Obsession (Year of Fire) (33 page)

“I believe what I see. I believe in reality. And the reality is that Shiloah never hated you.”

“Why, Eliah? Because you prefer him? I’m your best friend!”

Al-Saud looked up at the ceiling. Suddenly, they were sounding like spoiled children.

“It was thanks to me that you discovered and learned to love planes. I taught you everything you know…”

“Of course, Gérard.” Al-Saud stopped him. “You know I’ll always be grateful to you for that, but right now I have to tell you that you’re being unfair.”

“What a great actor you are, Shiloah!” Gérard yanked his jacket from the back of his chair. “You’ll do well at politics in that insignificant
country filled with Nazis, racists and Imperialist toadies. You’ll probably end up as the prime minister.” He turned to face Eliah. “I never thought you would betray me like this. You’ve broken my heart.”

“Please, Gérard. What are you talking about? Why are you reacting like this?”

“You were my only friend, Eliah. My only brother.”
My only love.
“Today is a very sad day for me.”

He spun around and left the suite. When he looked up, Al-Saud saw Shiloah’s eyes brimming with tears.

Claude Masséna reviewed the list of guests at the George V from the previous fifteen days. A name caught his eye: Udo Jürkens.
Hello, Udo! Hanging around my dear boss again?
His fingers moved quickly across the keyboard. He entered the Rent-a-Car system, and verified that the car with the license plate 454 WJ 06 was still being rented by Jürkens. If the guy decided to return it to one of the offices in Paris, Masséna had a chance to intercept him. The returns process was usually bureaucratic and time consuming and, as the system processed the data in real time, he would know the moment it was happening. This was a rare opportunity that he wouldn’t miss out on. He would program an alarm so that the system would advise him when 454 WJ 06 was being returned.

Ever since the afternoon when he had seen Al-Saud leaving Zoya’s building, many of his doubts and questions had been answered. Claude suspected that Udo Jürkens might be useful in helping him to get his revenge.

The seriousness of the attack in the George V convention room meant another trip for Ariel Bergman on the high-speed Thalys train from Centraal station in Amsterdam to Gare du Nord in Paris. Once more, the katsas Diuna Kimcha and Mila Cibin led him through the bowels of the Israeli embassy on Rue Rabelais where the Mossad offices were located. There, he met Greta and Jäel, the
bat leveyha
—Mossad officers a grade
below a katsa—who, passing as members of Peace Now, had witnessed the attack. They spent hours going over the events and conjecturing.

“What does our sayan in the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire say?”

“Nothing yet,” Diuna reported. “This morning they gathered the test results and now they’re analyzing them. As soon as he has any relevant information, he’ll get in touch with us.”

“Have you reviewed the guest list from the hotel?”

“Luckily, the George V uses the Primex system,” Mila explained. “We were able to hack it without any trouble. Here’s the list.”

Ariel Bergman unfolded the piece of paper and quickly read down the page, following the list of names with his index finger. He stopped suddenly.

“Have you looked at this list?”

“Yes,” Mila said. “I just skimmed it.”

“And you don’t have anything to say about it?” The agent looked at him with open confusion. “Udo Jürkens is on here. According to this record, he’s staying at the hotel. Coincidence?”

“Coincidences don’t exist,” Diuna said, repeating one of the maxims from their training at The Institute.

“Something here smells very fishy. We’ll have to pay a visit to the hotel tonight, although I’m telling you now that we won’t find Udo Jürkens there. What do we know about the car he rented?”

“He still hasn’t returned it.”

“Pay attention, boys. That will be our only chance to catch him. And let’s pray that he returns it in Paris instead of some other city in the European Union.”

“We’ll alert the offices in all the principal cities,” Mila contributed, trying to make up for having missed such an important fact.

They prepared a report on the attack for the new general director of Mossad. Moving on immediately, Bergman used a remote control to start a film and switched to another topic.

“These are the arms dealers Mohamed Abu Yihad and Rauf Al-Abiyia, the Prince of Marbella. Here, we see them in Port Banús in southern Spain. Abu Yihad’s real name is Aldo Martínez Olazábal, an Argentinean with a very interesting history.” He quickly summarized the salient facts
of Aldo’s life. “Before he went to prison in Argentina, Al-Abiyia didn’t represent a threat. But a while ago, he and his new Argentinean partner strengthened their ties with the people from Tikrit”—he meant Saddam Hussein and his entourage—“and the money is pouring in. A few days ago, an informant from Johannesburg told us that Abu Yihad is finishing a deal to buy red mercury.” This was a chemical component used to make highly toxic radioactive bombs. “The instructions are clear: Abu Yihad and Al-Abiyia must disappear.”

CHAPTER 10

Matilde didn’t see Eliah until Friday, when the convention had finished against a background of tension and zealous security, but with a positive tone and predisposition for change. In Al-Saud’s opinion, the document drawn up by the participating organizations and political parties, which they were planning to present to the United Nations Council, the Knesset and the Palestinian Legislative Council, would come to nothing. Shiloah, on the other hand, seemed elated. The convention had occupied the front pages of the most important newspapers and the news headlines, and his name and political party, Tsabar, had become ubiquitous in these reports. He was completely unconcerned when a rumor started that the attack had been staged by his party to attract the press but had simply laughed and quoted Oscar Wilde: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Absorbed in the activities and responsibilities of the event, they didn’t discuss the argument with Gérard, from whom they had heard nothing, even though Al-Saud called him every day and left messages on the answering machine. He wouldn’t accept that a friendship of so many years could end in such a stupid, infantile way. Perhaps the illness had started to ravage Gérard’s nervous system. Otherwise, he couldn’t explain his friend’s hatred or distorted view of reality.

Eliah’s great plan for Matilde to meet her favorite writer, Sabir Al-Muzara, vanished after the attack. As soon as Sabir had finished his opening speech on Wednesday, Dingo and Axel escorted him in a helicopter to Le Bourget, where he boarded Al-Saud’s Gulfstream V destined for Atarot Airport, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The Silent One left Paris
with just the tiny, battered suitcase he had arrived with and a dozen bags of gifts that Al-Saud’s secretaries had been busy buying for his two-year-old daughter, Amina. He left without giving interviews to the press and, after working hard with Shiloah on Tuesday afternoon, asked Eliah to take him to visit his sister Samara’s grave in the Muslim cemetery in Bobigny, five miles to the northeast of Paris. Al-Saud never found visiting his wife’s grave easy; it brought back the old demons that tormented him intermittently, sometimes loosening their grip but on other occasions digging surprisingly deep.

He needed Matilde. He no longer questioned his obsession with her, nor that this dependence was at odds with his Horse of Fire nature and chaotic, nomadic life. He went to pick her up on Friday at the institute, nervous as a teenager. When he saw her appear on the sidewalk, he felt an overwhelming happiness that entirely dispelled the exhaustion of a hellish week. He walked toward her to take her tiny, perfumed and smiling form in his arms. He suggested to Matilde and Juana that they have dinner with him and Shiloah at the Costes restaurant, on Rue Saint-Honoré, which was famous for its exclusive stores, jewelers and delicatessens; Thérèse had booked a table for four.

“Since Mat knew we’d be seeing you today, she spent all morning cooking.”

“I thought you might like to eat at home,” Matilde explained, “and relax a little, but we can go to that place if you like.”

He had spent the week dining out with potential clients and strangers, as he often did. With Matilde, he yearned for the seclusion of home and a home-cooked meal, made by her.

“I’ll ask Thérèse to cancel the reservation and tell Shiloah that we’re expecting him at Rue Toullier.”

Soon after they arrived at the apartment, while they were taking off their coats and washing their hands, the buzzer rang. As Juana didn’t understand a word, she passed the receiver to Al-Saud.

“They’re bringing something up to you,” he said to Matilde severely, and she looked at him in surprise. “I’ll go down.”

He returned with a package; it was clear from the way that it was wrapped that it was a painting. Matilde let out a little yelp when she saw what it was.

“My painting!” she exclaimed.

Juana grabbed a small envelope stuck to the gold-leaf frame and opened it. Matilde was admiring the oil painting with a smile. Her eyes looked as though they had turned to liquid silver.

“It’s from Roy,” Juana said, and passed her the card.

Matilde read it wordlessly, her face unchanging, and put it on the table. Al-Saud took advantage of the fact that she had her back turned, absorbed in the oil painting, and picked it up: “
Just as I got your painting back, I’ll get you back. You’re mine, Matilde. I love you. Your husband.
”

His face clouded over and the lines around his mouth hardened. How dare that son of a bitch talk to his woman like that? Had Blahetter been there at that moment, Eliah would have reduced him to a blubbering wreck. He made a mental note of the name and address on the back of the card:
Ezequiel Blahetter. Mannequin. 29 Avenue Charles Floquet, troisième étage.
There was also a cell phone number.

Matilde, still staring at the painting—a girl in profile looking at a snail in her hand—felt Al-Saud’s presence behind her.

“This was me when I was five.” She saw his dark, hairy hand reach over her to caress the outline of the tiny nose. “My aunt Enriqueta painted it for me. I adore this painting.”

“And that jerk Roy,” Juana intervened, “sold it when Mat left the house. Now he’s acting like he’s all chivalrous because he got it back for her. Mat, isn’t it possible that he lied to you? That he never sold it and is now playing the big hero? Where would he have gotten the cash to get this painting back? Your aunt’s works are worth a lot.”

“Juana, please,” Matilde begged, “I don’t want to talk about him. I got my painting back. That’s all that matters.”

Shiloah Moses’s arrival changed the mood immediately. They left the story of the painting to the side and set the table. Eliah and Shiloah tucked into the lasagna with Bolognese and cream sauce until they were licking their dishes clean.

“I’ve never tasted such an exquisite lasagna!” Shiloah declared.

“Wait until you try the dessert,” Juana said. “Tiramisu!”

Al-Saud saw how Matilde blushed. He reached across the table and traced the outline of her oval face with his fingertips.

“The food was exquisite, my love. Thank you.”

Matilde’s blush deepened; he had only called her “my love” on a very few occasions and always when they were alone. She smiled, avoiding Al-Saud’s look, and stood up to clear away the dishes. Once they had finished dessert and had coffee, Shiloah expressed his desire to go out dancing. Juana wanted to go with him. Eliah and Matilde exchanged a look.

“We’ll stay here,” Al-Saud stated.

Once they were alone, while Matilde washed the dishes, Eliah answered a call from Shariar and returned another from Alamán. When he went into the kitchen, he found her taking a pill.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” she answered. “Vitamins.”

“I’m glad you take vitamins. Given how little you eat, you’re in danger of getting malnourished.”

“I’m just fine,” she promised him, and Al-Saud detected a certain annoyance in her tone. He took her by the waist, sat her on the counter and spread her knees so he could get between her legs.

Matilde swept her hands over his forehead and through his hair. Al-Saud threw his head back, closed his eyes and sighed.

“Are you tired?” she asked him, her lips on his neck.

He was, not to mention beset with worries. A few security contracts had fallen through after the attack, the Dutch insurance companies were pressuring him to hand in the results of the investigation into the Bijlmer disaster, Céline had called him every five minutes and finally there was the telephone conversation with Joseph Kabila, which made him especially uneasy.

“Yes, very tired. It was an intense week.”

Matilde felt a tickle between her legs at seeing his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down under the tight skin of his neck. She touched it. Al-Saud opened his eyes, finding her waiting expectantly, her eyes wide, like a little girl caught being naughty. Matilde hurried to ask him, “Is there any news about the attack? What did the police say?”