Page 64 of The New Girl

The forensic teams meticulously gathered up the remains of the victim; the explosives experts, the fragments of the bomb that killed her. All the evidence was flown to Paris that night by police helicopter. So, too, were Gabriel, Khalid, Mikhail, and Keller. By dawn, Khalid and his daughter’s remains were airborne once more, this time bound for Saudi Arabia. For Gabriel and his accomplices, however, the French had other plans.

He was an ally—indeed, he had all but single-handedly destroyed ISIS’s terror network in France—and they treated him accordingly. The inquisition, such as it was, took place later that same day, in a gilded, chandeliered room in the Interior Ministry. Present were the minister himself, the chiefs of the various police and intelligence services, and several note takers, cupbearers, and assorted fonctionnaires. Mikhail and Keller were spared direct questioning, and the French pledged there would be no electronic recording. Gabriel assumed the French were lying.

The minister began the proceedings by demanding to know how the chief of Israeli intelligence had become involved in the search for the princess in the first place. Gabriel replied, truthfully, that he undertaken the assignment at the behest of the child’s father.

“But Saudi Arabia is your adversary, is it not?”

“I was hoping to change that.”

“Did you receive assistance from anyone inside the French security and intelligence establishment?”

“I did not.”

The minister wordlessly presented Gabriel with a photograph. A Passat sedan entering Alpha Group headquarters on the rue Nélaton. The visit, explained Gabriel, had been a courtesy call only.

“And the woman in the passenger seat?” wondered the minister.

“She’s a colleague.”

“According to the Swiss Federal Police, that same car was in Geneva the following evening when Lucien Villard was killed by a briefcase bomb. I assume you were there, too?”

“I was.”

“Did Israeli intelligence kill Lucien Villard?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The minister thrust a photograph beneath Gabriel’s nose. A man sitting in a café in Annecy. “Did he?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Were you able to identify him?”

“No.”

Another photograph. “What about her?”

“I believe I spoke to her last night.”

“She handled the negotiations?”

“There were none.”

“There was no exchange of money?”

“The demand was abdication.”

“And the ten shots you fired?”

“I saw the light of a mobile phone. I assumed he was using it to detonate the bomb.”

“He?”

Gabriel inclined his head toward the man in the photograph. “If I had hit him—”

“You might have saved the child.”

Gabriel said nothing.