The Messenger

Mordecai said. “It’s nothing more than a booth with a sliding aluminum shutter over the window and one door for the staff to come in and out. We could be inside in a matter of seconds. The problem is that the airport itself is under guard at night. We could lose the entire operation just to find out the name and credit card number he used to rent his car.”

“Too risky,” Gabriel said. “Any activity on the telephone?”

Mordecai had placed a transmitter in the junction box overnight. “One call this morning,” he said. “A woman. She phoned a hair salon in Saint-Jean and made an appointment for this afternoon.”

“What did she call herself?”

“Madame al-Nasser,” Mordecai said. “There’s one small problem with the tap. As it stands now, we’re at the outside edge of its range. The signal is weak and full of interference. If bin Shafiq picked up the phone right now we might not be able to make a voice ID on him because of static on the line. We need a listening post.”

Gabriel looked at Yaakov. “What about moving the boat?”

“The waters off that point are too rough to be used as an anchorage. If we dropped anchor out there to watch the villa, we’d stick out like a sore thumb. We might as well just walk up to al-Nasser’s front door and introduce ourselves.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” said Mikhail as he entered the salon. “I volunteer.”

“We need a static post,” Yaakov said.

“So we’ll get one.” Gabriel held up the gift card again. “What about this name? Do you recognize it?”

“It’s not an alias that we know about,” Yaakov said. “I’ll have King Saul Boulevard run it through the computers and see what they come up with.”

“What now?” asked Mikhail.

“We’ll spend the day watching him,” Gabriel said. “We’ll try to get his photograph and his voice. If we can, we’ll send them to King Saul Boulevard for analysis.”

“It’s a small island,” Lavon said, his tone cautionary. “And we have limited personnel.”

“That can work to our advantage. In a place like this, it’s not uncommon to see the same people every day.”

“True,” Lavon said, “but bin Talal’s goons will get nervous if they see too many familiar faces.”

“And what if King Saul Boulevard tells us that Alain al-Nasser of Montreal is really a Saudi GID officer named Ahmed bin Shafiq?” Mikhail asked. “What do we do then?”

Gabriel glanced up at the monitor and looked at Sarah. “I’m going back to Gustavia,” he said, still gazing at the screen. “We need a listening post.”

THE WELL-BRED ENGLISHWOMAN who greeted him fifteen minutes later at the Sibarth villa rental agency had sun-streaked brown hair and pale blue eyes. Gabriel played the role of Heinrich Kiever, a German of means who had stumbled upon paradise and now wished to stay on a bit longer. The Englishwoman smiled-she had heard many such tales before-then printed out a listing of available properties. Gabriel scanned it and frowned. “I was hoping for something here,” he said, tapping the map that lay spread over her desk. “On this point on the north side of the Island.”

“Pointe Milou? Yes, it’s lovely, but I’m afraid we have nothing available there at the moment. We do have something here, though.” She tapped the map. “The next point over. Pointe Mangin.”

“Can you see Pointe Milou from the house?”

“Yes, quite clearly. Would you like to see some photographs?”

“Please.”

The woman produced a brochure and opened it to the appropriate page. “It’s four bedrooms, Herr Kiever. Did you need something that large?”

“Actually, we might be having some company.”

“Then I suspect this will do brilliantly. It’s a bit pricey, twelve thousand a week, and I’m afraid there’s a two- week minimum.”

Gabriel shrugged, as if to say money was no object.

“No children and absolutely no pets. You don’t have a dog, do you?”

“Heavens no.”

“There’s a two-thousand-dollar security deposit as well, bringing the grand total to twenty-six thousand, payable in advance, of course.”

“When can we have it?”

She looked at her watch. “It’s ten-fifteen now. If we rush things along, we should be able to have you and your wife in by eleven-thirty at the latest.”

Gabriel smiled and handed her a credit card.

THOUGH THE ENGLISHWOMAN did not know it, the first guests arrived at the villa fifteen minutes after Gabriel and Dina had settled in. Their possessions were quite unlike those of ordinary visitors to the island. Mordecai brought a voice-activated receiver and a Nikon camera with a long lens, while Mikhail arrived with a nylon rucksack containing cellular phones, radios, and four handguns. An hour later they glimpsed their quarry for the first time when he strode onto the terrace, dressed in white shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt. Mordecai snapped several photos of him. Five minutes later, when al-Nasser emerged shirtless from the pool after a vigorous swim, he snapped several more. Gabriel examined the images on the computer but deemed them unworthy of sending to King Saul Boulevard for analysis.

At one in the afternoon the light on the voice-activated recorder turned from red to green. A burst of tone came over the line, followed by the sound of someone inside the house dialing a local number. After two rings the call was answered by a woman at La Gloriette restaurant. Gabriel closed his eyes in disappointment when the next voice on the line was that of Madame al-Nasser, requesting a lunch reservation for two o’clock. He briefly considered putting a team inside the restaurant but ruled it out after obtaining a description of the cramped beachside dining room. Mordecai, however, managed to take two more photographs of al-Nasser, one as he was climbing out of his car in the parking lot and a second as he was sipping a drink at his table. In both he was wearing dark sports sunglasses and a long-sleeved shirt. Gabriel dispatched them to King Saul Boulevard for analysis. One hour later, as al-Nasser and his wife were leaving the restaurant, King Saul Boulevard sent a flash over the secure link that the results were inconclusive.

At 3:30 they departed La Gloriette and drove to Saint-Jean village, where al-Nasser dropped his wife at the hair salon. From there he went to Gustavia, where, at 3:50, he boarded a launch and headed to Alexandra. Yossi recorded his arrival from the bridge of Sun Dancer , along with the warm embrace he received from Zizi al-Bakari as they entered the upstairs office suite for a private meeting. Sarah was not on board to see al-Nasser’s arrival, for at that moment she and most of Zizi’s entourage were snorkeling in Ile Fourche, a small deserted island about a mile northeast of Saint-Bart’s.

The meeting lasted a little over an hour. Yossi recorded al-Nasser’s departure from Zizi’s office and the altogether determined expression on his face as he boarded the launch and headed back to Gustavia. Mikhail followed him back to Saint-Jean village, where he collected his newly coiffed wife from the salon shortly after six o’clock. By 6:30 al-Nasser was once again swimming laps in his pool, and Mikhail was seated glumly next to Gabriel in the villa on the other side of the inlet.

“We’ve been chasing him all day,” Mikhail said, “and what have we got to show for it? A few useless pictures. Alain al-Nasser is obviously bin Shafiq. Let’s take him now and be done with it.”

Gabriel gave him a disdainful look. “Some day, when you’re a little older and wiser, I’ll tell you a story about the night an Office hit team thought they had the prize in their sights and killed an innocent waiter by mistake.”

“I know the story, Gabriel. It happened in Lillehammer. Inside the Office you still refer to it as Leyl-ha-Mar: the Night of Bitterness. But it was a long time ago.”

“It is still the greatest operational blunder in the history of the Office. They killed the wrong man, and they got caught doing it. They broke all the rules. They acted hastily, and they let their emotions get the better of them. We’ve come too far to have another Leyl-ha-Mar. First we get proof-airtight, unassailable proof-that Alain al-Nasser is Ahmed bin Shafiq.