“You’re not an outsider, Nabil. You know everyone, you can go everywhere. That’s why we pay you so lucratively.”
“Tip money, Mike, that’s all I get from your outfit-cigarettes and champagne and a few bucks to waste on the girls.”
“You must have expensive taste in girls, Nabil, because I’ve seen your pay stubs. You’ve made a rather large sum of money from your relationship with my firm.”
Azouri raised his glass in Gabriel’s direction. “We’ve made good business together, Mike. I won’t deny that. I’d like to continue working for you. That’s why someone else needs to run down to Ein al-Hilweh for you. It’s too rich for my blood. Too dangerous.”
Azouri signaled the waiter and ordered another bottle of the French champagne. Refusing an offer of work wasn’t going to keep him from having a good meal on the Office tab. Gabriel tossed an envelope onto the table. Azouri eyed it thoughtfully but made no move for it.
“How much is in there, Mike?”
“Two thousand.”
“What flavor?”
“Dollars.”
“So what’s the deal? Half now, half on delivery? I’m just a dumb Arab, but two thousand and two thousand add up to four thousand, and I’m not going into Ein al-Hilweh for four thousand dollars.”
“Two thousand is only the retainer.”
“And how much for delivery of the information?”
“Another five.”
Azouri shook his head. “No, another ten.”
“Six.”
Another shake of the head. “Nine.”
“Seven.”
“Eight.”
“Done,” said Gabriel. “Two thousand in advance, another eight on delivery. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. If you behave yourself we’ll even throw in gas money.”
“Oh, you’ll pay for the gas, Mike. My expenses are always separate from my fee.” The waiter brought the second bottle of champagne. When he was gone again, Azouri said, “So what do you want to know?”
“I want you to find someone.”
“There are forty-five thousand refugees in that camp, Mike. Help me out a little bit.”
“He’s an old man named al-Tamari.”
“First name?”
“We don’t know it.”
Azouri sipped his wine. “It’s not a terribly common name. It shouldn’t be a problem. What else can you tell me about him?”
“He’s a refugee from the Western Galilee.”
“Most of them are. Which village?”
Gabriel told him.
“Family details?”
“Two sons were killed in eighty-two.”
“In the camp?”
Gabriel nodded. “They were Fatah. Apparently his wife was killed, too.”
“Lovely. Go on.”
“He had a daughter. She ended up in Europe. I want to know everything you can find out about her. Where she went to school. What she studied. Where she lived. Who she slept with.”
“What’s the girl’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Age?”
“Early thirties, I’d say. Spoke decent French.”
“Why are you looking for her?”
“We think she may have been involved in the attack on the Gare de Lyon.”
“Is she still alive?”
Gabriel shook his head. Azouri looked out at the beach for a long moment. “So you think that by tracing the background of the girl, you’re going to get to the big boss? The brains behind the operation?”
“Something like that, Nabil.”
“How do I play it with the old man?”
“Play it any way you want to,” Gabriel said. “Just get me what I need.”
“This girl,” the Lebanese said. “What did she look like?”
Gabriel handed Azouri a magazine he’d brought down from his room. Azouri opened it and leafed through the pages until he came upon the sketch Gabriel had made aboard Fidelity.
“She looked like that,” Gabriel said. “She looked exactly like that.”
HE HEARD NOTHING from Nabil Azouri for three days. For all Gabriel knew, the Lebanese had absconded with the down payment or had been killed trying to get into Ein al-Hilweh. Then, on the fourth morning, the telephone rang. It was Azouri, calling from Beirut. He would be at the Palm Beach Hotel in time for lunch. Gabriel hung up the phone, then he went down to the beach and took a long run at the water’s edge. His bruises were beginning to fade, and much of the soreness had left his body. When he had finished, he returned to his room to shower and change. By the time he arrived at the poolside restaurant, Azouri was working on his second glass of champagne.
“What a fucking place, Mike. Hell on earth.”
“I’m not paying you ten thousand dollars for a report on conditions at Ein al-Hilweh,” Gabriel said. “That’s the UN’s job. Did you find the old man? Is he still alive?”
“I found him.”
“And?”
“The girl left Ein al-Hilweh in 1990. She’s never been back.”
“Her name?”
“Fellah,” said Azouri. “Fellah al-Tamari.”
“Where did she go?”
“She was a smart girl, apparently. Earned a UN grant to study in Europe. The old man told her to take it and never come back to Lebanon.”
“Where did she study?” Gabriel asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
“ France,” Azouri said. “ Paris first, then she went somewhere in the south. The old man wasn’t sure. Apparently there were long periods with no contact.”
“I’m sure there were.”
“He didn’t seem to fault his daughter. He wanted a better life for her in Europe. He didn’t want her wallowing in the Palestinian tragedy, as he put it to me.”
“She never forgot about Ein al-Hilweh,” Gabriel said absently. “What did she study?”
“She was an archaeologist.”
Gabriel remembered the appearance of her fingernails. He’d had the impression then that she was a potter or someone who worked with her hands outdoors. An archaeologist certainly fit that description.
“Archaeology? You’re certain.”
“He seemed very clear on that point.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah,” Azouri said. “Two years ago she sent him a very strange letter. She told him to destroy all the letters and photographs she’d sent from Europe over the years. The old man disobeyed his daughter’s wishes. The letters and photos were all he had left of her. A couple of weeks later, a bully boy shows up in his room and burned the things for him.”
A friend of Khaled, Gabriel thought. Khaled was trying to erase her past.
“How did you play it with him?”
“You got the information you wanted. Leave the operational details to me, Mike.”
“Did you show him the sketch?”
“I showed him. He wept. He hadn’t seen his daughter in fifteen years.”
AN HOUR LATER, Gabriel checked out of the hotel and drove to the airport, where he waited until the evening flight to Tel Aviv. It was after midnight by the time he returned to Narkiss Street. Chiara was asleep. She stirred as he climbed into bed, but did not wake. When he pressed his lips against her bare shoulder, she murmured incoherently and rolled away from him. He looked at his nightstand. The papers were gone.
35 TEL MEGIDDO, ISRAEL
NEXT MORNING GABRIEL WENT TO ARMAGEDDON.
He left his Skoda in the parking lot of the visitors center and hiked up the footpath to the top of the mount through the searing sunlight. He paused for a moment to gaze out across the Jezreel Valley. For Gabriel the valley was the place of his birth, but biblical scholars and those obsessed by endtime prophesies believed it would be the setting for the apocalyptic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. Regardless of what calamity might lay ahead, Tel Megiddo had already witnessed much bloodshed. Located at the crossroads between Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, it had been the site of dozens of major battles over the millennia. Assyrians, Israelites, Canaanites, Egyptians, Philistines, Greeks, Romans, and Crusaders-all had shed blood beneath this hillock. Napolean defeated the Ottomans there in 1799, and a little more than a century later General Allenby of the British army defeated them again.