The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(26)
Gabriel took a first bite.
“Well?”
“It might be the finest sandwich I’ve ever eaten.”
“I told you,” said Sarah. “Everything tastes better in France.”
It was a few minutes after midnight when they arrived in Annecy. They left the Passat outside Brasserie Saint-Maurice and checked into a small hotel near the cathedral. Gabriel was awakened shortly after four a.m. by a quarrel in the street beneath his window. Unable to sleep again, he went downstairs to the breakfast room and over several cups of coffee read the newspapers from Paris and Geneva. They were filled with accounts of the latest outrage from Washington, but there was no mention of a missing princess from Saudi Arabia.
Sarah appeared a few minutes after nine. Together they walked for an hour along the moss-green canals of the old town to determine whether they were being followed. While crossing the Pont des Amours, they agreed they were not.
They returned to the hotel long enough to collect their luggage, then walked to Brasserie Saint-Maurice. Sarah drank a café crème while Gabriel, in the manner of a stranded motorist, searched the Passat for explosives or a tracking device. Finding no evidence to suggest the car had been tampered with, he tossed their bags into the backseat and summoned Sarah with a nod. They left Annecy by way of the avenue de Cran, passing the spot where the woman had entered the Transit van, and made their way to the D14.
It bore them westward through a string of Alpine towns and villages that lay along the banks of the Fier River. Beyond the hamlet of La Croix the road climbed sharply into a coppice of trees before emerging once more into a Van Gogh landscape of groomed farmland. At the intersection of the D38, Gabriel eased onto the grassy verge and switched off the engine. The silence was complete. A single villa occupied a hilltop about a kilometer away. Otherwise, there was not a building or residence in sight.
Gabriel opened his door and placed a foot on the ground. Instantly, he felt shattered auto glass beneath his shoe. It was everywhere, the glass, at all four corners of the imperfect intersection. The French police, in their haste, hadn’t given the scene a proper cleaning. There was even a bit of blood still on the asphalt, like an oil stain, and a long set of tire marks. Gabriel reckoned they were the ones left by the Range Rover. He saw it all clearly—the collision, the gunshots, the controlled explosion, a child being ripped from the back of a luxury automobile. With his right hand he was counting the seconds. Twenty-five, thirty at most.
He climbed into the car next to Sarah. His finger hovered over the start button.
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t think Ronald Burke looks British, either.” Gabriel started the engine. “Have you ever been to Khalid’s chateau?”
“Once.”
“Do you remember the way?”
Sarah pointed to the west.
Even before they reached the main gate, the property made its presence known. There was, for a start, the wall. Many kilometers in length, it was fashioned of local stone and topped by outward-leaning rows of barbed wire. It reminded Gabriel of the fence that ran along Grosvenor Place in London, separating the grounds of Buckingham Palace from the rabble of neighboring Belgravia. The gate itself was a monstrosity of iron bars and gold-dipped lamps, behind which a perfect gravel drive stretched toward a garish private Versailles.
Gabriel pondered it in silence. Finally, he asked, “Why am I trying to help a man who would waste four hundred million euros on a house like that?”
“What’s the answer?”
Before Gabriel could respond, his BlackBerry shivered. He frowned at the screen.
“What is it?” asked Sarah.
“Rafiq al-Madani just entered the Interior Ministry in Paris.”
18
Geneva
During his brief stay in the Office station in Paris, Gabriel had done more than place Rafiq al-Madani under surveillance. He had also ordered Unit 8200 to find the address of Lucien Villard, the former chief of security at the International School of Geneva. The cyberthieves of the Unit obtained it in a matter of minutes from the personnel section of the school’s computer network, which they entered as though passing through an open door. Villard lived in a busy quarter of Parisian-style apartment buildings. His street was a watcher’s paradise of shops and cafés. There was even a modest hotel, where Gabriel and Sarah arrived at midday. Gabriel asked to see a guest named Lange and was directed to a room on the third floor. They arrived to find a do not disturb sign hanging from the latch and Mikhail Abramov standing in the breach of the half-open door.
He looked at Sarah and smiled. “Something wrong?”
“I was just—”
“Expecting to see someone else?”
“Hoping, actually.” Sarah looked at Gabriel. “You might have mentioned he was going to be here.”
“Mikhail is a professional, and so are you. I’m sure you two can set aside your differences and play nicely together.”
“Like Israel and the Palestinians?”
“Anything’s possible.”
Gabriel slipped past them and entered the room. The lights were doused, the shades were tightly drawn. The only sources of illumination were the open laptop computer on the writing desk and Mikhail’s secure Office BlackBerry.
He drew a thin file from the outside pocket of his overnight bag. “We ran those photographs of the man and woman from Annecy through all the databases last night.”