Prince of Fire

you’ll never be able to get your wife out of the station before the bombs go off. The only way to save her is to allow hundreds of other people to die—hundreds of deaths in order to save a wreck of a human being. Quite a moral dilemma, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Where is she?”
    “You tell me.”
    “Track D,” Gabriel said. “Track Dalet.”
    “Very good.”
    “She’s not there. I don’t see her.”
    “Look harder. Fifteen seconds, Gabriel. Fifteen seconds.”
    And then the line went dead.
    T IME SEEMED TO CRAWL to a stop. He saw it all as a streetscape, rendered in the vibrant palette of Renoir—the shaheeds , their eyes on the departure clock; the soldiers, their shoulders slung with submachine guns; Palestina, clutching the handbag that held a loaded Tanfolgio nine-millimeter. And in the center of it all he saw the pretty Arab girl walking away from a woman in a wheelchair. On the track stood a train bound for Marseilles, and five feet from the spot where the woman waited to die was an open door to the last carriage. Above him a clock read 6:59:50. Mimi had cheated him, but Gabriel knew better than most men that ten seconds was an eternity. In the span of ten seconds he had followed Khaled’s father into a Paris courtyard and filled his body with eleven bullets. In less than ten seconds, on a snowy night in Vienna, his son was murdered and his wife forever lost to him.
    His first move was so compact and rapid that no one seemed to notice it—a blow to the left side of Palestina’s skull that landed with such force that Gabriel, when he pulled the handbag off her shoulder, was not sure whether she was still alive. As the girl collapsed at his feet, he reached inside the bag and wrapped his hand around the grip of the Tanfolgio. Tayyib, the shaheed closest to him at the snack bar, had seen none of it, for his eyes were fixed on the clock. Gabriel drew the weapon from the bag and leveled it, one-handed, at the bomber. He squeezed the trigger twice, tap-tap. Both shots struck the bomber high in the chest, flinging him backward, away from the explosive-laden suitcase.
    The sound of gunfire in the vast echo chamber of the station had the effect Gabriel had expected. Across the platform, people crouched or dropped to the ground. Twenty feet away, the two soldiers were pulling their submachine guns off their shoulders. And at either end of the platform the last two shaheeds , Bashir and Naji, were still standing, their eyes fixed on the clock. There wasn’t time for both.
    Gabriel, in French, shouted: “Bomber! Get down! Get down!”
    A firing lane opened as Gabriel aimed the Tanfolgio at the one called Naji. The French soldiers, confused by what they were witnessing, hesitated. He squeezed the trigger, saw a flash of pink, then watched as Naji spiraled lifelessly to the floor.
    He ran toward Track D, toward the spot where Leah sat exposed to the coming blast wave. He clung to Palestina’s handbag, for it contained the keys to his escape. He glanced once over his shoulder. Bashir, the last of the shaheeds , was heading toward the center of the station. He must have seen his two comrades fall; now he was trying to increase the killing power of his single bomb by placing it in the center of the platform where it was still most crowded.
    To stop now meant almost certain death for himself and for Leah, so Gabriel kept running. He reached the entrance to Track D and turned to the right. The platform was empty; the gunfire and Gabriel’s warnings had driven the passengers into the trains or toward the exit of the station. Only Leah remained, helpless and immobile.
    The clock rolled over: 7:00:00
    Gabriel seized Leah by the shoulders and lifted her unresisting body from the chair, then made one final lunge toward the doorway of the waiting train as the suitcase detonated. A flash of brilliant light, a thunderclap, a searing blast wave that seemed to press the very life out of him. Poison bolts and nails. Shattered glass and blood.
    B LACK SMOKE , an unbearable silence. Gabriel looked into Leah’s eyes. She looked directly back at him, her gaze strangely serene. He slipped the Tanfolgio into the handbag, then cradled Leah in his arms and stood. She seemed weightless to him.
    From outside the shattered carriage came the first screams. Gabriel looked around him. The windows on both sides were blown out. Those passengers who had been in their seats had been cut by the flying glass. Gabriel saw at least six who