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

by Daniel Silva

  “Don’t blame yourself for what happened. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s me. I was the one who took this job. I was the one who asked Elizabeth to put her life on hold and come here with me. And I was the one who let her go running in Hyde Park three mornings a week even though I feared something like this could happen.”

  The American ambassador put his glasses back on and gazed at Gabriel thoughtfully for a moment. “But imagine my surprise when I heard that the mysterious man who killed three of the terrorists in Hyde Park was you. The president is my closest friend, Mr. Allon. If it weren’t for you, he might have been killed at the Vatican earlier this year.”

  Actually, it was the pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Luigi Donati, who had saved the president’s life. Gabriel had only killed the assassin, a convert to radical Islam who had managed to penetrate the ranks of the Swiss Guard.

  “What are the British telling you about the prospects of finding your daughter?” he asked.

  “Maddeningly little, I’m afraid. They conducted raids at three locations today where they thought she might be being held. The intelligence turned out to be incorrect. What I don’t understand is why the terrorists haven’t made any demands yet.”

  “Because they know the uncertainty is causing you a great deal of pain. They want you to be grateful when they finally come forward and make their demands.”

  “You’re sure they want something in return?”

  “Yes, Mr. Ambassador. But you have to be prepared for the fact that it’s almost certainly something you can’t give them.”

  “I’m trying to remind myself that there are larger principles and issues of policy involved than the fate of my daughter,” the ambassador said. “I’m preparing myself for the possibility that my daughter might have to die to keep diplomats safe around the world. But it hardly seems a fair tradeoff, Mr. Allon. And I’m not at all sure it’s a price I’m prepared to pay. In fact, I’m quite certain I’d give them anything they wanted to get my daughter back alive.”

  “That’s what they want, Mr. Ambassador. That’s why they’re waiting to make their demands.”

  “Your government has experience in these kinds of matters. What do you think they want?”

  “Prisoners,” Gabriel said. “That’s almost always what they want. It might be several prisoners. Or it might be just one important prisoner.”

  “Like one of the 9/11 masterminds that we’re holding?”

  “It depends on who’s taken her.”

  “I’m considering offering a sizeable reward for information.”

  “How sizeable?”

  “Fifty million dollars.”

  “A reward like that will almost certainly bring out the charlatans and the con artists. And then the British will find themselves buried beneath a blizzard of false tips and leads. It will get in the way of the investigation rather than help it. For the time being, I would recommend keeping your wallet closed, Mr. Ambassador.”

  “That’s probably sound advice.” He looked at Gabriel for a moment without speaking. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I can convince you to stay in London for a few days and help find my daughter?”

  “I’m afraid I have to go home and face the music for getting my picture in the newspaper. Besides, this is a matter for you and the British. Obviously, if we happen to pick up any intelligence, we’ll pass it along right away.”

  The telephone rang. The ambassador lifted the receiver out of the console and brought it to his ear. He listened for a moment, face tense, then murmured, “Thank you, Prime Minister.” He hung up the phone and looked at Gabriel. “The Metropolitan Police just raided a house in Walthamstow in East London. Nothing.” He lapsed into a contemplative silence. “It just occurred to me that you were the last person to see my daughter—the last decent person, I should say.”

  “Yes, Mr. Ambassador, I suppose I was.”

  “Did you see her face?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Yes, sir, I saw her face.”

  “Did they harm her?”

  “It didn’t look as though she was injured.”

  “Was she frightened?”

  Gabriel answered truthfully. “I’m sure she was very frightened, sir, but she didn’t go willingly. She fought them.”

  The ambassador’s eyes shone suddenly with tears.

  “I’m glad she fought them,” Robert Halton said. “I hope she’s fighting them right now.”

  12

  She had fought them. Indeed she had fought them with more rage, and for much longer, than they had anticipated. She had fought them as they raced up the Edgware Road from Hyde Park, and she had fought them in the mews garage in Maida Vale, where they had transferred her to a second van. She had clawed and kicked. She had spit in their faces and called them murderous cowards. In the end, they had been forced to use the needle on her. She didn’t like the needle. She didn’t fight them anymore.

  Her room was small and square, with cinder-block walls painted bone white and a cement floor. It contained nothing except for a folding army cot with a bricklike pillow and a scratchy woolen blanket that smelled of mothballs and disinfectant. Her hands were cuffed and her legs shackled, and they left the light on always so that she had no idea whether it was day or night. There was a spy hole in the metal door through which a malevolent brown eye watched her constantly. She dreamed of ramming a scalpel into it. When she slept, which was seldom, her dreams were filled with violence.

  Interaction with her captors was kept to an absolute minimum and strictly regulated. The ground rules were established early on the first day, after she had awakened from the drugs. All communication was conducted in writing, with notes slipped beneath the door of her cell. Upon receipt of such a note, she was to reply yes or no in a low voice. Any deviation from the procedures, they warned, would result in a loss of food and water. Thus far they had asked her only two questions. One was: Do you want food? The other was: Do you wish to use the toilet? Each time a question appeared beneath her door, she replied yes, regardless of whether she was hungry or needed to relieve herself. Saying yes to them meant a break from the tedium of staring at the featureless white walls. Saying yes meant a moment of contact with her kidnappers, which, no matter how much she loathed them, she found strangely comforting.

  Her food never varied: a bit of bread and cheese, a bottle of water, a few pieces of chocolate if she had been behaving herself. Her toilet was a yellow plastic bucket. Only two of the kidnappers ever entered her cell. They wore balaclava hoods in her presence to conceal their faces, but she learned to recognize them by their eyes. One had brown eyes; the other had green eyes that she found perversely beautiful. She nicknamed “brown eyes” Cain and “green eyes” Abel. Cain always brought her food, but poor Abel was the one who had to collect her bucket. He was kind enough to avert his green eyes when he did so.

  She played mind games with herself to fill the long empty hours. She floated down endless ski runs through perfect crystalline air. She performed difficult surgeries and reread all her dreary medical school textbooks. She spoke often to her mother. But it was the moment of her capture she thought of most. It played ceaselessly in her memory, like a loop of videotape over which she had no control: the men in black jumpsuits pouring out of the vans, the shredded bodies of her friends lying in Hyde Park, the man who had tried to save her. She had glimpsed him briefly as they were forcing her into the back of the van, an angular figure with gray temples, crouched on one knee with a gun in his outstretched hands. She wondered often who he was. She hoped that one day, if she were ever rescued, she would have an opportunity to thank him.

  If she were ever rescued… For some reason she found it easier to contemplate her own death than to picture the moment of her liberation. She knew that she was almost certainly the target of a massive search, but her hope of ever being found faded as the days ground slowly past—and as the notes came with a mind-deadening regularity. Do you want food?…Do you wish to use the toilet?… But on the fift
h day, as the man with gray temples was boarding a jetliner at Heathrow Airport, a different note appeared. It said: One of my men needs a doctor. Will you help us? “Yes,” she replied in a low voice, and a moment later Cain and Abel entered her cell and lifted her gently to her feet.

  They led her wordlessly up a flight of steep narrow stairs, slowly, so that she did not trip over the shackles. At the top of the stairs they passed through a creaking metal door and entered a small warehouse. It was abandoned and dark, except for a single utility lamp burning above a cluster of cots in the far corner. On one of the cots lay a man whose face was not covered by a balaclava. It was twisted into a grimace of pain and damp with sweat. Cain lifted the blanket, exposing his right leg.

  “Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said softly.

  The bullet had entered below the knee and had shattered the crown of the tibia. The entrance wound was about two centimeters in diameter and was imbedded with bits of debris from the clothing he had been wearing the morning of the attack. The surrounding skin was now reddish brown and badly swollen, and red streaks had begun to radiate up the thigh. It was obvious he was suffering from a severe local infection and was on the verge of sepsis. She reached toward his wrist, but one of the terrorists seized her arm. It was the one with brown eyes: Cain.

  “I have to take his pulse.”

  She pulled away from Cain’s grasp and placed her fingertips on the inside of his wrist. The pulse was rapid and weak. Next she placed her hand upon his forehead and found it was damp and burning with fever.

  “He needs to go to a trauma center right away. A good one.”

  Cain shook his head.

  “If he doesn’t, he’ll die.”

  The terrorist lifted a gloved hand and pointed his finger at Elizabeth’s face like a loaded gun.

  “Me? I can’t do anything for him here. He needs to be in a sterile environment. He needs to go to a hospital now.”

  Once again the terrorist shook his head.

  “If I help him, will you let me go?”

  This time he didn’t bother to respond. Elizabeth looked down at the wounded man. He was no more than twenty-five, she guessed, and if she didn’t intervene immediately he would die a very painful death within thirty-six hours. It was a death he deserved, but that didn’t matter now. He was a human being in great pain, and Elizabeth was oath bound to treat him. She looked at the brown-eyed terrorist.

  “I’ll need some things. We are still in Britain, aren’t we?”

  The terrorist hesitated, then nodded.

  “Then your friend is in luck. It’s still possible to get some very strong over-the-counter antibiotics here. Get me a piece of paper and something to write with. I’ll make you a list. Get me everything I ask for. If you don’t, your friend is going to die.”

  13

  BEN-GURION AIRPORT: 10:47 P.M., THURSDAY

  The VIP reception room was empty when Gabriel arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport later that same evening. He walked the long white corridor alone and stepped into the frigid night air. Shamron’s armored limousine was idling in the traffic circle, cigarette smoke wafting through the half-open rear window. Parked behind it was a second car filled with absurdly young security men, a new addition to his detail since the attempt on his life. Shamron had spent his old age surrounded by children with guns. Gabriel feared it would be his fate, too.

  He climbed into the back of the limousine and closed the door. Shamron regarded him silently, then lifted a liver-spotted hand and gestured to his driver to move. A moment later, as they were speeding into the Judean Hills toward Jerusalem, he placed a stack of Israeli newspapers in Gabriel’s lap: Haaretz, Maariv, Yediot Aharonot, the Jerusalem Post. Gabriel’s photograph appeared on the front page of each.

  “I send you to Amsterdam for a few days of quiet reading and this is what you bring me? You know, Gabriel, there are easier ways of getting out of dinner with the prime minister.”

  “I was actually looking forward to it.”

  Shamron gave him a dubious look. “At least the tone of the articles is positive—not like the drubbing we usually endure when our agents are exposed in the field. Once again you’re a national hero. Haaretz has dubbed you ‘Israel’s not-so-secret super-agent.’ That’s my favorite.”

  “I’m glad you find this all so entertaining.”

  “I don’t find it the least bit entertaining,” Shamron said. “We took the extraordinary step of sending you to London to make certain that the British understood the seriousness of our warning. They chose to ignore it, and the result was a holocaust in the Underground and the daughter of the American ambassador in the hands of Islamic terrorists.”

  “Not to mention six dead American diplomats and security men.”

  “Yes, everyone seems to have forgotten them.” Shamron ignited another cigarette. “How did you know they were going to hit in Hyde Park?”

  “I didn’t know. It was just a theory that unfortunately turned out to be correct.”

  “And what led you to this theory?”

  Gabriel told him about the image on the legal pad he’d taken from Samir al-Masri’s apartment in Amsterdam. Shamron smiled. He regarded Gabriel’s flawless memory as one of his finest achievements. Gabriel had come to him with the mechanism in place, but it was Shamron who taught him how to use it.

  “So you warned them not once but twice,” Shamron pointed out. “It’s no wonder the British were behaving like such jackasses during the negotiations for your release. I got the distinct impression that they were using your arrest and incarceration as a means of bringing pressure to bear against us.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “So that your testimony at the inevitable public inquiry into the attacks doesn’t reflect the true nature of your two conversations with Graham Seymour.”

  “Seymour’s covering his ass?”

  “He’s entered the final lap of a long and distinguished career. He can almost see his country house and his knighthood and comfortable seat on the board of a respectable financial house in the City. He doesn’t want some gunslinging Israeli to trip him up as he nears the finish line.”

  “The last thing I’m going to do is fall on my sword to protect Graham Seymour’s reputation and retirement.”

  “No, but you’re not going to go out of your way to embarrass him either. We’ll need to concoct some subtle variation on the truth that protects both your reputation and his.” Shamron smiled; concocting subtle variations on the truth was one of his favorite pastimes. “Burning Graham Seymour serves no useful purpose. You’re going to need him, and his friends, in your next life.”

  “And what life is that?”

  Shamron scrutinized Gabriel through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Being deliberately obtuse serves no useful purpose either, Gabriel. You know very well what we have in store for you. The time has come for you to lead. The keys to the throne room are within your grasp.”

  “Perhaps, Ari, but there’s only one problem. I don’t want them. I have other things I want to do with the rest of my life.”

  “I’m afraid it’s time for you to put away childish things.”

  “You’re referring to restoration?”

  “I am.”

  “You didn’t consider it a childish thing when you were using it as cover to conceal an assassin.”

  “Restoration served both our needs for a long time,” Shamron said, “but its season has faded.”

  They passed the charred hulk of an armored personnel carrier, a remnant of the fierce fighting that took place in the Bab al-Wad during Israel’s War of Independence.

  “I’ve been in the Cabinet Room in times of crisis,” Gabriel said. “I’ve seen our leaders tear each other to shreds. It’s not the way I want to spend the next ten years. Besides, when all those former generals look at me, they’re just going to see a boy with a gun.”

  “You’re not a boy any longer. You are approaching the age when men in government reach the summit of their careers. You’ll
just reach yours a little sooner than most. You were always a bit of a wunderkind.”

  Gabriel held up the copy of Haaretz. “And what about this?”

  “The scandals?” Shamron shrugged. “A career free of scandal is not a proper career at all. For the most part, your scandals have earned you valuable allies in Washington and the Vatican.”

  “They’ve earned me enemies, too.”

  “They would be your enemies regardless of your actions. And they’ll be your enemies long after your body is placed next to Dani’s on the Mount of Olives.” Shamron crushed out his cigarette. “Don’t worry, Gabriel, this is not something that’s going to happen overnight. Amos’s death will be a slow one, and only a handful of people will even know the patient is terminal.”

  “How long?”

  “A year,” Shamron said. “Perhaps eighteen months at the most. Plenty of time for you to repair a few more paintings for your friend in Rome.”

  “There’s no way you’ll be able to keep it a secret for a year, Ari. You always said that the worst place to try to keep a secret is inside an intelligence service.”

  “At the moment only three people are privy to it—you, me, and the prime minister.”

  “And Uzi.”

  “I needed to bring Uzi into the picture,” Shamron said. “Uzi serves as my eyes inside the Office.”

  “Maybe that’s why you want me there.”

  Shamron smiled. “No, Gabriel, I want you there so I can close my eyes.”

  “You’re not thinking of dying, are you, Ari?”

  “I’d just like to take a short nap.”

  Gabriel turned and peered out the rear window of the limousine. The chase car was following closely behind them. He looked at Shamron and asked whether there had been any news from London about Elizabeth Halton.

  “Still nothing from her captors,” Shamron said. “And nothing from the British, at least nothing they’re willing to say in public. But it is possible that we might be coming into some useful intelligence.”