The Messenger

A FIST crashed against the door three times. A tense voice shouted at her to come out. Sarah turned the latch and opened the door. Jean-Michel was standing outside in the passage, along with four of Zizi’s bodyguards. They seized her arms and pulled her back to the beach.

THE WHITE CABRIOLET came through the security gate and turned onto the road, followed by the police Rover. Fifteen seconds later the little convoy sped past Gabriel and Mikhail. The top of the convertible was still down. Bin Shafiq had both hands on the wheel, and his eyes were straight ahead.

Gabriel looked at Mikhail and spoke to the entire team simultaneously over the radio. “Evacuate to Saline now. Everyone. Leave me a boat, but get off the island.”

Then he set off after bin Shafiq and the gendarmes.

“YOU’RE HURTING ME.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Sarah, but we have to hurry.”

“For what? The main course?”

“There’s been a bomb threat. We’re leaving the island.”

“A bomb threat? Against who? Against what?”

“Please don’t say another word, Miss Sarah. Just walk quickly.”

“I will, but let go of my arms. You’re hurting me!”

GABRIEL STAYED two hundred yards behind the Range Rover and rode with his headlamp doused. They sped through the village of Lorient, then Saint-Jean. As they raced along the edge of the bay he saw the sign for Le Tetou. He throttled down and peered into the parking lot, just as Zizi and the rest of his entourage were climbing into the Land Cruisers under the gaze of two more gendarmes. Sarah was sandwiched between Rafiq and Jean- Michel. There was nothing Gabriel could do now. Reluctantly he accelerated and set off after bin Shafiq.

The airport was now directly ahead of them. Without warning the two vehicles swerved into the service road and headed through an open security gate onto the tarmac. A turboprop was waiting at the end on the tarmac, engines running. Gabriel stopped on the shoulder of the road and watched as bin Shafiq, the woman, and the two gendarmes emerged from their vehicles.

The Saudi terrorist and the woman immediately boarded the plane, while the gendarmes loaded the bags into the storage compartment in the belly. Fifteen seconds after the cabin door closed, the plane lurched forward and swept down the runway. As it rose over the Baie de Saint-Jean, Zizi’s motorcade came roaring past in a black blur and started up the hill toward Gustavia.

IT WAS 8:40 when Mordecai and Oded spotted Mikhail and Rimona clambering down the dunes toward Saline beach. Two minutes later four more figures appeared. By 8:43 everyone was aboard the boats but Lavon.

“You heard him, Eli,” Yaakov shouted. “He wants everyone off the island.”

“I know,” Lavon said, “but I’m not leaving without him.”

Yaakov could see there was no point in arguing. A moment later the Zodiacs were bounding through the surf toward Sun Dancer. Lavon watched them melt into the darkness; then he turned and began pacing the water’s edge.

THE MOTORCADE snaked its way at high speed down the hill into Gustavia. Gabriel, following after them, could see Alexandra ablaze with light at the edge of the harbor. Two minutes later the Land Cruisers turned into the parking lot of the marina. Zizi’s bodyguards handled the disembarkation and loading process with the speed and precision of professionally trained men. Rescue was not an option. Gabriel saw Sarah only once-a flash of saffron wedged between two large dark figures-and a moment later they were seaborne once more, bound for the sanctuary of Alexandra. He had no choice but to turn and head to Saline, where Lavon was waiting for him. Gabriel sat morosely in the prow as they headed into the bay.

“Do you remember what I told you this afternoon, Gabriel?”

“I remember, Eli.”

“If you can only get one target tonight, make sure it’s Sarah. That’s what I told you.”

“I know, Eli.”

“Who made the mistake? Was it us? Or was it Sarah?”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“No, it doesn’t. He’s going to kill her unless we can somehow get her back.”

“He won’t do it here. Not after involving the French police.”

“He’ll find a way. No one betrays Zizi and gets away with it. Zizi’s rules.”

“He’ll have to move her,” Gabriel said. “And, of course, he’ll want to know who she’s working for.”

“Which means we might have a very small window, depending on the methods Zizi is willing to use to get answers.”

Gabriel was silent. Lavon could read his thoughts.

We’ll get her, Gabriel was thinking. Let’s just hope there’s something left of her when we do.

28.

CIA Headquarters

WORD OF THE DISASTER in Saint-Barthelemy arrived in the Operations Room at King Saul Boulevard within ten minutes of Gabriel’s return to Sun Dancer. Amos Sharrett, the director-general, was upstairs in his office at the time and was informed of the developments by the duty officer. Despite the lateness of the hour, he immediately woke the prime minister and told him the news. Five minutes later there was a second secure call from Sun Dancer, this one to Langley, Virginia. It went not to the Ops Center but to the private line of Adrian Carter’s seventh-floor office. Carter took the news calmly, as he did most things, and toyed with a stray paper clip as Gabriel made his request. “We have a plane in Miami at the moment,” Carter said. “It can be on the ground in Saint Maarten by dawn.”

Carter hung up the phone and gazed toward the bank of television monitors on the opposite side of the room. The president was in Europe on his fence-mending tour. He had spent the day meeting with the new German chancellor while outside the police had waged running street battles across Berlin with anti-American demonstrators. More of the same was expected at the president’s final two stops: Paris and Rome. The French were bracing for a wave of Muslim rioting, and the Carabinieri were anticipating demonstrations on a scale not seen in the Italian capital in a generation-hardly the scenes of transatlantic harmony the White House imagemakers had been hoping for.

Carter switched off the television and locked his papers in his wall safe, then took his overcoat from the hook on the back of his door and slipped out. The secretaries had gone for the night, and the vestibule was in shadow except for a trapezoid of light that shone from a half-open door on the opposite side. The door led to the office of Shepard Cantwell, the deputy director of intelligence, Carter’s counterpart on the analytical side of the Agency. From inside the room came the clattering of a computer keyboard. Cantwell was still there. According to the Agency wits, Cantwell never left. He simply locked himself into his wall safe some time around midnight and let himself out again at dawn, so he could be at his desk when the director arrived.

“That you, Adrian?” Cantwell inquired in his lazy Back Bay drawl. When Carter poked his head into Cantwell’s lair, the DDI stopped typing and looked up over a batch of files. He was prim as a prior and twice as crafty. “Christ, Adrian, you look like death warmed over. What’s bothering you?”

When Carter mumbled something vague about the chaos surrounding the president’s goodwill trip to Europe, Cantwell launched into a dissertation about the false dangers of anti-Americanism. Cantwell was analysis. He couldn’t help it.

“It’s always fascinated me, Adrian, this ludicrous need of ours to be powerful and loved at the same time. The