The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) - Daniel Silva Page 0,100
It is essential that I speak to him.”
But why? thought Natalie as the Iraqi slipped from the room. Because the Iraqi did not know what Saladin knew. Because if Saladin died, the network would die with him.
With the surgery complete, Natalie dutifully covered herself with her abaya, lest the great Saladin awaken to find an unveiled woman in his court. She requested a timepiece to properly chart the patient’s recovery and was given the Iraqi’s personal Seiko digital. She checked Saladin’s pulse and blood pressure every thirty minutes and recorded his intake of IV solution. His pulse was still rapid and weak, but his blood pressure was rising steadily, a positive development. It suggested there were no other sources of internal bleeding and that the IV was helping to increase his blood volume. Even so, he remained unconscious and unresponsive to mild stimulus. The likely culprit was the immense loss of blood and the shock he had suffered after being wounded, but Natalie could not rule out brain trauma. A CT scan would reveal evidence of brain bleeding and swelling, but the Iraqi had made it clear that Saladin could not be moved. Not that it mattered, thought Natalie. In a land where bread was scarce and women carried water from the Euphrates, the chances of finding a working scanner were almost zero.
A pair of fighters remained in the room always, and the Iraqi appeared every hour or so to stare at the prostrate man on the floor, as if willing him to regain consciousness. During his third visit, Natalie pulled at Saladin’s earlobe and tugged the thick hair of his beard, but there was no response.
“Must you?” asked the Iraqi.
“Yes,” said Natalie, “I must.”
She pinched the back of his hand. Nothing.
“Try talking to him,” she suggested. “A familiar voice is helpful.”
The Iraqi crouched next to the stretcher and murmured something into Saladin’s ear that Natalie could not discern.
“It might help if you say it so he can actually hear it. Shout at him, in fact.”
“Shout at Saladin?” The Iraqi shook his head. “One does not even raise one’s voice to Saladin.”
By then, it was late afternoon. The shaft of light from the oculus had traveled slowly across the room, and now it heated the patch of bare floor where Natalie sat. She imagined that God was watching her through the oculus, judging her. She imagined that Gabriel was watching her, too. In his wildest operational dreams, surely he had not contemplated a scenario such as this. She pictured her homecoming, a meeting in a safe house, a tense debriefing, during which she would be forced to defend her attempt to save the life of the most dangerous terrorist in the world. She pushed the thought from her mind, for such thoughts were perilous. She had never met a man named Gabriel Allon, she reminded herself, and she had no interest in the opinion of her God. Only Allah’s judgment mattered to Leila Hadawi, and surely Allah would have approved.
There was no electricity in the house, and with nightfall it plunged into darkness. The fighters lit old-fashioned hurricane lamps and placed them around the room. The Iraqi joined Natalie for supper. The fare was far better than at the camp in Palmyra, a couscous worthy of a Left Bank café. She did not share this insight with her dinner companion. He was in a dark mood, and not particularly good company.
“I don’t suppose you can tell me your name,” said Natalie.
“No,” he answered through a mouthful of food. “I don’t suppose I can.”
“You don’t trust me? Even now?”
“Trust has nothing to do with it. If you are arrested when you return to Paris next week, French intelligence will ask you who you met during your vacation in the caliphate. And you will give them my name.”
“I would never talk to French intelligence.”
“Everyone talks.” Again, it seemed the Iraqi spoke from personal experience. “Besides,” he added after a moment, “we have plans for you.”
“What sort of plans?”
“Your operation.”
“When will I be told?”
He said nothing.
“And if he dies?” she asked with a glance at Saladin. “Will the operation go forward?”
“That is none of your affair.” He scooped up a portion of the couscous.
“Were you there when it happened?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m making conversation.”
“In the caliphate, conversation can be dangerous.”
“Forget I asked.”
He didn’t. “I arrived soon after,” he said. “I was the one who pulled him out of the rubble. I thought he was dead.”