The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(21)

The flight attendant headed aft, and when she returned, she was accompanied by a woman of forty-three with blond hair and blue eyes. A murmur arose in the first-class cabin as the woman lowered herself into the seat next to the man who had boarded the plane last.

“Did you really think my security department would allow me to get on a plane without first reviewing every name on the manifest?”

“No,” replied Sarah Bancroft. “But it was worth a try.”

“You deceived me. You asked me about my travel plans, and I foolishly told you the truth.”

“I was trained by the best.”

“How much of it do you remember?”

“All of it.”

Gabriel smiled sadly. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”



It was a few minutes after four o’clock when the flight landed in Paris. Gabriel and Sarah cleared passport control separately—Gabriel falsely, Sarah under her real name—and reunited in the busy arrivals hall of Terminal 2A. There they were met by a courier from Paris Station, who handed Gabriel the key to a car. It was waiting on the second level of the short-term car park.

“A Passat?” Sarah dropped into the passenger seat. “Couldn’t they have given us something a little more exciting?”

“I don’t want exciting. I want reliability and anonymity. It’s also rather fast.”

“When was the last time you drove a car?”

“Earlier this year, when I was in Washington working on the Rebecca Manning case.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

“Not with the car.” Gabriel opened the glove box. Inside was a Beretta 9mm pistol with a walnut grip.

“Your favorite,” remarked Sarah.

“Transport thinks of everything.”

“What about bodyguards?”

“They make it hard to operate effectively.”

“Is it safe for you to be in Paris without a security detail?”

“That’s what the Beretta is for.”

Gabriel reversed out of the space and followed the ramp to the lower level. He paid the attendant in cash and did his best to shield his face from the security camera.

“You’re not fooling anyone. The French are going to figure out that you’re in the country.”

“It’s not the French I’m worried about.”

Gabriel followed the A1 through the gathering dusk to the northern fringes of Paris. Night had fallen by the time they arrived. The rue la Fayette bore them westward across the city, and the Pont de Bir-Hakeim carried them over the Seine to the fifteenth arrondissement. Gabriel turned onto the rue Nélaton and stopped at a formidable security gate manned by heavily armed officers of the National Police. Behind the gate stood a charmless modern office block. A small sign warned that the building belonged to the Interior Ministry and was under constant video surveillance.

“It reminds me of the Green Zone in Baghdad.”

“These days,” said Gabriel, “the Green Zone is safer than Paris.”

“Where are we?”

“The headquarters of the Alpha Group. It’s an elite counter-terrorism unit of the DGSI.” The direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, or DGSI, was France’s internal security service. “The French created the Alpha Group not long after you left the Agency. It used to be hidden inside a beautiful old building on the rue de Grenelle.”

“The one that was destroyed by that ISIS car bomb?”

“The bomb was in a van. And I was inside the building when it exploded.”

“Of course you were.”

“So was Paul Rousseau, Alpha Group’s chief. I introduced you to him at my swearing-in party.”

“He looked more like a professor than a French spy.”

“He was once, actually. He’s one of France’s foremost scholars of Proust.”

“What’s the Alpha Group’s role?”

“Human penetration of jihadist networks. But Rousseau has access to everything.”

A uniformed officer approached the car. Gabriel gave him two pseudonymous names, one male, the other female, both French and both inspired by the novels of Dumas, a particularly Rousseauian touch. The Frenchman was waiting in his new lair on the top floor. Unlike the other offices in the building, Rousseau’s was somber and wood-paneled and filled with books and files. Like Gabriel, he preferred them to digital dossiers. He was dressed in a crumpled tweed jacket and a pair of gray flannel trousers. His ever-present pipe belched smoke as he shook Gabriel’s hand.

“Welcome to our new Bastille.” Rousseau offered his hand to Sarah. “So good to see you again, Madame Bancroft. When we met in Israel, you told me you were a museum curator from New York. I didn’t believe it then, and I surely don’t believe it now.”

“It’s true, actually.”

“But obviously there’s more to the story. Where Monsieur Allon is concerned, there usually is.” Rousseau released Sarah’s hand and contemplated Gabriel over his reading glasses. “You were rather vague on the phone this morning. I assume this isn’t a social call.”

“I heard you recently had a bit of unpleasantness in the Haute-Savoie.” Gabriel paused, then added, “A few miles west of Annecy.”