The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) - Daniel Silva Page 0,12

a slender rhombus of light. Mikhail knocked softly and, hearing no reply, entered. Stuffed into an executive leather chair behind a desk of smoked glass was Uzi Navot, the soon-to-be former chief of the Office. He was frowning at an open file as though it were a bill he could not afford to pay. At his elbow was an open box of Viennese butter cookies. Only two remained, not a good sign.

At length, Navot looked up and with a dismissive movement of his hand instructed Mikhail to sit. He wore a striped dress shirt that had been cut for a thinner man and a pair of the rimless spectacles beloved by German intellectuals and Swiss bankers. His hair, once strawberry blond, was gray stubble; his blue eyes were bloodshot. He rolled up his shirtsleeves, exposing his massive forearms, and contemplated Mikhail for a long moment with thinly veiled hostility. It wasn’t the reception Mikhail had expected, but then one never knew quite what to expect when one encountered Uzi Navot these days. There were rumors his successor intended to keep him on in some capacity—blasphemy in a service that regarded regular turnover at the top almost as a matter of religious doctrine—but officially his future was unclear.

“Any problems on the way out of Beirut?” Navot asked at last, as though the question had occurred to him suddenly.

“None,” answered Mikhail.

Navot snared a stray cookie crumb with the tip of a thick forefinger. “Surveillance?”

“Nothing we could see.”

“And the man who rode the hotel elevator with you? Did you ever see him again?”

“At the roof bar.”

“Anything suspicious?”

“Everyone in Beirut looks suspicious. That’s why it’s Beirut.”

Navot flicked the cookie crumb onto the plate. Then he removed a photograph from the file and dealt it across the desktop toward Mikhail. It showed a man sitting in the front seat of a luxury automobile, at the edge of a seaside boulevard. The windows of the car were shattered. The man was a bloody tattered mess, and quite obviously dead.

“Recognize him?” asked Navot.

Mikhail squinted in concentration.

“Look carefully at the car.”

Mikhail did. And then he understood. The dead man was Sami Haddad.

“When did they get him?”

“Not long after he dropped you at the airport. And they were just getting started.”

Navot spun another photo across the desk, a ruined building on an elegant street in downtown Beirut. It was Gallerie Mansour on the rue Madame Curie. Limbs and heads littered the pavement. For once the carnage wasn’t human. It was Clovis Mansour’s magnificent professional inventory.

“I was hoping,” Navot resumed after a moment, “that my last days as chief would pass without incident. Instead, I have to deal with the loss of our best contract employee in Beirut and an asset we spent a great deal of time and effort recruiting.”

“Better than a dead field agent.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Navot accepted the two photographs and returned them to the file. “What did Mansour have for you?”

“The man who was behind Paris.”

“Who is he?”

“They call him Saladin.”

“Saladin? Well,” Navot said, closing the file, “at least that’s a start.”

Navot remained in his office long after Mikhail had taken his leave. The desk was empty except for his leather-bound executive notepad, on which he had scrawled a single word. Saladin . . . Only a man of great self-esteem would grant himself a code name like that, only a man of great ambition. The real Saladin had united the Muslim world under the Ayyubid dynasty and recaptured Jerusalem from the Crusaders. Perhaps this new Saladin was similarly inclined. For his coming-out party he had flattened a Jewish target in the middle of Paris, thus attacking two countries, two civilizations, at the same time. Surely, thought Navot, the success of the attack had only whetted his lust for infidel blood. It was only a matter of time before he struck again.

For the moment, Saladin was a French problem. But the fact that four Israeli citizens had perished in the attack gave Navot standing in Paris. So, too, did the name that Clovis Mansour had whispered into Mikhail’s ear in Beirut. In fact, with a bit of skilled salesmanship, the name alone might be enough to secure the Office a seat at the operational table. Navot was confident in his powers of persuasion. A former field agent and recruiter of spies, he had the ability to spin straw into gold. All he needed was someone to look after the Office’s interest in any joint Franco-Israeli undertaking. He had but one candidate in mind,