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

by Daniel Silva

  “Welcome to Downing Street,” said the British prime minister. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

  “Please forgive my appearance, Prime Minister. It’s been a long few days.”

  “We heard about your misadventure in Denmark. It appears you were deceived. We all were.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  “We treated you shabbily after the attack in Hyde Park, but the fact that your name and face appeared in the newspapers has provided us with an opportunity to save Elizabeth Halton’s life. I’m afraid we need your rather serious help, Mr. Allon. Are you prepared to listen to what we have to say?”

  “Of course, Prime Minister.”

  The prime minister smiled. It was a replica of a smile, thought Gabriel, and about as warm as the December afternoon.

  They hiked up the long Grand Staircase, beneath portraits of British prime ministers past.

  “Our logs contain no evidence of any previous visits by you to Downing Street, Mr. Allon. Is that the case, or have you slipped in here before?”

  “This is my first time, Prime Minister.”

  “I suppose it must seem rather different from your own prime minister’s office.”

  “That’s putting it mildly, sir. Our staterooms are decorated in early kibbutz chic.”

  “We’ll meet in the White Room,” the prime minister said. “Henry Campbell-Bannerman died there in 1908, but, as far as I know, no one has died there today.”

  They passed through a set of tall double doors and went inside. The heavy rose-colored curtains were drawn, and the Waterford glass chandelier glowed softly overhead. Robert Halton was seated on a striped couch, next to Dame Eleanor McKenzie, the director general of MI5. Her counterpart from M16 was pacing, and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was off in one corner, speaking quietly into a mobile phone. After a set of hasty introductions, Gabriel was directed to the end of the second couch, where he sat beneath the mournful gaze of a Florence Nightingale statuette. A log fire was burning brightly in the hearth. A steward brought tea that no one drank.

  The prime minister lowered himself into the wing chair opposite the fireplace and brought the proceedings to order. He spoke calmly, as though he were explaining a bit of dull but important economic policy. At noon London time, he said, Ambassador Halton submitted his resignation to the White House and made an offer of twenty million dollars’ ransom to the terrorists in exchange for his daughter’s freedom. Shortly after two o’clock London time, the terrorists made contact with FBI negotiators in the American embassy and, after providing proof that they were indeed holding Elizabeth captive, made a counteroffer. They wanted thirty million dollars instead of twenty. If the money was delivered as instructed—and if there were no traps or arrests—Elizabeth would be released twenty-four hours later.

  “So why am I here?” asked Gabriel, though he already knew the answer.

  “You are an intelligent man, Mr. Allon. You tell me.”

  “I’m here because they want me to the deliver the money.”

  “I’m afraid that is correct,” said the prime minister. “At five fifty-nine London time, they are going to call the FBI negotiator at the embassy. They want a one-word answer: yes or no. If the answer is no, Elizabeth Halton will be executed immediately. If it is yes—meaning that you have agreed to all their demands—she will be released forty-eight hours from now, give or take a few hours.”

  A heavy silence fell over the room. It was broken by Adrian Carter, who objected on Gabriel’s behalf. “The answer is no,” he said. “It is an obvious trap. I can think of three possible outcomes, none of them pleasant.”

  “We all know the pitfalls, Mr. Carter,” said the director-general of MI6. “There’s no need to review them now.”

  “Humor me,” said Carter. “I’m just a dull-witted American. Scenario number one, Gabriel will be killed immediately after delivering the money. Scenario number two, he will be taken captive, tortured savagely for some period of time, and then killed. The third scenario, however, is probably the most likely outcome.”

  “And what’s that?” asked the prime minister.

  “Gabriel will take Elizabeth Halton’s place as a hostage. The Sword of Allah and al-Qaeda will then make demands on the Israeli government instead of ours, and we’ll all be right back at square one.”

  “With one important difference,” added Graham Seymour. “Much of the world will be rooting for the Sword to kill him. He is an Israeli and a Jew, an occupier and an oppressor, and therefore in the eyes of many in Europe and the Islamic world he is worthy of death. His murder would be a major propaganda victory for the terrorists.”

  “But his cooperation will buy us something we have in exceedingly short supply at the moment,” said Eleanor McKenzie. “If we say yes tonight, we will be granted at least twenty-four additional hours to look for Miss Halton.”

  “We’ve been looking for her for two weeks,” said Carter. “Unless someone has made some serious inroads that I’m not aware of, twenty-four additional hours aren’t going to make much of a difference.”

  Gabriel looked at Robert Halton. It had been more than a week since Gabriel had seen him last, and in those days the ambassador’s face appeared to have aged many years. The prime minister would have been wise to conduct this conversation without Halton present, because to say no at this moment would be an act of almost unspeakable cruelty. Or perhaps that was exactly the reason the prime minister had invited him here. He had left Gabriel no option but to agree to the scheme.

  “They’re going to make additional demands,” Gabriel said. “They’ll demand that I come alone. They’ll warn that if I’m followed, the deal is off and Elizabeth dies. We’re going to abide by those rules.” He looked at Seymour and Carter. “No surveillance, British or American.”

  “You can’t go into this thing with no one watching your back,” said the chief of the Metropolitan Police.

  “I don’t intend to,” said Gabriel. “MI5 and the Anti-Terrorist Branch of Scotland Yard will give us all the intelligence and support we require, but this will be an Israeli operation from start to finish. I will bring whomever and whatever I need into the country to conduct it. Afterward, there will be no scrutiny and no inquiries. If anyone is killed or wounded during the recovery of Elizabeth, no one from my team will be questioned or prosecuted.”

  “Out of the question,” said Eleanor McKenzie.

  “Done,” said the prime minister.

  “How long will it take you to assemble the cash?”

  “Every major bank in the City is already involved,” the prime minister said. “The task should be complete by late tomorrow afternoon. Obviously it’s a large consignment and therefore it will be somewhat unwieldy. They think it will fit into two large rolling duffel bags.”

  Gabriel glanced from face to face. “Don’t even think about putting any tracking devices in the cash or the bags.”

  “Understood,” said the prime minister. “It occurs to me that tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Clearly it is not a coincidence.”

  “No, Prime Minister, I suspect they’ve been preparing for this for a long time.” Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. “Can someone give me a lift to the American embassy? There’s a telephone call coming there in a few minutes that I’d like to take.”

  “Graham will take you,” the prime minister said. “We’ll give you a police escort. The traffic in central London this time of day is really quite dreadful.”

  On the wall above John O’Donnell’s workstation was a large digital clock with red numerals set against a black background. Gabriel, however, had eyes only for the telephone. It was a modern device, with access to twenty lines, including extension 7512, which was available nowhere else in the building. Extension 7512 was O’Donnell’s private reserve. Now it belonged to Gabriel, along with O’Donnell’s warm chair and O’Donnell’s wrinkled legal pad.

  The clock rolled over to 17:59 and the seconds began their methodical march from :00
to :59. Gabriel kept his eyes on the phone—on the green light in the box marked 7512, and on the small crack in the receiver, inflicted by O’Donnell during a blind rage early in the crisis. A minute later, when the clock rolled over to 18:00:00, there was an audible gasp in the room. Then, at 18:01:25, Gabriel heard one of O’Donnell’s team members begin to weep. He did not share the pessimism of his audience. He knew the terrorists were cruel bastards who were just using the opportunity of the deadline to have a spot of fun at the expense of their American and Israeli opponents.

  At 18:02:17, the telephone finally rang. Gabriel, unwilling to cause his audience any additional stress, answered before it could ring a second time. He spoke in English, with his heavy Hebrew accent, so there would be no misunderstanding about who was on the line.

  “The answer is yes,” he said.

  “Be ready at ten o’clock tomorrow night. We’ll give you the instructions then.”

  Under normal circumstances, a professional negotiator like O’Donnell would have begun the delay tactics: trouble assembling the money, trouble getting the permission of local authorities for the handover, anything to keep the hostage alive and the kidnappers talking. But this was not a normal situation—the terrorists wanted Gabriel—and there was no point delaying the inevitable. The sooner it started, the sooner it would be over.

  “You’ll call on this number?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I look forward to hearing from you.”

  Click.

  Gabriel stood, pulled on his leather jacket, and started toward the stairs.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked Carter.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “You can’t just leave.”

  “I can’t stay here, Adrian. I have work to do.”

  “Let us give you a lift. We can’t have you wandering around London unprotected.”

  “I think I can look after myself, Adrian.”

  “At least let me rustle you up a gun.”

  “What are you boys carrying these days?”

  “Browning Hi-Power,” said Carter. “It doesn’t have the grace and beauty of your Berettas, but it’s quite lethal. Would you like one magazine or two?”

  Gabriel frowned.

  “I’ll bring you two,” said Carter. “And an extra box of ammo for laughs.”

  Five minutes later, with Carter’s loaded Browning pressing against the base of his spine, Gabriel slipped past the Marine guard at the North Gate and turned into Upper Brook Street. The sidewalk along the embassy fence was closed to pedestrian traffic and lined with Metropolitan Police officers in lime green jackets. Gabriel crossed to the opposite side of the street and headed toward Hyde Park. He spotted the motorcyclist two minutes later as he rounded the corner into Park Lane. The bike was a powerful BMW and the figure seated atop it was long-legged and helmeted. Gabriel noticed the bulge beneath the leather jacket—the left side, for the right-handed cross draw. He continued north to Marble Arch, then headed west along the Bayswater Road. As he was approaching Albion Gate he heard the roar of the BMW bike at his back. It came alongside him and braked to an abrupt stop. Gabriel swung his leg over the back and wrapped his arms around the rider’s waist. As the bike shot forward he heard the sound of a woman singing. Chiara always sang when she was at the controls of a motorcycle.

  48

  KENSINGTON, LONDON: 6:28 P.M., FRIDAY

  She drove for fifteen minutes through the streets of Belgravia and Brompton to make certain they were not being followed, then made her way to the Israeli embassy, located in Old Court Place just off Kensington High Street. Shamron was waiting for them in the office of the station chief, a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette in one hand and a handsome olive-wood cane in the other. He was angrier than Gabriel had seen him in many years.

  “Hello, Ari.”

  “What do you think you’re playing at?”

  “How did you get here so quickly?”

  “I left Ben-Gurion this morning after learning about your exploits in Denmark. It was my intention to ease your way through Heathrow and bring you home again. But when I placed a call to the station to let them know I had arrived, I was told you had just left Downing Street.”

  “I tried to steal some matches for you, but I was never alone.”

  “You should have consulted with us before agreeing to this!”

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “There was abundant time! You see, Gabriel, it would have been a very short consultation. You would have asked for clearance to undertake this mission and I would have told you no. End of consultation.” He crushed out his cigarette and looked at Gabriel malevolently for a long moment without speaking. “But to back out of this arrangement now is not an option. Can you imagine the headlines? Vaunted Israeli intelligence service, afraid to rescue the American girl. You’ve left us no choice but to proceed. But that’s exactly what you intended, isn’t it? You are a manipulative little bastard.”

  “I learned from the master.”

  Shamron stuck another cigarette between his lips, cocked the lid of his old Zippo lighter, and fired. “I held my tongue when you decided to return to Amsterdam to kidnap and interrogate this man Ibrahim Fawaz. I held my tongue again when you went to Copenhagen and tried to negotiate with his son. If I had obeyed my first instinct, which was to bring you home, it wouldn’t have come to this. You had no right to agree to this assignment without first obtaining the permission of your director and your prime minister. If it were anyone but you, I would bring you up on charges and throw you into the Judean Wilderness to atone for your sins.”

  “You can do that when I get home.”

  “You’re liable to come home in a box. You don’t need to commit suicide in order to get out of being the next chief, Gabriel. If you don’t want the job, just say so.”

  “I don’t want the job.”

  “I know you don’t really mean that.”

  “God, but you’re sounding more and more like a Jewish mother every day.”

  “And you are providing me ample proof that you are not up to the job. By way of deception, thou shalt do war—this is our creed. We are not shaheeds, Gabriel. We leave the suicide missions to Hamas and all the other Islamic psychopaths who wish to destroy us. We move like shadows, strike like lightning, and then we vanish into thin air. We do not volunteer to serve as delivery boys for rich Americans, and we certainly don’t sacrifice ourselves for no good reason. You are one of the elite. You are a prince of a very small tribe.”

  “And what do we do about Elizabeth Halton? Let her die?”

  “If it is the only way to end this madness, then the answer is yes.”

  “And if it were your daughter, Ari? If it were Ronit?”

  “Then I would shake hands with the Devil himself in order to get her back again. But I wouldn’t ask the Americans to do it for me. Blue and white, Gabriel. Blue and white. We do things for ourselves, and we do not help others with problems of their own making. The Americans threw in their lot with the secular dictatorships of the Middle East a long time ago, and now the oppressed are rising up and taking their revenge on symbols of American power. On September eleventh it was the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now it is the innocent daughter of the American ambassador to London.”

  “And next it will be us.”

  “And we will fight them—alone.” Shamron managed a faint smile of reminiscence. “I remember a boy who came home from Europe in 1975, a boy who looked twenty years older than he really was. A boy who wanted nothing more do to with this life in the shadows, nothing more to do with fighting and killing. What happened to this boy?”

  “He became a man, Ari. And he is sick to death of this shit. And he will not let this woman be murdered because the Americans refuse to release a dying sheikh from prison.”

  “And is this man prepared to die on behalf of this cause?” He looked at Chiara. “Is he prepared to give up his life with this beautiful woman in order to save one he doe
s not know?”

  “Trust me, Ari, I’m not a martyr, and the only people who are going to die are the terrorists. When we lost Ibrahim, we lost our only way into the conspiracy. Now, by demanding that I deliver the money, they’ve opened the door to us again. And we’re all going to walk through it, together.”

  “You’re telling me that I should think of you as nothing more than an agent of penetration?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Taking possession of money will be a major operational undertaking for them. It will expose their operatives and their means of communication. And if they do seize me, it will expose some of their hideouts and safe properties, which will give us additional names and telephone numbers. The British and the Americans have agreed to stay away and leave it to us. We’re going to fight them, Ari, right here on British soil, just the way we’ve always fought them. We’re going to kill them, and we’re going to bring that girl home to her father alive.” Gabriel paused, then added: “And then maybe they will stop blaming us for all their problems.”

  “I don’t care what they say about us. You are like a son to me, Gabriel, and I cannot afford to lose you. Not now.”

  “You won’t.”

  Shamron appeared suddenly fatigued by the confrontation. Gabriel used his silence as an opportunity to close the door on the debate and press forward.

  “Where’s the rest of my team?”

  “They returned to Amsterdam after the debacle in Denmark,” Shamron said. “They can all be here by morning.”

  “I’m going to need Mikhail and his gun.”

  Shamron smiled. “Gabriel and Michael: the angel of death and the angel of destruction. If you two can’t bring the woman out alive, then I don’t suppose anyone can.”

  “So you’ll give me your blessing?”

  “Only my prayers,” he said. “Get some sleep, my son. You’re going to need it. We’ll assemble here at nine in the morning and start planning. Let us hope we are not planning a funeral.”