The Black Widow

by Daniel Silva

  And so, at two minutes past nine that evening, as Natalie swung her leg over the back of Jalal Nasser’s Piaggio motorbike, only French eyes were watching, and only from a distance. The battered Renault followed for a time and was soon replaced by a Citroën. Then the Citroën dropped away too, and only the cameras watched over them. They tracked them northward, past Le Bourget Airport and Charles de Gaulle, and eastward through the villages of Thieux and Juilly. Then, at nine twenty, Paul Rousseau rang Gabriel to say that Natalie had vanished from their radar screens.

  At which point Gabriel and his team settled in for another long wait. Mordecai and Oded engaged in a furious game of table tennis; Mikhail and Eli Lavon waged war over a chessboard, Yossi and Rimona watched an American film on television. Only Gabriel and Dina refused to distract themselves with trivial pursuits. Gabriel paced alone in the darkened garden, worrying himself to death, while Dina sat alone in the makeshift operations room, staring at a black computer screen. Dina was grieving. Dina would have given anything to be in Natalie’s place.

  After putting the last of the Paris suburbs behind them, they rode for an hour through sleeping cropland and postcard villages, seemingly without aim or purpose or destination. Or was it two hours they journeyed? Natalie couldn’t be sure. Her view of the world was limited. There were only Jalal’s square shoulders, and the back of Jalal’s helmet, and Jalal’s narrow waist, to which she clung with guilt, for she was thinking of Ziad, whom she loved. For a time she tried to maintain a grasp of their whereabouts, noting the names of the villages they entered and exited, and the numbers of the roads along which they sped. Eventually, she surrendered and tilted her head heavenward. Stars shone in the black sky; a low luminous moon chased them across the landscape. She supposed she was back in France again.

  At last, they arrived at the outskirts of a midsize town. Natalie knew it; it was Senlis, the ancient city of French kings located at the edge of the Forest of Chantilly. Jalal sped through the cobbled alleyways of the medieval center and parked in a small courtyard. On two sides were high walls of gray flint, and on the third, darkened and shuttered, was a two-story building that showed no sign of habitation. Somewhere a church bell tolled heavily, but otherwise the town was eerily quiet. Jalal dismounted and removed his helmet. Natalie did the same.

  “Your hijab, too,” he murmured in Arabic.

  “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t the sort of place for people like us.”

  Natalie unpinned her hijab and tucked it into the helmet. In the darkness Jalal scrutinized her carefully.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “You’re just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “More beautiful than I imagined.” He locked the two helmets in the bike’s rear storage compartment. Then, from his coat pocket, he removed an object about the size of an old-fashioned pager. “Did you follow my instructions about phones and electronic devices?”

  “Of course.”

  “And no credit cards?”

  “None.”

  “Mind if I check?”

  He moved the object methodically over her body, down her arms and legs, across her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, down the length of her spine.

  “Did I pass?”

  Wordlessly, he returned the device to his coat pocket.

  “Is your name really Jalal Nasser?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Yes, my name is Jalal.”

  “And your organization?”

  “We seek to re-create the caliphate in the Muslim lands of the Middle East and establish Islamic dominance over the rest of the world.”

  “You’re from ISIS.”

  Without responding he turned and led her along an empty street, toward the sound of the church bells.

  “Take my arm,” he said sotto voce. “Speak to me in French.”

  “About what?”

  “Anything. It doesn’t matter.”

  She threaded her arm through his and told him about her day at the clinic. He nodded occasionally, always at the wrong times, but made no attempt to address her in his dreadful French. Finally, in Arabic, he asked, “Who was the woman you had coffee with yesterday afternoon?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The woman at Café de Flore, the one with the veil. Who is she?”

  “How long have you been watching me?”

  “Answer my question, please.”

  “Her name is Mona.”

  “Mona what?”

  “Mona el-Baz. We studied medicine together. She lives in Frankfurt now.”

  “She’s a Palestinian, too?”

  “Egyptian, actually.”

  “She didn’t look Egyptian to me.”

  “She comes from an old family, very aristocratic.”

  “I’d like to meet her.”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps she could be helpful to our cause.”

  “Don’t bother. Mona doesn’t think the way we do.”

  He seemed shocked by this. “Why would you associate with such a person?”

  “Why do you attend King’s College and reside in the land of the kufar?”

  The street brought them to the edge of a square. The tables of a small restaurant spilled onto the paving stones, and on the opposite side rose the Gothic towers and flying buttresses of Senlis Cathedral.

  “And the clothing store on the rue Vavin?” he asked over the tolling of the bells. “Why did you return there?”

  “I forgot my credit card.”

  “You were preoccupied?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Why should I have been?”

  “Did you know I was following you?”

  “Were you?”

  He was distracted by the sound of laughter rising from the tables of the restaurant. He took her hand and as the bells fell silent led her across the square.

  “How well do you know the Koran and the Hadith?” he asked suddenly.

  She was grateful for the change of subject, for it suggested he had no concerns as to her authenticity. Consequently, she did not confess that she had not cracked the Koran before settling into a farmhouse in the Valley of Jezreel. Instead, she explained that her parents were secular and that she did not discover the beauty of the Koran until she was at university.

  “Do you know about the Mahdi?” he asked. “The one they call the Redeemer?”

  “Yes, of course. The Hadith says he will appear as an ordinary man. ‘His name will be my name,’” she said, quoting the relevant passage, “‘and his father’s name my father’s name.’ He will be one of us.”

  “Very good. Go on, please.”

  “The Mahdi will rule over the earth until the Day of Judgment and rid the world of evil. There will be no Christians after the Mahdi comes.” She paused, then added, “And no Jews.”

  “And no Israel, either.”

  “Inshallah,” Natalie heard herself say softly.

  “Yes, God willing.” He stopped in the center of the square and gazed disapprovingly at the darkened southern facade of the ancient cathedral. “Soon it will look like the Colosseum in Rome and the Parthenon in Athens. Our Muslim tour guides will explain what went on here. This is where the kufar worshiped, they will say. This is where they baptized their young. This is where their priests whispered the magic spells that turned bread and wine into the body and blood of Isa, our prophet. The end is near, Leila. The clock is ticking.”

  “You intend to destroy them?”

  “We won’t have to. They will destroy themselves by invading the lands of the caliphate. There will be a final battle between the armies of Rome and the armies of Islam in the Syrian village of Dabiq. The Hadith tells us the black flags will come from the east, led by mighty men with long hair and beards, their surnames taken from their hometowns. Men like Zarqawi and Baghdadi.” He turned and looked at her for a moment in silence. Then he said, “And you,
of course.”

  “I’m not a soldier. I can’t fight.”

  “We don’t allow our women to fight, Leila, not on the battlefield, at least. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be a soldier.”

  A squadron of rooks took noisy flight from the abutments of the cathedral. Natalie watched their black silhouettes flutter across the sky like the black flags of the mighty men from the east. Then she followed Jalal through a doorway, into the south transept. An attendant, a gray emaciated woman of perhaps seventy, informed them that the cathedral would be closing in ten minutes. Natalie accepted a brochure and then joined Jalal in the central crossing. He was staring westward down the nave. Natalie looked in the opposite direction, over the choir, toward the main altar. The stained-glass windows were invisible in the gloom. There was no one else in the cathedral, no one but the elderly attendant.

  “The organization for which I work,” Jalal explained, his Arabic echoing softly among the pillars of the arcades, “handles external affairs for the Islamic State. Our goal is to draw America and its European allies into a ground war in Syria through calculated acts of violence. The attacks in Paris and Amsterdam were carried out by our network. We have many more attacks planned, some in the coming days.”

  He said all this while gazing down the length of the cathedral. Natalie delivered her response to the apse.

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “I would like you to work for us.”

  “I couldn’t be involved with something like Paris or Amsterdam.”

  “That’s not what you told my friend Nabil. You told Nabil that you wanted the kufar to know what it felt like to be afraid. You said you wanted to punish them for their support of Israel.” He turned and looked directly into her eyes. “You said you wanted to pay them back for what happened to Ziad.”

  “I suppose Nabil told you about Ziad, too.”

  He took the brochure from her hand, consulted it briefly, and then led her down the center of the nave, toward the western facade. “You know,” he was saying, “I think I actually met him once.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “At a meeting of some brothers in Amman. For reasons of security we weren’t using our real names.” He stopped and craned his neck toward the ceiling. “You’re afraid. I can see it.”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I am afraid.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wasn’t serious. It was only talk.”

  “You are a salon jihadist, Leila? You prefer to carry signs and shout slogans?”

  “No. I just never imagined something like this might happen.”

  “This isn’t the Internet, Leila. This is the real thing.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  From across the cathedral the old woman signaled that it was time to leave. Jalal lowered his gaze from the ceiling to Natalie’s face.

  “And if I say yes?” she asked.

  “You’ll need to travel to the caliphate for training. We’ll handle all the arrangements.”

  “I can’t be away for long.”

  “A few weeks are all we need.”

  “What happens if the authorities find out?”

  “Trust me, Leila, they’ll know nothing. We have routes we use. False passports, too. Your time in Syria will be our little secret.”

  “And then?”

  “You return to France and your job at the clinic. And you wait.”

  “For what?”

  He placed his hands on her shoulders. “You know, Leila, you’re lucky. You’re going to do something incredibly important. I envy you.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “My friend Mona told me the same thing.”

  “What was she talking about?”

  “It was nothing,” said Natalie. “Nothing at all.”

  31

  AUBERVILLIERS, FRANCE

  THAT NIGHT NATALIE COULD NOT sleep. For a time she lay awake in her bed, committing to memory every word Jalal Nasser had spoken. Afterward, she wrestled with her sheets while her mind raced with thoughts of what lay ahead. To distract herself she watched a tedious documentary on French television, and when that didn’t work, she opened her laptop and surfed the Internet. Not the jihadist sites, though; Jalal had warned her to avoid those. Natalie was now a servant of two masters, a woman with two lovers. When sleep finally claimed her, it was Jalal who visited her in her dreams. He strapped a suicide vest to her nude body and kissed her softly. You’re lucky, he said. You’re going to do something incredibly important.

  She awoke groggy and agitated and afflicted with a migraine that no amount of medication or caffeine would alleviate. A benevolent God might have seen fit to give her a quiet day at the clinic, but a parade of human malady kept her running from examination room to examination room until six that evening. As she was leaving work, Roland Girard, the clinic’s ersatz administrative director, invited her for coffee. Outside, he helped her into the front seat of his Peugeot sedan, and for the next forty-five minutes he spoke not a word as he followed a meandering path toward the center of Paris. As they were passing the Musée d’Orsay, his mobile phone pinged with an incoming message. After reading it he drove across the Seine and made his way to the rue de Grenelle in the Seventh Arrondissement, where he nosed the car through the security gate of a handsome cream-colored building. Natalie glimpsed the brass plaque as it flashed past her window. It read SOCIÉTÉ INTERNATIONALE POUR LA LITTÉRATURE FRANÇAISE.

  “An evening of Balzac?”

  He switched off the engine and led her inside. In the foyer she glimpsed the Arab-looking Frenchman whom she had seen leaving the pharmacy in La Courneuve, and in the stairwell she passed a habitué of the café across the street from her apartment. The uppermost floor of the building felt like a bank after hours. A stern-looking woman sat behind an orderly desk, while in an adjacent office a sharp-suited man glared at his computer as though it were an uncooperative witness. Two men waited in a glass-enclosed conference room. One smoked a pipe and wore a crumpled blazer. The other was Gabriel.

  “Leila,” he said formally. “So nice to see you again. You’re looking well. A bit tired, but well.”

  “It was a long night.”

  “For all of us. We were relieved when we saw that motorbike pull up outside your apartment building.” Gabriel moved slowly from behind the table. “I trust your meeting with Jalal went well.”

  “It did.”

  “He has plans for you?”

  “I think he does.”

  “Because of his security precautions, we weren’t able to record the conversation. It is important you tell us everything he said last night, exactly the way he said it. Can you do that, Leila?”

  She nodded.

  “Good,” said Gabriel, smiling for the first time. “Please have a seat and start from the beginning. What were the first words out of his mouth when he met you outside the pharmacy? Did he speak during the drive? Where did he take you? What was his route? Tell us everything you can. No detail is too small.”

  She lowered herself into her assigned seat, adjusted her hijab, and began to speak. After a moment or two, Gabriel reached across the table and placed a restraining hand upon hers.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asked.

  “You’re doing beautifully, Leila. But please start again from the beginning. And this time,” he added, “it would be helpful if you spoke French instead of Arabic.”

  It was at this point that they were confronted with their first serious operational dilemma—for within the walls of the ancient cathedral of Senlis, Jalal Nasser, Saladin’s man in Western Europe, had told his potential recruit that more attacks were coming, sooner rather than later. Paul Rousseau declared that they were compelled to inform his minister of the developments, and perhaps even the British. The goal of the operation, he said, had been to roll up the network. Working with MI5, they could arrest Jalal Nasser, interrogate him, learn his future plans, and scoop up his operatives.

&nb
sp; “Call it a day?” asked Gabriel. “Job well done?”

  “It happens to be true.”

  “And what if Nasser doesn’t crack under the friendly interrogation he’ll receive in London? What if he doesn’t reveal his plans or the names of his operatives? What if there are parallel networks and cells, so that if one goes down the others survive?” He paused, then added, “And what about Saladin?”

  Rousseau conceded the point. But on the question of bringing the threat to the attention of higher authority—namely, his chief and his minister—he was unyielding. And so it was that Gabriel Allon, the man who had operated on French soil with impunity and had left a trail of dead bodies stretching from Paris to Marseilles, entered the Interior Ministry at half past ten that evening, with Alpha Group’s chief at his side. The minister was waiting in his ornate office, along with the chief of the DGSI and Alain Lambert, the minister’s aide-de-camp, note taker, food taster, and general factotum. Lambert had come from a dinner party; the minister, from his bed. He shook Gabriel’s hand as if he feared catching something. Lambert avoided Gabriel’s eye.

  “How serious is the threat of another attack?” the minister asked when Rousseau had completed his briefing.

  “As serious as it gets,” answered the Alpha Group chief.

  “Will the next attack come in France?”

  “We cannot say.”

  “What can you say?”

  “Our agent has been recruited and invited to travel to Syria for training.”

  “Our agent?” The minister shook his head. “No, Paul, she is not our agent.” He pointed to Gabriel and said, “She is his.”

  A silence fell over the room.

  “Is she still willing to go through with it?” the minister asked after a moment.

  “She is.”

  “And you, Monsieur Allon? Are you still willing to send her?”

  “The best way to learn the time and place of the next attack is to insert an agent directly into the operation itself.”