Gabriel Allon: The Black Widow Part 28

His blood pressure was at the low end of normal. Natalie removed the cuff and changed the dressings on his chest and leg. There was no visible sign of infection in either wound. Miraculously, it appeared as though he had come through surgery in an unsterile environment with no sepsis. Unless he took a sudden turn for the worse, Saladin would survive.

She opened a package of fibergla.s.s casting tape and commenced work on the arm. Saladin watched her intently.

"It's not necessary for you to conceal your face in my presence. After all," he said, fingering the white sheet that covered his otherwise nude body, "we are well acquainted, you and I. A hijab is sufficient."

Natalie hesitated, then removed the heavy black garment. Saladin stared hard at her face.

"You're very beautiful. But Abu Ahmed is right. You look like a Jew."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment, too?"

"I've known many beautiful Jewesses. And everyone knows that the best doctors are always Jewish."

"As an Arab doctor," said Natalie, "I take exception to that."

"You're not an Arab, you're a Palestinian. There's a difference."

"I take exception to that, too."

Silently, she bound his arm with the fibergla.s.s tape. Orthopedics was hardly her specialty, but then she was not a surgeon, either.

"It was a mistake," he said, watching her work, "for me to mention Abu Ahmed's name in front of you. Names have a way of getting people killed. You will do your best to forget you ever heard it."

"I already have."

"He tells me you're French."

"Who?" she asked playfully, but Saladin did not rise to the bait. "Yes," she said, "I am French."

"You approved of our attack on the Weinberg Center?"

"I wept with joy."

"The Western press said it was a soft target. I can a.s.sure you it was not. Hannah Weinberg was an a.s.sociate of an Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon, and her so-called center for the study of anti-Semitism was a front for the Israeli service. Which is why I targeted it." He fell silent. Natalie could feel the weight of his gaze on her while she worked on the arm. "Perhaps you've heard of this man Gabriel Allon," he said at last. "He is an enemy of the Palestinian people."

"I think I read about him in the papers a few months ago," she answered. "He's the one who died in London, is he not?"

"Gabriel Allon? Dead?" He shook his head slowly. "I don't believe it."

"Be quiet for a moment," Natalie instructed him. "It's important that I immobilize your arm properly. If I don't, you'll have problems with it later."

"And my leg?"

"You need surgery-proper surgery in a proper hospital. Otherwise, I'm afraid your leg will be badly damaged."

"I'll be a cripple, is that what you're saying?"

"You'll have restricted movement, you'll require a cane to walk, you'll have chronic pain."

"I already have restricted movement." He smiled at his own joke. "They say Saladin walked with a limp, the real Saladin. It didn't stop him, and it won't stop me, either."

"I believe you," she said. "A normal man would never have survived wounds as serious as yours. Surely, Allah is watching over you. He has plans for you."

"And I," said Saladin, "have plans for you."

She finished the cast in silence. She was pleased with her work. So, too, was Saladin.

"Perhaps when your operation is complete, you can return to the caliphate to serve as my personal physician."

"Your Maimonides?"

"Exactly."

"It would be an honor," she heard herself say.

"But we won't be in Cairo. Like Saladin, I've always preferred Damascus."

"What about Baghdad?"

"Baghdad is a city of rafida."

It was a bigoted Sunni slur for Shia Muslims. Natalie wordlessly prepared a new IV bag.

"What's that you're putting in the solution?" he asked.

"Something for your pain. It will help you sleep through the heat of the afternoon."

"I'm not in pain. And I don't want to sleep."

Natalie attached the bag to the IV tube and squeezed it to start the flow of fluid. Within a few seconds, Saladin's eyes dulled. He fought to keep them open.

"Abu Ahmed is right," he said, watching her. "You do look like a Jew."

"And you," said Natalie, "need to rest."

The eyelids dropped like window blinds and Saladin slipped helplessly into unconsciousness.

43.

ANBAR PROVINCE, IRAQ.

HER DAYS MOVED TO THE rhythm of Saladin. She slept when he slept and woke whenever he stirred on his sickbed. She monitored his vital signs, she changed his dressings, she gave him morphine against his wishes for the pain. For a few seconds after the drug entered his blood, he would hover in a hallucinatory state where words escaped his mouth, like the air that had rushed from his damaged lung. Natalie could have prolonged his talkative mood by giving him a smaller measure of the drug; conversely, she could have ushered him to death's door with a larger dose. But she was never alone with her patient. Two fighters stood over him always, and Abu Ahmed-he of the lobster claw and overcast disposition-was never far. He consulted with Saladin frequently, about what Natalie was not privy. When matters of state or terror were discussed, she was banished from the room.

She was not permitted to go far-the next room, the toilet, a sun-blasted court where Abu Ahmed encouraged her to take exercise in order to stay fit for her operation. She was never allowed to see the rest of the great house or told where she was, though when she listened to al-Bayan on the ancient transistor radio they gave her, the signal was without interference. All other radio was forbidden, lest she be exposed to un-Islamic ideas or, heaven forbid, music. The absence of music was harder to bear than she imagined. She longed to hear a few notes of a melody, a child sawing away at a major scale, even the thud of hip-hop from a pa.s.sing car. Her rooms became a prison. The camp at Palmyra seemed a paradise in comparison. Even Raqqa was better, for at least in Raqqa she had been allowed to roam the streets. Never mind the severed heads and the men on crosses, at least there was some semblance of life. The caliphate, she thought grimly, had a way of reducing one's expectations.

And all the while she watched an imaginary clock in her head and turned the pages of an imaginary calendar. She was scheduled to fly from Athens to Paris on Sunday evening, and to return to work at the clinic in Aubervilliers Monday morning. But first, she had to get from the caliphate to Turkey and from Turkey to Santorini. For all their talk of an important role in an upcoming operation, she wondered whether Saladin and Abu Ahmed had other plans for her. Saladin would require constant medical care for months. And who better to care for him than the woman who had saved his life?

He referred to her as Maimonides and she, having no other name for him, called him Saladin. They did not become friends or confidants, far from it, but a bond was forged between them. She played the same game she had played with Abu Ahmed, the game of guessing what he had been before the American invasion upended Iraq. He was obviously of high intelligence and a student of history. During one of their conversations, he told her that he had been to Paris many times-for what reason he did not say-and he spoke French badly but with great enthusiasm. He spoke English, too, much better than he spoke French. Perhaps, thought Natalie, he had attended an English preparatory school or military academy. She tried to imagine him without his wild hair and beard. She dressed him in a Western suit and tie, but he didn't wear it well. Then she clothed him in olive drab, and the fit was better. When she added a thick mustache of the sort worn by Saddam loyalists, the picture was complete. Saladin, she decided, was a secret policeman or a spy. For that reason she was always fearful in his presence.

He was no fire-breathing jihadist, Saladin. His Islam was political rather than spiritual, a tool by which he intended to redraw the map of the Middle East. It would be dominated by a ma.s.sive Sunni state that would stretch from Baghdad to the Arabian Peninsula and across the Levant and North Africa. He did not rant or spew venom or recite Koranic verses or the sayings of the Prophet. He was entirely reasonable, which made him all the more terrifying. The liberation of Jerusalem, he said, was high on his agenda. It was his wish to pray in the n.o.ble Sanctuary at least once before his death.

"You've been, Maimonides?"

"To Jerusalem? No, never."

"Yes, I know. Abu Ahmed told me that."

"Who?"

Eventually, he told her he had been raised in a small, poor village in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq, though he pointedly did not say the village's name. He had joined the Iraqi army, hardly surprising in a land of ma.s.s conscription, and had fought in the long war against Iranians, though he referred to them always as Persians and rafida. The years between the war with Iran and the first Gulf War were a blank; he mentioned something about government work but did not elaborate. But when he spoke of the second war with the Americans, the war that destroyed Iraq as he knew it, his eyes flashed with anger. When the Americans disbanded the Iraqi army and removed all Baath Party members from their government posts, he was put on the streets along with thousands of other mainly Sunni Iraqi men. He joined the secular resistance and, later, al-Qaeda in Iraq, where he met and befriended Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Unlike Zarqawi, who relished his Bin Ladenlike role as a terror superstar, Saladin preferred to keep a lower profile. It was Saladin, not Zarqawi, who masterminded many of al-Qaeda in Iraq's most spectacular and deadly attacks. And yet even now, he said, the Americans and the Jordanians did not know his real name.

"You, Maimonides, will not be so fortunate. Soon you will be the most wanted woman on the planet. Everyone will know your name, especially the Americans."

She asked again about the target of her attack. Annoyed, he refused to say. For reasons of operational security, he explained, recruits were not given their targets until the last possible minute.

"Your friend Safia Bourihane wasn't told her target until the night before the operation. But your target will be much bigger than hers. One day they will write books about you."

"Is it a suicide operation?"

"Maimonides, please."

"I must know."

"Did I not tell you that you were going to be my personal physician? Did I not say that we would live together in Damascus?"

Suddenly fatigued, he closed his eyes. His words, thought Natalie, were without conviction. She knew at that moment that Dr. Leila Hadawi would not be returning to the caliphate. She had saved Saladin's life, and yet Saladin, with no trace of misgivings or guilt, would soon send her to her death.

"How is your pain?" she asked.

"I feel nothing."

She placed her forefinger in the center of his chest and pressed. His eyes shot open.

"It seems you have pain, after all."

"A little," he confessed.

She prepared his dose of morphine.

"Wait, Maimonides. There's something I must tell you."

She stopped.

"You'll be leaving here in a few hours to begin your journey back to France. In time, someone will contact you and tell you how to proceed."

Natalie finished preparing his dose of morphine.

"Perhaps," she said, "we shall meet again in paradise."

"Inshallah, Maimonides."

She fed the morphine through his IV tube into his veins. His eyes blurred and grew vacant; he was in a vulnerable state. Natalie wanted to double his dose and shove him through death's door, but she hadn't the courage. If he died, the knife or the stone would be her fate.

Finally, he slipped into unconsciousness and his eyes closed. Natalie checked his vital signs one last time and while he was sleeping removed the chest tube and sutured the incision. That night, after supper, she was blindfolded and placed in the backseat of another SUV. She was too tired to be afraid. She plunged into a dreamless sleep, and when she woke they were near the Turkish border. A pair of smugglers took her across and drove her to the ferry terminal in Bodrun, where Miranda Ward was waiting. They traveled together on the ferry to Santorini and shared a room that night at the Panorama Hotel. It was not until late the following morning, when they arrived in Athens, that Miranda returned Natalie's phone. She sent a text message to her "father" saying that her trip had gone well and that she was safe. Then, alone, she boarded an Air France flight bound for Paris.

PART THREE.

THE END OF DAYS.

44.

CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, PARIS.

THE NAME ON THE RECTANGULAR paper sign read MORESBY. Christian Bouchard had chosen it himself. It came from a book he had read once about wealthy, naive Americans wandering among the Arabs of North Africa. The story ended badly for the Americans; someone had died. Bouchard hadn't cared for the novel, but then Bouchard was the first to admit he wasn't much of a reader. This shortcoming had not endeared him initially to Paul Rousseau, who famously read while brushing his teeth. Rousseau was forever foisting dense volumes of prose and poetry upon his ill-read deputy. Bouchard displayed the books on the coffee table in his apartment to impress his wife's friends.

He clutched the paper sign in his damp right hand. In his left he held a mobile phone, which for the past several hours had pinged with a steady stream of messages regarding a certain Dr. Leila Hadawi, a French citizen of Palestinian Arab extraction. Dr. Hadawi had boarded Air France Flight 1533 in Athens earlier that afternoon, following a month's holiday in Greece. She had been granted reentry into France with no questions about her travel itinerary and was now making her way to the arrivals hall of Terminal 2F, or so said the last message Bouchard had received. He would believe it when he saw her with his own eyes. The Israeli standing next to him seemed to feel the same way. He was the lanky one with gray eyes, the one the French members of the team knew as Michel. There was something about him that made Bouchard uneasy. It was not difficult to picture him with a gun in his hand, pointed at a man who was about to die.