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

by Daniel Silva

  It took them twenty minutes to cover the distance back to the harbor. The café was beginning to fill by the time they arrived, but Jean-Michel found an empty table outside in the shade and sat down. Sarah looked over the menu for a few moments, then lifted her gaze toward the men’s clothing boutique opposite the café. The window display was filled with handmade French dress shirts of expensive-looking cotton. Sarah closed the menu and looked at Jean-Michel.

  “I should buy Zizi a thank-you present.”

  “The last thing Zizi needs is a gift. He truly is the man who has everything.”

  “I should get him something. He was very generous to me.”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  She touched Jean-Michel’s arm and pointed to the boutique.

  “The last thing Zizi needs is another shirt,” he said.

  “They’re very nice-looking, though.”

  Jean-Michel nodded. “They’re French,” he said. “We still can do a few things well.”

  “Give me your credit card.”

  “It’s an AAB company card.”

  “I’ll reimburse you.”

  He produced a card from the pocket of his running shorts and handed it over. “Don’t bother paying me back,” he said. “Trust me, Sarah, you won’t be the first person to buy Zizi a present with his own money.”

  “What size shirt does he wear?”

  “Sixteen-and-a-half-inch neck, thirty-three sleeve.”

  “Very impressive.”

  “I’m his personal trainer.”

  She gave Jean-Michel her breakfast order—tartin, scrambled eggs, and café au lait—then walked over to the boutique. She stood outside for a moment, gazing at the shirts in the window, then slipped through the entrance. An attractive young woman with short blond hair greeted her in French. Sarah selected two shirts, one dark blue, the other pale yellow, and gave the woman Zizi’s measurements. The woman disappeared into a back room and returned a moment later with the shirts.

  “Do you have a gift box?”

  “Of course, Madame.”

  She produced one from beneath the counter, then carefully wrapped the shirts in tissue paper and placed them inside.

  “Do you have a gift card of some sort?” Sarah asked. “Something with an envelope?”

  Again the woman reached beneath the counter. She placed the card before Sarah and handed her a pen.

  “How will you be paying, Madame?”

  Sarah gave her the credit card. While the saleswoman rang up the purchases, Sarah leaned over the gift card and wrote: Alain al-Nasser—Montreal. Then she inserted the card into the envelope, licked the adhesive flap, and sealed it tightly. The saleswoman then placed the credit card receipt in front of Sarah. She signed it, then handed the woman the pen, along with the sealed envelope.

  “I don’t understand, Madame.”

  “Sometime this morning a friend of mine is going to come here to see whether I forgot something,” Sarah said. “Please give my friend this envelope. If you do, you’ll be paid handsomely. Discretion is important. Do you understand me, Madame?”

  “Of course.” She smiled at Sarah mischievously, then looked at Jean-Michel sitting in the café. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  The woman placed the gift box in a paper bag and handed it to Sarah. Sarah winked at her, then went out and returned to the café. Her breakfast was waiting for her when she sat down.

  “Any problems?” Jean-Michel asked.

  Sarah shook her head and handed him the credit card. “No,” she said. “No problems at all.”

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER Sarah and Jean-Michel boarded the launch and returned to Alexandra. Gabriel waited another fifteen minutes before entering the boutique. He collected the gift card from the saleswoman and gave her one hundred euros for her trouble. Five minutes after that he was seated at the tiller of a Zodiac, heading out of the inner harbor toward the anchorage.

  Alexandra lay directly before him, by far the largest private vessel in port, second in scale only to the cruise ship that had come in overnight. Gabriel turned a few degrees to port and headed toward Sun Dancer, which was anchored several hundred yards away, near the twin rocks that stood guard over the entrance of the harbor. He tied off the Zodiac at the stern and went into the main salon, which had been converted into a mobile command and operations center. There was a secure satellite telephone and a computer with a link to King Saul Boulevard. Two dozen cellular phones and several handheld radios stood in formation in their chargers, and a video camera with telephoto lens was trained on Alexandra.

  Gabriel stood before the monitor and watched Sarah step out onto her private sundeck. Then he looked at Yaakov, who was on the phone to Tel Aviv. When Yaakov hung up a moment later, Gabriel held up the gift card. Alain al-Nasser—Montreal.

  “That’s our girl,” Yaakov said. “Have a seat, Gabriel. King Saul Boulevard has had a busy morning.”

  GABRIEL POURED HIMSELF a cup of coffee from a thermos and sat down.

  “Technical hacked into the reservation system of the villa rental firm early this morning,” Yaakov said. “The villa where Sarah went last night was rented by a company called Meridian Construction of Montreal.”

  “Meridian Construction is controlled entirely by AAB Holdings,” Lavon said.

  “Did the reservation say who would be staying there?” Gabriel asked.

  Yaakov shook his head. “The booking was handled by a woman named Katrine Devereaux at Meridian headquarters. She paid for everything in advance and instructed the rental company to have the house open and ready for his arrival.”

  “When did he get here?”

  “Three days ago, according to the records.”

  “How much longer is he staying?”

  “The reservation is for four more nights.”

  “What about his car?”

  “There’s a Cabriolet parked at the house now. The sticker on the back says Island Rental Cars. No computerized reservation system. Everything’s on paper. If we want the particulars we’ll have to break in the old-fashioned way.”

  Gabriel looked at Mordecai, a neviot man by training. “Their office is at the airport,” Mordecai said. “It’s nothing more than a booth with a sliding aluminum shutter over the window and one door for the staff to come in and out. We could be inside in a matter of seconds. The problem is that the airport itself is under guard at night. We could lose the entire operation just to find out the name and credit card number he used to rent his car.”

  “Too risky,” Gabriel said. “Any activity on the telephone?”

  Mordecai had placed a transmitter in the junction box overnight. “One call this morning,” he said. “A woman. She phoned a hair salon in Saint-Jean and made an appointment for this afternoon.”

  “What did she call herself?”

  “Madame al-Nasser,” Mordecai said. “There’s one small problem with the tap. As it stands now, we’re at the outside edge of its range. The signal is weak and full of interference. If bin Shafiq picked up the phone right now we might not be able to make a voice ID on him because of static on the line. We need a listening post.”

  Gabriel looked at Yaakov. “What about moving the boat?”

  “The waters off that point are too rough to be used as an anchorage. If we dropped anchor out there to watch the villa, we’d stick out like a sore thumb. We might as well just walk up to al-Nasser’s front door and introduce ourselves.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” said Mikhail as he entered the salon. “I volunteer.”

  “We need a static post,” Yaakov said.

  “So we’ll get one.” Gabriel held up the gift card again. “What about this name? Do you recognize it?”

  “It’s not an alias that we know about,” Yaakov said. “I’ll have King Saul Boulevard run it through the computers and see what they come up with.”

  “What now?” asked Mikhail.

  “We’ll spend the day watching him,” Gabriel said. “We’ll try to get his photo
graph and his voice. If we can, we’ll send them to King Saul Boulevard for analysis.”

  “It’s a small island,” Lavon said, his tone cautionary. “And we have limited personnel.”

  “That can work to our advantage. In a place like this, it’s not uncommon to see the same people every day.”

  “True,” Lavon said, “but bin Talal’s goons will get nervous if they see too many familiar faces.”

  “And what if King Saul Boulevard tells us that Alain al-Nasser of Montreal is really a Saudi GID officer named Ahmed bin Shafiq?” Mikhail asked. “What do we do then?”

  Gabriel glanced up at the monitor and looked at Sarah. “I’m going back to Gustavia,” he said, still gazing at the screen. “We need a listening post.”

  THE WELL-BRED ENGLISHWOMAN who greeted him fifteen minutes later at the Sibarth villa rental agency had sun-streaked brown hair and pale blue eyes. Gabriel played the role of Heinrich Kiever, a German of means who had stumbled upon paradise and now wished to stay on a bit longer. The Englishwoman smiled—she had heard many such tales before—then printed out a listing of available properties. Gabriel scanned it and frowned. “I was hoping for something here,” he said, tapping the map that lay spread over her desk. “On this point on the north side of the Island.”

  “Pointe Milou? Yes, it’s lovely, but I’m afraid we have nothing available there at the moment. We do have something here, though.” She tapped the map. “The next point over. Pointe Mangin.”

  “Can you see Pointe Milou from the house?”

  “Yes, quite clearly. Would you like to see some photographs?”

  “Please.”

  The woman produced a brochure and opened it to the appropriate page. “It’s four bedrooms, Herr Kiever. Did you need something that large?”

  “Actually, we might be having some company.”

  “Then I suspect this will do brilliantly. It’s a bit pricey, twelve thousand a week, and I’m afraid there’s a two-week minimum.”

  Gabriel shrugged, as if to say money was no object.

  “No children and absolutely no pets. You don’t have a dog, do you?”

  “Heavens no.”

  “There’s a two-thousand-dollar security deposit as well, bringing the grand total to twenty-six thousand, payable in advance, of course.”

  “When can we have it?”

  She looked at her watch. “It’s ten-fifteen now. If we rush things along, we should be able to have you and your wife in by eleven-thirty at the latest.”

  Gabriel smiled and handed her a credit card.

  THOUGH THE ENGLISHWOMAN did not know it, the first guests arrived at the villa fifteen minutes after Gabriel and Dina had settled in. Their possessions were quite unlike those of ordinary visitors to the island. Mordecai brought a voice-activated receiver and a Nikon camera with a long lens, while Mikhail arrived with a nylon rucksack containing cellular phones, radios, and four handguns. An hour later they glimpsed their quarry for the first time when he strode onto the terrace, dressed in white shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt. Mordecai snapped several photos of him. Five minutes later, when al-Nasser emerged shirtless from the pool after a vigorous swim, he snapped several more. Gabriel examined the images on the computer but deemed them unworthy of sending to King Saul Boulevard for analysis.

  At one in the afternoon the light on the voice-activated recorder turned from red to green. A burst of tone came over the line, followed by the sound of someone inside the house dialing a local number. After two rings the call was answered by a woman at La Gloriette restaurant. Gabriel closed his eyes in disappointment when the next voice on the line was that of Madame al-Nasser, requesting a lunch reservation for two o’clock. He briefly considered putting a team inside the restaurant but ruled it out after obtaining a description of the cramped beachside dining room. Mordecai, however, managed to take two more photographs of al-Nasser, one as he was climbing out of his car in the parking lot and a second as he was sipping a drink at his table. In both he was wearing dark sports sunglasses and a long-sleeved shirt. Gabriel dispatched them to King Saul Boulevard for analysis. One hour later, as al-Nasser and his wife were leaving the restaurant, King Saul Boulevard sent a flash over the secure link that the results were inconclusive.

  At 3:30 they departed La Gloriette and drove to Saint-Jean village, where al-Nasser dropped his wife at the hair salon. From there he went to Gustavia, where, at 3:50, he boarded a launch and headed to Alexandra. Yossi recorded his arrival from the bridge of Sun Dancer, along with the warm embrace he received from Zizi al-Bakari as they entered the upstairs office suite for a private meeting. Sarah was not on board to see al-Nasser’s arrival, for at that moment she and most of Zizi’s entourage were snorkeling in Île Fourche, a small deserted island about a mile northeast of Saint-Bart’s.

  The meeting lasted a little over an hour. Yossi recorded al-Nasser’s departure from Zizi’s office and the altogether determined expression on his face as he boarded the launch and headed back to Gustavia. Mikhail followed him back to Saint-Jean village, where he collected his newly coiffed wife from the salon shortly after six o’clock. By 6:30 al-Nasser was once again swimming laps in his pool, and Mikhail was seated glumly next to Gabriel in the villa on the other side of the inlet.

  “We’ve been chasing him all day,” Mikhail said, “and what have we got to show for it? A few useless pictures. Alain al-Nasser is obviously bin Shafiq. Let’s take him now and be done with it.”

  Gabriel gave him a disdainful look. “Some day, when you’re a little older and wiser, I’ll tell you a story about the night an Office hit team thought they had the prize in their sights and killed an innocent waiter by mistake.”

  “I know the story, Gabriel. It happened in Lillehammer. Inside the Office you still refer to it as Leyl-ha-Mar: the Night of Bitterness. But it was a long time ago.”

  “It is still the greatest operational blunder in the history of the Office. They killed the wrong man, and they got caught doing it. They broke all the rules. They acted hastily, and they let their emotions get the better of them. We’ve come too far to have another Leyl-ha-Mar. First we get proof—airtight, unassailable proof—that Alain al-Nasser is Ahmed bin Shafiq. Only then do we start talking about killing him. And we pull the trigger only if we can get Sarah and the entire team off this island without getting caught.”

  “How are we going to get proof?”

  “The photographs aren’t good enough,” Gabriel said. “We need his voice.”

  “He doesn’t speak.”

  “Everyone speaks. We just have to make him speak while we’re listening.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  Just then the green light shone on the telephone recorder and a burst of dial tone came blaring over the speakers. Madame al-Nasser’s call lasted less than thirty seconds. When it was over, Gabriel listened to it again, just to make certain he’d got the details right.

  “Le Poivre.”

  “We’d like a table for two at nine o’clock.”

  “We’re booked then, Madame. I can do eight or nine-thirty.”

  “Eight is too early. We’ll take the nine-thirty, please.”

  “You’re name?”

  “Al-Nasser.”

  Gabriel pressed the Stop button and looked at Mikhail—Patience, my boy. Good things come to those who wait.

  THE RESTAURANT known as Le Poivre is one of the island’s undiscovered gems. It stands at the far end of a pleasant little shopping center in Saint-Jean, at the intersection of the main coast road and a narrow track that climbs the heights overlooking the beach. It has no view, other than the traffic and the parking lot, and little in the way of ambience. The dining room is the size of an average suburban patio. The service is sometimes listless, but the food, when it finally arrives, is always among the best on the island. Still, because of its unremarkable location, those who come to Saint Bart’s to be seen are rarely seen at Le Poivre, and nothing much out of the ordinary ever happens the
re. It is why, to this day, they still talk about the incident that occurred there involving Monsieur and Madame al-Nasser.

  The staff know the story well, as do the locals who drink at the tiny bar. Afternoons, during the docile period between lunch and the evening rush, they often recount it over a glass of rosé or an espresso and a cigarette. The reservation had been for 9:30, but they had come on the early side. Odette, the hostess on duty that night, remembers it as 9:15, but Étienne, the bartender, will tell you with great certainty that it was 9:20. There were no tables yet available, and so they had a seat at the bar to wait. Étienne saw to the drinks, of course. A glass of champagne for Madame al-Nasser. A pineapple juice for the gentleman. “Nothing else?” Étienne had asked, but the gentleman had smiled without charm and in a voice barely above a whisper had replied: “Just the juice, please.”

  A table opened sometime after 9:30. Again there is mild dispute over the time. Denise, the waitress, recalls it as 9:40, but Odette, keeper of the reservation sheet and watcher of the clock, swears it was no later than 9:35. Regardless of the time, Monsieur and Madame al-Nasser were not happy with the table. Madame complained that it was too close to the entrance of the toilet, but one had the impression that Monsieur al-Nasser disliked the table for a different reason, though he never voiced an opinion.

  It was nearly ten before the next table opened. This one was against the rail overlooking the street. Monsieur al-Nasser sat in the chair facing the bar, but Étienne remembers that his gaze was fixed permanently on the traffic flowing along the coast road. Denise apprised them of the evening’s menu and took their drink orders. Madame ordered a bottle of wine. Côtes du Rhône, says Denise. Bordeaux, according to Étienne. Of the wine’s color, however, there is no dispute. It was red, and much of it would soon be splashed across Madame’s white tropical pantsuit.

  The catalyst for the incident arrived at Le Poivre at 10:15. He was small of stature and unimpressive of build. Étienne made him at five-eight, a hundred fifty pounds at the most. He wore a pair of baggy khaki shorts that hadn’t been washed in some time, an oversized gray T-shirt with a tear in the left sleeve, a pair of sandals with Velcro straps, and a golf cap that had seen better days. Strangely, no one can summon a compelling portrait of his face. Étienne remembers a pair of outdated eyeglasses. Odette recalls an untrimmed mustache that really didn’t suit his features. Denise only remembers the walk. His legs had a slight outward bend to them, she will tell you. Like a man who can run very fast or is good at football.