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

by Daniel Silva

  The apartment on the Bayswater Road was precisely as he had left it the morning of the attack. His half-drunk cup of coffee stood on the desk by the window, next to the London A–Z atlas, which was still open to map number 82. In the bedroom his clothes lay scattered about, evidence of the haste with which he had dressed in the moments before disaster had struck. Samir al-Masri’s notebook, with his mountaintops and sand dunes and spider web of intersecting lines, lay on the unmade bed next to the woman with riotous auburn hair. A Beretta pistol protruded from the front of her faded blue jeans. Gabriel removed the weapon and placed his hand softly against her abdomen.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “An insatiable desire to touch something beautiful.”

  “You know what I’m asking you, Gabriel. Why did you agree to the demands of the kidnappers?”

  Gabriel, silent, deftly unsnapped Chiara’s jeans. Chiara pushed his hand away, then reached up to his face. He recoiled from her touch. His skin was throbbing again.

  “It’s because of Dani, isn’t it? You know what it’s like to lose a child to the terrorists. You know how it makes you hate, how it can destroy your life.” She ran her fingers through the ash-colored hair at his temples. “Everyone always thought it was Leah who made you burn. They seemed to forget that you lost a son. It’s Dani who drives you. And it’s Dani who’s telling you to take this insane assignment.”

  “There’s nothing insane about it.”

  “Am I the only person to at least consider the possibility that these terrorists have no intention of releasing Elizabeth Halton—that they will take Ambassador Halton’s money and then kill her?”

  “No,” said Gabriel. “That is exactly what they’re going to do.”

  “Then why are we engaging in this folly of a ransom payment?”

  “Because it is the only way to save her. They’re not going to kill her in some cellar where no one can see it. They kidnapped her in a terrorist spectacular and they’ll kill her in one.” He paused, then added: “And me with her.”

  “We are not shaheeds,” she said, parroting the words of Shamron. “We leave the suicide missions to Hamas and all the other Islamic psychopaths who wish to destroy us.”

  Gabriel tugged at the zipper of her jeans. Once again she pushed his hand away.

  “Did you enjoy working with Sarah again?”

  “She performed better than I expected.”

  “You trained her, Gabriel. Of course she performed well.”

  Chiara lapsed into silence.

  “Is there something you want to know?” Gabriel asked.

  “Whose idea was it for her to work with you on this operation?”

  “It was Carter’s. And it wasn’t an idea. It was a demand. They wanted an American component to our team.”

  “He could have picked someone else.” She paused. “Someone who didn’t happen to be in love with you.”

  “What are you talking about, Chiara?”

  “She’s in love you, Gabriel. Everyone could see it during the al-Bakari operation—everyone but you, that is. You’re rather thick when it comes to matters of the heart.” She looked at him in the darkness. “Or maybe you’re not so thick after all. Maybe you’re secretly in love with her, too. Maybe you want Sarah watching your back tomorrow instead of me.”

  His third attempt to remove her jeans met no resistance. The cashmere sweater was a joint operation. Chiara dealt with the brassiere alone and guided his hands to her breasts.

  “Fraternization between employees in Office safe houses is strictly forbidden,” she said through his kisses.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You’re going to be a terrible chief.”

  He was about to take issue with her statement when the blue light on the telephone flashed. When Gabriel reached for it, Chiara seized his hand.

  “What if it’s the Memuneh?” he asked.

  She rolled on top of him. “Now I’m the Memuneh.”

  She pressed her mouth against his. The blue light flashed unanswered.

  “Marry me,” she said.

  “I’ll marry you.”

  “Now, Gabriel. Marry me now.”

  “I do,” he said.

  “Don’t die on me tomorrow night.”

  “I won’t die.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise you.”

  49

  BAYSWATER, LONDON: 7:15 A.M., SATURDAY

  Gabriel woke suddenly and with the sensation of having slept an eternity. He glanced at the alarm clock, then looked at Chiara. She lay tangled in the blankets next to him like a Greek statue toppled from its plinth. He slipped out of bed quietly and listened to the news on the radio while he made coffee. According to the BBC there had been no response to Ambassador Halton’s offer of ransom, and the fate of his missing daughter was still unknown. Londoners had been warned to expect heavy security along the city’s main shopping streets and in the Underground and rail stations. Gabriel took comfort in the weather forecast: light rain with intervals of brightness.

  He drank his first cup of coffee, then spent an inordinate amount of time standing beneath the shower. The cuts on his face made shaving impossible. Besides, there was something he liked about the look of several days’ growth on his cheeks. Chiara stirred as he entered the bedroom. She drew him into the bed and made drowsy love to him one last time.

  They left the apartment together at ten minutes to nine and climbed aboard Chiara’s BMW bike. The forecasted rain had not yet started, nor was there evidence of the expected rush of Christmas Eve shoppers. They sped down Bayswater Road to Notting Hill, then followed Kensington Church Street to Old Court Place. A small knot of protesters was gathered in the street outside the embassy; they waved Israeli flags emblazoned with swastikas and shouted something about Jews and Nazis as Gabriel and Chiara slipped through the open gate and disappeared inside.

  The rest of the team had already arrived and was gathered in the largest of the embassy’s meeting rooms, looking like a band of refugees from a natural disaster. All of Gabriel’s original team was there, along with the entire staff of the London Station and several other European stations as well. Uzi Navot had made the trip overnight from King Saul Boulevard and had brought with him another half-dozen field operatives. It occurred to Gabriel that this would be the largest and most important Office operation ever conducted on European soil—and yet they had no idea how it would unfold.

  He sat down at the conference table next to Shamron, who was dressed in khaki trousers and his leather bomber jacket. They looked at one another in silence for a long moment; then Shamron rose slowly to his feet and called the room to order.

  “At ten o’clock this evening, Gabriel is going to walk into Hell,” he said. “It is our job to make sure he comes out the other end alive. I want ideas. No idea, no matter how meshuganah, is beyond consideration.”

  Shamron sat down again and opened the floor to debate. Everyone in the room started talking at once. Gabriel threw his head back and laughed out loud. It was good to be home again.

  They worked through the morning, broke for a working lunch, then worked throughout the afternoon. At 5:30, Gabriel drew Chiara into an empty office and kissed her one final time. Then, wishing to avoid an awkward scene with Shamron, he slipped out of the embassy alone and headed through the streets of Kensington toward Mayfair. As he crossed Hyde Park, he paused briefly at the place where on the morning of the attack he had come upon the body of Chris Petty, the American Diplomatic Security agent. A few yards beyond lay a pile of wilted memorial flowers and a crude cardboard placard of tribute to the fallen Americans. Then, on the spot where Samir al-Masri had died in Gabriel’s grasp, there was a second memorial to the “Hyde Park Martyrs,” as the terrorists had become known to their supporters in London. Here was the coming clash of civilizations, thought Gabriel, played out on a few square yards of a London park.

  He crossed the open lawns at the eastern edge of the park and entered
Upper Brook Street. Adrian Carter was standing next to the Marine guard at the North Gate, puffing nervously on his pipe. He greeted Gabriel as though mildly surprised to see him, then took him by the arm and led him inside.

  The duffel bags of money were waiting in Ambassador Halton’s top-floor office, surrounded by a detachment of DS agents. Gabriel inspected them, then looked at Carter.

  “No beacons, right, Adrian?”

  “No beacons, Gabriel.”

  “What kind of car did you get me?”

  “A Vauxhall Vectra, dark gray and unassuming.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “Upper Brook Street.”

  “The bags fit in the truck?”

  “We checked it out. They fit.”

  “Put the money inside now.”

  Carter frowned. “I don’t know about you, Gabriel, but I never leave my wallet in the car, let alone thirty million in cash.”

  “At this moment the embassy is surrounded by a hundred Metropolitan Police officers,” Gabriel said. “No one is going to break into the car.”

  Carter nodded at the DS agents, and a moment later the bags were gone.

  “You, too, Adrian. I’d like to have a word with the ambassador alone.”

  Carter opened his mouth as though he were about to object, then thought better of it. “I’ll be down in the ops center,” he said. “Don’t be late, Gabriel. The show can’t start without you.”

  Precisely what was said between Gabriel Allon and Ambassador Robert Halton never became known and was not included in any record of the affair, overt or secret. Their conversation was brief, no more than a minute in duration, and the DS agent standing guard outside the ambassador’s office later described Gabriel as looking damp-eyed but determined as he emerged and made his way toward the ops center. This time the kidnappers did not make him wait. The call, according to the clock above John O’Donnell’s workstation, came at 20:00:14. Gabriel reached for it instantly, though he remembered thinking as he did so that he would be happy never to speak into a telephone again for as long as he lived. His greeting was calm and somewhat vague; his demeanor, as he listened to the instructions, was that of a traffic officer recording the details of a minor accident. He posed no questions, and his face registered no emotion other than profound irritation. At 20:00:57, he was heard to murmur: “I’ll be there.” Then he stood and pulled on his coat. This time Carter made no attempt to stop him as he started toward the stairs.

  He paused for a moment in the ground-floor atrium to slip on his miniature earpiece and throat microphone, then nodded silently to the Marine guard as he exited the embassy grounds through the North Gate. Carter’s Vauxhall sedan was parked in a flagrantly illegal space on the corner of North Audley Street. The keys resided in Gabriel’s coat pocket, along with a GPS beacon the size of a five-pence coin. He opened the trunk and quickly inspected the cargo before adhering the beacon near the driver’s-side taillight. Then he climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. A moment later he was turning into Oxford Street and marveling at the crush of last minute shoppers. Carter’s watchers followed him as far as Albany Street, where they photographed him making a left turn and heading north. That would be their last contact with him. As far as the Americans and British were concerned, Gabriel had now disappeared from radar.

  That was not the case, however, at the Israeli embassy in South Kensington, where, in one of the more bizarre coincidences of the entire affair, a group of well-meaning Christians had chosen that night to conduct a candlelight vigil calling for peace in the Holy Land. Inside the building, Ari Shamron and Uzi Navot were holding a vigil of their own. Their thoughts were not of peace or the holidays or even of home. They were huddled round a smoky table in the makeshift operations room, moving their forces into place, and watching a winking green light heading along the eastern fringe of Regent’s Park toward Hampstead.

  50

  HAMPSTEAD HEATH: 10:25 P.M., CHRISTMAS EVE

  He parked where they told him to park, in the Constantine Road at the southern tip of Hampstead Heath. There was no other traffic moving in the street, and Gabriel, as he had made his final approach, detected no signs of surveillance, opposition or friendly. He shut off the engine and pressed the interior trunk release, then opened the center console hatch and dropped the keys inside. A gentle rain had started to fall. As he stepped outside, he cursed himself for failing to bring a hat.

  He walked to the back of the car and removed the first duffel. As he was reaching for the second, he heard noises at his back and wheeled around to find a pack of young carolers advancing festively toward him. For a mad instant he wondered whether they might be the Sphinx’s watchers but quickly dismissed that notion as they bade him a Happy Christmas and paraded obliviously by. He placed the second bag in the street and closed the trunk. The carolers were now singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” outside a small brick cottage strung with holiday lights. A sign in the window read: GIVE US PEACE IN OUR TIME.

  Gabriel towed the duffel bags a few yards along the street, then crossed a footbridge over a set of sunken railroad tracks and entered the heath. To his right was a darkened running track. In the cement esplanade outside the padlocked gate, four immigrant men in their twenties were kicking a football about beneath the amber glow of a sodium lamp. They appeared to pay Gabriel no heed as he labored past and started up the slope of Parliament Hill, toward the bench where they had told him to wait for their next contact. He arrived to find it occupied by a small man with a frayed coat and matted beard. His accent, when he spoke to Gabriel, was East London and leaden with drink.

  “Happy Christmas, mate. What can I do for you?”

  “You can get off the bench.”

  “It’s my bench tonight.”

  “Not anymore,” said Gabriel. “Move.”

  “Piss off.”

  Gabriel drew Adrian Carter’s Browning Hi-Power and leveled it at the man’s head. “Get the fuck out of here and forget you ever saw me. Do you understand?”

  “Loud and fucking clear.”

  The man got quickly to his feet and melted into the darkness of the Heath. Gabriel ran his hand along the back and underside of the bench and found a mobile phone taped to the bottom of the seat on the left side. He quickly removed the battery and searched the phone for any concealed explosive charges. Then he reconnected the battery and pressed the POWER button. When the telephone was back online, he spoke quietly into his throat microphone.

  “Nokia E50.”

  “Number?” asked Uzi Navot.

  Gabriel recited it.

  “Any recent activity.”

  “It’s clean.”

  “Text activity?”

  “Nothing.”

  Gabriel stared down at the lights of London and waited for the phone to ring. Fifteen minutes later, he heard a thin, tinny version of the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. He silenced it with a press of a button and raised the phone to his ear. It took them only thirty seconds to deliver the next set of instructions. Gabriel dropped the phone into the rubbish bin next to the bench, then took hold of the duffel bags and started walking.

  At the makeshift command center inside the Israeli embassy, Uzi Navot laid down the handset of his secure radio and snatched up the receiver of his telephone. He quickly dialed a number for Thames House, the riverfront headquarters of MI5, and ten seconds later heard the voice of Graham Seymour.

  “Where is he now?” Seymour asked.

  “Heading across Hampstead Heath toward Highgate. They just told him that if he has a radio or a weapon on him at the next stop, Elizabeth Halton will be executed immediately. In a few seconds he’s going to be off the air.”

  “What can we do for you?”

  “Trace a telephone.”

  “Give me everything you have on it.”

  Navot gave Seymour the model and telephone number.

  “I don’t suppose they were foolish enough to leave any information in the calling history.”

  �
��The phone was clean, Graham.”

  “We’ll run it and see if we come up with anything. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of jihadists in our local telecommunications industry. They’re damned clever when it comes to covering their tracks with phones.”

  “Just give us anything you come up with.”

  Navot slammed down the phone and picked up the radio handset again. He grunted a few words in terse Hebrew, then looked at Shamron. He was pacing the room slowly, leaning heavily on his cane.

  “You’re wasting your time chasing that phone, Uzi. You should be chasing the watchers instead.”

  “I know, boss. But where are the watchers?”

  Shamron stopped in front of a computer monitor and peered at a grainy night-vision image of four young men playing football outside the padlocked Hampstead Heath running track.

  “At least one of them is right there in front of you, Uzi.”

  “We’ve had them under watch since before Gabriel arrived. No phone calls. No text messaging. Only football.”

  “Then you should assume that’s what the Sphinx told him to do,” Shamron said. “That’s the way I would have done it—an old-school, physical signal. If Gabriel is clean, keep playing football. If Gabriel is being followed, have an argument of some sort. If Gabriel has a radio, take a cigarette break.” Shamron poked at the screen. “Like that boy is doing right there.”

  “You think one of them is a spotter?”

  “I’d bet my life on it, Uzi.”

  “That means that there’s someone else in the heath who can see him—someone with a cell phone or a two-way pager.”

  “Exactly,” said Shamron. “But you’re never going to find him. He’s already gone by now. Your only option is to follow the spotter.”

  Navot looked at the screen. “I don’t have the resources to follow four men.”