“You were far away for a moment.”

“I was in Palestine,” Martineau murmured, his speech heavy with the drug. “Beit Sayeed.”

“We’ll all be there soon,” Abu Saddiq said.

Martineau treated himself to a smile-not one of arrogance but of quiet confidence. Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Rome -three attacks, each flawlessly planned and executed. The teams had delivered their explosives to the target and had vanished without a trace. In each operation, Martineau had concealed himself with archaeological work and had operated through a cutout. Abu Saddiq was handling the Paris operation. Martineau had conceived and planned it; Abu Saddiq, from his coffeehouse in the Quartier Belsunce, moved the chess pieces at Martineau’s command. When it was over Abu Saddiq would suffer the same fate as all those Martineau had used. He had learned from the mistakes of his ancestors. He would never allow himself to be undone by an Arab traitor.

Abu Saddiq offered Martineau the pipe. Martineau lifted his hand in surrender. Then, with a slow nod of his head, he instructed Abu Saddiq to get on with the final briefing. For the next half hour Martineau remained silent while Abu Saddiq spoke: the locations of the teams, the addresses in Paris where the suitcase bombs were being assembled, the emotional state of the three shaheeds. Abu Saddiq stopped talking while the veiled woman poured more coffee. When she was gone again Abu Saddiq mentioned that the last member of the team would arrive in Marseilles in two days’ time.

“She wants to see you,” Abu Saddiq said. “Before the operation.”

Martineau shook his head. He knew the girl-they had been lovers once-and he knew why she wanted to see him. It was better they not spend time together now. Otherwise Martineau might have second thoughts about what he had planned for her.

“We stay to the original plan,” he said. “Where do I meet her?”

“The Internet café overlooking the harbor. Do you know it?”

Martineau did.

“She’ll be there at twelve-thirty.”

Just then, from the minaret of a mosque up the street, the muezzin summoned the faithful to prayer. Martineau closed his eyes as the familiar words washed over him.

God is most great. I testify that there is no god but God. I testify that Muhammad is the Prophet of God. Come to prayer. Come to success. God is most great. There is no god but God.

Martineau, when the call to prayer had ended, stood and prepared to take his leave.

“Where’s Hadawi?” he asked.

“ Zurich.”

“He’s something of a liability, wouldn’t you say?”

Abu Saddiq nodded. “Should I move him?”

“No,” said Martineau. “Just kill him.”

MARTINEAU’S HEAD had cleared by the time he reached the Place de la Préfecture. How different things were on this side of Marseilles, he thought. The streets were cleaner, the shops more plentiful. Martineau the archaeologist could not help but reflect on the nature of the two worlds that existed side by side in this ancient city. One was focused on devotion, the other on consumption. One had many children, the other found children to be a financial burden. The French, Martineau knew, would soon be a minority in their own country, colons in their own land. Someday soon, a century, perhaps a bit longer, France would be a Muslim country.

He turned into the boulevard St-Rémy. Tree-lined and split by a payage parking lot in the median, the street rose at a slight pitch toward a small green park with a view of the old port. The buildings on each side were fashioned of stately graystone and uniform in height. Iron bars covered the ground-floor windows. Many of the buildings contained professional offices-lawyers, doctors, estate agents-and farther up the street there were a couple of banks and a large interior-design store. At the base of the street, on the edge of the Place de la Préfecture, were a pair of opposing kiosks-one selling newspapers, the other sandwiches. During the day there was a small market in the street, but now that it was dusk the vendors had packed up their cheese and fresh vegetables and gone home.

The building at Number 56 was residential only. The foyer was clean, the stairway wide with a wood banister and a new runner. The flat was empty except for a single white couch and a telephone on the floor. Martineau bent down, lifted the receiver, and dialed a number. An answering machine, just as he’d expected.

“I’m in Marseilles. Call me when you have a chance.”

He hung up the phone, then sat on the couch. He felt the pressure of his gun pushing into the small of his back. He leaned forward and drew it from the waist of his jeans. A Stechkin nine-millimeter-his father’s gun. For many years after his father’s death in Paris, the weapon had gathered dust in a police lockup, evidence for a trial that would never take place. An agent of French intelligence spirited the gun to Tunis in 1985 and made a gift of it to Arafat. Arafat had given it to Martineau.

The telephone rang. Martineau answered.

“Monsieur Véran?”

“Mimi, my love,” Martineau said. “So good to hear the sound of your voice.”

16 ROME

THE TELEPHONE WOKE HIM. LIKE ALL SAFE FLAT phones, it had no ringer, only a flashing light, luminous as a channel marker, that turned his eyelids to crimson. He reached out and brought the receiver to his ear.

“Wake up,” said Shimon Pazner.

“What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty.”

Gabriel had slept twelve hours.

“Get dressed. There’s something you should see since you’re in town.”

“I’ve analyzed the photographs, I’ve read all the reports. I don’t need to see it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Why?”

“It’ll piss you off.”

“What good will that do?”

“Sometimes we need to be pissed off,” Pazner said. “I’ll meet you on the steps of the Galleria Borghese in an hour. Don’t leave me standing there like an idiot.”

Pazner hung up. Gabriel climbed out of bed and stood beneath the shower for a long time, debating whether to shave his beard. In the end he decided to trim it instead. He dressed in one of Herr Klemp’s dark suits and went to the Via Veneto for coffee. One hour after hanging up with Pazner he was walking along a shaded gravel footpath toward the steps of the galleria. The Rome katsa sat on a marble bench in the forecourt, smoking a cigarette.

“Nice beard,” said Pazner. “Christ, you look like hell.”

“I needed an excuse to stay in my hotel room in Cairo.”

“How’d you do it?”

Gabriel answered: a common pharmaceutical product that, when ingested instead of used properly, had a disastrous but temporary effect on the gastrointestinal tract.

“How many doses did you take?”

“Three.”

“Poor bastard.”

They headed north through the gardens-Pazner like a man marching to a drum only he could hear, Gabriel at his side, weary from too much travel and too many worries. On the perimeter of the park, near the botanical gardens, was the entrance to the cul-de-sac. For days after the bombing the world’s media had camped out in the intersection. The ground was still littered with their cigarette ends and crushed Styrofoam coffee cups. It looked to Gabriel like a patch of farmland after the annual harvest festival.

They entered the street and made their way down the slope of the hill, until they arrived at a temporary steel barricade, watched over by Italian police and Israeli security men. Pazner was immediately admitted, along with his bearded German acquaintance.

Once beyond the fence they could see the first signs of damage: the scorched stone pine stripped clean of their needles; the blown-out windows in the neighboring villas; the pieces of twisted debris lying about like scraps of discarded paper. A few more paces and the bomb crater came into view, ten feet deep at least and surrounded by a halo of burnt pavement. Little remained of the buildings closest to the blast point; deeper in the compound, the structures remained standing, but the sides facing the explosion had been sheared away, so that the effect was of a child’s dollhouse. Gabriel glimpsed an intact office with framed photographs still propped on the desk and a bathroom with a towel still hanging from the rod. The air was heavy with the stench of ash and, Gabriel feared, the lingering scent of burning flesh. From deep within the compound came the scrape and grumble of backhoes and bulldozers. The crime scene, like the corpse of a murder victim, had given up its final clues. Now it was time for the burial.