Obsession (Year of Fire) (64 page)

Al-Saud zipped up his pants and went over to a sink. As he made as if to squirt liquid soap onto his hand, he crouched down to dodge the elbow of the guy washing his hands next to him, which had been aimed at his neck. He punched him in the side, and the man groaned at the sound of his ribs cracking; he bent over his stomach with the wind knocked out of him. The other two flanked Eliah. He had no way out and started to back away toward the marble sinks until he touched the cold surface. The one with the wind knocked out of him straightened up, recovering a little, although pain still creased his face, and stepped forward to form part of the semicircle that closed around Al-Saud. All three brandished bladed steel knuckle-dusters. They were splendid weapons, typical of elite military groups.

It happened in the blink of an eye and they reacted too late. Al-Saud, pushing the soles of his feet against the marble, leaped over the heads of his attackers to land behind them in the open space of the bathroom. He kicked the one who had already been punched, hitting him in the same spot as his elbow had landed. The man bellowed and fell to the ground.

The other two immediately rushed forward, and from the way they moved and attacked him, Al-Saud identified the fighting technique of Krav Maga, used by the Israeli army special forces and Mossad kidonim. They were very good, agile and precise. Al-Saud was in continuous movement; his feet were always shifting, first as a feint, then to retreat into a defensive posture. He confused them, keeping them at bay, and then let them get within arm’s reach. They were nervous, not just because their objective was so slippery, but also because of the kicking and shouting of the men trying to break down the bathroom door.

“Horse of Fire!” Ramsay shouted. “Are you okay?”

“Everything’s under control.”

The attackers feinted a few times before they pounced on Al-Saud in a joint attack, with their knives pointed at his abdomen. Eliah, using the same technique, Krav Maga, hooked the arm of the one from the right, breaking it, while he broke the wrist of the one charging at him from the left with a kick. He finished his work with a solid punch in the latter’s face, leaving him unconscious. He approached the other and reduced him to the floor with a knee to the sternum. He put his hand on his broken forearm and asked him in English, “Who sent you?” He received a gob of spit for an answer. He wiped his face on the shoulder of his shirt, squeezed the broken bone and waited for the man to stop screaming before insisting, “Who sent you?”

He repeated the move a few times without success. Finally, the man passed out from the pain without saying a word. Al-Saud took his knee from his sternum and found a gold charm with a Hebrew inscription on the man’s neck. He approached the one with the broken ribs, who had started to writhe and moan on the ground. Grabbing him by the lapels of his jacket, he drew him toward his face.

“
Shalom
,” he greeted him, baring his lips to show his canines. He continued in English, “Tell your
memuneh
”—the highest authority of Mossad—“to follow the news next week very carefully. And tell him that I’ll be in touch.”

He took the knuckle-dusters, not because he needed them—he had his own hanging from the back of his pants—but as a memento. He unblocked the door and opened it.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to his colleagues.

Later, in the early hours of Friday morning, the Gulfstream V took off from Rafic Hariri Airport in Beirut on its way to London City Airport. They arrived just after seven in the morning. During the trip, Al-Saud took a nap after talking to his partners on the encrypted phone. None of them had slept; they were all eagerly waiting for the results of the mission at the Summerland Hotel.

“The fish took the bait,” he announced and gave them the details of the night’s events. “Two things became clear in Beirut: we have a leak in Mercure and it’s a Mossad plant.”

“A sayan?” Michael concluded.

“Sayanim are usually Jewish,” Tony said.

“Of the employees who were told about the details of the Summerland operation, which are Jewish?” Nobody knew. “Well then, we need to find out. We need to isolate them and separate them from our systems and sources of information.”

“I’ll do it,” volunteered Mike, who had always been reluctant to believe that they had a leak.

In London, he checked in to the Savoy Hotel. He enjoyed a copious breakfast in his room while he leafed through the city’s major newspapers. A headline in the
Times
that mentioned NATO reminded him of his years with L’Agence. Sometimes he missed the times when he and his men used to hop from one mission to another; one day they might wake up in Djibouti, the next in Cambodia, and his energy had been enhanced in all three dimensions of his being, physical, mental and spiritual, as if he had been born for this life of risk, diversity and originality. Samara had weighed him down in those years, when she reproached him for his prolonged absences, accused him of having lovers and cried because she was afraid of him. “What do you do, what do you do for a living?” she would blurt out through her tears. “And don’t tell me that you’re a consultant for aviation companies because I’m not stupid!”

This made him think of General Anders Raemmers, his superior, a Danish soldier who had taught him everything he knew about strategy, weapons, explosives, commando groups, camouflage and survival in different climates. Thanks to Raemmers, he could survive just as well in the most inhospitable desert on Earth, the Rub al-Khali, as in the dense tropical jungle of the Amazon. The training had been cruel at times—most had given up after the third week when the complete course lasted a year. He remembered the icy days in the Brecon Beacons, in Wales, climbing a mountain with a pack full of rocks; the stifling heat in the desert where, with huge fans set up to imitate sand storms, they were pulled up into helicopters on ropes; rappelling down the sheer sides of cliffs or buildings without safety nets. They spent hours poring over maps to learn how to read them, a skill he already knew pretty well from his years as a pilot. Then there were the seemingly eternal minutes in the tanks of freezing water, the underwater swimming, learning to drive all manner of vehicles, familiarization with electronic accessories, tracking techniques, resuscitation techniques—the list was endless. “I’ll turn you
into lethal weapons, invincible men,” Raemmers rallied them when he thought that their spirits were flagging. He felt an urge to pay him a visit, because although the NATO headquarters were in Brussels, the base of L’Agence, whose location few knew, was in London, in the basement of an abandoned factory in Bayswater. That basement, equipped with technology that looked as though it came out of a science-fiction movie, was the inspiration for the base in the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus.

In the end, he gave up on the idea of getting in touch with Anders Raemmers; their last conversations hadn’t been on the best of terms, given his habit of disobeying orders and changing the plan on the fly. Still, Al-Saud suspected that if he called the old general, he would be received with open arms, with the differences of the past forgotten. “You’re my best man,” Raemmers had confessed to him once. “Why do you drive me crazy like this?” Al-Saud smiled as he remembered the lectures Raemmers would give him when he came back from a mission. “I’ve run out of excuses to defend you from the top brass,” he’d say reproachfully.

There were still plenty of hours until eight thirty, when he was scheduled to meet Madame Gulemale for dinner. He left the hotel and set out to buy gifts for Matilde. He wanted her to look radiant at his mother’s party, so he went to the famous Bond Street, where he bought a dress and a coat from Gucci, a pearl necklace with a white gold brooch at Tiffany & Co., shoes and a wallet from F. Pinet and a jewelry box from Smythson, because he planned to give her many jewels, even if she didn’t appreciate them. The purchases for Matilde, instead of sweetening his disposition toward her, made him more aggressive, because with every acquisition he felt that he had to come up with a compelling new reason for her to accept it. By the end of the day, he was in a thoroughly bad mood, worn down by the desire that had been wearing on him all this time; he wanted to go back to her. The previous five days had become an obstacle course with Matilde at the finish line.

When he finished his shopping, he went back to the Savoy loaded with bags and packages and got ready for dinner with Madame Gulemale. She found him irresistible, it didn’t just show in her obsidian eyes; she also said so explicitly.

“It’s a shame that you’re looking so handsome tonight, because unfortunately we won’t be able to spend it together.”

“Ah, no?” Al-Saud hid his relief with a mask of surprise and offense. “A terrible disappointment,
chérie
.”

“Unless you’re interested in forming a trio with a friend who’s waiting for me at the Dorchester.” Al-Saud grimaced. “I knew it, you’re straitlaced after all.”

“I want you all to myself or I don’t want you at all, Gulemale.”

They challenged each other with their eyes. It was always like this between them, sexual tension mingled with the underlying power struggle. They had known each other for a long time—Michael Thorton had introduced them in this very city, in the famous club the Ministry of Sound, which they had abandoned to share a night of savage, unforgettable sex. Al-Saud wondered how old this inimitable woman was. Her svelte, voluptuous body, which seemed as though it had been sculpted from ebony, held the mysteries of a life that had brought her from the suburbs of Kinshasa to wealth and power in the European capitals. It was said that she had started out at fourteen, trading contraband cigarettes. Presently she was associated with every kind of illegal trafficking imaginable, especially arms and heroin.
Apparently
, Al-Saud thought to himself,
coltan has been added to the list
. They quickly discovered that they had similar reasons for coming to the table at Scott’s: the much-sought-after gray gold in the Congo. Gulemale was offering to compensate Al-Saud generously if he would act as a spy in the Kabila household; she knew about his friendship with Joseph, the president’s eldest son, and wanted to take advantage of it.

“Gulemale, my services might cost you less than you think.”

“Truly?” she said, using the African idiom: “And how much will they cost me?”

“In fact, you can pay me with a favor.”

“Perhaps your favor is related to this joint venture between the Israeli Shaul Zeevi and TMK, the Chinese battery and computer-chip manufacturer?”

Al-Saud smiled.

“You’re well informed,
chérie
.”

“Truly?”

“I haven’t congratulated you for being named president of Somigl.”

“
Merci.
”

“You’ve become an even more powerful woman than you were before.”

“Don’t believe it,” she denied. “I answer to several different groups.”

“Africom, Cogecom and Promeco?”

“You’re well informed,
chéri
,” she imitated. “What do you want, Eliah?” she asked him straight out, and her posture and face changed. She had discarded her femme fatale mask to reveal another face, that of a businesswoman with few scruples and no fear. “Are you hoping that we’re going let you to exploit our mines and steal our coltan?”

“
Our
coltan? Gulemale, please! The mines are located in the Kivu regions, which, for your information, are Congolese provinces. And Zeevi has received a license from Kabila’s government to mine in one of them.”

“That agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. And you know that, Eliah. Unless Kabila offers Zeevi the protection of his army. The Kivus might be part of the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the maps that children study in school, but for all intents and purposes, the land is an annexed province of Rwanda. If Zeevi and TKM want the coltan, they’ll have to buy it from one of our subsidiaries in Europe. If they insist on entering
our
territory to take the bounty of
our
mines, they’ll have to do battle with General Nkunda’s troops.” The general was the head of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, a fairly well-disciplined and -trained Rwandan rebel militia, which had occupied the eastern zone of the Congo, what was known as the Great Lake region.

“Is that your last word,
chérie
?”

“On this matter, Eliah, yes, it is.”

“I appreciate your sincerity.”

“I wouldn’t dare to insult your intelligence with lies,
chéri
. You know better than anyone how things are in the Congo and especially the Great Lakes region. Now, I have just given you a categorical answer. So what can we expect?” she asked in an innocent, angelic tone.

“Physics tells us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So, Gulemale, you can certainly expect
something
from us, though I’m sure that you don’t expect me to outline our plans.”

“The most sensible plan would be for you to advise your client to clip his wings and accept reality: we control the coltan area. We’ll sell
him what he needs at a good price. I give you my word on that. And I’ll do it for you, because you’re my best friend.” Al-Saud’s chortle made Gulemale laugh. “You don’t believe me? Well, you are. Eliah,
chéri
, tell Zeevi to stop being so silly and forget these claims; they’re so typical of Kabila. Are you with a woman?” she shot suddenly and unexpectedly, provoking another chortle from Al-Saud. “I’m just curious,” she backtracked.

“We’ve never been interested in each other’s private lives. Why the sudden change?”

“As I said, I’m just curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

Al-Saud paid the bill and, when he put the black Centurion card on the little silver tray, he saw Gulemale’s covetous look.

“It’s a cold but beautiful night,” Eliah commented.

“Truly.”

“Shall we walk to your hotel?”

They collected their coats at the door and, while Al-Saud helped Gulemale into her mink, the doors opened and in strolled Nigel Taylor, owner of Spider International, in the company of an exuberant blonde. Taylor’s smile vanished when he noticed Eliah. Neither of them could forget the images of their shared experiences at L’Agence.