Gabriel gazed down at the two bullet-torn bodies. “What are we going to do with them now?”
“Don’t worry.” Khalid slammed the lid. “I’ll take care of it.”
28
Auvergne–Rhône–Alpes
“For the record, I was only joking when I said you should kill him.”
“Were you? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”
They were racing westward along the A89 Autoroute, the chief of the Israeli secret intelligence service and the future king of Saudi Arabia. Gabriel was at the wheel, Khalid was slouched wearily in the passenger seat. Between them, drawing power from the adapter, was Rafiq al-Madani’s iPhone. A few minutes earlier, imitating al-Madani’s cryptic style, Khalid had sent an update to the kidnappers. The gist of the message was that His Royal Highness was desperate to secure the release of his daughter and was preparing to abdicate. As yet, there had been no reply.
Khalid checked the phone again, then slammed it onto the console.
“Careful, Prince Hothead. Phones break.”
“What do you think it means?”
“It means you probably shouldn’t have killed Rafiq before we were certain your daughter was really at that address in Spain.”
“You were the one who said she was there.”
“What I said,” replied Gabriel, “was that we located the phone. I would have preferred to test the proposition against a living, breathing witness.”
“He all but confirmed it.”
“He had a gun pointed at his head at the time.”
“I believe he was telling us the truth about the safe house. But the rest was a lie.”
“You don’t think he organized it by himself?”
“Al-Madani is a small cog. Others are involved in the plot against me.”
“Perhaps we should interrogate him again and find out who they are.” Gabriel glanced into the rearview mirror. Mikhail, Keller, and Sarah were a couple of hundred meters behind them. “What are you going to do about the bodies?”
“Rest assured, the bodies will disappear.”
“Make your gun disappear, too.”
“It wasn’t mine, it was Rafiq’s.”
“But it’s got your fingerprints all over it.” After a silence, Gabriel said, “You shouldn’t have killed them, Khalid. I’m now implicated in their murders. Sarah, too.”
“No one will ever know.”
“But you know. And you can hold it over me whenever it suits you.”
“It wasn’t my intention to compromise you.”
“Given your track record for rash behavior, I’m inclined to believe you.”
Khalid glanced at the phone again. “Was it my imagination, or was Rafiq not surprised by your presence at my home?”
“You noticed that, too?”
“Someone clearly told him you were involved in the search for Reema.”
“A couple hundred members of your royal court saw me in Saudi Arabia the other night.”
“I’m afraid I never go anywhere alone.”
“You’re alone now, Khalid.”
“With you, of all people.” His smile was brief. “I must say, my art adviser didn’t seem shocked by the sight of a little blood.”
“She doesn’t faze easily, not after what Zizi al-Bakari did to her.”
“What happened, exactly?”
Gabriel decided there was no harm in telling him; it was a long time ago. “When Zizi figured out that Sarah was a CIA agent on loan to the Office, he handed her over to an al-Qaeda cell to be interrogated and executed.”
“But you were able to save her.”
“And in the process,” said Gabriel, “I prevented a Saudi-financed plot to assassinate the pope.”
“You’ve lived quite a life.”
“And yet what do I have to show for it? I don’t have a palace in the Haute-Savoie.”
“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.