The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(35)
“It’s in a suitcase in the trunk of my car,” the Egyptian said. “But it’s going to cost you.”
Gabriel sighed. “How much, Wazir?”
“Another fifty thousand.”
“I don’t happen to have another fifty thousand on me.”
The Egyptian smiled. “I’ll take an IOU,” he said. “I know you’re good for it.”
The Samsonite suitcase that Wazir al-Zayyat produced from the trunk of his rented Volkswagen contained the lifeblood of one of the world’s most violent terror organizations and was therefore a steal at fifty thousand. When the Egyptian was gone, Gabriel opened a directory of known Sword members and started reading. Five minutes later he came across a name that was familiar to him. He located a photocopy of the corresponding file and examined the photograph. It was dated and of poor quality; even so, Gabriel could tell it was the same man he had encountered a week earlier in Amsterdam. I’m the person you’re looking for in Solomon Rosner’s files, the man had said to him that night. And I’ve come to help you.
16
PARIS: 3:45 P.M., FRIDAY
The knock was cautious and contrite. Dr. Yusuf Ramadan, professor of Near Eastern history at American University in Cairo, looked up from his work and saw a woman standing in the doorway of his office. Like all female employees of the Institute of Islamic Studies, she was veiled. Even so, the professor averted his eyes slightly as she spoke.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, Professor, but if it’s all right with you, I’ll be leaving now.”
“Of course, Atifah.”
“Can I get you anything before I go? More tea, perhaps?”
“I’ve had too much already.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “In fact, I’m going to be leaving soon myself. I’m meeting a colleague from the Sorbonne for coffee at four-thirty.”
“Don’t forget your umbrella. It’s still raining.”
“It’s been raining for five days.”
“Welcome to Paris. Peace be upon you, Professor Ramadan.”
“And you, Atifah.”
The woman slipped out of the office and quietly closed the door. Ramadan spent another ten minutes tapping away at the keyboard of his laptop computer, then placed the computer and his research files into his briefcase and stood up. He was slender and bearded, with receding curly hair, soft brown eyes, and the fine aquiline features often associated with Egyptian aristocracy. He was not of aristocratic birth; indeed, the man now regarded as one of Egypt’s most influential intellectuals and writers was born the son of a postal clerk in a poor village at the edge of the Fayoum Oasis. Brilliant, charismatic, and a self-professed political moderate, he had taken a leave of absence from the university eighteen months earlier and signed on as a visiting scholar in residence with the institute. The ostensible purpose of his stay in Paris was to complete his masterwork, a critical reexamination of the Crusades that promised to be the standard against which all future books on the subject would be measured. When he was not writing, Professor Ramadan could often be seen in the lecture halls of the Sorbonne, or on French television, or even in the corridors of government power. Embraced wholeheartedly by the intelligentsia and media of Paris, his opinions were much in demand on matters ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the American occupation of Iraq and, of course, the scourge of Islamic terror, a topic with which he was intimately familiar.
He walked over to his narrow window and looked down into the boulevard de la Chapelle. Dark and raw, a halfhearted drizzle: Paris in winter. It had been many days since the sun had made its last appearance, and even then it was only a furtive peak from behind the blanket of cloud. Ramadan longed to be back in Cairo: the thunder of the traffic, the smells both putrid and magical, the music of a thousand muezzins, the kiss of the desert wind at night…It had been six months since his last visit. Soon, he thought. Soon it would be over and he would go home again. And if things went according to plan, the country to which he would return would be very different from the one he had left behind. Strange to think that it had all been set in motion here, in dreary Paris, from his tiny office in the eighteenth arrondissement.
He pulled on his overcoat and hat, then snatched up his briefcase and umbrella and stepped into the corridor. As he passed by the staff lounge he saw several colleagues gathered around the television, watching a briefing by the commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police. Mahmoud Aburish, the tubby, owl-like director of the institute, motioned for Ramadan to join him. Ramadan walked over and looked up at the screen.
“What’s he saying?”
“No word yet from the kidnappers,” said Aburish. “And no clues about the woman’s whereabouts.”
“Do you believe him?”
“The British are very good, but judging from the expression on that man’s face, he’s not holding any cards up his sleeve.” Aburish regarded Ramadan through his smudged eyeglasses. “You’re the resident expert on matters like these, Yusuf. Who do you think has kidnapped this woman? And what on earth do they want?”
“I suppose we’ll know soon enough,” Ramadan said.
“How goes the writing?”
“It goes, Mahmoud, just not as quickly as I had hoped. In fact, I’m having drinks with my French publisher in a few minutes to tell him I won’t be able to deliver the manuscript on time. He’s not going to be pleased. Neither are my British and American publishers.”