Gabriel Allon: The Black Widow Part 21

"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 pa.s.sed a habitue of the cafe 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 gla.s.s-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 a.s.signed 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 Na.s.ser, 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 Na.s.ser, interrogate him, learn his future plans, and scoop up his operatives.

"Call it a day?" asked Gabriel. "Job well done?"

"It happens to be true."

"And what if Na.s.ser 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, 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."

"I take it your answer is yes, then?"

Gabriel nodded gravely. The minister made a show of thought.

"How comprehensive is your surveillance of this man Na.s.ser?" he asked.

"Physical and electronic."

"But he uses encrypted communications?"

"Correct."

"So he could issue an attack order and we would be completely in the dark."

"Conceivably," said Gabriel carefully.

"And the British? They are unaware of his activities?"

"It appears so."

"Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Monsieur Allon, but if I had an agent who was about to go into Syria, I wouldn't want the man who sent her there to be arrested by the British."

Gabriel did not disagree with the minister, largely because he had been thinking the same thing for some time. And so late the following morning he journeyed across the channel to inform Graham Seymour, the chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, that the Office had been covertly watching a high-ranking ISIS operative living in the Bethnal Green section of East London. Seymour was predictably appalled, as was Amanda Wallace, the chief of MI5, who heard the same confession an hour later across the river at Thames House. For his penance, Gabriel was forced to make the British services nonvoting partners in his operations. All he needed now was the Americans, he thought, and the disaster would be complete.

The woman now known as Dr. Leila Hadawi was unaware of the interservice warfare raging around her. She tended to her patients at the clinic, she idled away her spare time at the cafe across the street from her apartment, she ventured occasionally into the center of Paris to shop or stroll. She no longer viewed extremist material on the Internet because she had been instructed not to. Nor did she ever discuss her political beliefs with friends or colleagues. Mainly, she spoke of her summer holiday, which she planned to spend in Greece with a friend from her university days. A packet containing her airline tickets and hotel accommodations arrived three days before she was due to depart. A travel agent in London named Farouk Ghazi handled the booking. Dr. Hadawi paid for nothing.

With the arrival of the packet, Gabriel and the rest of the team went on a war footing. They made travel accommodations of their own-in point of fact, King Saul Boulevard handled the arrangements for them-and by early the next morning the first operatives were moving quietly toward their failsafe points. Only Eli Lavon remained behind at Seraincourt with Gabriel, a decision he later came to regret because his old friend was distraught with worry. He watched over Natalie as a parent watches over an ailing child, looking for signs of distress, changes in mood and demeanor. If she was frightened, she gave no sign of it, even on the last night, when Gabriel spirited her into Paul Rousseau's lair on the rue de Grenelle for a final briefing. When he gave her a last chance to change her mind, she only smiled. Then she composed a letter to her parents, to be delivered in the event of her death. Tellingly, Gabriel did not refuse to accept it. He placed it in a sealed envelope and placed the envelope in the breast pocket of his jacket. And there it would remain until the day she came out of Syria again.

ISIS supplied most of its European recruits with a detailed list of items to pack for their trip. Dr. Leila Hadawi was no ordinary recruit, however, and so she packed with deception in mind-summer dresses of the kind worn by promiscuous Europeans, revealing swimwear, erotic undergarments. In the morning she dressed piously, pinned her hijab carefully into place, and wheeled her suitcase through the quiet streets of the banlieue to the Aubervilliers RER station. The ride to Charles de Gaulle Airport was ten minutes in length. She glided through unusually heavy security and onto an Air France jet bound for Athens. On the other side of the aisle, dressed for the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company, was the small man with an elusive face. Smiling, Natalie peered out her window as France disappeared beneath her. She was not alone. Not yet.

As it happened, the day of Natalie's departure was a particularly violent one in the Middle East, even by the region's b.l.o.o.d.y standards. There were beheadings and burnings in Syria, a string of simultaneous suicide bombings in Baghdad, a Taliban raid in Kabul, a new round of fighting in Yemen, several stabbings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and a gun-and-grenade attack on Western tourists at a beach hotel in Tunisia. So it was understandable that a relatively minor skirmish between Islamic militants and Jordanian police went largely unnoticed. The incident occurred at ten fifteen in the morning outside the village of Ramtha, located just a few yards from the Syrian border. The militants were four in number; all perished during the brief firefight. One of the militants was later identified as Nabil Awad, a twenty-four-year-old Jordanian citizen who resided in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. In a statement released on social media, ISIS confirmed that Awad was a member of its organization who had played a major support role in the attacks in Paris and Amsterdam. It declared him a holy martyr and swore to avenge his death by unleashing "rivers of blood." The final battle, it said, would come in a place called Dabiq.

32.

SANTORINI, GREECE.

DR. LEILA HADAWI SHED HER VEIL in a public toilet at Athens International Airport ten minutes after clearing pa.s.sport control. She shed her pious clothing, too, changing into a pair of white Capri-length pants, a sleeveless blouse, and a pair of gold flat-soled sandals that displayed her newly polished nails. While waiting for her next flight to be called, she repaired to an airport bar and consumed her first alcohol, two gla.s.ses of tart Greek white wine, since her recruitment. Boarding her next flight, the three-fifteen to Santorini, she was oblivious to fear. Syria was a troubled place on a map. Isis was the wife of Osiris, friend of slaves and sinners, protector of the dead.

Leila Hadawi had never visited Santorini, and neither for that matter had the woman who wore the good doctor's ident.i.ty. Her first airborne glimpse of the island, with its sharp demonic peaks rising from the rim of a flooded caldera, was a revelation. And at the airport, as she stepped onto the bleached tarmac, the heat of the sun on her bare arms was like a lover's first kiss. She rode in a taxi to Thera and then made her way on foot along a pedestrian walkway to the Panorama Boutique Hotel. Entering the lobby, she saw a tall, sunburned Englishman shouting hysterically at the concierge while a woman with sandstone-colored hair and childbearing hips looked on in embarra.s.sment. Natalie smiled. She was not alone. Not yet.

A young Greek woman stood watch behind the reception desk. Natalie walked over and stated her name. "We have you in a double for ten nights," said the woman after tapping a few keys on her computer keyboard. "According to our records, one other person will be joining you, a Miss Shirazi."

"I'm afraid she's been delayed."

"Problems with her flight?"

"A family emergency."

"Not serious, I hope."

"Not too."

"Pa.s.sport, please."

Natalie slid her worn French pa.s.sport across the counter while Yossi Gavish and Rimona Stern, using different names, flying false flags, stormed from the lobby in a rage. Even Natalie welcomed the sudden quiet.

"Their room isn't to their liking," explained the clerk.

"I gathered that."

"Yours is lovely, I a.s.sure you."

Natalie accepted the key and, after declining an offer of help with her bag, made her way alone to her room. It had two single beds and a small balcony overlooking the rim of the caldera, where a pair of gleaming white cruise ships floated like toys upon a flat perfect sea. One last fling, she thought, courtesy of the richest terrorist organization in history.

She unzipped her bag and unpacked her belongings as though she were settling in for a long stay. By the time she had finished, the sun was a few degrees above the horizon, flooding her room with fiery orange light. After locking her pa.s.sport in the room safe, she headed downstairs to the terrace bar, which was crowded with other guests, mainly from the British Isles. Seated among them, in decidedly better spirits, were Yossi and Rimona.

Natalie seized an empty table and from a harried waitress ordered a gla.s.s of white wine. Slowly, the bar filled with other guests, including a lanky man with bloodless skin and eyes like glacial ice. She hoped he might join her but instead he sat at the bar, where he could keep watch over the terrace and pretend to flirt with a pretty girl from Bristol. Natalie was able to hear his voice for the first time and was surprised by the distinct Russian accent. Given the demographics of modern Israel, she suspected the accent was authentic.

Presently, the sun slipped behind the peaks of Therasia. The skies darkened, the sea turned to black. Natalie glanced at the man who spoke with a Russian accent but at that moment he was otherwise occupied, so she turned away again and stared into the emptiness. Someone will come for you, they had said. But at that instant, in this place, the only person Natalie wanted was the man at the bar.

For the next three days Dr. Leila Hadawi behaved as an ordinary, if solitary, tourist. She breakfasted alone in the Panorama's dining room, she roasted her skin on the black-pebble beach at Perissa, she hiked the rim of the caldera, she toured the island's archaeological and geological sites, she took her wine at sunset on the terrace. It was a small island, so it was understandable she might encounter other guests of the hotel far from its premises. She pa.s.sed an unpleasant morning on the beach within earshot of the balding Englishman and his Rubenesque wife, and while touring the buried city of Akrotiri she b.u.mped into the pale Russian, who pointedly ignored her. The next day, her fourth on the island, she saw the pretty girl from Bristol while shopping in Thera. Dr. Hadawi was coming out of a swimwear boutique. The pretty girl was standing outside in the narrow street.

"You're staying at my hotel," she said.

"Yes, I think I am."

"I'm Miranda Ward."

Dr. Leila Hadawi extended her hand and introduced herself.

"What a lovely name. Won't you join me for a drink?"

"I was just going back to the hotel."

"I can't bear the scene at our bar anymore. Too many b.l.o.o.d.y English! Especially that bald bloke and his curvy wife. G.o.d, what bores! If they complain about the service again, I'll open a vein."

"Let's go somewhere else then."

"Yes, let's."

"Where?"

"Have you been to the Tango?"

"I don't think so."

"It's this way."

She seized Natalie's arm as though she feared losing her and led her through the shadows of the street. She was thin and blond and freckled and smelled of cherry candy and coconut. Her sandals slapped the paving stones like the palm of a hand connecting to an unfaithful cheek.

"You're French," she said at once, her tone accusatory.

"Yes."

"French French?"

"My family is from Palestine."

"I see. A shame, that."

"How so?"

"The whole refugee thing. And those Israelis! Horrible creatures."

Dr. Hadawi smiled but said nothing.

"You're here alone?" asked Miranda Ward.

"That wasn't the plan, but it seems to have worked out that way."

"What happened?"

"My friend had to cancel at the last minute."

"Mine, too. He dumped me for another woman."