Daniel Silva - Prince of fire

Shamron slowly crushed out his cigarette.

“I don’t care if it’s broad daylight,” he said evenly. “I don’t care if he’s with a friend. I don’t care if the act is witnessed by a crowd of people. When Khaled al-Khalifa steps out of that apartment house, I want you to put him on the ground and be done with it.”

“The escape route?”

“Up the boulevard Notre-Dame, over the avenue du Prado. Head east at high speed. The Ayin will leave a car for you in the parking lot of the Velodrome. Then get to Geneva as quickly as possible. We’ll put you in a flat there and move you when it’s safe.”

“When do we leave Sardinia?”

“Now,” Shamron said. “Head due north, toward Corsica. On the southwest corner of the island is the port of Propriano. The Marseilles ferry leaves from there. You can shadow it across the Mediterranean. It’s nine hours from Propriano. Slip into the port after dark and register with the harbormaster. Then make contact with the watchers and establish the link with the surveillance camera.”

“And you?”

“The last thing you need in Marseilles is an old man looking over your shoulder. Rami and I will leave you here. We’ll be back in Tel Aviv by tomorrow evening.”

Gabriel picked up the satellite image of the boulevard St-Remy and studied it carefully.

“Aleph, Bet, Ayin, Qoph,” said Shamron. “It will be just like the old days.”

“Yes,” Gabriel replied. “What on earth could go wrong?”

YAAKOV AND DINA waited aboard Fidelity while Gabriel took Shamron and Rami ashore. Rami leapt onto the quay and held the dinghy steady while Shamron climbed slowly out.

“This is the end,” Gabriel said. “The last time. After this, it’s over.”

“For both of us, I’m afraid,” Shamron said. “You’ll come home, we’ll grow old together.”

“We’re already old.”

Shamron shrugged. “But not too old for one last fight.”

“We’ll see.”

“If you get the shot, don’t hesitate. Do your duty.”

“To whom?”

“To me, of course.”

Gabriel brought the dinghy around and headed out into the harbor. He looked over his shoulder once and glimpsed Shamron standing motionless on the quay with his arm raised in a gesture of farewell. When he turned a second time the old man was gone. Fidelity was already under way. Gabriel opened the throttle and followed after it.

Within twenty-four hours of Fidelity’s arrival in Marseilles, Gabriel had grown to loathe the doorway of the apartment house at 56 boulevard St-Remy. He loathed the door itself. He loathed the latch and the frame. He detested the graystone of the building and iron bars on the ground-floor windows. He resented all those who trod past on the pavement, especially Arab-looking men in their mid-thirties. More than anything, though, he despised the other tenants: the distinguished gentleman in a Cardin blazer who practiced law from an office up the street; the gray-haired grande dame whose terrier shat first thing each morning on the pavement; and the woman named Sophie who shopped for a living and bore more than a passing resemblance to Leah.

They monitored the screen in shifts-one hour on, two hours off. Each adopted a unique posture for watching. Yaakov would smoke and scowl at the screen, as though, through sheer force of will, he could compel Khaled to appear on it. Dina would sit meditatively on the salon couch, legs crossed, hands on her knees, motionless except for the tapping of her right forefinger. And Gabriel, who was used to standing for hours on end before the object of his devotion, would pace slowly before the screen, his right hand to chin, his left hand supporting his right elbow, his head tilted to one side. Had Francesco Tiepolo from Venice appeared suddenly on board Fidelity, he would have recognized Gabriel’s pose, for it was the same one he adopted when contemplating whether a painting was finished.

The changing of the surveillance cars provided a welcome break in the tedium of the watching. The Ayin had perfected the sequence so that it unfolded with the precision of ballet. The replacement car would approach the entrance of the payage from the south. The old car would back out and drive off, then the new car would slide into the empty space. Once, the two Ayin purposely tapped bumpers and engaged in a convincing shouting match for the benefit of any watchers from the other side. There were always a few tense seconds when the old camera went black and the new one came on line. Gabriel would order any necessary adjustments in the angle and the focus, and then it would be done.

Though Gabriel remained a prisoner of Fidelity, he ordered Dina and Yaakov to behave as ordinary tourists. He pulled double and triple shifts at the screen so they could eat lunch in a quayside restaurant or tour the outer reaches of the city by motorcycle. Yaakov made a point of driving the escape route at different periods of the day to familiarize himself with the traffic patterns. Dina would shop for clothing in one of the boutique-lined pedestrian streets or don a swimsuit and sun herself on the aft deck. Her body bore the marks of the nightmare on Dizengoff Square, a thick red scar across the right side of her abdomen, a long jagged scar on her right thigh. On the streets of Marseilles she shrouded them with clothing, but aboard Fidelity she made no attempt to conceal the damage from Gabriel and Yaakov.

At night Gabriel ordered three-hour shifts so that those who were not watching could get some meaningful sleep. He soon came to regret that decision, because three hours seemed an eternity. The street would grow quiet as death. Each figure who flashed across the screen seemed filled with possibility. To relieve the boredom, Gabriel would whisper greetings to the Ayin officers on duty in the esplanade in front of the Palais de Justice-or he would raise the duty officer on the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard on the pretext he was testing the satellite connection, just so he could hear a voice from home.

Dina was Gabriel’s relief. Once she had settled herself yoga-like in front of the screen, he would wander back to his stateroom and try to sleep, but in his mind he would see the door; or Sabri walking down the boulevard St-Germain with his hand in the pocket of his lover; or the Arabs of Beit Sayeed trudging off to exile; or Shamron, on the waterfront in Sardinia, reminding him to do his duty. And sometimes he would wonder whether he still possessed the reservoir of emotional coldness necessary to walk up to a man on a street and fill his body with chunks of searing metal. In moments of self-obsession he would find himself hoping that Khaled never again set foot on the boulevard St-Remy. And then he would picture the ruins of the embassy in Rome, and remember the scent of burnt flesh that hung on the air like the spirits of the dead, and he would see Khaled’s death, glorious and graceful, rendered in the passionate stillness of a Bellini. He would kill Khaled. Khaled had left him with no other choice, and for that Gabriel hated him.

On the fourth night he slept not at all. At 7:45 in the morning he rose from his bed to prepare for his eight o’clock shift. He drank coffee in the galley and stared at the calendar hanging from the door of the refrigerator. Tomorrow was the anniversary of Beit Sayeed’s fall. Today was the last day. He went into the salon. Yaakov, wreathed in cigarette smoke, was looking at the screen. Gabriel tapped his shoulder and told him to get a couple hours’ sleep. He stood in the same place for a few minutes, finishing his coffee, then he assumed his usual position-right hand to his chin, left hand supporting his right elbow-and paced the carpet in front of the screen. The lawyer stepped out of the door at 8:15. The grande dame came ten minutes later. Her terrier shat for Gabriel’s camera. Sophie, Leah’s wraith, came last. She paused for a moment in front of the door to fish a pair of sunglasses from her bag before floating prettily out of view.