The Black Widow

She looked around the interior of the bathroom, around the edges of the mirror, at the overhead light fixture. Surely, the Americans were watching and listening. And surely, she thought, Gabriel was watching, too. She wondered what they were waiting for. She had come to Washington in an attempt to identify targets and other members of the attack cells. Thus far, she had learned almost nothing because Safia had very deliberately withheld even the most basic information about the operation. But why? And why had Safia insisted that Natalie wear the suicide vest with the red stitch in the zipper? Again, she glanced around the bathroom. Are you watching? Do you see what’s going on in here? Obviously, they intended to let it play out a little longer. But not too long, she thought. The Americans wouldn’t allow a proven terrorist like Safia, a black widow with blood on her hands, to walk around the streets of Washington wearing a suicide vest. As an Israeli, Natalie knew that such operations were inherently dangerous and unpredictable. Safia would have to be shot cleanly through the brain stem with a large-caliber weapon to ensure that she did not retain the capacity to squeeze her detonator with a dying spasm. If she did, anyone close to her would be cut to pieces.

Natalie scrutinized her face one last time in the mirror, as if committing her own features to memory — the nose she detested, the mouth she thought too large for her face, the dark alluring eyes. Then, quite unexpectedly, she saw someone standing beside her, a man with pale skin and eyes the color of glacial ice. He was dressed for a special occasion, a wedding, perhaps a funeral, and was holding a gun in one hand.

Actually, you’re more like me than you realize. .

She switched out the light and went into the next room. Safia was sitting at the end of the bed, dressed in her suicide vest and her gray jacket. She was staring blankly at the television. Her skin was pale as milk, her hair lay heavy and limp against the side of her neck. The young woman who had carried out a massacre of innocents in the name of Islam was obviously frightened.

“Are you ready?” asked Natalie.

“I can’t.” Safia spoke as though a hand were squeezing her throat.

“Of course you can. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Safia held a cigarette between the trembling fingers of her left hand. With her right she was clutching her detonator — too tightly, thought Natalie.

“Maybe I should drink a little vodka or whisky,” Safia was saying. “They say it helps.”

“Do you really want to meet Allah smelling of alcohol?”

“I suppose not.” Her eyes moved from the television to Natalie’s face. “Aren’t you afraid?”

“A little.”

“You don’t look afraid. In fact, you look happy.”

“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

“For death?”

“For vengeance,” said Natalie.

“I thought I wanted vengeance, too. I thought I wanted to die. .”

The invisible hand had closed around her throat again. She appeared incapable of speech. Natalie removed the cigarette from Safia’s fingertips, crushed it out, and laid the butt next to the twelve others she had smoked that afternoon.

“Shouldn’t we be leaving?”

“In a minute.”

“Where are we going?”

She didn’t answer.

“You have to tell me the target, Safia.”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

Her voice was as brittle as dead leaves. She had the pallor of a corpse.

“Do you think it’s true?” she asked. “Do you think we’ll go to paradise after our bombs explode?”

I don’t know where you’ll go, thought Natalie, but it won’t be into the loving arms of God.

“Why wouldn’t it be true?” she asked.

“I sometimes wonder whether it’s just. .” Again, her voice faltered.

“Just what?”

“Something men like Jalal and Saladin say to women like us to turn us into martyrs.”

“Saladin would put on the vest if he were here.”

“Would he really?”

“I met him after you left the camp in Palmyra.”

“I know. He’s very fond of you.” An edge of jealousy crept into her voice. It seemed she was still capable of at least one emotion other than fear. “He told me you saved his life.”

“I did.”

“And now he’s sending you out to die.”

Natalie said nothing.

“And what about the people we kill tonight?” Safia asked. “Or the people I killed in Paris?”

“They were unbelievers.”

The detonator suddenly felt hot in Natalie’s hand, as though she were clutching a live ember. She wanted nothing more than to rip the suicide vest from her body. She glanced around the interior of the room.

Are you watching? What are you waiting for?

“I killed the woman in France,” Safia was saying. “The Weinberg woman, the Jew. She was going to die of her injuries, but I shot her anyway. I’m afraid—” She cut herself off.

“Afraid of what?”

“That I’m going to meet her again in paradise.”

Natalie could summon no response from the well of lies within her. She placed a hand on Safia’s shoulder, lightly, so as not to startle her. “Shouldn’t we be going?”