Gabriel Allon: The Black Widow Part 42

IT WAS A SMALL DUPLEX, two floors, aluminum siding. The unit on the left was painted granite gray. The one on the right, Qa.s.sam el-Banna's, was the color of a shirt that had been dried too many times on a radiator. Each unit had a single window on the ground floor and a single window on the second. A chain-link fence divided the front yard into separate plots. The one on the left was a showpiece, but Qa.s.sam's looked as though it had been chewed bare by goats.

"Obviously," observed Eli Lavon darkly from the backseat of the Buick, "he hasn't had much time for gardening."

They were parked on the opposite side of the street, outside a duplex of identical construction and upkeep. In the s.p.a.ce in front of the gray-white duplex was an Acura sedan. It still had dealer plates.

"Nice car," said Lavon. "What's the husband drive?"

"A Kia," said Gabriel.

"I don't see a Kia."

"Neither do I."

"Wife drives an Acura, husband drives a Kia-what's wrong with this picture?"

Gabriel offered no explanation.

"What's the wife's name?" asked Lavon.

"Amina."

"Egyptian?"

"Apparently so."

"Kid?"

"Boy."

"How old?"

"Two and a half."

"So he won't remember what's about to happen."

"No," agreed Gabriel. "He won't remember."

A car moved past in the street. The driver had the look of an indigenous South American-a Bolivian, maybe Peruvian. He seemed not to notice the three Israeli intelligence operatives sitting in the parked Buick Regal across the street from the house owned by an Egyptian jihadi who had slipped through the cracks of America's vast post9/11 security structure.

"What did Qa.s.sam do before he got into the moving business?"

"IT."

"Why are so many of them in IT?"

"Because they don't have to study un-Islamic subjects like English literature or Italian Renaissance painting."

"All the things that make life interesting."

"They aren't interested in life, Eli. Only death."

"Think he left his computers behind?"

"I certainly hope so."

"What if he smashed his hard drives?"

Gabriel was silent. Another car moved past in the street, another South American behind the wheel. America, he thought, had its banlieues, too.

"How are you going to play it?" asked Lavon.

"I'm not going to knock on the door and invite myself in for a cup of tea."

"But no rough stuff, though."

"No," said Gabriel. "No rough stuff."

"You always say that."

"And?"

"There's always rough stuff."

Gabriel picked up one of the AR-15s and checked to make sure it was properly loaded.

"Front door or back?" asked Lavon.

"I don't do back doors."

"What if they have a dog?"

"Bad swing thought, Eli."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Stay in the car."

Without another word, Gabriel climbed out and started swiftly across the street, gun in one hand, Mikhail at his side. It was funny, thought Lavon, watching him, but even after all these years he still moved like the boy of twenty-two who had served as Israel's angel of vengeance after Munich. He scaled the chain-link fence with a straddling sidestep and then hurled himself toward the el-Bannas' front door. There was a sharp splintering of wood, followed by a female scream, abruptly smothered. Then the door slammed shut and the lights of the house went dark. Lavon slid behind the wheel and surveyed the quiet street. So much for no rough stuff, he thought. There was always rough stuff.

71.

HUME, VIRGINIA.

NATALIE'S BODY SEEMED TO LIQUEFY with fear. She clutched the detonator tightly in her hand, lest it slip from her grasp and sink like a coin to the bottom of a wishing well. Inwardly, she reviewed the elements of her fabricated curriculum vitae. She was Leila from Sumayriyya, Leila who loved Ziad. At a rally in the Place de la Republique, she had told a young Jordanian named Nabil that she wanted to punish the West for its support of Israel. Nabil had given her name to Jalal Na.s.ser, and Jalal had given her to Saladin. Inside the global jihadist movement, a story such as hers was commonplace. But it was just that, a story, and somehow Saladin knew it.

But how long had he known? From the beginning? No, thought Natalie, it wasn't possible. Saladin's lieutenants would never have allowed her to be in the same room with him if they suspected her loyalty. Nor would they have placed his fate in her hands. But they had entrusted her with Saladin's life, and to her shame she had preserved it. And now she stood before him with a bomb strapped to her body and a detonator in her right hand. We don't do suicide missions, Gabriel had said after her return from the caliphate. We don't trade our lives for theirs. She placed her thumb atop the trigger switch and, testing the resistance, pressed it lightly. Saladin, watching her, smiled.

"You are very brave, Maimonides," he said to her in Arabic. "But then I always knew that."

He reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Natalie, fearing he was reaching for a gun, pressed harder on the switch. But it was not a gun, it was a phone. He tapped the screen a few times, and the device emitted a sharp hissing sound. Natalie realized after a few seconds that the sound was water rushing into a basin. The first voice she heard was her own.

"Do you know who that woman is?"

"How did she get into the country?"

"On a false pa.s.sport."

"Where did she come in?"

"New York."

"Kennedy or Newark?"

"I don't know."

"How did she get down to Washington?"

"The train."

"What's the name of the pa.s.sport?"

"Asma Doumaz."

"Have you been given a target?"

"No. But she's been given hers. It's a suicide operation."

"Do you know her target?"

"No."

"Have you met any other members of the attack cells?"

"No."

"Where's your phone?"

"She took it from me. Don't try to send me any messages."

"Get out of here."

Saladin, with a tap on the screen, silenced the recording. Then he regarded Natalie for several unbearable seconds. There was no reproach or anger in his expression. It was the gaze of a professional.

"Who do you work for?" he asked at last, again addressing her in Arabic.

"I work for you." She did not know from what reservoir of pointless courage she drew this response, but it seemed to amuse Saladin. "You are very brave, Maimonides," he said again. "Too brave for your own good."

She noticed for the first time that there was a television in the room. It was tuned to CNN. Three hundred invited guests in evening gowns and tuxedos were streaming from the White House East Room under Secret Service escort.

"A night to remember, don't you think? All the attacks were successful except for one. The target was a French restaurant where many prominent Washingtonians are known to eat. For some reason, the operative chose not to carry out her a.s.signment. Instead, she climbed into a car driven by a woman she believed to be an agent of the FBI."

He paused to allow Natalie a response, but she remained silent.

"Her treachery posed no threat to the operation," he continued. "In fact, it proved quite valuable because it allowed us to distract the Americans during the critical final days of the operation. The end game," he added ominously. "You and Safia were a feint, a deception. I am a soldier of Allah, but a great admirer of Winston Churchill. And it was Churchill who said that in wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

He had addressed these remarks to the television screen. Now he turned once more toward Natalie.

"But there was one question we were never able to answer satisfactorily," he continued. "Whom, exactly, were you working for? Abu Ahmed a.s.sumed you were an American, but it didn't feel like an American operation to me. Quite honestly, I a.s.sumed you were British, because as we all know, the British are the very best when it comes to running live agents. But that also turned out not to be the case. You weren't working for the Americans or the British. You were working for someone else. And tonight you finally told me his name."

Again, he tapped the screen of his mobile phone, and again Natalie heard a sound like water running into a basin. But it wasn't water, it was the drone of a car fleeing the chaos of Washington. This time, the only voice she heard was her own. She was speaking Hebrew, and her voice was heavy with sedative.

"Gabriel . . . Please help me . . . I don't want to die . . ."

Saladin silenced the phone and returned it to the breast pocket of his magnificent suit jacket. Case closed, thought Natalie. Still, there was no anger in his expression, only pity.

"You were a fool to come to the caliphate."

"No," said Natalie, "I was a fool to save your life."

"Why did you?"

"Because you would have died if I hadn't."

"And now," said Saladin, "it is you who will die. The question is, will you die alone, or will you press your detonator and take me with you? I'm wagering you don't have the courage or the faith to push the b.u.t.ton. Only we, the Muslims, have such faith. We are prepared to die for our religion, but not you Jews. You believe in life, but we believe in death. And in any fight, it is those who are prepared to die who will win." He paused briefly, then said, "Go ahead, Maimonides, make a liar of me. Prove me wrong. Push your b.u.t.ton."

Natalie raised the detonator to her face and stared directly into Saladin's dark eyes. The trigger b.u.t.ton yielded to a slight increase in pressure.

"Don't you remember your training in Palmyra? We deliberately use a firm trigger to avoid accidents. You have to push it harder."

She did. There was a click, then silence. Saladin smiled.

"Obviously," he said, "a malfunction."