The Messenger

Indeed they embraced them wholeheartedly and argued about them long past midnight. At the end of the evening there was another quarrel, this one about whose night it was to do the dishes. Dina and Rimona claimed exemption on the grounds that they had performed the task the last night in Surrey. Gabriel, in one of his few command decisions of the day, inflicted the task on the new boys: Oded and Mordecai, two experienced all-purpose fieldhands, and Mikhail, a gunman on loan to the Office from the Sayeret Matkal. He was a Russian-born Jew with bloodless skin and eyes the color of glacial ice. “A younger version of you,” Yaakov had said. “Good with a gun, but no conscience. He practically took down the command structure of Hamas by himself.”
    Their accommodations lacked the grandeur of Alexandra ’s, and no one was granted the privilege of private quarters. Gabriel and Lavon, veterans of manhunts past, bunked together in the prow. Lavon was used to Gabriel’s erratic operational sleeping habits and was not surprised the following morning when he woke before dawn to find Gabriel’s bed unoccupied. He climbed out of his bunk and went up to the deck. Gabriel was standing at the prow, coffee in hand, his gaze fixed on the smudge of light on the distant horizon. Lavon went back to his bunk and slept two more hours. When he returned to the deck, Gabriel was standing in the exact same spot, staring out at the empty sea.

23.

Off the Bahamas

    H ER DAYS QUICKLY ACQUIRED SHAPE .
    She would rise early each morning and linger in a drowsy half-sleep in the enormous bed, listening to Alexandra slowly stirring to life around her. Then, usually around seven-thirty, she would ring the steward and order her morning coffee and brioche, which would come on a tray, always with a fresh flower, five minutes later. If there was no rain she would take her breakfast in the shade of her starboard-facing private sundeck. Alexandra was on a southeasterly heading, steaming without haste toward an unnamed destination, and usually Sarah could just make out the low, flat islands of the Bahamian chain in the distance. Zizi’s suite was one level above her. Some mornings she could hear him on the telephone, closing the day’s first deals.
    After breakfast she would place two calls to London on the shipboard system. First she would dial her apartment in Chelsea and, invariably, would find two or three ersatz voice messages left by the Office. Then she would call the gallery and speak to Chiara. Her soft, Italian-accented English was like a lifeline. Sarah would pose questions about pending deals; Chiara would then read Sarah’s telephone messages. Contained in the seemingly benign patter was vital information: Sarah telling Chiara that she was safe and that there was no sign of Ahmed bin Shafiq; Chiara telling Sarah that Gabriel and the others were close by and that she was not alone. Hanging up on Chiara was the hardest part of Sarah’s day.
    By then it was usually ten o’clock, which meant that Zizi and Jean-Michel were finished working out and the gym was now free to other staff and guests. The rest of them were a sedentary lot; Sarah’s only company each morning was Herr Wehrli, who would torment himself on the elliptical machine for a few minutes before retiring to the sauna for a proper Swiss sweat. Sarah would run thirty minutes on the treadmill, then row for thirty more. She had been on the Dartmouth crew, and within a few days began to see definition in her shoulders and back that hadn’t been there since Ben’s death.
    After her workout Sarah would join the other women on the foredeck for a bit of sun before lunch. Nadia and Rahimah remained distant, but the wives gradually warmed to her, especially Frau Wehrli and Jihan, the fair-haired young Jordanian wife of Hassan, Zizi’s communications specialist. Monique, Jean-Michel’s wife, spoke rarely to her. Twice Sarah peered over the top of her paperback novel and saw Monique glaring at her, as though she were plotting to shove Sarah over the rail when no one else was looking.
    Lunch was always a slow, lengthy affair. Afterward the ship’s crew would bring Alexandra to a stop for what Zizi referred to as the afternoon jet-ski derby. For the first two days Sarah remained safely on the deck, watching while Zizi and his executives leaped and plunged through the swells. On the third day he convinced her to take part and personally gave her a lesson in how to operate her craft.