The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon #7)(41)
OFF LE HAVRE, FRANCE: 4:49 P.M., SATURDAY
The lights of the French coastline pricked the darkness off the prow of the Portsmouth–to–Le Havre ferry. The man seated near the observation windows in the upper lounge glanced at his wristwatch. Thirty minutes remained of the five-hour crossing. He signaled the waitress and, with a small gesture of his hand, ordered another Carlsberg, his fourth of the journey. She brought it a moment later and placed it suggestively on his table. She had bleached-blond hair and a jeweled stud in her lower lip. Her name tag said CHRISTINE. The man stared directly at her, the way infidel men always stared at their women, and allowed his eyes to wander over her breasts.
“You have a name?” she asked.
“Thomas,” he said.
It wasn’t his real name. It was borrowed, like his borrowed driver’s license and borrowed British passport. His Yorkshire accent was the real thing. He was a Yorkshire lad, born and bred.
“I could be wrong, Thomas, but I think you have an admirer.”
“Oh, really? Who?”
The waitress glanced toward the other side of the lounge. Seated alone at a table near the opposite window was a small woman in her mid-twenties with short dark hair and stormy black eyes. She was dressed in tight jeans and a snug-fitting pullover embroidered with the word OUI.
“She’s been looking at you ever since we left Portsmouth,” the waitress said. “Can’t keep her eyes off you, actually.”
“Not my type.”
“What is your type?”
He remembered the words his controller had spoken during the final briefing. Whatever you do, don’t sit by yourself looking as though you are a terrorist. Strike up a conversation. Buy someone a drink. Flirt with a girl if there’s a girl to flirt with.
“I like girls named Christine who serve drinks on Channel ferries.”
“You don’t say.”
She smiled at him. He felt his stomach churn with rage.
“When are you going back to England?” she asked.
“Tomorrow, midday.”
“What a coincidence. I’m going back on the same boat. I’ll see you then, I hope.”
“Cheers to that.”
The waitress walked back to the bar. The man with the Yorkshire accent raised his beer to his lips and, before taking a swallow, begged Allah for forgiveness. He had done other things during the past few days for which he had sought Allah’s pardon. He had shaved his beard for the first time since he was a teenager and had dyed his dark hair platinum blond to look more like a native European. He had eaten pork sausage in a roadside café in Britain and had spoken to many women with unveiled faces. He had sought no absolution, however, for his role in the kidnapping of the American woman. Her father served the Crusader regime—a regime that oppressed Muslims around the world, a regime that supported Israel while the Palestinians suffered, a regime that supported an apostate thug like Hosni Mubarak who grew rich while the Egyptian people slipped deeper into poverty and despair with each passing day. The American woman was nothing more than a tool to be used to secure the release of Sheikh Abdullah from the Crusader jail, an infidel cow that could be taken to market and, if necessary, slaughtered without mercy and without fear of Allah’s retribution.
A voice crackled over the ship’s loudspeaker. It was the captain informing the passengers that the ferry would soon make landfall. The man in the bar finished the rest of his beer, then headed down a flight of stairs to the vehicle-loading deck. The silver LDV Maxus panel van was parked in the center column, three rows from the stern. He opened the rear doors and peered into the darkened cargo area. Inside were several dozen large crates that bore the markings of a fine bone china from a manufacturer in Yorkshire. The shipment, which was fully documented, was bound for an exclusive shop in the French city of Strasbourg—a shop that happened to be owned by an Egyptian with close links to the Sword of Allah. Several of the crates had been opened by British police at the Portsmouth ferry terminal, presumably in an effort to locate the missing American woman. Their search had uncovered nothing besides fine bone china from Yorkshire.
The man closed the rear doors, then walked around to the driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel. The dark-haired girl from the lounge bar was now seated in the passenger seat, her snug-fitting pullover concealed by a heavy leather jacket.
“It looked to me like you actually enjoyed flirting with that infidel cow,” the girl said.
“I wanted to slap her face the entire time.”
“She’s definitely going to remember you,” the girl said. “In fact, she’s going to remember us both.”
He smiled. That was exactly the point.
Five minutes later the ferry eased into the landing at Le Havre. The man with platinum blond hair and a Yorkshire accent guided the van onto French soil and headed for Rennes.
20
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE: 2:17 P.M., SATURDAY
So whose bright idea was this anyway?” asked Sarah Bancroft. “Yours or Adrian’s?”
Gabriel looked at the woman seated opposite him in the passenger cabin of the CIA Gulfstream V. She had shoulder-length blond hair, skin the color of alabaster, and eyes like a cloudless summer sky. Dressed as she was now, in a cashmere pullover, trim faded jeans, and shapely leather boots, she was dangerously attractive.