He passed the remainder of the afternoon stretched out on the couch in the sitting room with the burner phone resting on his chest. Shortly before six he shaved and showered and changed into clean clothing. Knight and Higgins arrived with a takeaway dinner at seven, this time from Socca. They ate without appetite at the dining room table, the phone resting between them. It rang at 8:05p.m., an hour before the expiration of Gabriel’s deadline. He accepted the call and raised the phone to his ear. “Good evening, Mr. Allon,” said the automated female voice. “Now, listen carefully.”
15
Parc de Bruxelles
It was one thing to dispatch a few lines of text via email, quite another to transmit undeniable photographic evidence that one’s hostage was alive and well. This the kidnappers steadfastly refused to do. They were far too disciplined to make a mistake like that, too professional. Nor would they agree to leave the proof-of-life photo somewhere in London, with its Orwellian network of surveillance cameras. Brussels was as close as they would get.
The Bombardier Challenger made retrieval of the image a bit less arduous. Gabriel boarded the luxurious private jet at London City Airport shortly before the 10:30p.m.curfew and was on the ground in Brussels an hour later. Thirty minutes after that, at 1:00a.m.local time, a chauffeured Mercedes sedan delivered him to the Parc de Bruxelles. He slipped through an open gate on the Rue Ducale and then made his way along a cobbled footpath toward the octagonal ornamental pond at the center of the park. Along the left side of the walkway, nestled amid a stand of trees, was a café called the Woodpecker, an establishment he had frequented in a previous life.
The service windows of the small wooden hut were tightly shuttered, and the surrounding picnic tables were deserted and dripping with the remnants of a recent rain. He illuminated the undersideof one of the tables—the one indicated by the automated female voice—and spotted a length of opaque masking tape holding a small object in place. With his thumbnail he pried away a corner of the tape and tugged gently. The object, a USB flash drive left by one of the kidnappers, dropped into his palm.
He walked back to the car, and the driver took him to the Hotel Brussels. It was located on the Avenue Louise, in an unsightly tower that looked like something the Soviets might have thrown up in East Berlin during the darkest days of the Cold War. Higgins had reserved a suite on an upper floor. Inside, Gabriel placed his laptop on the desk and with some trepidation inserted the USB flash drive. It contained a single file. He clicked the touchpad twice, and a photograph blossomed onto the screen.
She was wearing the same white blouse she had worn the day of her disappearance. Her pale hair hung limp and lifeless, and there were dark semicircles beneath her eyes. The faded contusion on her left cheek appeared genuine, as did the magazine she held in her hands. It was the current issue ofThe Economist. The cover story concerned the perilous state of American democracy.
The wall behind her was gray cinder block—a cellar, thought Gabriel, or perhaps an industrial room of some sort. He enlarged the photograph and searched for evidence of manipulation. Her skin tone, the shape of her nose and mouth, the curl of her fingers around the edges of the magazine, the consistency of the lighting. Harsh and white, like the light of the halogen work lamps in Gabriel’s studio, it shone from Alice’s left. The shadows fell to the left throughout the image, without deviation.
Indeed, to Gabriel’s restorer’s eye, the image appeared authentic. That did not mean, however, that it had not been fabricated with the help of artificial intelligence. Chiara was right; he required the services of a skilled cyber professional, someone who could subject the image to sophisticated digital analysis.
The ringing of his mobile phone shattered the silence in the hotel room. Gabriel saw the number and his heart sank. He was not looking forward to this conversation.
He accepted the call and heard the voice of Edward Knight. “Was it there?” he asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Send it to me.”
“I’d rather you not see it.”
“She’s my wife, Allon.”
He dispatched the photograph by email.
“Dear God,” said Knight a moment later. “Look what they’ve done to my beautiful Alice.”
“Are you sure it’s really her?”
“Who else would it be?”
“A computer-generated image of Alice.”
“I know my wife, Allon. That’s definitely her.”
“I’d still like to have it examined before we proceed with the negotiations.”
“Time is of the essence.”
“For them, but not for us. This is only the beginning.”
Knight exhaled heavily. “Do you have anyone in mind for the job?”
“One of the best in the business.”
“And what business is that?”
“Cybersecurity.”
“I insist you send me the bill.”
