*
In a country villa surrounded by tall hedges and old pecan trees, Abu Yusef slammed the receiver and looked at a room full of men. “Battle stations! Go!”
They grabbed their weapons and ran out to their assigned positions-twelve around the perimeter of the property, four on the roof, and three pairs patrolling the road through the village.
A few moments later, Bashir appeared. He was a muscular native of Hebron, who had been with Abu Yusef for many years. “Two motorcycles,” he said. “Hassan went in the other direction to escape the assassins-”
“ He’s dead. They’re all dead.”
Bashir’s face darkened. “I should have turned back to help them.”
“You should have noticed the tail from the airport!” Abu Yusef struggled to control his rage. “You should have driven behind the Renault, not rush ahead like a mindless dog!”
“I didn’t expect Arafat’s people to find out-”
“It was the Israelis. I heard a woman’s voice. Greetings from Jerusalem. ”
“The Israelis? How?”
“They must have a snitch in Damascus, or in the French foreign service. Are you sure they didn’t follow you here?”
“Impossible.”
“Go, check our defenses. And keep the men in position until tomorrow, just in case you made another error!”
Bashir left.
Abu Yusef stepped outside to a wide patio decorated with fresh roses and sprinkled with mint leaves. A long table had been set, the plates patterned with the Palestinian tri-colors, the silverware shining to perfection. A giant outdoor grill stood at the edge of a sparkling swimming pool. A steel skewer impaled a lamb over the red embers. A handle attached to the skewer dangled unattended. The man assigned to turn it must have run to his assigned battle post.
The belly of the limp animal dripped fat, producing a hissing sound and a flare-up below. The aroma of roasting gave way to the stench of burning fat. Abu Yusef stepped forward and kicked the grill. It tipped over and fell into the swimming pool with a huge splash of water and steam.
*
Bathsheba closed the distance in long steps. Gideon moved forward on the saddle, making room. Her almond-shaped eyes glistened through the helmet eye-shield. “Did you see his-”
“Climb on! Quick!”
She mounted the motorbike behind him, breathing hard. “ Wow! Wow! Wow! ”
The earphones rang in his ears. “Don’t shout.”
“The terror! You should’ve seen his eyes!”
Distant sirens sounded.
Gideon made another U-turn and headed in their original direction, away from Ermenonville. The surge of power propelled the motorbike forward. In four seconds, they were moving at sixty miles per hour.
“ He knew!” She slipped forward on the short saddle, her hands around Gideon, her panting loud in the tiny speakers inside his helmet. He felt her thighs pressing against him on both sides. She groaned. “He watched me! Terrified! Knew he was about to die!”
“Every dog has his day.”
“He got it alright! Pow! ”
The thin hand of the RPM gauge rolled clockwise and crossed the red line. The engine’s buzz flowed through the saddle, and Gideon heard Bathsheba utter a grunt as her thighs closed on him again, her body molded against him like a spoon. As he passed the blue Porsche and the other two cars, his foot kicked into second gear. The engine pace dropped, its shuddering subsided. He felt the tension in her body loosen, her thighs parting.
“ He saw the bullets hit his chest. Splash! ”
The engine revs peaked again, high-pitched buzzing, transferred through the saddle. Gideon felt her arms tighten around him, her body cling to his back. Her thighs squeezed inward rhythmically. The motorbike moved fast on the local road, leaning deep into each turn.
He released the throttle. “Stop it!”
“No!” Her voice came deep through the earphones. “Keep going!” Her breathing grew more rapid. “His face! His eyes! His fear! ”
“Stop it!”
Her right hand dug under his leather jacket, forcing its way under his shirt. Her glove was gone, her fingers cold against his skin. “Go faster!” Her body moved back and forth.
He leaned forward, trying to separate from her.
“ The bullets tore him up! He felt them!” Her body pressed against Gideon’s back, her fingernails plowing his stomach.
“Enough!” He Gideon used his right hand to try to pull her hand out from under his jacket while holding on to the handlebar with his left, keeping the motorbike balanced. He cried in pain as her fingers hooked into him.
“Go! Go! Go!” Her voice was filled with urgency, her body not ceasing from its constant jerking. “Give it gas, damn it!”
Gideon’s hand closed around the throttle, pulling it violently. Her crotch hit him repeatedly from behind as she rubbed herself back and forth on the quivering saddle. The engine screamed, rising to the highest pitch. Her body moved faster and faster. Her thighs closed on him like a vise, opened and closed, again and again. Her breathing turned into moans while he kept the throttle open all the way, the engine revs well into the red. The shuddering intensified, buzzing through the saddle into their bodies. She slid back and forth, her moans becoming short, rapid whimpers. Gideon twisted his face in pain as her thighs clamped on him. He kept the motorbike zooming in a straight line, thankful for a gap in traffic, and gasped as she clung to him in a final, violent spasm-thighs and arms tight around him, fingernails digging into his chest. She cried out, and a moment later her body slackened.
He shifted to a higher gear. The engine revs declined. He felt Bathsheba begin to tremble. His hand found the small switch on the right side of his helmet and turned off the communications system. He wished he could wipe the sweat from his face.
*
At his bedroom in the rear of the villa, Abu Yusef shut the door and locked it. He called the Hilton Hotel in Paris and left word for Prince Abusalim az-Zubayr that dinner was cancelled.
Latif put his slim arms around Abu Yusef. “I’m so sorry.”
“ I can’t believe Al-Mazir is dead.” He sat on the bed, and tears emerged from his eyes. “Why did I bring him here? To see him? To hug him? To celebrate with my beloved friend? It’s my fault. I should have gone to see him in Damascus. His blood is on my hands!”
“ Allah took him for a reason.” Latif caressed Abu Yusef’s thinning gray hair and kissed his forehead. “So that you can take over. His men will now follow you.”
“ And Hassan? What will I tell my sister?” Abu Yusef wept. “Allah has deserted me!”
“ Allah loves you.” Latif’s embrace tightened. “He will help you take revenge, kill a hundred Jews for each of our martyrs.”
*
They crossed the Seine River at Pont de la Concorde, circled the Obelisque, and sped up the Champs Elysees. Gideon kept the motorbike in the left lane, glancing at the side mirrors, his ears pricked for sirens that would break the constant hum of the widest avenue in the world.
Halfway to the Arc de Triomphe, he pulled to the left and parked between two cars along the center divider. They dismounted and ran between moving cars to the opposite sidewalk, still wearing their black helmets, scanning the flow of people and automobiles for any irregularity, any change of pace, any indication that someone had spotted them.
Nothing.
They slowed down and removed their helmets. Bathsheba’s tall figure, cropped hair, and sculpted face never failed to draw men’s eyes, which right now was a disadvantage.
At the Cafe Renault, where tourists sipped coffee in booths resembling cars, they turned left onto Rue Pierre Charron and passed by the window displays of Iran Air. Bathsheba motioned at the Iranian flag. “Do you have any bullets left?”
He walked faster.
On Rue Francois they turned right.
Near the end of the block, a short, thin man wearing a dark wool cap leaned against a white Citroen BX. He drew once more from his cigarette, dropped it, and put it out with the sole of his shoe.
Bathsheba got in the back, Gideon behind the wheel, and Elie Weiss in the passenger seat. The car smelled of cigarette smoke. They drove off.
Elie looked forward, not turning his head.
“ Your source told the truth,” Gideon said. “Al-Mazir was on the Damascus flight. Abu Yusef’s men picked him up, but drove north to the suburbs, not to the city. They split up. We chased the car he was in and shot him.”
“ Any problems?”
“Not with the Arabs.” Gideon glanced at Bathsheba through the rearview mirror.
“ We had fun.” She leaned forward and ruffled his hair. “We’re a good team.”
Elie coughed in a slow, deep rumble that sounded as if it should emerge from a much larger man. He pulled the tight-fitting wool cap down over his ears. It gave his head a conical shape. His face had a sickly hue.
Gideon drove fast, passing other cars whenever possible, taking turns with sudden jerks of the wheel. In Paris, slow driving drew attention.
Heading east on Rue La Fayette, he slammed on the brakes and made a tight U-turn. A quarter-block back, he turned into Rue Lamartine, a narrow one-way street with little traffic, and took a swift left turn into Rue Buffault, where he stopped at the curb.
They waited a few minutes.
Elie opened the door. The air was cold and moist. He led the way across the street and down the opposite pavement, past the municipal office building. Next was number 32, a public elementary school, where a marble plaque commemorated twenty thousand Parisian Jewish children deported to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944. A bouquet of dry flowers rested in a metal ring under the plaque, wrapped in the French red, white, and blue flag.
The next building, number 30, was a synagogue. Its three mahogany doors were embraced by ornate marble pillars resembling palm fronds, and a Biblical quote on top: Blessed are you in coming, and blessed are you in leaving. A temporary wall of plywood, supported by police barriers, separated the sidewalk from the street, shielding the forecourt and doors from passing cars. The synagogue had been the target of a terrorist attack a decade earlier.
Gideon pushed open the heavy door at number 28 and held it for Elie and Bathsheba. The old apartment building had an elevator, but they took the stairs.
On the third floor landing, Elie was out of breath. He coughed hard and spat into a handkerchief. Gideon entered the apartment with his weapon drawn. He checked the bedroom, which had one bed and two thin mattresses on the floor, and the workroom, where a large metal desk carried a telephone, a computer, and a small TV. Electrical wires crisscrossed the floor.
Elie sat at the desk and pulled off the wool cap. He opened a file, took out a small photograph, and showed it to them.
“That’s the one who shot back at us,” Gideon said.
“Hassan Gaziri.” Elie tapped the photo with his finger. “A nephew. Abu Yusef must be very upset. And nervous. He’s hunkered down in a secluded house, difficult to access, lots of hiding spots for his men to wait in ambush for foolhardy attackers.”
“ So what?” Bathsheba kicked the leg of the table. “We give up?”
“ We plan ahead,” Elie said. “Let him stew in grief and anger and dread. Let him experience what he has caused so many others to experience.”
“ That’s never going to happen,” Bathsheba said. Her father, a judo champion, had represented Israel in the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. At his funeral near Tel Aviv, three-year-old Bathsheba had held a red rose. The next day, her picture was picked up by news outlets worldwide. “He’s a murderer,” she said. “He doesn’t experience the feelings we experience. Right now, all he’s thinking about is how to kill more Jews.”
“ That too,” Elie said.
“ Then we should go now, drive around Ermenonville, ask people. Someone might have noticed a bunch of Arabs living in a house.”
“My father,” Elie said, “may he rest in peace, was a shoykhet, the only kosher butcher within a week’s mule-ride from our shtetl. He taught me that a successful act of slaughter requires meticulous preparations-for both the shoykhet and the animal.”
Bathsheba laughed, but Gideon didn’t. He had once seen Elie work with a long blade on a former SS prison guard, an elderly man who had spent decades evading the consequences of his crimes. Since then, despite Elie’s small stature and worsening health, Gideon had felt apprehension in his presence.
“ Driving around could draw attention to you,” Elie said. “We need an observation point. Show me the layout.”
With a roadmap flat on the desk, Gideon’s finger traced Charles de Gaulle Airport, the highway north, and the exit ramp. “That’s where the green Peugeot turned right. We can wait at this gas station.” He pointed at the intersection off the highway. “The Peugeot 605 is a pricey car. They’ll use it again.”
“ Start on Friday,” Elie said. “Give them a day to calm down.”
“ Calm down my ass,” Bathsheba said. “They’re going to strike back.”
Elie glanced at his watch. “I have a flight to catch.” He raised his hand to stop Gideon, who started to rise. “Stay here. I’ll take the train to the airport.”