He rounded the corner into the rue Parrot. The car was still there: Khaled’s only mistake. He carried Leah across the street. For an instant she clung anxiously to his neck. Did she know it was him, or did she think him an orderly in her hospital in England? A moment later she was seated in the front passenger seat, staring calmly out the window as Gabriel pulled away from the curb and rolled up to the corner of the rue de Lyon. He glanced once to the left, toward the burning station, then turned right and sped up the wide avenue toward the Bastille. He reached into the girl’s handbag again and pulled out her satellite phone. By the time he rounded the traffic circle in the Place de la Bastille, King Saul Boulevard had come on the line.

PART FOUR SUMAYRIYYA

 PART FOUR 

SUMAYRIYYA

30 PARIS

30

PARIS

THE THIN RAIN THAT HAD GREETED GABRIEL upon his emergence from the Gare de Lyon had turned to a spring downpour. It was dark now, and for that he was grateful. He had parked in a quiet leafy street near the Place de Colombie and shut down the engine. Because of the darkness, and the drenching rain, he was confident no one could see into the car. He rubbed a porthole in the fogged front windshield and peered through it. The building that contained the safe flat was on the opposite side of the street and a few doors up. Gabriel knew the flat well. He knew it was apartment 4B and that the nameplate on the buzzer read Guzman in faded blue script. He also knew that there was no place to safely hide a key, which meant that it had to be opened in advance by someone from the Paris station. Usually such tasks were handled by a bodel, the Office terminology for local hires who do the spadework required to keep a foreign station running. But ten minutes later Gabriel was relieved to see the familiar figure of Uzi Navot, the Paris katsa, pounding past his window with his strawberry blond hair plastered to his large round skull and a key to the flat in his hand.

Navot entered the apartment building and a moment later lights came on in the fourth-floor window. Leah stirred. Gabriel turned and looked at her, and for an instant her gaze seemed to connect with his. He reached out and took what remained of her hand. The hard scar tissue, as always, made Gabriel feel violently cold. She’d been agitated during the drive. Now she seemed calm, the way she always looked when Gabriel visited her in the solarium. He peered through his porthole again, toward the window on the fourth floor.

“Is it you?”

Gabriel, startled by the sound of Leah’s voice, looked up sharply—too sharply, he feared, because her eyes seemed suddenly panicked.

“Yes, it’s me, Leah,” he said calmly. “It’s Gabriel.”