The Confessor

Israeli's involvement--and if he was, why he hadn't hired Lange to deal with it. Perhaps Casagrande didn't know how to find the Israeli. Thanks to the documents on Peter Malone's computer, Lange did know how to find him, and he had no intention of waiting for orders from Casagrande to act. He had a slight advantage, a brief window of opportunity, but he had to move swiftly or the window would close.
    He copied the two files onto a disk, then erased them from the hard drive. Katrine, wrapped in the duvet from her bed, came into the room and sat down at the other end of the couch. Lange closed the computer.
    "You promised to cook for me," she said. "I'm famished."
    "I have to go to Paris."
    "Now?"
    Lange nodded.
    "Can't it wait until morning?"
    He shook his head.
    "What's so important in Paris?"
    Lange looked out the window. "I need to find a man."
    Rashid Husseini did not look much like a professional terrorist. He had a round fleshy face and large brown eyes heavy
    with fatigue. His wrinkled tweed jacket and turtleneck sweater gave him the appearance of a doctoral student at work on a dissertation he could not quite finish. It wasn't far from the truth. Husseini lived in France on a student visa, though he rarely found time to attend his courses at the Sorbonne. He taught English at a language center in a dreary Muslim suburb north of Paris, did the odd bit of translation work, and occasionally wrote incendiary commentary for various left-wing French journals. Eric Lange was aware of the true source of Husseini's income. He worked for a branch of the Palestinian Authority few people knew about. Rashid Husseini-- student, translator, journalist--was chief of European operations for the PLO's foreign intelligence service. Husseini was the reason Eric Lange had come to Paris.
    Lange telephoned the Palestinian at his apartment on the rue de Tournon. An hour later, they met in a deserted brasserie in the Luxembourg Quarter. Husseini, a secular Palestinian nationalist of the old school, drank red wine. Alcohol made him talkative. He lectured Lange on the suffering of the Palestinian people. It was virtually identical to the diatribe he had inflicted on Lange in Tunis twenty years ago, when he and Abu Jihad were trying to seduce Lange into working for the Palestinian cause. The land and the olive trees, the injustice and the humiliation. "The Jews are the world's new Nazis," Husseini opined. "In the West Bank and Gaza, they operate like the Gestapo and the SS. The Israeli prime minister? He's a war criminal who deserves the justice of Nuremberg." Lange bided his time, stirring his coffee with a tiny silver spoon and nodding sagely at appropriate moments. He couldn't help but feel sorry for Husseini. The war had passed him by. Once it had been waged by men like Rashid Husseini, intellectuals who read Camus in French and screwed stupid German girls on the beaches of St. Tropez.
    Now the old fighters had grown fat on handouts from the Europeans and Americans while children, the precious fruit of Palestine were blowing themselves up in the cafes and markets of Israel.
    Finally, Husseini threw his hands up in a helpless gesture, like an old man who knows he has become a bore. "Forgive me, Eric, but my passion always gets the better of me. I know you didn't come here tonight to talk about the suffering of my people. What is it? Are you looking for work?"
    Lange leaned forward over the table. "I was wondering whether you might be interested in helping me find the man who killed our friend in Tunis."
    Husseini's tired eyes came suddenly to life. "Abu Jihad? I was there that night. I was the first one to enter the study after that Israeli monster had done his evil work. I can still hear the screaming of Abu Jihad's wife and children. If I had the opportunity, I'd kill him myself."
    "What do you know about him?"
    "His real name is Allon--Gabriel Allon--but he's used dozens of aliases. He's an art restorer. Used his job as cover for his killings in Europe. An old comrade of mine named Tariq al-Hourani put a bomb beneath Allon's car in Vienna about twelve years back and blew up his wife and son. The boy was killed. We were never sure what happened to the wife. Allon took his revenge against Tariq a couple of years ago in Manhattan."
    "I remember," Lange said. "That affair with Arafat."
    Husseini nodded. "You know where he is?"
    "No, but I think I know where he's going."
    "Where?"
    Lange told him.
    "Rome} Rome is a big city, my friend.