Obsession (Year of Fire) Read online

  “My brother can’t vouch for every employee he hires or every person who checks in. Even if we did careful background checks, you know the records can be falsified. My dear friend, ever since you decided to dedicate yourself to Israeli politics, and got the idea of a single two-nation state in your head, a lot of people have turned against you, starting with Mossad, which has made the task of watching your back increasingly difficult.”

  “A task for which I pay you a fortune,” Shiloah noted, and laughed until he clapped a hand on Eliah’s shoulder. “Buddy, it’s good to see you again.”

  Shiloah Moses and Eliah Al-Saud had known each other since they were in kindergarten, and, along with Sabir Al-Muzara, their bonds of friendship had grown stronger over time as they had weathered various storms. When they were younger, they hadn’t realized how unusual their trio was: the son of the president of the Zionist Federation of France, the son of a Saudi prince and the son of an exiled Palestinian. Sometimes their mischievous group had expanded to include Eliah’s brothers Shariar and Alamán, and Sabir’s older brother, Anuar. They had mainly met up at the Moses household since Gérard, Shiloah’s brother, couldn’t leave the house due to his congenital illness, which prevented him from venturing into the sunlight.

  Eliah and Shiloah went to the little kitchen to make coffee.

  “Why are you here and not at home? If we were there we could be drinking Leila’s excellent Colombian coffee.”

  “Since you’re staying here, I thought it would be more comfortable for you. Why was it so urgent for us to see each other today, on the first of January?” Al-Saud wanted to know.

  “You know that in a few weeks the convention for the two-nation state will begin and I won’t have any time to chat to you in peace. I wanted to do so today without constantly ringing phones or interruptions.”

  Al-Saud brought him up to date with the security measures Mercure would deploy during the convention, which was to be held at the George V Hotel. In his opinion no precaution, however small, could be overlooked; they were facing the transfer of the powder keg that was the Middle East to a conference room at the George V in Paris.

  The doorbell rang.

  “At least there won’t be interruptions, I said,” Shiloah complained.

  “It’s Medes.” Eliah moved toward the door. “I just need to speak to him for a second.”

  Medes greeted Shiloah from afar and followed his boss into an office. They closed the door behind them.

  “Show me the photos.”

  Medes handed them to him across the desk and, as his boss flipped through them slowly, studying each one, he described the route of the targets he had been charged with watching.

  “Did you find out who the BMW belongs to?”

  “Vladimir spoke to his friend at thirty-six Quai des Orfèvres.” He took a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and read, “His name is René Raoul Sampler.”

  Al-Saud turned on the computer and, as the programs booted up, turned back to the photographs. Who was this René Sampler who was hugging, caressing and kissing Matilde like that? It seemed to him that there was something more than mere affection in the looks they were exchanging; there was love.

  “Go back to Rue Toullier and stand guard day and night. I want you to focus on the blonde girl. Follow her wherever she goes. You’ll take turns with Diana. You can go now. There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen if you’d like.”

  He entered the name of the car owner into the computer. He was an ad model with the Jean-Paul Trégart agency. Twenty-five years old, from Strasbourg, no criminal record. The photograph the system gave him wasn’t good. His fists clenched over the keyboard. Were they lovers? Why was the prospect intolerable to him? He jumped up, sending the wheeled chair into a wall. He went back to the living room and sat in an armchair, opposite Shiloah.

  “What a face! Is there a problem?”

  “No problem. I was telling you that Tony is in charge of maintaining a perimeter of our people around the hotel. Nobody will come in or out without registering or going through the metal detectors Alamán will set up at the entrances. I’ll need you to give me a list of the guests who will be staying at the George V.”

  “They can’t all afford it. The poorest will be staying in cheaper hotels.”

  Eliah’s cell phone rang.

  “Allô?”

  “Son, it’s me,” Francesca Al-Saud said in Spanish.

  “Hello, Mama. When did you arrive?”

  “Three days ago. How are you, dear?”

  “Good.”

  Francesca Al-Saud felt that God had been more than generous with her. She didn’t ask him for anything for herself, simply for the health and happiness of her sons, especially Eliah, who for many years had wandered through life with a broken heart.

  “Alamán told us that you went to Argentina. For your Friesians?”

  “Yes. How’s Papa?”

  “He’s very well. He’s right here, next to me. He says hello.”

  “I’m with Shiloah. He also says hello.”

  “Oh, Shiloah! Pass him the phone.”

  Shiloah adored Madame Francesca, who had always welcomed him affectionately in their house on Avenue Foch, in Paris, where there a harmony nonexistent at his own home reigned. They had also invited him to the Villa Visconti in northern Italy a few times, and even once to the estate in Jeddah. Nobody would have imagined that the Prince of Kamal’s sons would be friends with the son of one the most powerful Zionists in the world, Gérard Moses, even less that they would invite him to tread on Islamic territory.

  Shiloah hung up and laughed at Eliah’s grimace. Eliah found it hard to understand his friend’s bottomless good humor. Three years before, he had seen his wife blown up by a suicide attack committed by the Palestinian group Hamas in a pizzeria in Tel Aviv. Moses had only survived because he had gone to the bathroom minutes before the attack.

  “My old lady didn’t have anything else to say to me?”

  “No. She just said that she was expecting us at the house on Avenue Foch for lunch. All your siblings have confirmed they’re going. Your aunt Fátima and her family arrived yesterday from Riyadh and they’ll be there too, along with your aunt Sofía and your uncle Nando.”

  “Let’s get on with it, Shiloah. I want to finish as soon as possible. Every participant in the conference will be given a credential with a microchip containing all that person’s relevant information. They won’t be able to enter without that credential. Every day, before the talks begin, the room will be cleared of microphones and other accessories.”

  “How much will all this cost me?”

  “It won’t be cheap, mon frère. You wanted me to protect this circus, so now you have to finance it.”

  “It’s the launch of my political career, the birth of my political party. Guess what I called it? Tsabar.”

  “Enlighten me. You know I don’t know much Hebrew.”

  “Tsabar is the word for the plant Cactus opuntia. In fact, my party’s logo is the silhouette of the plant. It’s a figurative allusion to the tenacity and spiny character of the cactus, which can survive in the desert and protects a soft interior with a sweet flavor. Yes!” he exclaimed. “The costs incurred will be well spent.”

  Al-Saud stared at him.

  “Why are you doing this, Shiloah?”

  “If Takumi sensei was here, he would tell you that I’m doing it because I’m unable to rein in the Horse of Fire inside of me. I love challenges and achieving the impossible. Nothing motivates me more.” Suddenly, his face looked serious. “I’m doing it for so many reasons, mon frère, but above all I’m doing it for her, for Mariam. Dying like that, at the hands of her own people…it can’t go on. Someone has to do something.”

  Shiloah Moses’s wife, though she had French citizenship, came from a Palestinian family that, after the war in 1948, had taken refuge in Paris under the protective wing of some rich relatives. Shiloah had met her at the Al-Saud household, as Mariam was one of his sister Ya
smín’s best friends. In spite of opposition from both families, Shiloah and Mariam defended their relationship. It was thought that the romance would end when Shiloah left for Israel at eighteen to enroll in the Tsahal, the Israeli army. The year passed, and Shiloah Moses continued to send letters and gifts to Mariam, who swore to be faithful in turn.

  “They’ll block your political project, Shiloah.”

  “Oh, there are many like me. Peace Now, the Israeli Committee Against Demolition, the Progressives for Peace, the Palestinian Youth League for Peace, et cetera. They let them be. Why not me?”

  “Because you have serious economic power and you’re a public figure in your country. You’re not like the others, people with good intentions and no power. Your ecological campaigns have won you respect and affection in many sectors.”

  “And that’s what I’ll use to my advantage to bring my ideas for unity to the Knesset,” he said, referring to the Israeli parliament.

  “Shiloah, if you really want to make a difference and join the struggle for peace, why don’t you support the PLO?” Eliah was referring to Yasser Arafat’s party, the Palestinian Liberation Organization. “And support a Palestinian state?”

  Moses opened a folder that he had left on the table between them and took out a map of the West Bank.

  “Look at this, Eliah. These are the Israeli settlements and here are the Palestinian cities. It’s the same as what the black population had to suffer under apartheid in South Africa. The Israeli settlements have everything going for them: the protection of the Tsahal, the road system that connects them to the rest of Israel—which is forbidden to Palestinians—while the Palestinians are trapped in ghetto islands. And now they’re talking about building a wall! Do you really believe that the Palestinian state has a chance? We have to work on the idea of a united state, because the settlements aren’t going anywhere, so there’s no other way of stopping the violence.”

  “Shiloah, you’re a Zionist. What are you talking about?”

  “Yes, I am, but I think that Zionism has achieved its goal, a Jewish state. Now is the time to coexist with the Arabs. For centuries both communities lived in peace. We can have no more pariahs like they had in Nazi Germany.”

  “Why do you say that the Israeli settlements will never abandon the West Bank?”

  “Because of the resources, mon frère, water especially. Water is the most important thing in my country. Eighty percent of the water in the West Bank ends up in Israel. And water is life.”

  “Then the Oslo Accords were a sham.”

  “Sabir warned you that in ’93, when the damn documents were signed.”

  Al-Saud rested his elbows on his knees and cradled his head in his hands. It was all a terrible mess.

  “Your idea is a utopia,” he concluded, finally.

  “No, it’s not,” Shiloah refuted. “Anything is possible, and it pains me that you, of all mortals, would try to tell me that something can’t be done. You, who does whatever he wants and successfully too. Regardless of what stands in your way.”

  “There are too many complications. I’m just thinking of the opposition you’ll get from the Israeli parties and centers of power, not to mention the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It’s overwhelming. If we add the United States into the equation, then prospects are really starting to look bleak.”

  “Step by step. Little by little.”

  “Moreover, in your newspaper,” Eliah said, referring to Breaking News, “you’ve always criticized the Mossad for not appearing in the budget and generally enjoying impunity. You’ve shaken up a hornet’s nest by saying they should be subject to Knesset supervision. Now you have them against you. And they’re not to be messed with, I’m warning you.”

  “Ah, but that’s why I have you! So you can watch my back.”

  “I’ve already told you how difficult you’re making it, mon frère. Tell me, Shiloah.” The tone of Al-Saud’s voice silenced Moses’s laugh. “What do you know about the Israeli Institute of Biological Research?”

  “Not much. I can tell you that the residents of Ness-Ziona, the city where it’s located, have expressed their fears about the type of products manufactured there. In the last few years, six employees have died under pretty murky circumstances, probably as a result of handling highly toxic substances.”

  The ring of a cell phone interrupted their conversation. Al-Saud checked who was calling before answering. Céline. He closed and turned off the phone.

  “Answer it,” Moses encouraged him. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “It’s not important. Tell me, Shiloah, do you remember the air disaster in Bijlmer?” He pronounced it correctly, “beilmer.”

  “The cargo plane that crashed into a building in Amsterdam?” Al-Saud nodded. “It was a huge scandal for El Al.”

  “We’re trying to find out what the El Al plane was carrying.”

  “Mercure is investigating?” Moses was surprised. “Why would Mercure be doing that?”

  “Mike”—Michael Thornton, Mercure’s other partner—“Tony and I are broadening our horizons. We’re working on expanding the business. The pressure’s on with the UN resolution banning mercenary forces. We’ve decided to diversify.”

  “Oh, mercenaries will never cease to exist!”

  “I know, but the demand for our services might fall, and we have very high fixed costs. So we’ve decided to branch into other businesses, such as high-risk investigations and economic and industrial protection services. You already know that industrial and economic espionage is a serious issue. In the Bijlmer case, what we’re uncovering might help your political campaign.”

  “That’s interesting. I’m listening.”

  “We’ve been contracted by two of the largest insurance companies in the Netherlands, who have to cover the cost of property and human lives lost in the accident. They want to know what the El Al plane was carrying. Mike interviewed a few of the Bijlmer residents who swore that they saw four or five people dressed like astronauts wandering around in the middle of the chaos right after the accident. The health problems among the residents of Bijlmer have gotten worse since the accident. You can see it in the statistics from hospitals in the area.”

  “That’s no proof of anything.”

  “It is if the people all fall ill with the same symptoms, ranging from skin problems to a rare type of cancer. Though the causes of the accident are well known, it was never revealed what the cargo plane was carrying. The Dutch and Israeli authorities are not being very helpful with regard to handing over the freight documents, which has raised suspicions.”

  “A great friend of mine is a manager at El Al. He doesn’t much like government shenanigans either. I’ll ask him if he knows anything.”

  “That might be useful to us. We learned two interesting facts from Mike’s trip to Amsterdam. First, an employee from the Department of Cargo Operations at Amsterdam-Schiphol airport swore that there was a fourth man on flight 2681. It has always been claimed that only the crew were traveling: the pilot, the copilot and the plane engineer. However, this man swears he saw a fourth. Who is it? Why wasn’t his presence recorded? Secondly, this same employee, who was supervising the cargo, saw several Danger labels. He knew that the material was military. The man swears that while he was putting the boxes through the pressure chamber used to detect and detonate potential bombs, he saw a label he hadn’t seen before. Next to the Danger sign it read, ‘Chemical Blahetter Inc. Origin: Córdoba—Argentina.’ He noticed it because it was written in Spanish and he knows the language a little. We’re following up on that clue. We are going to get to the heart of the matter and expose it in the press. It won’t be just the insurance companies who benefit from this investigation. No doubt you’ll have a better chance in the elections after a scandal of this magnitude.”

  Shiloah listened to Al-Saud with his eyes on the floor and a hand on his chin.

  “I’m now thinking about how best to prepare the terrain to take advantage of this news. What do
you think the El Al plane was carrying?”

  “Mike thinks that we’re dealing with compounds used to produce chemical weapons: nerve agents such as sarin gas, tabun, soman and others, all used by the Nazis during World War II.”

  “What makes him suspect that?”

  “A very interesting conversation he had with the air-traffic controller who was supervising flight 2681’s takeoff. The guy swears that after the pilot informed him that he couldn’t get control of the aircraft for the emergency landing and the plane seemed doomed, the tower at Amsterdam-Schiphol asked him repeatedly to try to ditch in Lake IJssel. Why would a pilot, an Israeli air force veteran with twenty-five thousand hours of flight experience, be unable to steer the plane toward the lake?” Al-Saud answered himself. “Because he wanted to avoid the water at all costs, even though that meant crashing in a densely populated area. A chemical weapons expert explained to Mike that dimethyl methyl phosphate and chlorine thionyl, both components of sarin gas, react furiously on contact with water. If the plane had ended up in Lake IJssel, the catastrophe would have been of unimaginable proportions. I think that the pilot did what he had to do to save the population of Amsterdam.”

  “How would the pilot know that the dimethyl…chlorine…or whatever they were would react so lethally with the water? That’s hardly something everyone knows.”

  “Either the pilot was warned about the cargo he was carrying and the dangers that were involved, which seems improbable, or the fourth man played an important role in the decision to crash into the Bijlmer estate.”

  “Are these chemicals used in other processes that don’t involve making chemical weapons? Insecticides, fertilizers or pharmaceuticals, for example?”

  “According to the UN Convention on Chemical Weapons, thionyl chlorate is classified in table three, which is to say that it’s listed as used in the manufacture of chemical weapons as well as other legitimate industrial products. Its sale is controlled and restricted. Dimethyl methyl phosphate, on the other hand, is classified in table two, elements that are essential to the production of chemical weapons and that aren’t used in large quantities for civilian purposes. Sale of table two substances is prohibited.”