Gabriel pushed open the window to vent the smoke from the room. Six cigarette butts lay like spent bullets in one of Gabriel’s saucers. Shamron had been here for some time.

“How was Venice?” Shamron asked.

“Venice was lovely, but the next time you break into my flat, please have the courtesy to not smoke.” Gabriel picked up the saucer by the edge and poured the cigarette butts into the garbage. “What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait till the morning?”

“Another Saudi link to the attack on the Vatican.”

Gabriel looked up at Shamron. “What is it?”

“Ibrahim el-Banna.”

“The Egyptian cleric? Why am I not surprised.”

Gabriel sat down at the table.

“Two nights ago our station chief in Cairo held a secret meeting with one of our top sources inside the Egyptian Mukhabarat. It seems Professor Ibrahim el-Banna had a well-established militant pedigree, long before he went to the Vatican. His older brother was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was a close associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number-two man in al-Qaeda. A nephew went to Iraq to fight the Americans and was killed in the siege of Fallujah. Apparently tapes of the imam’s sermons are required listening among Egyptian Islamic militants.”

“Too bad our friend in the Mukhabarat didn’t tell the Vatican the truth about el-Banna. Seven hundred people might be alive—and the Dome of the Basilica might not have a hole in it.”

“The Egyptians knew something else about Professor el-Banna,” Shamron said. “Throughout much of the eighties and nineties, when the problem of Islamic fundamentalism was exploding in Egypt, Professor el-Banna received regular cash payments and instructions from a Saudi who posed as an official of the International Islamic Relief Organization, one of the main Saudi charities. This man called himself Khalil, but Egyptian intelligence knew his real name: Ahmed bin Shafiq. What makes this even more interesting is bin Shafiq’s occupation at that time.”

“He was GID,” said Gabriel.

“Exactly.”

The GID, or General Intelligence Department, was the name of the Saudi intelligence service.

“What do we know about him?”

“Until four years ago, bin Shafiq was chief of a clandestine GID unit code-named Group 205, which was responsible for establishing and maintaining links between Saudi Arabia and Islamic militant groups around the Middle East. Egypt was one of Group 205’s top priorities, along with Afghanistan, of course.”

“What’s the significance of the number?”

“It was the extension of bin Shafiq’s office in GID Headquarters.”

“What happened four years ago?”