Gabriel Allon: The Black Widow Part 43

72.

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA.

AMINA EL-BANNA HAD BEEN A legal resident of the United States for more than five years, but her grasp of English was limited. As a result, Gabriel questioned her in his Arabic, which was limited, too. He did so at the tiny kitchen table with Mikhail hovering in the doorway, and in a voice that was not loud enough to wake the child sleeping upstairs. He did not fly a false flag and claim to be an American, for such a pretense was not possible. Amina el-Banna, an Egyptian from the Nile Delta, knew very well that he was an Israeli, and consequently she feared him. He did nothing to put her mind at ease. Fear was his calling card, and at a time like this, with an agent in the hands of the most violent terrorist group the world had ever known, fear was his only a.s.set.

He explained to Amina el-Banna the facts as he knew them. Her husband was a member of the ISIS terror cell that had just laid waste to Was.h.i.+ngton. He was no bit player; he was a major operational a.s.set, a planner who had patiently moved the pieces into place and provided cover for the attack cells. In all likelihood, Amina would be charged as an accomplice and spend the rest of her life in jail. Unless, of course, she cooperated.

"How can I help you? I know nothing."

"Did you know Qa.s.sam owned a moving company?"

"Qa.s.sam? A moving company?" She shook her head incredulously. "Qa.s.sam works in IT."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"Yesterday morning."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"Have you tried to call him?"

"Of course."

"And?"

"His phone goes straight to voice mail."

"Why didn't you call the police?"

She gave no answer. Gabriel didn't need one. She didn't call the police, he thought, because she thought her husband was an ISIS terrorist.

"Did he make arrangements for you and the child to go to Syria?"

She hesitated, then said, "I told him I wouldn't go."

"Wise decision. Are his computers still here?"

She nodded.

"Where?"

She glanced toward the ceiling.

"How many?"

"Two. But they're locked, and I don't have the pa.s.sword."

"Of course you do. Every wife knows her husband's pa.s.sword, even if her husband is an ISIS terrorist."

She said nothing more.

"What's the pa.s.sword?"

"The Shahada."

"English or Arabic transliteration?"

"English."

"s.p.a.ces or no s.p.a.ces?"

"No s.p.a.ces."

"Let's go."

She led him up the narrow stairs, quietly, so as not to wake the child, and opened the door to Qa.s.sam el-Banna's office. It was a counterterrorism officer's nightmare. Gabriel sat down at one of the computers, awakened it with a small movement of the mouse, and placed his fingers lightly on the keyboard. He typed THEREISNOG.o.dBUTG.o.d and pressed the return b.u.t.ton.

"s.h.i.+t," he said softly.

The hard drive had been wiped clean.

He was very good, Qa.s.sam, but the ten hackers of the Minyan were much better. Within minutes of Gabriel's upload, they had discovered the digital traces of Qa.s.sam's doc.u.ments folder. Inside the folder was another folder, locked and encrypted, filled with doc.u.ments related to Dominion Movers of Alexandria-and among those doc.u.ments was a one-year lease agreement for a small property near a town called Hume.

"It's not far from that old CIA safe house in The Plains," explained Uzi Navot by telephone. "It's about an hour from your current location, maybe more. If you drive all that way and she's not there . . ."

Gabriel rang off and dialed Adrian Carter at Langley.

"I need an aircraft with thermal-imaging capability to make a pa.s.s over a cottage off Hume Road in Fauquier County. And don't try to tell me you don't have one."

"I don't. But the FBI does."

"Can they spare a plane?"

"I'll find out."

They could. In fact, the FBI already had one airborne over Liberty Crossing-a Cessna 182T Skylane, owned by a Bureau front company called LCT Research of Reston, Virginia. It took the single-engine aircraft ten minutes to reach Fauquier County and to locate the small A-frame house in a vale north of Hume Road. Inside were the heat signatures of seven individuals. One of the signatures, the smallest, appeared immobile. There were three vehicles parked outside the cottage. All had been recently driven.

"Are there any other heat signatures in that valley?" asked Gabriel.

"Only wildlife," explained Carter.

"What kind of wildlife?"

"Several deer and a couple of bear."

"Perfect," said Gabriel.

"Where are you now?"

Gabriel told him. They were heading west on I-66. They had just pa.s.sed the Beltway.

"Where's the closest FBI SWAT or hostage rescue team?" he asked.

"All the available teams have been sent to Was.h.i.+ngton to deal with the attacks."

"How long can we keep the Cessna up top?"

"Not long. The Bureau wants it back."

"Ask them to make one more pa.s.s. But not too low. The men inside that house know the sound of a surveillance aircraft when they hear it."

Gabriel killed the connection and watched the images of American suburbia flas.h.i.+ng past his window. In his head, however, there were only numbers, and the numbers did not look good. Seven heat signatures, two AR-15 a.s.sault rifles, one veteran of the IDF's most elite special forces unit, one former a.s.sa.s.sin who would soon be the chief of Israeli intelligence, one surveillance specialist who never cared for rough stuff, two bears. He looked down at his mobile phone. Distance to destination: fifty-one miles. Time to destination: one hour and seven minutes.

"Faster, Mikhail. You have to drive faster."

73.

HUME, VIRGINIA.

SHE WAS TO BE GIVEN no trial, for none was necessary; with a press of her detonator b.u.t.ton she had admitted her guilt. There was only the matter of her confession, which would be recorded for dissemination on ISIS's myriad propaganda platforms, and her execution, which would be by beheading. It might all have been handled quite swiftly were it not for Saladin himself. The brief delay was by no means an act of mercy. Saladin was still a spy at heart. And what a spy craved most was not blood but information.

The success of the attacks on Was.h.i.+ngton, and the prospect of Natalie's imminent death, had the effect of loosening his tongue. He acknowledged that, yes, he had served in the Iraqi Mukhabarat under Saddam Hussein. His primary duty, he claimed, was to provide material and logistical support to Palestinian terrorist groups, especially those that rejected absolutely the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. During the Second Intifada he had overseen the payment of lucrative death benefits to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Abu Nidal, he boasted, was a close friend. Indeed, it was Abu Nidal, the most vicious of the so-called rejectionist terrorists, who had given Saladin his code name.

His work required him to become something of an expert on the Israeli secret intelligence service. He developed a grudging admiration for the Office and for Ari Shamron, the master spy who guided it, on and off, for the better part of thirty years. He also came to admire the accomplishments of Shamron's famous protege, the legendary a.s.sa.s.sin and operative named Gabriel Allon.

"And so you can imagine my surprise," he told Natalie, "to see him walking across the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Was.h.i.+ngton, and to hear you speak his name."

After completing his opening remarks, he commenced questioning Natalie on every aspect of the operation-her life prior to joining Israeli intelligence, her recruitment, her training, her insertion into the field. Having been told she would soon face beheading, Natalie had no reason to cooperate other than to delay by a few minutes her inevitable death. It was motive enough, for she knew that her disappearance had not gone unnoticed. Saladin, with his spy's curiosity, had given her the opportunity to run a little sand through the hourgla.s.s. He began by asking her real name. She resisted for several precious minutes, until in a rage he threatened to carve the flesh from her bones with the same knife he would use to take her head.

"Amit," she said at last. "My name is Amit."

"Amit what?"

"Meridor."

"Where are you from?"

"Jaffa."

"How did you learn to speak Arabic so well?"

"There are many Arabs in Jaffa."

"And your French?"

"I lived in Paris for several years as a child."

"Why?"

"My parents worked for the Foreign Ministry."

"Are you a doctor?"

"A very good one."

"Who recruited you?"

"No one. I applied to join the Office."

"Why?"

"I wanted to serve my country."

"Is this your first operation?"

"No, of course not."

"Were the French involved in this operation?"

"We never work with other services. We prefer to work alone."

"Blue and white?" asked Saladin, using one of the slogans of the Israeli military and security establishment.