Prince of Fire

run it through the database?”
    She nodded. “No match on file.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” Gabriel said. “I have something better than her voice.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Her story.”
    He told Dina how the girl’s story of pain and loss had virtually tumbled out of her during the final miles before Paris. How her family had come from Sumayriyya in the Western Galilee; how they had been driven out during Operation Ben-Ami and forced into exile in Lebanon.
    “Sumayriyya? It was a small place, wasn’t it? A thousand people?”
    “Eight hundred, according to the girl. She seemed to know her history.”
    “Not everyone from Sumayriyya obeyed the orders to flee,” Dina said. “Some of them stayed behind.”
    “And some of them managed to sneak back across the border before it was sealed. If her grandfather was truly a village elder, someone would remember him.”
    “But even if we’re able to learn the girl’s name, what good will it do? She’s dead. How can she help us find Khaled?”
    “She was in love with him.”
    “She told you this?”
    “I just know it.”
    “How perceptive of you. What else do you know about this girl?”
    “I remember how she looked,” he said. “I remember exactly how she looked.”
    T HE NOTEPAD of unlined paper she found on the flying bridge; the two ordinary lead pencils in the junk drawer of the galley. He settled himself on the couch and worked by the glow of a halogen reading lamp. Dina tried to peer over his shoulder, but he cast her a severe look and sent her out onto the windswept deck to wait until he had finished. She stood at the rail and watched the lights of the Italian coast growing faint on the horizon. Ten minutes later she returned to the salon and found Gabriel asleep on the couch. The portrait of the dead girl lay next to him. Dina switched off the lamp and let him sleep on.
    T HE I SRAELI FRIGATE appeared off Fidelity ’s starboard side in the afternoon of the third day. Two hours after that, Gabriel, Yaakov, and Dina were touching down on the helipad of a secure air base north of Tel Aviv. An Office greeting party awaited them. They stood in a circle and looked ill at ease, like strangers at a funeral. Lev was not among them, but then Lev could never be bothered with something as commonplace as greeting agents returning from dangerous missions. Gabriel, as he stepped off the helicopter, was relieved to see the armored Peugeot turning through the gates and coming across the tarmac at high speed. Without a word he separated himself from the others and made for the car.
    “Where are you going, Allon?” shouted one of Lev’s men.
    “Home.”
    “The boss wants to see you now.”
    “Then maybe he should have canceled a meeting or two and come here to greet us personally. Tell Lev I’ll try to squeeze him in tomorrow morning. I have to move a couple of things around. Tell him that.”
    The rear door of the Peugeot swung open, and Gabriel climbed inside. Shamron regarded him silently. He seemed to have aged noticeably during Gabriel’s absence. His next cigarette was lit by a hand that shook more than usual. As the car lurched forward, he placed a copy of Le Monde in Gabriel’s lap. Gabriel looked down and saw two pictures of himself—one in the Gare de Lyon, moments before the explosion, and the other at Mimi Ferrere’s nightclub in Cairo, seated with the three shaheeds.
    “It’s all very speculative,” Shamron said, “and therefore more damaging as a result. The suggestion is that you were somehow involved in the plot to bomb the train station.”
    “And what might my motivation be?”
    “To discredit the Palestinians, of course. Khaled carried off quite a coup. He managed to bomb the Gare de Lyon and blame us for the deed.”
    Gabriel read the first few paragraphs of the story. “He obviously has friends in high places—Egyptian and French intelligence to name two. The Mukhabarat was watching me from the moment I set foot in Cairo. They photographed me in the nightclub, and after the bombing they sent that photograph to the French DST. Khaled orchestrated the whole thing.”
    “Unfortunately, there’s more to the story. David Quinnell was found murdered in his Cairo apartment yesterday morning. It’s safe to assume we’re going to be blamed for that, too.”
    Gabriel handed the newspaper back to Shamron, who returned it to his briefcase. “The fallout has already begun. The foreign minister was supposed to visit Paris next