Page 55 of The New Girl

You’re dead... Dead, dead, dead...

30

Paris–Jerusalem

The aides and bodyguardsKhalid had abandoned at the Dorchester were waiting in the VIP lounge at Paris–Le Bourget. They reclaimed their crown prince as though receiving stolen contraband and hustled him aboard his private plane. An Israeli Embassy car took Gabriel and the others to nearby Charles de Gaulle. Inside the terminal they went their separate ways. Keller returned to London, Sarah to New York. Gabriel and Mikhail had to wait two hours for an El Al flight to Tel Aviv. Having nothing better to do, Gabriel informed CIA director Morris Payne that the American president’s favorite leader in the Arab world was about to abdicate in order to save his daughter’s life. Payne pressed Gabriel for the source of his information. Gabriel, as usual, played hard to get.

It was early evening when he and Mikhail arrived at Ben Gurion. They headed straight for King Saul Boulevard, where Gabriel spent an hour in Uzi Navot’s office, clearing away the operational and administrative debris that had accumulated during his absence. In his fashionable striped dress shirt and trendy rimless eyewear, Navot looked as though he had just stepped from the boardroom of a Fortune 500 company. At Gabriel’s request, he had turned down a high-paying job at a defense contractor in California to remain at the Office as deputy director. Navot’s demanding wife, Bella, had never forgiven Gabriel. Or her husband, for that matter.

“The analysts are making good progress on the Tehran documents,” explained Navot. “There’s no evidence of an active program, but we’ve got them cold on their previous work, both warheads and delivery systems.”

“How soon can we go public?”

“What’s the rush?”

“In a few hours’ time, the mullahs are going to be celebrating Khalid’s demise. A regional change of subject might help.”

“It won’t change the fact your boy is going down.”

“He was never my boy, Uzi. He was the prime minister’s.”

“He wants to see you.”

“I can’t face it. I’ll call him from the car.”

Gabriel placed the call as his motorcade was making the ascent up the Bab al-Wad, into the Judean Mountains. The prime minister took the news about as well as Morris Payne. Khalid was the linchpin of a regional strategy to isolate Iran, normalize relations with the Sunni Arab regimes, and reach a peace deal with the Palestinians on terms favorable to Israel. Gabriel supported the overall goals of the strategy, but he had warned the prime minister repeatedly that the crown prince was an erratic and unstable actor who would prove to be his own worst enemy.

“It seems you got your wish,” said the prime minister in his baritone voice.

“With all due respect, that is a mischaracterization of my position.”

“Can we intervene?”

“Believe me, I tried.”

“When will it happen?”

“Before midnight Riyadh time.”

“Will he go through with it?”

“I can’t imagine he won’t. Not after what I saw today.”

It was a few minutes after nine o’clock when Gabriel’s motorcade rumbled into Narkiss Street. Usually, the children were asleep by that hour, but much to Gabriel’s surprise they flung themselves into his arms as he came through the door. Raphael, a future painter, displayed his latest work. Irene read a story she had composed with the help of her mother. The notebook in which it was written was identical to the one they had found in Princess Reema’s crude cell in the Basque Country of Spain.

You’re dead... Dead, dead, dead...

Gabriel volunteered to put the children to bed, an operation that proved no more successful than his attempt to find Khalid’s daughter. When he emerged from their room, he found Chiara removing an orange casserole dish from the oven. He recognized the savor. It was osso buco, one of his favorites. They ate at the small café-style table in the kitchen, a bottle of Galilean Shiraz and Gabriel’s BlackBerry between them. The television played silently on the counter. Chiara was puzzled by her husband’s choice of a channel.

“Since when do you watch Al Jazeera?”

“They have excellent sources inside Saudi Arabia.”

“What’s happening?”

“An earthquake.”

Except for a couple of vaguely worded text messages, Gabriel had had no contact with Chiara since the morning he departed for Paris. Now he told her everything that had transpired. He did so in Italian, the language of their marriage. Chiara listened intently. She loved nothing more than to hear about Gabriel’s exploits in the field. His stories gave her a connection, however tenuous, to the life she had given up to become a mother.