The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(11)
The restaurant where Sophie Vanderhaus had placed the takeaway order was in the Leidsestraat, not far from the Koningsplein. Gabriel, after crossing the Amstel, should have gone to the right. He went left instead, into a narrow pedestrian lane lined with sex shops, American fast-food restaurants, and tiny Middle Eastern cafés. It was crowded in spite of the hour; even so, Gabriel had no trouble keeping track of his pursuer in the garish neon light.
The street emptied into the Rembrandtplein, but twenty yards before the busy square Gabriel turned into a darkened shoulder-width alley that led back to the river. The man with the kaffiyeh and the kufi paused at the mouth of the alley, as though reluctant to enter, then followed after him.
Gabriel removed the Beretta from its resting place at the small of his back and chambered a round. As he did so, he could almost hear Shamron’s voice echoing in his head: We do not wave our guns around in public like gangsters and make idle threats. When we take out our weapons we do so for one reason and one reason only. We start shooting. And we keep shooting until the target is dead. He slipped the gun into the pocket of his overcoat and walked on.
At the midpoint of the alley, the darkness was nearly impenetrable. Gabriel turned into a bisecting passageway and waited there with his hand wrapped around the butt of the Beretta. As the bearded man came past, Gabriel stepped from the alley and delivered a knifelike blow to his left kidney. The man’s legs buckled instantly, but before he could crumple to the ground, Gabriel seized hold of the kaffiyeh and hurled him hard against a graffiti-spattered brick wall. The look in the man’s eyes was one of genuine terror. Gabriel struck him again, this time in the solar plexus. As the man doubled over, Gabriel quickly searched him for weapons but found only a billfold and a small copy of the Quran.
“What do you want with me?” Gabriel asked in rapid Arabic.
The man managed only a single, wet cough.
“Answer me,” Gabriel said, “or I’ll keep hitting you until you do.”
The man lifted his hand and pleaded with Gabriel not to strike him again. Gabriel let go of him and took a step back. The man leaned against the wall and fought for breath.
“Who are you?” Gabriel asked. “And why are you following me?”
“I’m the person you’re looking for in Solomon Rosner’s files,” he said. “And I’ve come to help you.”
5
AMSTERDAM
My name is Ibrahim.”
“Ibrahim what?”
“Ibrahim Fawaz.”
“You were a fool to follow me like that, Ibrahim Fawaz.”
“Obviously.”
They were walking along the darkened embankment of the Amstel River. Ibrahim had one hand pressed to his kidney and the other wrapped around Gabriel’s arm for support. A gritty snow had begun to fall and the air was suddenly brittle with the cold. Gabriel pointed to an open café and suggested they talk there. “Men like me don’t have coffee in places like that, especially in the company of men like you. This is not America. This is Amsterdam.” He swiveled his head a few degrees and glanced at Gabriel out of the corner of his eye. “You speak Arabic like a Palestinian. I suppose the rumors about Professor Rosner were true.”
“What rumors?”
“That he was a pawn of the Zionists and their Jewish supporters in America. That he was an Israeli spy.”
“Who said things like that?”
“The angry boys,” said Ibrahim. “And the imams, too. They’re worse than the young hotheads. They come from the Middle East. From Saudi Arabia. They preach Wahhabi Islam. The imam in our mosque told us that Professor Rosner deserved to die for what he had written about Muslims and the Prophet. I warned him to go into hiding, but he refused. He was very stubborn.”
Ibrahim stopped and leaned against the balustrade overlooking the sluggish black river. Gabriel looked at the Arab’s right hand and saw it was missing the last two fingers.
“Are you going to be sick?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Can you walk, Ibrahim? It’s better if we walk.”
The Arab nodded and they set off slowly along the riverbank. “I suppose you were the professor’s handler? That’s why you and your friend are digging frantically through his files.”
“What I’m doing inside his house is no business of yours.”
“Just do me a favor,” the Arab said. “If you come across my name, please do me the courtesy of dropping the document in question into the nearest shredder. I respected Professor Rosner very much, but I don’t want to end up like him. There are men in Amsterdam who will slit my throat if they knew I was helping him.”
“How long did you work for him?”
“A long time,” said Ibrahim. “But it wasn’t work. We were partners, Professor Rosner and I. We shared the same beliefs. We both believed the jihadists were destroying my religion. We both knew that if they weren’t stopped, they would destroy Holland, too.”
“Why work for Rosner? Why not the police?”
“Perhaps you can tell from my accent that I am Egyptian by birth. When one comes from Egypt, one has a natural fear of the police, secret or otherwise. I’ve lived in Holland for twenty-five years now. I am a citizen of this country, as are my wife and son. But to the Dutch police, and the rest of my countrymen, I will always be an allochtoon. An alien.”