Prince of Fire

“How will they explain Leah’s condition?”

“Illness.”

“How will we get her to Warsaw?”

“We?” Navot shook his head. “You’re going home by a different route: overland to Italy, then a nighttime pickup on the beach at Fiumicino. Apparently you’re familiar with that spot?”

Gabriel nodded. He knew the beach well. “So how does Leah get to Warsaw?”

“I’ll take her.” Navot saw the reluctance in Gabriel’s eyes. “Don’t worry, I won’t let anything happen to your wife. I’ll accompany her home on the flight. Three doctors are on the tour. She’ll be in good hands.”

“And when she gets to Israel?”

“A team from the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital will be ready to receive her.”

Gabriel spent a moment thinking it over. He was in no position to raise objections to the plan.

“How will I get over the border?”

“Do you remember the Volkswagen van we used in the Radek affair?”

Gabriel did. It had a hidden compartment beneath the rear foldout bed. Radek, drugged and unconscious, had been concealed there when Chiara had driven him over the Austrian-Czech border.

“I brought it back to Paris after the operation,” Navot said. “It’s stored in a garage over in the seventeenth.”

“Did you delouse it?”

Navot laughed. “It’s clean,” he said. “More important, it’ll get you over the border and down to Fiumicino.”

“Who’s taking me to Italy?”

“Moshe can handle it.”

“Him? He’s a kid.”

“He knows how to handle himself,” Navot said. “Besides, who better than Moses to lead you home to the Promised Land?”

31 FIUMICINO, ITALY

“THERE’S THE SIGNAL. TWO SHORT FLASHES FOLLOWED by a long one.”

Moshe flicked the wipers and leaned forward over the wheel of the Volkswagen. Gabriel sat placidly in the passenger seat. He was tempted to tell the kid to relax but decided instead to let him enjoy the moment. Moshe’s previous assignments had involved stocking the pantries of safe flats and cleaning up the mess after the agents had left town. A midnight rendezvous on a rainswept Italian beach was going to be the highlight of his association with the Office.

“There it is again,” the bodel said. “Two short flashes-”

“-followed by a long one. I heard you the first time.” Gabriel clapped the kid on the back. “Sorry, it’s been a long couple of days. Thanks for the ride. Be careful on the way home, and use-”

“-a different border crossing,” he said. “I heard you the first four times.”

Gabriel climbed out of the van and crossed the carpark overlooking the beach, then he saddle-stepped a short stone wall and struck out across the sand to the water’s edge. He waited there, the waves lapping over his shoes, and watched the dinghy drawing closer. A moment later he was seated in the prow, with his back to Yaakov and his eyes on Fidelity.

“You shouldn’t have gone,” Yaakov shouted over the buzz of the outboard.

“If I’d stayed in Marseilles, I would have never got Leah back.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe Khaled would have played the game differently.”

Gabriel twisted his head round. “You’re right, Yaakov. He would have played it differently. First he would have killed Leah and left her body on some road in the south of England. Then he would have sent his three shaheeds into the Gare de Lyon and turned it into rubble.”

Yaakov backed off on the throttle. “That was the dumbest move I’ve ever seen,” Yaakov said, then, in a concessionary tone, he added: “And by far the bravest. They’d better pin a medal on you when we get back to King Saul Boulevard.”

“I fell into Khaled’s trap. They don’t pin medals on officers who walk into traps. They leave them in the desert to be picked over by the vultures and the scorpions.”

Yaakov brought the dinghy to the stern of Fidelity. Gabriel climbed out onto the swim platform and scaled the ladder up the aft deck. Dina awaited him there. She was wearing a heavy sweater, and the wind was tossing about her dark hair. She rushed forward and threw her arms around his neck.

“Her voice,” Gabriel said. “I want to hear the sound of her voice.”

DINA LOADED THE TAPE and pressed PLAY.

“What have you done to her? Where is she?”

“We have her, but I don’t know where she is.”

“Where is she? Answer me! Don’t speak to me in French. Speak to me in your real language. Speak to me in Arabic.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“So you can speak Arabic. Where is she? Answer me, or you’re going down.”

“If you kill me, you’ll destroy yourself-and your wife. I’m your only hope.”

Gabriel pressed STOP, then REWIND, then PLAY.

If you kill me, you’ll destroy yourself-and your wife. I’m your only hope.”

STOP . REWIND . PLAY .

“I’m your only hope.”

STOP .

He looked up at Dina. “Did you run it through the database?”

She nodded. “No match on file.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gabriel said. “I have something better than her voice.”

“What’s that?”

“Her story.”

He told Dina how the girl’s story of pain and loss had virtually tumbled out of her during the final miles before Paris. How her family had come from Sumayriyya in the Western Galilee; how they had been driven out during Operation Ben-Ami and forced into exile in Lebanon.

“Sumayriyya? It was a small place, wasn’t it? A thousand people?”

“Eight hundred, according to the girl. She seemed to know her history.”

“Not everyone from Sumayriyya obeyed the orders to flee,” Dina said. “Some of them stayed behind.”

“And some of them managed to sneak back across the border before it was sealed. If her grandfather was truly a village elder, someone would remember him.”

“But even if we’re able to learn the girl’s name, what good will it do? She’s dead. How can she help us find Khaled?”

“She was in love with him.”

“She told you this?”

“I just know it.”

“How perceptive of you. What else do you know about this girl?”

“I remember how she looked,” he said. “I remember exactly how she looked.”

THE NOTEPAD of unlined paper she found on the flying bridge; the two ordinary lead pencils in the junk drawer of the galley. He settled himself on the couch and worked by the glow of a halogen reading lamp. Dina tried to peer over his shoulder, but he cast her a severe look and sent her out onto the windswept deck to wait until he had finished. She stood at the rail and watched the lights of the Italian coast growing faint on the horizon. Ten minutes later she returned to the salon and found Gabriel asleep on the couch. The portrait of the dead girl lay next to him. Dina switched off the lamp and let him sleep on.

THE ISRAELI FRIGATE appeared off Fidelity’s starboard side in the afternoon of the