The Messenger

brought a voice-activated receiver and a Nikon camera with a long lens, while Mikhail arrived with a nylon rucksack containing cellular phones, radios, and four handguns. An hour later they glimpsed their quarry for the first time when he strode onto the terrace, dressed in white shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt. Mordecai snapped several photos of him. Five minutes later, when al-Nasser emerged shirtless from the pool after a vigorous swim, he snapped several more. Gabriel examined the images on the computer but deemed them unworthy of sending to King Saul Boulevard for analysis.
    At one in the afternoon the light on the voice-activated recorder turned from red to green. A burst of tone came over the line, followed by the sound of someone inside the house dialing a local number. After two rings the call was answered by a woman at La Gloriette restaurant. Gabriel closed his eyes in disappointment when the next voice on the line was that of Madame al-Nasser, requesting a lunch reservation for two o’clock. He briefly considered putting a team inside the restaurant but ruled it out after obtaining a description of the cramped beachside dining room. Mordecai, however, managed to take two more photographs of al-Nasser, one as he was climbing out of his car in the parking lot and a second as he was sipping a drink at his table. In both he was wearing dark sports sunglasses and a long-sleeved shirt. Gabriel dispatched them to King Saul Boulevard for analysis. One hour later, as al-Nasser and his wife were leaving the restaurant, King Saul Boulevard sent a flash over the secure link that the results were inconclusive.
    At 3:30 they departed La Gloriette and drove to Saint-Jean village, where al-Nasser dropped his wife at the hair salon. From there he went to Gustavia, where, at 3:50, he boarded a launch and headed to Alexandra . Yossi recorded his arrival from the bridge of Sun Dancer, along with the warm embrace he received from Zizi al-Bakari as they entered the upstairs office suite for a private meeting. Sarah was not on board to see al-Nasser’s arrival, for at that moment she and most of Zizi’s entourage were snorkeling in Île Fourche, a small deserted island about a mile northeast of Saint-Bart’s.
    The meeting lasted a little over an hour. Yossi recorded al-Nasser’s departure from Zizi’s office and the altogether determined expression on his face as he boarded the launch and headed back to Gustavia. Mikhail followed him back to Saint-Jean village, where he collected his newly coiffed wife from the salon shortly after six o’clock. By 6:30 al-Nasser was once again swimming laps in his pool, and Mikhail was seated glumly next to Gabriel in the villa on the other side of the inlet.
    “We’ve been chasing him all day,” Mikhail said, “and what have we got to show for it? A few useless pictures. Alain al-Nasser is obviously bin Shafiq. Let’s take him now and be done with it.”
    Gabriel gave him a disdainful look. “Some day, when you’re a little older and wiser, I’ll tell you a story about the night an Office hit team thought they had the prize in their sights and killed an innocent waiter by mistake.”
    “I know the story, Gabriel. It happened in Lillehammer. Inside the Office you still refer to it as Leyl-ha-Mar : the Night of Bitterness. But it was a long time ago.”
    “It is still the greatest operational blunder in the history of the Office. They killed the wrong man, and they got caught doing it. They broke all the rules. They acted hastily, and they let their emotions get the better of them. We’ve come too far to have another Leyl-ha-Mar . First we get proof—airtight, unassailable proof —that Alain al-Nasser is Ahmed bin Shafiq. Only then do we start talking about killing him. And we pull the trigger only if we can get Sarah and the entire team off this island without getting caught.”
    “How are we going to get proof?”
    “The photographs aren’t good enough,” Gabriel said. “We need his voice.”
    “He doesn’t speak.”
    “Everyone speaks. We just have to make him speak while we’re listening.”
    “And how are you going to do that?”
    Just then the green light shone on the telephone recorder and a burst of dial tone came blaring over the speakers. Madame al-Nasser’s call lasted less than thirty seconds. When it was over, Gabriel listened to it again, just to make certain he’d got the details right.
    “Le Poivre.”
    “We’d like a table for two at nine