The Black Widow

The exchange gave her an electrical charge, a lightness in her fingertips, a blurriness of her vision, that was akin to the first blush of desire. She did not report it; there was no need. They were monitoring her computer and her phone. They were watching her, too. She saw them sometimes on the streets of Aubervilliers — the pockmarked tough who had conducted her final interrogation in the land of the Jews, the man with the forgettable face, the man with eyes like winter. She ignored them, as she had been trained to do, and went about her business. She tended to her patients, she gossiped with the women of the housing estates, she averted her eyes piously in the presence of boys and young men, and at night, alone in her apartment, she wandered the rooms of the house of extremist Islam, hidden behind her protective software and her vague pen name. She was a black widow, a ticking time bomb.

Approximately twenty miles separate the banlieue of Aubervilliers from the village of Seraincourt, but they are a world apart. There are no halal markets or mosques in Seraincourt, no looming housing blocks filled with immigrants from hostile lands, and French is the only language one hears on its narrow streets or in the brasserie next to the ancient stone church in the village square. It is a foreigner’s idealized vision of France, France as it once was, France no more.

Just beyond the village, in a river valley of manicured farms and groomed woods, stood Château Treville. Shielded from prying eyes by twelve-foot walls, it had a heated swimming pool, two clay tennis courts, fourteen ornate bedrooms, and thirty-two acres of gardens where, if one were so inclined, one could pace with worry. Housekeeping, the Office division that acquired and maintained safe properties, was on good, if entirely deceptive, terms with the château’s owner. The deal — six months, with an option to extend — was concluded with a swift exchange of faxes and a wire transfer of several thousand well-disguised euros. The team moved in the same day that Dr. Leila Hadawi settled into her modest little flat in Aubervilliers. Most stayed only long enough to drop their bags and then headed straight into the field.

They had operated in France many times before, even in tranquil Seraincourt, but never with the knowledge and approval of the French security service. They assumed the DGSI was looking over their shoulders at all times and listening to their every word, and so they behaved accordingly. Inside the château they spoke a terse form of colloquial Office Hebrew that was beyond the reach of mere translators. And on the streets of Aubervilliers, where they kept a vigilant watch on Natalie, they did their best not to betray family secrets to their French allies, who were watching her, too. Rousseau acquired an apartment directly opposite Natalie’s where rotating teams of operatives, one Israeli, the other French, maintained a constant presence. At first, the atmosphere in the flat was chilly. But gradually, as the two teams became better acquainted, the mood warmed. For better or worse, they were in this fight together now. All past sins were forgiven. Civility was the new order of the day.

The one member of the team who never set foot in the observation post or on the streets of Aubervilliers was its founder and guiding light. His movements were unpredictable, Paris one day, Brussels or London the next, Amman when he needed to consult with Fareed Barakat, Jerusalem when he needed the touch of his wife and children. Whenever he slipped into Château Treville, he would sit up late with Eli Lavon, his oldest friend in the world, his brother-in-arms from Operation Wrath of God, and scour the watch reports for signs of trouble. Natalie was his masterpiece. He had recruited her, trained her, and hung her in a gallery of religious madness for the monsters to see. The viewing period was nearing its end. Next would come the sale. The auction would be rigged, for Gabriel had no intention of selling her to anyone but Saladin.

And so it was that, two months to the day after the Clinique Jacques Chirac opened its doors, Gabriel found himself in Paul Rousseau’s office on the rue de Grenelle. The first phase of the operation, declared Gabriel, batting away another onslaught of pipe smoke, was over. It was time to put their asset into play. Under the rules of the Franco-Israeli operational accord, the decision to proceed was supposed to be a joint one. But the asset was Gabriel’s, and therefore the decision was his, too. He spent that evening at the safe house in Seraincourt in the company of his team, and in the morning, with Mikhail at his side and Eli Lavon watching his back, he boarded a train at the Gare du Nord and headed for Brussels. Rousseau made no attempt to follow them. This was the part of the operation he didn’t want to know about. This was the part where things would get rough.

24 RUE DU LOMBARD, BRUSSELS