House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(82)
“No,” said Gabriel. “We did not.”
After that, there was just one final piece of business to attend to. It was not something that could be addressed in front of a roomful of spies. It was a bilateral issue, one that needed to be handled at the highest level, chief to chief. A quiet side room wouldn’t do. Only the walled garden, with its crumbled fountains and weedy footpaths, provided the necessary level of privacy.
Despite the fact it was midsummer, the weather was cool and gray and the overgrown hedges dripped with the rain of a recent shower. Gabriel and Morris Payne walked side by side, slowly, thoughtfully, separated by an inch at most. Viewed from the leaded windows of the old manor house, they made an unlikely pairing—the big, beefy American from the Dakotas, the diminutive Israeli from the ancient Valley of Jezreel. Morris Payne, jacketless, gestured broadly as he made his points. Gabriel, listening, rubbed the small of his back and when appropriate nodded in agreement.
Five minutes into the conversation, they stopped and turned to face one another, as if in confrontation. Morris Payne jabbed a thick forefinger into Gabriel’s chest, hardly an encouraging sign, but Gabriel only smiled and returned the favor. Then he raised his left hand above his head and moved it in a circular fashion while the right hovered palm-down at his hip. This time it was Morris Payne who nodded in assent. Those watching from inside understood the significance of the moment. An operational accord had been struck. The Americans would handle the skies and cyber, the Israelis would run the show on the ground and, if presented the opportunity, send Saladin quietly into the night.
With that, they turned and started back toward the house. It was clear to those watching from inside that Gabriel was saying something that displeased Morris Payne greatly. There was another pause and more fingers pointed toward chests. Then Payne turned his big Easter Island face toward the gray sky and gave a capitulatory exhalation of breath. Passing through the meeting room, he snared his jacket from the back of his chair and headed outside, followed by his unsmiling executive staff and, a few paces behind, by Adrian Carter and Kyle Taylor. Gabriel and Graham Seymour waved to them from the portico as though bidding farewell to unwanted company.
“Did you get everything you wanted?” asked Seymour through a frozen smile.
“We’ll see in a minute.”
The scrum of Americans was now beginning to divide into smaller cells, with each cell making for one of the waiting SUVs. Morris Payne stopped suddenly and called out for Carter to join him. Carter detached himself from the rest of the operators and, watched enviously by Kyle Taylor, climbed into the director’s SUV.
“How did you manage that?” asked Seymour as the motorcade rumbled into life.
“I asked nicely.”
“How long do you reckon he’ll survive?”
“That,” said Gabriel, “depends entirely on Saladin.”
44
King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
Next morning the whole of King Saul Boulevard charged into battle. Even Uzi Navot, who had been tending other operational fires during Gabriel’s many prolonged absences, was drawn into the intense planning. It was, as the Americans liked to say, all hands on deck. The Office had fought for and won the right to retain control of the operation. But with that victory had come the enormous responsibility of getting it right. Not since the American raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad had there been a targeted killing operation of this magnitude. Saladin pulled the levers of a global terror network that had proven itself capable of striking virtually at will—a network that had managed to obtain the radiological material for a dirty bomb and smuggle it to the doorstep of Western Europe. The stakes, they reminded themselves at every turn, could not be any higher. The security of the civilized world quite literally hung in the balance. So, too, did Gabriel’s career. Success would only burnish his reputation, but a failure would wipe away all that had come before and add his name to the list of disgraced chiefs who had overreached and then stumbled.
If Gabriel was concerned about potential damage to his personal legacy, he didn’t show it. Not even to Uzi Navot, who wore a groove in the patch of carpet stretching from his door to the office that once had been his. There was a rumor he had actually tried to talk Gabriel out of it, that he had advised his old rival to make a gift of Jean-Luc Martel and Saladin to the Americans and turn his attention to matters closer to home, like the Iranians. The risks of the operation were far too great, worried Navot, and the rewards too small. At least that was the version of the conversation that flashed through the corridors and cipher-protected rooms of King Saul Boulevard. But Gabriel, according to this account, had held fast to his operation. “And why wouldn’t he?” asked a sage from Travel. Saladin had bested Gabriel that terrible night in Washington. And then, of course, there was Hannah Weinberg, Gabriel’s friend and sometime accomplice, whom Saladin had killed in Paris. No, said the sage, Gabriel was not going to leave Saladin to his friends in Washington. He was going to put him in the ground. In fact, if given the chance, he was likely to do the deed himself. It wasn’t business for Gabriel any longer. It was strictly personal.
But a personal stake in an operation was oftentimes perilous. No one recognized this more than Gabriel; his career spoke for itself. Therefore, he leaned heavily on Uzi Navot and the other members of his staff to vet every detail. Organizationally, it was Yaakov Rossman, the chief of Special Ops, who bore responsibility for planning and executing the mission. And with Gabriel looking over his shoulder, he hastily put the pieces in place. Morocco was not Lebanon or Syria, but it was still hostile territory. More than twenty times the size of Israel, it was a vast country with a varied terrain of agricultural plains, rugged mountains, Saharan sand deserts, and several large cities, including Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier, Fez, and Marrakesh. Finding Saladin, even with the help of Jean-Luc Martel, was going to be a difficult undertaking. Killing him with no collateral casualties—and then getting out of the country safely—would be one of the sternest tests the Office had ever faced.