Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant

by Daniel Silva

  “You’re talking too much. I’ll never finish this if you keep talking.”

  “I’m hungry. You shouldn’t have mentioned food. How’s Leah, by the way?”

  Gabriel stopped sketching and glared at Chiara over the top of the sketchpad, as if to tell her he did not appreciate the rather cavalier juxta-position of food and his wife.

  “I’m sorry,” Chiara said. “How is she?”

  Gabriel heard himself say that Leah was doing well, that two or three days a week he drove up to the psychiatric hospital atop Mount Herzl to spend a few minutes with her. But as he told her these things his mind was elsewhere; on a tiny street in Vienna not far from the Judenplatz; on the car bomb that killed his son and the inferno that destroyed Leah’s body and stole her memory. For thirteen years she had been silent in his presence. Now, for brief periods, she spoke to him. Recently, in the garden of the hospital, she had posed to him the same question Chiara had a moment earlier: Were there other women while I was gone? He had answered her truthfully.

  “Did you love this girl, Gabriel?”

  “I loved her, but I gave her up for you.”

  “Why on earth would you do that, my love? Look at me. There’s nothing left of me. Nothing but a memory.”

  Chiara had lapsed into silence. The light on her face was fading slowly from coral-red to gray. The plump woman appeared in the window opposite and began reeling in her laundry. Chiara lifted the sheet to her throat.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want Signora Lorenzetto to see me naked.”

  Gabriel, in pulling the sheet down to its original position, left a smudge of charcoal on her breast.

  “I suppose I have to move back to Jerusalem,” she said. “Unless you feel like telling Shamron that you can’t take over Special Ops because you’re coming back to Venice.”

  “It’s tempting,” Gabriel said.

  “Tempting, but not possible. You’re a loyal soldier, Gabriel. You always do what you’re told. You always did.” She brushed the charcoal from her breast. “At least I won’t have to decorate the apartment.”

  Gabriel’s eyes remained downward toward the sketchpad. Chiara studied his expression, then asked, “Gabriel, what have you done to the apartment?”

  “I’m afraid I needed a place to work.”

  “So you just moved some things around?”

  “You know, I’m getting hungry, too.”

  “Gabriel Allon, is there anything left?”

  “It’s warm tonight,” he said. “Let’s take the boat out to Murano and have fish.”

  9.

  Jerusalem

  IT WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK the following evening when Gabriel returned to Narkiss Street. Shamron’s car was parked at the curb and Rami, his bodyguard, was standing watch in the walkway outside Number 16. Upstairs Gabriel found all the lights on and Shamron drinking coffee at the kitchen table.

  “How did you get in?”

  “In case you’ve forgotten, this used to be an Office safe flat. There’s a key in Housekeeping.”

  “Yes, but I changed the locks over the summer.”

  “Really?”

  “I guess I’ll have to change them again.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  Gabriel pushed open the window to vent the smoke from the room. Six cigarette butts lay like spent bullets in one of Gabriel’s saucers. Shamron had been here for some time.

  “How was Venice?” Shamron asked.

  “Venice was lovely, but the next time you break into my flat, please have the courtesy to not smoke.” Gabriel picked up the saucer by the edge and poured the cigarette butts into the garbage. “What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait till the morning?”

  “Another Saudi link to the attack on the Vatican.”

  Gabriel looked up at Shamron. “What is it?”

  “Ibrahim el-Banna.”

  “The Egyptian cleric? Why am I not surprised.”

  Gabriel sat down at the table.

  “Two nights ago our station chief in Cairo held a secret meeting with one of our top sources inside the Egyptian Mukhabarat. It seems Professor Ibrahim el-Banna had a well-established militant pedigree, long before he went to the Vatican. His older brother was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was a close associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number-two man in al-Qaeda. A nephew went to Iraq to fight the Americans and was killed in the siege of Fallujah. Apparently tapes of the imam’s sermons are required listening among Egyptian Islamic militants.”

  “Too bad our friend in the Mukhabarat didn’t tell the Vatican the truth about el-Banna. Seven hundred people might be alive—and the Dome of the Basilica might not have a hole in it.”

  “The Egyptians knew something else about Professor el-Banna,” Shamron said. “Throughout much of the eighties and nineties, when the problem of Islamic fundamentalism was exploding in Egypt, Professor el-Banna received regular cash payments and instructions from a Saudi who posed as an official of the International Islamic Relief Organization, one of the main Saudi charities. This man called himself Khalil, but Egyptian intelligence knew his real name: Ahmed bin Shafiq. What makes this even more interesting is bin Shafiq’s occupation at that time.”

  “He was GID,” said Gabriel.

  “Exactly.”

  The GID, or General Intelligence Department, was the name of the Saudi intelligence service.

  “What do we know about him?”

  “Until four years ago, bin Shafiq was chief of a clandestine GID unit code-named Group 205, which was responsible for establishing and maintaining links between Saudi Arabia and Islamic militant groups around the Middle East. Egypt was one of Group 205’s top priorities, along with Afghanistan, of course.”

  “What’s the significance of the number?”

  “It was the extension of bin Shafiq’s office in GID Headquarters.”

  “What happened four years ago?”

  “Bin Shafiq and his operatives were funneling matériel and money to the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. A Palestinian informant told us about the operation, and we told the Americans. The American president showed our evidence to the king and brought pressure on him to shut down Group 205. That was six months after 9/11, and the king had no choice but to accede to the president’s wishes, much to the dismay of bin Shafiq and other hardliners inside the kingdom. Group 205 was terminated, and bin Shafiq was run out of the GID.”

  “Has he gone over to the other side of the street?”

  “Are you asking whether he’s a terrorist? The answer is, we don’t know. What we do know is that Islamic militancy is in his blood. His grandfather was a commander of the Ikhwan, the Islamic movement created by Ibn Saud at the turn of the nineteenth century in the Najd.”

  Gabriel knew the Ikhwan well. In many respects they were the prototype and spiritual precursor of today’s Islamic militant groups.

  “Where else did bin Shafiq operate when he was with Group 205?”

  “Afghanistan, Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria. We even suspect he’s been in the West Bank.”

  “So it’s possible we’re dealing with someone who has terrorist contacts ranging from al-Qaeda to Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt. If bin Shafiq has gone over to the other side, he’s the nightmare scenario. The perfect terrorist mastermind.”

  “We found another interesting tidbit in our own files,” Shamron said. “About two years ago we were receiving reports of a Saudi trolling the camps of southern Lebanon looking for experienced fighters. According to the reports, this Saudi called himself Khalil.”

  “The same name bin Shafiq used in Cairo.”

  “Unfortunately, we didn’t pursue it. Frankly, if we chased down every moneyed Saudi who was trying to raise an army to wage jihad, we wouldn’t get much else done. Hindsight, as they say, is twenty-twenty.”

  “How much more do we have on bin Shafiq?”

  “Precious little, I’m afraid.”

  “What about a photograph?”

>   Shamron shook his head. “As you might expect, he’s somewhat camera shy.”

  “We need to share, Ari. The Italians need to know that there may be a Saudi connection. So do the Americans.”

  “I know.” Shamron’s tone was gloomy. The idea of sharing a hard-won piece of intelligence was heresy to him, especially if nothing was to be gained in return. “It used to be blue and white,” he said, referencing the national colors of Israel. “That was our motto. Our belief system. We did things ourselves. We didn’t ask others for help, and we didn’t help others with problems of their own making.”

  “The world has changed, Ari.”

  “Perhaps it’s a world I’m not cut out for. When we were fighting the PLO or Black September, it was simple Newtonian physics. Hit them here, squeeze them there. Watch them, listen to them, identify the members of their organization, eliminate their leadership. Now we’re fighting a movement—a cancer that has metastasized to every vital organ of the body. It’s like trying to capture fog in a glass. The old rules don’t apply. Blue and white isn’t enough. I can tell you one thing, though. This isn’t going to go down well in Washington. The Saudis have many friends there.”

  “Money will do that,” Gabriel said. “But the Americans need to know the truth about their best friend in the Arab world.”

  “They know the truth. They just don’t want to face it. The Americans know that in many ways the Saudis are the wellspring of Islamic terrorism, that the Saudis planted the seeds, watered them with petrodollars, and fertilized them with Wahhabi hatred and propaganda. The Americans seem content to live with this, as if Saudi-inspired terrorism is just a small surcharge on every tank of gasoline. What they don’t understand is that terrorism can never be defeated unless they go after the source: Riyadh and the al-Saud.”

  “All the more reason to share with them intelligence linking the GID and the al-Saud to the attack on the Vatican.”

  “I’m glad you think so, because you’ve been nominated to go to Washington to brief them on what we know.”

  “When do I leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  Shamron looked absently out the window and for the second time asked Gabriel about his trip to Venice.

  “I was lured there under false pretenses,” Gabriel said. “But I’m glad I went.”

  “Who did the luring?”

  Gabriel told him. The smile that appeared on Shamron’s face made Gabriel wonder whether he was involved in the operation as well.

  “Is she coming here?”

  “We spent a single day together,” Gabriel said. “We weren’t able to make any plans.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” Shamron said warily. “Surely you’re not contemplating a return to Venice. Have you forgotten you’ve made a commitment to take over Special Ops.”

  “No, I haven’t forgotten.”

  “By the way, your appointment will be made official when you return from Washington.”

  “I’m counting the hours.”

  Shamron looked around the apartment. “Did you confess to Chiara that you gave away all her furniture?”

  “She knows I had to make some changes to accommodate my studio.”

  “She’s not going to be happy,” Shamron said. “I’d give anything to see Chiara’s face when she walks in here for the first time.”

  SHAMRON STAYED FOR another hour, debriefing Gabriel about the attack on the Vatican. At nine-fifteen Gabriel walked him down to the car, then stood in the street for a moment and watched the taillights disappear around the corner. He went back upstairs and put the kitchen in order, then shut out the lights and went into his bedroom. Just then the apartment block shook with the clap of a thunderous explosion. Like all Israelis, he had become adept at estimating the casualty toll of suicide bombs by counting the sirens. The more sirens, the more ambulances. The more ambulances, the more dead and wounded. He heard a single siren, then another, then a third. Not too large, he thought. He switched on the television and waited for the first bulletin, but fifteen minutes after the explosion there was still no word. In frustration he picked up the phone and dialed Shamron’s car. There was no answer.

  PART TWO

  Dr. Gachet’s Daughter

  10.

  Ein Kerem, Jerusalem

  GILAH SHAMRON’S LIFE HAD been a succession of tense vigils. She had endured the secret missions to dangerous lands, the wars and the terror, the crises and the Security Cabinet meetings that never seemed to end before midnight. She had always feared an enemy from Shamron’s past would one day rise and take his revenge. She had always known that one day Ari would force her to wait for word of whether he was going to live or die.

  Gabriel found her seated calmly in a private waiting room in the intensive care unit of the Hadassah Medical Center. Shamron’s famous bomber jacket lay across her lap, and she was absently plucking at the tear in the right breast that Shamron had never seen fit to repair. Gabriel had always seen something of Golda Meir in Gilah’s sad gaze and wild gray hair. He could not look at Gilah without thinking of the day Golda pinned a medal on his chest in secret and, with tears in her eyes, thanked him for avenging the eleven Israelis murdered at Munich.

  “What happened, Gabriel? How did they get to Ari in the middle of Jerusalem?”

  “He’s probably been under surveillance for a very long time. When he left my apartment tonight, he told me he was going back to the Prime Minister’s Office to do a bit of work.” Gabriel sat down and took Gilah’s hand. “They hit him at a traffic signal on King George Street.”

  “A suicide bomber?”

  “We think there were two men. They were in a van and disguised as haredi Jews. The bomb was abnormally large.”

  She looked up at the television mounted high on the wall. “I can see that from the pictures. It’s remarkable anyone survived.”

  “A witness saw Ari’s car accelerate suddenly an instant before the bomb went off. Rami or the driver must have seen something that made them suspicious. The armor plating withstood the force of the blast, but the car was thrown into the air. Apparently it rolled at least twice.”

  “Who did this? Was it Hamas? Islamic Jihad? The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades?”

  “There’s been a claim by the Brotherhood of Allah.”

  “The same people who did the Vatican?”

  “Yes, Gilah.”

  “Do you believe them?”

  “It’s early,” Gabriel said. “What have the doctors told you?”

  “He’s going to be in surgery for at least another three hours. They say we’ll be able to see him when he comes out, but only for a minute or two. They’ve warned me he won’t look good.”

  Gilah studied him for a moment, then looked up at the television again. “You’re worried he’s not going to live, aren’t you, Gabriel?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Gilah. “Shamron is indestructible. Shamron is eternal.”

  “What did they tell you about his injuries?”

  She recited them calmly. The inventory of damaged organs, head trauma, and broken bones made clear to Gabriel that Shamron’s survival was by no means assured.

  “Ari came through it the best of the three,” Gilah said. “Apparently Rami and the driver were hurt much worse. Poor Rami. He’s been standing guard over Ari for years. And now this.”

  “Where’s Yonatan?”

  “He was on duty in the north tonight. He’s on his way.”

  Shamron’s only son was a colonel in the Israel Defense Force. Ronit, his wayward daughter, had moved to New Zealand in order to get away from her domineering father. She was living there on a chicken farm with a gentile. It had been years since she and Shamron had spoken.

  “Ronit’s coming, too,” Gilah said. “Who knows? Maybe something good can come out of all this. Ronit’s absence has been very hard on him. He blames himself, as well he should. Ari’s very hard on his children. But then you know that, don’t you, Gabriel?”


  Gilah stared directly into Gabriel’s eyes for a moment, then looked suddenly away. For years she had thought him a deskman of some sort who knew much about art and spent a great deal of time in Europe. Like the rest of the country she had learned the true nature of his work by reading the newspapers. Her demeanor toward him had changed since his unmasking. She was quiet around him, careful never to upset him, and incapable of looking him too long in the eye. Gabriel had seen behavior like Gilah’s before, as a child, whenever people had entered the Allon home. Death had left its mark on Gabriel’s face, just as Birkenau had stained the face of his mother. Gilah couldn’t gaze long into his eyes because she feared what she might see there.

  “He wasn’t well before this. He’s been hiding it, of course—even from the prime minister.”

  Gabriel wasn’t surprised. He knew Shamron had been covertly battling various ailments for years. The old man’s health, like almost every other aspect of his life, was a closely held secret.

  “Is it the kidneys?”

  Gilah shook her head. “The cancer is back.”

  “I thought they got it all.”

  “So did Ari,” she said. “And that’s not all. His lungs are a mess from the cigarettes. Tell him not to smoke so much.”

  “He never listens to me.”

  “You’re the only one he listens to. He loves you like a son, Gabriel. Sometimes I think he loves you more than Yonatan.”

  “Don’t be silly, Gilah.”

  “He’s never happier than when you’re sitting on the terrace together in Tiberias.”

  “We’re usually arguing.”

  “He likes arguing with you, Gabriel.”

  “I’ve gathered that.”

  On the television cabinet ministers and security chiefs were arriving at the Prime Minister’s Office for an emergency session. Under ordinary circumstances Shamron would have been among them. Gabriel looked at Gilah. She was pulling at the torn leather of Shamron’s jacket. “It was Ari, wasn’t it?” she asked. “It was Ari who dragged you into this life…after Munich.”