“I’ve decided to visit Dr. Brieger,” Al-Saud said, referring to the girl’s psychiatrist. “We have to let him know about this advance. I’ll go with Matilde.”
When he got back from the base, he found the ground floor silent and dark. The servants and the girls had all gone to bed. He bounded up the stairs two at a time, heading toward his bedroom eagerly. Matilde was reading in bed. She had braided her hair to one side. She smiled when she saw him come in. She put the book to one side, got out of bed and ran to him barefoot, wearing a red nightie covered in pandas.
“What were you reading?” he wanted to know.
“Rereading, really. The Expatriate’s Guide, from HH. I already mentioned it to you once, do you remember? They’re the rules we have to follow on the ground.” Matilde overlooked the frown that hardened Eliah’s face, grabbed his neck and kissed him on the lips. “Thank you for the painting!” she exclaimed. “You always bring me such beautiful surprises.”
Al-Saud led her by the waist to the flower room, where he had ordered Marie to put the painting.
“The frame is more than pretty. It’s splendid. I wonder how much it cost you.” He said nothing and continued to admire the portrait of Matilde. “Where should we hang it?”
“Here? In this house?” Al-Saud was surprised, and Matilde misinterpreted his reaction.
“Well, yes, here, in your bedroom,” she answered, intimidated, “or somewhere else, if you like. I want to give it to you, Eliah. If you’ll accept it.”
“If I’ll accept it?” he repeated, incredulous. “There’s nothing I want more than to be the owner of this painting. But I can’t accept it. This painting is worth a fortune. The dealer I had repair it told me so.”
“I don’t care how much the painting costs, Eliah. I want to give it to you. If you accept it, of course.”
“Stop saying ‘if you accept it, of course.’ In that offended little voice.” Matilde laughed when Eliah imitated her voice. “I already told you that I’d love to have this painting with me, but I won’t accept it without telling you that it is one of the most sought-after paintings on the market.”
“I want to give it to you,” she insisted.
“Why do you want me to have it? I know what this painting means to you.”
“This painting, Eliah, is worth nothing compared to everything you’ve given me. You gave me freedom, and that’s priceless. I want you to have the two things that mean the most to me in the world, my Médaille Miraculeuse and the painting my aunt painted, by way of gratitude and as a token of my love.”
“I don’t want anything material. I just want you, all of you.”
“I’m all yours, Eliah. I’ve told you that before. I never lie.”
“But you’re going to the Congo.”
They stared at each other, the breath caught in their throats. As much as they had avoided bringing up the subject of the trip to the Congo, it hung over them like a black, ominous cloud. Finally, Al-Saud had gathered the strength to confront the issue.
Matilde broke eye contact and went over to the curved window. She rested her forehead on the frozen glass and closed her eyes. A few seconds passed before she felt his hands at her waist.
“Matilde, I don’t want you to go. It’s dangerous.”
“I have to go,” she whispered, and turned to face him. “I have to go, my love.”
“Why do you say that you have to go?”
“Because for years I have lived and studied only to heal the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet. Please, my love, please support me in this. Don’t turn your back on me, Eliah. Not you.”
“Matilde!” he exclaimed passionately, tightening his arms around her tiny torso. “My God, Matilde,” he said in a begging tone. “What are you asking of me?”
They held the embrace in silence. Matilde felt Al-Saud’s heartbeat start to return to normal.
“Open my jacket and shirt,” he whispered into her ear, and Matilde obeyed after giving him a confused, conspiratorial look. Her Médaille Miraculeuse stood out against the forest of black hair on Al-Saud’s chest, hanging from a chain that was a little thick given the size of the medal. “Do you like it?”
“The chain is beautiful. I love the shape of the links, but shouldn’t you have bought a silver one? It would go better with the medal.”
“Your medal, my love, must have been silver-plated at some point. Now that the silver plating is rubbing off, it looks half gold. Look. Plus, you’re asking the son of an Arab to buy silver instead of gold? I must be true to my nature, Matilde.”
Matilde pressed her smile onto the medal and kissed it. Holy Virgin, bless him and protect him always, she said to herself.
* * *
* * *
CHAPTER 16
* * *
* * *
Ezequiel held up the FedEx envelope by way of greeting, and the nurses, admiring him through the glass, waved frantically and smiled at him. He had given each of them a signed photograph, the one from the ad for Gauloises cigarettes, so they would give Roy special care.
He went into room 304 and immediately realized that his brother wasn’t well. His pale, washed-out face frightened him.
“What’s wrong with you? What happened?”
“I feel…very out of sorts.”
He doubled over with nausea, barely managing to lift his head out of the bed to vomit. There was blood. Ezequiel dropped the envelope, which flew under the orthopedic bed, and threw himself onto his brother.
“Roy! What’s happening? What is this?” He pressed the buzzer and shouted: “Infirmière! Infirmière!”
Al-Saud ran the last stretch to 304 when he heard Ezequiel’s call. Blahetter, leaning out of the bed, was vomiting a bright-red, almost burgundy-colored liquid. A violent convulsion forced him back onto the pillow, and with the vomit still smeared around his mouth, he started to tremble, shaking the system of pulleys holding his leg up.
“Hold the broken leg!” Al-Saud shouted, and Ezequiel did as he was told, relieved that someone else was taking control of the situation.
He was shaking so intensely that Al-Saud was forced to throw himself on top of Roy. Inches away from his face, he realized that only the whites of his eyes were showing and that his jaw was clenched so tightly that he would wind up breaking his teeth. A nurse ran in and, when she saw the scene, ran back out. She came back, escorted by a colleague, who was removing the air from a syringe. Taking advantage of the fact that Al-Saud was holding him down firmly, they injected the vein on Roy’s right arm with a sedative. He was lying flat on the pillow a few minutes later.
Two doctors and more nurses showed up, and formed a tight circle around Blahetter. Al-Saud retired to the other side of the bed, with Ezequiel.
“Thank you, Al-Saud. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t showed up. He might have broken it again,” he conjectured.
“What happened? Why was he reacting like that?”
“No idea. I came into the room, and a second later he was vomiting blood. My God, could those sons of bitches who attacked him have burst some organ?”
“I don’t think so. The doctors would have detected it already. I’m sure they did X-rays and other tests to check for internal injuries.”
“Yes, yes, that’s true. They did various tests and assured me that there was no internal bleeding.”
The doctors peeled off from the group to talk to Ezequiel. The nurses were leaving, and the area around the bed was clear. Al-Saud approached to study Blahetter up close. He heard a crunch underfoot and noticed something on the floor under his boot. It was an envelope. A FedEx envelope. “The man from my grandfather’s company got everything together sooner than expected. He’ll overnight them today by Federal Express.” Al-Saud gave Ezequiel a sidelong glance. He had his back to him. He pretended to lean down over Roy and picked up the envelope, slipping it under his jacket.
“Excuse me,” he said to the doctors. “See you later, Ezequiel. I’ll come back la
ter or tomorrow, when your brother is well enough to receive me.”
Ezequiel just nodded.
Al-Saud, Michael Thorton and Anthony Hill met at the base to analyze the latest batch of proof provided by Blahetter, which was made up of internal memorandums, lists of substances, delivery orders, return addresses and other documents that confirmed the belief that the El Al flight had been transporting at least two of the four elements necessary for fabricating sarin gas, and in quantities that wouldn’t support claims by the Israeli government that the chemicals were intended for inoffensive uses, such as testing gas masks or producing insecticides. The documentation extracted from Blahetter Chemicals and Bouchiki’s photographs constituted overwhelming evidence.
“Your plan, Eliah, entails a huge risk,” Mike Thorton worried.
“If we coordinate the steps one by one, it will be successful,” Al-Saud refuted. “Then we’ll have them by the balls. And the negotiations will be a piece of cake.”
“What’s the next step?” Tony asked.
“A visit to Lefortovo,” Al-Saud answered, “and scaring the Israeli government.”
“You’re planning to use the Dutch journalist for the latter, right?”
Al-Saud nodded.
“There’s the other matter too,” said Tony. “The leak at Mercure—I won’t be able to get a good night’s sleep until we’ve sorted it out once and for all.”
“If there is a leak,” Mike insisted.
“As we said, we’ll organize a fictitious exchange and limit knowledge of it to the employees we think most likely to be the leak. We won’t do it here, in Paris. we’ll find another city. I’ll be the one to carry out the supposed exchange.”
“When?”
“We’ll do it after we talk to Lars Meijer. We have to coordinate the steps well. If the leak at Mercure is a Mossad informant as we believe…”
“I don’t think so,” Mike was adamant.
“As Tony and I believe,” Al-Saud conceded, “it’ll be easy to lure him into the trap.”
Eliah drove straight from the base to Vladimir Chevrikov’s apartment.
“Who is it?” the Russian asked through the door in a sleepy voice, as though he had just woken up.
“Lefortovo, it’s Horse of Fire.” Chevrikov let him in, and Al-Saud lifted the corner of his mouth into a mocking smile. “Fresh as a daisy, eh?”
He received a grunt in response. Zoya, wrapped in a robe, stuck her head into the living room.
“Hello, sweetie.”
“Oh, I see this is a bad time,” Al-Saud commented, going over to greet her with kisses on both cheeks. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, ma chérie, but I need you to leave us alone. Vladimir and I have to work.”
“I really need to talk to you, Eliah,” said the prostitute. “Can you come by my house later?”
Al-Saud agreed and retired to the kitchen to serve himself coffee. He waited until he heard the sound of the door closing before he went back into the living room. Chevrikov reappeared fully dressed, with his hair wet and combed. He grabbed the cup Al-Saud offered him gratefully.
“You have expensive tastes,” he said, referring to Zoya.
“You pay well, Horse of Fire. Very well.”
Al-Saud opened an envelope and tipped its contents, a set of photos, out onto the table.
“What are they?”
“You don’t need to know, Lefortovo.”
The Russian laughed.
“Given everything I know about you and your dirty games, I could easily bring you down. What’s one more thing going to do to our friendship?”
“You could ruin me,” Al-Saud agreed. “Yes, you could. But then I would hunt you down and kill you. You may be a genius at forgery, but I’m a genius at killing.”
“Someone once told me that you’re capable of killing a man my size with one hand. How would you do that?” Vladimir asked incredulously.
Al-Saud leered at him again.
“Easy,” he assured him, and quick as a snake brought his hand to Chevrikov’s throat, barely giving him time to blink. “You would already be dead, dear Lefortovo, because my fingers…do you feel them?” The Russian nodded very slightly. “My fingers would have broken your trachea.” Vladimir swallowed with difficulty and as he did so felt a painful jab where Al-Saud was exercising pressure. “I repeat, you don’t need to know what’s in these photos or where they came from.” He pulled his hand away. He had never stopped smiling.
“What do I have to do with them?” the Russian asked in a surly voice, massaging his throat.
“They’re real, legitimate photos that I need you to falsify. It’s critical that an expert be able to tell that they’re fakes. You’ll have to do your worst work, Lefortovo.”
“When do you need them?”
“Yesterday.”
On his way to Zoya’s, he called Diana’s cell phone, using the hands-free system.
“Where are you?”
“I’m standing guard at the door of the institute. Sanny’s inside. Nothing to report so far.”
“When they get out, take them straight home. Understood?”
“Yes, boss.”
Zoya was waiting for him with one of his favorite natural juices: kiwi, pineapple and carrot. They settled on the sofa in the living room to drink them.
“Eliah, I asked you to come because I’m worried.”
“About Natasha?” Al-Saud ventured.
“No, not about her. She hasn’t called me back since the last time we spoke. I’m worried about Masséna. It’s been a week since I heard anything from him. I’ve called him thousands of times but he’s not answering my calls. That’s very unusual. In fact, he’s never behaved like this. I’m worried that he’s uncovered our little sham.”
“Bring me the gun I gave you a while ago.”
Zoya reappeared with a violet suede bag, from which she extracted a pistol that fit inside Al-Saud’s palm. It was a .22 Beretta 950 BS. Eliah went to the table, where he opened the barrel in three movements and made sure that it was clean and loaded.
“If Masséna comes to see you, I want you to have this with you.”
“I always have it near me.”
That night, while they were having dinner in the house on Avenue Elisée Reclus, Juana’s cell phone rang, and she excused herself and went off in search of privacy.
“It must be Shiloah,” Matilde said, and Al-Saud raised an eyebrow. “He always calls her about now, when he’s finished with his commitments for the political campaign. What time is it in Israel, Eliah?”
He looked at his Rolex Submariner.
“Eleven thirty-five. It’s only an hour ahead.”
Al-Saud looked at Juana in the darkness of the unlit living room next door. Over the last few days, he had tried to get in touch with Shiloah a few times, unsuccessfully. His campaign manager and assistants always told him that Mr. Moses was in a meeting, on a television program, giving a speech, in a debate or going who knows where. They would take a message and hang up on him. And yet he had time to call Juana every day. Eliah was happy. This girl, with her spontaneity and kindness, was reviving something in his friend that he thought the attack had destroyed along with Mariam.
Juana came back to the living room and passed the phone to Matilde.
“It’s Eze. He wants to talk to you.”
“Hello, Eze.” Matilde suddenly jumped to her feet. “What’s happening? Why are you crying? It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m going over there. Here, Juana, I don’t even know how to hang up on this thing.” She turned to look at Al-Saud, who was standing next to her. “Ezequiel said that Roy is very sick. They don’t know what’s wrong with him. He asked me to come. He’s desperate.”
“I’ll take you.”
“He’s in Hospital…oh, my God, I don’t remember the name. It sounded like…Pompidou.”
“I know it,” Al-Saud assured her.
“It’s one of Roy’s tricks to get you there, Mat,” Juana ventured. “Don’t go.”
“Juana, for the love of God, Ezequiel was crying over the phone.”
“He was always a crybaby.”
“Are you coming or not?”
“Fine, fine, I’m coming.”
On the ground floor of the hospital, Al-Saud asked where they could find patient Blahetter and they informed him that he had been transferred to the fourth floor. Matilde was tense and anxious, and Al-Saud could feel her little hand sweating through the woolen glove. They walked down the hall on the fourth floor. Al-Saud spotted three men near the sign that said Intensive Care Unit.
“Papa!” Matilde exclaimed, and let go of his hand to run toward the man striding quickly down the hall toward her.
Al-Saud was paralyzed for an instant while Aldo Martínez Olazábal hugged his youngest daughter. He was overcome by feelings of impotence, jealousy and anxiety. Nobody else was allowed to touch her like that, nobody.
“Let’s go, stud,” Juana urged him, and they walked together until they got to Matilde and her father, who were still hugging. “Hello, Don Aldo. How are you?” she said, offering her cheek to be kissed.
“Hello, Juani.”
“Papa”—Matilde extended her hand toward Eliah—“I want to introduce you to…”
“I know exactly who this character is. Ezequiel has told me everything.”
“Papa!”
“This is the character who’s separating you from your husband. How dare you bring him here when Roy is dying?”
“Oh, Don Aldo,” Juana interjected. “Stop talking out your ass.”
“Juana, don’t get involved.”
Al-Saud was worried by how pale Matilde suddenly looked. He stood behind her to hold her up. As he closed his hands around her shoulders, he challenged Martínez Olazábal with a look. The other man stared at him with hostility at first, and then perplexity, as he found traces of Francesca’s features in this young, beautiful face. Especially in the shape of Al-Saud’s mouth, which was too well defined and plump for a man. Suddenly, Aldo had caught a glimpse of his eternal love. He was almost blinded by the image of himself and Francesca stealing fiery kisses in the summer of 1961, in Arroyo Seco, and looked at the ground, overwhelmed by nostalgia. This young man might have been my son. But he was the son of the Arab prince. He had yearned for a male child, but Dolores had only given him girls. How ironic! he exclaimed to himself, and bit his lip to hold in a bitter laugh. My favorite daughter in love with the son of Kamal Al-Saud. Life is always ready to play a dirty trick on you.