The Black Widow (Gabriel Allon #16) - Daniel Silva Page 0,75

been wholly unnecessary, for it was only a warning shot across the bow. Lavon prevailed in the end, if only because Gabriel, in his operational heart, knew that his old friend was correct. He was magnanimous in defeat, but no less worried about sending his agent into the meeting entirely alone. Despite his unthreatening appearance, Jalal Nasser was a ruthless and committed jihadi killer who had served as a project manager for two devastating terror attacks. And Natalie, for all her training and intelligence, was a Jew who happened to speak Arabic very well.

And so, at two minutes past nine that evening, as Natalie swung her leg over the back of Jalal Nasser’s Piaggio motorbike, only French eyes were watching, and only from a distance. The battered Renault followed for a time and was soon replaced by a Citroën. Then the Citroën dropped away too, and only the cameras watched over them. They tracked them northward, past Le Bourget Airport and Charles de Gaulle, and eastward through the villages of Thieux and Juilly. Then, at nine twenty, Paul Rousseau rang Gabriel to say that Natalie had vanished from their radar screens.

At which point Gabriel and his team settled in for another long wait. Mordecai and Oded engaged in a furious game of table tennis; Mikhail and Eli Lavon waged war over a chessboard, Yossi and Rimona watched an American film on television. Only Gabriel and Dina refused to distract themselves with trivial pursuits. Gabriel paced alone in the darkened garden, worrying himself to death, while Dina sat alone in the makeshift operations room, staring at a black computer screen. Dina was grieving. Dina would have given anything to be in Natalie’s place.

After putting the last of the Paris suburbs behind them, they rode for an hour through sleeping cropland and postcard villages, seemingly without aim or purpose or destination. Or was it two hours they journeyed? Natalie couldn’t be sure. Her view of the world was limited. There were only Jalal’s square shoulders, and the back of Jalal’s helmet, and Jalal’s narrow waist, to which she clung with guilt, for she was thinking of Ziad, whom she loved. For a time she tried to maintain a grasp of their whereabouts, noting the names of the villages they entered and exited, and the numbers of the roads along which they sped. Eventually, she surrendered and tilted her head heavenward. Stars shone in the black sky; a low luminous moon chased them across the landscape. She supposed she was back in France again.

At last, they arrived at the outskirts of a midsize town. Natalie knew it; it was Senlis, the ancient city of French kings located at the edge of the Forest of Chantilly. Jalal sped through the cobbled alleyways of the medieval center and parked in a small courtyard. On two sides were high walls of gray flint, and on the third, darkened and shuttered, was a two-story building that showed no sign of habitation. Somewhere a church bell tolled heavily, but otherwise the town was eerily quiet. Jalal dismounted and removed his helmet. Natalie did the same.

“Your hijab, too,” he murmured in Arabic.

“Why?”

“Because this isn’t the sort of place for people like us.”

Natalie unpinned her hijab and tucked it into the helmet. In the darkness Jalal scrutinized her carefully.

“Is something wrong?”

“You’re just . . .”

“Just what?”

“More beautiful than I imagined.” He locked the two helmets in the bike’s rear storage compartment. Then, from his coat pocket, he removed an object about the size of an old-fashioned pager. “Did you follow my instructions about phones and electronic devices?”

“Of course.”

“And no credit cards?”

“None.”

“Mind if I check?”

He moved the object methodically over her body, down her arms and legs, across her shoulders, her breasts, her hips, down the length of her spine.

“Did I pass?”

Wordlessly, he returned the device to his coat pocket.

“Is your name really Jalal Nasser?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“Yes, my name is Jalal.”

“And your organization?”

“We seek to re-create the caliphate in the Muslim lands of the Middle East and establish Islamic dominance over the rest of the world.”

“You’re from ISIS.”

Without responding he turned and led her along an empty street, toward the sound of the church bells.

“Take my arm,” he said sotto voce. “Speak to me in French.”

“About what?”

“Anything. It doesn’t matter.”

She threaded her arm through his and told him about her day at the clinic. He nodded occasionally, always at the wrong times, but made no attempt to address her in his dreadful French. Finally, in Arabic, he asked,