Gabriel Allon: The Black Widow Part 40

She didn't understand what he was saying, and so she merely smiled and sat down. While reclaiming his own seat, Saladin shot a glance toward the man sitting at the end of the bar. The man with dark hair and eyegla.s.ses who had entered the restaurant a few minutes after Saladin. The man, thought Saladin, who had taken great interest in Safia's arrival and who was holding a mobile phone tightly to his ear. It could mean only one thing: Saladin's presence in Washington had not gone unnoticed.

He raised his eyes toward the television over the bar. It was tuned to CNN. The network was only just beginning to grasp the scope of the calamity that had befallen Washington. There had been attacks at the National Counterterrorism Center, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Kennedy Center. The network was also hearing reports, unconfirmed, of attacks on a number of restaurants in the Washington Harbor complex. The patrons of Cafe Milano were clearly on edge. Most were staring at their mobiles, and about a dozen were gathered around the bar, watching the television. But not the man with dark hair and gla.s.ses. He was trying his best not to stare at Safia. It was time, thought Saladin, to be leaving.

He placed his hand lightly on Safia's and stared into her hypnotic eyes. In Arabic, he asked, "You dropped her where I told you?"

She nodded.

"The Americans followed you?"

"They tried. They seemed confused."

"With good reason," he said with a glance toward the television.

"It went well?"

"Better than expected."

A waiter approached. Saladin waved him away.

"Do you see the man at the end of the bar?" he asked quietly.

"The one who's talking on the phone?"

Saladin nodded. "Have you ever seen him before?"

"I don't think so."

"He's going to try to stop you. Don't let him."

There was a moment's silence. Saladin granted himself the luxury of one last look around the room. This was the reason he had made the risky journey to Washington, to see with his own eyes fear on American faces. For too long, only Muslims had been afraid. Now the Americans would know what it was like to taste fear. They had destroyed Saladin's country. Tonight, Saladin had begun the process of destroying theirs.

He looked at Safia. "You're ready?"

"Yes," she answered.

"After I leave, wait one minute exactly." He gave her hand a soft squeeze of encouragement and then smiled. "Don't be afraid, my love. You won't feel a thing. And then you'll see the face of Allah."

"Peace be with you," she said.

"And with you."

With that, Saladin rose and, taking up his cane, limped past the man with dark hair and gla.s.ses, into the foyer.

"Is everything all right, Mr. al-Farouk?" asked the matre d'.

"I have to make a phone call, and I don't want to disturb your other guests."

"I'm afraid they're already disturbed."

"So it would seem."

Saladin went into the night. On the redbrick pavement, he paused for a moment to savor the wail of sirens. A black Lincoln Town Car waited curbside. Saladin lowered himself into the backseat and instructed the driver, a member of his network, to move forward a few yards. Inside the restaurant, surrounded by more than a hundred people, a woman sat alone, staring at her wrist.w.a.tch. And though she did not realize it, her lips were moving.

65.

WISCONSIN AVENUE, GEORGETOWN.

AFTER CROSSING Q STREET, NATALIE encountered two Georgetown students, both women, both terrified. Over the scream of a pa.s.sing ambulance, she explained that she had been robbed and needed to call her boyfriend for help. The women said that the university had sent out an alert ordering all students to return to their dorms and residences and to shelter in place. But when Natalie made a second appeal, one of the women, the taller of the two, handed over an iPhone. Natalie held the device in the palm of her left hand, and with her right, the one that held the detonator switch, entered the number she was supposed to use only in an extreme emergency. It rang on the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. A male voice answered in terse Hebrew.

"I need to speak to Gabriel right away," Natalie said in the same language.

"Who is this?"

She hesitated and then spoke her given name for the first time in many months.

"Where are you?"

"Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown."

"Are you safe?"

"Yes, I think so, but I'm wearing a suicide vest."

"It might be b.o.o.by-trapped. Don't try to take it off."

"I won't."

"Stand by."

Twice the man on the Operations Desk in Tel Aviv tried to transfer the call to Gabriel's mobile. Twice there was no answer.

"There seems to be a problem."

"Where is he?"

"The National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia."

"Try again."

A police cruiser flashed past, siren screaming. The two Georgetown students were growing impatient.

"Just a minute," Natalie said to them in English.

"Please hurry," replied the owner of the phone.

The man in Tel Aviv tried Gabriel's phone again. It rang several times before a male voice answered in English.

"Who is this?" asked Natalie.

"My name is Adrian Carter. I work for the CIA."

"Where's Gabriel?"

"He's here with me."

"I need to speak to him."

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

"Why not?"

"Is this Natalie?"

"Yes."

"Where are you?"

She answered.

"Are you still wearing your vest?"

"Yes."

"Don't touch it."

"I won't."

"Can you keep this phone?"

"No."

"We're going to bring you in. Walk north on Wisconsin Avenue. Stay on the west side of the street."

"There's going to be another attack. Safia is somewhere close."

"We know exactly where she is. Get moving."

The connection went dead. Natalie returned the phone and headed north up Wisconsin Avenue.

In the ruins of the National Counterterrorism Center, Carter managed to communicate to Gabriel that Natalie was safe and would momentarily be in FBI custody. Deafened, bleeding, Gabriel had no time for celebration. Mikhail was still inside Cafe Milano, not twenty feet from the table where Safia Bourihane sat alone, her thumb on her detonator, her eyes on her watch. Carter raised the phone to his ear and again ordered Mikhail to leave the restaurant at once. Gabriel still couldn't hear what Carter was saying. He only hoped that Mikhail was listening.

Like Saladin, Mikhail surveyed the interior of Cafe Milano's elegant dining room before rising. He, too, saw fear on the faces around him, and like Saladin he knew that in a moment many people would die. Saladin had had the power to stop the attack. Mikhail did not. Even if he was armed, which he was not, the chances of stopping the attack were slim. Safia's thumb was atop the detonator switch, and when she was not staring at her watch, she was staring at Mikhail. Nor was it possible to issue any sort of warning. A warning would only cause a panicked rush to the door, and more would die. Better to let the vest explode with the patrons as they were. The lucky ones at the outer tables might survive. The ones closest to Safia, the ones who had been granted the coveted tables, would be spared the awful knowledge that they were about to die.

Slowly, Mikhail slid from the barstool and stood. He didn't dare try to leave the restaurant through the front entrance; his path would take him far too close to Safia's table. Instead, he moved calmly down the length of the bar toward the toilets. The door to the men's room was locked. He twisted the flimsy latch until it snapped and went inside. A thirtysomething man with gelled hair was admiring himself in the mirror.

"What's your problem, man?"

"You'll know in a minute."

The man tried to leave, but Mikhail seized his arm.

"Don't go. You'll thank me later."

Mikhail closed the door and pulled the man to the ground.

From his vantage point on Prospect Street, Eli Lavon had witnessed a series of increasingly unsettling developments. The first was the arrival at Cafe Milano of Safia Bourihane, followed a few minutes later by the departure of the large Arab known as Omar al-Farouk. The large Arab was now in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car, which was parked about fifty yards from Cafe Milano's entrance, behind a white Honda Pilot. What's more, Lavon had called Gabriel several times at the NCTC without success. Subsequently, he had learned, from King Saul Boulevard and the car radio, that the NCTC had been attacked by a pair of truck bombs. Lavon now feared that his oldest friend in the world might be dead, this time for real. And he feared that, in a few seconds, Mikhail might be dead, too.

Just then, Lavon received a message from King Saul Boulevard reporting that Gabriel had been slightly injured in the attack at the NCTC but was still very much alive. Lavon's relief was short-lived, however, for at that same instant the thunderclap of an explosion shook Prospect Street. The Lincoln Town Car eased sedately from the curb and slid past Lavon's window. Then four armed men spilled from the Honda Pilot and started running toward the wreckage of Cafe Milano.

66.

WISCONSIN AVENUE, GEORGETOWN.

NATALIE HEARD THE EXPLOSION as she was approaching R Street and knew at once it was Safia. She turned and gazed down the length of Wisconsin Avenue, with its graceful rightward bend toward M Street, and saw hundreds of panicked people walking north. It reminded her of the scenes in Washington after 9/11, the tens of thousands of people who had simply left their offices in the world's most powerful city and started walking. Once again, Washington was under siege. This time, the terrorists weren't armed with airplanes, only explosives and guns. But the result, it seemed, was far more terrifying.

Natalie turned and joined the exodus moving north. She was growing weary beneath the dead weight of the suicide vest, and the weight of her own failure. She had saved the life of the very monster who had conceived and plotted this carnage, and after her arrival in America she had been unable to uncover a single piece of intelligence about the targets, the other terrorists, or the timing of the attack. She had been kept in the dark for a reason, she was certain of it.

All at once there was a burst of gunfire from the same direction as the explosion. Natalie hurried across R Street and continued north, keeping to the west side of the street as the man named Adrian Carter had instructed. We're going to bring you in, he had said. But he had not told her how. Suddenly, she was pleased to be wearing the red jacket. She might not be able to see them, but they would see her.

North of R Street, Wisconsin Avenue sank for a block or two before rising into the neighborhoods of Burleith and Glover Park. Ahead, Natalie saw a blue-and-yellow awning that read BISTROT LEPIC & WINE BAR. It was the restaurant Safia had ordered her to bomb. She stopped and peered through the window. It was a charming place-small, warm, inviting, very Parisian. Safia had said it would be crowded, but that wasn't the case. Nor did the people sitting at the tables look like French diplomats or officials from the Foreign Ministry in Paris. They looked like Americans. And, like everyone else in Washington, they looked frightened.

Just then, Natalie heard someone calling her name-not her own name but the name of the woman she had become in order to prevent a night like this. She turned sharply and saw that a car had pulled up at the curb behind her. At the wheel was a woman with open-air skin. It was Megan, the woman from the FBI.

Natalie crawled into the front seat as though she were crawling into the arms of her mother. The weight of the suicide vest pinned her to the seat; the detonator felt like a live animal in her palm. The car swung a U-turn and joined the northward exodus from Georgetown, as all around the sirens wailed. Natalie covered her ears, but it was no use.