trouble assembling the money, trouble getting the permission of local authorities for the handover, anything to keep the hostage alive and the kidnappers talking. But this was not a normal situation-the terrorists wanted Gabriel-and there was no point delaying the inevitable. The sooner it started, the sooner it would be over.
“You’ll call on this number?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I look forward to hearing from you.”
Gabriel stood, pulled on his leather jacket, and started toward the stairs.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Carter.
“I’m leaving.”
“You can’t just
“I can’t stay here, Adrian. I have work to do.”
“Let us give you a lift. We can’t have you wandering around London unprotected.”
“I think I can look after myself, Adrian.”
“At least let me rustle you up a gun.”
“What are you boys carrying these days?”
“Browning Hi-Power,” said Carter. “It doesn’t have the grace and beauty of your Berettas, but it’s quite lethal. Would you like one magazine or two?”
Gabriel frowned.
“I’ll bring you two,” said Carter. “And an extra box of ammo for laughs.”
Five minutes later, with Carter’s loaded Browning pressing against the base of his spine, Gabriel slipped past the Marine guard at the North Gate and turned into Upper Brook Street. The sidewalk along the embassy fence was closed to pedestrian traffic and lined with Metropolitan Police officers in lime green jackets. Gabriel crossed to the opposite side of the street and headed toward Hyde Park. He spotted the motorcyclist two minutes later as he rounded the corner into Park Lane. The bike was a powerful BMW and the figure seated atop it was long-legged and helmeted. Gabriel noticed the bulge beneath the leather jacket-the left side, for the right-handed cross draw. He continued north to Marble Arch, then headed west along the Bayswater Road. As he was approaching Albion Gate he heard the roar of the BMW bike at his back. It came alongside him and braked to an abrupt stop. Gabriel swung his leg over the back and wrapped his arms around the rider’s waist. As the bike shot forward he heard the sound of a woman singing. Chiara always sang when she was at the controls of a motorcycle.
48
She drove for fifteen minutes through the streets of Belgravia and Brompton to make certain they were not being followed, then made her way to the Israeli embassy, located in Old Court Place just off Kensington High Street. Shamron was waiting for them in the office of the station chief, a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette in one hand and a handsome olive-wood cane in the other. He was angrier than Gabriel had seen him in many years.
“Hello, Ari.”
“What do you think you’re playing at?”
“How did you get here so quickly?”
“I left Ben-Gurion this morning after learning about your exploits in Denmark. It was my intention to ease your way through Heathrow and bring you home again. But when I placed a call to the station to let them know I had arrived, I was told you had just left Downing Street.”
“I tried to steal some matches for you, but I was never alone.”
“You should have consulted with us before agreeing to this!”
“There wasn’t time.”
“There was abundant time! You see, Gabriel, it would have been a very short consultation. You would have asked for clearance to undertake this mission and I would have told you no. End of consultation.” He crushed out his cigarette and looked at Gabriel malevolently for a long moment without speaking. “But to back out of this arrangement
“I learned from the master.”
Shamron stuck another cigarette between his lips, cocked the lid of his old Zippo lighter, and fired. “I held my tongue when you decided to return to Amsterdam to kidnap and interrogate this man Ibrahim Fawaz. I held my tongue again when you went to Copenhagen and tried to negotiate with his son. If I had obeyed my first instinct, which was to bring you home, it wouldn’t have come to this. You had no right to agree to this assignment without first obtaining the permission of your director and your prime minister. If it were anyone but you, I would bring you up on charges and throw you into the Judean Wilderness to atone for your sins.”
“You can do that when I get home.”
“You’re liable to come home in a
“I don’t want the job.”
“I know you don’t really mean that.”
“God, but you’re sounding more and more like a Jewish mother every day.”
“And you are providing me ample proof that you are not up to the job. By way of deception, thou shalt do war-this is our creed. We are not
“And what do we do about Elizabeth Halton? Let her die?”
“If it is the only way to end this madness, then the answer is yes.”
“And if it were your daughter, Ari? If it were Ronit?”
“Then I would shake hands with the Devil himself in order to get her back again. But I wouldn’t ask the Americans to do it for me. Blue and white, Gabriel. Blue and white. We do things for ourselves, and we do not help others with problems of their own making. The Americans threw in their lot with the secular dictatorships of the Middle East a long time ago, and now the oppressed are rising up and taking their revenge on symbols of American power. On September eleventh it was the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now it is the innocent daughter of the American ambassador to London.”
“And next it will be
“And we will fight them-
“He became a man, Ari. And he is sick to death of this shit. And he will not let this woman be murdered because the Americans refuse to release a dying sheikh from prison.”
“And is this man prepared to die on behalf of this cause?” He looked at Chiara. “Is he prepared to give up his life with this beautiful woman in order to save one he does not know?”
“Trust me, Ari, I’m not a martyr, and the only people who are going to die are the terrorists. When we lost Ibrahim, we lost our only way into the conspiracy. Now, by demanding that I deliver the money, they’ve opened the door to us again. And we’re all going to walk through it, together.”
