Prince of Fire

escorted Gabriel wordlessly through the debris of the Mukata. The harsh light, after the gloom of Arafat’s office, was nearly unbearable. Beyond the broken gate Yonatan Shamron was playing football with a few of the Palestinian guards. They climbed back into the armored jeep and drove through streets of death. When they were clear of Ramallah, Yonatan asked Gabriel whether he had learned anything useful.
    “Khaled al-Khalifa bombed our embassy in Rome,” Gabriel said with certainty.
    “Anything else?”
    Yes, he thought. Yasir Arafat had personally ordered Tariq al-Hourani to murder his wife and son.

11

J ERUSALEM : M ARCH 23
    G ABRIEL ’ S BEDSIDE TELEPHONE RANG AT TWO A . M . It was Yaakov.
    “Looks like your visit to the Mukata has stirred the hornet’s nest.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I’m outside in the street.”
    The connection went dead. Gabriel sat up in bed and dressed in the dark.
    “Who was that?” Chiara asked, her voice heavy with sleep.
    Gabriel told her.
    “What is it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He bent to kiss her forehead. Chiara’s arm rose from the blankets, curled around the back of his neck, and drew him to her mouth. “Be careful,” she whispered, her lips against his cheek.
    A moment later he was buckled into the passenger seat of Yaakov’s unmarked Volkswagen Golf, racing westward across Jerusalem. Yaakov drove ludicrously fast, in true Sabra fashion, with the wheel in one hand and coffee and a cigarette in the other. The headlamps of the oncoming traffic threw an unkind light on the pockmarked features of his uncompromising face.
    “His name is Mahmoud Arwish,” Yaakov said. “One of our most important assets inside the Palestinian Authority. He works in the Mukata. Very close to Arafat.”
    “Who made the approach?”
    “Arwish sent up a flare a couple of hours ago and said he wanted to talk.”
    “About what?”
    “Khaled, of course.”
    “What does he know?”
    “He wouldn’t say.”
    “Why do you need me? Why isn’t he talking to his controller?”
    “I’m his controller,” Yaakov said, “but the person he really wants to talk to is you.”
    They had reached the western edge of the New City. To Gabriel’s right, bathed in the silver light of a newly risen moon, lay the flatlands of the West Bank. Old hands called it “Shabak country.” It was a land where the usual rules did not apply—and where the few conventions that did exist could be bent or broken whenever it was deemed necessary to combat Arab terror. Men such as Yaakov were the mailed fist of Israeli security, foot soldiers who engaged in the dirty work of counterterrorism. Shabakniks had the power to arrest without cause and search without warrants, to shut down businesses and dynamite houses. They lived on nerves and nicotine, drank too much coffee and slept too little. Their wives left them, their Arab informants feared and hated them. Gabriel, though he had dispensed the ultimate sanction of the State, always considered himself fortunate that he had been asked to join the Office and not Shabak.
    Shabak’s methods were sometimes at odds with the principles of a democratic state, and, like the Office, public scandals had damaged its reputation both at home and abroad. The worst was the infamous Bus 300 Affair. In April 1984, bus No. 300, en route from Tel Aviv to the southern city of Ashkelon, was hijacked by four Palestinians. Two were killed during the military rescue operation; the two surviving terrorists were led into a nearby wheat field and never seen again. Later it was revealed that the hijackers had been beaten to death by Shabak officers acting under orders from their director-general. A series of scandals followed in quick succession, each exposing some of Shabak’s most ruthless methods: violence, coerced confessions, blackmail, and deception. Shabak’s defenders were fond of saying that interrogations of suspected terrorists cannot be conducted over a pleasant cup of coffee. Its goals, regardless of the scandals, remained unchanged. Shabak was not interested in catching terrorists after blood was shed. It wanted to stop the terrorists before they could strike, and, if possible, to frighten young Arabs from ever going the way of violence.
    Yaakov applied the brakes suddenly to avoid colliding with a slow-moving transit van. Simultaneously he flashed his lights and pounded on the car horn. The van responded by