Daniel Silva 2-Book Thriller Collection: Portrait of a Spy, The Fallen Angel. Daniel SilvaЧитать онлайн книгу.
smelled jasmine and lavender, the scent of Nadia, and recalled the instant of their parting. Nadia’s hand had been oddly cold to the touch. It was the hand of fear, thought Zoe. The hand of death.
Chapter 25 Seraincourt, France
ZOE’S CALL TO NEW YORK sounded in the high-ceilinged rooms of Château Treville like a fanfare of trumpets. Gabriel responded by immediately dispatching a secure cable to Adrian Carter, whereupon AAB Holdings and its owner, Nadia al-Bakari, became the target of NSA surveillance. It meant that Carter now knew the name of the wealthy Muslim with unimpeachable jihadist credentials whom Gabriel wanted to fund Rashid’s network. It also meant that, at any given moment, several dozen other members of the sprawling American intelligence community knew it, too. It was a risk Gabriel had no choice but to take. Israel’s signals intelligence service was formidable, but its capabilities paled in comparison to those of the NSA. America’s mastery of the digital world was unrivaled. It was the human factor—the ability to recruit spies and to penetrate the courts of their enemies—that eluded the Americans, and for that they had turned to the Office.
At Gabriel’s request, Carter went to great lengths to conceal Nadia’s name from the rest of official Washington. Despite the obvious potential implications for American-Saudi relations, he neglected to mention it to either the president or James McKenna at the weekly White House counterterrorism meeting. He also took care to safeguard the identity of the party who would be reviewing the NSA intercepts. They were sent first to Carter’s personal attention at Langley and then routed to the CIA station in Paris. The deputy chief, a man who owed his career to Carter, drove them personally to the grand manor house at Seraincourt, where they were signed over to Sarah Bancroft. Of particular interest to Gabriel and the team was the telephone and e-mail account of Rafiq al-Kamal, Nadia’s chief of security. Despite numerous calls placed to contacts inside the Saudi GID and Interior Ministry, al-Kamal never once mentioned the name Zoe Reed. That was not true, however, of Madame Dubois, who spent much of the next seventy-two hours burning up the lines between Paris and London, searching for dirt and gossip in Zoe’s professional past. Gabriel took this as an encouraging sign. It meant that, as far as AAB was concerned, the investigative reporter from CNBC was a public-relations problem, not a security threat.
Zoe remained blissfully unaware of the intrigue swirling around her. Following Gabriel’s carefully prepared script, she refrained from further contact with AAB or its employees. To help fill the empty hours, she visited museums and took long walks along the Seine, which allowed Eli Lavon and the rest of the field operatives to determine that she was free of any surveillance. As two more days slipped past with no word from Nadia, Zoe’s producer in New York began to grow impatient. “I want you back in the States on Monday at the latest,” he told her by telephone, “with or without the exclusive. It’s simply a question of money. Nadia has barrels full of it. We’re pinching every penny.”
The call darkened the mood at the Seraincourt safe house, as did the speech given by the French president that afternoon to an emergency session of the National Assembly. “It is not a question of whether France will be attacked by terrorists again,” the president warned, “but only a question of when and where. It is a sad fact that more lives will be lost to the fires of extremism. Regrettably, this is what it means to be a citizen of Europe in the twenty-first century.”
A few minutes after the speech ended, a message arrived from the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard. It was just four characters in length—two letters followed by two numbers—but its meaning was unambiguous. God was cooling his heels in a Montmartre safe flat. And God wanted a word with Gabriel in private.
THE APARTMENT HOUSE STOOD ON the rue Lepic, not far from the cemetery. It was gray in color and seven floors in height, with wrought-iron balustrades and garret rooms across the top. A single leafless tree rose from the center courtyard and from the neat foyer spiraled a staircase with a well-worn runner that muffled Gabriel’s footfalls as he ascended swiftly to the third floor. The door to apartment 3A hung slightly ajar; in the sitting room was an elderly man dressed in pressed khaki trousers, a white oxford cloth shirt, and a leather bomber jacket with an unrepaired tear in the left shoulder. He had settled himself at the edge of a brocade-covered wing chair with his legs slightly splayed and his large hands bunched atop the crook of his olive wood cane, like a traveler on a rail platform resigned to a long wait. Between two yellowed fingers burned the stub of a filterless cigarette. Acrid smoke swirled above his head like a private storm cloud.
“You’re looking well,” said Ari Shamron. “Being back in the field obviously agrees with you.”
“It’s not exactly how I’d planned to spend the winter.”
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have followed a suicide bomber into Covent Garden.”
Shamron gave a mirthless smile, then crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table. Six other stubs were already there, lined in a neat row, like bullets waiting to be loaded into a gun. He added the seventh and peered thoughtfully at Gabriel through the fog of smoke.
“It’s good to see you, my son. I thought our meeting in Cornwall last summer was going to be our last.”
“Actually, I was hoping it would be.”
“Can you at least pretend to have some regard for my feelings?”
“No.”
Shamron ignited another cigarette with his old Zippo lighter and purposely blew smoke in Gabriel’s direction.
“How eloquent,” said Gabriel.
“Words sometimes fail me. Fortunately, my enemies rarely do. And once again, they’ve managed to deliver you back into the arms of King Saul Boulevard, where you belong.”
“Temporarily.”
“Ah, yes,” Shamron agreed with disingenuous haste. “By all means, this arrangement is purely temporary.”
Gabriel went to the French doors overlooking the rue Lepic and opened one. A chill draft entered the room, bringing with it the sound of the evening traffic.
“Must you?” Shamron asked, frowning. “My doctor says I should avoid drafts.”
“Mine says I should avoid secondhand smoke. Thanks to you, I have the lungs of a man who smokes forty cigarettes a day.”
“At some point you’re going to have to stop blaming me for everything that’s gone wrong with your life.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s counterproductive.”
“It also happens to be the truth.”
“I’ve always found it best to avoid the truth. It invariably leads to unnecessary complications.”
Gabriel closed the door, muting the sound of the traffic, and asked Shamron why he had come to Paris.
“Uzi thought you could use some extra help on the ground.”
“Why didn’t he tell me you were coming?”
“It must have slipped his mind.”
“Does he even know you’re here?”
“No.”
Gabriel couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s try this one more time, Ari. Why are you in Paris?”
“I was worried.”
“About the operation?”
“About you,” Shamron said. “That’s what it means to be a father. We worry about our children until the day we die.”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Forgive