The Black Widow

He was no fire-breathing jihadist, Saladin. His Islam was political rather than spiritual, a tool by which he intended to redraw the map of the Middle East. It would be dominated by a massive Sunni state that would stretch from Baghdad to the Arabian Peninsula and across the Levant and North Africa. He did not rant or spew venom or recite Koranic verses or the sayings of the Prophet. He was entirely reasonable, which made him all the more terrifying. The liberation of Jerusalem, he said, was high on his agenda. It was his wish to pray in the Noble Sanctuary at least once before his death.

“You’ve been, Maimonides?”

“To Jerusalem? No, never.”

“Yes, I know. Abu Ahmed told me that.”

“Who?”

Eventually, he told her he had been raised in a small, poor village in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq, though he pointedly did not say the village’s name. He had joined the Iraqi army, hardly surprising in a land of mass conscription, and had fought in the long war against Iranians, though he referred to them always as Persians and rafida. The years between the war with Iran and the first Gulf War were a blank; he mentioned something about government work but did not elaborate. But when he spoke of the second war with the Americans, the war that destroyed Iraq as he knew it, his eyes flashed with anger. When the Americans disbanded the Iraqi army and removed all Baath Party members from their government posts, he was put on the streets along with thousands of other mainly Sunni Iraqi men. He joined the secular resistance and, later, al-Qaeda in Iraq, where he met and befriended Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Unlike Zarqawi, who relished his Bin Laden — like role as a terror superstar, Saladin preferred to keep a lower profile. It was Saladin, not Zarqawi, who masterminded many of al-Qaeda in Iraq’s most spectacular and deadly attacks. And yet even now, he said, the Americans and the Jordanians did not know his real name.

“You, Maimonides, will not be so fortunate. Soon you will be the most wanted woman on the planet. Everyone will know your name, especially the Americans.”

She asked again about the target of her attack. Annoyed, he refused to say. For reasons of operational security, he explained, recruits were not given their targets until the last possible minute.

“Your friend Safia Bourihane wasn’t told her target until the night before the operation. But your target will be much bigger than hers. One day they will write books about you.”

“Is it a suicide operation?”

“Maimonides, please.”

“I must know.”

“Did I not tell you that you were going to be my personal physician? Did I not say that we would live together in Damascus?”

Suddenly fatigued, he closed his eyes. His words, thought Natalie, were without conviction. She knew at that moment that Dr. Leila Hadawi would not be returning to the caliphate. She had saved Saladin’s life, and yet Saladin, with no trace of misgivings or guilt, would soon send her to her death.

“How is your pain?” she asked.

“I feel nothing.”

She placed her forefinger in the center of his chest and pressed. His eyes shot open.

“It seems you have pain, after all.”

“A little,” he confessed.

She prepared his dose of morphine.

“Wait, Maimonides. There’s something I must tell you.”

She stopped.

“You’ll be leaving here in a few hours to begin your journey back to France. In time, someone will contact you and tell you how to proceed.”

Natalie finished preparing his dose of morphine.

“Perhaps,” she said, “we shall meet again in paradise.”

“Inshallah, Maimonides.”

She fed the morphine through his IV tube into his veins. His eyes blurred and grew vacant; he was in a vulnerable state. Natalie wanted to double his dose and shove him through death’s door, but she hadn’t the courage. If he died, the knife or the stone would be her fate.

Finally, he slipped into unconsciousness and his eyes closed. Natalie checked his vital signs one last time and while he was sleeping removed the chest tube and sutured the incision. That night, after supper, she was blindfolded and placed in the backseat of another SUV. She was too tired to be afraid. She plunged into a dreamless sleep, and when she woke they were near the Turkish border. A pair of smugglers took her across and drove her to the ferry terminal in Bodrun, where Miranda Ward was waiting. They traveled together on the ferry to Santorini and shared a room that night at the Panorama Hotel. It was not until late the following morning, when they arrived in Athens, that Miranda returned Natalie’s phone. She sent a text message to her “father” saying that her trip had gone well and that she was safe. Then, alone, she boarded an Air France flight bound for Paris.

PART THREE THE END OF DAYS

44 CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, PARIS