The Black Widow

A pair of fighters remained in the room always, and the Iraqi appeared every hour or so to stare at the prostrate man on the floor, as if willing him to regain consciousness. During his third visit, Natalie pulled at Saladin’s earlobe and tugged the thick hair of his beard, but there was no response.

“Must you?” asked the Iraqi.

“Yes,” said Natalie, “I must.”

She pinched the back of his hand. Nothing.

“Try talking to him,” she suggested. “A familiar voice is helpful.”

The Iraqi crouched next to the stretcher and murmured something into Saladin’s ear that Natalie could not discern.

“It might help if you say it so he can actually hear it. Shout at him, in fact.”

“Shout at Saladin?” The Iraqi shook his head. “One does not even raise one’s voice to Saladin.”

By then, it was late afternoon. The shaft of light from the oculus had traveled slowly across the room, and now it heated the patch of bare floor where Natalie sat. She imagined that God was watching her through the oculus, judging her. She imagined that Gabriel was watching her, too. In his wildest operational dreams, surely he had not contemplated a scenario such as this. She pictured her homecoming, a meeting in a safe house, a tense debriefing, during which she would be forced to defend her attempt to save the life of the most dangerous terrorist in the world. She pushed the thought from her mind, for such thoughts were perilous. She had never met a man named Gabriel Allon, she reminded herself, and she had no interest in the opinion of her God. Only Allah’s judgment mattered to Leila Hadawi, and surely Allah would have approved.

There was no electricity in the house, and with nightfall it plunged into darkness. The fighters lit old-fashioned hurricane lamps and placed them around the room. The Iraqi joined Natalie for supper. The fare was far better than at the camp in Palmyra, a couscous worthy of a Left Bank café. She did not share this insight with her dinner companion. He was in a dark mood, and not particularly good company.

“I don’t suppose you can tell me your name,” said Natalie.

“No,” he answered through a mouthful of food. “I don’t suppose I can.”

“You don’t trust me? Even now?”

“Trust has nothing to do with it. If you are arrested when you return to Paris next week, French intelligence will ask you who you met during your vacation in the caliphate. And you will give them my name.”

“I would never talk to French intelligence.”

“Everyone talks.” Again, it seemed the Iraqi spoke from personal experience. “Besides,” he added after a moment, “we have plans for you.”

“What sort of plans?”

“Your operation.”

“When will I be told?”

He said nothing.

“And if he dies?” she asked with a glance at Saladin. “Will the operation go forward?”

“That is none of your affair.” He scooped up a portion of the couscous.

“Were you there when it happened?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m making conversation.”

“In the caliphate, conversation can be dangerous.”

“Forget I asked.”

He didn’t. “I arrived soon after,” he said. “I was the one who pulled him out of the rubble. I thought he was dead.”

“Were there other casualties?”

“Many.”

“Is there anything I can—”

“You have one patient and one patient only.” The Iraqi fixed his dark eyes on Saladin. “How long can he go on like this?”

“He’s a large man, strong, otherwise healthy. It could go on a very long time.”

“Is there anything more you can do to revive him? A shot of something?”

“The best thing you can do is talk to him. Say his name loudly. Not his nom de guerre,” she said. “His real name. The name his mother called him.”

“He didn’t have a mother.”

With those words the Iraqi departed. A woman cleared away the couscous and brought tea and baklava, an unheard of delicacy in the Syrian portion of the caliphate. Natalie checked Saladin’s pulse, blood pressure, and lung function every thirty minutes. All showed signs of improvement. His heartbeat was slowing and growing stronger, his blood pressure was rising, the right lung was clearing. She checked his eyes, too, by the light of a butane cigarette lighter — the right eye first, then the left. The pupils were still responsive. His brain, regardless of its state, was alive.

At midnight, some twenty-four hours after the American air strike, Natalie was in desperate need of a few hours’ sleep. Moonlight shone through the oculus, cold and white, the same moon that had illuminated the ruins of Palmyra. She checked the pulse, blood pressure, and lungs. All were progressing nicely. Then she checked the eyes by the blue glow of the butane lighter. The right eye, then the left.

Both remained open after the examination.

“Who are you?” asked a voice of shocking strength and resonance.

Startled, Natalie had to compose herself before answering. “My name is Dr. Leila Hadawi. I’m taking care of you.”

“What happened?”

“You were injured in an air strike.”

“Where am I now?”

“I’m not sure.”

He was momentarily confused. Then he understood. Fatigued, he asked, “Where is Abu Ahmed?”

“Who?”