Prince of Fire

file.”
    “Several hundred men work in the Presidential Security Service. If this man—” He faltered. “What was his name?”
    “Daoud Hadawi.”
    “Ah, yes, Hadawi. If he ever worked for the service, and if we still have a personnel file on him, I’ll be glad to give it to you. But I think the odds of us finding something are rather slim.”
    “Really?”
    “Let me make this clear to you,” Arafat said. “We Palestinians had nothing to do with the attack on your embassy. Maybe it was Hezbollah or Osama. Maybe it was neo-Nazis. God knows, you have many enemies.”
    Gabriel placed his palms on the arms of the chair and prepared to stand. Arafat raised his hand. “Please, Jibril,” he said, using the Arabic version of Gabriel’s name. “Don’t leave yet. Stay a little longer.”
    Gabriel, for the moment, relented. Arafat fidgeted with his kaffiyeh, then looked at Colonel Kemel and in quiet Arabic instructed him to leave them alone.
    “You’ve not touched your tea, Jibril. Can I get you something else? Some sweets, perhaps.”
    Gabriel shook his head. Arafat folded his tiny hands and regarded Gabriel in silence. He was smiling slightly. Gabriel had the distinct sense Arafat was enjoying himself.
    “I know what you did for me in New York a few years ago. If it weren’t for you, Tariq might very well have killed me in that apartment. In another time you might have hoped for him to succeed.” A wistful smile. “Who knows? In another time it might have been you, Jibril, standing there with a gun in your hand.”
    Gabriel made no reply. Kill Arafat? In the weeks after Vienna, when he had been unable to picture anything but the charred flesh of his wife and the mutilated body of his son, he had thought about it many times. Indeed, at his lowest point, Gabriel would have gladly traded his own life for Arafat’s.
    “It’s strange, Jibril, but for a brief time we were allies, you and I. We both wanted peace. We both needed peace.”
    “Did you ever want peace, or was it all part of your phased strategy to destroy Israel and take the whole thing?”
    This time it was Arafat who allowed a question to hang in the air unanswered.
    “I owe you my life, Jibril, and so I will help you in this matter. There is no Khaled. Khaled is a figment of your imagination. If you keep chasing him, the real killers will escape.”
    Gabriel stood abruptly, terminating the meeting. Arafat came out from behind the desk and placed his hands on Gabriel’s shoulders. Gabriel’s flesh seemed ablaze, but he did nothing to sever the Palestinian’s embrace.
    “I’m glad we finally met formally,” Arafat said. “If you and I can sit down together in peace, perhaps there’s hope for us all.”
    “Perhaps,” said Gabriel, though his tone revealed his pessimism.
    Arafat released Gabriel and started toward the door, then stopped himself suddenly. “You surprise me, Jibril.”
    “Why is that?”
    “I expected you to use this opportunity to clear the air about Vienna.”
    “You murdered my wife and son,” Gabriel said, deliberately misleading Arafat over Leah’s fate. “I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to ‘clear the air,’ as you put it.”
    Arafat shook his head. “No, Jibril, I didn’t murder them. I ordered Tariq to kill you to avenge Abu Jihad, but I specifically told him that your family was not to be touched.”
    “Why did you do that?”
    “Because you deserved it. You conducted yourself with a certain honor that night in Tunis. Yes, you killed Abu Jihad, but you made certain no harm came to his wife and children. In fact, you stopped on the way out of the villa to comfort Abu Jihad’s daughter and instruct her to look after her mother. Do you remember that, Jibril?”
    Gabriel closed his eyes and nodded. The scene in Tunis, like the bombing in Vienna, hung in a gallery of memory that he walked each night in his dreams.
    “I felt you deserved the same as Abu Jihad, to die a soldier’s death witnessed by your wife and child. Tariq didn’t agree with me. He felt you deserved a more severe punishment, the punishment of watching your wife and child die, so he planted the bomb beneath their car and made certain you were on hand to witness the detonation. Vienna was Tariq’s doing, not mine.”
    The telephone on Arafat’s desk rang, tearing Gabriel’s memory of Vienna as a knife shreds canvas. Arafat turned suddenly and left Gabriel to see himself out. Colonel Kemel was waiting on the landing. He