“Is he acting at Arafat’s behest?”
“I couldn’t say for certain.”
“What
“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
“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
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.
“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.
