Obsession (Year of Fire) (43 page)

Tony assigned roles and the orders among the employees. Peter Ramsay explained the plan to elude the ring of Mossad agents surrounding Bouchiki. They spoke about Diana and Dingo, who had traveled to
Cairo that morning to take their places in the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel. Everything was ready.

“How will Bouchiki give Diana the information?” Masséna asked.

“You don’t need to know that,” Al-Saud answered. “You have all the information you need. Get to work.”

Hours later, Masséna headed to the telephone booth he used to communicate with his new bosses, which was located in the Alma-Marceau métro station. Ariel Bergman answered with a sleepy voice.

“Picasso? It’s Salvador Dalí.” He greeted him using his code name.

“I’m listening,” said Bergman.

Gérard Moses entered his apartment on Rue Charles Martel in the Belgian city of Herstal. He didn’t particularly like Herstal; he had chosen it for its proximity to the Fabrique Nationale arms factory, one of the oldest in Europe and one of his best clients. They would pay him a fortune for the new accessory he was designing, which he had named the “shooting control unit,” and which could sharpen the aim of a grenade shot from a rocket launcher down to a margin of error of a few inches. He had no doubt that his invention would cause a big stir at the next arms exposition in Berlin.

Though he had been out of Herstal for some time—after Paris, he had spent a few days in Baghdad—it still struck him as strange that his answering machine had five new messages; nobody called him. Eliah’s voice caught him off-guard and his legs gave way from under him. He sat on the armchair next to the answering machine and listened to the messages again and again, crying. He dried his tears with the cuff of his sleeve and tried to compose himself. Udo would get there soon, and he didn’t want to reveal his weakness. He took a few sips of Laphroaig, his favorite whiskey, to bolster his courage. He was furious with his right-hand man and was going to let him know. For some reason that Jürkens couldn’t quite to explain, he had managed to screw up the meeting with Roy Blahetter; the fool hadn’t been at the restaurant in the Ritz at the agreed time and wasn’t responding to e-mails. The opportunity to get his hands on the plans for a new uranium centrifuge had vanished again. And Saddam Hussein was starting to lose patience.

He hated Blahetter for many reasons: for his youth, his beauty, his sanity and healthy body, but above all for being more brilliant than him. What was his IQ? He didn’t know, and he regretted not having tested him when they were working together at MIT. He had never come across a nuclear engineer who knew his field so well and who moved within it so freely and confidently. Blahetter was a god of nuclear energy. His revolutionary uranium centrifuge was proof enough. Of course, Gérard had presented it to the Iraqis as his own invention, even publishing an article in
Science and Technology
outlining the principles used in the construction according to the notes and designs he had stolen from Blahetter at MIT. He had nonetheless needed to spend days convincing the Iraqi engineers that the machine was feasible. The Iraqis weren’t stupid; they knew a lot about the operation of traditional centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Enriching uranium meant separating fissile isotope 235, which was what was needed to construct nuclear bombs, from uranium 238, which is what the mineral is mostly made up of. The separation process is complex because both isotopes have similar masses; the centrifuge, consequently, needs to be very high power and it still needs a large quantity of time.

And time was what Saddam Hussein didn’t have. To enrich enough uranium to build a bomb, the Iraqis would need hundreds of centrifuges working collectively for three years. Before the Gulf War, Saddam had had an abundance of the technology, mostly German, but at this point he had to start from zero. His ambition to make himself a nuclear power hadn’t lessened with defeat; on the contrary, it had become an obsession. He
needed
Blahetter’s centrifuge (even though the rais thought it was Gérard Moses’s) to enrich the requisite amount of uranium in a few weeks and build enough bombs to give him the power to destroy his worst enemies: the United States and Israel, which was just a North American proxy. The rais knew that the United States hadn’t landed their final blow. Someday, not too far off, they would come back to settle what they had started in January 1991. And he would be ready for them.

Blahetter’s centrifuge was so innovative—reducing the process from years to weeks—that Gérard still marveled at it. Apart from its main advantage—the reduction of time—the centrifuge had ingenious solutions to problems that had been keeping nuclear engineers up at night since World War II. For example, to protect the friction rotor, Blahetter
suggested that it run in a vacuum, and to give it the highest possible rotation speed and eliminate vibrations, he proposed constructing the centrifuge not out of aluminum but maraging steel with a high nickel content to make it lighter and more resistant. Moses knew that he had experimented with this steel in his family’s metallurgy factories in Córdoba, Argentina, and that the tests had been successful.

This marvelous human invention that had been so close to falling into his hands had slipped away again thanks to Udo Jürkens’s incompetence. Blahetter hadn’t contacted him again; he didn’t even know if he was still in Paris. And he, Gérard Moses, was unable to finish the project with the information he had, he didn’t know how to do it, though he had certainly tried. He needed Blahetter’s final designs.

The doorbell rang. It was Udo. With his metallic, inhuman voice, he immediately announced, “Boss, I have good news about Blahetter.” Gérard Moses looked at him suspiciously. “I just left the private investigator following Al-Saud.”

“What does that have to do with Blahetter?”

“Please, sit down and I’ll explain. On Saturday night, Al-Saud went to a building on Avenue Charles Floquet, number twenty-nine. He arrived with Céline,” he added, and showed him a photo in which Eliah appeared in a black coat with Céline on his arm. “A few hours later he left the building with another woman.” He held out a new photograph in which Matilde appeared.

“She looks very young,” Gérard thought out loud, and, when Jürkens didn’t resume his speech, he looked up to prompt him. “What happened with this girl?”

“He brought her to his house.”

“To what house?”

“His house on Avenue Elisée Reclus.”

“Impossible!” Gérard said angrily. “He never brings his whores to the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus. He told me himself: it’s his sanctuary. Nobody gets inside except those he trusts absolutely, except those who are very important…” The words hung in the air.

“The girl spent the night and all of Sunday. Al-Saud brought her to her house, on Rue Toullier, where the investigator returned the next day to continue his investigation. At around two in the afternoon, the girl and another young woman came out of the building.” He pushed a third
photograph across the table with his index finger. “Blahetter was waiting for them.”

Gérard Moses stood up with the photograph and went over to the natural light filtering in through the window. Yes, it was Blahetter. Blahetter grabbing the arm of the girl who had entered Eliah’s sanctuary.

“Please, Udo, tell me that the private investigator followed Blahetter.”

“He did, boss. Since he already knew where to find the blonde girl, he decided that it wouldn’t be a problem to divert the surveillance for a moment to concentrate on the man who was harassing her. He thought it might be of use to us.”

“What was Medes doing there?” Moses asked suddenly and pointed to the photograph that captured the moment when the chauffeur came between Blahetter and Matilde. “Why is Medes in this photo?” he insisted, furiously.

“I don’t know, boss. I didn’t even notice Al-Saud’s chauffeur.”

Moses didn’t know who to concentrate on, Blahetter or this young girl and the implications of her appearance in Al-Saud’s life. He poured out another measure of Laphroaig and downed it.

“Let’s forget about the girl for a minute. Tell me about Blahetter.”

“Blahetter realized that the private investigator was following him. He went into the Louvre and lost him in a crowd of tourists.”

“
Merde!
Didn’t we hire a professional? How could he give himself away like that?”

“According to the investigator, Blahetter was very alert, as if he was expecting to be followed. Plus, he’s a brilliant man, as we know.” Seeing the expression on Moses’s face, Udo wished he had kept his mouth shut. “But there’s no doubt that he’ll go back to Rue Toullier. Sooner or later, he’ll be there.”

“Pay the private investigator what he’s owed and fire him. From now on, you’re in charge of this matter.”

“Yes, boss.”

The next day, Al-Saud went to pick up Matilde from the institute at around 6:20. They hadn’t met at midday because they were both too busy: Matilde
was studying for an exam and Eliah had the mission in Cairo. As he turned the corner, he frowned and cursed upon seeing her standing alone at the door. She looked so vulnerable on the dim, remote solitary street that Al-Saud almost tried to forbid her from going back to the Lycée des Langues Vivantes. He got out of the sports car and hugged her on the sidewalk. She was so tiny that her torso disappeared next to his arms and his chest. Matilde looked up and Al-Saud kissed her delicately.

“Why are you alone? Where’s Juana?”

“She went with a group of classmates to have a drink.”

Al-Saud shook his wrist until his Rolex Submariner appeared from under the cuff of his camel-hair jacket.

“It’s early, it’s not even six thirty yet. Why are you outside?”

“We had an exam today. Whenever we finished, we could leave. I finished at six fifteen. I’ve only been here for a little while, waiting for you.”

“Let’s go, let’s get in the car,” he urged her.

Once they were safe in the tinted car, he didn’t turn on the engine but stared at her. He wanted to say so many things that he didn’t dare.
Don’t go to the Congo. Don’t keep coming here, I’ll teach you French or I’ll pay a professional to teach you at home. At home. In our home. Because the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus is as much yours as it is mine. It’s already not the same without you, Matilde, my love. What have you done to me? A Horse of Fire loves his liberty, it’s his most prized possession. Now I’m chaining myself to you and I don’t mind at all
. Matilde held his gaze sweetly. She lifted her hand and ran the back of her finger over his jawline.

“What’s going on, Eliah?”

“
Tu es si belle, mon amour
.” She looked down as her cheeks turned red. Al-Saud laughed. “And you’re so adorable when you blush.”

“You always say you like it when I blush, but I don’t. I look terrible.”

Al-Saud put one hand on the nape of her neck, the other on her waist, and pulled her to his lips.

“Yes, yes, terrible. So terrible.”

He kissed her for a long time, carefully, going deep into her mouth, invading it with his tongue, absorbing her lips, consuming them with his. Every breath intoxicated Matilde because it was laden with his cologne, the sweet notes of chocolate mixed with other spicier scents, like cayenne pepper. Sometimes she thought she caught orange essence, others,
vanilla. She said to herself that this cologne had as many different sides as Eliah Al-Saud—some she knew, others she didn’t. She had the sensation that he was hiding a darker, possibly sordid side. In the silence inside the car, she could tell that he was beginning to go wild; his breathing was becoming more intense and rapid.

“Let’s make love, right here, right now,” he proposed, already sliding the seat back, away from the steering wheel.

“What if someone comes by? They’ll see us!”

“The windows are tinted, even the windshield is. No one will see anything. And I can’t wait until we get home.” He wedged his hand under her and pulled her onto him so that she straddled him. “
J’ai besoin de toi, Matilde. J’ai besoin de te sentir.
”

“You’re speaking French because you know you can get anything out of me when you speak French. You’re perverse. And an opportunist.”

Al-Saud laughed in a low rumble and started to take off her coat.

“Does that mean I can make love to you?”

Matilde’s protest transformed into a moan when Al-Saud slipped his hands under her jersey and squeezed her breasts through her bra. She arched when he teased her nipple with his teeth through the fabric of the garment. Matilde opened his jacket and unbuckled his belt. Al-Saud threw his head back like someone coming up for air after a long time underwater. He lifted his pelvis so she could take off his pants and boxers.

“
Touche-moi, Matilde. Je t’en prie.
”

Kneeling on the seat, hovering over her lover, Matilde covered his member with both hands and, following Juana’s advice, rubbed it up and down. She was alert to Al-Saud’s reactions; he didn’t realize how hard he was gripping her waist. He shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut—his black eyelashes stood out in a tangle—and bit his lip. Matilde also listened to Al-Saud’s heavy, irregular breathing and the noises his hair made brushing against the leather of the headrest, loud in the silence of the car. Every once in a while she heard the rumble of the engine of another car passing by, and Matilde would remember where they were making love. She rubbed faster and harder, and Al-Saud’s eyes popped out of his head in response.

“
Le préservatif!
” he cried out, and Matilde rummaged in the inside pocket of his jacket to get to his wallet and extract a condom. She put it on with his help.

Al-Saud pulled up her jersey and liberated her breasts from the bra so he could bury his face between them, and then searched for her nipples with an avid mouth so he could suck, lick and nibble them. Matilde was still on her knees in complete submission, one hand on the door handle and the other spread open on the roof, as if she were holding it up herself. Al-Saud pushed her back onto the passenger seat and took off her ballerina flats, pants and panties, which he threw to the back of the car. He kept her in that position so he could slide his middle finger into her and gently flick her clitoris with his thumb. Matilde screamed and twisted.