Prince of Fire

Parisian apartment building with a Beretta in his hand. “This is Sabri al-Khalifa,” Dina was saying. “The setting is the Boulevard St-Germain in Paris, the year is 1979. The photograph was snapped by an Office surveillance team. It was the last ever taken of him.”
AMMAN, JORDAN: JUNE 1967
    It was eleven in the morning when the handsome young man with pale skin and black hair walked into a Fatah recruiting office in downtown Amman. The officer seated behind the desk in the lobby was in a foul mood. The entire Arab world was. The second war for Palestine had just ended. Instead of liberating the land from the Jews, it had precipitated yet another catastrophe for the Palestinians. In just six days the Israeli military had routed the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. Sinai, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank were now in Jewish hands, and thousands more Palestinians had been turned into refugees.
    “Name?” the recruiter snapped.
    “Sabri al-Khalifa.”
    The Fatah man looked up, startled. “Yes, of course you are,” he said. “I fought with your father. Come with me.”
    Sabri was immediately placed in a car and chauffeured at high speed across the Jordanian capital to a safe house. There he was introduced to a small, unimpressive-looking man named Yasir Arafat.
    “I’ve been waiting for you,” Arafat said. “I knew your father. He was a great man.”
    Sabri smiled. He was used to hearing compliments about his father. All his life he had been told stories about the heroic deeds of the great warlord from Beit Sayeed, and how the Jews, to punish the villagers who had supported his father, razed the village and forced its inhabitants into exile. Sabri al-Khalifa had little in common with most of his refugee brethren. He had been raised in a pleasant district of Beirut and educated at the finest schools and universities in Europe. Along with his native Arabic, he spoke French, German, and English fluently. His cosmopolitan upbringing had made him a valuable asset to the Palestinian cause. Yasir Arafat wasn’t about to let him go to waste.
    “Fatah is riddled with traitors and collaborators,” Arafat said. “Every time we send an assault team across the border, the Jews are lying in wait. If we’re ever going to be an effective fighting force, we have to purge the traitors from our midst. I would think a job such as that would appeal to you, given what happened to your father. He was undone by a collaborator, was he not?”
    Sabri nodded gravely. He’d been told that story, too.
    “Will you work for me?” Arafat said. “Will you fight for your people, like your father did?”
    Sabri immediately went to work for the Jihaz al Razd, the intelligence branch of Fatah. Within a month of accepting the assignment, he’d unmasked twenty Palestinian collaborators. Sabri made a point of attending their executions and always personally fired a symbolic coup de grâce into each victim as a warning to those considering treason against the revolution.
    After six months at the Jihaz al Razd, Sabri was summoned to a second meeting with Yasir Arafat. This one took place in a different safe house from the first. The Fatah leader, fearful of Israeli assassins, slept in a different bed every night. Though Sabri didn’t know it then, he would soon be living the same way.
    “We have plans for you,” Arafat said. “Very special plans. You will be a great man. Your feats will rival even those of your father. Soon, the whole world will know the name Sabri al-Khalifa.”
    “What sort of plans?”
    “In due time, Sabri. First, we must prepare you.”
    He was sent to Cairo for six months of intense terrorist training under the tutelage of the Egyptian secret service, the Mukhabarat. While in Cairo, he was introduced to a young Palestinian woman named Rima, the daughter of a senior Fatah officer. It seemed a perfect match, and the two were hastily married in a private ceremony attended only by Fatah members and officers of Egyptian intelligence. A month later, Sabri was recalled to Jordan to begin the next phase of his preparation. He left Rima in Cairo with her father, and though he didn’t realize it at the time, she was pregnant with a son. The date of his birth was an ominous one for the Palestinians: September 1970.
    For some time, King Hussein of Jordan had been concerned about the growing power of the Palestinians living in his midst. The western portion of his country had become a virtual state within