The Saudi terrorist and the woman immediately boarded the plane, while the gendarmes loaded the bags into the storage compartment in the belly. Fifteen seconds after the cabin door closed, the plane lurched forward and swept down the runway. As it rose over the Baie de Saint-Jean, Zizi’s motorcade came roaring past in a black blur and started up the hill toward Gustavia.
IT WAS 8:40 when Mordecai and Oded spotted Mikhail and Rimona clambering down the dunes toward Saline beach. Two minutes later four more figures appeared. By 8:43 everyone was aboard the boats but Lavon.
“You heard him, Eli,” Yaakov shouted. “He wants everyone off the island.”
“I know,” Lavon said, “but I’m not leaving without him.”
Yaakov could see there was no point in arguing. A moment later the Zodiacs were bounding through the surf toward Sun Dancer. Lavon watched them melt into the darkness; then he turned and began pacing the water’s edge.
THE MOTORCADE snaked its way at high speed down the hill into Gustavia. Gabriel, following after them, could see Alexandra ablaze with light at the edge of the harbor. Two minutes later the Land Cruisers turned into the parking lot of the marina. Zizi’s bodyguards handled the disembarkation and loading process with the speed and precision of professionally trained men. Rescue was not an option. Gabriel saw Sarah only once-a flash of saffron wedged between two large dark figures-and a moment later they were seaborne once more, bound for the sanctuary of Alexandra. He had no choice but to turn and head to Saline, where Lavon was waiting for him. Gabriel sat morosely in the prow as they headed into the bay.
“Do you remember what I told you this afternoon, Gabriel?”
“I remember, Eli.”
“If you can only get one target tonight, make sure it’s Sarah. That’s what I told you.”
“I know, Eli.”
“Who made the mistake? Was it us? Or was it Sarah?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“No, it doesn’t. He’s going to kill her unless we can somehow get her back.”
“He won’t do it here. Not after involving the French police.”
“He’ll find a way. No one betrays Zizi and gets away with it. Zizi’s rules.”
“He’ll have to move her,” Gabriel said. “And, of course, he’ll want to know who she’s working for.”
“Which means we might have a very small window, depending on the methods Zizi is willing to use to get answers.”
Gabriel was silent. Lavon could read his thoughts.
We’ll get her, Gabriel was thinking. Let’s just hope there’s something left of her when we do.
28.
WORD OF THE DISASTER in Saint-Barthélemy arrived in the Operations Room at King Saul Boulevard within ten minutes of Gabriel’s return to Sun Dancer. Amos Sharrett, the director-general, was upstairs in his office at the time and was informed of the developments by the duty officer. Despite the lateness of the hour, he immediately woke the prime minister and told him the news. Five minutes later there was a second secure call from Sun Dancer, this one to Langley, Virginia. It went not to the Ops Center but to the private line of Adrian Carter’s seventh-floor office. Carter took the news calmly, as he did most things, and toyed with a stray paper clip as Gabriel made his request. “We have a plane in Miami at the moment,” Carter said. “It can be on the ground in Saint Maarten by dawn.”
Carter hung up the phone and gazed toward the bank of television monitors on the opposite side of the room. The president was in Europe on his fence-mending tour. He had spent the day meeting with the new German chancellor while outside the police had waged running street battles across Berlin with anti-American demonstrators. More of the same was expected at the president’s final two stops: Paris and Rome. The French were bracing for a wave of Muslim rioting, and the Carabinieri were anticipating demonstrations on a scale not seen in the Italian capital in a generation-hardly the scenes of transatlantic harmony the White House imagemakers had been hoping for.
Carter switched off the television and locked his papers in his wall safe, then took his overcoat from the hook on the back of his door and slipped out. The secretaries had gone for the night, and the vestibule was in shadow except for a trapezoid of light that shone from a half-open door on the opposite side. The door led to the office of Shepard Cantwell, the deputy director of intelligence, Carter’s counterpart on the analytical side of the Agency. From inside the room came the clattering of a computer keyboard. Cantwell was still there. According to the Agency wits, Cantwell never left. He simply locked himself into his wall safe some time around midnight and let himself out again at dawn, so he could be at his desk when the director arrived.
“That you, Adrian?” Cantwell inquired in his lazy Back Bay drawl. When Carter poked his head into Cantwell’s lair, the DDI stopped typing and looked up over a batch of files. He was prim as a prior and twice as crafty. “Christ, Adrian, you look like death warmed over. What’s bothering you?”
When Carter mumbled something vague about the chaos surrounding the president’s goodwill trip to Europe, Cantwell launched into a dissertation about the false dangers of anti-Americanism. Cantwell was analysis. He couldn’t help it.
“It’s always fascinated me, Adrian, this ludicrous need of ours to be powerful and loved at the same time. The American president reached halfway around the world and toppled the ruler of Mesopotamia in an afternoon. Not even Caesar could manage that. And now he wants to be adored by those who oppose him. The sooner we stop worrying about being liked, the better off we’ll be.”
“You’ve been reading Machiavelli again, Shep?”
“Never stopped.” He interlaced his fingers behind his neck and splayed his elbows, treating Carter to an unwanted view of his armpits. “There’s a nasty rumor going round the village, Adrian.”
“Really?” Carter gave his wristwatch a glance that Cantwell seemed not to notice.
“According to the rumor you’re involved in some sort of special operation against a well-to-do friend of the al-Saud. And your partners in this endeavor-again, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard, Adrian -are the Israelites.”
“You shouldn’t listen to rumors,” Carter said. “How far has it traveled?”
“Beyond Langley,” replied Cantwell, which was another way of saying it had reached some of the brother agencies that had been steadily encroaching on CIA turf ever since the dreaded reorganization of the American intelligence community.
“How far beyond?”
“Far enough so that some people in town are starting to get nervous. You know how the game is played, Adrian. There’s a pipeline between Riyadh and Washington, and it flows green with cash. This town is awash with Saudi money. It pours into the think tanks and the law firms. Hell, the lobbyists dine out on the stuff. The Saudis have even managed to devise a system for bribing us while we’re still in office. Everyone knows that if they look out for the al-Saud while they’re working for Club Fed, the al-Saud will look out for them when they return to the private sector. Maybe it will be in the form of a lucrative consulting contract or some legal work. Maybe a chair at some insipid institute that spouts the Saudi party line. And so when rumors start flying around town that some cowboy at Langley is going after one of the most generous benefactors of this unholy system, people get nervous.”
“Are you one of them, Shepard?”
“Me?” Cantwell shook his head. “I’m heading back to Boston the minute my parole comes through. But there are other people in the building planning to hang around town and cash in.”