not Zarqawi, who masterminded many of al-Qaeda in Iraq’s most spectacular and deadly attacks. And yet even now, he said, the Americans and the Jordanians did not know his real name.
“You, Maimonides, will not be so fortunate. Soon you will be the most wanted woman on the planet. Everyone will know your name, especially the Americans.”
She asked again about the target of her attack. Annoyed, he refused to say. For reasons of operational security, he explained, recruits were not given their targets until the last possible minute.
“Your friend Safia Bourihane wasn’t told her target until the night before the operation. But your target will be much bigger than hers. One day they will write books about you.”
“Is it a suicide operation?”
“Maimonides, please.”
“I must know.”
“Did I not tell you that you were going to be my personal physician? Did I not say that we would live together in Damascus?”
Suddenly fatigued, he closed his eyes. His words, thought Natalie, were without conviction. She knew at that moment that Dr. Leila Hadawi would not be returning to the caliphate. She had saved Saladin’s life, and yet Saladin, with no trace of misgivings or guilt, would soon send her to her death.
“How is your pain?” she asked.
“I feel nothing.”
She placed her forefinger in the center of his chest and pressed. His eyes shot open.
“It seems you have pain, after all.”
“A little,” he confessed.
She prepared his dose of morphine.
“Wait, Maimonides. There’s something I must tell you.”
She stopped.
“You’ll be leaving here in a few hours to begin your journey back to France. In time, someone will contact you and tell you how to proceed.”
Natalie finished preparing his dose of morphine.
“Perhaps,” she said, “we shall meet again in paradise.”
“Inshallah, Maimonides.”
She fed the morphine through his IV tube into his veins. His eyes blurred and grew vacant; he was in a vulnerable state. Natalie wanted to double his dose and shove him through death’s door, but she hadn’t the courage. If he died, the knife or the stone would be her fate.
Finally, he slipped into unconsciousness and his eyes closed. Natalie checked his vital signs one last time and while he was sleeping removed the chest tube and sutured the incision. That night, after supper, she was blindfolded and placed in the backseat of another SUV. She was too tired to be afraid. She plunged into a dreamless sleep, and when she woke they were near the Turkish border. A pair of smugglers took her across and drove her to the ferry terminal in Bodrun, where Miranda Ward was waiting. They traveled together on the ferry to Santorini and shared a room that night at the Panorama Hotel. It was not until late the following morning, when they arrived in Athens, that Miranda returned Natalie’s phone. She sent a text message to her “father” saying that her trip had gone well and that she was safe. Then, alone, she boarded an Air France flight bound for Paris.
PART THREE
THE END OF DAYS
44
CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, PARIS
THE NAME ON THE RECTANGULAR paper sign read MORESBY. Christian Bouchard had chosen it himself. It came from a book he had read once about wealthy, naive Americans wandering among the Arabs of North Africa. The story ended badly for the Americans; someone had died. Bouchard hadn’t cared for the novel, but then Bouchard was the first to admit he wasn’t much of a reader. This shortcoming had not endeared him initially to Paul Rousseau, who famously read while brushing his teeth. Rousseau was forever foisting dense volumes of prose and poetry upon his ill-read deputy. Bouchard displayed the books on the coffee table in his apartment to impress his wife’s friends.
He clutched the paper sign in his damp right hand. In his left he held a mobile phone, which for the past several hours had pinged with a steady stream of messages regarding a certain Dr. Leila Hadawi, a French citizen of Palestinian Arab extraction. Dr. Hadawi had boarded Air France Flight 1533 in Athens earlier that afternoon, following a month’s holiday in Greece. She had been granted reentry into France with no questions about her travel itinerary and was now making her way to the arrivals hall of Terminal 2F, or so said the last message Bouchard had received. He would believe it when he saw her with his own eyes. The Israeli standing next to him seemed to feel the same way. He was the lanky one with gray eyes, the one the French members of the team knew as Michel.