by Daniel Silva
“I see you’ve learned a thing or two from your Shabak friend,” Arwish said, rubbing his jaw. “They have a reputation of being good with their fists.”
“You said you wanted to see me,” said Gabriel. “I don’t like when people ask to see me.”
“What did you think I was planning to do? Kill you?”
“It’s not without precedent,” Gabriel replied calmly.
Shabak agents, he knew, were at their most vulnerable while meeting with assets from the other side. In recent years, several had been killed during meetings. One had been hacked to death with an ax in a Jerusalem safe flat.
“If we’d wanted to kill you, we’d have done it this morning in Ramallah. Our people would have celebrated your death. Your hands are stained with the blood of Palestinian heroes.”
“Celebration of death is what you’re good at these days,” Gabriel replied. “Sometimes it seems to be the only thing. Offer your people something instead of suicide. Lead them instead of following the most extreme elements of your society. Build something.”
“We tried to build something,” Arwish replied, “and you tore it down with your tanks and bulldozers.”
Gabriel glimpsed Yaakov’s shadow stirring in the window. The Shabak man wanted the topic moved onto less contentious ground. Mahmoud Arwish, judging from the menacing manner in which he lit a second cigarette, was not ready to concede. Gabriel looked away from the Arab’s single glaring eye and absently trailed his forefinger through the dust on the linoleum floor. Let him rant, Shamron would have counseled. Let him cast you as the oppressor and villain. It helps to assuage the guilt of betrayal.
“Yes, we celebrate death,” Arwish said, closing the lid of Yaakov’s old-fashioned lighter with a snap. “And some of us collaborate with our enemy. But that’s the way it always is in war, isn’t it? Unfortunately, we Palestinians are easily bought. Shabak calls it the three K’s: kesef, kavod, kussit. Money, respect, woman. Imagine, betraying your people for the affection of an Israeli whore.”
Gabriel, silent, continued doodling in the dust. He realized he was tracing the outline of a Caravaggio-Abraham, knife in hand, preparing to slay his own son in service to the Lord.
Arwish went on. “Do you know why I collaborate, Jibril? I collaborate because my wife became ill. The doctor at the clinic in Ramallah diagnosed her with cancer and said she would die unless she received treatment in Jerusalem. I requested permission from the Israeli authorities to enter the city, which brought me into contact with Shabak and my dear friend.” He inclined his head toward Yaakov, who was now seated on the window ledge with his arms folded. “In front of me he calls himself Solomon. I know his real name is Yaakov, but I always refer to him as Solomon. It is one of the many games we play.”
Arwish contemplated the end of his cigarette. “Needless to say, my wife received permission to travel to Jerusalem for treatment, but it came at a steep price, the price of collaboration. Solomon jails my sons from time to time, just to keep the information flowing. He’s even jailed a relative who lives on the Israeli side of the Green Line. But when Solomon truly wants to turn the screws on me, he threatens to tell my wife of my treachery. Solomon knows she would never forgive me.”
Gabriel looked up from his Caravaggio. “Are you finished?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then why don’t you tell me about Khaled?”
“Khaled,” Arwish repeated, shaking his head. “Khaled is the least of your problems.” He paused and looked toward the darkened ceiling. “ ‘Israel is bewildered. They have now become among the nations like an unwanted vessel, like a lonely wild ass.’ ” His gaze settled on Gabriel once more. “Do you know who wrote those words?”
“Hosea,” Gabriel replied indifferently.
“Correct,” said Arwish. “Are you a religious man?”
“No,” answered Gabriel truthfully.
“Neither am I,” confessed Arwish, “but perhaps you should heed the advice of Hosea. What is Israel’s solution to her problems with the Palestinians? To build a fence. To act, in the words of Hosea, like shifters of field boundaries. The Jews complain bitterly about the centuries they spent in the ghetto, and yet what are you doing with that Separation Fence? You are building the first Palestinian ghetto. Worse still, you’re building a ghetto for yourselves.”
Arwish started to raise his cigarette to his lips, but Yaakov stepped away from the window and slapped the cigarette from the Palestinian’s ruined hand. Arwish treated himself to the victim’s superior smile, then he twisted his head around and asked Yaakov for a cup of tea. Yaakov returned to the window and remained motionless.
“No tea today,” Arwish said. “Only money. To get my money, I must sign Solomon’s ledger and affix to it my own thumbprint. That way, if I betray Solomon, he can punish me. There is but one fate for collaboration in our part of this land. Death. And not a gentleman’s death. A biblical death. I’ll be stoned or hacked to pieces by Arafat’s fanatical killers. That’s how Yaakov ensures I tell him nothing but the truth, and on a timely basis.”
Yaakov leaned forward and whispered into Arwish’s ear, like a lawyer instructing a witness under hostile questioning.
“Solomon grows irritated with my speeches. Solomon would like me to get down to business.” Arwish studied Gabriel for a moment. “But not you, Jibril. You are the patient one.”
Gabriel looked up. “Where’s Khaled?”
“I don’t know. I only know that Arafat misled you this morning. You’re right. Khaled does exist, and he’s taken up the sword of his father and grandfather.”
“Did he do Rome?”
A moment of hesitation, a glance toward the dark figure of Yaakov, then a slow nod.
“Is he acting at Arafat’s behest?”
“I couldn’t say for certain.”
“What can you say for certain?”
“He’s in communication with the Mukata.”
“How?”
“A number of different ways. Sometimes he uses faxes. They’re bounced from a number of different machines, and by the time they arrive in the Territories, they’re almost impossible to read.”
“What else?”
“Sometimes he uses coded e-mails, which are routed through a number of different addresses and servers. Sometimes he sends messages to Arafat via courier or through the visiting delegations. Most of the time, though, he just uses the telephone.”
“Could you identify his voice?”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him speak.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“I believe I met him once, many years ago in Tunis. A young man came to visit and stayed in Arafat’s compound for a few days. He had a French name and passport, but he spoke Arabic like a Palestinian.”
“What makes you think it was Khaled?”
“The way Arafat was acting. He glowed in the presence of this young man. He was positively giddy.”
“That’s all?”
“No, there was something about his appearance. They always said Khaled looked like his grandfather. This man certainly bore a striking resemblance to Sheikh Asad.”
Arwish stood suddenly. Yaakov’s arm swung up, and he leveled his Uzi at the Arab’s head. Arwish smiled and pulled his shirt out of his trousers. Taped to his lower back was an envelope. Gabriel had missed it during his rapid search for weapons in the back of the car. Arwish removed the envelope and flipped it to Gabriel, who pried open the flap and shook the photograph out onto his lap. It showed a young man, strikingly handsome, seated next to Arafat at a table. He seemed unaware that his picture was being taken.
“Arafat has a habit of secretly photographing anyone who meets with him,” Arwish said. “You have photographs of Khaled as a child. Perhaps your computers can confirm that this man is truly him.”
“It’s not likely,” Gabriel said. “What else do you have?”
“When he calls the Mukata, it’s not his voice on the line.”
“How
does he do that?”
“He has someone else do the talking. A woman-a European woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“She uses different names and different telephones.”
“Where?”
Arwish shrugged.
“What’s her native language?”
“Hard to tell, but her Arabic is perfect.”
“Accent?”
“Classical. Upper-crust Jordanian. Maybe Beirut or Cairo. She refers to Khaled as Tony.”
“Tony who?” Gabriel asked calmly. “Tony where?”
“I don’t know,” Arwish said, “but find the woman, and maybe you’ll find Khaled.”
12
TEL AVIV
“She calls herself Madeleine, but only when she’s posing as a Frenchwoman. When she wants to be British, she calls herself Alexandra. When Italian, she’s Lunetta-Little Moon.”
Natan looked at Gabriel and blinked several times. He wore his hair in a ponytail, his spectacles lay slightly askew across the end of his nose, and there were holes in his Malibu surfer’s sweatshirt. Yaakov had forewarned Gabriel about Natan’s appearance. “He’s a genius. After graduating from Cal-Tech, every high-tech firm in America and Israel wanted him. He’s a bit like you,” Yaakov had concluded, with the slightly envious tone of a man who did but one thing well.
Gabriel looked out of Natan’s glass-enclosed office, onto a large brightly lit floor lined with row upon row of computer workstations. At each station sat a technician. Most were shockingly young and most were Mizrahim, Jews who had come from Arab countries. These were the unsung warriors in Israel’s war against terrorism. They never saw the enemy, never forced him to betray his people or confronted him across an interrogation table. To them he was a crackle of electricity down a copper wire or a whisper in the atmosphere. Natan Hofi was charged with the seemingly impossible task of monitoring all electronic communication between the outside world and the Territories. Computers did the brunt of the work, sifting the intercepts for certain words, phrases, or the voices of known terrorists, yet Natan still regarded his ears as the most reliable weapon in his arsenal.
“We don’t know her real name,” he said. “Right now she’s just Voiceprint 572/B. So far we’ve intercepted five telephone calls between her and Arafat. Care to listen?”
Gabriel nodded. Natan clicked an icon on his computer screen, and the recordings began to play. During each call the woman posed as a foreign peace activist telephoning to express support for the beleaguered Palestinian leader or to commiserate about the latest Zionist outrage. Each conversation contained a brief reference to a friend named Tony, just as Mahmoud Arwish had said.
After listening to four of the conversations, Gabriel asked, “What can you tell about her based on her voice?”
“Her Arabic is excellent, but she’s no Arab. French, I’d say. From the South, maybe the Marseilles area. Overeducated. Oversexed. She also has a small butterfly tattooed on her rear end.”
Yaakov looked up sharply.
“I’m kidding,” said Natan. “But listen to intercept number five. She’s posing as our Frenchwoman, Madeleine, head of something called the Center for a Just and Lasting Peace in Palestine. The topic of the conversation is an upcoming rally in Paris.”
“Paris?” Gabriel asked. “You’re sure it’s Paris?”
Natan nodded. “She tells Arafat that one of the organizers, a man named Tony, is predicting a turnout of a hundred thousand. Then she hesitates and corrects herself. Tony’s prediction isn’t a hundred thousand, she says, it’s two hundred thousand.”
Natan played the intercept. When it was over, Yaakov said, “What’s so interesting about that?”
“This.”
Natan opened another audio file and played a few seconds worth of inaudible muffle.
“There was someone else in the room with her at the time. He was monitoring the conversation on another extension. When Madeleine says Tony is expecting a hundred thousand people, this fellow covers the mouthpiece and in French tells her, ‘No, no, not a hundred thousand. It’s going to be two hundred thousand.’He thinks no one can hear him, but he’s put the mouthpiece right against his vocal cords. It’s a real rookie mistake. We got the vibrations on tape. With a little filtering and scrubbing, I made that garble sound like this.”
Natan played the file again. This time it was audible-a man, perfect French. “No, no, not a hundred thousand. It’s going to be two hundred thousand.” Natan clicked his mouse and pointed to the top-right corner of his computer monitor, a grid pattern crisscrossed by a series of undulating lines.
“This is a sound spectrograph. The voiceprint. It’s a mathematical equation, based on the physical configuration of a speaker’s mouth and throat. We’ve compared this print with every voice we have on file.”
“And?”
“Not a single match. We call him Voiceprint 698/D.”
“When was that call recorded?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Do you know where the call was placed?”
Natan smiled.
There was a row, but then no Office operation was complete without one. Lev wanted to keep Gabriel locked in the basement on punishment rations of bread and water, and he briefly held the upper hand. Gabriel was blown and no longer fit for fieldwork, Lev argued. Besides, the telephone intercepts suggested Khaled was hiding in the Arab world, somewhere the Europhile Gabriel, except for his brief foray into Tunis, had never operated. As a last resort, Lev sought refuge in bureaucratic twaddle, arguing that Gabriel’s committee possessed no foreign operational charter. The matter reached Shamron, as most matters eventually did. Lev sidestepped, but too late to ward off the fatal blow, for advice from Shamron had the authority of God’s commandments chiseled in stone.
Having prevailed in the bureaucratic trenches, Gabriel hurriedly dealt next with his problems of identity and appearance. He decided to travel as a German, for German was his first language and remained the language of his dreams. He chose commercial interior design as his trade and Munich as his place of residence. Operations supplied him with a passport in the name of Johannes Klemp and a wallet filled with credit cards and other personal paraphernalia, including business cards engraved with a Munich telephone number. The number, if dialed, would ring in an Office safe flat, then transfer automatically to a switchboard inside King Saul Boulevard, where Gabriel’s recorded voice would announce that he was away on holiday and would call back upon his return.
As for his appearance, the specialists in Operations suggested a beard, and Gabriel, who regarded any man with facial hair as distrustful and hiding something, reluctantly complied. To his everlasting disappointment, it came in very gray. This pleased the specialists, who colored his hair to match. They added a pair of frameless rectangular spectacles and a suitcase filled with fashionable monochrome clothing from Berlin and Milan. The wizards in Technical provided several innocent-looking consumer electronic devices that, in reality, were not so innocent at all.
One warm evening, shortly before his departure, he dressed in one of Herr Klemp’s egregious suits and stalked the discos and nightclubs along Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv. Herr Klemp was all that he, and by extension Mario Delvecchio, was not-a loquacious bore, a womanizer, a man who liked expensive drink and techno music. He loathed Herr Klemp, yet at the same time welcomed him, for Gabriel never felt truly safe unless wearing the skin of another man.
He thought of his hasty preparation for Operation Wrath of God; of walking the streets of Tel Aviv with Shamron, stealing wallets and breaking into hotel rooms along the Promenade. Only once had he been caught, a Romanian Jewish woman who had seized Gabriel’s wrist in a Shamron-like grip and screamed for the police. “You went like a lamb to the slaughter,” Shamron had said. “What if it had been a gendarme? Or a carabiniere? Do you think I’d be able to walk in and demand your freedom? If they come for you, fight back. If you must shed innocent blood, then shed it without hesitation. But never allow
yourself to be arrested. Never!”
Office tradition demanded Gabriel spend his final night in Israel at a “jump site,” the in-house idiom for a departure safe flat. Without exception they are forlorn places that stink of cigarettes and failure, so he chose instead to spend the night in Narkiss Street with Chiara. Their lovemaking was strained and awkward. Afterward, Chiara confessed that Gabriel felt a stranger to her.
Gabriel had never been able to sleep before an operation, and his last night in Jerusalem was no exception. And so he was pleased to hear, shortly before midnight, the distinctive grumble of Shamron’s armored Peugeot pulling up outside in the street-and to glimpse Shamron’s bald head floating up the garden walk with Rami at his heels. They passed the remainder of that night in Gabriel’s study, with the windows open to the chill night air. Shamron talked about the War of Independence, his search for Sheikh Asad, and of the morning he had killed him in the cottage outside Lydda. As dawn approached, Gabriel felt a reluctance to leave him, a sense that perhaps he should have taken Lev’s advice and allowed someone else to go in his place.
Only when it had grown light outside did Shamron talk about what lay ahead. “Don’t go anywhere near the embassy,” he said. “The Mukhabarat assumes, with some justification, that everyone who works there is a spy.” Then he gave Gabriel a business card. “He’s ours, bought and paid for. He knows everyone in town. I’ve told him to expect you. Be careful. He likes his drink.”
An hour later Gabriel climbed into an Office car outfitted as a Jerusalem taxi and headed down the Bab al-Wad to Ben-Gurion Airport. He cleared customs as Herr Klemp, endured a mind-numbing security examination, then went to the departure lounge. When his flight was called he set out across the bone-white tarmac toward the waiting jetliner and took his seat in the economy cabin. As the plane lifted off he looked out the window and watched the land sinking beneath him, gripped by a perverse fear that he would never see it or Chiara again. He thought of the journey ahead, a weeklong Mediterranean odyssey that would take him from Athens to Istanbul and finally to the ancient city on the western edge of the Fertile Crescent, where he hoped to find a woman named Madeleine, or Alexandra, or Lunetta, the Little Moon, and her friend named Tony.