Prince of Fire

hurry,” she said, “or we won’t make it to Nîmes in time.”
    “I’m going nearly two hundred kilometers an hour. I can’t drive any faster without killing us both. Next time Khaled calls, tell him he’s going to have to extend the deadlines.”
    “Who?”
    “Khaled,” Gabriel repeated. “The man you’re working for. The man who’s running this operation.”
    “I’ve never heard of a man named Khaled.”
    “My mistake.”
    She studied him for a moment. “You speak Arabic very well. You grew up in the Jezreel Valley, yes? Not far from Afula. I’m told there are many Arabs there. People who refused to leave or be driven out.”
    Gabriel didn’t rise to her baiting. “You’ve never seen it?”
    “Palestine?” A flicker of a smile. “I’ve seen it from a distance,” she said.
    Lebanon, thought Gabriel. She’s seen it from Lebanon.
    “If we’re going to make this journey together, I should have a name to call you.”
    “I don’t have a name. I’m just a Palestinian. No name, no face, no land, no home. My suitcase is my country.”
    “Fine,” he said, “I’ll call you Palestine.”
    “It’s not a proper name for a woman.”
    “All right, then I’ll call you Palestina.”
    She looked at the road and nodded. “You may call me Palestina.”
    A MILE BEFORE N ÎMES , she directed him into the gravel parking lot of a roadside store that sold earthenware planters and garden statuary. For five unbearable moments they waited in silence for her satellite telephone to ring. When it finally did, the electronic chime sounded to Gabriel like a fire alarm. The girl listened without speaking. From her blank expression Gabriel could not discern whether she’d been ordered to keep going or to kill him. She severed the connection and nodded toward the road.
    “Get on the Autoroute.”
    “Which direction?”
    “North.”
    “Where are we going?”
    A hesitation, then: “Lyon.”
    Gabriel did as he was told. As they neared the Autoroute tollbooth, the girl slipped the Tanfolgio into her satchel. Then she handed him some change for the toll. When they were back on the road, the gun came out again. She placed it on her lap. Her forefinger, with her short, dirty nail, lay noncommittally across the trigger.
    “What’s he like?”
    “Who?”
    “Khaled,” Gabriel said.
    “As I told you before, I don’t know anyone named Khaled.”
    “You spent the night with him in Marseilles.”
    “Actually, I spent the night with a man named Monsieur Véran. You’d better drive faster.”
    “He’s going to kill us, you know. He’s going to kill us both.”
    She said nothing.
    “Were you told that this was a suicide mission? Have you prepared yourself to die? Have you prayed and made a farewell videotape for your family?”
    “Please drive, and don’t talk anymore.”
    “We’re shaheeds , you and I. We’re going to die together—for different causes, mind you, but together.”
    “Please, shut up.”
    And there it was, he thought. The crack. Khaled had lied to her.
    “We’re going to die tonight ,” he said. “At seven o’clock. He didn’t mention that to you?”
    Another silence. Her finger was moving over the surface of the trigger.
    “I guess he forgot to tell you,” Gabriel resumed. “But then it’s always been that way. It’s the poor kids who die for Palestine, the kids from the camps and the slums. The elite just give the orders from their villas in Beirut and Tunis and Ramallah.”
    She swung the gun toward his face again. This time he snatched it and twisted it from her grasp.
    “When you hit me with this, it makes it hard to drive.”
    He held out the gun to her. She took it and placed it back in her lap.
    “We’re shaheeds , Palestina. We’re driving toward destruction, and Khaled is giving us directions. Seven o’clock, Palestina. Seven o’clock.”
    O N THE ROAD between Valence and Lyon, he pushed Leah from his mind and thought of nothing but the case. Instinctively, he approached it as though it were a painting. He stripped away the varnish and dissolved the paint, until there was nothing left but the fragmentary charcoal lines of the underdrawing; then he began building it back up again, layer by layer, tone and texture. For the moment he was unable to affix a reliable authentication. Was Khaled the artist, or had Khaled been only an apprentice in the workshop of the Old Master himself, Yasir Arafat? Had Arafat ordered it to avenge the destruction of his power and