up, resting on the edge of a table, his legs lightly separated and his arms crossed over his chest. He communicated mistrust that was accentuated by his furrowed brow. A cold, lethal energy flowed from his body. Bergman looked at the muscles in his naked forearms—he had rolled up his white sleeves—and remembered what was said about him, that he had been trained to kill a man with one hand. He couldn’t avoid admiring the man in spite of the problems he had caused him over the last few weeks.

  “Our actions,” Hill said, “are not personally motivated, not even toward you, Mr. Bergman, or the agency you belong to. They’re the consequence of an agreement we made.”

  “Why did you ask me to come to see you?”

  “Because we need a contact in the Israeli government,” Mike explained, “and we think that you’re the perfect person.”

  “A contact? Why?”

  “Mr. Bergman.” Al-Saud spoke for the first time, and leaned down to put himself at the same height as his partners. “We don’t just have proof that the Institute for Biological Research is producing chemical weapons on a large scale, but that El Al flight 2681, which crashed in Bijlmer, was carrying at least three of the four components of the nerve agent known as sarin.” Their eyes met in the bright light. “Our clients hired us last year to investigate whether the rumors that the cargo on the El Al flight wasn’t made up of cosmetics as was claimed were true.”

  “Who are your clients?” Bergman wanted to know.

  “The Metropolitan,” said Anthony, “and World Assurance
, two Dutch insurance companies that have suffered large economic losses due to the accident in 1996.”

  Al-Saud held out a folder, and Bergman studied it for a few long moments in which nobody made a sound. He tried to disguise his unease at the document he was analyzing. Bouchiki’s betrayal reached unthinkable dimensions. He had photographed not just the laboratories but also the documentation containing manifests of the nerve agents and their components and their names and providers. The next part was made up of notes, memorandums, records, documents, delivery orders, shipping manifests and much more, all with the Blahetter logo stamped on them. Many of these papers were in Spanish, a language he didn’t understand, but reading the details in English was enough to appreciate the magnitude of the danger.

  “What do you want?”

  “Our clients,” Tony spoke, “want to meet, discreetly of course, with the transport minister of your country and the authorities from El Al, and, in light of the interesting information with which we have just provided you, negotiate a compensation fee that will alleviate the economic damage suffered from the air crash.”