THIRTY-ONE

Paris

Gabriel hadn’t touched his breakfast. He sat in the first-class carriage of the Eurostar train, headphones on, listening to tapes on a small portable player. The first encounters between Yusef and Jacqueline. Yusef telling Jacqueline the story of the massacre at Shatila. Yusef’s conversation with Jacqueline the previous night. He removed that tape, inserted one more: Yusef’s meeting with his contact in Hyde Park. He had lost track of how many times he had heard it by now. Ten times? Twenty? Each time it disturbed him more. He pressed the rewind button and used the digital tape counter to stop at precisely the spot he wanted to hear.

“… check out her… in Paris… problems… thing’s fine.”

STOP.

He pulled off the headphones, removed a small spiral notebook from his pocket, turned to a blank page. He wrote: check out her… in Paris… problems… thing’s fine. Between the staccato phrases he left blank spaces corresponding approximately to the times of the dropouts on the tape.

Then he wrote: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were no problems. Everything’s fine.

It was possible that’s what he had said, or it could have been this: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were big problems with it. But everything’s fine.

That made no sense. Gabriel crossed it out, then slipped on the headphones and listened to the section of the tape yet again. Wait a minute, he thought. Was Yusef’s contact saying thing’s fine or other side?

This time he wrote: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were big problems with it. We think she may be working for the other side.

But if that were the case, why would they ask her to accompany an operative on a mission?

Gabriel pressed the fast-forward button, then STOP, then PLAY.

“Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you.”

STOP. REWIND. PLAY.

“Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you.”

Gabriel caught a taxi at the train station and gave the driver an address on the avenue Foch. Five minutes later he announced he had changed his mind, handed the driver some francs, and got out. He found another taxi. In the accent of an Italian, he asked to be taken to Notre-Dame. From there he walked across the river to the St-Michel Métro station. When he was confident he was not being followed, he flagged down a taxi and gave the driver an address in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, near the Bois de Boulogne. Then he walked fifteen minutes to an apartment house on a leafy street not far from the place de Colombie.

On the wall in the entranceway was a house phone and next to the phone a list of occupants. Gabriel pressed the button for 4B, which bore the name Guzman in faded blue script. When the phone rattled on the other end, he murmured a few words, replaced the receiver, waited for the door to open. He crossed the foyer, rode the lift to the fourth floor, and knocked softly on the door of the flat. He heard a chain sliding away, followed by a dead bolt snapping back. To Gabriel’s ears it sounded like a gunman ejecting a spent cartridge and forcing a new round into the chamber.

The door drew back. Standing in the threshold was a man of Gabriel’s height, square of head and shoulders, with steel-blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself-like a man who had had too much success with women. He didn’t shake Gabriel’s hand, just drew him inside by the elbow and closed the door as if he were trying to keep out the cold.

A large flat, dark, the smell of burning coffee and Shamron’s cigarettes hanging on the air. Big couches, reclining leather chairs, fat throw pillows-a place for agents to wait. On the wall opposite an entertainment center filled with Japanese components and American films. No pornography in safe flats: Shamron’s rule.

Shamron came into the room. He made a vast show of looking at his watch. “Ninety minutes,” he said. “Your train arrived ninety minutes ago. Where the hell have you been? I was about to send out a search party.”

And I never told you how I was getting to Paris or what time I would be arriving…

“A proper surveillance detection run takes time. You remember how to do one of those, Ari, or have you stopped teaching that course at the Academy?”

Shamron held out his parched hand. “You have the tapes?”

But Gabriel looked at the other man. “Who’s this?”

“This is Uzi Navot. Uzi’s our katsa in Paris now, one of my best men. He’s been working with me on this case. Meet the great Gabriel, Uzi. Shake the hand of the great Gabriel Allon.”

Gabriel could see that Navot was one of Shamron’s acolytes. The Office was full of them: men who would do anything-betray, cheat, steal, even kill-in order to win Shamron’s approval. Navot was young and he was brash, and there was a smugness about him that made Gabriel dislike him instantly. He shone like a newly minted coin. The instructors at the Academy had told him he was a member of the elite-a prince-and Navot had believed them.

As Gabriel handed Shamron the tapes and sank into the leather reclining chair, he could think of only one thing: Shamron, on the Lizard in Cornwall, promising him that the operation would be a closely held secret within the halls of King Saul Boulevard. If that was the case, who the hell was Uzi Navot and what was he doing here?

Shamron crossed the room, inserted a tape into the stereo system, and pressed play. Then he sat opposite Gabriel and folded his arms. As Yusef began to speak, he closed his eyes and cocked his head slightly to one side. To Gabriel he looked as though he were listening to the strains of distant music.

“A friend of mine, a very important Palestinian, needs to make a trip abroad for a crucial meeting. Unfortunately, the Zionists and their friends would rather this man not attend this important meeting, and if they spot him during his journey they’ll probably seize him and send him back home.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because he has dared to question the fairness of the so-called peace process. Because he has dared to challenge the Palestinian leadership. Because he believes the only just solution to the Palestinian problem is to allow us to go back to our homes, wherever they might be, and to establish a truly binational state in the land of Palestine. Needless to say these views have made him very unpopular-not only among the Zionists and their friends but also among some Palestinians. As a result he is an exile and lives in hiding.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Because this man is under constant threat, he finds it necessary to take certain precautions. When he travels he does so under an assumed name. He’s very educated, and he speaks many languages. He can pass for several different nationalities.”

“I still don’t know what you want from me, Yusef.”

“The passport control officers of all Western countries use what’s known as profiling to single out travelers for closer scrutiny. Unfortunately, because of ”Arab terrorism,“ Arab men traveling alone are subject to the harshest scrutiny of all. Therefore, this man prefers to travel under a Western passport and with another person-a woman.”

“Why a woman?”

“Because a man and women traveling together are less suspicious than two men. This man needs a traveling companion, a partner, if you will. I’d like you to go with him on this trip.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I wouldn’t joke about something like this. The meeting this man needs to attend could change the course of history in the Middle East and for the Palestinian people. It is vital that he arrive at his destination and be allowed to attend this meeting and represent the views of a great number of Palestinians.”

“Why me?”

“For one reason, your appearance. You are a very attractive, very distracting woman. But also because of your passport. This man-and I’m sorry, Dominique, but I’m not allowed to tell you his name-prefers to travel on a French passport. You will be posing as lovers, a successful businessman and his younger girlfriend.”