Obsession (Year of Fire) (56 page)

It became obvious that the man knew what he was looking for as he went along the walls. He pulled down Matilde’s painting and squatted on the ground to cut it open. Up to that point, the camera hadn’t gotten a good shot of the intruder’s face.

“What’s he doing?” Peter Ramsay wondered. “What is that?”

“Something that Blahetter hid in the painting,” Al-Saud replied.

The intruder took out several sheets of paper, smoothed them out, then rolled them up and put them away in a plastic tube, the kind used by architects to carry blueprints. He stood up and the camera hidden in the frame of the front door captured his face fully; the eye not covered by the goggle shone brightly like a cat’s eye.

“
Mon Dieu!
” Eliah exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “Alamán, go back! I want to see his face again. Freeze the image there!
Merde
,” he muttered.

“What’s going on?”

“I know that guy.” He stopped and fell silent for a long moment; it was almost unbearable to say what he was thinking: “I think that he’s the terrorist who tried to kidnap Yasmín, Mama and me in 1981.”

“You’re delirious!” said Alamán. “You can’t even make out his features. The light is too bad; the green tint diminishes the quality of the definition. Plus, that man would have changed a lot in fifteen years. No, no, brother, you must be confused.”

Al-Saud, however, knew that he was right. The fleeting face he had glimpsed in the pandemonium of the convention room at the George V hadn’t been a figment of his imagination.

He asked Ramsay to put one of his tracking experts on the trail of the three Iraqis who would probably be let out of jail in a day or two.

“Maybe they’ll lead us to the man we just saw on the recording.”

“I’ll call Amburgo Ferro, the Italian. He’s available and he’s one of the best.”

“Tell him to set up outside the door of thirty-six Quai des Orfèvres tonight. They could get out tomorrow or the next day. Warn him that he might not be the only one following the Iraqis.”

Later that same night, Matilde was watching him swim from a chair at the end of the pool. Al-Saud stretched out his arms and opened his chest, swimming the butterfly. His shoulder muscles bulged before being submerged in the water only to reappear again, tense with effort. How many laps had he done? She felt his furious energy and knew that it was driven
by rage. She had seen how tense he was during dinner—he had barely said a word, not even to praise her
milanesas napolitanas
, while Alamán, Mike and Peter had devoured them and thanked her with their mouths full.

Finally he got out of the pool and lay facedown, soaking and naked on a recliner; his arms hung heavily at his sides and rested on the teakwood planks. Matilde left her seat to dry him. His back rose and fell as he panted. He had made a superhuman effort.

“My Horse of Fire,” she whispered, her head close to his. “So strong and powerful. You know what, Eliah? I can identify all the muscles in your body one by one.” She dragged her lips down his wet back and felt him shift, seeing how his buttocks compressed and revealed the depressions in his side. “You’re so handsome.” With a languid caress, barely touching him, her fingers ran down his vertebral column and continued into the dent between his buttocks. Al-Saud stifled a moan, and Matilde saw that his left hand had closed around the cracks in the teakwood decking.

“Matilde,” she heard him say, and leaned down to see his face contracted with pleasure, although it looked more like he was enduring searing pain. She continued to torture him, running the tip of her index finger up and down the valley of his buttocks. She loved getting a reaction out of him, perhaps because he seemed so passive. When she sank her hand around past the dent and caressed his testicles, Al-Saud threw himself at her and they made love on the wood. Matilde pushed the hair from his face and stroked his bluish jaw. They stared into each other’s eyes as he thrust into her. He possessed her with the same passion as he always did, and yet it was clear that something was bothering him, something that robbed his green eyes of their glint.

When they went back to the bedroom, exhausted and satisfied, Matilde found her coat spread out on the bed. It wasn’t the same one, she realized immediately; Eliah had bought her another one.

“Thank you, my love,” she said, but she suddenly drew away and ran to her shika to get her Médaille Miraculeuse, which now lacked a chain. “This is my most prized possession,” she told him once she was standing in front of him again. “It has protected me since I was sixteen. Now I want to give it you as a symbol of my love and admiration. You’re the best man I’ve ever known in my life, Eliah.”

Al-Saud took the medallion in a silence he was unable to break; his throat had gone numb. Matilde realized that his chin was trembling and that he was looking at her through a veil of tears.

“I’m giving it to you now so it will protect you from evil forever.”

Early the next morning, Al-Saud burst into room 304. Ezequiel was helping Roy to eat breakfast.

“Out.”

“Who the hell do you think you are to throw me out? I’m sick of this, Al-Saud!” Ezequiel rushed toward him, ready to hit him. In two movements, Eliah had pinned him to the linoleum floor. He spoke to him with one hand around his neck and the other pinning his hands behind his back.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Ezequiel, because you’re important to Matilde. But I have no patience today, no time and a lot of things to discuss with your brother. So I’ll say it one more time: out.”

“Please, Ezequiel,” Roy intervened.

His brother got up and looked at Al-Saud; he didn’t look humiliated, just shocked. He hadn’t spent years in the gym working on his body so that someone just a little taller than he was could throw him around like a child and shove his face into the ground. He would talk to Matilde. Who was this Al-Saud?

Ezequiel left, and Eliah walked to the head of the bed. He buried his fists in the pillow on either side of Roy’s head and leaned in to look him in the eye.

“Now, Blahetter, you’re going to tell me the name of the person who left you in this state.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You can do it for two reasons. Your choice: because Matilde is at risk and you want to help her, or because you’re afraid, because I promise you that if I leave this room without that information, this time they’ll have to operate on your arm.” To add weight to his threat, he seized Blahetter’s right forearm with both hands. “In my lifetime I’ve picked up certain skills, like the ones you saw recently. I have others that would allow me to
break your forearm just by applying a little pressure here. Talk now. I’m so angry, Blahetter, that I can’t take responsibility for my actions.”

“His name is Udo Jürkens, at least that’s what he told me. It could well be a pseudonym.”

Udo Jürkens, Udo Jürkens
. The name bounced around his head, driving him crazy.

“Come in.” Ezequiel came in flanked by two security guards. “Escort this individual out of the hospital. He’s disturbing my brother.”

Al-Saud looked at Ezequiel furiously.

“I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“You won’t be back!”

“Ezequiel, shut up!” Roy intervened. “Bring what I asked for, Al-Saud.”

From the hospital he headed toward the offices at the George V with the name Udo Jürkens in his head. When he was about to go into the underground garage at the hotel, he swerved, brakes squealing, and headed toward L’Alma Bridge. He was home in five minutes. He left the Aston Martin in the street and entered through the door on Rue Maréchal Harispe, which led directly to the base.

“Masséna!” he shouted as soon as the elevator doors opened. “My office, now!”

The computer expert brushed off the crumbs from a brioche he had just taken a bite of and hurried after his boss. He was trembling. Al-Saud must have just discovered his betrayal. His plans were ruined. He would never be able to wreak his vengeance.

“
Quoi?
” Masséna was shocked when he found out that Al-Saud was summoning him for something else.

“Are you deaf, Masséna? I’m asking you about Udo Jürkens. Some time ago I asked you to investigate the license plate of a car that was parked in front of my house, one that that I didn’t like the look of. You found that it was rented by one Udo Jürkens. And I entrusted you with following this guy closely. You promised me you would do so through the Rent-a-Car system. So what did you find out?”

“Nothing,” he lied.

“
Merde!
” Al-Saud accompanied the curse by punching his desk, which made the hacker jump out of his chair. “You’re incompetent! I
expressly asked you to follow that trail. What the hell do you waste your time on? Time that I pay you a fortune for.”

“I’ve got a lot on my plate, sir!” Masséna made excuses.

“You have five assistants! I don’t have half the number you have. And you’re telling me that you have too much work? Get out of here right now and get into the Rent-a-Car system. I want to know what happened to that car, the one Jürkens rented. Close the door behind you!”

Al-Saud put his fists on the desk and pressed down, as if he were trying to bore through the wood. He exhaled loudly, spraying spit all over the desk, and threw himself back into his chair.
Damn Udo Jürkens! Who the hell are you? What are you looking for?
He opened a bottle of Perrier and drank half of it down in one gulp. He wiped his mouth on his shirtsleeve. He knew that he had to calm down. He sat in his chair and did the breathing exercises that Takumi sensei had shown him to prepare his body and mind for meditation. His head started to clear, his heartbeat evened out and his body relaxed. He pictured the night he had noticed the car parked on Avenue Elisée Reclus.
It was the second of January
, he remembered,
the day I intercepted Matilde in the métro.
At the time, there hadn’t been any connection between him and Roy Blahetter, so Jürkens had been standing guard outside his house for a different reason. Could he be working for the Israeli Secret Service? Maybe they had been warned about his investigation in Buenos Aires and they were keeping an eye on him. Wouldn’t he have noticed them following him a while ago?

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in, Masséna.”

“Sir, according to the Rent-a-Car system, Udo Jürkens returned the car on the thirtieth of January in the office on Rue des Pyramides.”

Al-Saud felt a profound rage mixed with anxiety. He wanted to kill Masséna. But he also wanted to beat his own head against the wall for having forgotten the order, for not asking about Jürkens again. In truth, it had completely slipped his mind. The Horse of Fire’s capacity to deal with many things all at once had a limit.

“Go back to work, Masséna,” he said, after regaining some control over himself. He stayed quiet, his eyes fixed on one point, while he organized his ideas and revised all the matters that were pending. He dialed Chevrikov’s number. “Lefortovo, it’s me.”

“How can I be useful to you, Horse of Fire?”

“Investigate one Fauzi Dahlan. Apparently he’s Iraqi. I need the name immediately.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else?”

“Do you know the name Udo Jürkens?”

“Not at all. It sounds German, doesn’t it? Do you want me to ask around among my contacts to see if they know him?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

This feverish race to analyze Blahetter’s plans and notes would lead to an attack of porphyria if he didn’t lie down to rest. Although Gérard had taken the precaution of eating something every two hours, the lack of sleep—it had been twenty-four hours since he’d rested—would chip away at him. He knew the symptoms. Nonetheless, the excitement he felt at seeing an invention of this magnitude kept him awake and filled with adrenaline.

From the analysis of the plans, it emerged that Blahetter had finally finished his invention and resolved the gaps of the past, though without a prototype to test there was no way to guarantee that it would work. Still, he bet that it would. His experience told him so. Saddam Hussein would be obliging about financing the construction of the prototype if he could persuade him properly. And the truth was he always knew how to deal with the sayid rais.

He urgently needed to get rid of Blahetter. The Argentinean scientist must already know about the disappearance of the plans. Had he had time to patent the centrifuge in his name? The doubt tormented him. Would Blahetter have made a formal complaint? Did anyone else know about his development? His wife, for example? He remembered that Eliah was involved with Blahetter’s wife. What an ironic situation!

Udo Jürkens knocked and came in.

“What have you found out about Blahetter?”

“I found him, boss. It was easier than I thought. I stood guard outside the building on Floquet Avenue and this morning, very early, I saw a guy who looked very similar to Blahetter come out. I knew it must be this
Ezequiel. I followed him to the Hospital Européen Georges Pompidou, on Rue Leblanc.”

“And you discovered that Blahetter was hospitalized there,” Moses inferred, and Jürkens said yes in German with a smile that only helped to accentuate his sinister features, as if his soul were reproduced in his brutal face and inhuman voice.

“Room three oh four.”

Moses sat up and felt his head spin. Jürkens hurried to stabilize him, and Gérard shook him firmly away.

“I’m fine. I sat up a little too fast.”

“When was the last time you slept, boss?”

“Don’t nag me about that, Udo. We’re so close to achieving something incredible. There’s no time for sleep, only action.”

Gérard Moses walked toward an oil painting and swung it away from the wall as though it was a little door. He struggled to remember the password to the safe. He turned the numerical lock anxiously and waited with bated breath for the little click that meant the bolt had opened. He took out a black box and carried it to his desk before opening the lid. It held two parallel racks of upright test tubes organized by the color of their caps. Gérard lifted up one with a red cap. He read the label in Arabic: ricin, one of the most lethal toxins known to man, for which no antidote had been developed. The sayid rais had used it during the war with Iran and continued to make it in his secret laboratory in the desert, which the allied forces hadn’t destroyed for the simple reason that they weren’t aware of its existence.