The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(41)

“Or the second-largest superyacht in the world,” Khalid pointed out.

“Or a Leonardo.”

“It seems I don’t have a Leonardo, either.”

“Why do you need all of it?” asked Gabriel.

“It makes me happy.”

“Does it really?”

“Not all of us are as lucky as you. You are a man of extraordinary gifts. You don’t need toys to make you happy.”

“One or two would be nice.”

“What do you want? I’ll give you anything.”

“I want to see you holding your daughter in your arms again.”

“Can’t you drive any faster?” asked Khalid impatiently.

“No, I can’t.”

“Then let me drive.”

“Not without training wheels.”

Khalid gazed at the darkened countryside. “Do you think she’ll be there?”

“Yes,” said Gabriel with more certainty than he intended.

“And if she’s not?”

Gabriel was silent.

“Do you know what my uncle Abdullah told me? He said a daughter can be replaced, but not a king.”

The drone of the engine filled the silence. After a moment, Gabriel noticed that Khalid was working a set of prayer beads with the fingers of his left hand. “Are those al-Madani’s?”

“I left mine at the Dorchester.”

“Surely, there’s an Islamic prohibition against using the prayer beads of a man you just murdered.”

“No,” said Khalid. “Not that I’m aware of.”



The courier was waiting at the edge of a moonlit field in the commune of Saint-Sulpice. The nylon sports bag he delivered to Gabriel contained two Uzi Pro compact submachine pistols, a pair of .45-caliber Jerichos, and a Beretta 9mm. Gabriel gave the Uzis and the Jerichos to Mikhail and Keller and kept the Beretta for himself.

“Nothing for me?” asked Khalid when they were moving again.

“You’re not going anywhere near that house.”

By the time they reached Bordeaux, Gabriel could see a fiery sun rising in his rearview mirror. They headed south along the Bay of Biscay and crossed the Spanish border without a check of their passports. The weather was capricious, golden sunlight one minute, black skies and windblown rain the next.

“Have you spent much time in Spain?” asked Khalid.

“I had occasion to visit Seville recently.”

“It was a Muslim city once.”

“At the rate things are going, it will be a Muslim city again.”

“There were Jews in Seville, too.”

“And we all know how that ended.”

“One of history’s great acts of injustice,” said Khalid. “And five centuries later, you did the same thing to the Palestinians.”

“Would you like to discuss how many people the Al Saud killed and displaced while establishing control over the Arabian Peninsula?”

“We were not a colonial entity.”

“Neither were we.”

They were approaching San Sebastián, the resort city the Basques referred to as Donostia. Bilbao was the next major city, but before they reached it Gabriel turned south, into the Basque interior. In a village called Olarra he stopped by the side of the highway long enough for Sarah to join them. She crawled into the backseat, her hair in disarray, her eyes heavy with fatigue. Mikhail and Keller turned onto a side road and vanished from their view.

“I should be with your men,” said Khalid.

“You’d only get in their way.” Gabriel glanced at Sarah. “Do you still think the secret world is more interesting?”

“Is there coffee in the secret world?”

Villaro, the town the Basques called Areatza, was a few miles farther to the south. It was not a popular tourist destination, but there were several small hotels in the town center and a café on the plaza. Gabriel, in decent Spanish, ordered.

“Is there a language you don’t speak?” asked Khalid when the waitress was gone.

“Russian.”

Through the window of the café Khalid watched the shifting light in the plaza and the little tornadic gusts chasing newsprint around the arcades. “I’ve never seen a day like this before. So beautiful and so foul at the same time.”

Gabriel and Sarah exchanged a glance as three young women, their hair blown by the wind, came in out of the cold. Their leggings were torn, their noses were pierced, they had tattoos on their hands and many bangles and bracelets on their wrists that clattered and clanged as they collapsed into three chairs at a table near the bar. They were known to the waitress, who remarked on their lack of sobriety. They were at the end of their day, thought Gabriel, not the beginning.

“Look at them,” said Khalid contemptuously. “They look like witches. I suppose this is what we have to look forward to in Saudi Arabia.”

“You should be so lucky.”

Al-Madani’s iPhone, muted, lay at the center of the table, next to Gabriel’s BlackBerry. Khalid was rubbing a thumb over the prayer beads.

“Maybe you should put those things away,” said Gabriel.

“They’re comforting.”

“They make you look like a Saudi prince who’s wondering whether he’s ever going to see his daughter again.”