Obsession (Year of Fire) (10 page)

“
Bonne année
, monsieur.”

“
Bonne année a toi
, Évanie. Any messages?”

“None, sir. Your mother, Madame Francesca, was here yesterday. She came with your brother Monsieur Shariar. She told me that she had just arrived from Jeddah to spend the new year with all of you.”

“Has Mr. Shiloah Moses arrived?”

“Not yet. We expect him any moment.”

“
Merci
.”

There was an unusual silence in the rooms on the eighth floor. On a normal working day, telephones were ringing, his secretaries were rushing around sending faxes, making photocopies and preparing folders, meetings were held with clients and his men were coming and going as he summoned and sent them on different missions. He looked at the time. Nine thirty in the morning. His Rolex Submariner now had pleasant connotations and he laughed at the memory. He decided to take a bath. Shiloah Moses wouldn’t arrive until at least ten thirty.

A little while later, with a towel wrapped around his waist, he went into the living room and looked out one of the windows facing the hotel’s internal garden. As he stood looking at the fountain, he dried his hair roughly to relax his thick scalp. What was Matilde doing right now? The sound of the telephone broke the silence.

“It’s me, boss. Medes.”

“Where are you?”

“At Vladimir’s house, he’s developing the pictures.”

“Did you find them?” Medes answered affirmatively. “Finish what you’re doing and come to the George V.”

He turned to go back into the bathroom, and his gaze strayed to the oil painting hanging over the wood stove: it was a portrait of Jacques Méchin, whom he had loved like a grandfather. His paternal grandfather, the founder of the Saudi kingdom, had died before he was born, and his maternal grandfather wasn’t really related to him. Alfredo Visconti, his grandmother Antonina’s husband, had loved Francesca like a daughter and thus her children like grandchildren. Eliah felt great affection for the old Italian and remembered fondly the summers he spent in the Villa Visconti, in Val d’Aosta, in northern Italy. He still enjoyed his company and cultivated conversation, but the man he had really adored was Jacques Méchin. His absence still pained him. Before he died, Jacques had named him heir to his estate, including the house that had belonged to the Méchins for generations, on the exclusive Avenue Elisée Reclus, on the corner of Rue Maréchal Harispe, and a ranch on the outskirts of Rouen, where Eliah raised Holsteiner horses.

Shiloah Moses showed up at ten thirty, fresh faced and smiling as always. They greeted each other with a hug. Shiloah took a step back, looked at his friend and said, “
Mon frère
, you’re always looking as fit as a fiddle.” He said it in English, the language they had learned at the bilingual high school where they met.

Al-Saud, who was now wearing a white V-neck Ralph Lauren T-shirt, dark blue jeans and olive-green Hogan shoes, looked youthful and relaxed.

“I, on the other hand,” Shiloah said, “look more like my father every day, and not just because I’m losing my hair.” He slapped his belly. “But you look tired. Did you not sleep well?”

“I didn’t sleep at all,” Eliah confirmed. “Tell me, did they give you room six oh four?” Moses nodded. “Peter Ramsay has already installed the electronic countermeasures so you can speak freely. We can’t guarantee any other sector in the hotel.”

“For God’s sake, Eliah! We’re in your brother’s hotel.”

“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 Yasmín’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.