The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) - Daniel Silva Page 0,140

leave, but Mikhail seized his arm.

“Don’t go. You’ll thank me later.”

Mikhail closed the door and pulled the man to the ground.

From his vantage point on Prospect Street, Eli Lavon had witnessed a series of increasingly unsettling developments. The first was the arrival at Café Milano of Safia Bourihane, followed a few minutes later by the departure of the large Arab known as Omar al-Farouk. The large Arab was now in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car, which was parked about fifty yards from Café Milano’s entrance, behind a white Honda Pilot. What’s more, Lavon had called Gabriel several times at the NCTC without success. Subsequently, he had learned, from King Saul Boulevard and the car radio, that the NCTC had been attacked by a pair of truck bombs. Lavon now feared that his oldest friend in the world might be dead, this time for real. And he feared that, in a few seconds, Mikhail might be dead, too.

Just then, Lavon received a message from King Saul Boulevard reporting that Gabriel had been slightly injured in the attack at the NCTC but was still very much alive. Lavon’s relief was short-lived, however, for at that same instant the thunderclap of an explosion shook Prospect Street. The Lincoln Town Car eased sedately from the curb and slid past Lavon’s window. Then four armed men spilled from the Honda Pilot and started running toward the wreckage of Café Milano.

66

WISCONSIN AVENUE, GEORGETOWN

NATALIE HEARD THE EXPLOSION as she was approaching R Street and knew at once it was Safia. She turned and gazed down the length of Wisconsin Avenue, with its graceful rightward bend toward M Street, and saw hundreds of panicked people walking north. It reminded her of the scenes in Washington after 9/11, the tens of thousands of people who had simply left their offices in the world’s most powerful city and started walking. Once again, Washington was under siege. This time, the terrorists weren’t armed with airplanes, only explosives and guns. But the result, it seemed, was far more terrifying.

Natalie turned and joined the exodus moving north. She was growing weary beneath the dead weight of the suicide vest, and the weight of her own failure. She had saved the life of the very monster who had conceived and plotted this carnage, and after her arrival in America she had been unable to uncover a single piece of intelligence about the targets, the other terrorists, or the timing of the attack. She had been kept in the dark for a reason, she was certain of it.

All at once there was a burst of gunfire from the same direction as the explosion. Natalie hurried across R Street and continued north, keeping to the west side of the street as the man named Adrian Carter had instructed. We’re going to bring you in, he had said. But he had not told her how. Suddenly, she was pleased to be wearing the red jacket. She might not be able to see them, but they would see her.

North of R Street, Wisconsin Avenue sank for a block or two before rising into the neighborhoods of Burleith and Glover Park. Ahead, Natalie saw a blue-and-yellow awning that read BISTROT LEPIC & WINE BAR. It was the restaurant Safia had ordered her to bomb. She stopped and peered through the window. It was a charming place—small, warm, inviting, very Parisian. Safia had said it would be crowded, but that wasn’t the case. Nor did the people sitting at the tables look like French diplomats or officials from the Foreign Ministry in Paris. They looked like Americans. And, like everyone else in Washington, they looked frightened.

Just then, Natalie heard someone calling her name—not her own name but the name of the woman she had become in order to prevent a night like this. She turned sharply and saw that a car had pulled up at the curb behind her. At the wheel was a woman with open-air skin. It was Megan, the woman from the FBI.

Natalie crawled into the front seat as though she were crawling into the arms of her mother. The weight of the suicide vest pinned her to the seat; the detonator felt like a live animal in her palm. The car swung a U-turn and joined the northward exodus from Georgetown, as all around the sirens wailed. Natalie covered her ears, but it was no use.

“Please turn on some music,” she begged.

The woman switched on the car radio, but there was no music to