The Black Widow

“I’m the last person you’re ever going to see.”

Swiftly, Mikhail drew a gun from the small of his back. It was a.22-caliber Beretta, with no suppressor. It was a naturally soft-spoken weapon.

“I’m here for Hannah Weinberg,” he said quietly. “And for Rachel Lévy and Arthur Goldman and all the other people you killed in Paris. I’m here for the victims in Amsterdam and America. I speak for the dead.”

“Please,” whispered the Jordanian. “I can help you. I know things. I know the plans for the next attack.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I swear.”

“Where will it be?”

“Here in London.”

“What’s the target?”

Before Jalal could answer, Mikhail fired his first shot. It shattered the bottle of milk and lodged in the Jordanian’s heart. Slowly, Mikhail moved forward, firing nine more shots in rapid succession, until his target lay motionless in the entrance, in a pool of blood and milk. The gun was empty. Mikhail rammed a new magazine into the grip, placed the barrel to the dead man’s head, and fired one last shot. The eleventh. Behind him, a motorcycle pulled to the curb. He climbed onto the back, and in a moment he was gone.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

THE BLACK WIDOW IS A work of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Visitors to the rue des Rosiers in the Fourth Arrondissement of Paris will search in vain for the Isaac Weinberg Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism in France. Isaac’s granddaughter, the fictitious Hannah Weinberg, created the center at the end of The Messenger, the first novel in which she appeared. Hannah’s van Gogh painting, Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table, is also fictitious, though its tragic provenance is quite obviously drawn from the terrible events of Jeudi Noir and the Paris Roundup in July 1942.

I wish I could say that the anti-Jewish attacks described in the first chapter of The Black Widow were cut from whole cloth. But sadly they, too, were inspired by truth. Anti-Semitism in France, much of it emanating from Muslim communities, has compelled thousands of French Jews to leave their homes and emigrate to Israel. Indeed, eight thousand departed in the twelve months following the brutal murder of four Jews at the Hypercacher kosher market in January 2015. Many French Jews pass their afternoons in Independence Square in Netanya, at Chez Claude or one of the other cafés that cater to a growing francophone clientele. I can think of no other religious minority or ethnic group that is fleeing a Western European country. What’s more, the Jews of France are swimming against the tide, moving from the West to the most dangerous and volatile region on the planet. They are doing so for one reason only: they feel safer in Israel than they do in Paris, Toulouse, Marseilles, or Nice. Such is the condition of modern France.

Alpha Group, the secret counterterrorism unit of the DGSI portrayed in The Black Widow, does not exist, though I hope for all our sakes that something like it does. For the record, I am aware of the fact that the headquarters of Israel’s secret intelligence service is no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. I have chosen to keep the headquarters of my fictitious service there in part because I like the name of the street much more than the current address, which I shall not mention in print. There is indeed a limestone apartment building at 16 Narkiss Street in Jerusalem, but Gabriel Allon and his new family do not live there. During a recent visit to Israel, I learned that the building is now a stop on at least one guided tour of the city. My deepest apologies to the residents and their neighbors.