They embraced her, they kissed her cheeks, they clung to her limbs as though they feared she might drift away from them and never return. Dina removed the hijab from Natalie’s head; Gabriel pressed a glass of chilled white wine into her hand. It was a sauvignon blanc from the Western Galilee that Natalie adored.
“I couldn’t possibly,” she laughed. “It is haram.”
“Not tonight,” he said. “Tonight you are one of us again.”
There was food and there was music, and there were a thousand questions no one dared ask; there would be time for that later. They had sent an agent into the belly of the beast, and the agent had come back to them. They were going to savor their achievement. They were going to celebrate life.
Only Gabriel seemed to withhold himself from the revelry. He did not partake of the food or wine, only coffee. Mainly, he watched Natalie with an unnerving intensity. She remembered the things he had told her about his mother on that first day at the farm in the Jezreel Valley, how she rarely laughed or smiled, how she could not show pleasure on festive occasions. Perhaps he had inherited her affliction. Or perhaps, thought Natalie, he knew that tonight was not an occasion for celebration.
At last, as if by some imperceptible signal, the party came to an end. The dishes were cleared away, the wine was removed. In one of the sitting rooms a wing chair had been reserved for Natalie. There were no cameras or microphones visible, but surely, she thought, the proceedings were being recorded. Gabriel chose to remain standing.
“Usually,” he said, “I prefer to start debriefings from the beginning. But perhaps tonight we should start at the end.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Perhaps we should.”
“Who was staying in the large house near Mosul?”
“Saladin,” she answered without hesitation.
“Why were you brought there?”
“He required medical attention.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because,” replied Natalie, “he was going to die.”
45
SERAINCOURT, FRANCE
ONE DAY,” SAID GABRIEL, “they’re going to write a book about you.”
“It’s funny,” replied Natalie, “but Saladin told me the same thing.”
They were walking along a footpath in the garden of the chateau. A bit of light leaked from the French doors of the sitting room, but otherwise it was dark. A storm had come and gone during the many hours of her debriefing, and the gravel was wet beneath their feet. Natalie shivered. The air was chill with the promise of autumn.
“You’re cold,” said Gabriel. “We should go back inside.”
“Not yet. There’s something I wanted to tell you in private.”
Gabriel stopped and turned to face her.
“He knows who you are.”
“Saladin?” He smiled. “I’m flattered but not surprised. I have quite a following in the Arab world.”
“There’s more, I’m afraid. He knows about your connection to Hannah Weinberg. And he suspects that you are very much alive.”
This time, he did not dismiss her words with a smile.
“What does it mean?” asked Natalie.
“It means that our suspicions about Saladin being a former Iraqi intelligence officer are almost certainly correct. It also means he’s probably connected to certain elements in Saudi Arabia. Who knows? Perhaps he’s receiving support from them.”
“But ISIS wants to destroy the House of Saud and incorporate the Arabian Peninsula into the caliphate.”
“In theory.”
“So why would the Saudis support ISIS?”
“You are now our foremost expert on ISIS. You tell me.”
“Saudi Arabia is a classic straddling state. It combats Sunni extremism while at the same time nurturing it. They’re like a man holding a tiger by the ears. If the man lets go of the tiger, it will devour him.”
“You were obviously paying attention during those long lectures at the farm. But you left out one other important factor, and that’s Iran. The Saudis are more afraid of Iran than they are of ISIS. Iran is Shiite. And ISIS, for all its evil, is Sunni.”
“And from the Saudi perspective,” continued Natalie, “a Sunni caliphate is far preferable to a Shiite Crescent that stretches from Iran to Lebanon.”
“Exactly.” Again, he smiled. “You’re going to make a fine intelligence officer. Actually,” he corrected himself, “you already are.”
“A fine intelligence officer wouldn’t have saved the life of a monster like Saladin.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Did I?”
“We’re not like them, Natalie. If they want to die for Allah, we will help them in any way we can. But we will not sacrifice ourselves in the process. Besides,” he added after a moment, “if you had killed Saladin, Abu Ahmed al-Tikriti would have taken his place.”
“So why bother to kill any of them if another will rise?”
“It is a question with which we wrestle all the time.”
“And the answer?”
“What choice do we have?”
“Maybe we should bomb that house.”
“Bad idea.”
“Why?”
“You tell me.”
She considered the question carefully before answering. “Because they would suspect that the woman who saved Saladin—the woman he called Maimonides—was a spy who had revealed the location of the house to her handlers.”
“Very good. And you can be certain they moved him the minute you crossed into Turkey.”
“Were you watching?”
“Our satellite had been retasked to follow you.”
“I saw al-Tikriti use a phone several times.”
“That phone is now off the air. I’ll ask the Americans to review their satellite and cellular data. It’s possible they’ll be able to retrace Saladin’s movements, but unlikely. They’ve been looking for al-Baghdadi for a long time without success. In a case like this we need to know where Saladin is going to be, not where he’s been.” With a sidelong glance he asked, “Is there any chance he might have already died of his wounds?”
“There’s always a chance. But I’m afraid he had a very good doctor.”
“That’s because she was Jewish. Everyone knows that all the best doctors are Jewish.”
She smiled.
“You dispute this?”
“No. It’s just that Saladin said the same thing.”
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”
They walked in silence for a moment, the gravel of the pathway crunching beneath their feet, watched over by Greek and Roman statuary. Apollo emerged spectrally from the darkness. For an instant Natalie was once more in Palmyra.
“What now?” she asked at last.
“We wait for Saladin to summon you. And we stop the next attack.”
“What if they don’t choose me for the team?”
“They’ve invested a great deal of time and effort in you. Almost as much as we have,” he added.
“How long will we have to wait?”
“A week, a month . . .” He shrugged. “Saladin has been at this for a long time, a thousand years in fact. He’s obviously a patient man.”
“I can’t keep living as Leila Hadawi.”
He said nothing.
“How are my parents?”
“Worried, but fine.”
“Do they know I went to Syria?”
“No. But they know you’re safe.”