Regrettably, the ensuing political scandal, and the many questions surrounding the Alpha Group’s tactics, would overshadow the coldly calculated precision and brutality of the bombing itself. There was symbolism not only in the target but in the mode of delivery for the bomb—a white Renault Trafic transit van, the same model used in the attack on the Isaac Weinberg Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism in France ten months earlier. At just two hundred kilograms, however, it was far smaller than the Weinberg Center device. Even so, it was comparable in explosive power, which suggested to the experts that Saladin’s bomb maker, whomever he was, had perfected his craft. The force of the blast left the Alpha Group headquarters in ruins and damaged buildings for several hundred meters up and down the length of the rue de Grenelle. Four pedestrians who happened to be walking past the van when it exploded were killed instantly, as were a mother and her six-year-old daughter who were entering the pharmacy across the street. Otherwise, the only fatalities were officers of the Alpha Group.
Of the van itself, almost nothing remained. A door came to rest near a boucherie in the rue Cler; a portion of the roof, in a playground in the Champ de Mars. Later, it would be established that the vehicle had been reported stolen three weeks earlier in a suburb of Brussels and that it had entered Paris from the northwest on the A13. Where the bomb had been assembled would never be reliably determined. Nor would the French authorities ever identify the man who parked the van directly beneath the window of Paul Rousseau’s fifth-floor office. He was last seen climbing onto a motorcycle left for him in the Square de la Tour-Maubourg. The motorcycle, like the man, would never be found.
Fortunately, half of the Alpha Group’s staff were off duty or in the field when the bomb exploded. Hardest hit were the technical staff and the watchers, whose workspaces occupied the basement and ground floor. Two young women from Registry were lost, as were nine of the Alpha Group’s most experienced agent-runners. Paul Rousseau and Christian Bouchard suffered only moderate injuries, due in part to the fact they were in the secure conference room when the bomb exploded. Sadly, Madame Treville had chosen that very moment to tidy up Rousseau’s cluttered office and was exposed to the full force of the detonation. She was pulled from the rubble alive, but died later that night as the rest of France wallowed in political intrigue.
But there was more intrigue to come. Indeed, on the day after the bombing, questions arose over whether the casualties inside the building were restricted solely to officers of the Alpha Group. The source of the controversy was a report that witnesses had seen two men—young, sturdy, and armed with pistols—frantically scouring the rubble in the immediate aftermath while repeatedly shouting a name. The name was Gavriel, which happened to be the Hebrew version of the name of the current chief of the Israeli secret intelligence service. This gave rise to speculation that the man in question, whose history in France was long and sordid, had been inside the building when the bomb detonated. The interior minister and the chief of the DGSI denied he had been present, or that he had even been in France. Given their recent track record, the statements were met with the skepticism they deserved.
In point of fact the man in question had indeed been inside the Alpha Group headquarters at the time of the attack and had spent forty-five long minutes buried in the rubble, bent and twisted like a contortionist, before finally being pried loose by his bodyguards and a French rescue team. Bloodied and coated in dust, he was taken to the nearby Val-de-Grace military hospital, where he was sewn and patched and treated for several badly broken ribs, two fractured vertebrae in his lower back, and a severe concussion. Doctors would recall that he spoke fluent if slightly accented French, had been unfailingly polite if somewhat dazed, and had refused all pain medication despite the intense discomfort of his injuries. Later, however, after a visit from French intelligence officials, the doctors and attending nurses would deny all knowledge of him.
In truth, he remained at the hospital for three days, in a room next to the one occupied by Paul Rousseau and Christian Bouchard, cared for by a joint French-Israeli team of doctors and watched over by an identically composed team of bodyguards. Finally, after a round of X-rays and MRIs confirmed it was safe to move him, he was dressed in a clean suit and shirt and driven by ambulance to Charles de Gaulle Airport. There, after refusing all offers of assistance, he climbed a steep flight of stairs, stopping several times to rest and regain his balance, and entered the first-class cabin of an El Al jetliner. It was empty except for a beautiful woman with riotous dark hair. He lowered himself into the seat next to hers, rested his head on her shoulder, and closed his eyes. The woman’s hair smelled of vanilla. Only then was he certain he was still alive.
Upon his return to Israel, Gabriel went directly to Narkiss Street and remained there, hidden from view, for the better part of the next week. At first, he kept mainly to his bed, rising only to catch the few minutes of late-winter sun that fell each afternoon on the little terrace. The pain of his injuries, while manageable, was immense. Each breath was an ordeal and even the smallest movement seemed to drive a hot iron spike into the base of his spine. And then there were the lingering effects of the concussion—the chronic headache, the sensitivity to light and sound, the inability to concentrate for more than a minute or two. He was most comfortable in a darkened room, behind a closed door. Alone, with only his muddled thoughts for company, he fretted that his condition was permanent, that he had suffered one wound too many, that he had exhausted his allotted ability to heal. No amount of retouching could restore him. He was a canvas beyond repair.