Prince of Fire

PART THREE. THE GARE de LYON

15 MARSEILLES

FOR THE SECOND TIME IN TEN DAYS PAUL MARTINEAU made the drive from Aix-en-Provence to Marseilles. Once again he entered the coffeehouse on the small street off the rue des Convalescents and climbed the narrow stairs to the flat on the first floor, and once again he was greeted on the landing by the gowned figure who spoke to him quietly in Arabic. They sat, propped on silk pillows, on the floor of the tiny living room. The man slowly loaded hashish into a hubble-bubble and touched a lighted match to the bowl. In Marseilles he was known as Hakim el-Bakri, a recent immigrant from Algiers. Martineau knew him by another name, Abu Saddiq. Martineau did not refer to him by that name, just as Abu Saddiq did not call Martineau by the name he’d been given by his real father.

Abu Saddiq drew heavily on the mouthpiece of the pipe, then inclined it in Martineau’s direction. Martineau took a long pull at the hashish and allowed the smoke to drift out his nostrils. Then he finished the last of his coffee. A veiled woman took away his empty cup and offered him another. When Martineau shook his head, the woman slipped silently from the room.

He closed his eyes as a wave of pleasure washed over his body. The Arab way, he thought-a bit of smoke, a cup of sweet coffee, the subservience of a woman who knew her place in life. Though he had been raised a proper Frenchman, it was Arab blood that flowed in his veins and Arabic that felt most comfortable on his tongue. The poet’s language, the language of conquest and suffering. There were times when the separation from his people was almost too painful to bear. In Provence he was surrounded by people like himself, yet he could not touch them. It was as if he had been condemned to wander among them, as a damned spirit drifts among the living. Only here, in Abu Saddiq’s tiny flat, could he behave as the man he truly was. Abu Saddiq understood this, which was why he seemed in no hurry to get around to business. He loaded more hashish into the water pipe and struck another match.

Martineau took another draw from the pipe, this one deeper than the last, and held the smoke until it seemed his lungs might burst. Now his mind was floating. He saw Palestine, not with his own eyes but as it had been described to him by those who had actually seen it. Martineau, like his father, had never set foot there. Lemon trees and olives groves-that’s what he imagined. Sweet springs and goats pulling on the tan hills of the Galilee. A bit like Provence, he thought, before the arrival of the Greeks.

The image disintegrated, and he found himself wandering across a landscape of Celtic and Roman ruins. He came to a village, a village on the Coastal Plain of Palestine. Beit Sayeed, they had called it. Now there was nothing but a footprint in the dusty soil. Martineau, in his hallucination, fell to his knees and with his spade clawed at the earth. It surrendered nothing, no tools or pottery, no coins or human remains. It was as if the people had simply vanished.

He forced open his eyes. The vision dissipated. His mission would soon be over. The murders of his father and grandfather would be avenged, his birthright fulfilled. Martineau was confident he would not spend his final days as a Frenchman in Provence but as an Arab in Palestine. His people, lost and scattered, would be returned to the land, and Beit Sayeed would rise once more from its grave. The days of the Jews were numbered. They would leave like all those who had come to Palestine before them-the Greeks and Romans, the Persians and the Assyrians, the Turks and the British. One day soon, Martineau was convinced, he would be searching for artifacts amid the ruins of a Jewish settlement.

Abu Saddiq was pulling at his shirtsleeve and calling him by his real name. Martineau turned his head slowly and fixed Abu Saddiq in a heavy-lidded gaze. “Call me Martineau,” he said in French. “I’m Paul Martineau. Doctor Paul Martineau.”

“You were far away for a moment.”

“I was in Palestine,” Martineau murmured, his speech heavy with the drug. “Beit Sayeed.”

“We’ll all be there soon,” Abu Saddiq said.

Martineau treated himself to a smile-not one of arrogance but of quiet confidence. Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Rome -three attacks, each flawlessly planned and executed. The teams had delivered their explosives to the target and had vanished without a trace. In each operation, Martineau had concealed himself with archaeological work and had operated through a cutout. Abu Saddiq was handling the Paris operation. Martineau had conceived and planned it; Abu Saddiq, from his coffeehouse in the Quartier Belsunce, moved the chess pieces at Martineau’s command. When it was over Abu Saddiq would suffer the same fate as all those Martineau had used. He had learned from the mistakes of his ancestors. He would never allow himself to be undone by an Arab traitor.

Abu Saddiq offered Martineau the pipe. Martineau lifted his hand in surrender. Then, with a slow nod of his head, he instructed Abu Saddiq to get on with the final briefing. For the next half hour Martineau remained silent while Abu Saddiq spoke: the locations of the teams, the addresses in Paris where the suitcase bombs were being assembled, the emotional state of the three shaheeds. Abu Saddiq stopped talking while the veiled woman poured more coffee. When she was gone again Abu Saddiq mentioned that the last member of the team would arrive in Marseilles in two days’ time.

“She wants to see you,” Abu Saddiq said. “Before the operation.”

Martineau shook his head. He knew the girl-they had been lovers once-and he knew why she wanted to see him. It was better they not spend time together now. Otherwise Martineau might have second thoughts about what he had planned for her.

“We stay to the original plan,” he said. “Where do I meet her?”

“The Internet cafe overlooking the harbor. Do you know it?”

Martineau did.

“She’ll be there at twelve-thirty.”

Just then, from the minaret of a mosque up the street, the muezzin summoned the faithful to prayer. Martineau closed his eyes as the familiar words washed over him.

God is most great. I testify that there is no god but God. I testify that Muhammad is the Prophet of God. Come to prayer. Come to success. God is most great. There is no god but God.

Martineau, when the call to prayer had ended, stood and prepared to take his leave.

“Where’s Hadawi?” he asked.

“ Zurich.”

“He’s something of a liability, wouldn’t you say?”

Abu Saddiq nodded. “Should I move him?”

“No,” said Martineau. “Just kill him.”

MARTINEAU’S HEAD had cleared by the time he reached the Place de la Prefecture. How different things were on this side of Marseilles, he thought. The streets were cleaner, the shops more plentiful. Martineau the archaeologist could not help but reflect on the nature of the two worlds that existed side by side in this ancient city. One was focused on devotion, the other on consumption. One had many children, the other found children to be a financial burden. The French, Martineau knew, would soon be a minority in their own country, colons in their own land. Someday soon, a century, perhaps a bit longer, France would be a Muslim country.

He turned into the boulevard St-Remy. Tree-lined and split by a payage parking lot in the median, the street rose at a slight pitch toward a small green park with a view of the old port. The buildings on each side were fashioned of stately graystone and uniform in height. Iron bars covered the ground-floor windows. Many of the buildings contained professional offices-lawyers, doctors, estate agents-and farther up the street there were a couple of banks and a large interior-design store. At the base of the street, on the edge of the Place de la Prefecture, were a pair of opposing kiosks-one selling newspapers, the other sandwiches. During the day there was a small market in the street, but now that it was dusk the vendors had packed up their cheese and fresh vegetables and gone home.