A car came down the hill from the direction of the church. It was the Mercedes that had blocked their path a few minutes earlier on the boulevard St-Rémy. It stopped in front of them. The girl opened the back door and got in. Gabriel looked one final time at Yaakov, then climbed in after her.

“HE’S OFF THE AIR, ” Lev said. “His beacon has been stationary for five minutes.”

His beacon, thought Shamron, is lying in a Marseilles gutter. Gabriel had vanished from their screens. All the planning, all the preparation, and Khaled had beaten them with the oldest of Arab ploys—a hostage.

“Is it true about Leah?” Shamron asked.

“London station has called the security officer several times. So far they haven’t been able to raise him.”

“That means they’ve got her,” Shamron said. “And I suspect we have a dead security agent somewhere inside the Stratford Clinic.”

“If that’s all true, a very serious storm is going to break in England in the next few minutes.” There was a bit too much composure in Lev’s voice for Shamron’s taste, but then Lev always did place a high premium on self-control. “We need to reach out to our friends in MI5 and the Home Office to keep things as quiet as possible for as long as possible. We also need to bring the Foreign Ministry into the picture. The ambassador will have to do some serious hand-holding.”

“Agreed,” Shamron said, “but I’m afraid there’s something we have to do first.”

He looked at his wristwatch. It was 7:28 A.M. local time, 6:28 in France—twelve hours until the anniversary of the evacuation of Beit Sayeed.

“BUT WE CAN’T just leave him here,” Dina said.

“He’s not here any longer,” Yaakov replied. “He’s gone. He was the one who made the decision to go with her. He gave us the order to evacuate and so has Tel Aviv. We have no other choice. We’re leaving.”

“There must be something we can do to help him.”

“You can’t be any help to him if you’re sitting in a French jail.”

Yaakov raised his wrist-microphone to his lips and ordered the Ayin teams to pull out. Dina went reluctantly down onto the dock and loosened the lines. When the last line was untied, she climbed back onto Fidelity and stood with Yaakov atop the flying bridge as he guided the vessel into the channel. As they passed the Fort of Saint Nicholas, she went back down the companionway to the salon. She sat down at the communications pod, typed in a command to access the memory, then set the time-code for 6:12 A.M. A few seconds later she heard her own voice.

“It’s him. He’s on the street. Heading south toward the park.”