THE PRIME MINISTER GRANTED Gabriel his operational charter at two-thirty the following afternoon. Gabriel headed straight for Armageddon. He reckoned it was a fine place to start.
The weather seemed perversely glorious for such an occasion: cool temperatures, a pale blue sky, a soft Judean breeze that plucked at his shirt-sleeves as he sped along the Jaffa Road. He switched on the radio. The mournful music that had saturated the airwaves in the hours after the attempt on Shamron’s life was now gone. A news bulletin came suddenly on the air. The prime minister had promised to do everything in his power to track down and punish those responsible for the attempt on Shamron’s life. He made no mention of the fact that he already knew who was responsible, or that he had granted Gabriel the authority to kill him.
Gabriel plunged down the Bab al-Wad toward the sea, weaving impatiently through the slower traffic, then raced the setting sun northward along the Coastal Plain. There was a security alert near Hadera-according to the radio, a suspected suicide bomber had managed to slip through a crossing in the Separation Fence near Tulkarm-and Gabriel was forced to wait by the side of the road for twenty minutes before heading into the Valley of Jezreel. Five miles from Afula a rounded hillock appeared on his left. In Hebrew it was known as Tel Megiddo, or the Mound of Megiddo. The rest of the world knew it as Armageddon, forecast in the Book of Revelation to be the site of the final earthly confrontation between the forces of good and evil. The battle had not yet begun, and the parking lot was empty except for a trio of dusty pickup trucks, a sign that the archaeological team was still at work.
Gabriel climbed out of his car and headed up the steep footpath to the summit. Tel Megiddo had been under periodic archaeological excavation for more than a century, and the top of the hill was cut by a maze of long, narrow trenches. Evidence of more than twenty cities had been discovered beneath the soil atop the tel, including one believed to have been built by King Solomon.
He stopped at the edge of a trench and peered down. Crouched on all fours was a small figure in a tan bush jacket, picking at the soil with a hand trowel. Gabriel thought of the last time he had stood over a man in an excavation pit and felt as though a lump of ice had been placed suddenly at the back of his neck. The archaeologist looked up and regarded him with a pair of clever brown eyes, then looked down again and resumed his work. “I’ve been waiting for you,” said Eli Lavon. “What took you so long?”
Gabriel sat in the dirt at the edge of the pit and watched Lavon work. They had known each other since the Black September operation. Eli Lavon had been an ayin, a tracker. His job was to follow the terrorists and learn their habits. In many respects his assignment had been more dangerous even than Gabriel’s, for Lavon had sometimes been exposed to the terrorists for days and weeks on end with no backup. After the unit disbanded, he’d settled in Vienna and opened a small investigative bureau called Wartime Claims and Inquiries. Operating on a shoestring budget, he had managed to track down millions of dollars’ worth of looted Jewish assets and had played a significant role in prying a multibillion-dollar settlement from the banks of Switzerland. These days Lavon was working the dig at Megiddo and teaching archaeology part-time at Hebrew University.
“What have you got there, Eli?”
“A piece of pottery, I suspect.” A gust of wind took his wispy, unkempt hair and blew it across his forehead. “What about you?”
“A Saudi billionaire who’s trying to destroy the civilized world.”
“Haven’t they already done that?”
Gabriel smiled. “I need you, Eli. You know how to read balance sheets. You know how to follow the trail of money without anyone else knowing it.”
“Who’s the Saudi?”
“The chairman and CEO of Jihad Incorporated.”
“Does the chairman have a name?”
“Abdul Aziz al-Bakari.”
“Zizi al-Bakari?”
“One and the same.”
“I suppose this has something to do with Shamron?”
“And the Vatican.”
“What’s Zizi’s connection?”
Gabriel told him.
“I guess I don’t need to ask what you intend to do with bin Shafiq,” Lavon said. “Zizi’s business empire is enormous. Bin Shafiq could be operating from anywhere in the world. How are we going to find him?”
“We’re going to put an agent into Zizi’s inner circle and wait for bin Shafiq to walk into it.”
“An agent in Zizi’s camp?” Lavon shook his head. “Can’t be done.”
“Yes, it can.”
“How?”
“I’m going to find something Zizi wants,” Gabriel said. “And then I’m going to give it to him.”
“I’m listening.”
Gabriel sat down at the edge of the excavation trench with his legs dangling over the side and explained how he planned to penetrate Jihad Incorporated. From the bottom of the trench came sound of Lavon’s work-pick, pick, brush, brush, blow…
“Who’s the agent?” he asked when Gabriel had finished.
“I don’t have one yet.”
Lavon was silent for a moment-pick, pick, brush, brush, blow…
“What do you want from me?”
“Turn Zizi al-Bakari and AAB Holdings inside out. I want a complete breakdown of every company he owns or controls. Profiles of all his top executives and the members of his personal entourage. I want to know how each person got there and how they’ve stayed. I want to know more about Zizi than Zizi knows about himself.”
“And what happens when we go operational?”
“You’ll go, too.”
“I’m too old and tired for any rough stuff.”
“You’re the greatest surveillance artist in the history of the Office, Eli. I can’t do this without you.”
Lavon sat up and brushed his hands on his trousers. “Run an agent into Zizi al-Bakari’s inner circle? Madness.” He tossed Gabriel a hand trowel. “Get down here and help me. We’re losing the light.”
Gabriel climbed down into the pit and knelt beside his old friend. Together they scratched at the ancient soil, until night fell like a curtain over the valley.
IT WAS AFTER nine o’clock by the time they arrived at King Saul Boulevard. Lavon was long retired from the Office but still gave the odd lecture at the Academy and still had credentials to enter the building whenever he pleased. Gabriel cleared him into the file rooms of the Research division, then headed down to a gloomy corridor two levels belowground. At the end of the hall was Room 456C. Affixed to the door was a paper sign, written in Gabriel’s own stylish Hebrew hand: TEMPORARY COMMITTEE FOR THE STUDY OF TERROR THREATS IN WESTERN EUROPE. He decided to leave it for now.
He opened the combination lock, switched on the lights, and went inside. The room seemed frozen in time. They’d had several names for it: the Pod, the Quad, the Tank. Yaakov, a pockmarked tough from the Arab Affairs Department of Shabak, had christened it the Hellhole. Yossi from Research had called it the Village of the Damned, but then Yossi had read classics at Oxford and always brought an air of erudition to his work, even when the subjects weren’t worthy of it.
Gabriel paused at the trestle table that Dina and Rimona had shared. Their constant squabbling over territory had driven him to near madness. The separation line he had drawn down the center of the table was still there, along with the warning Rimona had written on her side of the border: Cross at your own risk. Rimona was a captain in the IDF and worked for Aman, military intelligence. She was also Gilah Shamron’s niece. She believed in defensible borders and had responded with retaliatory raids each time Dina had strayed over the line. At Dina’s place now was the short note she had left there on the final day of the operation: May we never have to return here again. How naïve, thought Gabriel. Dina, of all people, should have known better.