The Secret Servant (32 page)

T
wo homecomings of note occurred the day after Christmas. The first had for its backdrop Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and was broadcast live around the world. A president was in attendance, as was his entire national security team and most of the Congress. A Marine band played; a country-music star sang a patriotic song. Speeches were made about American determination and resolve. Praise was heaped upon the men and women of American and British intelligence who had made this day possible. No mention was made of ransom or negotiation and the name Israel was not uttered. Elizabeth Halton, still traumatized by her captivity and the circumstances of her rescue, attempted to address the crowd, but managed only a few words before breaking down. She was immediately placed aboard a waiting helicopter and flown under heavy guard to a secret location to begin her recovery.

The second homecoming took place at Ben-Gurion Airport and, by coincidence, occurred at precisely the same moment. There were no politicians in attendance and no television cameras present to record the event for posterity. No patriotic music was performed, no speeches were made; indeed, there was no official reception of any kind. As far as the State of Israel was concerned, the twenty-six men and women aboard the arriving charter from London did not exist. They were nonpersons. Ghosts. Lies. They disembarked in darkness and, despite the lateness of the hour, were shuttled immediately to an anonymous office block in Tel Aviv’s King Saul Boulevard, where they endured the first of what would be many debriefings. There was nothing pro forma about these sessions; they knew that once the celebrations had ended the questions would begin. A storm was coming. Shelters would have to be hastily constructed. Provisions set aside. Cover stories made straight.

For the first seventy-two hours after Elizabeth Halton’s dramatic rescue, the official British version of events went unchallenged. Her recovery, according to this version, had been the result of tireless efforts by the intelligence and police services of the United Kingdom, working in concert with their friends in America. While ransom had been offered by Ambassador Halton in desperation, it had not been paid. The two gunmen who had killed the would-be suicide bombers at Westminster Abbey were members of the Met’s SO19 division. For obvious reasons of security, the two men could not be identified publicly or made available to the media for comment—now or at any point in the future, said the Met commissioner emphatically.

The first cracks in the story appeared four days after Christmas, not in the United Kingdom but in Denmark, where a local newspaper carried an intriguing report about a mysterious explosion at a summer cottage along the North Sea. The Danish police had originally said the cottage was unoccupied, but a local paramedic, speaking on condition of anonymity, disputed that claim, saying he had personally seen three bodies removed from the charred rubble. The paramedic also claimed to have treated a German-speaking man for superficial facial wounds. Lars Mortensen, chief of the Danish Security Intelligence Service, appeared before a hastily convened news conference in Copenhagen and confirmed that, yes, there were indeed three people killed in the incident and, yes, it was linked to the search for Elizabeth Halton. Mortensen then declared he would have nothing else to say about the matter until a formal investigation had been carried out.

The next crack in the official version of events came two days later in Amsterdam, where an Egyptian woman of late middle age appeared at a press conference and confirmed that one of the people killed in northern Denmark had been her husband, Ibrahim Fawaz. Speaking in Arabic through an interpreter, Mrs. Fawaz said that she had been informed by American officials that her husband had been working on their behalf and had perished during a failed attempt to rescue Miss Halton. She also said that all attempts to reach her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson in Copenhagen had been unsuccessful. Her left-leaning lawyers speculated that Ibrahim Fawaz had been kidnapped by American agents and coerced into working on the CIA’s behalf. They called on the Dutch justice minister to order an investigation of the matter and the minister did so at four that afternoon, promising that it would be full and unflinching.

The next morning in London, a Home Office spokesman confirmed that the son of Ibrahim Fawaz had been one of two terrorists found dead in a bomb-laden transit van that crashed into a field in Essex shortly after dawn on Christmas morning. The spokesman also confirmed that Fawaz the younger had been shot several times in the leg and that the driver of the van, as yet still unidentified, had been fatally shot in the head. Who had inflicted the wounds, and precisely what had transpired in Essex, was not yet known, though British investigators were operating under the assumption that a second attack had been planned for Christmas morning and that it had somehow gone awry.

On New Year’s Day the
Telegraph
called into question the government’s version of the events at Westminster Abbey. According to the authoritative newspaper, several witnesses said the gunman who shouted at Elizabeth to run away did so in an accent that was not British. Another witness, who walked past the two gunmen seconds before the shootings, heard them speaking to one another in a language other than English. After listening to recordings of twenty different languages, the witness identified Hebrew as the one he had heard.

The dam broke the following day when the
Times
, in an explosive exposé headlined
THE JERUSALEM CONNECTION
, laid out a compelling case of Israeli involvement in the rescue of Elizabeth Halton. Contained in the coverage was a photograph, snapped by a man waiting to enter the Abbey, that showed two gunmen fleeing Westminster seconds after the rescue. Facial-recognition experts hired by the
Times
stated conclusively that one of the men was none other than Gabriel Allon, the legendary Israeli agent who had killed three of the terrorists in Hyde Park the morning of Elizabeth’s abduction.

By that evening there were full-throated demands in Parliament for Her Majesty’s Government and secret services to come clean about the events that had led to Miss Halton’s recovery. Those demands were echoed across the capitals of western Europe, and in Washington, where reporters and members of Congress called on the White House to explain what the president knew of Allon’s connection to the affair. It was becoming increasingly clear, said the president’s detractors, that American intelligence officers and their Israeli allies had run roughshod over Europe in their frantic quest to find Miss Halton before the deadline and secure her release. What, precisely, had transpired? Had laws been bent or broken? If so, by whom?

The government of Israel, besieged by press inquiries at home and abroad, broke its official silence on the affair the following morning. A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister’s Office conceded that the secret intelligence service of Israel had indeed granted assistance to American investigators. Then she made clear that the nature of the assistance given would never be divulged. As for suggestions that Gabriel Allon travel to London and Washington to assist in the official inquiries into the affair, her response was vague at best. Gabriel Allon was on an extended leave of absence for personal reasons, she explained, and as far as the government of Israel was concerned his whereabouts were unknown.

Had they made any serious attempt to locate him, which they most certainly had not, they would have found him resting quietly at his tidy little apartment in Narkiss Street. He had weathered storms like this before and knew that the best course of action was to place boards over the doors and windows and say nothing at all.

His injuries were such that he had little energy for anything else. Between the beatings he had suffered at the hands of his captors and the crash that occurred during his rescue, he had suffered numerous broken and cracked bones, dozens of facial and other lacerations, and deep bruises to every limb of his body. His abdomen ached so badly he could not take food, and two days after his return to Jerusalem he found that he could not turn his head. A doctor affiliated with the Office came round to see him and discovered he had suffered a previously undiagnosed injury to his neck that made it necessary for him to wear a stiff brace for several weeks.

For two weeks he did not move from his bed. Though used to the process of healing and recovery, his naturally restless nature made him a poor patient. To help pass the long empty hours, he diligently followed his own case in the newspapers and on television. As evidence of Israeli involvement in the affair mounted, so did expressions of outrage from Europe’s restive Islamic communities and their quisling supporters on the European left. The horror of the London bombings and Elizabeth Halton’s abduction seemed quickly forgotten, and in its place rose a Continent-wide indignation over the tactics that had been used to find and rescue her. Shamron’s carefully brokered agreements with the justice ministries and security services of Europe soon lay in tatters. Gabriel was once more a wanted man—wanted for questioning in the Netherlands and Denmark over the death of Ibrahim Fawaz, wanted for questioning in the United Kingdom over his role in Elizabeth Halton’s rescue.

There was another storm raging, one that went largely unnoticed by the global media and a human rights community seemingly obsessed with the alleged misdeeds of Gabriel and his team. On the other side of Israel’s western border, in Egypt, the regime of Hosni Mubarak was dealing with a Sword of Allah–inspired insurrection the way it had dealt with every Islamic challenge in the past—with overwhelming force and ruthless brutality. The Office had picked up reports of street battles between the army and Islamists from the Nile Delta to Upper Egypt. There were also reports of massacres, summary executions, widespread use of torture, and a concentration camp in the Western Desert where thousands of radicals were being held without charge. A hastily prepared Office estimate had concluded that Mubarak would likely survive the challenge and that, for the moment at least, Israel would not be confronted with an Islamic republic on its western flank. But at what cost? Repression breeds radicals, said the estimate, and radicals commit acts of terror.

By the middle of January, Gabriel was strong enough to leave his bed. The doctor came round again and, after poking and prodding at his neck, decided it had healed sufficiently to remove the brace. Eager to shut out the unpleasant events swirling around him, he focused solely on plans for the wedding. He sat for hours with Chiara in the living room, leafing through glossy bridal magazines and engaged in deep and meaningful discussions about matters such as food and flowers. They chose a date in mid-May and prepared a provisional guest list, which included seven hundred names. After two hours of hard bargaining, they managed to pare only twenty of them. A week later, when the bruising in his face finally dissipated to an acceptable level, they ventured out into Jerusalem together to inspect hotel ballrooms and other potential sites for the ceremony and reception. The special events coordinator at the King David Hotel, after inquiring about the size of the guest list, jokingly insisted they consider holding the wedding at Teddy Kollek Stadium instead, a suggestion Chiara did not find at all amusing. She sulked during the short drive back to Narkiss Street.

“Maybe this is a mistake,” said Gabriel carefully.

“Here we go again,” she replied.

“Not the wedding—only the
size
of the wedding. Maybe we should have something small and private. Family and friends.
Real
friends.”

She exhaled heavily. “Nothing would make me happier.”

By early February he felt a strong desire to work. He left Narkiss Street at ten o’clock one morning and drove up to the Israel Museum to see if there was anything lying about that might occupy his time. After a brief meeting with the head of the European paintings division, he left with a lovely panel by Rembrandt, appropriately called
St. Peter in Prison
. The panel was structurally sound and required only a clean coat of varnish and a bit of inpainting. He set up shop in the spare bedroom of the apartment, but Chiara complained about the stench of his solvents and pleaded with him to move his operations to a proper studio. He found one, in the artists’ colony overlooking the Valley of Hinnom, and began working there the following week.

With the arrival of the Rembrandt, his days finally acquired something of a routine. He would arrive at the studio early and work until midday; then, after taking a break for a leisurely lunch with Chiara, he would return to the studio and work until the light was no good. Once or twice a week, he would cut his afternoon session short and drive across Jerusalem to the Mount Herzl Psychiatric Hospital to spend time with Leah. It had been many months since he had seen her last, and the first three times he appeared she did not recognize him. On his fourth visit she greeted him by name and lifted her cheek to him to be kissed. He wheeled her into the garden and together they sat beneath an olive tree—the same olive tree he had seen in his dreams while in the hands of the Sword of Allah. She placed her hand against his face. Her skin was scarred by fire and cold to the touch.

“You’ve been fighting again,” she said.

He nodded his head slowly.

“Black September?” she asked.

“That was a long time ago, Leah. They don’t exist anymore.”

She looked at his hands. They were smudged with pigment.

“You’re painting again?”

“Restoring.”

“Can you work on me when you’re finished?”

A tear spilled onto his cheek. She brushed it away and looked again at his hands.

“Why aren’t you wearing a wedding ring?”

“We’re not married yet.”

“Second thoughts?”

“No, Leah—no second thoughts.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” She looked away suddenly and the light went out of her eyes. “Look at the snow, Gabriel. Isn’t it beautiful?”