they have given us something a little more exciting?”
“I don’t want exciting. I want reliability and anonymity. It’s also rather fast.”
“When was the last time you drove a car?”
“Earlier this year, when I was in Washington working on the Rebecca Manning case.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
“Not with the car.” Gabriel opened the glove box. Inside was a Beretta 9mm pistol with a walnut grip.
“Your favorite,” remarked Sarah.
“Transport thinks of everything.”
“What about bodyguards?”
“They make it hard to operate effectively.”
“Is it safe for you to be in Paris without a security detail?”
“That’s what the Beretta is for.”
Gabriel reversed out of the space and followed the ramp to the lower level. He paid the attendant in cash and did his best to shield his face from the security camera.
“You’re not fooling anyone. The French are going to figure out that you’re in the country.”
“It’s not the French I’m worried about.”
Gabriel followed the A1 through the gathering dusk to the northern fringes of Paris. Night had fallen by the time they arrived. The rue la Fayette bore them westward across the city, and the Pont de Bir-Hakeim carried them over the Seine to the fifteenth arrondissement. Gabriel turned onto the rue Nélaton and stopped at a formidable security gate manned by heavily armed officers of the National Police. Behind the gate stood a charmless modern office block. A small sign warned that the building belonged to the Interior Ministry and was under constant video surveillance.
“It reminds me of the Green Zone in Baghdad.”
“These days,” said Gabriel, “the Green Zone is safer than Paris.”
“Where are we?”
“The headquarters of the Alpha Group. It’s an elite counterterrorism unit of the DGSI.” The direction générale de la sécurité intérieure, or DGSI, was France’s internal security service. “The French created the Alpha Group not long after you left the Agency. It used to be hidden inside a beautiful old building on the rue de Grenelle.”
“The one that was destroyed by that ISIS car bomb?”
“The bomb was in a van. And I was inside the building when it exploded.”
“Of course you were.”
“So was Paul Rousseau, Alpha Group’s chief. I introduced you to him at my swearing-in party.”
“He looked more like a professor than a French spy.”
“He was once, actually. He’s one of France’s foremost scholars of Proust.”
“What’s the Alpha Group’s role?”
“Human penetration of jihadist networks. But Rousseau has access to everything.”
A uniformed officer approached the car. Gabriel gave him two pseudonymous names, one male, the other female, both French and both inspired by the novels of Dumas, a particularly Rousseauian touch. The Frenchman was waiting in his new lair on the top floor. Unlike the other offices in the building, Rousseau’s was somber and wood-paneled and filled with books and files. Like Gabriel, he preferred them to digital dossiers. He was dressed in a crumpled tweed jacket and a pair of gray flannel trousers. His ever-present pipe belched smoke as he shook Gabriel’s hand.
“Welcome to our new Bastille.” Rousseau offered his hand to Sarah. “So good to see you again, Madame Bancroft. When we met in Israel, you told me you were a museum curator from New York. I didn’t believe it then, and I surely don’t believe it now.”
“It’s true, actually.”
“But obviously there’s more to the story. Where Monsieur Allon is concerned, there usually is.” Rousseau released Sarah’s hand and contemplated Gabriel over his reading glasses. “You were rather vague on the phone this morning. I assume this isn’t a social call.”
“I heard you recently had a bit of unpleasantness in the Haute-Savoie.” Gabriel paused, then added, “A few miles west of Annecy.”
Rousseau raised an eyebrow. “What else have you heard?”
“That your government chose to cover up the incident at the request of the victim’s father, who happens to own the largest château in the region. He also happens to be—”
“The future king of Saudi Arabia.” Rousseau lowered his voice. “Please tell me you didn’t have anything to do—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Paul.”
The Frenchman nibbled thoughtfully at the stem of his pipe. “The unpleasantness, as you call it, was quickly designated a criminal act rather than an act of terrorism. Therefore, it fell outside the purview of the Alpha Group. It is none of our affair.”
“But you must have been at the table during the first hours of the crisis.”
“Of course.”
“You also have access to all the information and intelligence gathered by the National Police and the DGSI.”
Rousseau pondered Gabriel at length. “Why is the abduction of the crown prince’s daughter of interest to the State of Israel?”
“Our interest is humanitarian in nature.”
“A refreshing change of pace. On whose behalf have you come?”
“The future king of Saudi Arabia.”
“My goodness,” said Rousseau. “How the world has changed.”
IT SOON BECAME APPARENT THAT Paul Rousseau did not approve of his government’s decision to conceal the abduction of Princess Reema. It had been made easier, he said, by the remote location—the intersection of two rural roads, the D14 and the D38, west of Annecy. As it happened, the first person on the scene was a retired gendarme who lived in a nearby village. The next to arrive were the crown prince himself and his usual retinue of bodyguards. They surrounded the two vehicles of the princess’s motorcade, along with a third vehicle that had been abandoned by the kidnappers. To subsequent passersby it looked like a serious traffic accident involving wealthy men from the Middle East.
“Hardly an unusual occurrence in France,” said Rousseau.
The
