He was an ally—indeed, he had all but single-handedly destroyed ISIS’s terror network in France—and they treated him accordingly. The inquisition, such as it was, took place later that same day, in a gilded, chandeliered room in the Interior Ministry. Present were the minister himself, the chiefs of the various police and intelligence services, and several note takers, cupbearers, and assorted fonctionnaires. Mikhail and Keller were spared direct questioning, and the French pledged there would be no electronic recording. Gabriel assumed the French were lying.

The minister began the proceedings by demanding to know how the chief of Israeli intelligence had become involved in the search for the princess in the first place. Gabriel replied, truthfully, that he undertaken the assignment at the behest of the child’s father.

“But Saudi Arabia is your adversary, is it not?”

“I was hoping to change that.”

“Did you receive assistance from anyone inside the French security and intelligence establishment?”

“I did not.”

The minister wordlessly presented Gabriel with a photograph. A Passat sedan entering Alpha Group headquarters on the rue Nélaton. The visit, explained Gabriel, had been a courtesy call only.

“And the woman in the passenger seat?” wondered the minister.

“She’s a colleague.”

“According to the Swiss Federal Police, that same car was in Geneva the following evening when Lucien Villard was killed by a briefcase bomb. I assume you were there, too?”

“I was.”

“Did Israeli intelligence kill Lucien Villard?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

The minister thrust a photograph beneath Gabriel’s nose. A man sitting in a café in Annecy. “Did he?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Were you able to identify him?”

“No.”

Another photograph. “What about her?”

“I believe I spoke to her last night.”

“She handled the negotiations?”

“There were none.”

“There was no exchange of money?”

“The demand was abdication.”

“And the ten shots you fired?”

“I saw the light of a mobile phone. I assumed he was using it to detonate the bomb.”

“He?”

Gabriel inclined his head toward the man in the photograph. “If I had hit him—”

“You might have saved the child.”

Gabriel said nothing.

“It was a mistake not to involve us. We could have brought her in safely.”

“They said they would kill her.”

“Yes,” said the minister. “And now she is dead.”

And on it went, deep into the afternoon, until the lights of Paris glowed beyond the ministry’s windows. It was a folly, and both sides knew it. The French intended to sweep the entire messy episode under the rug. When at last the questions stopped and the note takers laid down their pens, there were handshakes all around. They were of the graveside variety, fleeting, consoling. A ministry car took Gabriel, Mikhail, and Keller to Charles de Gaulle. Keller boarded a plane bound for London; Gabriel and Mikhail, for Tel Aviv. During the four-hour flight they did not speak of what had transpired in the field in the Département du Tarn. They never would.

There was a small item the next day in one of the southern papers, something about a set of remains being found in a remote field, an adolescent, almost certainly a female. It made Le Figaro, and a short story was read on one of the evening newscasts, but the French cover-up was so thorough—and the French media was so distracted by the “Yellow Vests”—it was soon forgotten. At times, even Gabriel wondered whether he had dreamed it. He had only to listen to the recordings of his conversations with the woman to be reminded that a child had been blown to pieces before his eyes.

If he was grieving, he gave no sign of it, at least not within the walls of King Saul Boulevard. Khalid’s abdication had thrown Saudi Arabia—and by extension the entire region—into political turmoil. To make matters worse, the American president declared his intention to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria, effectively ceding control of the country to the Iranians and their ally, Russia. Within hours of the announcement, which he made via Twitter, a Hezbollah missile fired from Syrian territory crossed into Israeli airspace and was intercepted over Hadera. Gabriel supplied the prime minister with the location of a secret Iranian command bunker south of Damascus. Several officers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in the retaliatory strike, drawing Israel and the Islamic Republic ever closer to war.

But it was Saudi Arabia that occupied the lion’s share of Gabriel’s time during those endless days after his return from France. His accurate prediction that Khalid was about to abdicate had suddenly made him flavor of the week at Langley, which was grasping at straws trying to figure out what was happening inside the royal court of its closest ally in the Arab world. Was Khalid in Riyadh? Was he even alive? Gabriel was able to offer the Americans precious little intelligence, for his own attempts to reach Khalid had proved fruitless, and the Saudi’s compromised phone was no longer emitting a signal. Nor was Gabriel able to provide the Americans—or his prime minister, for that matter—reliable intelligence as to Khalid’s likely successor. Consequently, when Gabriel was awakened at three in the morning with the news that it was Prince Abdullah, the king’s London-based half brother, he was as surprised as everyone else.

The Office knew the basics of Abdullah’s undistinguished career, and in the days following his elevation, Collections and Research rapidly filled in the missing pieces. He was anti-Israel, anti-West, and harbored an abiding resentment of America, which he blamed for much of the Middle East’s violence and political chaos. He had two wives in Riyadh whom he rarely saw and a stable of high-priced prostitutes, boys and girls, who tended to his sexual needs at his mansion in Belgravia. A devout Wahhabi Muslim, he was a heavy drinker who had thrice received treatment at an exclusive facility outside Zurich. In business he had been aggressive but unwise. Despite a generous monthly stipend, money was constantly an issue.

There was speculation in the media that Abdullah was merely a caretaker crown prince who would remain in the post only until a suitable candidate from the next generation could be chosen. Abdullah, however, quickly consolidated his hold on power by purging the royal court and the Saudi security services of his nephew’s influence. He also scrapped The Way Forward, Khalid’s ambitious plan to transform the Saudi economy, and made it clear there would be no more talk of reforming the faith. Wahhabism, he proclaimed, was the Kingdom’s official religion and would be practiced in its purest and sternest form. Women were summarily stripped of the right to drive or attend sporting events—and the Mutaween, the dreaded Saudi religious police, were once again given license to enforce the rules of Islamic purity, with arrests and physical brutality if necessary. Those who objected were jailed or publicly flogged. The fleeting Riyadh Spring was over.

Which prompted, mainly in the West, another great reassessment. Had the Americans and their European allies been too hard on KBM for his misdeeds? Had they foolishly backed the House of Saud into a corner, leaving them no choice but to revert to their tried-and-true method of survival? Had they let a golden opportunity to fundamentally change the Middle East slip through their fingers? In the secure rooms and salons of Washington and London, they quarreled among themselves over who had lost Saudi Arabia. In Tel Aviv, however, Gabriel approached the question altogether differently. Saudi Arabia, he concluded, had not been lost, it had been taken from them. But by whom?