Tariq smiled tightly. He’d known it would come to this. He couldn’t begrudge her wanting to know. “We’re not doing this alone, you and I,” said Tariq. “There are others hoping for the same outcome.”
“Israelis,” said Dahlia.
“They’d better be,” said Tariq, with a laugh. Then seriously: “Yes, Israelis. Members of their government. Men who’d prefer that I rule Qatar, not my brother.”
Dahlia nodded, and he could see that the answer pleased her. “What did she want? I mean, why was it so important to meet her at the restaurant?”
“To blackmail me,” said Tariq.
“To sell you back what she’d stolen,” said Dahlia.
“More to convince me not to go ahead,” said Tariq. “Stop or else.”
“So she knew,” said Dahlia. “About what we plan to do.”
“She thought she knew,” said Tariq. “Mostly, she was trying to save herself.”
“Are you worried?” said Dahlia. “You know ... that she told others?”
“No difference if she did,” said Tariq. “I made sure no one would believe her. We made sure. My friends and I.”
“Did you kill her?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
“I’d like to know.”
“No, I didn’t,” said Tariq. “Not yet.”
“But you will?”
“We will need someone to blame for my brother’s death,” said Tariq. “It can’t be an Arab killing an Arab. And it certainly can’t be me. She’s a Jew. She will do nicely. Her name is Ava. Ava Marie Mercier Attal.”
“Thank you,” said Dahlia.
“You were right to ask,” said Tariq. “You should know.”
Dahlia put her hand in his and squeezed. “There will be blood,” she said.
“It’s a coup,” said Tariq. “There’s always blood.”
Chapter 40
27 Avenue Montaigne
Paris
Ava was free.
The flex-cuffs that had bound her hands lay on the floor, severed by a retractable X-Acto knife. The knife sat on the windowsill, next to a flash drive and a miniature cell phone—a BM70: three inches long, an inch wide, as thin as the latest iPhone. A text on the thumbnail-sized screen readTNT has Samson. Driving to Epernay, his vineyard. Maids cleaning rooms. Posse watching TV. Be careful.
Ava slid the phone and flash drive into her pocket, picked up the X-Acto, and crossed the room to the door. She pressed down on the handle. Locked. A girl could hope, couldn’t she? Entry was governed by a biometric scanner on the other side of the door. There was no corresponding panel inside the bedroom, which meant that once unlocked, the door remained open until an authorized party relocked it upon leaving. Whether the door was alarmed, she didn’t know.
It was no mystery how Ava had smuggled in the necessary tools. On arriving yesterday afternoon, she’d been searched; her phone, billfold, and cosmetics were taken from her. It was an amateurish search—polite, even. Nothing like what a prisoner got when checking into a place like Shikma, the maximum-security facility in southern Israel housingHezbollah and Hamas fighters. The intake procedure there was neither amateurish nor polite. No need to elaborate.
Ava had long experience crossing hostile borders, living behind enemy lines, living with the enemy himself. Damascus, Amman, Beirut, other places she was prohibited from discussing. She knew what to take with her and how to transport it to avoid detection. No one ever said spying was glamorous.
Ava dug the X-Acto knife into the wood above the escutcheon and methodically hollowed out a space until the wiring connecting the lock to the scanner was visible. With care, she drew the bundle of wires out of the door. There were two ways to do this. Cut them all and cross her fingers. Or mimic the signal transmitted when the scanner generated a positive match. To do this, she had to send an electric current to the lock mechanism itself. Today, however, Ava didn’t have a choice. Pinching the wires together, she severed them with the razor-sharp blade. Fingers crossed and a silent prayer.
