“Maybe once,” answered Gabriel, “but we can’t operate like that any longer. We need partners.”
“Partners have a way of disappointing you. And that passport won’t protect you if something goes wrong in Morocco.”
Gabriel picked up the little display case with the spent .22 rounds. “If my memory is correct, and I’m sure it is, you were in the backseat of a car in the Piazza Annibaliano while I was inside that apartment house dealing with Zwaiter.”
“I was the chief of Special Ops then. It was my place to be in the field. A more appropriate analogy,” Shamron went on, “would be Abu Jihad. I was the chief then, and I stayed aboard that naval vessel while you and the rest of the team went ashore.”
“With the defense minister, as I recall.”
“It was an important operation. Almost as important,” said Shamron quietly, “as the one you’re about to carry out. It’s time for Saladin to leave the stage, with no encores or curtain calls. Just make sure you don’t give him what he really wants.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
Gabriel returned the case to its place on the shelf.
“Will you permit me a question or two?” asked Shamron.
“If it will make you happy.”
“Bolt-holes?”
Gabriel explained that there would be two. One was an Israeli corvette. The other was the Neptune, a Liberian-registered cargo vessel that in reality was a floating radar and eavesdropping station operated by AMAN, Israel’s military intelligence service. The Neptune would be stationed off Agadir, on Morocco’s Atlantic coast.
“And the corvette?” asked Shamron.
“A little Mediterranean port called El Jebha.”
“I assume that’s where the Sayeret team will come ashore.”
“If I require it. After all,” said Gabriel, “I have a former Sayeret officer and a veteran of the British Special Air Service at my disposal.”
“Both of whom will have their hands full maintaining control of this Jean-Luc Martel character.” Shamron shook his head slowly. “Sometimes the worst thing about a successful recruitment is that you’re stuck with the asset. Whatever you do, don’t trust him.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Shamron’s cigarette had extinguished itself. He lit another and returned to work on the radio while Gabriel stared at the photograph on the shelf, trying to reconcile the black-and-white image of a spymaster in his prime with the elderly figure before him. It had happened so quickly. Soon, he thought, it would happen to him. Not even Raphael and Irene could stave off the inevitable.
“Aren’t you going to get that?” Shamron asked suddenly.
“Get what?”
“Your phone. It’s driving me to distraction.”
Gabriel looked down. He had been so lost in thought he hadn’t noticed the message from the Ramatuelle safe house.
“Well?” asked Shamron.
“It seems Mohammad Bakkar would like a word with Jean-Luc Martel about those missing drugs. He was wondering whether he could come to Morocco early next week.”
“Will he be free?”
“Martel? I think we can fit it into his schedule.”
Smiling, Shamron plugged the radio into the power strip on his worktable and switched it on. A moment later, after adjusting the tuning dial, he found a bit of music.
“I don’t recognize it,” said Gabriel.
“You wouldn’t, you’re too young. It’s Artie Shaw. The first time I heard this . . .” He left the thought unfinished.
“What’s it called?” asked Gabriel.
“‘You’re a Lucky Guy.’”
Just then, the radio died and the music fell silent.
Shamron frowned. “Or maybe not.”
46
Casablanca, Morocco
The road linking Casablanca’s Mohammed V International Airport with the center of Morocco’s largest city and financial hub was four lanes of smooth coal-black asphalt, along which Dina Sarid, a reckless motorist by nature and nationality, drove with extraordinary care.
“What are you so worried about?” asked Gabriel.
“You,” she replied.
“What have I done now?”
“Nothing. I’ve just never driven a chief before.”
“Well,” he said, staring out his window, “there’s a first time for everything.”
Gabriel’s overnight bag lay on the backseat, his attaché case was balanced on his knees. In it was the American passport that had allowed him to sail unmolested through Moroccan border control and customs. Things might have changed in Washington, but in much of the world it was still good to be an American.
All at once the traffic slowed to a halt.
“A checkpoint,” explained Dina. “They’re everywhere.”
“What do you suppose they’re looking for?”
“Maybe the chief of Israeli intelligence.”
A line of orange pylons guided the traffic onto the shoulder of the road, where a pair of gendarmes was inspecting the vehicles and their occupants, watched over by a DST tough in plainclothes and sunglasses. While lowering her window, Dina spoke a few words to Gabriel in fluent German—German being the language of her cover identity and false passport. The bored gendarmes waved her forward, as though they were chasing away the flies. The DST man’s thoughts were clearly elsewhere.
Dina quickly raised her window against the heavy, merciless heat and turned the air conditioner on full. They passed a large military installation. Then it was farmland again, small plots of rich dark earth, tended mainly by inhabitants of the surrounding villages. The stands of eucalyptus reminded Gabriel of home.
At last, they reached the ragged edges of Casablanca, North Africa’s second-largest city, eclipsed only by the megalopolis of Cairo. The farmland did not surrender entirely; there were patches of it between the smart new apartment blocks and the shantytowns of corrugated metal-and-cinderblock shacks that were home to hundreds of thousands of Casablanca’s poorest residents.
“They call them Bidonvilles,” said Dina, pointing out one of the shantytowns. “I suppose it sounds better than a slum. The people there have nothing. No running water, barely enough to eat. Every once in a while the government tries to clear away the Bidonvilles with bulldozers, but the people come back and rebuild. What choice do they have? They have nowhere else to go.”
They passed a plot of thin brown grass where two barefoot boys were watching over a flock of skinny goats.