The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) - Daniel Silva Page 0,137

couldn’t hear. He realized he had heard nothing since regaining consciousness—not a siren, not a groan of pain or cry for help, not his footfalls through the rubble. He was in a silent world. He wondered if the condition were permanent and thought about all the sounds he would never hear again. He would never hear the nonsensical chatter of his children or thrill to the arias of La Bohème. Nor would he hear the soft bristly tap of a Winsor & Newton Series 7 paintbrush against a Caravaggio. But it was the sound of Chiara singing he would miss the most. Gabriel always joked that he had fallen in love with Chiara the first time she made him fettuccini and mushrooms, but it wasn’t true. He lost his heart to her the first time he heard her singing a silly Italian love song when she thought no one was listening.

Gabriel killed the connection to Mikhail and picked his way through the debris of what a moment ago had been the Operations Floor. He had to give Saladin credit; it was a masterstroke. Honor was due. The dead were everywhere. The astonished survivors, the lucky ones, were hauling themselves laboriously from the rubble. Gabriel located the spot where he had been standing when he heard the first explosion. Paul Rousseau was bleeding heavily from numerous lacerations and cradling an obviously broken arm. Fareed Barakat, the ultimate survivor, seemed to have come through it unscathed. Looking only mildly annoyed, he was brushing the dust from his handmade English suit. Adrian Carter was still holding a phone to his ear. He didn’t seem to realize the receiver was no longer connected to its base.

Gabriel gently removed the phone from Carter’s grasp and asked whether Safia Bourihane was dead. He could not hear the sound of his own voice, nor could he hear Carter’s response. It was as if someone had pressed the mute button. He looked toward the giant video screen, but the screen was gone. And then he realized that Natalie was gone, too.

63

GEORGETOWN

SAFIA CLEARLY KNEW WHERE SHE was going. After making the right turn onto M Street, she blew through the red light at the base of Thirty-fourth and then swerved hard into Bank Street, a cobbled alley that climbed the gentle hill up to Prospect. Ignoring the stop sign, she made a right, and then another left onto Thirty-third. It was a one-way street running south-to-north up the length of Georgetown’s West Village, with four-way stops at every block. Safia flashed across N Street without slowing. She was holding the steering wheel tightly with her left hand. Her right, the one with the detonator, was clutching the grip of the shift.

“Are they still behind us?”

“Who?”

“The Americans!” Safia shouted.

“What Americans?”

“The ones who’ve been watching us at the hotel. The ones who followed us to the shopping mall.”

“No one followed us.”

“Of course they did! And they were waiting for us just now in the parking lot of the hotel. But he tricked them.”

“Who tricked them?”

“Saladin, of course. Can’t you hear the sirens? The attack has begun.”

Natalie could hear them. There were sirens everywhere.

“Alhamdulillah,” she said softly.

Ahead, an elderly man entered the crosswalk at O Street, trailed by a basset hound on a leash. Safia slammed on the horn with her detonator hand, and both man and canine moved out of the car’s path. Natalie glanced over her shoulder. The man and the dog appeared uninjured. Far behind them, a car rounded the corner at Prospect Street at high speed.

“Where did we attack them?” asked Natalie.

“I don’t know.”

“What’s my target?”

“In a minute.”

“What’s yours?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Alarm flashed on Safia’s face. “They’re coming!”

“Who?”

“The Americans.”

Safia put her foot to the floor and raced across P Street. Then, at Volta Place, she made another right turn.

“There’s a French restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue called Bistrot Lepic. It’s about a kilometer up the street, on the left side. Some diplomats from the French Embassy are having a private dinner there tonight with people from the Foreign Ministry from Paris. It will be very crowded. Walk as far into the restaurant as you can and hit your detonator. If they try to stop you at the door, do it there.”

“Is it just me, or are there others?”

“Just you. We’re part of the second wave of attacks.”

“What’s your target?”

“I told you once already, it doesn’t matter.”

Safia braked hard at Wisconsin Avenue.

“Get out.”

“But—”

“Get out!” Safia waved her clenched right fist in Natalie’s face, the fist that held the detonator. “Get