Beyond the circle, the town dwindled. For a mile or so the countryside was groomed and cultivated, but gradually it turned wild. The road narrowed, spanned a riverbed over a stone bridge, and narrowed again. Gabriel glanced at the dashboard clock. By his calculation they were already three or four minutes late. Then he checked the rearview mirror and saw a set of headlights. Somehow the lights were drawing nearer. He found his BlackBerry and dialed.

It was Keller who answered.

“Back off,” said Gabriel.

“Not a chance.”

“Tell Mikhail to pull over now.”

Gabriel overheard Keller reluctantly relay the instructions and watched a few seconds later as the car moved onto the verge. Then he severed the connection and returned the phone to his pocket. Khalid’s was suddenly ablaze with light. No name. No number.

“Put her on speaker.”

Khalid tapped the screen.

“You’re late,” said the woman.

“I think we’re almost there.”

“You are. And so are your men.”

“I told them to pull over. They won’t come any closer.”

“They’d better not.”

A sign appeared: département du tarn.

“I’m crossing the border,” said Gabriel.

“Keep going.”

They were in a tunnel of trees. When they emerged, Gabriel saw a line of sagging wire fencing along the right side of the road. The field beyond it was in darkness. Heavy cloud had rendered the night moonless.

“Slow down,” commanded the woman. “The break in the fence is just ahead.”

Gabriel eased off the throttle and turned through the breach. The track was unpaved, deeply rutted, and wet with a recent rain. Gabriel bumped along for what he thought was a hundred meters and braked.

“Keep going,” said the woman.

Gabriel crept forward, the car rocking like a boat rising and falling on swells.

“That’s far enough.”

Gabriel stopped.

“Switch off the engine and the headlamps.”

Gabriel hesitated.

“Now,” said the woman. “Or the next bullet comes through the windscreen.”

Gabriel killed the engine and the lights. The darkness was absolute. So was the silence at the other end of the cellular connection. The woman, he thought, had muted her phone.

“How long do you think she’ll make us wait?” asked Khalid.

“She can hear you,” said the woman.

“And I can hear you,” said Khalid coldly.

“Was that a threat?”

Before Khalid could answer, the Renault’s rear window exploded. Gabriel drew a Beretta from the small of his back and chambered the first round.

“I know you’re rather good with a gun, Mr. Allon, but I wouldn’t try anything. Besides, it’s almost over now.”

“Where is she?”

“Turn on your headlamps,” said the woman, and the connection went dead.

35

Département du Tarn, France

She was standing on the track about fifty meters in front of the car, atop a slight rise in the land. Silver duct tape covered her mouth and bound her hands. They had dressed her in a tartan skirt, dark tights, and a schoolgirl’s toggle coat. It looked as though they had buttoned the coat out of proper sequence, but that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t buttoned at all.

All at once Khalid threw open his door and, shouting Reema’s name, sprinted up the muddy path. Gabriel followed a few paces behind him, bent slightly at the waist, the Beretta in his outstretched hands. He pivoted left and right, looking for what, he did not know. Reema and the land behind her were awash in light, but otherwise the darkness in the field was complete. Gabriel could see nothing, only a father careening toward a child whose eyes were filled with terror.

Something wasn’t right. Why wasn’t she relieved by the sound of her father’s voice? And where was the next gunshot? The promised bullet through Gabriel’s head? And then he understood why Reema’s coat did not fit her properly. There was no sniper, not any longer. The child was the weapon.

“Don’t go near her!” shouted Gabriel, but Khalid plunged forward along the slippery path. It was then Gabriel saw a glimmer of light in the trees bordering the field.

A mobile phone . . .

It was a long way off, a hundred meters at least. Gabriel leveled the Beretta toward the light and pulled the trigger until the magazine was empty. Then he dropped the gun and hurled himself toward Khalid.

The Saudi was a much younger man, but he was no athlete and Gabriel had the advantage of a kind of madness. He closed the space between them with a few wild strides and dragged Khalid to the damp earth as the bomb beneath Reema’s toggle coat exploded.

A flash of searing light illuminated the field in all directions, and rushing metal filled the air above Gabriel’s head like outgoing artillery. When he looked up again, Reema was gone. What remained of her was strewn along both sides of the pathway.

Gabriel tried to pin Khalid to the ground, but the Saudi wrenched himself free and clambered to his feet. He was covered in Reema’s blood, they both were. Gabriel turned away and covered his ears as the first terrible scream of agony poured from Khalid’s lungs.

A car was racing up the road. Gabriel found the Beretta, ejected the spent cartridge, and inserted a new one. Then he turned slowly and saw Khalid desperately collecting his daughter’s limbs. “Call an ambulance,” he was saying. “Please, we must get her to a hospital.”

Gabriel dropped to his knees and was violently sick. Then he raised his face to the moonless sky and prayed for a sudden rain to wash the blood of the child from his face. “You’re dead!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Dead, dead, dead!”

Part Three

Absolution

36

Southwest France–Jerusalem

Mikhail Abramov and Christopher Keller had heard the frenzied burst of gunfire—ten shots, all discharged by the same weapon—followed a few seconds later by an explosion. It was relatively small, judging by the sound of it, but the flash of the detonation was enough to illuminate the sky above the remote corner of the Département du Tarn. The tableau they encountered upon their arrival in the field was like something from Dante’s Inferno. Both men were combat veterans who had carried out numerous extrajudicial killings, and yet both were sickened by what they saw. Gabriel was on his knees in the mud, drenched in blood, raging against the heavens. Khalid was holding something that looked like a small arm, and screaming about an ambulance. Mikhail and Keller would never speak of it again. Not to one another, and certainly not to the French.

After regaining a small measure of composure, Gabriel had called Paul Rousseau in Paris—and Rousseau had called his chief, who called his minister, who called the palace. Within minutes, the first units of the gendarmerie were streaking up the D629, and the entire field was soon ablaze with crime-scene lights. On the direct orders of the French president, no attempt was made to question the victim’s overwrought father or the devastated chief of Israeli intelligence.

The forensic teams meticulously gathered up the remains of the victim; the explosives experts, the fragments of the bomb that killed her. All the evidence was flown to Paris that night by police helicopter. So, too, were Gabriel, Khalid, Mikhail, and Keller. By dawn, Khalid and his daughter’s remains were airborne once more, this time bound for Saudi Arabia. For Gabriel and his accomplices, however, the French had other plans.