Obsession (Year of Fire) (12 page)

After a silence, during which the roar of the motor drowned out all other sounds, Shiloah Moses asked, “So that’s why you have that black belt, sixth
dan
?”

“No. That was a ninjutsu technique,” he corrected sardonically.

“Was that whole display really necessary,
mon frère
?”

Al-Saud turned his head slowly to look at Moses.

“Shiloah, let me do my job. This is what I was trained for.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Don’t underestimate the danger you put yourself in ever since you decided to start your career by espousing such unorthodox ideas for your country.”

Silence overtook the Aston Martin as they advanced down the Champs-Élysées toward the Arc de Triomphe.

“I’m still thinking about what you told me about the Bijlmer disaster,” Moses said. “I wonder how that Argentinean laboratory…what was it called?”

“Blahetter Chemicals.”

“How would Blahetter Chemicals be able to get such toxic substances out of Argentina?”

An evasive, almost mocking smile crossed Al-Saud’s face.

“You would be surprised how easy it is to get in and out of Argentina without raising suspicion. Their radar coverage at the border is terrible. Anyway, Blahetter, who doesn’t just run a laboratory but an empire, has
a firm ally when it comes to transporting goods to Israel: the EDCA Company, which is owned by the state but run by a subsidiary of the Blahetter group. EDCA provides storage and deposit services for the international cargo planes that arrive and take off in various airports in Argentina.”

Shiloah Moses whistled.

“So it would be a piece of cake for Blahetter,” he realized.

“We don’t have any proof to show that what was in that plane was supplied by Blahetter. We don’t even have proof that those substances were on the plane. But we’re trying to get it.”

They went around the Place Charles de Gaulle roundabout, where the Arc de Triomphe was built, and took one of the roads branching off, Avenue Foch. Al-Saud braked at the corner of Avenue Malakoff, in front of a small mansion protected by a wrought-iron gate with spearheads lining the top. He opened it with a remote control and the Aston Martin rolled slowly into the gravel driveway. Two men in black suits were stationed at the stairway that led to the Al-Saud mansion’s front door. One of them lifted his arm to greet his boss, and Shiloah noticed the pistol strapped under his jacket.

“What kind of guns do your men use?”

“Browning Hi Power pistols, better known as HP 35.”

“Are they any good?”

“Lethal, I’d say. The HP 35 is the queen of the nine millimeters. They carry thirteen Parabellum cartridges.”

“Why did you choose the HP 35?”

“I didn’t, Tony did. It’s an SAS favorite.”

Shiloah Moses knew that Anthony Hill, Al-Saud’s main business partner, who was around forty but was as physically fit as a twenty-five-year-old, had belonged to the British army’s elite troop, the Special Air Service, better known as the SAS, graduating with the highest grades from Sandhurst Military Academy. In Shiloah’s opinion, Hill himself was a lethal weapon, though with his boyish features and wavy blond hair, no one would have believed it.

The Al-Saud family crowded into the hallway to greet Shiloah Moses; it had been a long time since they’d seen him. Francesca pulled away from the group and went out to meet her son, who bent down to kiss her.
Francesca held his face in her hands and, although she had memorized every millimeter, admired the beauty of her third son’s eyes; they were a different, more intense shade of green than Kamal’s, like grass in summertime, and his thick, black eyelashes intensified the color. Eliah turned away because he didn’t want his mother to see what was brewing inside of him.

“How are you, love?” she asked him, pushing his hair off his forehead.

“Fine, Mama. And you?”

As he listened to her describe the details of their trip to Jeddah, he looked at her. As usual, his mother wore restrained and elegant clothing. Despite having given birth to four children, she still had a slim figure, which was accentuated by her fitted jacket. She wore her black, shiny hair loose, just as he remembered from when he was a child.

Kamal Al-Saud came over to say hello. Father and son hugged each other and exchanged a few words about the only thing they had in common: horses. Kamal had never agreed with his son becoming an air force pilot or the fact that he was now running one of the best-known private military businesses in the market; he would have preferred it if he had studied medicine, economic sciences or international relations and eventually become the Saudi ambassador to France. For contractual reasons, Eliah had never mentioned his years as a member of NATO’s elite force, L’Agence, but his father wouldn’t have approved of that, either. In Francesca’s opinion they were both too authoritarian, independent and idiosyncratic to get along well.

Over lunch, Shiloah entertained the guests with his loquacity; even Shariar’s older children were laughing. The tenor changed when they started to discuss the birth of Tsabar, Moses’s political party, and the conversation turned to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.

“The truth is that the Arabic world doesn’t know what to do to help the Palestinian people,” Kamal admitted, and went on to mention the different wars that had been fought to expel the Zionists from Palestine and reclaim it as their own. “It’s embarrassing to think that a recently born country like Israel, with an inexperienced army, was able to defeat five old, established Arabic countries.”

Kamal Al-Saud spoke of “his” country and the Arabic world because he felt Arabic; however, Eliah pondered, there he was, celebrating the
Western new year in a palace, with his Catholic wife and children, who, though educated in the Muslim faith, led Western lives. Eliah’s father had always been an enigmatic figure to him.

Still listening to the conversation, he started to observe the guests in order to decipher the meaning of their gestures and postures, another of the skills he had learned during his training for L’Agence. “There are faces, movements and attitudes that speak louder than words,” they had been assured by a specialist in body language. For example, his sister, Yasmín, was angry; he could tell from the way she was chewing the inside of her cheek. Maybe she had had an argument with André, who was sitting next to her, although he seemed to be happily following the conversation, or maybe it was another dispute with her bodyguard, the Bosnian Sándor “Sanny” Huseinovic, whom Yasmín had declared she couldn’t stand.

Then he looked at his mother, noticing the way she was looking at Kamal. He would define her expression as she regarded her husband at the head of the table as devotion. It wasn’t just that she loved him; she venerated him. The age difference between them was noticeable. He was seventy-two, with white hair—his eyebrows, mysteriously, had kept their bluish-black color—and his features were aged by wrinkles and worry lines, though he had to admit that the old man was still agile and upright with a keen mind. Francesca, in contrast, wasn’t yet sixty and still exuded her habitual freshness. At that moment, as he looked at Francesca’s face, Eliah understood why his father had renounced Islam and Saudi Arabia, even the throne—something Grandmother Fadila had never forgiven him—all so that he could see this woman looking back at him every day of his life. Eliah had never felt anything like that. Despite the fact that he loved Samara, they had tried to change each other and achieved nothing but arguments and sour faces. He abruptly came out of his trance when Matilde’s face appeared before him.

Later, Eliah found his uncle Nando in a separate room reading
Le Monde
. The man wasn’t really his uncle, but rather the husband of Francesca’s best friend, Sofía, and he had been Kamal’s right-hand man for thirty years. He sat next to him and asked, “Uncle, why would a woman in Argentina be nicknamed
pechochura
?” Eliah was referring to Matilde’s “treasure chest” nickname.

Nando laughed. “It’s a play on the word
pecho
, or
chest
. That’s what they would call a pretty girl with big breasts.”

“And how about
tarantula
?”

Nando laughed again.

“Because of the girl’s large, round bottom, like that of a spider, you see. But Eliah, those nicknames wouldn’t be used anywhere in Argentina, only in Córdoba. They’re typical of the region’s sense of humor and fun.”

Eliah announced that he wouldn’t be staying for dinner and, before saying good-bye, went upstairs to look for his jacket. As he walked by Shariar’s room, he caught a glimpse of his nephew Dominique, a six-month-old baby, sleeping in the middle of the bed, surrounded by pillows. Unlike Alamán and Yasmín, who had formed very strong bonds with his elder brother’s children, Eliah preferred to keep his distance. Children made him uncomfortable and unsure of himself; he didn’t know how to act in the presence of these tiny, noisy creatures and he felt clumsy and ridiculous trying to win their affection. He stared down at the baby from all of his six-foot-three height. Images flashed before his eyes and Samara was in all of them, until he leaned down to smell Dominique’s little neck and thought of Matilde.

He went back to the George V to conclude the progress report he would send to the Dutch insurance companies. He found Céline in the hotel lobby. She was perched on an armchair near the elevators. They regarded each other across the room. She wore a pink cashmere overcoat and classic black patent-leather shoes. Her legs were crossed and Eliah’s eyes surveyed her slim ankles, long legs and bony knees.
A good screw is just what I need to clear my head
, he decided. They got into the elevator. In her heels, the girl was almost six feet tall.

Céline stepped back into the corner on the opposite side of the elevator. Then, with smoldering eyes, she opened the overcoat to reveal her naked body, merely accentuated by her small black lace panties.

CHAPTER 4

Aldo Martínez Olazábal climbed up onto the deck of his newly purchased yacht to enjoy the tranquil sunset in Puerto Banús, in Spain. He looked upward: the full moon stood out brightly against the dark sky, and in spite of the fact that it was winter, a warm breeze caressed his bearded cheeks. He lowered his eyelids and felt a pleasant tingling in his eyes. He was exhausted; he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. After the conversation with his son-in-law at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires, he had taken an Iberia flight to Madrid. From there he had driven to Banús in a rental car, a nearly suicidal act: two hundred fifty miles, alone and exhausted. But it had been a long time since Aldo had been afraid of anything. After all, as his business partner and best friend, Rauf Al-Abiyia, said, you have to live life on your own terms.

He went back into the boat’s main cabin and lay down on the sofa. From there he called Rauf and, in Arabic, told him that he was on his yacht in Puerto Banús.

“I’m in Marbella,” Al-Abiyia informed him. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

Rauf Al-Abiyia was known in the world of weapons and narcotics trafficking as the Prince of Marbella. Of Palestinian origin, when he was seven he fled, with his family, from his native Burayr, near the city of Gaza, in what was known as the British Mandate of Palestine. They had set up on the outskirts of Cairo as refugees, which is to say exiles, living in tents, eating whatever they could get their hands on, without running water or electricity, and having to absorb the bitterness of having lost their beloved land, a pain that still lingered fifty years later. Palestinians in Egypt weren’t conferred citizenship and, with the exception of free
education, the country didn’t show very much hospitality. The Egyptian authorities feared them, as they had feared the Jewish population in Moses’ time. In the refugee camp, Rauf had learned the meaning of hunger. Once, Aldo had asked him laughingly why he had three refrigerators and a freezer crammed full of food, and Rauf, with a seriousness that his friend would always remember, answered him with another question: “Tell me, Mohamed,” he said, addressing him with his Arabic name, “have you ever experienced hunger? I’m not talking about a normal appetite after three hours without eating, but the hunger of days, the kind that grips your stomach, fills your mouth with a terrible taste and saps at your will.”

Rauf also learned that he couldn’t depend on his parents for survival; if he wanted to eat, he would have to find food for himself. He went to the souk with other Palestinian boys, where he begged, stole, bartered, haggled, bought and sold. At sixteen he led a band of petty thieves whose earnings yielded enough to rent a small house for his parents and their siblings, and provide them with a few luxuries. At that time he met a Palestinian medical student, Fathi Shiqaqi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a man with a lot of natural talent for leadership and spreading religious fervor. Rauf’s life took a radical turn. From being a simple criminal on the streets of Cairo, he became the head of a group with nobler, loftier objectives. In his quest to do works that would lead him to paradise at the right hand of the Prophet (may the peace and blessings of Allah be with him), jihad was first and foremost and, though Rauf hadn’t lost interest in money or comfort, nothing came before his struggle: expelling the Zionists from the Middle East and restoring his beloved Palestine.