Obsession (Year of Fire) (70 page)

CHAPTER 19

The week turned out to be very busy. Al-Saud’s head jumped from one issue to the next. There was no room in his schedule for any more commitments; his phones—the landlines and cell phones—rang every few minutes; Victoire and Thérèse pestered him with messages, requests and reminders, they filled his desk with slips of papers and asked him to sign checks and contracts. Al-Saud, however, didn’t miss out on two pieces of news: the publication of the story in
NRC Handelsblad
, the Dutch newspaper, and the photos that Amburgo Ferro had taken of the assassin of the three Iraqi boys, because Edmé de Florian had confirmed what they had known since Saturday afternoon: they were dead. The autopsy results wouldn’t be ready for some time. For now Alamán and Peter Ramsay were working on Amburgo’s photographs, because they weren’t good; the Italian had taken them from a distance with an inadequate lens. They tried to establish, with the help of software, whether the measurements of the assassin from the abandoned factory in Seine-Saint-Denis matched the one who had broken into the apartment on Rue Toullier.

Al-Saud leafed through the newspapers while he wolfed down a sandwich. He was looking for stories about the assassination of the Iraqis; there was only a mention in the local Seine-Saint-Denis newspaper, where they speculated about the possibility of an overdose, in spite of the fact that neither syringes nor narcotic residue had been found. He pushed the newspaper away and cleaned his hands to answer his cell phone. He looked at the screen: it was Zoya. Her voice sounded tense.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Masséna is doing well in the Caribbean. He seems more relaxed. I’m calling because Natasha has got back in touch with me. She asked me for money. She seemed nervous, almost desperate.”

“How are you sending the money?”

“She gave me a bank account number.”

“I’ll take care of it. Give me the number. Do you have it handy?” Zoya read it out to him. “Did she ask you for a sum in particular?”

“No, but I was planning on being generous. As I said, she seemed very nervous. And even though I insisted, she didn’t want to tell me where she was.”

That night, Al-Saud entered the base through the garage on Maréchal Harispe. He shut himself up with Peter and Alamán in the projection room, ready to listen to their conclusions. They reviewed the tape, viewed the photographs on the screen and reviewed the results of the software analysis.

“The measurements match, as do the skull shapes,” Peter reported.

“Taking a base from the profile of the assassin that Amburgo photographed, which is very blurry, as you can see, the program developed a possible face. The man would look, more or less, like this.”

The potential face of the assassin appeared on the screen in front of Eliah, gigantic on the wall-sized screen. The similarity to the man who had broken into the apartment on Rue Toullier was amazing.

“It’s him,” he murmured. “It’s the same son of a bitch.”

“That shouldn’t surprise us,” Alamán pointed out. “The one who broke into Matilde’s house is the one who hired the Iraqis to attack her. He didn’t want to leave loose ends, so he killed anyone who could testify against him.”

“I mean,” Al-Saud said without taking his eyes off the sketch created by the software, “that it’s the same son of a bitch who tried to kidnap us in 1981.”

“We also scanned the Identi-Kit that came from the head nurse’s description,” Alamán continued, ignoring his brother’s comments, “and we compared it to the photos and the recording.”

“And?”

“There are some points of similarity,” Ramsay admitted, “but nothing that gives us a definitive result.”

“It’s the same guy,” Al-Saud declared. “All three of them are the same son of a bitch.”
And the same one who was there during the attack on Sabir and Shiloah on the opening day of the convention.

During dinner, Al-Saud’s somber mood worsened when Juana’s cell phone rang and it was for Matilde.

“Auguste Vanderhoeven, from Healing Hands,” Juana announced with a disappointed air, since she had hoped it would be Shiloah Moses.

Matilde’s happiness, the way she insisted on speaking to him in French and giggled boiled Al-Saud’s blood. When she hung up, Matilde turned to Juana.

“Auguste called to let us know that Dr. Rolf Gustafsson, the Swedish doctor who has lived in North Kivu for the last twenty years and is one of the few specialists in vaginal fistulas in the world, is passing through Paris.”

So you call him Auguste
, Al-Saud thought furiously. He thought that Matilde was acting as elated and happy as if she had just won the lottery.

“Does he work for Healing Hands?” Juana wanted to know.

“No, no. Dr. Gustafsson has a contract with the Congolese government. He’s been there twenty years!” she repeated. “He could tell us so much.”

“Who is Auguste Vanderhoeven?” Al-Saud interrupted.

“You know him,” Matilde hurried to explain. “You saw him the day you came to pick me up from the Healing Hands headquarters, when you got back from your trip. Remember?”

Al-Saud nodded and looked down at a piece of meat he was bringing to his mouth. Of course he remembered the guy who had stared at Matilde like a fool.

“What did he want?” he asked, without looking up.

“He wanted us to have lunch tomorrow with him and Dr. Gustafsson.”

“And are you planning on going, Matilde?” he asked, deliberately slowly, emphasizing the
Matilde
as he bored into her with his eyes. Juana kicked him under the table.

“Yes, I’m planning on going,” she answered, unsettled and timorous. She got up to help Leila serve dessert.

“What’s got up your ass?” Juana burst out once Matilde had gone into the kitchen. “Why are you talking to her like that, in that snide voice?”

“I don’t want her to go to lunch with that guy. He has the hots for her.”

“So?”

“So?” He was scandalized. “I don’t want anyone to have the hots for my woman.”

“Oh, my darling!” Juana got impatient. “Well, if you don’t want anyone to have the hots for your woman, pick one with the face of a cockroach and not a
Vogue
model. My God, Eliah! You’re a worldly guy, how can you get so worked up because a colleague from Healing Hands has invited her to a working lunch?”

“I’m a worldly guy so I know what men are like!”

“The fact that Matilde is crazy about you and only has eyes for you doesn’t come into the equation? And that you’re the only man she’s ever been devoted to, that either?”

“She’s too innocent and humble to realize what she provokes in men.”

“She’s innocent, I agree with that, and humble too, but she’s not a moron. Stud,” she said, and softened her frown and her tone, “don’t turn into another Roy and suffocate her with jealousy. Mat values her liberty because she had to work hard for it. If you turn against her, you’ll lose her. I know her, Eliah, I know her like no one else. She seems weak and tender, but she’s a lion when it comes to fighting for what she thinks is fair. And you treating her like an idiot and not trusting her is completely unfair.”

Later, as he was swimming the butterfly, Al-Saud saw through the film of water in his eyes Matilde’s tiny figure at the far end of the pool, wrapped in the white George V robe. He didn’t somersault when he touched the wall, but instead put his hands on the edge of the pool and rested his chin on them. They stared at each other for a long time. Al-Saud swam to the steps and got out. Rather than getting angry, Matilde was surprised to realize her own weakness; her anger at the scene at dinner had dissolved as soon as she saw that perfect, dark body glistening with water. His small tight bathing suit, like the ones professional swimmers used, revealed his member and testicles, and the sight provoked a tickle between her legs. She picked up Al-Saud’s robe and a towel from the chair and handed them to him. He stared at her as he dried himself, and all she could think about was making love. Why were they arguing about Auguste Vanderhoeven? It made no sense. She went up to him and smiled.

“Your mother called me this morning.” Eliah just raised his eyebrows, his face a mask of indifference. “She asked me to accompany her to the Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse on Friday. She told me that you said to—”

“Did you see Vanderhoeven while I was away?”

“What? No! Wouldn’t Diana and Sándor have reported that to you?” she rebuked sarcastically.

“Maybe you’ve won their favor and they’re hiding things from me. You have an incredible little way of getting everyone to fall at your feet.”

Matilde spun around to leave the pool room. Al-Saud snatched her back into his arms and dug his fingers into the ribs in her back.

“Let me go, Eliah. You’re hurting me.”

“Why were you so excited about a simple phone call from that fool?”

Matilde looked him right in the eyes; his eyelashes stuck together with pool water. Then she realized that he was suffering the same way she had during his week of absence and silence, when she tortured herself at night imagining him in the arms of another woman.

“I was so excited,” she gave in and explained, “because I’m very interested in learning about repairing vaginal fistulas, a condition that doesn’t exist in my country, but that is common in Africa. Few doctors in the world know about the subject and few know how to repair fistulas, which is a very peculiar surgery. That’s it. Being able to converse with one of the world’s pioneers in the field of vaginal fistula surgery excites me, just as everything to do with my career excites me. Did you sleep with another woman during the week you were away?” Al-Saud just stared at her with a hurt expression, so Matilde continued, “Because that’s what I thought the whole time you were away from me. I thought that’s why you didn’t call me, because you were with someone else.”

“No!” Al-Saud was stunned. “How could you think I was with someone else?”

“How could you think I was excited about Vanderhoeven? Did you see another woman? I don’t know, to have lunch or dinner, either is just as bad.”

“I had dinner with an old friend.”

“Nothing happened between you?” Matilde was starting to be disgusted by her role as the hysterical wife and yet she couldn’t repress her
ire and spite, they flowed out of her uncontrollably. “Not a thing? Not even a kiss?”

“Not a thing,” he lied.

“What’s the name of this
old friend
?”

“You’re jealous,” Al-Saud realized with a half smile. His petulance irritated Matilde.

“I’m just curious. What’s her name?”

“Madame Gulemale.”

“What a strange name! Madame Gulemale.”

“You’re jealous,” he repeated, “and I love it.” He kissed her ardently on the neck and kept her pressed to him in spite of Matilde’s struggles to get loose. “Stay still.”

“No. Let me go. I’m angry with you. You’re getting me all wet, Eliah!”

“Why did you come to look for me? For this?” he asked her, and pressed her hand against his bulge; he knew where to apply pressure to keep her hand open. Matilde felt the tension and heat under the wet bathing suit.

“How gentlemanly,” she reproached him, and tried to yank her hand away. Al-Saud held on to it and used it to paw himself. “I didn’t come for any of this. Just to tell you that your mother invited me to the Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse. But I see that you’re not in the right frame of mind.”

“I want to kill that Vanderhoeven guy.”

“Ha!” Matilde spat, and, though she knew that she wouldn’t get out of Al-Saud’s grip, she continued to struggle. “And do you think that I’m pleased about the idea of this Madame Gulemale?”

“I’m so horny.” He pinned her arms to her sides, subduing her. Matilde stopped struggling and stood panting with her cheek pressed against Al-Saud’s torso. “I don’t want us to be angry. Forgive me, my love. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just don’t trust anyone else. When I see that someone else desires you, my blood boils.”

“The same thing happens to me,” she admitted. “When I saw you with Celia the night of…”

Al-Saud shushed her.

“Let’s not keep arguing, Matilde. I had a long day.”

“I don’t want to argue anymore either. You had a long day?” Al-Saud nodded. “My poor love. We’ll have to do something to make up for your
hard day. Any ideas?” she said, hooking her thumbs in the elastic of the bathing suit and pulling it off completely. She threw off her robe—she was naked underneath—and slid her body down his until she was on her knees and had him in her mouth. Juana, who was working out in the gymnasium, heard the noise of Al-Saud’s shameless roar, and a smile raised the corners of her mouth.

At five in the afternoon on Wednesday, February 25, Ariel Bergman’s secretary came into his office carrying Amsterdam’s most important evening newspapers and deposited them on the conference table where he liked to spread them out and leaf through them.

“Thank you, Rutke,” he said, his eyes glued to his computer screen.

“Mr. Bergman.” The tone of his secretary’s voice made him look up. “It’s urgent that you see the
NRC Handelsblad
.”