“I don’t know.”
“What’s my target?”
“In a minute.”
“What’s yours?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Alarm flashed on Safia’s face. “They’re coming!”
“Who?”
“The Americans.”
Safia put her foot to the floor and raced across P Street. Then, at Volta Place, she made another right turn.
“There’s a French restaurant on Wisconsin Avenue called Bistrot Lepic. It’s about a kilometer up the street, on the left side. Some diplomats from the French Embassy are having a private dinner there tonight with people from the Foreign Ministry from Paris. It will be very crowded. Walk as far into the restaurant as you can and hit your detonator. If they try to stop you at the door, do it there.”
“Is it just me, or are there others?”
“Just you. We’re part of the second wave of attacks.”
“What’s your target?”
“I told you once already, it doesn’t matter.”
Safia braked hard at Wisconsin Avenue.
“Get out.”
“But—”
“Get out!” Safia waved her clenched right fist in Natalie’s face, the fist that held the detonator. “Get out or I’ll kill us both right now!”
Natalie climbed out and watched the Toyota speed south on Wisconsin Avenue. Then she looked up the length of Volta Place. No traffic moved in the street. It seemed Safia had managed to elude their pursuers. Once again, Natalie was alone.
She stood frozen with indecision for a moment, listening to the screaming of the sirens. They all seemed to be converging at the southern end of Georgetown, near the Potomac. Finally, she headed in the opposite direction, toward her target, and started looking for a telephone. And all the while she was wondering why Safia had insisted she wear the suicide vest with the red stitch in the zipper.
Five critical minutes would elapse before the FBI managed to find the car. It was parked at the corner of Wisconsin and Prospect, illegally and very badly. The right-front wheel was on the curb, the driver’s-side door was ajar, the headlights were on, the engine was running. More important, the two female occupants, one dark-haired, one blond, subjects one and two, had vanished.
64
CAFé MILANO, GEORGETOWN
SAFIA WAS SLIGHTLY OUT OF breath when she entered Café Milano. With a martyr’s serenity, she walked across the foyer to the ma?tre d’ stand.
“Al-Farouk,” she said.
“Mr. al-Farouk has already arrived. Right this way, please.”
Safia followed the ma?tre d’ into the main dining room, and then to the table where Saladin sat alone. He rose slowly on his wounded leg and kissed her lightly on each cheek.
“Asma, my love,” he said in perfect English. “You look absolutely lovely.”
She didn’t understand what he was saying, and so she merely smiled and sat down. While reclaiming his own seat, Saladin shot a glance toward the man sitting at the end of the bar. The man with dark hair and eyeglasses who had entered the restaurant a few minutes after Saladin. The man, thought Saladin, who had taken great interest in Safia’s arrival and who was holding a mobile phone tightly to his ear. It could mean only one thing: Saladin’s presence in Washington had not gone unnoticed.
He raised his eyes toward the television over the bar. It was tuned to CNN. The network was only just beginning to grasp the scope of the calamity that had befallen Washington. There had been attacks at the National Counterterrorism Center, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Kennedy Center. The network was also hearing reports, unconfirmed, of attacks on a number of restaurants in the Washington Harbor complex. The patrons of Café Milano were clearly on edge. Most were staring at their mobiles, and about a dozen were gathered around the bar, watching the television. But not the man with dark hair and glasses. He was trying his best not to stare at Safia. It was time, thought Saladin, to be leaving.
He placed his hand lightly on Safia’s and stared into her hypnotic eyes. In Arabic, he asked, “You dropped her where I told you?”
She nodded.
“The Americans followed you?”
“They tried. They seemed confused.”
“With good reason,” he said with a glance toward the television.
“It went well?”
“Better than expected.”
A waiter approached. Saladin waved him away.
“Do you see the man at the end of the bar?” he asked quietly.
“The one who’s talking on the phone?”
Saladin nodded. “Have you ever seen him before?”
“I don’t think so.”
“He’s going to try to stop you. Don’t let him.”
There was a moment’s silence. Saladin granted himself the luxury of one last look around the room. This was the reason he had made the risky journey to Washington, to see with his own eyes fear on American faces. For too long, only Muslims had been afraid. Now the Americans would know what it was like to taste fear. They had destroyed Saladin’s country. Tonight, Saladin had begun the process of destroying theirs.
He looked at Safia. “You’re ready?”
“Yes,” she answered.
“After I leave, wait one minute exactly.” He gave her hand a soft squeeze of encouragement and then smiled. “Don’t be afraid, my love. You won’t feel a thing. And then you’ll see the face of Allah.”
“Peace be with you,” she said.
“And with you.”
With that, Saladin rose and, taking up his cane, limped past the man with dark hair and glasses, into the foyer.
“Is everything all right, Mr. al-Farouk?” asked the ma?tre d’.
“I have to make a phone call, and I don’t want to disturb your other guests.”
“I’m afraid they’re already disturbed.”
“So it would seem.”
Saladin went into the night. On the redbrick pavement, he paused for a moment to savor the wail of sirens. A black Lincoln Town Car waited curbside. Saladin lowered himself into the backseat and instructed the driver, a member of his network, to move forward a few yards. Inside the restaurant, surrounded by more than a hundred people, a woman sat alone, staring at her wristwatch. And though she did not realize it, her lips were moving.
65
WISCONSIN AVENUE, GEORGETOWN
AFTER CROSSING Q STREET, NATALIE encountered two Georgetown students, both women, both terrified. Over the scream of a passing ambulance, she explained that she had been robbed and needed to call her boyfriend for help. The women said that the university had sent out an alert ordering all students to return to their dorms and residences and to shelter in place. But when Natalie made a second appeal, one of the women, the taller of the two, handed over an iPhone. Natalie held the device in the palm of her left hand, and with her right, the one that held the detonator switch, entered the number she was supposed to use only in an extreme emergency. It rang on the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. A male voice answered in terse Hebrew.
“I need to speak to Gabriel right away,” Natalie said in the same language.
“Who is this?”
She hesitated and then spoke her given name for the first time in many months.
“Where are you?”
“Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown.”