end of it, ivied and stately, stood a large manor house. Roland Girard stopped a few meters from the front entrance. He left the engine running.
“This is as far as I’m allowed to go. I’m disappointed. I want to know what it was like.”
She gave no answer.
“You’re a very brave woman to go to that place.”
“You would have done the same thing.”
“Not in a million years.”
An exterior light bloomed in the dusk, the front door opened.
“Go,” said Roland Girard. “They’ve waited a long time to see you.”
Mikhail was now standing in the entrance of the house. Natalie climbed out of the car and approached him slowly.
“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about me.” She looked past him, into the interior of the grand house. “How lovely. Much better than my little place in Aubervilliers.”
“Or that dump near al-Rasheed Park.”
“You were watching me?”
“As much as we could. We know that you were taken to a village near the Iraqi border, where you were undoubtedly interrogated by a man named Abu Ahmed al-Tikriti. And we know that you spent several days at a training camp in Palmyra, where you managed to find time to tour the ruins by moonlight.” He hesitated before continuing. “And we know,” he said, “that you were taken to a village near Mosul, where you spent several days in a large house. We saw you pacing in a courtyard.”
“You should have bombed that house.”
Mikhail gave her a quizzical look. Then he stepped aside and with a movement of his hand invited her to enter. She remained frozen in place.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed with me.”
“Not possible.”
“We’ll see about that,” she said, and went inside.
They embraced her, they kissed her cheeks, they clung to her limbs as though they feared she might drift away from them and never return. Dina removed the hijab from Natalie’s head; Gabriel pressed a glass of chilled white wine into her hand. It was a sauvignon blanc from the Western Galilee that Natalie adored.
“I couldn’t possibly,” she laughed. “It is haram.”
“Not tonight,” he said. “Tonight you are one of us again.”
There was food and there was music, and there were a thousand questions no one dared ask; there would be time for that later. They had sent an agent into the belly of the beast, and the agent had come back to them. They were going to savor their achievement. They were going to celebrate life.
Only Gabriel seemed to withhold himself from the revelry. He did not partake of the food or wine, only coffee. Mainly, he watched Natalie with an unnerving intensity. She remembered the things he had told her about his mother on that first day at the farm in the Jezreel Valley, how she rarely laughed or smiled, how she could not show pleasure on festive occasions. Perhaps he had inherited her affliction. Or perhaps, thought Natalie, he knew that tonight was not an occasion for celebration.
At last, as if by some imperceptible signal, the party came to an end. The dishes were cleared away, the wine was removed. In one of the sitting rooms a wing chair had been reserved for Natalie. There were no cameras or microphones visible, but surely, she thought, the proceedings were being recorded. Gabriel chose to remain standing.
“Usually,” he said, “I prefer to start debriefings from the beginning. But perhaps tonight we should start at the end.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Perhaps we should.”
“Who was staying in the large house near Mosul?”
“Saladin,” she answered without hesitation.
“Why were you brought there?”
“He required medical attention.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because,” replied Natalie, “he was going to die.”
45
SERAINCOURT, FRANCE
ONE DAY,” SAID GABRIEL, “they’re going to write a book about you.”
“It’s funny,” replied Natalie, “but Saladin told me the same thing.”
They were walking along a footpath in the garden of the château. A bit of light leaked from the French doors of the sitting room, but otherwise it was dark. A storm had come and gone during the many hours of her debriefing, and the gravel was wet beneath their feet. Natalie shivered. The air was chill with the promise of autumn.
“You’re cold,” said Gabriel. “We should go back inside.”
“Not yet. There’s something I wanted to tell you in private.”
Gabriel stopped and turned to face her.
“He knows who you are.”
“Saladin?” He smiled. “I’m flattered but not surprised. I have quite a following in the Arab world.”
“There’s more, I’m afraid. He knows about your connection to Hannah Weinberg. And he suspects that you are very much alive.”
This time,