Portrait of a Spy

Chapter 21 New York City

A REMARKABLY ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF THE worrisome new terrorist chatter appeared the next morning in the New York Times. Gabriel read the story with more than passing interest on the Amtrak Acela from Washington to New York. His seatmate, a Washington political consultant, spent the entire journey shouting into her mobile phone. Every twenty minutes, a policeman in paramilitary garb strode through the carriage with a bomb-sniffing dog. It seemed the Department of Homeland Security had finally come to realize the trains of Amtrak were rolling terrorist catastrophes waiting to happen.

A prickly rain greeted Gabriel as he emerged from Penn Station. Nevertheless, he spent the next hour hiking the streets of Midtown Manhattan. At the corner of Lexington Avenue and East Sixty-third Street, he saw Chiara peering into the window of a shoe store, a mobile phone pressed to her right ear. Had she been holding it to her left, it would have meant Gabriel was under surveillance. The right meant he was clean and that it was safe to proceed to the target.

He walked across town to Fifth Avenue. Dina was perched on the stone wall bordering Central Park, a black-and-white kaffiyeh around her neck. A few paces farther south, Eli Lavon was buying a soft drink from a street vendor. Gabriel brushed past him without a word and headed toward the used-book stalls at the corner of East Sixtieth Street. An attractive woman stood alone at one of the trestle tables, as though killing a few minutes before an appointment. She kept her gaze downward for several seconds after Gabriel’s arrival, then looked at him for a long moment without speaking. She had dark hair, olive-complected skin, and wide brown eyes. A thin smile animated her face. Not for the first time, Gabriel had the uncomfortable feeling he was being studied by a figure from a painting.

“Was it really necessary for me to take the bloody subway?” Zoe Reed asked resentfully in her posh London accent.

“We had to make certain you weren’t being followed.”

“I assume by your presence I’m not.”

“You’re clean.”

“What a relief,” she said archly. “In that case, you can take me to the Pierre for a drink. I’ve been on the air since six this morning.”

“I’m afraid your face is far too well known for that. You’ve become quite the star since coming to America.”

“I was always a star,” she replied playfully. “It just doesn’t count unless you’re on television.”

“I hear you’re getting your own show.”

“Prime time, actually. It’s supposed to be witty news chat with an emphasis on global affairs and business. Perhaps you’d like to appear on the debut program.” She lowered her voice and added conspiratorially, “We can finally tell the world how we brought down the Iranian nuclear program together. It has all the elements of a blockbuster. Boy meets girl. Boy seduces girl. Girl steals boy’s secrets and gives them to the Israeli secret service.”

“I don’t think anyone would find it credible.”

“But that’s the beauty of American cable news, darling. It doesn’t have to be credible. It just has to be entertaining.” She brushed a drop of rain from her cheek, then asked, “To what do I owe this honor? Not another security review, I hope.”

“I don’t do security reviews.”

“No, I don’t suppose you do.” She picked up a novel from the table and turned the cover toward Gabriel. “Ever read him? His character is a bit like you—moody, egotistical, but with a sensitive streak women find irresistible.”

“That one’s more to my taste,” he said, pointing toward a battered Rembrandt monograph.

Zoe laughed. “Please let me buy it for you.”

“It won’t fit in my carry-on. Besides, I already own a copy.”

“Of course you do.” She returned the novel to its place and with feigned casualness glanced up Fifth Avenue. “I see you brought along two of your little helpers. I believe you referred to them as Max and Sally when we were at the safe house in Highgate. Not the most realistic cover names, if you ask me. Better suited to a pair of Welsh corgis than two professional spies.”

“There is no safe house in Highgate, Zoe.”

“Ah, yes, I remember. It was all just a bad dream.” She managed a fleeting smile. “Actually it wasn’t all bad, was it, Gabriel? In fact, it went quite smoothly until the end. But that’s the way it is with affairs of the heart. They always end disastrously and someone always gets hurt. Usually, it’s the girl.”

She picked up the Rembrandt monograph and leafed through the pages until she came to a painting called Portrait of a Young Woman. “What do you suppose she’s thinking?” she asked.

“She’s curious,” replied Gabriel.

“About what?”

“About why a man from her recent past has reappeared without warning.”

“Why has he?”

“He needs a favor.”

“The last time he said that, it almost got her killed.”

“It’s not that kind of favor.”

“What is it?”

“An idea for her new prime-time cable news program.”

Zoe closed the book and returned it to the table. “She’s listening. But don’t try to mislead her. Remember, Gabriel, she’s the one person in the world who knows when you’re lying.”

The rain ended as they entered the park. They drifted slowly past the Delacorte clock, then made their way to the foot of Literary Walk. For the most part, Zoe listened in studied silence, interrupting only to challenge Gabriel or to clarify a point. Her questions were posed with the intelligence and insightfulness that had made her one of the world’s most respected and feared investigative reporters. Zoe Reed had made just one mistake during her celebrated career—she had fallen in love with a glamorous Swiss businessman who, unbeknownst to her, was selling restricted nuclear materials to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Zoe had atoned for her sins by agreeing to join forces with Gabriel and his allies in British and American intelligence. The result of the operation was an Iranian nuclear program in ruins.

“So you inject cash into the network,” she said, “and with a bit of luck, it moves through the bloodstream until it arrives at the head.”

“I couldn’t have put it any better myself.”

“Then what happens?”

“You cut off the head.”

“What does that mean?”

“I suppose that depends entirely on the circumstances.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Gabriel.”

“It could mean the arrest of important members of the network, Zoe. Or it could mean something more definitive.”

“Definitive? What an elegant euphemism.”

Gabriel paused before the statue of Shakespeare but said nothing.

“I won’t be a party to a killing, Gabriel.”

“Would you rather be a party to another massacre like the one in Covent Garden?”

“That’s beneath even you, my love.”

With a dip of his head, Gabriel conceded the point. Then he took Zoe by the elbow and led her down the walkway.

“You’re forgetting one important thing,” she said. “I agreed to work with you and your friends on the Iran case, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forsaken my values. At my core, I remain a rather orthodox left-wing journalist. As such, I believe it is essential that we combat global terrorism in ways that don’t compromise our basic principles.”

“That sort of pithy comment sounds wonderful from the safety of a television studio, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way in the real world.” Gabriel paused, then added, “You do remember the real world, don’t you, Zoe?”

“You still haven’t explained what any of this has to do with me.”

“We would like you to make an introduction. All you have to do is start the conversation. Then you recede quietly into the background, never to be seen again.”

“Hopefully with my head still attached.” She was joking, but only a little. “Is it anyone I know?”

Gabriel waited for a pair of lovers to pass before speaking the name. Zoe stopped walking and raised an eyebrow.

“Are you serious?”

“You know better than to ask a question like that, Zoe.”

“She’s one of the richest women in the world.”

“That’s the point.”

“She also happens to be notoriously press shy.”

“She has good reason to be.”

Zoe started walking again. “I remember the night her father was killed in Cannes,” she said. “According to the press accounts, she was at his side when he was gunned down. The witnesses say she held him as he was dying. Apparently, it was bloody awful.”

“So I’ve heard.” Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and saw Eli Lavon walking a few paces behind, a Moleskine notebook under his right arm, looking like a poet in search of inspiration. “Did you ever look into it?”

“Cannes?” Zoe narrowed her eyes. “I scratched around the edges.”

“And?”

“I was never able to come up with anything firm enough to take to print. The running theory in London financial circles was that he was killed as a result of some kind of internal Saudi feud. Apparently, there was a prince involved, a low-level member of the royal family who’d had several run-ins with European police and hotel staff.” She looked at Gabriel. “I suppose you’re going to tell me there was more to the story.”

“There are things I can tell you, Zoe, and things I cannot. It’s for your own protection.”

“Just like last time?”

Gabriel nodded. “Just like last time.”

A few paces ahead, Chiara sat alone on a bench. Zoe managed not to look at her as they passed. They walked a little farther, to the Wisteria Pergola, and huddled beneath the latticework. As the rain started up again, Gabriel explained exactly what he needed Zoe to do.

“What happens if she gets angry and decides to tell my bosses I’m working on behalf of Israeli intelligence?”

“She has far too much to lose to pull a stunt like that. Besides, who would ever believe such a wild accusation? Zoe Reed is one of the world’s most respected journalists.”

“There’s a certain Swiss businessman who might not agree with that statement.”

“He’s the least of our worries.”

Zoe lapsed into a thoughtful silence, which was interrupted by the pinging of her BlackBerry. She fished it from her handbag, then stared at the screen in silence, her face distraught. A few seconds later, Gabriel’s own BlackBerry vibrated in his coat pocket. He managed to keep a blank expression on his face as he read it.

“Looks like it wasn’t harmless chatter after all,” he said. “Do you still think we should fight these monsters in ways that don’t compromise your core values? Or would you like to return briefly to the real world and help us save innocent lives?”

“There’s no guarantee she’ll even take my call.”

“She will,” Gabriel said. “Everyone does.”

He asked for Zoe’s BlackBerry. Two minutes later, after downloading a file from a Web site claiming to offer discount travel to the Holy Land, he returned it.

“Conduct all your negotiations using this device. If there’s something you need to say to us directly, just say it near the phone. We’ll be listening all the time.”

“Just like last time?”

Gabriel nodded. “Just like last time.”

Zoe slipped the BlackBerry into her handbag and rose. Gabriel watched as she walked away, followed by Lavon and Chiara. He sat alone for several minutes, reading the first news bulletins. It appeared as though Rashid and Malik had just taken another step closer to America.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

Chapter 22 Madrid-Paris

THE OLD COMPLACENCY HAD RETURNED to Madrid, but this was to be expected. It had been seven years since the deadly train bombings, and memories of that terrible morning had long since faded. Spain had responded to the massacre of its citizens by withdrawing its troops from Iraq and launching what it described as “an alliance of civilizations” with the Islamic world. Such action, said the political commentators, had succeeded in redirecting Muslim rage from Spain to America, where it rightly belonged. Submission to the wishes of al-Qaeda would protect Spain from another attack. Or so they thought.

The bomb exploded at 9:12 p.m., at the intersection of two busy streets near Puerta del Sol. It had been assembled at a rented garage in an industrial quarter south of the city and concealed in a Peugeot van. Owing to its ingenious construction, the initial force of the blast was directed leftward into a restaurant popular with Spanish governing elites. There would be no firsthand account of precisely what occurred inside, for no one lived to describe it. Had there been a survivor, he would have recounted a brief but terrible instant of airborne bodies adrift in a lethal cloud of glass, cutlery, ceramic, and blood. Then the entire building collapsed, entombing the dead and dying together beneath a mountain of shattered masonry.

The damage was greater than even the terrorist had hoped. Façades were ripped from apartment buildings for an entire block, exposing lives that, until a few seconds earlier, had been proceeding peacefully. Several nearby shops and cafés suffered damage and casualties while the small trees lining the street were shorn of their leaves or uprooted entirely. There were no visible remnants of the Peugeot van, only a large crater in the street where it once had been. For the first twenty-four hours of the investigation, the Spanish police were convinced the bomb had been detonated remotely. Later, they discovered traces of the shahid’s DNA sprayed amid the ruins. He was just twenty, an unemployed Moroccan carpenter from the Lavapiés district of Madrid. In his suicide video, he spoke fondly of Yaqub al-Mansur, the twelfth-century Almohad caliph known for his bloody raids into Christian lands.

It was against this dreadful backdrop that Zoe Reed of the American business news network CNBC placed her first call to the publicity department of AAB Holdings, formerly of Riyadh and Geneva, lately of the Boulevard Haussmann, in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. The time was ten past four in the afternoon, the weather in Paris predictably overcast. The inquiry received no immediate response, per standing AAB protocol.

Annually cited by Forbes magazine as one of the most successful and innovative investment firms in the world, the company was founded in 1979 by Abdul Aziz al-Bakari. Known to friends and detractors alike as Zizi, he was the nineteenth son of a prominent Saudi merchant who had served as the personal banker and financial adviser to Ibn Saud, the Kingdom’s founder and first absolute monarch. AAB’s holdings were as extensive as they were lucrative. AAB did shipping and mining. AAB did chemicals and drugs. AAB had major stakes in American and European banks. AAB’s real estate and hotel division was one of the world’s largest. Zizi traveled the world on a gold-plated 747, owned a string of palaces stretching from Riyadh to the French Riviera to Aspen, and sailed the seas on a battleship-sized yacht called the Alexandra. His collection of Impressionist and Modern art was thought to be among the largest in private hands. For a short period, it included Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table by Vincent van Gogh, purchased from Isherwood Fine Arts, 7–8 Mason’s Yard, St. James’s, London. The sale had been brokered by a young American named Sarah Bancroft, who went on to serve, briefly, as Zizi’s primary art consultant.

He was the target of many rumors, particularly regarding the source of his enormous fortune. AAB’s glossy prospectus claimed it had been built entirely from the modest inheritance Zizi received from his father, a claim that an authoritative American business journal, after a careful investigation, found wanting. AAB’s extraordinary liquidity, it said, could be explained by only one thing: it was being used as a front for the House of Saud to quietly reinvest its petrodollars around the world. Outraged by the article, Zizi threatened to sue. Later, on the advice of his lawyers, he had a change of heart. “The best revenge is living well,” he told a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. “And that is something I know how to do.”

Perhaps, but the handful of Westerners who were granted entrée into Zizi’s inner circle always sensed a certain restlessness in him. His parties were lavish affairs, yet Zizi seemed to take no pleasure in them. He neither smoked nor drank alcohol and refused to be in the presence of dogs or pork. He prayed five times a day; each winter, when the rains made the Saudi desert bloom, he retreated to an isolated encampment in the Nejd to meditate and hunt with his falcons. He claimed to be a descendant of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab, the eighteenth-century preacher whose austere, puritanical version of Islam became the official creed of Saudi Arabia. He built mosques around the world, including several in America and Western Europe, and gave generously to the Palestinians. Firms looking to do business with AAB knew better than to send a Jew to meet with Zizi. According to the rumor mill, Zizi liked Jews even less than he liked losses on his investments.

As it turned out, Zizi’s charitable activities extended far beyond what was publicly known. He also gave generously to charities associated with Islamic extremism and even directly to al-Qaeda itself. Eventually, he crossed the thin but bright line separating the financiers and enablers of terrorism from the terrorists themselves. The result was an attack on the Vatican that left more than seven hundred people dead and the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica in ruins. With Sarah Bancroft’s help, Gabriel hunted down the man who planned the attack—a renegade Saudi intelligence officer named Ahmed Bin Shafiq—and killed him in a hotel room in Istanbul. A week later, on the Quai Saint-Pierre in Cannes, he killed Zizi, too.

Despite his adherence to Saudi traditions, Zizi had but two wives, both of whom he had divorced, and a single child—a beautiful daughter named Nadia. She buried her father in the Wahhabi tradition, in an unmarked desert grave, and immediately consolidated her hold on his assets. She moved AAB’s European headquarters from Geneva, which bored her, to Paris, where she was more comfortable. A few of the firm’s more pious employees refused to work for a woman—especially one who shunned the veil and consumed alcohol—but most stayed on. Under Nadia’s guiding hand, the company entered previously uncharted territories. She acquired a famous French fashion company, an Italian maker of luxury leather goods, a substantial portion of an American investment bank, and a German motion picture production company. She also made significant changes to her personal holdings. Her father’s many homes and estates were quietly put up for sale, as was the Alexandra and his 747. Nadia now traveled on a more modest Boeing Business Jet and owned just two homes—a graceful mansion on the Avenue Foch in Paris and a lavish palace in Riyadh that she rarely saw. Despite her lack of formal business training, she had proved to be an adept and skillful manager. The total value of the assets now under AAB’s control was higher than at any point in company history, and Nadia al-Bakari, at just thirty-three, was regarded as one of the richest women in the world.

AAB’s media relations, such as they were, fell under the purview of Nadia’s executive assistant, a well-preserved Frenchwoman of fifty named Yvette Dubois. Madame Dubois rarely bothered to acknowledge requests from reporters, especially those employed by American companies. But upon receiving a follow-up call from the famous Zoe Reed, she decided a response was in order. She allowed another day to elapse, then, for good measure, she placed the call in the middle of the night, New York time, when she assumed Ms. Reed would be sleeping. For reasons not known to Madame Dubois, that turned out not to be the case. The conversation that followed was cordial but hardly promising. Madame Dubois explained that the offer of a one-hour prime-time special, while flattering, was entirely beyond the realm of possibility. Ms. al-Bakari was traveling constantly and had several large deals pending. More to the point, Ms. al-Bakari simply didn’t do the kind of interview Ms. Reed had in mind.

“Will you at least give her the request?”

“I’ll give it to her,” the Frenchwoman said, “but the chances are not good.”

“But not zero?” Zoe asked, probing.

“Let’s not play little word games, Ms. Reed. They’re beneath us.”

Madame Dubois’s concluding remark produced an outburst of much-needed laughter at Château Treville, an eighteenth-century French manor house located north of Paris, just beyond the village of Seraincourt. Shielded from prying eyes by twelve-foot walls, it had a heated swimming pool, two clay tennis courts, thirty-two acres of manicured gardens, and fourteen ornate bedrooms. Gabriel had rented it in the name of a German high-tech firm that existed only in the imagination of an Office corporation lawyer and promptly sent the bill along to Ari Shamron at King Saul Boulevard. Under normal circumstances, Shamron would have balked at the exorbitant price tag. Instead, with no small amount of pleasure, he forwarded the bill to Langley, which had assumed responsibility for all operational expenses.

For the next several days, Gabriel and his team spent most of their time monitoring the feed from Zoe’s BlackBerry, which was now functioning as a tireless little electronic spy in her pocket. They knew her precise latitude and longitude, and, when she was in motion, they knew the speed at which she was traveling. They knew when she was buying her morning coffee at Starbucks, when she was stuck in New York traffic, and when she was annoyed with her producers, which was often. By monitoring her Internet activity, they knew she was planning to remodel her Upper West Side apartment. By reading her e-mail, they knew she had many romantic suitors, including a millionaire bond trader who, despite heavy losses, somehow found the time to drop her at least two missives a day. They sensed, in spite of all her success, that Zoe was not altogether happy in America. She whispered coded greetings to them often. At night, her sleep was made restless by nightmares.

To the rest of the world, however, she projected an air of cool indomitability. And to the select few who were privileged to witness her seduction of the French publicist, she provided yet more proof that she was the greatest natural spy any of them had ever encountered. Her tradecraft was a textbook combination of sound technique matched with unyielding persistence. Zoe flattered, Zoe cajoled, and, at the end of one particularly contentious phone call, Zoe even managed a few tears. Even so, Madame Dubois proved to be more than a worthy opponent. After a week, she declared the negotiations at an impasse, only to reverse course two days later by unexpectedly sending Zoe a detailed questionnaire. Zoe completed the document in perfect French and returned it the following morning, at which point Madame Dubois adopted a posture of radio silence. At Château Treville, Gabriel’s team lapsed into an uncharacteristic despair as several precious days slipped past with no further contact. Only Zoe was optimistic. She had been through many such seductions in the past and knew when the hook had been set. “I’ve got her, darling,” she murmured to Gabriel late one night, as the BlackBerry was recharging on her bedside table. “It’s only a question of when she capitulates.”

Zoe’s prediction proved correct, though the Frenchwoman would allow an additional twenty-four hours to elapse before announcing her conditional surrender. It came in the form of a grudging invitation. It seemed that, owing to an unexpected cancellation, Ms. al-Bakari was free for lunch in two days’ time. Would Ms. Reed be willing to make the trip to Paris on such short notice? The consummate professional, Zoe waited ninety annoying minutes before returning the call and accepting.

“Let me be clear about one thing,” Madame Dubois said. “This is not an interview. The luncheon will be completely off the record. If Ms. al-Bakari feels comfortable in your presence, she will consider taking the next step.”

“Where shall I meet her?”

“As you might expect, Ms. al-Bakari finds it difficult to conduct business in restaurants. We’ve taken the liberty of booking the Louis XV Suite at the Hôtel de Crillon. She’s expecting you at one-thirty. Ms. al-Bakari insists on paying. It’s one of her rules.”

“Does she have any others I should know about?”

“Ms. al-Bakari is sensitive about questions concerning the death of her father,” Madame Dubois said. “And I wouldn’t dwell on the subject of Islam and terrorism. She finds it terribly boring. À tout à l’heure, Ms. Reed.”

Chapter 23 Paris

IN THE AFTERMATH, THE TEAM would recall the period of preparation that came next as among the most unpleasant they had ever endured. The cause was none other than Gabriel, whose brittle mood cast a pall over the rooms of Château Treville. He quibbled over the placement of observation posts, second-guessed backup plans, and even briefly considered requesting a change of venue. Under normal circumstances, the team would not have hesitated to push back, but they could sense that something about the operation had set Gabriel on edge. Dina reckoned it was Covent Garden and the terrible memories of the shot not taken, a theory that was dismissed by Eli Lavon. It was not London that weighed on Gabriel’s mind, Lavon explained, but Cannes. Gabriel had violated a personal canon that night; he had killed Zizi in front of his daughter. Zizi al-Bakari, financier of mass murder, had deserved to die. But Nadia, his only child, had not been obliged to witness it.

Only Zoe Reed remained shielded from Gabriel’s bout of bad temper. She spent an unhurried final day in New York, then, at five-thirty that afternoon, boarded Air France Flight 17 bound for Paris. An experienced traveler, she carried only a small overnight bag and a briefcase containing her notebook computer and research packet, which included a file of highly classified material, along with a detailed briefing paper on strategy for the luncheon. The items were handed to Zoe shortly after takeoff by her seatmate, an operative from the Office’s New York station, and were collected again shortly before landing.

Still in possession of a British passport, Zoe breezed through customs in the EU express line and took a car service into the city center. It was approaching nine when she arrived at the Crillon; after checking into her room, she changed into a tracksuit and went for a run along the footpaths of the Jardin des Tuileries. At eleven thirty, she presented herself at an exclusive salon next to the hotel for a wash and blow-dry, then returned to her room to dress for lunch. She departed her room early and was standing in the elegant lobby, hands clasped to conceal a bout of nerves, as the stately grandfather clock tolled quarter past the hour.

It was the quiet time of the year at the Crillon, the annual ceasefire between the running battle of the summer season and the celebrity-strewn ambush of the winter holidays. Monsieur Didier, the chief concierge, stood behind his barricade, gold half-moon reading glasses perched at the end of his regal nose, looking like the last man on earth anyone would ask for assistance. Herr Schmidt, the imported German day manager, stood a few feet away at reception, holding a telephone to his ear, while Isabelle, the special events coordinator, fussed with orchids in the sparkling entrance hall. Her efforts went largely unnoticed by the bored-looking Arab businessman sitting near the elevators and by the pair of lovers huddled over their café crèmes in the cold shadows of the interior courtyard. The businessman was actually an employee of AAB’s generously staffed security department. The lovers were Yaakov and Chiara. The hotel staff believed them to be an agreeable couple from Montreal who had popped into Paris on short notice to comfort a friend going through a messy divorce.

As the clock struck the bottom of the hour, Isabelle drifted over to the doorway and peered expectantly into the leaden Paris afternoon. Zoe glanced into the courtyard and saw Yaakov tapping a book of matches on the tabletop. It was the prearranged signal indicating that the motorcade—two S-Class Mercedes sedans for the hired help and a Maybach 62 for Her Highness—had departed AAB’s building on the Boulevard Haussmann and was en route to the hotel. At that moment, the cars were actually stuck in traffic along the narrow rue de Miromesnil. Once free of the obstruction, it took just five minutes for them to reach the entrance of the Crillon, where Isabelle, flanked by the better-looking half of the bell staff, now stood. The undercover AAB security man was no longer feigning boredom. He was now hovering at Zoe’s shoulder, making little effort to conceal the fact he was armed.

Outside, six car doors opened in unison, and six men, all former members of the elite Saudi National Guard, emerged. One was familiar to Gabriel and the rest of the team: Rafiq al-Kamal, the burly former chief of Zizi al-Bakari’s personal security detail, who now served in the same capacity for his daughter. It was al-Kamal who had conducted the advance sweep of the hotel earlier that morning. And it was al-Kamal who now walked a subservient step behind Nadia as she flowed from the back of her Maybach into the lobby where Zoe stood with a porcelain smile fixed upon her face and her heart beating against her breastbone.

There exist in the file rooms of King Saul Boulevard many photos of a younger version of Nadia, or, as Eli Lavon was fond of saying, Nadia before the fall. Zoe had been given access to some of the more illustrative shots during the flight from New York. They showed a petulant woman in her mid-twenties, darkly beautiful, spoiled, and superior. She was a woman who smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol behind her father’s back and who, in violation of Muhammad’s teachings, bared her flesh on some of the world’s most glamorous beaches. Her father’s death had straightened Nadia’s carriage and lent a serious light to her face, yet it had robbed her of none of her beauty. She wore a radiant dress of winter white, with her dark hair hanging straight between her shoulder blades like a satin cape. Her nose was long and straight. Her eyes were wide and nearly black. Pearls lay against the caramel-colored skin of her neck. A thick gold bracelet sparkled on her slender wrist. Her scent was an intoxicating blend of jasmine, lavender, and the sun. Her hand, when it closed around Zoe’s, was as cool as marble.

“It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you,” Nadia said in an accent that betrayed no origin other than unfathomable wealth. “I’ve heard so much about your work.”

She smiled for the first time, a cautious effort that did not quite extend to her eyes. Zoe felt slightly claustrophobic in the enclosure of the bodyguards, but Nadia conducted herself as though she were unaware of their presence.

“I’m sorry to make you come all the way to Paris on such short notice.”

“Not at all, Ms. al-Bakari.”

“Nadia,” she said, her smile genuine now. “I insist you call me Nadia.”

Al-Kamal appeared anxious to move the party out of the lobby, as did Madame Dubois, who was rocking slightly from heel to toe. Zoe suddenly felt an unseen hand on her elbow nudging her toward the elevators. She squeezed into a cramped carriage next to Nadia and her bodyguards and had to turn her shoulders slightly in order for the door to close. The scent of jasmine and lavender in the confined space was mildly hallucinogenic. On Nadia’s breath was the faintest trace of the last cigarette she had smoked.

“Do you come to Paris often, Zoe?”

“Not as often as I used to,” she answered.

“You’ve stayed at the Crillon before?”

“Actually, it’s my first time.”

“You really must allow me to pay for your room.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Zoe said with a gracious smile.

“It’s the least I can do.”

“It would also be unethical.”

“How so?”

“It could create the appearance that I’m accepting something of value in return for a favorable news piece. My company forbids it. Most journalistic enterprises do, at least the reputable ones.”

“I didn’t realize there was such a thing.”

“A reputable journalistic enterprise?” Zoe offered a confiding smile. “One or two.”

“Including yours?”

“Including mine,” said Zoe. “In fact, I would feel much more comfortable if you would allow me to pay for lunch.”

“Don’t be silly. Besides,” Nadia added, “I’m sure the famous Zoe Reed would never allow herself to be influenced by a nice lunch in a Paris hotel.”

They passed the rest of the journey in silence. When the doors of the elevator finally rattled open, al-Kamal surveyed the vestibule before leading Zoe and Nadia briskly into the Louis XV Suite. The classical French furnishings in the sitting room had been rearranged to create the impression of an elegant private dining room. Before the tall windows overlooking the Place de la Concorde was a round table set for two. Nadia surveyed the room with approval before snuffing out the single candle burning amid the crystal and silver. Then, with a movement of her dark eyes, she invited Zoe to sit.

There ensued a somewhat farcical few moments of unfurling napkins, closing doors, furtive glances, and murmured exchanges—some in French, some in Arabic. Finally, at Nadia’s insistence, the security men retreated into the corridor, accompanied by Madame Dubois, who was visibly uneasy about the prospect of leaving her boss alone with the famous reporter. The sommelier poured a few drops of Montrachet into Nadia’s glass. Nadia pronounced it satisfactory, then looked at Zoe’s BlackBerry, which was resting on the table like an uninvited guest. “Would you mind turning that off?” she asked, attempting to make light of the request. “One can never be too careful these days when it comes to electronic devices. You never know who might be listening.”

“I understand completely,” said Zoe.

Nadia returned her glass to the table and said, “I’m sure you do.”

Were it not for the miniature transmitter carefully concealed in the hotel suite, those four words, at once innocent and ominous, might have been the last heard by the man of medium height and build pacing the rooms of a château north of Paris. Instead, with a few keystrokes on his notebook computer, the audio feed resumed with only a brief interruption. In the courtyard of the Crillon, the couple from Montreal departed, replaced by two women in their mid-thirties. One had sandstone-colored hair and childbearing hips; the other had dark hair and walked with a slight limp. She pretended to read a glossy Paris fashion magazine. It helped to quiet the clock ticking relentlessly in her head.

Chapter 24 Paris

SOME RECRUITMENTS ARE LIKE SEDUCTIONS, some border on extortion, and still others are like a ballet of the wounded. But even Ari Shamron, who had haunted the secret world far longer than most, would later say that he had never witnessed anything quite like the recruitment of Nadia al-Bakari. Having listened to the opening act over a secure link at King Saul Boulevard, he declared it one of the most masterful pieces of fieldwork he had ever heard. It was especially high praise given that the person doing the recruiting hailed from a profession for which Shamron had nothing but contempt.

Gabriel had instructed his recruiter to go slowly, and go slowly she did. For the first hour of the encounter, as hushed waiters entered and departed the hotel suite, Zoe questioned Nadia respectfully on the many changes she had made to AAB’s investment profile and on the challenges posed by the global recession without end. Much to Gabriel’s surprise, the reclusive Saudi heiress turned out to be an engaging and forthright conversationalist who seemed far wiser than her thirty-three years. Indeed, there was not a trace of tension until Zoe nonchalantly asked Nadia how often she traveled to Saudi Arabia. The question produced the first uncomfortable silence of the encounter, just as Gabriel had expected it would. Nadia regarded Zoe for a moment with her bottomless dark eyes before responding with a question of her own.

“You’ve been to Saudi Arabia?”

“Once,” replied Zoe.

“For your work?”

“Is there any other reason for a Westerner to go to Saudi Arabia?”

“I suppose not.” Nadia’s expression softened. “Where did you go?”

“I spent two days in Riyadh. Then I went to the Empty Quarter to tour the new Saudi Aramco oil-drilling project at Shaybah. It was very impressive.”

“Actually, you described it as ‘a technological marvel that will ensure Saudi domination of the global oil market for at least another generation.’ ” Nadia gave a fleeting smile. “Do you really think I would agree to a meeting without first reviewing your work? After all, you do have something of a reputation.”

“For what?”

“Ruthlessness,” said Nadia without hesitation. “They say you have something of a puritanical streak. They say you like to destroy companies and executives who step out of line.”

“I don’t do that kind of work any longer. I’m on television now. We don’t investigate. We just talk.”

“You don’t miss being a real journalist?”

“By that you mean a print journalist?”

“Yes.”

“Occasionally,” Zoe admitted, “but then I look at my bank account and I feel much better.”

“Is that why you left London? For money?”

“There were other reasons.”

“What kind of reasons?”

“The kind I generally don’t discuss in professional settings.”

“It sounds as though it had something to do with a man,” Nadia said, her tone conciliatory.

“You’re very perceptive.”

“Yes, I am.” Nadia reached for her wineglass but stopped. “I don’t go to Saudi Arabia often,” she said suddenly, “once every three or four months, no more. And when I do go, I don’t stay for long.”

“Because?”

“For the reasons you would expect.” Nadia appeared to choose her next words with great care. “The laws and customs of Islam and Saudi Arabia are old and very important to our society. I’ve learned how to navigate the system in a way that allows me to conduct my business with a minimum of disruption.”

“What about your countrywomen?”

“What about them?”

“Most aren’t as lucky as you are. Women in Saudi Arabia are considered property, not people. Most spend their lives locked away indoors. They’re not permitted to drive an automobile. They’re not permitted to go out in public without a male escort and without first concealing themselves beneath an abaya and a veil. They’re not permitted to travel, even inside the country, without receiving permission from their fathers or older brothers. Honor killings are permissible if a woman brings shame upon her family or engages in un-Islamic behavior, and adultery is a crime punishable by stoning. In the birthplace of Islam, women cannot even enter a mosque except in Mecca and Medina, which is odd, since the Prophet Muhammad was something of a feminist. ‘Treat your women well and be kind to them,’ the Prophet said, ‘for they are your partners and committed helpers.’ ”

Nadia picked at an invisible flaw in the tablecloth. “I admire your honesty, Zoe. Most journalists trying to secure an important interview would resort to platitudes and flattery.”

“I can do that, if you prefer.”

“Actually, I prefer honesty. We don’t have enough of that in Saudi Arabia. In fact, we avoid it at all costs.” Nadia turned her gaze toward the windows. Outside, it was dark enough so that her image was reflected ghostlike in the glass. “I never realized you were so interested in the condition of Muslim women,” she said softly. “There’s no evidence of it in your previous work.”

“How much of it did you read?”

“All of it,” said Nadia. “There were many stories about corrupt businessmen but not one about the plight of Muslim women.”

“I’m interested in the rights of all women, regardless of their faith.” Zoe paused, then added provocatively, “I would think that someone in your position would be interested in them as well.”

“Why would you think such a thing?”

“Because you have the power and influence to be an important role model.”

“I run a large company, Zoe. I don’t have the time or desire to involve myself in politics.”

“You don’t have any?”

“Any what?”

“Politics.”

“I am a citizen of Saudi Arabia,” Nadia said. “We have a king, not politics. Besides, in the Middle East, politics can be very dangerous.”

“Was your father killed because of politics?” Zoe asked cautiously.

Nadia turned and gazed at Zoe. “I don’t know why my father was killed. I’m not sure anyone does, other than his murderers, of course.”

A heavy silence fell between them. It was broken a few seconds later by the sound of a door opening. A pair of waiters entered, bearing trays of coffee and pastries. They were followed by Rafiq al-Kamal, the chief of security, and Madame Dubois, who was tapping the face of her Cartier wristwatch as if to say the meeting had gone on long enough. Zoe feared Nadia might latch onto the signal as an excuse to take her leave. Instead, she ordered the intruders from the room with an imperious wave of her hand. She did the same for the waiter holding the tray of pastries, but accepted the coffee. She drank it black with an extraordinary amount of sugar.

“Are these the kinds of questions you propose to ask me on camera? Questions about the rights of women in Saudi Arabia? Questions about the death of my father?”

“We don’t divulge the questions in advance of an interview.”

“Come, come, Zoe. We both know how this works.”

Zoe made a brief show of thought. “If I failed to ask you about your father, I would be brought up on charges of journalistic malpractice. It makes you a deeply compelling figure.”

“What it makes me is a woman without a father.” Nadia removed a packet of Virginia Slims from her handbag and ignited one with a rather ordinary-looking gold lighter.

“You were there that night in Cannes?”

“I was,” said Nadia. “One minute we were all enjoying a wonderful evening in our favorite restaurant. The next I was holding my father as he lay dying in the street.”

“You saw the men who killed him?”

“There were two,” she said, nodding her head. “They rode motorcycles, very fast, very skillfully. At first, I thought they were just French boys having a bit of fun on a warm summer night. Then I saw the weapons. They were obviously professionals.” She drew on her cigarette and exhaled a slender stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “After that, everything is a blur.”

“There were reports that witnesses heard you screaming for revenge.”

“I’m afraid that retribution is the Bedouin way,” Nadia said sadly. “I suppose it runs in my blood.”

“You admired your father,” Zoe pressed.

“I did,” Nadia said.

“He was an art collector.”

“A voracious one.”

“I understand you share your father’s passion.”

“My art collection is private,” Nadia said, reaching for her coffee.

“Not as private as you think.”

Nadia looked up sharply but said nothing.

“My sources tell me that you made an important acquisition last month. They tell me that you were the one who paid the record price for the Rothko at Christie’s in New York.”

“Your sources are mistaken, Zoe.”

“My sources are never mistaken. And they’ve told me other things about you as well. Apparently, you’re not as indifferent to the rights of women in the Islamic world as you pretend to be. You’ve quietly given millions of dollars to combat violence against women and millions more to promote female entrepreneurship, which you believe will have the effect of empowering Muslim women as never before. But your charitable works don’t stop there. I’m told you’ve used your fortune to promote free and independent media in the Arab world. You’ve also attempted to counter the spread of dangerous Wahhabi ideology by donating to organizations that promote a more tolerant version of Islam.” Zoe paused. “Taken together, your activities paint a portrait of a courageous woman who is singlehandedly trying to change the face of the modern Middle East.”

Nadia managed a dismissive smile. “It’s an intriguing story,” she said after a moment. “It’s a shame none of it is true.”

“That’s too bad,” Zoe replied, “because there are people who would like to help you.”

“What sort of people?”

“People of discretion.”

“In the Middle East, people of discretion are either spies or terrorists.”

“I can assure you they’re not terrorists.”

“So they must be spies then.”

“I wasn’t told their affiliation.”

Nadia gave her a skeptical look. Zoe held out a card. It had no name, only the number of her BlackBerry.

“This is my private number. It is important that you proceed with caution. As you know, there are people around you who do not share your goal of changing the Islamic world for the better—including your own bodyguards.”

“What is your interest in this matter, Zoe?”

“I have no interest, other than obtaining an interview with a woman I greatly admire.”

Nadia hesitated. Then she accepted the card and slipped it into her handbag. At that instant, the door of the hotel suite opened again and Madame Dubois entered with Rafiq al-Kamal at her side. She was once again tapping her wristwatch. This time, Nadia rose. Looking suddenly fatigued, she extended her hand toward Zoe.

“I’m not sure I’m ready to lift the veil just yet,” she said, “but I’d like some time to consider your offer. Would it be possible for you to remain in Paris for a few days?”

“It will be a terrible hardship,” Zoe said jokingly, “but I’ll try to manage.”

Nadia released Zoe’s hand and followed her security chief into the corridor. Zoe remained behind for a moment longer before returning to her room three floors below. There she powered on her BlackBerry and called her producer in New York to explain that she would be staying on in Paris to continue the negotiations. Then she placed the BlackBerry on the bedside table and sat for a long time at the end of her bed. She smelled jasmine and lavender, the scent of Nadia, and recalled the instant of their parting. Nadia’s hand had been oddly cold to the touch. It was the hand of fear, thought Zoe. The hand of death.

Chapter 25 Seraincourt, France

ZOE’S CALL TO NEW YORK sounded in the high-ceilinged rooms of Château Treville like a fanfare of trumpets. Gabriel responded by immediately dispatching a secure cable to Adrian Carter, whereupon AAB Holdings and its owner, Nadia al-Bakari, became the target of NSA surveillance. It meant that Carter now knew the name of the wealthy Muslim with unimpeachable jihadist credentials whom Gabriel wanted to fund Rashid’s network. It also meant that, at any given moment, several dozen other members of the sprawling American intelligence community knew it, too. It was a risk Gabriel had no choice but to take. Israel’s signals intelligence service was formidable, but its capabilities paled in comparison to those of the NSA. America’s mastery of the digital world was unrivaled. It was the human factor—the ability to recruit spies and to penetrate the courts of their enemies—that eluded the Americans, and for that they had turned to the Office.

At Gabriel’s request, Carter went to great lengths to conceal Nadia’s name from the rest of official Washington. Despite the obvious potential implications for American-Saudi relations, he neglected to mention it to either the president or James McKenna at the weekly White House counterterrorism meeting. He also took care to safeguard the identity of the party who would be reviewing the NSA intercepts. They were sent first to Carter’s personal attention at Langley and then routed to the CIA station in Paris. The deputy chief, a man who owed his career to Carter, drove them personally to the grand manor house at Seraincourt, where they were signed over to Sarah Bancroft. Of particular interest to Gabriel and the team was the telephone and e-mail account of Rafiq al-Kamal, Nadia’s chief of security. Despite numerous calls placed to contacts inside the Saudi GID and Interior Ministry, al-Kamal never once mentioned the name Zoe Reed. That was not true, however, of Madame Dubois, who spent much of the next seventy-two hours burning up the lines between Paris and London, searching for dirt and gossip in Zoe’s professional past. Gabriel took this as an encouraging sign. It meant that, as far as AAB was concerned, the investigative reporter from CNBC was a public-relations problem, not a security threat.

Zoe remained blissfully unaware of the intrigue swirling around her. Following Gabriel’s carefully prepared script, she refrained from further contact with AAB or its employees. To help fill the empty hours, she visited museums and took long walks along the Seine, which allowed Eli Lavon and the rest of the field operatives to determine that she was free of any surveillance. As two more days slipped past with no word from Nadia, Zoe’s producer in New York began to grow impatient. “I want you back in the States on Monday at the latest,” he told her by telephone, “with or without the exclusive. It’s simply a question of money. Nadia has barrels full of it. We’re pinching every penny.”

The call darkened the mood at the Seraincourt safe house, as did the speech given by the French president that afternoon to an emergency session of the National Assembly. “It is not a question of whether France will be attacked by terrorists again,” the president warned, “but only a question of when and where. It is a sad fact that more lives will be lost to the fires of extremism. Regrettably, this is what it means to be a citizen of Europe in the twenty-first century.”

A few minutes after the speech ended, a message arrived from the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard. It was just four characters in length—two letters followed by two numbers—but its meaning was unambiguous. God was cooling his heels in a Montmartre safe flat. And God wanted a word with Gabriel in private.

Chapter 26 Montmartre, Paris

THE APARTMENT HOUSE STOOD ON the rue Lepic, not far from the cemetery. It was gray in color and seven floors in height, with wrought-iron balustrades and garret rooms across the top. A single leafless tree rose from the center courtyard and from the neat foyer spiraled a staircase with a well-worn runner that muffled Gabriel’s footfalls as he ascended swiftly to the third floor. The door to apartment 3A hung slightly ajar; in the sitting room was an elderly man dressed in pressed khaki trousers, a white oxford cloth shirt, and a leather bomber jacket with an unrepaired tear in the left shoulder. He had settled himself at the edge of a brocade-covered wing chair with his legs slightly splayed and his large hands bunched atop the crook of his olive wood cane, like a traveler on a rail platform resigned to a long wait. Between two yellowed fingers burned the stub of a filterless cigarette. Acrid smoke swirled above his head like a private storm cloud.

“You’re looking well,” said Ari Shamron. “Being back in the field obviously agrees with you.”

“It’s not exactly how I’d planned to spend the winter.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t have followed a suicide bomber into Covent Garden.”

Shamron gave a mirthless smile, then crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray on the coffee table. Six other stubs were already there, lined in a neat row, like bullets waiting to be loaded into a gun. He added the seventh and peered thoughtfully at Gabriel through the fog of smoke.

“It’s good to see you, my son. I thought our meeting in Cornwall last summer was going to be our last.”

“Actually, I was hoping it would be.”

“Can you at least pretend to have some regard for my feelings?”

“No.”

Shamron ignited another cigarette with his old Zippo lighter and purposely blew smoke in Gabriel’s direction.

“How eloquent,” said Gabriel.

“Words sometimes fail me. Fortunately, my enemies rarely do. And once again, they’ve managed to deliver you back into the arms of King Saul Boulevard, where you belong.”

“Temporarily.”

“Ah, yes,” Shamron agreed with disingenuous haste. “By all means, this arrangement is purely temporary.”

Gabriel went to the French doors overlooking the rue Lepic and opened one. A chill draft entered the room, bringing with it the sound of the evening traffic.

“Must you?” Shamron asked, frowning. “My doctor says I should avoid drafts.”

“Mine says I should avoid secondhand smoke. Thanks to you, I have the lungs of a man who smokes forty cigarettes a day.”

“At some point you’re going to have to stop blaming me for everything that’s gone wrong with your life.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s counterproductive.”

“It also happens to be the truth.”

“I’ve always found it best to avoid the truth. It invariably leads to unnecessary complications.”

Gabriel closed the door, muting the sound of the traffic, and asked Shamron why he had come to Paris.

“Uzi thought you could use some extra help on the ground.”

“Why didn’t he tell me you were coming?”

“It must have slipped his mind.”

“Does he even know you’re here?”

“No.”

Gabriel couldn’t help but smile. “Let’s try this one more time, Ari. Why are you in Paris?”

“I was worried.”

“About the operation?”

“About you,” Shamron said. “That’s what it means to be a father. We worry about our children until the day we die.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Forgive me, my son,” Shamron said after a moment. “I should have known better. After all, that’s my fault, too.”

He pushed himself upright and, leaning heavily on his cane, moved into the kitchen. The components of a coffee press lay scattered across the countertop, along with an empty teakettle and an open bag of Carte Noir. Shamron made a feeble attempt to light the gas stove before raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. Gabriel nudged him toward the small café-style table and lifted the bag of coffee cautiously to his nose. It smelled like dust.

“Unless I’m mistaken,” Shamron said, lowering himself into the chair, “it’s the same coffee we drank the last time we were here.”

“There’s a market next door. Do you think you can survive alone until I get back?”

With a dismissive wave of his hand, Shamron indicated the coffee was good enough. Gabriel filled the teakettle with water and placed it on the stove to boil.

“There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” Shamron said, watching him carefully.

“It’s really not that complicated, Ari. First you pour in the coffee, then you add the water, then you push the little plunger.”

“I was referring to Covent Garden. Why did you follow him? Why didn’t you simply warn Graham Seymour and go back to your cottage by the sea?”

Gabriel made no response.

“Will you allow me to offer a possible explanation?”

“If you insist.”

“You went after him because you knew full well the British had neither the courage nor the resolve to stop him on their own. Our European friends are in the midst of a full-blown existential crisis. I’m convinced it’s one of the reasons they despise us. We have a purpose. We believe our cause is just. They believe in nothing except their thirty-five-hour workweek, their global warming, and their annual six-week vacation in the south. What boggles the mind is why you choose to live among them.”

“Because once upon a time they actually believed in God, and their faith inspired them to paint like angels.”

“That’s true,” Shamron said. “But faith in God now resides almost exclusively in the jihadis. Unfortunately, it’s a faith that was born of Wahhabi intolerance and fed by Saudi money. After 9/11, the Saudis promised to put an end to the incitement that gave rise to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. But now, just ten years later, Saudi money is once again fueling the hatred, with scarcely a word of protest from the Americans.”

“They’ve managed to convince themselves that the Saudis are an important ally in the fight against terrorism.”

“They’re delusional,” Shamron said. “But it’s not entirely their fault. Oil isn’t the only thing flowing from Saudi Arabia to the West. There’s also a great deal of intelligence in the pipeline. The Saudi GID is constantly tipping off the CIA and the European services about potential plots and suspicious individuals. Occasionally, the tips contain actionable intelligence, but most of it is complete and utter crap.”

“You’re not actually suggesting,” Gabriel said sardonically, “that Saudi intelligence is playing the same old double game of combating the jihadists while at the same time supporting them?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. And the Americans are so economically weak at the moment they’re in no position to do anything about it.”

The teakettle began to hiss. Gabriel filled the press with boiling water and stood over it while waiting for the coffee to steep. He glanced at Shamron. The dour expression on his face made it abundantly clear he was still thinking about the Americans.

“Every American administration has its buzzwords. This one likes to speak in terms of equity. They’re constantly reminding us of the equity they have invested across the Middle East. They have equity in Iraq, equity in Afghanistan, and equity in maintaining a stable price of oil. At the moment, we don’t count for much on the American balance sheet. But if you succeed in neutralizing Rashid’s network . . .”

“It might add a bit of much-needed equity to our account.”

Shamron nodded grimly. “That doesn’t mean, however, that we have to conduct ourselves like a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA. In fact, the prime minister is adamant that we use this opportunity to take care of some unfinished business.”

“Like Malik al-Zubair?”

Shamron nodded.

“Something tells me you knew Malik was involved in this from the beginning.”

“Let’s just say I had a strong suspicion that might be the case.”

“So when Adrian Carter asked me to come to Washington—”

“I set aside my usual misgivings and agreed without hesitation.”

“How generous of you,” said Gabriel. “So why are you worried now?”

“Nadia.”

“She was your idea.”

“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she’s been fooling us all these years. Maybe she’s more like her father than we think.” He paused, then added, “Maybe we should cut her loose and find someone else.”

“That person doesn’t exist.”

“So forge him,” Shamron said. “I hear you’re quite good at that.”

“It’s not possible, and you know it.”

Gabriel carried the coffee to the table and poured out two cups. Shamron dumped sugar into his and stirred it thoughtfully for a moment.

“Even if Nadia al-Bakari agrees to work for you,” Shamron said, “you will have no means of keeping her under discipline. We have our traditional methods. Kesef, kavod, kussit—money, respect, sex. Nadia al-Bakari has no need for any of those things. Therefore, she cannot be controlled.”

“Then I suppose we’ll just have to trust each other.”

“Trust?” Shamron asked. “I’m sorry, Gabriel, but I’m not familiar with that word.” He drank some of his coffee and grimaced. “There’s an old proverb that I’m particularly fond of. It says the veil that hides the future from us is woven by an angel of mercy. Unfortunately, there’s no veil that can shield us from our past. It’s filled with ghosts. The ghosts of loved ones. The ghosts of enemies. They’re with us always. They’re here with us now.” His rheumy blue eyes searched the tiny kitchen for a moment before settling again on Gabriel. “Perhaps it’s better to leave the past undisturbed. Better for Nadia. Better for you.”

Gabriel examined Shamron carefully. “Am I mistaken, Ari, or are you actually feeling guilty about pulling me back in?”

“You made your wishes clear last summer in Cornwall. I should have respected them.”

“You never did before. Why start now?”

“Because you’ve earned it. And the last thing you need at this stage of your life is a confrontation with the child of a man you killed in cold blood.”

“I don’t plan to confess my sins.”

“You might not have a choice in the matter,” Shamron said. “But promise me one thing, Gabriel. If you insist on using her, be certain you don’t make the same mistake the Americans made with Rashid. Assume she is a mortal enemy and treat her accordingly.”

“Why don’t you join us? We have plenty of room at the safe house for one more.”

“I’m an old man,” Shamron said gloomily. “I’d just be in the way.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to sit here alone and worry. These days that seems to be my lot in life.”

“Don’t start worrying just yet, Ari. It’s possible Nadia won’t come.”

“She’ll come,” Shamron said.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because in her heart she knows that you are the one whispering in her ear. And she won’t be able to resist the opportunity to have a look at your face.”

Operational doctrine dictated that Gabriel return immediately to Château Treville, but anger obliged him to make a pilgrimage to the Champs-Élysées. He arrived shortly after midnight to find that all evidence of the bombing had been carefully erased. The shops and restaurants had been repaired. The buildings had been given new windows and a fresh coat of paint. The paving stones had been washed of the blood. There was no expression of outrage, no memorial to the dead, no plea for sanity in a world gone mad. Indeed, were it not for the pair of gendarmes standing watch over the street corner, it might have been possible to imagine that nothing disagreeable had ever occurred there. For a moment, Gabriel regretted his decision to come, but as he was leaving, a secure e-mail from the team at Seraincourt unexpectedly lifted his spirits. It said that Nadia al-Bakari, the daughter of a man whom Gabriel had killed in the Old Port of Cannes, had just been overheard canceling a trip to Saint Petersburg. Gabriel returned the BlackBerry to his coat pocket and walked on through the lamplight. The veil that hid his future had been torn in two. He saw a beautiful woman with raven hair crossing the forecourt of a château north of Paris. And an old man sitting alone in a Montmartre apartment, worrying himself to death.

Chapter 27 Paris

NADIA AL-BAKARI PERSONALLY TELEPHONED Zoe Reed at 10:22 a.m. the next morning to invite her to tea at her mansion on the Avenue Foch. Zoe politely declined. It seemed she already had plans.

“I’m spending the afternoon with an old friend from London. He made a pile of money in private equity and bought himself a château in the Val-d’Oise. I’m afraid he’s throwing a small party in my honor.”

“A birthday party?”

“How did you know?”

“My security staff conducted a discreet background check before our lunch at the Crillon. As of today you are thirty—”

“Please don’t say it aloud. I’m trying to pretend it’s just a bad dream.”

Nadia managed to laugh. Then she asked the name of Zoe’s friend from London.

“Fowler. Thomas Fowler.”

“What firm is he with?”

“Thomas doesn’t do firms. Thomas is militantly independent. Apparently, you met him a few years ago in the Caribbean. One of the French islands. Can’t remember which. St. Barts, I think it was. Or maybe it was Antigua.”

“I’ve never set foot on Antigua.”

“So it must have been St. Barts.”

There was silence.

“Did I lose you?” asked Zoe.

“No, I’m still here.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Where did I meet him?”

“He said it was in a bar near one of the beaches.”

“Which bar?”

“Not sure about that.”

“Which beach?”

“Don’t think Thomas mentioned it.”

“Was Thomas alone that day?”

“Actually, he was with his wife. Lovely girl. Bit on the pushy side, but I suppose that comes with the territory.”

“Which territory is that?”

“Being the wife of a billionaire like Thomas.”

More silence, longer than the first.

“I’m afraid I don’t remember him.”

“He certainly remembers you.”

“Describe him, please.”

“Tallish chap. Built like a lamppost. A bit more interesting, once you get to know him. I think he did a deal a few years ago with an associate of your father.”

“Do you happen to recall this associate’s name?”

“Why don’t you ask Thomas for yourself?”

“What are you saying, Zoe?”

On the second floor of Château Treville was a somber music room with walls covered in red silk and lavish window treatments to match. At one end of the room was a harpsichord with gilded moldings and a pastoral oil painting on the lid. At the other was an antique French Renaissance table with walnut inlay where Gabriel and Eli Lavon sat staring into a pair of computers. On one was a blinking light showing Zoe Reed’s current location and altitude. On the other was a recording of the conversation she had conducted at 10:22 with Nadia al-Bakari. Ten times Gabriel and Lavon had listened to it. Ten times they could find no excuse not to proceed. It was now 11:55. Lavon frowned as Gabriel clicked the play icon one final time.

“Do you happen to recall this associate’s name?”

“Why don’t you ask Thomas for yourself?”

“What are you saying, Zoe?”

“I’m saying you should come to the party. I know Thomas would simply adore it, and it would give us a chance to spend some more time together.”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because your friend . . . forgive me, Zoe, but please tell me his name again.”

“Thomas Fowler. Like the character in the Graham Greene novel.”

“Who?”

“It’s not important. What’s important is that you come.”

“I wouldn’t want to be an imposition.”

“You wouldn’t be, for heaven’s sake. Besides, it’s my birthday, and I insist.”

“Where exactly is your friend’s home located?”

“Just north of Paris. The hotel’s arranged a car for me.”

“Tell the hotel to cancel it. We’ll take my car instead. It will give us a chance to talk.”

“Wonderful. Thomas says the dress code is château casual. But let’s go light on the security, shall we? Thomas is a bit of a fanny patter, but he’s otherwise quite harmless.”

“I’ll see you at noon, Zoe.”

The call went dead. Gabriel clicked on the stop icon and then looked up to find Yossi leaning in the doorway, looking every inch the prosperous private equity mogul who was spending the weekend at his French country retreat. “For the record,” he said in his lazy Oxford drawl, “I didn’t appreciate the bit about a lamppost.”

“I’m sure she meant it as a term of endearment.”

“How would you feel if someone compared you to a lamppost?”

“Endeared.”

Yossi smoothed the front of his Bond Street cashmere jacket. “Have we achieved château casual?”

“I believe we have.”

“Ascot or no ascot?”

“No ascot.”

“Ascot,” said Lavon. “Definitely ascot.”

Yossi went out. Gabriel reached for the computer mouse again, but Lavon stilled his hand.

“She knows it’s us, and she’s still coming. Besides,” Lavon added, “it’s too late to do anything about it now.”

Gabriel looked at the other computer screen. The elevation reading on the icon indicated that Zoe was sinking slowly toward the lobby. This was confirmed a few seconds later when Gabriel heard the sound of the elevator doors opening, followed by the clatter of Zoe’s heels as she headed across the lobby. She bade good day to Herr Schmidt, thanked Isabelle for the complimentary fruit basket that had been left in her room the previous evening, and blew a kiss to Monsieur Didier, who was at that moment attempting to secure a reservation at the Jules Verne for Chiara and Yaakov—a reservation which, regrettably, they would later be forced to cancel. Next came a burst of traffic noise as Zoe stepped outside, followed in turn by the heavy thud of a limousine door closing. The ensuing silence was coffinlike. It was broken by the pleasant voice of a woman with unimpeachable jihadist credentials.

“It’s so lovely to see you again, Zoe,” said Nadia al-Bakari. “I brought your friend a bottle of Latour as a château-warming gift. I hope he likes red.”

“You shouldn’t have.”

“Don’t be silly.”

And with that, the icon was once again in motion, pursued by three other flashing beacons representing the surveillance teams. A moment later, they were all headed westward along the Champs-Élysées at a speed of thirty-three miles per hour. As they neared the Arc de Triomphe, Zoe offered to switch off her BlackBerry. “Don’t bother,” said Nadia quietly. “I trust you now, Zoe. No matter what happens, I will always consider you a friend.”

Chapter 28 Seraincourt, France

THE BANLIEUES OF NORTHEASTERN PARIS seemed to stretch for an eternity, but gradually the vulgar apartment blocks fell away and the first patches of green appeared. Even in winter, with the sky low and heavy, the French countryside looked as though it had been groomed for a family portrait. They roared through it in the black Maybach sedan with no escort vehicles, at least none that Zoe could see. Rafiq al-Kamal, the pumice-faced security chief, sat scowling in the front passenger seat. He wore his usual dark suit but, in deference to the informality of the occasion, no necktie. Nadia wore a rich cream-colored cashmere sweater, trim-fitting tan suede trousers, and low-heeled boots suitable for walking along wooded country lanes. To hide her nerves, she spoke without pause. About the French. About the appalling fashions that winter. About an article she had read in the Financial Journal that very morning regarding the deplorable financial straits of the Euro-zone economies. The heat inside the car was tropical. Zoe was perspiring beneath her clothing, but Nadia appeared slightly chilled. Her hands were curiously bloodless. Noticing Zoe’s interest, she blamed it on the damp Parisian weather, of which she spoke without interruption until a road sign warned that they were approaching the village of Seraincourt.

At that instant, a motorcycle overtook them. It was a high-powered Japanese model of the sort that compelled the driver to lean forward at an uncomfortable-looking angle. He looked into Zoe’s window as he passed, as though curious about the occupants of so fine an automobile, then made an obscene gesture at the driver before vanishing behind a cloud of road spray. Hello, Mikhail, thought Zoe. So nice to see you again.

She drew the BlackBerry from her handbag and dialed. The voice that answered was vaguely familiar. Of course it was, she reminded herself quickly. It belonged to her old friend Thomas Fowler from London. Thomas who made a bundle investing in God only knew what. Thomas who met Nadia a few years ago at a seaside bar in St. Barts. Thomas who was now giving Zoe directions to his showy new château—right on the rue de Vexin, left on the rue des Vallées, right on the Route des Hèdes. The gate was on the left side of the road, he said, just beyond the old vineyard. Never mind the warning sign about the dogs. It was just a bluff, for security’s sake. Thomas was concerned about security. Thomas had good reason to be.

Zoe severed the connection and returned the BlackBerry to her handbag. Looking up again, she caught Rafiq al-Kamal eyeing her warily in his mirror. Nadia was gazing gloomily out her window at the passing countryside. Smile, thought Zoe. We’re going to a party, after all. It’s important you try to smile.

There was no formal precedent for what they were attempting to do, no established doctrine, no Office tradition upon which to draw. During the endless rehearsal sessions, Gabriel likened it to an unveiling, with Nadia as the potential buyer and Gabriel himself as the painting propped upon a display pedestal. The event would be preceded by a brief journey—a journey, he explained, that would take Nadia and the team from the present into the not-too-distant past. The nature of this trip would have to be carefully calibrated. It would have to be pleasant enough so as not to scare Nadia away, yet forceful enough to leave her no opportunity to turn back. Even Gabriel, who had devised the strategy, placed their chances of success at no better than one in three. Eli Lavon was still more pessimistic. But then Lavon, a student of biblical disasters, was a worrier by nature.

At that moment, though, the prospect of failure was the farthest thing from Lavon’s thoughts. Bundled in several layers of wool, remnants of operations past, he was plodding along the grassy shoulder of the rue des Vallées, a walking stick in one hand, his head seemingly in the clouds. He paused briefly to stare at the passing Maybach limousine—to do otherwise would have been odd—but paid no attention to the little Renault hatchback that followed in the big sedan’s wake like a poor relation. Behind the Renault the road was deserted, which is precisely what Lavon was hoping for. He lifted his hand to his mouth and, feigning a cough, informed Gabriel that the target was proceeding as instructed, with no surveillance other than that of the home team.

By then, the Maybach had already made the turn onto the Route des Hèdes and was sweeping past the old vineyard at flank speed. It ducked through the imposing front gate of the château, then headed up the long straight gravel drive, at the end of which stood Yossi in a pose of idleness only money could buy. He waited until the car had come to a stop before advancing slowly toward it, but froze when al-Kamal emerged in an aggressive black blur. The Saudi bodyguard stood beside the car for several seconds, his eyes flickering over the façade of the grand manor house, before finally opening the rear passenger door at a strict forty-five-degree angle. Nadia emerged slowly and in stages—a costly boot upon the gravel, a jeweled hand across the top of the door, a flash of silken hair that seemed to gather the remaining light of the afternoon.

For reasons Gabriel did not share with the others, he had decided to mark the occasion with a photograph, which resides in the file rooms of King Saul Boulevard to this day. Snapped by Chiara from a window on the second floor, it shows Nadia taking her first step across the forecourt with Zoe at her side, one hand stretched hesitantly toward Thomas Fowler, the other clutching the bottle of Latour by the neck. Her brow is already slightly furrowed, and in her eyes is the faintest flicker of recognition. It was true that she had once seen this man on the island of St. Barts, in a charming little patio bar overlooking the salt marshes of Saline. Nadia had been drinking daiquiris that day; the man, burned by the sun, had nursed a beer a few tables away. He had been accompanied by a scantily dressed woman with sandstone-colored hair and generous hips—the same woman who was now stepping from the front entrance of the house in clothing that matched Nadia’s in cost and style. A woman who was now holding on to Nadia’s hand as though she had no intention of ever letting go. “I’m Jenny Fowler,” said Rimona Stern. “I’m so thrilled you’re joining us. Please come inside before we all catch our death.”

The first leg of Nadia’s journey complete, they turned in unison and started toward the entrance of the house. The bodyguard briefly attempted to follow, but Nadia, in her first act of conspiracy, stilled him with a gesture of her hand and a few reassuring words of murmured Arabic. If she thought her hosts would not understand, she was mistaken; the Fowlers were both fluent Arabic speakers, as was the petite woman with dark hair waiting beneath the chandelier in the grand main foyer. Again Nadia’s expression was one of distant recollection. “I’m Emma,” said Dina Sarid. “I’m an old friend of the Fowlers. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Nadia grasped the outstretched hand, another stage of the journey complete, and allowed Dina to draw her into the vaulted great room. Standing before a row of French doors, her gaze fixed on the elaborate terraced garden, was a woman with pale blond hair and skin the color of alabaster. Hearing the sound of footsteps, the woman turned slowly and stared at Nadia for a long moment with expressionless blue eyes. She didn’t bother to offer a false name. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.

“Hello, Nadia,” Sarah Bancroft said finally. “It’s lovely to see you again.”

Nadia recoiled slightly and seemed frightened for the first time. “My God,” she said after a moment of hesitation. “Is it really you? I was afraid you were . . .”

“Dead?”

Nadia made no reply. Her eyes moved slowly from face to face before coming to rest on Zoe’s.

“Do you know who these people are?”

“Of course.”

“Do you work for them?”

“I work for CNBC in New York.”

“So why are you here?”

“They need to talk to you. There was no other way.”

Nadia appeared to accept the explanation, at least for the moment. Again her gaze moved around the room. This time, it settled on Sarah.

“What is this about?”

“It’s about you, Nadia.”

“What about me?”

“You’re trying to change the Islamic world. We want to help.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Sarah Bancroft, the American girl who sold your father a painting by van Gogh. After that, he offered me a job as his personal art consultant. I went on your annual winter cruise in the Caribbean. Then I went away.”

“Are you a spy?” Nadia asked, but Sarah made no reply other than to extend her hand. Nadia’s journey was nearly complete. She had just one more stop to make. One last person to meet.

Chapter 29 Seraincourt, France

SEPARATED FROM THE GRAND SALON by a pair of stately double doors was a smaller, less formal drawing room with book-lined walls and overstuffed furnishings arranged before a large stone fireplace. It was both comforting and conspiratorial, a place where kisses had been stolen, sins had been confessed, and secret alliances had been forged. Shown into the room by Sarah, Nadia had led herself on a distracted tour of the perimeter before settling at one end of a long couch. Zoe sat at the other end, as if for balance, and Sarah sat opposite, with her hands folded neatly in her lap and her gaze slightly averted. The other members of the team were scattered about in various states of repose, as if resuming the party that had been interrupted by Nadia’s arrival. The one exception was Gabriel, who was standing before the unlit fire, one hand pressed to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side. At that instant, he was trying to decide how best to answer a simple question that had been put to him by Nadia a few seconds after he had slipped into the room. Frustrated by his silence, she posed the question again now, this time with more force.

“Who are you?”

Gabriel removed the hand from his chin and used it to help with the introductions. “These are the Fowlers, Thomas and Jenny. Thomas makes money. Jenny spends it. That rather melancholy girl in the corner is Emma. She and Thomas are old friends. Actually, they were lovers once, and in her darker moments, Jenny suspects they’re lovers still.” He paused for a moment to place a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “And you remember this woman, of course. This is Sarah, our star. Sarah has more degrees than the rest of us put together. Despite a costly education, paid for in full by a guilty father, she was working at a down-at-heel art gallery in London a few years ago when your father came looking for a van Gogh, the one artist missing from his collection. He was so impressed by Sarah that he fired his longtime art consultant and offered her the job at several times her existing salary. The perks included an invitation to cruise the Caribbean aboard the Alexandra. As I recall, you were quite standoffish at first. But by the time you reached the enchanted isle of St. Barts, you and Sarah had become good friends. Confidantes, I would say.”

Sarah acted as though she had heard none of it. Nadia examined her for a moment before turning back toward Gabriel.

“It was no accident that these four people all ended up on St. Barts at the same time. You see, Nadia, they are all professional intelligence officers. Thomas, Jenny, and Emma are employed by the foreign intelligence service of the State of Israel, as am I. Sarah works for the CIA. Her art expertise is quite genuine, which explains why she was selected for the operation against AAB Holdings. Your father was a secret philanthropist, just like you, Nadia. Unfortunately, his charity was directed to the opposite end of the Islamic spectrum. He gave to the inciters, the recruiters, and directly to the terrorists themselves. When your father discovered the truth about Sarah, he handed her over to be tortured and killed. But then you already knew that, didn’t you, Nadia? That’s why you were so surprised to see that your friend Sarah was still very much among the living and looking none the worse for wear.”

“You haven’t told me your name yet.”

“For the moment, my name is not important. I prefer to think of myself as a gatherer of sparks.” He paused, then added, “Just like you, Nadia.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Some of our ancient rabbis believed that when God was creating the universe, He placed His divine light into special celestial containers. But it turns out Creation didn’t go quite according to God’s plan, and an accident occurred. The vessels were broken, and the universe became filled with sparks of divine light and shards of broken vessels. The rabbis believed the task of Creation wouldn’t be complete until those sparks were gathered together. We call it Tikkun Olam, or Repair of the World. The people in this room are trying to repair the world, Nadia, and we believe that you are, too. You’re trying to gather the shards of hatred that have been spread by Wahhabi preachers. You’re trying to repair the damage caused by your father’s support of terrorism. We applaud your efforts. And we want to help.”

“How do you know all this about me?”

“Because we’ve been watching you for a long time.”

“Why?”

“Prudence,” said Gabriel. “After your father was killed in Cannes, we were afraid you would attempt to make good on your vow to avenge his death. And the last thing the world needed was another rich Saudi filling the pockets of terrorists with money. Our fears increased substantially when you quietly retained the services of a former Saudi GID officer named Faisal Qahtani to investigate the circumstances surrounding your father’s death. Mr. Qahtani reported that your father had been killed by the Israeli secret service, with the blessing of the CIA and the American president. He then went on to give you chapter and verse on your father’s long history of supporting the global jihadist movement.” Gabriel paused. “I’ve always wondered which aspect of your father’s life bothered you most, Nadia—that your father was a mass murderer, or that he lied to you. It can be very traumatic to learn that one has been misled by a parent.”

Nadia made no response. Gabriel pressed forward.

“We know what Mr. Qahtani told you because he gave the same briefing to us for the very reasonable price of one hundred thousand American dollars, deposited into a numbered Swiss bank account.” Gabriel permitted himself a brief smile. “Mr. Qahtani is a man with impeccable sources but suspect loyalties. He also has a fondness for beautiful women of the professional variety.”

“Was the information accurate?”

“Which part?”

“The part about the Israeli secret service murdering my father with the blessing of the CIA and the American president.”

Gabriel glanced at Zoe, who was doing an admirable job of concealing her curiosity. Now that her assignment was complete, she should have been quietly shown the door. But Gabriel had decided to allow her to remain in the room for now. His motives were purely selfish. He was acutely aware of the bond that had formed between his target and his agent of introduction. He was aware, too, that Zoe could be a powerful asset in helping to close the final deal. By her very presence, Zoe conferred legitimacy onto Gabriel’s cause and nobility onto his intent.

“Murder is hardly the correct word to describe what happened to your father,” he said. “But if you wouldn’t mind, I would prefer to continue for a moment longer on the topic of our mutual acquaintance, the duplicitous Mr. Qahtani. He did more than simply compile a postmortem on your father’s death. He also delivered a message from none other than the Saudi monarch himself. This message made it clear that certain elements of the House of Saud had known about your father’s activities and had tacitly approved of them. It also made it clear that under no circumstances were you to take any retributive actions against Israeli or American targets. The House of Saud was under tremendous pressure from Washington at that time to end the Kingdom’s support of extremist Islam and terrorism. The king didn’t want you to cause any further complications between Riyadh and Washington.”

“You were told this by Mr. Qahtani as well?”

“It was included in the original package, at no additional charge.”

“Did Mr. Qahtani characterize my reaction?”

“He did,” said Gabriel. “He said the warning from the House of Saud was probably needless because, in Mr. Qahtani’s opinion, you had no intention of following through on your vow to avenge your father’s death. What Mr. Qahtani didn’t realize was that you were repulsed by what you learned about your father—so repulsed, in fact, that you became something of an extremist yourself. After consolidating your grip on AAB Holdings, you decided to use your father’s fortune to undo the damage he had caused. You became a repairer of the world, a gatherer of sparks.”

Nadia gave a dismissive smile. “As I said to your friend Zoe at lunch the other day, it’s an interesting story, but it happens not to be true.”

Gabriel sensed that her denial lacked conviction. He decided the best course of action was to ignore it completely.

“You’re among friends, Nadia,” he said gently. “Admirers, actually. Not only do we admire the courage of your work, but we are also in awe of the skill with which you’ve concealed it. In fact, it took us quite some time to figure out that you were using cleverly constructed art transactions to launder money and put it in the hands of people you were trying to help. As professionals, we salute your tradecraft. In all honesty, we couldn’t have done it any better ourselves.”

Nadia looked up sharply, but this time she offered no denial. Gabriel sailed on.

“As a result of your skillful dealings, you’ve managed to keep your work secret from Saudi intelligence and the al-Saud. It’s a remarkable achievement, given the fact that you are surrounded day and night by your father’s old employees and security men. At first we were puzzled by your decision to retain their services. In retrospect, the reasons are quite obvious.”

“Are they?”

“You had no other choice. Your father was a wily businessman, but he didn’t exactly come by his fortune honestly. The House of Zizi was bought and paid for by the House of Saud, which means the al-Saud could break you with a snap of their royal fingers.”

Gabriel looked to Nadia for a reaction. Her face remained placid.

“It means you’re playing a dangerous game,” Gabriel continued. “You’re using the monarch’s money to spread ideas that could eventually threaten the monarch’s grip on his throne. That makes you a subversive. A heretic. And we both know what happens to subversives and heretics who threaten the House of Saud. One way or another, they’re eliminated.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you want to help me. In fact, it sounds as though you intend to blackmail me into doing your bidding.”

“Our only interest is that your work continues. We would, however, like to give you one piece of advice.”

“What sort of advice?”

“Investment advice,” said Gabriel. “We think now might be a good time to make a few changes in your portfolio—changes that are more in keeping with your birthright as the one and only child of the late Zizi al-Bakari.”

“My father was a financier of terrorism.”

“No, Nadia, he wasn’t just any financier of terrorism. Your father was unrivaled. Your father was Jihad Incorporated.”

“Forgive me,” Nadia said, “but I don’t understand what you want from me.”

“It’s simple. We want you to follow in your father’s footsteps. We want you to pick up the banner of jihad that fell from his grasp that terrible night in Cannes. We want you to avenge his death.”

“You want me to become a terrorist?”

“Exactly.”

“How would I do that?”

“By purchasing your own terrorist group. But don’t worry, Nadia. You won’t have to do it alone. Thomas and I are going to help you.”

Chapter 30 Seraincourt, France

THEY HAD COME TO A GOOD PLACE TO PAUSE—an oasis, thought Gabriel, who found himself suddenly bewitched by the iconography of the desert. The reason for Nadia’s summons had been successfully broached. It was now time to rest for a few moments and to reflect upon the journey thus far. It was also time to deal with a bit of unpleasant business. Gabriel had a few questions that needed answering before they could continue—questions dealing with the tangled politics and ancient hatreds of the Middle East. He posed the first while crouching before the fireplace, an unlit match between his fingertips.

“How do you feel about us?” he asked, striking the match on the stonework.

“About Israelis?”

“About Jews,” replied Gabriel, touching the match to the kindling. “Do you think we are children of the devil? Do you think we control the world’s finances and media? Do you think we brought the Holocaust upon ourselves? Do you even believe the Holocaust happened? Do you think we use the blood of non-Jewish children to prepare our unleavened bread? Do you believe we are apes and pigs, as your Wahhabi clerics and Saudi textbooks like to portray us?”

“I didn’t go to school in Saudi Arabia,” said Nadia without a trace of defensiveness.

“No,” said Gabriel, “you attended the most prestigious schools in Europe, just like your friend Sarah. And Sarah remembers quite clearly an incident on a beach in St. Barts when you said something quite unpleasant about a man you believed to be Jewish. She also recalls a fair amount of rough talk about Jews whenever your father and his entourage started discussing politics.”

Nadia stared at Sarah with a trace of sadness, as though a confidence had been betrayed. “My father’s opinions about Jews were well known,” she said after a moment. “Unfortunately, I was exposed to those opinions on a daily basis, and my father’s views briefly became my own.” She paused and looked at Gabriel. “Have you never said something you wish you could take back? Have you never done anything for which you are deeply ashamed?”

Gabriel blew softly on the kindling but said nothing.

“I sit atop a fortune worth many billions of dollars,” Nadia said. “So you’ll probably not find it surprising that I don’t believe Jews control the world’s financial system. Nor do I believe they control the media. I do believe the Holocaust took place, that six million people perished, and that to deny its truth is an act of hate speech. I also believe the ancient blood libel to be just that, a libel, and I cringe each time I hear one of Saudi Arabia’s so-called men of religion refer to Jews and Christians as apes and pigs.” She paused. “Have I left anything out?”

“The devil,” said Gabriel.

“I don’t believe in the devil.”

“And what about Israel, Nadia? Do you believe we have a right to live in peace? That we have a right to take our children to school or go to the market without fear of being blown to bits by a soldier of Allah?”

“I believe the State of Israel has a right to exist. I also believe it has a right to defend itself against those who seek to destroy it or to murder its citizens.”

“And what do you think would happen if tomorrow we walked away from the West Bank and Gaza and granted the Palestinians their state? Do you think the Islamic world would ever accept us, or are we doomed to forever be regarded as an alien entity, a cancer that must be removed?”

“The latter, I’m afraid,” said Nadia, “but I’m trying to help you. It might be nice if, from time to time, you didn’t make things so difficult for me. Each and every day, in large ways and small, you humiliate the Palestinians and their supporters in the broader Islamic world. And when you mix humiliation with the ideology of the Wahhabis . . .”

“Bombs explode in the streets of Europe,” said Gabriel. “But it takes more than just humiliation and ideology to produce terrorism on a global scale. It also takes money. The masterminds need money to inspire, money to recruit and train, and money to operate. With money, they can strike at will. Without it, they are nothing. Your father understood the power of money. So do you. That’s why we went to so much trouble to speak with you, Nadia. That’s why you’re here.”

Eli Lavon had slipped silently into the room and was watching the proceedings impassively from a perch along the windows. Nadia regarded him carefully for a moment, as if trying to place him in the cluttered drawers of her memory.

“Is he in charge?” she inquired.

“Max?” Gabriel shook his head slowly. “No, Max isn’t in charge. I’m the one who’s been cursed with the responsibility of command. Max is merely my guilty conscience. Max is my worried soul.”

“He doesn’t look worried to me.”

“That’s because Max is a professional. And like all professionals, Max is very good at concealing his emotions.”

“Like you.”

“Yes, like me.”

She glanced at Lavon and asked, “What’s bothering him?”

“Max thinks I’ve lost a step. Max is trying to prevent me from making what he thinks will be the biggest mistake of an otherwise unblemished career.”

“What mistake is that?”

“You,” said Gabriel. “I’m convinced you are the answer to my prayers, that we can work together in order to eliminate a grave threat to the security of the West and the Middle East. But as you can see, Max is much older than I am, and he’s terribly set in his ways. He finds the idea of our partnership laughable and naïve. He believes that, as a Muslim woman from Saudi Arabia, you acquired your hatred of Jews with the milk of your mother’s breast. Max is also convinced that you are, first and foremost, your father’s daughter. And Max believes that, like your father, you have two faces—one you show to the West and another you show at home.”

Nadia smiled for the first time. “Perhaps you should remind Max that I’m not allowed to show my face at home, at least not in public. And perhaps you should also remind Max that I risk my life every day trying to change that.”

“Max is highly dubious about your philanthropic activities and the motivations behind them. Max believes they are a cover for your real agenda, which is much more in keeping with that of your late father. Max believes you are a jihadist. Simply put, Max believes you are a liar.”

“Maybe you are the liar.”

“I’m an intelligence officer, Nadia, which means I lie for a living.”

“Are you lying to me now?”

“Just a little,” said Gabriel contritely. “I’m afraid that crumpled little soul over there isn’t really named Max.”

“But he still believes I’m a liar?”

“He’s hopeful that’s not the case. But he needs to know that we’re all on the same side before this conversation can continue.”

“What side is that?”

“The side of the angels, of course.”

“The same angels who murdered my father in cold blood.”

“There’s that word again, Nadia. Your father wasn’t murdered. He was killed by enemy forces on a battlefield of his choosing. He died a martyr’s death in the service of the great jihad. Unfortunately, the violent ideology he helped to propagate didn’t die with him. It lives on in a crescent of sacred rage stretching from the tribal areas of Pakistan to the streets of London. And it lives on in a lethal new terror network based in the mountains of Yemen. This network has a charismatic leader, a skilled operational mastermind, and a cadre of willing shahids. What it lacks is the one thing you can provide.”

“Money,” said Nadia.

“Money,” repeated Gabriel. “The question is, are you really a woman who is singlehandedly trying to change the face of the modern Middle East, or are you actually your father’s daughter?”

Nadia was silent for a moment. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to decide that without my help,” she said finally, “because as of this moment, this little interrogation session is officially over. If there is something you want from me, I suggest you tell me what it is. And I wouldn’t wait too long. You might have questions about where I stand, but you should have none about the chief of my security detail. Rafiq al-Kamal is a true Wahhabi believer and very loyal to my father. And if I had to guess, he’s starting to get a little suspicious about what’s going on in here.”

Chapter 31 Seraincourt, France

THE TEAM FILED SLOWLY FROM the room—everyone but Eli Lavon, who remained at his perch near the windows, and Gabriel, who settled into the place vacated by Sarah. He gazed at Nadia for a moment in respectful silence. Then, in a somber voice borrowed from Shamron, he proceeded to tell her a story. It was the story of a charismatic Islamic cleric named Rashid al-Husseini, of a well-intentioned CIA operation gone terribly wrong, and of a lethal terror network that was starved of the operating capital it needed to achieve its ultimate goals. The briefing was remarkably complete—indeed, by the time Gabriel finally finished, the weak autumn sun had set and the room was in semidarkness. Lavon was by then a mere silhouette, indistinguishable except for the wisp of disheveled hair that surrounded his head like a halo. Nadia sat motionless at the end of the long couch, feet drawn beneath her, arms folded under her breasts. Her dark eyes stared unblinking into Gabriel’s as he spoke, as though she were posing for a portrait. It was a portrait of an unveiled woman, thought Gabriel, oil on canvas, artist unknown.

From the adjacent room rose a swell of laughter. When it died away, there was music. Nadia closed her eyes and listened.

“Is that Miles Davis?” she asked.

“ ‘Dear Old Stockholm,’ ” said Gabriel with a slow nod.

“I’ve always been very fond of Miles Davis, despite the fact that my father, as a devout Wahhabi Muslim, briefly attempted to prevent me from listening to music of any sort.” She paused for a moment, still listening. “I’m also quite fond of Stockholm. Let us hope Rashid hasn’t put it on his list of targets.”

“A very wise man once told me that hope is not an acceptable strategy when lives are at stake.”

“Perhaps not,” said Nadia, “but hope is very much in vogue at the moment in Washington.”

Gabriel smiled and said, “You still haven’t answered my question, Nadia.”

“Which question is that?”

“What was more painful? Learning that your father was a terrorist or that he had misled you?”

She stared at Gabriel with an unsettling intensity. After a moment, she removed the pack of Virginia Slims from her handbag, lit one, and then offered the pack to Gabriel. With a curt wave of his hand, he declined.

“I’m afraid your question displays a profound ignorance of Saudi culture,” she said finally. “My father was highly Westernized, but he was still first and foremost a Saudi male, which meant he held my life in his hands, quite literally. Even in death, I was afraid of my father. And even in death, I never permitted myself to feel anything like disappointment in him.”

“But you were hardly a typical Saudi child.”

“That’s true,” she conceded. “My father granted me a great deal of freedom when we were in the West. But that freedom did not extend to Saudi Arabia or to our personal relationship. My father was like the al-Saud. He was the absolute monarch of our family. And I knew exactly what would happen if I ever stepped out of line.”

“He threatened you?”

“Of course not. My father never spoke a cross word to me. He didn’t have to. Women in Saudi Arabia know their place. From the time of their first menses, they’re hidden away beneath a veil of black. And heaven help them if they ever bring dishonor upon the male who holds sway over them.”

She was sitting slightly more erect now, as if mindful of her posture. The uncertain light of the fire had erased the first evidence of aging from her face. For now, she seemed the insolent, shockingly beautiful young woman whom they had first seen several years earlier floating across the paving stones of Mason’s Yard. Nadia had been an afterthought during the operation against her father, an annoyance. Even Gabriel could not quite believe that the spoiled daughter of Zizi al-Bakari had been transformed into the elegant, thoughtful woman seated before him now.

“Honor is very important to the psyche of the Arab man,” she continued. “Honor is everything. It was a lesson I learned quite painfully when I was just eighteen. One of my best friends was a girl named Rena. She came from a good family, not nearly as rich as ours, but prominent. Rena had a secret. She’d fallen in love with a handsome young Egyptian man she’d met in a Riyadh shopping mall. They were meeting secretly in the man’s apartment. I warned Rena that she was playing a dangerous game, but she refused to stop seeing the man. Eventually, the mutaween, the religious police, caught her and the Egyptian together. Rena’s father was so mortified he took the only course of action available to him, at least in his mind.”

“An honor killing?”

Nadia nodded her head slowly. “Rena was bound in heavy chains. Then, with the rest of her family looking on, she was thrown into the swimming pool of her home. Her mother and sisters were forced to watch. They said nothing. They did nothing. They were powerless.”

Nadia lapsed into silence. “When I found out what had happened,” she said finally, “I was devastated. How could a father be so barbaric and primitive? How could he kill his own child? But when I asked my father those questions, he told me it was Allah’s will. Rena had to be punished for her reckless behavior. It simply had to be done.” She paused. “I never forgot how my father looked as he spoke those words. It was the same expression I saw on his face several years later when he was watching the collapse of the World Trade Center. It was a terrible tragedy, he said, but it was Allah’s will. It simply had to be done.”

“Did you ever suspect your father was involved in terrorism?”

“Of course not. I believed that terrorism was the work of the crazy jihadis like Bin Laden and Zawahiri, not a man like my father. Zizi al-Bakari was a businessman and an art collector, not a mass murderer. Or so I thought.”

Her cigarette had burned down to a stub. She crushed it out and immediately lit another.

“But now, with the passage of enough time, I can see that there is a link between Rena’s death and the murder of three thousand innocent people on 9/11. Each had a common ancestor—Muhammad Abdul Wahhab. Until his ideology of hatred is neutralized, there will be more terrorism and more women like Rena. Everything I do is for her. Rena is my guide, my beacon.”

Nadia glanced toward the corner of the room where Lavon sat alone, veiled by darkness.

“Is Max still worried?”

“No,” Gabriel said, “Max isn’t worried in the least.”

“What is Max thinking?”

“Max believes it would be an honor to work with you, Nadia. And so do I.”

Nadia stared silently into the fire for a moment. “I have listened to your proposal,” she said finally, “and I’ve answered as many questions as I intend to. Now you have to answer a few of mine.”

“You may ask me anything you wish.”

Nadia gave the faintest trace of a smile. “Maybe we should drink some of the wine I brought. I’ve always found that a good bottle of Latour can take the edge off even the most unpleasant conversation.”

Chapter 32 Seraincourt, France

NADIA WATCHED GABRIEL’S HANDS CAREFULLY as he uncorked the wine. He poured out two glasses, keeping one for himself and handing the other to her.

“None for Max?”

“Max doesn’t drink.”

“Max is an Islamic fundamentalist?”

“Max is a teetotaler.”

Gabriel raised his glass a fraction of an inch in salutation. Nadia declined to reciprocate. She placed the wineglass on the table with what seemed to Gabriel to be inordinate care.

“There were a number of questions about my father’s death that I was never able to answer,” she said after a prolonged silence. “I need you to answer them now.”

“I’m limited in what I can say.”

“I would advise you to rethink that position. Otherwise—”

“What is it you wish to know, Nadia?”

“Was he targeted for assassination from the beginning?”

“Quite the opposite.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the Americans made it abundantly clear that your father was far too important to be treated like a normal terrorist. He wasn’t a member of the royal family, but he was the next best thing—a descendant of an old-line merchant family from the Nejd who claimed blood ties to none other than Muhammad Abdul Wahhab himself.”

“And that made him untouchable in the eyes of the Americans?”

“‘Radioactive’ was the word they used.”

“So what happened?”

“Sarah happened.”

“They hurt her?”

“They almost killed her.”

Nadia was silent for a moment. “How did you get her back?”

“We fight on a secret battlefield, but we consider ourselves soldiers, and we never leave one of our own in the hands of our enemies.”

“How noble of you.”

“You may not always agree with our goals and methods, Nadia, but we do try to operate by a certain code. Occasionally, our enemies do as well. But not your father. Your father played by his own rules. Zizi’s rules.”

“And for that he was killed on a crowded street in Cannes.”

“Would you have preferred London? Or Geneva? Or Riyadh?”

“I would have preferred not to have watched my father being gunned down in cold blood.”

“We would have preferred the same thing. Unfortunately, we had no other choice.”

A heavy silence fell over the room. Nadia stared directly into Gabriel’s face. There was no anger in her eyes, only the faintest trace of sadness.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” she said finally. “That’s hardly the foundation of a strong and trusting partnership.”

“I believe you already know my name, Nadia.”

“I do,” she said after a moment. “And if the terrorists and their supporters in the House of Saud ever learn that I am working with Gabriel Allon, the very same man who killed my father, they will declare me an apostate. Then, at the first opportunity, they will slit my throat.” She paused, then added, “Not your throat, Mr. Allon. Mine.”

“We are well aware of the danger involved in what we are asking of you, and we will do everything within our power to ensure your safety. Each step of your journey will be as carefully planned and executed as this meeting.”

“But that’s not what I’m asking, Mr. Allon. I need to know whether you will protect me.”

“You have my word,” he replied without hesitation.

“The word of a man who killed my father.”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to change the past.”

“No,” she said, “only the future.”

She looked at Eli Lavon, who was doing an admirable job of concealing his displeasure over what had just transpired, then gazed out the windows overlooking the terraced garden.

“We have a few more minutes of daylight,” she said finally. “Why don’t we take a walk, Mr. Allon? There’s one more thing I need to tell you.”

They set out along a gravel footpath between columns of swaying cypress pines. Nadia walked at Gabriel’s right shoulder. At first, she seemed wary of getting too close, but as they moved deeper into the garden, Lavon noticed her hand resting discreetly on Gabriel’s elbow. She paused once, as if compelled to do so by the gravity of her words, and a second time at the edge of the dormant fountain at the center of the garden. There she sat for several minutes, trailing her hand, childlike, across the surface of the water, as the last light retreated from the sky. After that, they were largely lost to Lavon. He saw Gabriel place his hand briefly along Nadia’s cheek, then nothing more until they came walking up the footpath toward the house again with Nadia clinging to Gabriel’s elbow for support.

Upon their return to the drawing room, Gabriel summoned the rest of the team, and the party resumed. At Gabriel’s insistence, they spoke of anything but their shared past and their uncertain future. For now, there was no global war on terror, no new network that needed dismantling, no cause for concern whatsoever. There was only good wine, good conversation, and a group of good friends who were not really friends at all. Nadia, like Gabriel, remained largely a passive observer of the feigned bonhomie. Still posed for her portrait, her eyes moved slowly from face to face, as though they were pieces of a puzzle she was trying to assemble in her mind. Occasionally, her gaze would settle on Gabriel’s hands. He made no attempt to conceal them, for there was now nothing left to hide. It was clear to Lavon and the rest of the team that Gabriel no longer harbored any doubts about Nadia’s intentions. Like lovers, they had consecrated their bond with the sharing of secrets.

It was a few minutes after seven when Gabriel gave the signal that the party was at an end. Rising to her feet, Nadia seemed suddenly light-headed. She bade them all good night; then, with Zoe at her side, she headed across the darkened forecourt to her car where Rafiq al-Kamal, guardian of her father, was waiting to reclaim her. During the drive back to Paris, she once again spoke without pause, this time about her new friends, Thomas and Jenny Fowler. Gabriel monitored the conversation by way of Zoe’s BlackBerry. The next morning, he watched the winking icon as it moved from the Place de la Concorde to Charles de Gaulle Airport. While waiting for her flight, Zoe phoned her producer in New York to say that, at least for now, the al-Bakari exclusive was off. Then, in a sultry whisper, she said to Gabriel, “Time to say good-bye, darling. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything else.” Gabriel waited until Zoe was safely on board the aircraft before disabling the software on her phone. The light flashed three more times. Then she vanished from the screen.

Chapter 33 Seraincourt, France

THE OPERATION BEGAN IN EARNEST at 10:15 the following morning, when Nadia al-Bakari, heiress, activist, and agent of Israeli intelligence, informed her senior staff that she intended to form a partnership with Thomas Fowler Associates, a small but highly successful private equity firm based in London. That afternoon, accompanied only by her security detail, she traveled by car to Mr. Fowler’s private home north of Paris for the first round of direct negotiations. Later, she would characterize the talks as productive and intense, both of which happened to be true.

She came the next day, and the day after as well. For reasons Gabriel did not share with the others, he dispensed with much of the usual training and focused mainly on Nadia’s cover story. Learning it was not difficult, for it corresponded largely to the facts. “It’s your story,” said Gabriel, “with only the slightest reordering of the salient details. It’s a story of murder, vengeance, and hatred as old as the Middle East. From now on, Nadia al-Bakari is no longer part of the solution. Nadia is just like her father. She’s part of the problem. She’s the reason why the Arabs will never be able to escape their history.”

Yossi assisted Nadia on superficial performance issues, but for the most part, she relied on Sarah for guidance. Gabriel was initially apprehensive about the renewal of their friendship, but Lavon saw their bond as an operational asset. Sarah was a timely reminder of Zizi’s evil. And unlike Rena, Nadia’s murdered childhood friend, Sarah had stared the monster in the eye and defeated him. She was Rena without chains, Rena resurrected.

Nadia proved to be a quick study, but Gabriel had expected nothing less. Her preparation was made easier by the fact that, having lived a double life for years, she was a natural dissembler. She also had two important advantages over other assets who had tried to penetrate the global jihadist movement: her name and her bodyguards. Her name guaranteed her instant access and credibility while her bodyguards gave her a layer of protection that most agents of penetration had to live without. As the only surviving child of a murdered Saudi billionaire, Nadia al-Bakari was one of the most heavily guarded private citizens in the world. No matter where she went, she would be surrounded by her loyal palace guard, along with a secondary ring of Office security. Getting to her would be all but impossible.

Nadia’s most valuable asset, though, was her money. Gabriel was confident that she would have no shortage of suitors once she returned to the world of jihad and terror. The challenge for Gabriel and his team would be to place the money in the hands of the right one. It was Nadia herself who supplied the name of a potential candidate while walking with Gabriel and Sarah one afternoon in the garden of the château.

“He sought me out not long after my father’s death and asked for a contribution to an Islamic charity. He described himself as an associate of my father. A brother.”

“And the charity?”

“It was nothing more than a front for al-Qaeda. Samir Abbas is the man you’re looking for. Even if he’s not involved with this new network, he will know people who are.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s employed by TransArabian Bank at its offices in Zurich. As you probably know, TransArabian is based in Dubai and is one of the largest financial institutions in the Middle East. It’s also regarded as the bank of choice for the global jihadist movement, of which Samir Abbas is a member in good standing. He manages the accounts of well-to-do Middle Eastern clients, which leaves him uniquely positioned to seek contributions for the so-called charities.”

“Is any of your personal fortune under TransArabian management?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Perhaps you should consider opening an account. Nothing too large. Just enough to get Samir’s attention.”

“How much shall I give him?”

“Can you spare a hundred million?”

“A hundred million?” She shook her head. “My father would never have given them that kind of money.”

“How much then?”

“Let’s make it two hundred million.” She smiled. “That way he’ll know we really mean business.”

Within twelve hours of the conversation, Gabriel had a team on the ground in Zurich, and Samir Abbas, wealth-management specialist for TransArabian Bank of Dubai, was under Office surveillance. Eli Lavon remained behind at Château Treville to button up the last details of the operation, including the ticklish question of how a Paris-based Saudi businesswoman was going to fund a terror group without arousing the suspicions of the French and other European financial authorities. Through her secret funding of the Arab reform movement, Nadia had already shown them the way. All Gabriel needed was a painting and a willing accomplice. Which explained why on Christmas Eve, as the rest of France was preparing for several days of feasting and celebration, he asked Lavon to drive him to the Gare du Nord. Gabriel had a ticket for the 3:15 train to London and a catastrophic headache from lack of sleep. Lavon was more on edge than usual at this stage of an operation. Unmarried and childless, he always became depressed around the holidays.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“Take a train to London on Christmas Eve? Actually, I think I’d rather walk.”

“I was talking about Nadia.”

“I know, Eli.”

Lavon stared out the car window at the crowds streaming toward the entrance of the train station. It was the usual lot—businessmen, students, tourists, African immigrants, and pickpockets, all watched over by heavily armed French police officers. The entire country was waiting for the next bomb to explode. So was the rest of Europe.

“Are you ever going to tell me what it was she said to you that evening in the garden?”

“No, I’m not.”

Lavon had expected the answer. Even so, he couldn’t conceal his disappointment.

“How long have we been working together?”

“A hundred and fifty years,” said Gabriel. “And never once have I kept a shred of important information from you.”

“So why now?”

“She asked me to.”

“Have you told your wife?”

“I tell my wife everything, and my wife tells me nothing. It’s part of the deal.”

“You’re a lucky man,” Lavon said. “All the more reason why you shouldn’t go making promises you can’t keep.”

“I always keep my promises, Eli.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Lavon looked at Gabriel. “Are you sure about her?”

“As sure as I am about you.”

“Go,” said Lavon after a moment. “I wouldn’t want you to miss your train. And if you happen to see a suicide bomber in there, do me a favor and just tell a gendarme. The last thing we need right now is for you to blow up another French train station.”

Gabriel handed Lavon his Beretta 9mm pistol, then climbed out of the car and headed into the ticket hall of the station. By some miracle, his train departed on time, and by five that evening he was once again walking along the pavements of St. James’s. Adrian Carter would later find much symbolism in Gabriel’s return to London, since it was where his journey had begun. In truth, his motives for coming back were hardly so lofty. His plan to destroy Rashid’s network from the inside would entail a criminal act of fraud. And what better place to carry it out than the art world.

Chapter 34 St. James’s, London

GABRIEL’S ACCOMPLICE WAS NOT YET aware of his plans—hardly surprising, since he was none other than Julian Isherwood, owner and sole proprietor of Isherwood Fine Arts, 7–8 Mason’s Yard. Among the many hundreds of paintings controlled by Isherwood’s gallery was Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene, formerly attributed to the Venetian master Palma Vecchio, now tentatively attributed to none other than the great and mighty Titian himself. For the moment, however, the painting remained locked away in Isherwood’s underground storage room, its image hidden by a protective layer of tissue paper. Isherwood had come to loathe the painting almost as much as the man who had defaced it. Indeed, in Isherwood’s troubled mind, the glorious swath of canvas had come to symbolize all that was wrong with his life.

As far as Isherwood was concerned, it had been an autumn to forget. He had sold just one picture—a minor Italian devotional piece to a minor collector from Houston—and had acquired nothing more than a chronic barking cough that could empty a room quicker than a bomb threat. Word on the street was that he was in the throes of yet another late-life crisis, his seventh or eighth, depending on whether one counted the prolonged Blue Period he endured after being dumped by the girl who worked the coffee machine at the Costa in Piccadilly. Jeremy Crabbe, the tweedy director of the Old Master department at Bonhams, thought a surprise party might lift Isherwood’s sagging spirits, an idea that Oliver Dimbleby, Isherwood’s tubby nemesis from Bury Street, dismissed as the dumbest he’d heard all year. “Given Julie’s precarious health at the moment,” said Oliver, “a surprise party might kill him.” He suggested fixing Isherwood up with a talented tart instead, but then that was Oliver’s solution to every problem, personal or professional.

On the afternoon of Gabriel’s return to London, Isherwood closed his gallery early and, having nothing better to do, headed over to Duke Street through a pelting rain to have a drink at Green’s. Aided by Roddy Hutchinson, universally regarded as the most unscrupulous dealer in all of St. James’s, Isherwood quickly consumed a bottle of white Burgundy, followed by a dose of brandy for his health. Shortly after six, he teetered into the street again to find a taxi, but when one finally approached, he was overcome by a retching coughing fit that left him incapable of lifting his arm. “Bloody hell!” snapped Isherwood as the car swept past, soaking his trousers. “Bloody, bloody, bloody hell!”

His outburst brought on another round of staccato barking. When finally it subsided, he noticed a figure leaning against the brickwork of the passageway leading to Mason’s Yard. He wore a Barbour raincoat and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. The right foot was crossed over the left, and the eyes were sweeping back and forth along the street. He gazed at Isherwood for a moment with a mixture of bemusement and pity. Then, without word or sound, he turned and started across the cobbles of the old yard. Against all better judgment, Isherwood followed after him, hacking his lungs out like a consumption patient on the way to the sanatorium.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” said Isherwood. “First you cover my Titian in rabbit-skin glue and tissue paper. Then you deposit it in my storage room and disappear to parts unknown. Now you reappear unannounced, looking, as usual, like something the cat dragged in, and tell me that you need the aforementioned Titian for one of your little extracurricular projects. Have I left anything out?”

“In order for this scheme to work, Julian, I’ll need you to deceive the art world and to conduct yourself in a way that some of your colleagues might consider unethical.”

“Just another day at the office, petal,” said Isherwood with a shrug. “But what’s in it for moi?”

“If it works, there will be no more attacks like the one in Covent Garden.”

“Until the next jihadi loon comes along. Then we’ll be back at square one again, won’t we? Heaven knows I’m no expert, but it seems to me the terrorism game is a bit like the art trade. It has its peaks and valleys, its good seasons and bad, but it never goes away.”

In the upper exhibition room of Isherwood’s gallery, the overhead lamps glowed with the softness of votive candles. Rain pattered on the skylight and dripped from the hem of Isherwood’s sodden overcoat, which he had yet to remove. Isherwood frowned at the puddle on his parquet floor and then looked at the wounded painting propped upon the baize-covered pedestal.

“Do you know how much that thing is worth?”

“In a fair auction, ten million in the shade. But in the auction I have in mind . . .”

“Naughty boy,” said Isherwood. “Naughty, naughty boy.”

“Have you mentioned it to anyone, Julian?”

“The painting?” Isherwood shook his head. “Not a peep.”

“You’re sure about that? No moment of indiscretion at the bar at Green’s? No pillow talk with that preposterously young woman from the Tate?”

“Her name’s Penelope,” Isherwood said.

“Does she know about the picture, Julian?”

“ ’Course not. That’s not the way it works when one has a coup, petal. One doesn’t brag about such things. One keeps it very quiet until the moment is just right. Then one announces it to the world with all the usual fanfare. One also expects to be compensated for one’s cleverness. But under your scenario, I’ll be expected to actually take a loss—for the good of God’s children, of course.”

“Your loss will be temporary.”

“How temporary?”

“The CIA is handling all operational expenses.”

“That’s not a line one hears every day in an art gallery.”

“One way or another, Julian, you’ll be compensated.”

“Of course I will,” Isherwood said with mock confidence. “This reminds me of the time my Penelope told me her husband wouldn’t be home for another hour. I’m rather too old to be leaping over garden walls.”

“Still seeing her?”

“Penelope? Left me,” Isherwood said, shaking his head. “They all leave me eventually. But not you, petal. And not this damn cough. I’m starting to think of it as an old friend.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Couldn’t get an appointment. The National Health Service is so bad these days, I’m thinking about becoming a Christian Scientist.”

“I thought you were a hypochondriac.”

“Orthodox, actually.” Isherwood picked at the tissue paper in the upper-right portion of the canvas.

“Every flake of paint you dislodge I have to put back.”

“Sorry,” said Isherwood, slipping his hand into his coat pocket. “There’s precedent for it, you know. A couple of years ago, Christie’s sold a painting attributed to the School of Titian for the paltry sum of eight thousand quid. But the painting wasn’t a School of Titian. It was a Titian Titian. As you might imagine, the owners weren’t terribly pleased. They accused Christie’s of malpractice. The lawyers got involved. There were ugly stories in the press. Bad feelings all round.”

“Perhaps we should give Christie’s a chance to redeem itself.”

“They might actually like that. There’s just one problem.”

“Just one?”

“We’ve already missed the big Old Master sales.”

“That’s true,” Gabriel acknowledged, “but you’re forgetting about the special Venetian School auction planned for the first week of February. A newly discovered Titian might be just the thing to gin up a bit of extra excitement.”

“Naughty boy. Naughty, naughty boy.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Considering my past connection to certain unsavory elements of this operation, it might be wise to put some distance between the gallery and the final sale. That means we’ll need to enlist the services of another dealer. Given the circumstances, he’ll have to be greedy, sneaky, cunning, and a first-class shit.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” said Gabriel, “but are you sure he can handle it?”

“He’s perfect,” Isherwood said. “All you need now is a Titian that actually looks like one.”

“I think I can manage that.”

“Where do you intend to work?”

Gabriel looked around the room and said, “This will do quite nicely.”

“Is there anything else you require?”

Gabriel handed him a list. Isherwood slipped on his reading glasses and frowned. “One bolt of Italian linen, one professional-grade iron, one pair of magnifying visors, one liter of acetone, one liter of methyl proxitol, one liter of mineral spirits, one dozen Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes, one pair of standing halogen work lamps, one copy of La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini . . .” He glared at Gabriel over his glasses. “Do you know how much this is going to cost me?”

But Gabriel seemed not to hear. He was standing before the canvas, one hand resting against his chin, his head tilted meditatively to one side.

Gabriel believed the craft of restoration was a bit like making love. It was best done slowly and with painstaking attention to detail, with occasional breaks for rest and refreshment. But in a pinch, if the craftsman and his subject matter were adequately acquainted, a restoration could be done at extraordinary speed, with more or less the same result.

Of the subsequent ten days Gabriel would later be able to recall very little, for they were a near-sleepless blur of linen, solvent, medium, and pigment, set to the music of Puccini and lit by the harsh white glare of his halogen work lamps. His initial fears about the condition of the canvas thankfully proved overblown. Indeed, once he had completed the relining and removed the yellowed varnish, he found Titian’s original work to be largely intact except for a chain of bare spots across the body of the Virgin and four lines of abrasion where the canvas had sloughed against the old stretcher. Having restored several Titians in the past, he was able to repair the painting almost as swiftly as the master himself had been able to paint it. His palette was Titian’s palette, as were his brushstrokes. Only the conditions of his studio were different. Titian had no doubt worked with a team of gifted apprentices and journeymen while Gabriel had no assistant other than Julian Isherwood, which meant he had no help at all.

He wore no wristwatch so that he would have only the vaguest idea of time, and when he slept, which was seldom, he did so on a camp bed in the corner of the room, beneath a luminous landscape by Claude. He drank coffee by the bucket from Costa and subsisted largely on butter cookies and tea biscuits that Isherwood smuggled into the gallery from Fortnum & Mason. Having no time to waste on shaving, he allowed his beard to grow. Much to his dismay it came in even grayer than the last time. Isherwood said the beard made it look as though Titian himself were standing before the canvas. Given Gabriel’s uncanny skill with a brush, it wasn’t far from the truth.

On his final evening in London, Gabriel stopped at Thames House, the riverfront headquarters of MI5, where, as promised, he informed Graham Seymour that the operation had in fact washed ashore in the British Isles. Seymour’s mood was foul and his thoughts clearly elsewhere. The son of the future king had decided to marry in late spring, and it was up to Seymour and his colleagues at the Metropolitan Police Service to see that nothing spoiled the occasion. Listening to Seymour bemoan his plight, Gabriel couldn’t help but think of the words Sarah had spoken in the garden of the café in Georgetown. London is low-hanging fruit. London can be attacked at will.

As if to illustrate the point, Gabriel emerged from Thames House to find the Jubilee Line of the Underground had been shut down at the height of the evening rush due to a suspicious package. He headed back to Mason’s Yard on foot and, with Isherwood peering over his shoulder, applied a coat of varnish to the newly restored Titian. The next morning, he instructed Nadia to deposit two hundred million dollars with TransArabian Bank. Then he climbed into a taxi and headed for Heathrow Airport.

Chapter 35 Zurich

FEW COUNTRIES HAD PLAYED A more prominent role in the life and career of Gabriel Allon than the Swiss Confederation. He spoke three of its four languages fluently and knew its mountains and valleys like the clefts and curves of his wife’s body. He had killed in Switzerland, kidnapped in Switzerland, and exposed some of its most repulsive secrets. One year earlier, in a café at the base of the glacier at Les Diablerets, he had taken a solemn vow never to set foot in the country again. It was funny how things never seemed to go according to plan.

Behind the wheel of a rented Audi, he glided past the dour banks and storefronts of the Bahnhofstrasse, then turned onto the busy road running along the western shore of Lake Zurich. The safe house was located two miles south of the city center. It was a modern structure, with far too many windows for Gabriel’s comfort, and a small T-shaped dock that had been sugared by a recent snow. Entering, he heard a female voice singing softly in Italian. He smiled. Chiara always sang to herself when she was alone.

He left his bag in the foyer and followed the sound into the living room, which had been converted into a makeshift field command post. Chiara was staring at a computer screen while at the same time peeling the skin from an orange. Her lips, when kissed by Gabriel, were very warm, as though she were suffering from a fever. He kissed them for a long time.

“I’m Chiara Allon,” she murmured, stroking the bristly gray hair on his cheeks. “And who might you be?”

“I’m not sure any longer.”

“They say aging can cause memory problems,” she said, still kissing him. “You should try fish oil. I hear it helps.”

“I’d rather have a bite of that orange instead.”

“I’m sure you would. It’s been a long time.”

“A very long time.”

She broke the fruit into segments and placed one in Gabriel’s mouth.

“Where’s the rest of the team?” he asked.

“They’re watching an employee of TransArabian Bank who also happens to have ties to the global jihadist movement.”

“So you’re all alone?”

“Not anymore.”

Gabriel loosened the buttons of Chiara’s blouse. Her nipples firmed instantly to his touch. She gave him another piece of the fruit.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this in front of a computer,” she said. “You never know who might be watching.”

“How much time do we have?”

“As much as you need.”

She took his hand and led him upstairs. “Slowly,” she said, as he lowered her onto the bed. “Slowly.”

The room was in semidarkness by the time Gabriel fell away exhausted from Chiara’s body. They lay for a long time together in silence, close but not quite touching. From outside came the distant rumble of a passing boat, followed a moment later by the lapping of wavelets against the dock. Chiara rolled onto one elbow and traced her finger along the ridgeline of Gabriel’s nose.

“How long are you planning to keep it?”

“Since I require it to breathe, I intend to keep it for as long as possible.”

“I was talking about your beard, darling.”

“I hate it, but something tells me I might need it before this operation is through.”

“Maybe you should keep it after the operation, too. I think it makes you look . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Don’t say it, Chiara.”

“I was going to say distinguished.”

“That’s like calling a woman elegant.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“You’ll understand when people start saying you look elegant.”

“It won’t be so bad.”

“It will never happen, Chiara. You’re beautiful and you’ll always be beautiful. And if I keep this beard after the operation, people will start to mistake you for my daughter.”

“Now you’re being unreasonable.”

“It is biologically possible.”

“What is?”

“For you to be my daughter.”

“I’ve never actually thought about it that way.”

“Don’t,” he said.

She laughed quietly and then said nothing more.

“What are you thinking about now?” Gabriel asked.

“What might have happened if you hadn’t noticed that boy with the bomb under his jacket walking along Wellington Street. We would have been sitting down to lunch when the bomb exploded. It would have been a tragedy, of course, but our lives would have gone on as normal, just like everyone else’s.”

“Maybe this is normal for us, Chiara.”

“Normal couples don’t make love in safe houses.”

“Actually, I’ve always enjoyed making love to you in safe houses.”

“I fell in love with you in a safe house.”

“Which one?”

“Rome,” she said. “That little flat off the Via Veneto where I took you after the Polizia di Stato tried to kill you in that dreadful pensione near the train station.”

“The Abruzzi,” Gabriel said heavily. “What a pit.”

“But the safe flat was lovely.”

“You barely knew me.”

“I knew you very well, actually.”

“You made me fettuccini with mushrooms.”

“I only make my fettuccini with mushrooms for people I love.”

“Make me some now.”

“You have some work to do first.”

Chiara flipped a switch on the wall above the bed. A tiny halogen reading lamp burned laserlike into Gabriel’s eye.

“Must you?” he asked, squinting.

“Sit up.”

She took a file folder from the bedside table and handed it to him. Gabriel lifted the cover and for the first time saw the face of Samir Abbas. It was angular, bespectacled, and lightly bearded, with thoughtful brown eyes and a deeply receded hairline. At the time the photo was snapped, he had been walking along a street in a residential section of Zurich. He was wearing a gray suit, the uniform of a Swiss banker, and a silver necktie. His briefcase looked expensive, as did his shoes. His overcoat was unbuttoned and his hands were gloveless. He was talking on a mobile phone. Judging by the shape of his mouth, it appeared to Gabriel he was speaking German.

“Here’s the man who’s going to help you buy a terror group,” Chiara said. “Samir Abbas, born in Amman in 1967, educated at the London School of Economics, and hired by TransArabian Bank in 1998.”

“Where does he live?”

“Up in Hottingen, near the university. If the weather is good, he walks to work, for the sake of his waistline. If it’s bad, he takes the streetcar from Römerhof down to the financial district.”

“Which one?”

“The Number Eight, of course. What else would he take?”

Chiara smiled. Her knowledge of European public transit, like Gabriel’s, was encyclopedic.

“Where’s his flat?”

“At Carmenstrasse Four. It’s a small postwar building with a stucco exterior, six flats in all.”

“Wife?”

“Take a look at the next picture.”

It showed a woman walking along the same street. She was wearing Western clothing except for a hijab that framed a childlike face. Holding her left hand was a boy of perhaps four. Holding her right was a girl who looked to be eight or nine.

“Her name is Johara, which means ‘jewel’ in Arabic. She works part-time as a teacher at an Islamic community center on the west side of the city. The older child attends classes there. The boy is in the day-care facility. Both children speak fluent Swiss German, but Johara is much more comfortable in Arabic.”

“Does Samir go to a mosque?”

“He prays in the apartment. The children like American cartoons, much to their father’s dismay. No music allowed, though. Music is strictly forbidden.”

“Does she know about Samir’s charitable endeavors?”

“Since they use the same computer, it would be hard to miss.”

“Where is it?”

“In the living room. We popped it the day after we arrived. It’s giving us fairly decent audio and visual coverage. We’re also reading his e-mail and monitoring his browsing. Your friend Samir enjoys his jihadi porn.”

“What about his mobile?”

“That took a bit of doing, but we got that, too.” Chiara pointed to the photograph of Samir. “He carries it in the right pocket of his overcoat. We got it on the streetcar while he was on his way to work.”

“We?”

“Yaakov handled the bump, Oded picked his pocket, and Mordecai did the technical stuff. He popped it while Samir was reading the newspaper. The whole thing took two minutes.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

“We didn’t want to bother you.”

“Is there anything else you neglected to tell me?”

“Just one thing,” Chiara said.

“What’s that?”

“We’re being watched.”

“By the Swiss?”

“No, not the Swiss.”

“Who then?”

“Three guesses. First two don’t count.”

Gabriel snatched up his secure BlackBerry and started typing.

Chapter 36 Lake Zurich

IT TOOK THE BETTER PART of forty-eight hours for Adrian Carter to find his way to Zurich. He met Gabriel in the late afternoon on the prow of a ferry bound for the suburb of Rapperswil. He wore a tan mackintosh coat and carried a copy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung beneath his arm. The newsprint was wet with snow.

“I’m surprised you’re not wearing your Agency credentials,” Gabriel said.

“I took precautions coming here.”

“How did you travel?”

“Economy plus,” Carter said resentfully.

“Did you tell the Swiss you were coming?”

“Surely you jest.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’m not.”

Gabriel looked over his shoulder toward the skyline of Zurich, which was barely visible behind a cloak of low clouds and falling snow. The entire scene was devoid of color—a gray city by a gray lake. It suited Gabriel’s mood.

“When were you planning to tell me, Adrian?”

“Tell you what?”

Gabriel handed Carter an unmarked letter-sized envelope. Inside were eight surveillance photographs of eight different CIA field operatives.

“How long did it take you to spot them?” Carter asked, flipping morosely through the pictures.

“Do you really want me to answer that question?”

“I suppose not.” Carter closed the envelope. “My best field personnel are currently deployed elsewhere. I had to use what was available. A couple of them are fresh off the Farm, as we like to say.”

The Farm was the CIA’s training facility at Camp Peary, Virginia.

“You sent probationers to watch us? If I wasn’t so angry, I’d be insulted.”

“Try not to take it personally.”

“This little stunt of yours could have blown us all sky-high. The Swiss aren’t stupid, Adrian. In fact, they’re quite good. They watch. They listen, too. And they get extremely annoyed when spies operate on their soil without signing the guestbook on the way in. Even experienced field agents have gotten into trouble here, ours included. And what does Langley do? It sends eight fresh-faced kids who haven’t been to Europe since their junior year abroad. Do you know one of them actually bumped into Yaakov a couple of days ago because he was looking down at a Streetwise Zurich map? That’s one for the books, Adrian.”

“You’ve made your point.”

“Not yet,” Gabriel said. “I want them out of here. Tonight.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“Why?”

“Because higher authority has taken an intense interest in your operation. And higher authority has decided it requires an American operational component.”

“Tell higher authority it already has an American operational component. Her name is Sarah Bancroft.”

“A single analyst from the CTC doesn’t count.”

“That single analyst could run circles around any of the eight dolts you sent here to keep watch over us.”

Carter stared at the lake but said nothing.

“What’s going on, Adrian?”

“It’s not what. It’s who.” Carter returned the envelope to Gabriel. “How much will it cost me to get you to burn those damn pictures?”

“Start talking.”

Chapter 37 Lake Zurich

THERE WAS A SMALL CAFÉ on the upper deck of the passenger cabin. Carter drank muddy coffee. Gabriel had tea. Between them they shared a rubbery egg sandwich and a bag of stale potato chips. Carter kept the receipt for his expenses.

“I asked you to keep her name closely held,” Gabriel said.

“I tried to.”

“What happened?”

“Someone tipped off the White House. I was brought into the Oval Office for a bit of enhanced interrogation. McKenna and the president worked me over together, bad cop, bad cop. Stress positions, sleep deprivation, denial of food and drink—all the techniques we’re now forbidden to use against the enemy. It didn’t take long for them to break me. Suffice it to say the president now knows my name. He also knows the name of the Muslim woman with impeccable jihadist credentials you’re in bed with—operationally speaking, of course.”

“And?”

“He’s not happy about it.”

“Really?”

“He’s fearful that U.S.-Saudi relations will suffer grave damage if the operation ever crashes and burns. As a result, he’s no longer willing to allow Langley to be a mere passenger.”

“He wants you flying the plane?”

“Not just that,” Carter said. “He wants us maintaining the plane, fueling the plane, stocking the plane’s galleys, and loading the luggage into the plane’s cargo hold.”

“Total control? Is that what you’re saying?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“It makes no sense, Adrian.”

“Which part?”

“All of it, frankly. If we’re running the show, the president has complete deniability with the Saudis if something goes wrong. But if Langley is in charge, any chance of deniability goes right out the White House window. It’s as if he’s trying to block a blow with his chin.”

“You know, Gabriel, I never looked at it in those terms.” Carter picked up the last potato chip. “Do you mind?”

“Enjoy.”

Carter popped the chip in his mouth and spent a long moment thoughtfully brushing the salt from his fingertips. “You have a right to be angry,” he said finally. “If I were you, I’d be angry, too.”

“Why?”

“Because I sailed into town with a cheap story thinking I could slip it past you, and you deserve better. The truth is that the president and his faithful if ignorant servant James A. McKenna aren’t concerned that the al-Bakari operation is going to fail. In fact, they’re afraid it’s going to succeed.”

“Try again, Adrian. It’s been a long few days.”

“It seems the president is head over heels in love.”

“Who’s the lucky girl?”

“Nadia,” murmured Carter into his crumpled paper napkin. “He’s crazy about her. He loves her story. He loves her courage. More important, he loves the operation you’ve built around her. It’s exactly the kind of thing he’s been looking for. It’s clean. It’s smart. It’s forward-leaning. It’s built for the long haul. It also happens to dovetail nicely with the president’s view of the world. A partnership between Islam and the West to defeat the forces of extremism. Brainpower over brute force. He wants Rashid’s network taken down and tied up with a bow before the next election, and he doesn’t want to share credit.”

“So he wants to go it alone? No partners?”

“Not entirely,” Carter said. “He wants us to bring in the French, the British, the Germans, and the Spaniards, since they were the ones attacked.”

“What about the partridge in a pear tree?”

“He works for a private security firm now. Doing quite nicely, from what I hear.”

“Need-to-know,” Gabriel said. “It isn’t an advertising slogan, Adrian. It’s a sacred creed. It keeps operations from being blown. It keeps assets alive.”

“Your concerns have been duly noted.”

“And dismissed.”

Carter said nothing.

“Where does that leave me and the rest of my team?”

“Your team will quietly withdraw from the field and be replaced by Agency personnel. You will stay on in an advisory capacity until the show is up and running.”

“And after that?”

“You’ll be eased out of the production.”

“I have news for you, Adrian. The show is already up and running. In fact, the star of the show is making her debut here in Zurich tomorrow afternoon.”

“We’re going to have to postpone that until the new management team is in place.”

Gabriel saw the lights of Rapperswil glowing faintly along the shoreline. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said after a moment. “The star of the show is a diva. She’s very demanding. And she won’t work with just anyone.”

“You’re saying she’ll work for you, the man who killed her father, but not us?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“I’d like to test that proposition for myself.”

“Be my guest. If you wish to speak to Nadia, she can be reached at her office on the Boulevard Haussmann, in the ninth arrondissement of Paris.”

“Actually, we were hoping that you might work with us on the transition.”

“Hope is not an acceptable strategy when lives are at stake.” Gabriel held up the envelope of snapshots. “Besides, if I were advising Nadia, I’d tell her to stay as far away from you and your Farm-fresh field operatives as possible.”

“We’re grown-ups, you and I. We’ve been through the wars together. We’ve saved lives. We’ve done the dirty jobs that no one else wanted to do or had the guts to do. But at this moment in time, I am resenting the hell out of you.”

“I’m glad I’m not alone.”

“Do you really think this is something I want to do? He’s the president, Gabriel. I can either follow his orders or quit. And I have no intention of quitting.”

“Then please tell the president that I wish him nothing but the best,” Gabriel said. “But at some point, you should remind him that Nadia is only the first step toward breaking Rashid’s network. In the end, it won’t be clean or smart or forward-leaning. I just hope the president doesn’t fall out of love when it comes time to make the tough decisions.”

The ferry shuddered as it nudged against the side of the dock. Gabriel stood abruptly. Carter gathered up the empty cups and wrappers and swept the crumbs onto the floor with the back of his hand.

“I need to know your intentions.”

“I intend to return to my command post and tell my team that we’re going home.”

“Is that final?”

“I never make threats.”

“Then do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Drive slowly.”

They left the ferry a few seconds apart and made their way along the slick jetty to a little car park at the edge of the terminal. Carter climbed into the passenger seat of a Mercedes and headed for the German border; Gabriel slipped behind the wheel of his Audi and sped over the Seedamm, toward the opposite side of the lake. Despite Carter’s admonition, he drove very fast. As a result, he was pulling up to the safe house when Carter called him back with the outlines of the new operational accord. Its parameters were simple and unambiguous. Gabriel and his team would be allowed to retain their ascendency in the field so long as the operation did not touch the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. On this point, said Carter, there was no room for further negotiation. The president would not permit Israeli intelligence to make mischief in the land of Mecca and Medina. Saudi was the game-changer. Saudi was the third rail. If the operation crossed the Saudi border, said Carter, all bets were off. Gabriel killed the connection and sat alone in the darkness, debating what to do. Ten minutes later, he called Carter back and reluctantly accepted the terms. Then he headed into the safe house and told his team they were playing on borrowed time.

Chapter 38 Paris

FROM THE MANY FLOORS OF her mansion on the Avenue Foch, Nadia al-Bakari had carved for herself a comfortable pied-à-terre. It contained an office, a sitting room, her bedroom suite, and a private art gallery hung with twelve of her most cherished paintings. Scattered throughout the apartment were many photographs of her father. In none was he smiling, preferring instead to display the juhayman, the traditional “angry face” of the Arabian Bedouin. The one exception was an unposed photo snapped by Nadia aboard the Alexandra on the final day of his life. His expression was vaguely melancholy, as if he were somehow aware of the fate that awaited him later that night in the Old Port of Cannes.

Framed in silver, the photograph stood on Nadia’s bedside table. Next to it was a Thomas Tompion clock, purchased at auction for the sum of two and a half million dollars and given to Nadia on the occasion of her twenty-fifth birthday. Lately, it had been running several minutes fast, which Nadia found eerily appropriate. She had been gazing at its stately features on and off since waking with a start at three a.m. Craving caffeine, she could feel the onset of a pounding headache. Nevertheless, she remained motionless in her large bed. During the final session of her training, Gabriel reminded her to avoid any changes to her daily schedule—a schedule that several dozen members of her household and personal staff could recite from memory. Without fail, she rose each morning at seven sharp, not a moment sooner or later. Her breakfast tray was to be left on the credenza in her office. Unless otherwise specified, it was to contain a thermos flask of café filtre, a pitcher of steamed milk, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and two six-inch slices of tartine with butter and strawberry preserves on the side. Her newspapers were to be placed on the right side of her desk—the Wall Street Journal on top, followed by the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Journal, and Le Monde—along with her leather-bound itinerary for the day. The television was to be tuned to the BBC, with the volume muted and the remote within easy reach.

It was now half past six. Thinking of anything but the throbbing in her head, she closed her eyes and willed herself into a gauzy half sleep, which was disturbed thirty minutes later by the butterfly knock of her longtime housekeeper, Esmeralda. As was her custom, Nadia remained in bed until Esmeralda had departed. Then she pulled on a dressing gown and, under the watchful gaze of her father, padded barefoot into her office.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee greeted her. She poured a cup, added milk and three spoonfuls of sugar, and sat down at her desk. On the television screen were images of mayhem in Islamabad, the aftermath of yet another powerful al-Qaeda car bombing that had killed more than a hundred people, nearly all of them Muslims. Nadia left the volume on mute and lifted the leather cover of her itinerary. It was strikingly benign. After two hours of private time, she was scheduled to depart her residence and fly to Zurich. There, in a conference room at the Dolder Grand Hotel, she and her closest aides would meet with executives from a Zug-based optical firm owned in large part by AAB Holdings. Immediately afterward, she would conduct a second meeting, without aides present. The topic was listed as “private,” which was always the case when Nadia’s personal finances were involved.

She closed the leather folder and, as was her custom, spent the next hour reading the newspapers over coffee and toast. Shortly after eight, she logged on to her computer to check the status of the Asian markets, then spent several minutes switching among the various cable news networks. Her tour ended with Al Jazeera, which had moved on from the carnage in Islamabad to report an Israeli military strike in the Gaza Strip that had killed two top Hamas terror planners. Describing the strike as “a crime against humanity,” the Turkish prime minister called on the United Nations to punish Israel with economic sanctions—a call rejected, in the next segment, by an important Saudi cleric. “The time for diplomacy has ended,” he told the fawning Al Jazeera questioner. “It is now time for all Muslims to join the armed struggle against the Zionist interlopers. And may God punish those who dare to collaborate with the enemies of Islam.”

Switching off the television, Nadia returned to her bedroom and changed into exercise clothing. She had never cared for physical activity, and since turning thirty she cared for it even less. She dutifully elevated her heart rate and strained her limbs each morning because it was something that, as a modern businesswoman who lived mainly in the West, she was expected to do. Still suffering from a mild headache, she shortened her already-brief daily routine. After a leisurely stroll atop the conveyor belt of her treadmill, she stretched for several minutes on a rubber yoga mat. Then she lay on her back very still, with her ankles pressed together and her arms extended from her sides. As always, the pose created a sensation of weightlessness. On that morning, however, it also produced a shockingly clear revelation of her future. She lay there for several moments, her pose unchanged, and debated whether to go through with the trip to Zurich. One phone call is all it would take, she thought. One phone call and the burden would be lifted. It was a call she could not bring herself to make. She believed she had been put on earth, in this time and place, for a reason. She believed the same was true for the man who had killed her father, and she did not want to disappoint him.

Nadia stood and, fighting off a wave of dizziness, returned to her bedroom. After bathing and perfuming her body, she entered her dressing room and selected her clothing, forsaking the light colors that she preferred for more somber shades of gray and black. Her hair she arranged piously. Her face, as she glided past Rafiq al-Kamal into the back of her limousine thirty minutes later, was set in the juhayman of the Bedouin. The transformation was nearly complete. She was a wealthy Saudi woman plotting to avenge the murder of her father.

The car slipped through the front gate of the mansion and turned into the street. As it headed along the Bois de Boulogne, Nadia noticed the man she knew as Max walking a few paces behind a woman who may or may not have been Sarah. Just then, a motorcycle appeared briefly next to her window, ridden by a slender, helmeted figure in a black leather jacket. Something about him made Nadia feel a sudden painful stab of memory. It was probably nothing, she told herself as the bike vanished into a side street. Just a touch of last-minute nerves. Just her mind playing tricks.

At the behest of the al-Saud, Nadia had been compelled to keep more than just her father’s old security detail. The basic structure of the company remained the same, as did most of the senior personnel. Daoud Hamza, a Stanford-educated Lebanese, still ran the day-to-day operations. Manfred Wehrli, a granite-calm Swiss moneyman, still managed the finances. And the legal team known as Abdul & Abdul still kept things reasonably above board. Accompanied by twenty additional aides, footmen, factotums, and assorted hangers-on, they were all gathered in the VIP lounge of Le Bourget Airport by the time Nadia arrived. At the stroke of ten, they filed onto AAB’s Boeing Business Jet, and by 10:15 they were Zurich bound. They spent the hour-long flight crunching numbers around the conference table and upon arrival at Kloten Airport piled into a convoy of Mercedes sedans. It bore them at considerable speed up the wooded slopes of the Zürichberg to the graceful entrance of the Dolder Grand Hotel, where management escorted them to a conference room with an Alpine-sounding name and a view of the lake that was worth the outrageous price of admission. The delegation from the Swiss optical firm had already arrived and was partaking freely of the lavish buffet. The AAB team sat down and began opening their briefcases and laptops. AAB personnel never ate during meetings. Zizi’s rules.

The meeting had been scheduled to last two hours. It ran thirty minutes over and concluded with a pledge by Nadia to invest an additional twenty million francs in the Swiss company to help it upgrade its factories and product line. After a few benedictory remarks, the Swiss delegation departed. Crossing the elegant lobby, they passed a thin, lightly bearded Arab in his early forties sitting alone with his briefcase at his side. Five minutes later, a phone call summoned him to the conference room the Swiss had just vacated. Waiting there alone was a beautiful woman of unimpeachable jihadist credentials.

“May God’s blessings be upon you,” she said in Arabic.

“And upon you as well,” Samir Abbas responded in the same language. “I trust your meeting with the Swiss went well.”

“Earthly matters,” said Nadia with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“God has been very generous to you,” Abbas said. “I’ve put together some proposals on how I think your money should be invested.”

“I don’t need investment advice from you, Mr. Abbas. I do quite well on my own.”

“Then how might I be of service, Miss al-Bakari?”

“You may begin by having a seat. And then you can switch off your BlackBerry. One can never be too careful these days when it comes to electronic devices. You never know who might be listening.”

“I understand completely.”

She managed to smile. “I’m sure you do.”

Chapter 39 Zurich

THEY SAT ON OPPOSITE SIDES of the conference table, with no refreshment other than bottles of Swiss mineral water, which neither of them touched. Between them lay two smart phones, screens dark, SIM cards removed. Having averted his gaze from Nadia’s unveiled face, Samir Abbas appeared to be studying the chandelier above his head. Concealed amid the lights and crystal was a miniature short-range transmitter installed earlier that morning by Mordecai and Oded. They were now monitoring its signal from a room on the fourth floor, all charges paid in full by the National Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency. Gabriel was listening at the safe house on the opposite shore of the lake via a secure microwave link. His lips were moving slightly, as if he were trying to feed Nadia her next line.

“I would like to begin by offering you my sincerest apology,” she said.

Abbas appeared momentarily perplexed. “You’ve recently deposited two hundred million dollars in the financial institution for which I work, Miss al-Bakari. I cannot imagine why you would apologize.”

“Because not long after my father’s death, you asked me to make a donation to one of the Islamic charities with which you are associated. I turned you away—rather brusquely, if I remember correctly.”

“I was wrong to have approached you at so sensitive a time.”

“I know you only had my best interests at heart. Zakat is extremely important to our faith. In fact, my father believed the giving of alms to be the most important of the Five Pillars of Islam.”

“Your father was generous to a fault. I could always count on him when we were in need.”

“He always spoke very highly of you, Mr. Abbas.”

“And of you as well, Miss al-Bakari. Your father loved you dearly. I cannot imagine the pain of your loss. Take peace in the knowledge that your father is with God in Paradise.”

“Inshallah,” she said wistfully, “but I’m afraid I’ve not had a single day of peace since his murder. And my pain has been compounded by the fact that his killers have never been punished for their crime.”

“You have a right to your anger. We all do. Your father’s murder was an insult to all Muslims.”

“But what to do with this anger?”

“Are you asking me for advice, Miss al-Bakari?”

“Of the spiritual variety,” she said. “I know you are a man of great faith.”

“Like your father,” he said.

“Like my father,” she repeated softly.

Abbas looked directly into her eyes briefly before averting his gaze once more. “The Koran is more than a recitation of Allah’s word,” he said. “It is also a legal document that governs every aspect of our lives. And it is quite clear about what is to be done in the case of murder. It is known as al-quisas. As the surviving next of kin, you have three options. You may simply forgive the guilty party out of the goodness of your heart. You may accept a payment of blood money. Or you may do to the killer the same as he did to the victim, without killing anyone except the guilty party.”

“The men who killed my father were professional assassins. They were sent by others.”

“Then it is the men who dispatched the assassins who are ultimately responsible for your father’s death.”

“And if I cannot find it in my heart to forgive them?”

“Then, by the laws of Allah, you are entitled to kill them. Without killing anyone else,” he added hastily.

“A difficult proposition, wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Abbas?”

The banker made no response other than to gaze directly into Nadia’s face for the first time without the slightest trace of Islamist decorum.

“Is something wrong?” asked Nadia.

“I know who killed your father, Miss al-Bakari. And I know why he was killed.”

“Then you also know that it is not possible for me to punish them under the laws of Islam.” She paused, then added, “Not without help.”

Abbas picked up Nadia’s disabled BlackBerry and examined it in silence.

“You have nothing to be nervous about,” she said quietly.

“Why would I be nervous? I manage accounts for high-net-worth individuals for TransArabian Bank. In my spare time, I solicit funds for legitimate charities to help ease the suffering of Muslims around the world.”

“Which is why I asked to see you.”

“You wish to make a contribution?”

“A substantial one.”

“To whom?”

“To the sort of men who can deliver to me the justice I am owed.”

Abbas returned Nadia’s BlackBerry to the table but said nothing. Nadia held his gaze for an uncomfortably long moment.

“We reside in the West, you and I, but we are children of the desert. My family came from the Nejd, yours from the Hejaz. We can say a great deal with very few words.”

“My father used to speak to me only with his eyes,” Abbas said wistfully.

“Mine, too,” said Nadia.

Abbas removed the cap from his bottle of mineral water and poured some slowly into a glass, as though it were the last water on the face of the earth. “The charities with which I am associated are entirely legitimate,” he said finally. “The money is used to build roads, schools, hospitals, and the like. Occasionally, some of it finds its way into the hands of a group based in the northwest tribal areas of Pakistan. I’m sure this group would be very grateful for any assistance. As you know, they lost their primary patron recently.”

“I’m not interested in the group based in the tribal areas of Pakistan,” Nadia said. “They’re no longer effective. Their time has passed.”

“Tell that to the people of Paris, Copenhagen, London, and Madrid.”

“It is my understanding that the group based in the tribal areas of Pakistan had nothing to do with those attacks.”

Abbas looked up sharply. “Who told you such a thing?”

“A man on my security staff who maintains close contact with the Saudi GID.”

Nadia was surprised at how easily the lie rose to her lips. Abbas screwed the cap back onto the bottle and appeared to consider her response carefully.

“One hears rumors about the Yemeni preacher,” he said finally. “The one who carries an American passport and speaks like one as well. One also hears rumors that he’s expanding his operations. His charitable operations, of course,” Abbas added.

“Do you know how to make contact with his organization?”

“If you are serious about trying to help them, I believe I can make an introduction.”

“The sooner the better,” she said.

“These are not the type of men who like to be told what to do, Miss al-Bakari, especially by women.”

“I’m not just any woman. I am the daughter of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari, and I have been waiting for a very long time.”

“So have they—hundreds of years, in fact. They are men of great patience. And you must be patient, too.”

The meeting unwound in the same precise manner with which it had been planned and executed. Abbas returned to his office, Nadia to her airplane, Oded and Mordecai to the safe house on the western shore of the lake. Gabriel didn’t bother to acknowledge their arrival. He was hunched over the computer in the living room, headphones over his ears, resignation on his face. He clicked pause, then rewind, then play.

“These are not the type of men who like to be told what to do, Miss al-Bakari, especially by women.”

“I’m not just any woman. I am the daughter of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari, and I have been waiting for a very long time.”

“So have they—hundreds of years, in fact. They are men of great patience. And you must be patient, too.”

“I have one request, Mr. Abbas. Because of what happened to my father, it is essential that I know who I will be meeting with and that I will be safe.”

“You needn’t worry, Miss al-Bakari. The person I have in mind poses absolutely no threat to your security.”

“Who is it?”

“His name is Marwan Bin Tayyib. He’s the dean of the department of theology at the University of Mecca and a very holy man.”

Gabriel clicked pause, then rewind, then play.

“His name is Marwan Bin Tayyib. He’s the dean of the department of theology at the University of Mecca and a very holy man.”

Gabriel pressed stop. Then, reluctantly, he forwarded the name to Adrian Carter at Langley. Carter’s response arrived five minutes later. It was a reservation for the morning flight back to Washington. Economy plus, of course. Carter’s revenge.

Chapter 40 Langley, Virginia

“WELL DONE,” SAID CARTER. “A bravura performance. A work of art. Truly.”

He was standing outside the elevators on the seventh-floor executive suite, smiling with all the sincerity of the artificial plants that flourished in the permanent gloom of his office. It was the kind of consoling smile worn by executives at sacking time, thought Gabriel. The only thing missing from the picture was the gold watch, the modest severance package, and the complimentary dinner for two at Morton’s steak house. “Come,” said Carter, patting Gabriel’s shoulder, something he never did. “I have something to show you.”

After descending into a subterranean level of the building, they hiked for what seemed like a mile along gray-and-white corridors. Their destination was a windowed observation deck overlooking a cavernous open space that had the atmosphere of a Wall Street trading floor. On each of the four walls flickered video display panels the size of billboards. Beneath them, two hundred computer screens illuminated two hundred faces. Precisely what they were doing Gabriel did not know. Truth be told, he was no longer certain he was still at Langley or even in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

“We decided it was time to bring everyone under one roof,” explained Carter.

“Everyone?” asked Gabriel.

“This is your operation,” Carter said.

“This is all for one operation?”

“We’re Americans,” said Carter with a trace of contrition. “We only do big.”

“Does it have its own zip code?”

“Actually, it doesn’t even have a name yet. For now, we’re calling it Rashidistan in your honor. Let me give you the nickel tour.”

“Under the circumstances, I believe I’m owed at least ten cents’ worth.”

“Are we going to have another pissing match over turf?”

“Only if it’s necessary.”

Carter led Gabriel down a tight spiral staircase onto the floor of the op center. The stale air smelled of freshly laid carpeting and overheated electrical circuitry. A young woman with spiky black hair brushed past without a word and sat at one of the many worktables at the center of the room. Gabriel looked up at one of the video screens and saw several famous Washington pundits chatting in the warm glow of a television studio. The audio was muted.

“Are they plotting a terrorist attack?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“So why are we watching them?” asked Gabriel, looking around the room with a combination of wonder and despair. “Who are all these people?”

Even Carter, the nominal leader of the operation, appeared to deliberate for a moment before responding. “Most come from inside the Agency,” he said finally, “but we’ve also got NSA, FBI, DOJ, and Treasury, along with several dozen green-badgers.”

“Are they some sort of endangered species?”

“Quite the opposite,” said Carter. “The people you see wearing green credentials are all private contractors. Even I’m not sure how many we have working at Langley these days. But I do know one thing. Most of them make far more than I do.”

“Doing what?”

“A few of them are former counterterrorism types who’ve tripled their salaries by going to work for private firms. In many cases, they do the exact same jobs and hold the exact same clearances. But now they’re paid by ACME Security Solutions or some other private entity instead of the Agency.”

“And the rest?”

“Data miners,” said Carter, “and thanks to that meeting in Zurich yesterday, they’ve hit the mother lode.” He pointed toward one of the worktables. “That group over there is handling Samir Abbas, our friend from TransArabian Bank. They’re tearing him limb from limb, e-mail from e-mail, phone call from phone call, financial transaction from financial transaction. They’ve managed to assemble a data trail that predates 9/11. As far as we’re concerned, Samir alone has been worth the price of admission to this operation. It’s remarkable he’s managed to escape our notice all these years. He’s the real thing. And so is his friend at the University of Mecca.”

The girl with spiky black hair handed Carter a file. Then he led Gabriel into a soundproof conference room. A single window looked onto the floor of the op center. “Here’s your boy,” Carter said, handing Gabriel an eight-by-ten photograph. “The Saudi dilemma incarnate.”

Gabriel looked down at the photograph and saw Sheikh Marwan Bin Tayyib staring unsmilingly back at him. The Saudi cleric wore the long unkempt beard of a Salafi Muslim and the expression of a man who did not care to have his photograph taken. His red-and-white ghutra hung from his head in a way that revealed the white taqiyah skullcap beneath it. Unlike most Saudi men, he did not secure his headdress with the black circular cord known as an agal. It was a display of piety that told the world he cared little about his appearance.

“How much do you know about him?” Gabriel asked.

“He comes from the Wahhabi heartland north of Riyadh. In fact, there’s a mud hut in his hometown where Wahhab himself is said to have stayed once. The men of his town have always regarded themselves as keepers of the true faith, the purest of the pure. Even now, foreigners aren’t welcome. If one happens to come to town, the locals hide their faces and walk the other way.”

“Does Bin Tayyib have ties to al-Qaeda?”

“They’re tenuous,” said Carter, “but undeniable. He was a key figure in the awakening of Islamic fervor that swept the Kingdom after the takeover of the Grand Mosque in 1979. In his doctoral thesis, he argued that secularism was a Western-inspired plot to destroy Islam and ultimately Saudi Arabia. It became required reading among certain radical members of the House of Saud, including our old friend Prince Nabil, the Saudi interior minister who to this day refuses to admit that nineteen of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of his country. Nabil was so impressed by Bin Tayyib’s thesis he personally recommended him for the influential post at the University of Mecca.”

Gabriel handed the photograph back to Carter, who looked at it disdainfully before returning it to the file.

“This isn’t the first time Bin Tayyib’s name has been connected to Rashid’s network,” he said. “Despite his radical past, Bin Tayyib serves as an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s much-vaunted terrorist rehabilitation program. At least twenty-five Saudis have returned to the battlefield after graduating from the program. Four are believed to be in Yemen with Rashid.”

“Any other connections?”

“Guess who was the last person to be seen in Rashid’s presence on the night he crossed back over to the other side.”

“Bin Tayyib?”

Carter nodded. “It was Bin Tayyib who issued the invitation for Rashid to speak at the University of Mecca. And it was Bin Tayyib who served as his escort on the night of his defection.”

“Did you ever raise this with your friends in Riyadh?”

“We tried.”

“And?”

“It went nowhere,” Carter admitted. “As you know, the relationship between the House of Saud and the members of the clerical establishment is complicated, to say the least. The al-Saud can’t rule without the support of the ulema. And if they were to move against an influential theologian like Bin Tayyib at our behest . . .”

“The jihadists might take offense.”

Nodding his head, Carter delved back into the file folder and produced two sheets of paper—transcripts of NSA intercepts.

“Our friend from TransArabian Bank made two interesting phone calls from his office this morning—one to Riyadh and a second to Jeddah. In the first call, he says he’s doing business with Nadia al-Bakari. In the second, he says he has a friend who wants to discuss spiritual matters with Sheikh Bin Tayyib. Separately, the two calls appear entirely innocent. But put them together . . .”

“And it leaves no doubt that Nadia al-Bakari, a woman of unimpeachable jihadist credentials, would like to have a word with the sheikh in private.”

“To discuss spiritual matters, of course.” Carter returned the transcripts to the file. “The question is,” he said, closing the cover, “do we let her go?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“Because it would violate all our standing agreements with the Saudi government and its security services. The Hadith clearly states that there shall not be two religions in Arabia. And the al-Saud have made it clear they won’t tolerate two intelligence services, either.”

“When are you going to realize they are the problem rather than the solution?”

“The day we no longer need their oil to power our cars and our economy,” Carter said. “We’ve arrested and killed hundreds of Saudi citizens since 9/11, but not inside Saudi Arabia itself. The country is off limits to infidels like us. If Nadia goes to see Sheikh Bin Tayyib, she has to go alone, without backup.”

“Can we bring the mountain to Muhammad?”

“If you’re asking whether Bin Tayyib can travel outside Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Nadia, the answer is no. He’s on too many watch lists for that. No European country in its right mind would let him in. If Bin Tayyib bites, we have no choice but to send Nadia up the mountain by herself. And if the al-Saud find out she’s there on our behalf, heads will roll.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you created an entire separate government agency to handle this,” Gabriel said, pointing at the op center beyond the window. “But that’s your problem now, Adrian. Under the terms of our most recent operational accord, this is the point where I hand over the keys and fade quietly into the background.”

“I’m wondering whether you might accept a few amendments,” said Carter cautiously.

“I’m listening.”

“Before I became the leader of the world’s largest counterterrorism force, I actually recruited and ran spies. And if there’s one thing a spy hates, it’s change. You found Nadia. You recruited her. It makes sense for you to continue running her.”

“You want me to serve as her case officer?”

“I suppose I do.”

“Under your supervision, of course.”

“The White House is adamant that the Agency assume overall control of the operation. I’m afraid my hands are tied.”

“It’s not like you to hide behind higher authority, Adrian.”

Carter made no reply. Gabriel appeared to give the matter serious thought, but in reality his mind was already made up. He tilted his head toward the soundproof glass and asked, “Do you have any room out there for me?”

Carter smiled. “I’ve already made an ID badge so you can get into the building unescorted,” he said. “It’s green, of course.”

“Green is the color of our enemy.”

“Islam isn’t the enemy, Gabriel.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot.”

Carter stood and escorted Gabriel to a small gray cubicle in the far corner of the op center. It contained a desk, a chair, an internal-line telephone, a computer, a document safe, a burn bag, and a coffee cup with the CIA emblem on the side. The girl with spiky black hair brought him a stack of files and then returned wordlessly to her pod. As Gabriel opened the first file, he looked up and saw Carter admiring the view of Rashidistan from the observation platform. He looked pleased with himself. He had a right to. The operation was his now. Gabriel was just another private contractor, a man in a gray box with a green badge around his neck.

Chapter 41 Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

THE BOEING BUSINESS JET OWNED and operated by AAB Holdings entered the airspace of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at precisely 5:18 p.m. As was customary, its British pilot immediately informed the passengers and crew of this development so that any females on board could begin exchanging their Western clothing for appropriate Islamic dress.

Ten of the women on board the plane did so at once. The eleventh, Nadia al-Bakari, remained in her usual seat, working through a thick stack of paperwork, until the first lights of Riyadh appeared like bits of amber scattered across the desert floor. A century earlier, the Saudi capital had been little more than a mud-walled desert outpost, all but unknown to the Western world, a speck on the map somewhere between the slopes of the Sarawat Mountains and the shores of the Persian Gulf. Oil had transformed Riyadh into a modern metropolis of palaces, skyscrapers, and shopping malls. Yet in many respects the trappings of petrowealth were a mirage. For all the billions the al-Saud had spent trying to modernize their sleepy desert empire, they had squandered billions more on their yachts, their whores, and their vacation homes in Marbella. Worse still, they had done little to prepare the country for the day the last well ran dry. Ten million foreign workers toiled in the oil fields and the palaces, yet hundreds of thousands of young Saudi men could find no work. Oil aside, the country’s biggest exports were dates and Korans. And bearded fanatics, thought Nadia grimly, as she watched the lights of Riyadh grow brighter. When it came to producing Islamic extremists, Saudi Arabia was a market leader.

Nadia lifted her gaze from the window and glanced around the interior of the aircraft. The forward seating compartment was arranged in the manner of a majlis, with comfortable chairs along the fuselage and rich Oriental rugs spread across the floor. The seats were occupied by AAB’s all-male senior staff—Daoud Hamza, the legal team of Abdul & Abdul, and, of course, Rafiq al-Kamal. He was staring at Nadia with a look of transparent disapproval, as if silently trying to remind her it was time to change her clothing. They were about to touch down in the land of invisible women, which meant Rafiq would become more than just Nadia’s bodyguard. He would also serve as her male chaperone and by law would be obligated to accompany her everywhere she went in public. In a few minutes’ time, Nadia al-Bakari, one of the world’s richest women, would have the rights of a camel. Fewer, she thought resentfully, for even a camel was permitted to show its face in public.

Without a word, she rose to her feet and made her way toward the back of the aircraft to her elegantly appointed private quarters. Opening the closet, she saw her Saudi uniform hanging limply from the rod: a simple white thobe, an embroidered black abaya cloak, and a black niqab facial veil. Just once, she thought, she would like to walk the streets of her country in loose-fitting white clothing rather than inside a constricting black cocoon. It wasn’t possible, of course; even wealth on the scale of the al-Bakaris offered no protection against the fanatical mutaween religious police. Besides, this was hardly the moment to test Saudi Arabia’s social and religious norms. She had come to her homeland to meet privately with Sheikh Marwan Bin Tayyib, the dean of the department of theology at the University of Mecca. Surely the esteemed religious scholar would find it odd if, on the eve of that meeting, Nadia was arrested by the bearded ones for failing to wear proper Islamic attire.

Reluctantly, she shed her pale Oscar de la Renta pantsuit and with clerical slowness robed herself in black. With the niqab now hiding the face God had given her, she stood before the mirror and examined her appearance. Only her eyes were visible, along with a tempting trace of flesh around her ankles. All other visual proof of her existence had been erased. In fact, her return to the forward passenger cabin provoked scarcely a glance from her male colleagues. Only Daoud Hamza, a Lebanese by birth, bothered to acknowledge her presence. The others, all Saudis, kept their eyes conspicuously averted. The illness had returned, she thought, the illness that was Saudi Arabia. It didn’t matter that Nadia was their employer. Allah had made her a woman, and upon arrival in the land of the Prophet, she would assume her proper place.

Their landing at King Khalid International Airport coincided with the evening prayer. Forbidden to pray with the men, Nadia had no choice but to wait patiently while they completed this most important pillar of Islam. Then, surrounded by several veiled women, she headed awkwardly down the passenger stairs, struggling not to trip over the hem of her abaya. A frigid wind was ripping over the tarmac, bringing with it a thick brown cloud of Nejdi dust. Leaning into the wind for balance, Nadia followed her male colleagues toward the general aviation terminal. There they went their separate ways, for the terminal, like every other public space in Saudi Arabia, was segregated by gender. Despite the AAB luggage tags, their bags were carefully searched for pornography, liquor, or any other hint of Western decadence.

Emerging from the opposite side of the building, she climbed into the back of a waiting Mercedes limousine with Rafiq al-Kamal for the twenty-two-mile drive into Riyadh. The dust storm had reduced visibility to only a few meters. Occasionally, the headlamps of an approaching car bobbed toward them like the running lights of a small ship, but for the most part, they seemed entirely alone. Nadia wanted desperately to remove her niqab but knew better. The mutaween were always on the lookout for unveiled women riding in automobiles—especially rich Westernized women returning home from Europe.

After fifteen minutes, the skyline of Riyadh finally pricked the brown-black gloom. They sped past Ibn Saud Islamic University and navigated a series of traffic circles to the King Fahd Road, the main thoroughfare of Riyadh’s thriving new al-Olaya financial district. Directly ahead rose the silver Kingdom Center tower, looking like a misplaced modern attaché case waiting to be reclaimed by its errant owner. In its shadow was the glittering new Makkah Mall, which had reopened after the evening prayer and was now under assault by hordes of eager shoppers. Baton-wielding mutaween moved among the crowds in pairs, looking for evidence of inappropriate conduct or relationships. Nadia thought of Rena, and for the first time since her summons to the house in Seraincourt, she felt a stab of genuine fear.

It receded a moment later when the car turned onto Musa Bin Nusiar Street and headed into al-Shumaysi, a district of walled palaces populated by al-Saud princes and other Saudi elite. The al-Bakari compound lay at the western edge of the district on a street patrolled constantly by police and troops. An ornate blend of East and West, the palace was surrounded by three acres of reflecting pools, fountains, lawns, and palm groves. Its towering white walls were designed to keep even the most determined enemy at bay but were no match for the dust, which was billowing across the forecourt as the limousine slipped through the security gate.

Standing at attention in the portico were the ten members of the permanent household staff, Asians all. Emerging from the back of her Mercedes, Nadia would have liked to greet them warmly. Instead, playing the role of a distant Saudi heiress, she walked past without a word and started up the sweeping central staircase. By the time she reached the first landing, she had torn the niqab from her face. Then, in the privacy of her rooms, she removed her clothing and stood naked before a full-length mirror, until a wave of dizziness drove her to her knees. When it passed, she washed the dust of the Nejd from her hair and lay on the floor with her ankles together and her arms extended, waiting for the familiar feeling of weightlessness to carry her away. It was nearly over, she thought. A few months, perhaps only a few weeks. Then it would be done.

It was just half past eleven a.m. at Langley, but in Rashidistan the atmosphere was one of permanent evening. Adrian Carter sat at the command desk, a secure phone in one hand, a single sheet of white paper in the other. The phone was connected to James McKenna at the White House. The sheet of paper was a printout of the latest cable from the CIA’s Riyadh Station. It stated that NAB, the Agency’s not-so-cryptic cipher for Nadia al-Bakari, had arrived home safely and appeared to be under no surveillance—jihadist, Saudi, or anything in between. Carter read the cable with a look of profound relief on his face before dealing it across the desk to Gabriel, whose face remained expressionless. They said nothing more to each other. They didn’t need to. Their affliction was shared. They had an agent in hostile territory, and neither one of them would have a moment’s peace until she was back on her plane again, heading out of Saudi airspace.

At noon Washington time, Carter returned to his office on the seventh floor while Gabriel headed to the house on N Street for some much-needed sleep. He woke at midnight and by one a.m. was back in Rashidistan, with his green badge around his neck and Adrian Carter sitting tensely at his side. The next cable from Riyadh arrived fifteen minutes later. It said NAB had departed her walled compound in al-Shumaysi and was now en route to her offices on al-Olaya Street. There she remained until one in the afternoon, when she was driven to the Four Seasons Hotel for a luncheon with Saudi investors, all of whom happened to be men. Upon departure from the hotel, her car turned right onto King Fahd Street—curious, since her office was in the opposite direction. She was last seen ten minutes later, heading north on Highway 65. The CIA team made no attempt to follow. NAB was now entirely on her own.

Chapter 42 Nejd, Saudi Arabia

THE WIND BLEW ITSELF OUT at midday, and by late afternoon, peace had once more been imposed upon the Nejd. It would be a temporary peace, as most were in the harsh plateau, for in the distant west, black storm clouds were creeping over the passes of the Sarawat Mountains like a Hejazi raiding party. It had been two weeks since the first rains, and the desert floor was aglow with the first hesitant growth of grass and wildflowers. Within a few weeks, the land would be as green as a Berkshire meadow. Then the blast furnace would reignite and from the sky not a drop of rain would fall—not until the next winter when, Allah willing, the storms would once again come rolling down the slopes of the Sarawat.

To the people of the Nejd, the rain was one of the few welcome things to come from the west. They regarded nearly everything else, including their so-called countrymen from the Hejaz, with contempt and scorn. It was their faith that made them hostile to outside influences, a faith that had been given to them three centuries earlier by an austere reformist preacher named Muhammad Abdul Wahhab. In 1744, he formed an alliance with a Nejdi tribe called the al-Saud, thus creating the union of political and religious power that would eventually lead to the creation of the modern state of Saudi Arabia. It had been an uneasy alliance, and from time to time, the al-Saud had felt compelled to put the bearded zealots of the Nejd in their place, sometimes with the help of infidels. In 1930, the al-Saud had used British machine guns to massacre the holy warriors of the Ikhwan in the town of Sabillah. And after 9/11, the al-Saud had joined forces with the hated Americans to beat back the modern-day version of the Ikhwan known as al-Qaeda. Yet through it all, the marriage between the followers of Wahhab and the House of Saud had endured. They were dependent on one another for their very survival. In the unforgiving landscape of the Nejd, one could not ask for much more.

Despite the extremes of climate, the newly laid surface of Highway 65 was smooth and black, like the rivers of crude that flowed beneath it. Running in a northwesterly direction, it followed the path of the ancient caravan route linking Riyadh with the oasis town of Hail. A few miles south of Hail, near the town of Buraydah, Nadia instructed her driver to turn onto a smaller two-lane road running westward into the desert. Rafiq al-Kamal was by now visibly uneasy. Nadia had told him nothing of her plans to travel to the Nejd until the moment of their departure from the Four Seasons, and even then her explanations had been opaque. She said she was having dinner at the family camp of Sheikh Marwan Bin Tayyib, an important member of the ulema. After the dinner—which would be strictly segregated by gender, of course—she would meet privately with the sheikh to discuss matters related to zakat. It would not be necessary for her to take along a chaperone to the meeting since the cleric was a good and learned man known for his extreme piety. Nor were there any concerns about safety. Al-Kamal had accepted her edicts, but clearly they did not please him.

It was now a few minutes past five, and the light was slowly seeping from the endless sky. They sped through groves of date, lemon, and orange trees, slowing only once to allow a leathered old shepherd to drive his goats across the road. Al-Kamal appeared to relax with each passing mile. A native of the region, he pointed out some of its more important landmarks as they flashed past his window. And in Unayzah, a starkly religious town known for the purity of its Islam, he asked Nadia to make a small detour so he could see the modest home where, as a child, he had lived with one of his father’s four wives.

“I never knew you came from here,” Nadia said.

“So does Sheikh Bin Tayyib,” he said, nodding. “I knew him when he was a boy. We attended the same school and prayed in the same mosque. Marwan was quite a firebrand back then. He got into trouble for throwing a rock through the window of a video shop. He thought it was un-Islamic.”

“What about you?”

“I didn’t mind the shop. There wasn’t much else to do in Unayzah but watch videos and go to the mosque.”

“It’s my understanding the sheikh has moderated his views since then.”

“The Muslims of Unayzah don’t know the meaning of the word ‘moderation,’ ” al-Kamal said. “If Marwan has changed in any way since then, it is for public consumption only. Marwan is an Islamist through and through. And he has very little use for the al-Saud, despite the fact that they pay him well. I’d watch your step around him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Maybe I should attend the meeting with you.”

“I’ll be fine, Rafiq.”

Al-Kamal fell silent as they left Unayzah and plunged once more into the desert. Directly before them, across a sea of boulders and stones, rose a barren escarpment of rock, its edges carved and scored by millions of years of wind and sand. The sheikh’s camp lay to the north of the outcropping along the edge of a deep wadi. Nadia could feel heavy stones thudding against the undercarriage of the car as they drove along a pitted unpaved track.

“I wish you’d told me where we were going,” al-Kamal said, clutching the armrest for support. “We could have taken one of the Range Rovers.”

“I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

“It’s a desert camp. How did you think we were going to get there?”

Nadia laughed in spite of herself. “I hope my father isn’t watching this.”

“Actually, I hope he is.” Al-Kamal looked at her for a long moment without speaking. “I never left your father’s side, Nadia, even when he was discussing highly sensitive business with men like Sheikh Bin Tayyib. He trusted me with his life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t protect him that night in Cannes, but I would have gladly stepped in front of those bullets. And I would do the same for you. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“I think I do, Rafiq.”

“Good,” he said. “If God wills it, this meeting tonight will be a success. But next time, tell me first so I can make proper arrangements. It’s better that way. No surprises.”

“Zizi’s rules?” she asked.

“Zizi’s rules,” he replied, nodding his head. “Zizi’s rules are like the teachings of the Prophet, peace be upon him. Follow them carefully and God will grant you a long and happy life. Ignore them . . .” He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “That’s when bad things happen.”

They came upon a cluster of cars parked haphazardly along the edge of the wadi: Range Rovers, Mercedes, Toyotas, and a few battered pickup trucks. Adjacent to the parking area, aglow with internal lighting, stood two large communal tents. A dozen smaller tents were scattered across the desert floor, each fitted with a generator and a satellite dish. Nadia smiled beneath the cover of her niqab. The Saudis loved to return to the desert each winter to reconnect with their Bedouin heritage, but their devotion to the old ways only went so far.

“The sheikh is obviously doing quite well for himself.”

“You should see his villa in Mecca,” al-Kamal said. “This is all bought and paid for by the government. As far as the al-Saud are concerned, it’s money well spent. They take care of the ulema, and the ulema takes care of them.”

“Why this spot?” asked Nadia, looking around.

“Long before there was such a thing as Saudi Arabia, members of the sheikh’s clan used to bring their animals here in the winter. The Bin Tayyibs have been camping here for centuries.”

“The next thing you’re going to tell me is that you came here when you were a boy.”

Al-Kamal gave a rare smile. “I did.”

The security man gestured to the driver to park in a spot isolated from the other cars. After helping Nadia out of the backseat, he paused to look at a Toyota Camry. But for the thin coating of fine powdery dust, it looked as though it had just rolled onto the dock at Dhahran.

“Your dream car?” asked Nadia sardonically.

“It’s the model they give to graduates of the terrorist rehabilitation program. They give them a car, a down payment on a house, and a nice girl to marry—all the trappings of a normal life so they stay tethered to this world rather than the world of jihad. They buy the loyalty of the ulema, and they buy the loyalty of the jihadis. It’s the way of the desert. It’s the al-Saud way.”

Al-Kamal instructed the driver to stay with the car and then led Nadia toward the two communal tents. Within a few seconds a young man appeared to welcome them. He wore a calf-length thobe in the style of the Salaf and a taqiyah skullcap with no headdress. His beard was long but sparse, and his eyes were unusually gentle for a Saudi man. After offering them the traditional greeting of peace, he introduced himself as Ali and said he was a talib, or student, of Sheikh Bin Tayyib. He looked to be about thirty.

“The meal is just getting started. Your bodyguard is free to join us, if he wishes. The women are over there,” he added, gesturing toward the tent on the left. “There are several members of the sheikh’s family here tonight. I’m sure you’ll be made to feel very welcome.”

Nadia exchanged a final brief glance with al-Kamal before setting off toward the tent. Two veiled women appeared and, greeting her warmly in Nedji Arabic, drew her through the opening. Inside were twenty more women just like them. They were seated on thick Oriental rugs, around heaping platters of lamb, chicken, eggplant, rice, and flat bread. Some wore the niqab like Nadia, but most were fully veiled. In the enclosed space of the tent, their energetic chatter sounded like the clicking of cicadas. It fell silent for a few seconds while Nadia was introduced by one of the women who had greeted her. Apparently, they had been waiting for Nadia’s arrival to begin eating, for one of the women loudly exclaimed, “Al-hamdu lillah!”—Thanks be to God! Then the women set upon the platters as if they had not eaten in many days and would not see food again for a very long time.

Still standing, Nadia searched the shapeless veiled forms for a moment before settling herself between two women in their twenties. One was named Adara, the other Safia. Adara came from Buraydah and was the sheikh’s niece. Her brother had gone to Iraq to fight the Americans and had vanished without a trace. Safia turned out to be the wife of Ali, the talib. “I was named for the Muslim woman who killed a Jewish spy in the time of the Prophet,” she said proudly before adding the obligatory “peace be upon him.” Rafiq al-Kamal had been right about the Toyota Camry; it had been given to Ali after his graduation from the terrorist rehabilitation program. Safia had been given to him as well, along with a respectable dowry. They were expecting their first child in four months’ time. “Inshallah, it will be a boy,” she said.

“If it is the will of God,” repeated Nadia with a serenity that did not match her thoughts.

Nadia served herself a small portion of chicken and rice and looked around at the other women. A few had removed their niqabs, but most were attempting to eat with their faces covered, including Adara and Safia. Nadia did the same, all the while listening to the constant hum of chatter around her. It was frightfully banal: family gossip, the newest shopping center in Riyadh, the accomplishments of their children. Only their sons, of course, for their female offspring were symbols of reproductive failure. This was how they spent their lives, locked away in separate rooms, in separate tents, in the company of women just like themselves. They attended no theater productions, because there was not one playhouse in the entire country. They went to no discotheques, because music and dancing were both strictly haram. They read nothing but the Koran—which they studied separately from men—and heavily censored magazines promoting clothing they were not allowed to wear in public. Occasionally, they would grant one another physical pleasure, the dirty little secret of Saudi Arabia, but for the most part they led lives of crushing, depressing boredom. And when it was over they would be buried in the Wahhabi tradition, in a grave with no marker, beneath the blistering sands of the Nejd.

Despite it all, Nadia couldn’t help but feel strangely comforted by the warm embrace of her people and her faith. That was the one thing Westerners would never understand about Islam: it was all-encompassing. It woke you in the morning with the call to prayer and covered you like an abaya as you moved through the rest of your day. It was in every word, every thought, and every deed of a pious Muslim. And it was here, in this communal gathering of veiled women, in the heart of the Nejd.

It was then she felt the first terrible pang of guilt. It swept up on her with the suddenness of a sandstorm and without the courtesy of a warning. By throwing in her lot with the Israelis and the Americans, she was effectively renouncing her faith as a Muslim. She was a heretic, an apostate, and the punishment for apostasy was death. It was a death these veiled, bored women gathered around her would no doubt condone. They had no choice; if they dared to rise to her defense, they would suffer the same fate.

The guilt quickly passed and was replaced by fear. To steel herself, she thought of Rena, her guide, her beacon. And she thought how appropriate it was that her act of betrayal should occur here, in the sacred land of the Nejd, in the comforting embrace of veiled women. And if she had any misgivings about the path she had chosen, it was too late. Because through the opening in the tent she could see Ali, the bearded talib, coming across the desert in his short Salafi thobe. It was time to have a quiet word with the sheikh. After that, Allah willing, the rains would come, and it would be done.

Chapter 43 Nejd, Saudi Arabia

SHE FOLLOWED THE TALIB INTO the desert, along the rim of the wadi. There was no proper footpath, only a swath of beaten earth, the remnants of an ancient camel track that had been carved into the desert floor long before anyone in the Nejd had ever heard of a preacher called Wahhab or even a trader from Mecca called Muhammad. The talib carried no torch, for no torch was needed. Their way was lit by the hard white stars shining in the vast sky and by the hilal moon floating above a distant spire of rock, like a crescent atop the world’s tallest minaret. Nadia carried her high heels in one hand and with the other lifted the hem of her black abaya. The air had turned bitterly cold, but the earth felt warm against her feet. The talib was walking a few paces ahead. His thobe appeared luminescent in the moon glow. He was reciting verses of the Koran softly to himself, but to Nadia he spoke not a word.

They came upon a tent with no satellite dish or generator. Two men crouched outside the entrance, their young, bearded faces lit by the faint glow of a small fire. The talib offered them a greeting of peace, then pulled open the flap of the tent and gestured for Nadia to enter. Sheikh Marwan Bin Tayyib, dean of the department of theology at the University of Mecca, sat cross-legged on a simple Oriental carpet, reading the Koran by the light of a gas lantern. Closing the book, he regarded Nadia through his small round spectacles for a long moment before inviting her to sit. She lowered herself slowly to the carpet, careful not to expose her flesh, and arranged herself piously next to the Koran.

“The veil becomes you,” Bin Tayyib said admiringly, “but you may remove it, if you wish.”

“I prefer to keep it on.”

“I never realized you were so devout. Your reputation is that of a liberated woman.”

The sheikh clearly did not mean it as a compliment. He intended to test her, but then she had expected nothing less. Neither had Gabriel. Hide only us, he had said. Adhere to the truth when possible. Lie as a last resort. It was the way of the Office. The way of the professional spy.

“Liberated from what?” Nadia asked, deliberately provoking him.

“From the sharia,” said the sheikh. “I’m told you never wear the veil in the West.”

“It is impractical.”

“It is my understanding that more and more of our women are choosing to remain veiled when they travel. I’m told that many Saudi women cover their faces when they are having tea at Harrods.”

“They don’t run large investment companies. And most of them drink more than just tea when they’re in the West.”

“I hear you are one of them.”

Adhere to the truth when possible. . . .

“I confess that I am fond of wine.”

“It is haram,” he said in a scolding tone.

“Blame it on my father. He permitted me to drink when I was in the West.”

“He was lenient with you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “he wasn’t lenient. He spoiled me terribly. But he also gave me his great faith.”

“Faith in what?”

“Faith in Allah and His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”

“If my memory is correct, your father regarded himself as a descendant of Wahhab himself.”

“Unlike the al-Asheikh family, we are not direct descendants. We come from a distant branch.”

“Distant or not, his blood flows through you.”

“So it is said.”

“But you have chosen not to marry and have children. Is this, too, a matter of practicality?”

Nadia hesitated.

Lie as a last resort. . . .

“I came of age in the wake of my father’s murder,” she said. “My grief makes it impossible for me to even contemplate the idea of marriage.”

“And now your grief has led you to us.”

“Not grief,” Nadia said. “Anger.”

“Here in the Nejd, it is sometimes difficult to tell the two apart.” The sheikh gave her a sympathetic smile, his first. “But you should know that you are not alone. There are hundreds of Saudis just like you—good Muslims whose loved ones were killed by the Americans or are rotting to this day in the cages of Guantánamo Bay. And many have come to the brothers in search of revenge.”

“None of them watched their father being murdered in cold blood.”

“You believe this makes you special?”

“No,” Nadia said, “I believe it is my money that makes me special.”

“Very special,” the sheikh said. “It’s been five years since your father was martyred, has it not?”

Nadia nodded.

“That is a long time, Miss al-Bakari.”

“In the Nejd, it is the blink of an eye.”

“We expected you sooner. We even sent our brother Samir to make contact with you. But you rejected his entreaties.”

“It wasn’t possible for me to help you at the time.”

“Why not?”

“I was being watched.”

“By whom?”

“By everyone,” she said, “including the al-Saud.”

“They warned you against taking any action to avenge your father’s death?”

“In no uncertain terms.”

“They said there would be financial consequences?”

“They didn’t go into specifics, except to say the consequences would be grave.”

“And you believed them?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because they are liars.” Bin Tayyib allowed his words to hang in the air for a moment. “How do I know that you are not a spy sent here by the al-Saud to entrap me?”

“How do I know that you are not the spy, Sheikh Bin Tayyib? After all, you are the one who’s on the al-Saud payroll.”

“So are you, Miss al-Bakari. At least that’s the rumor.”

Nadia gave the sheikh a withering look. She could only imagine how she must have appeared to him—two coal-black eyes glaring over a black niqab. Perhaps there was value to the veil after all.

“Try to see it from our point of view, Miss al-Bakari,” Bin Tayyib continued. “In the five years since your father’s martyrdom, you have said nothing about him in public. You seem to spend as little time in Saudi Arabia as possible. You smoke, you drink, you shun the veil—except, of course, when you are trying to impress me with your piety—and you throw away hundreds of millions of dollars on infidel art.”

Obviously, the sheikh’s test was not yet over. Nadia remembered the last words Gabriel had spoken to her at Château Treville. You’re Zizi’s daughter. Never let them forget it.

“Perhaps you’re right, Sheikh Bin Tayyib. Perhaps I should have cloaked myself in a burqa and declared my intention to avenge my father’s death on television. Surely that would have been the wiser course of action.”

The sheikh gave a conciliatory smile. “I’ve heard all about your wicked tongue,” he said.

“I have my father’s tongue. And the last time I heard his voice, he was bleeding to death in my arms.”

“And now you want vengeance.”

“I want justice—God’s justice.”

“And what of the al-Saud?”

“They seem to have lost interest in me.”

“I’m not surprised,” Bin Tayyib said. “Even the House of Saud isn’t sure whether it’s going to survive the turmoil sweeping the Arab world. They need friends wherever they can find them, even if they happen to wear the short thobes and unkempt beards of the Salaf.”

Nadia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. If the sheikh was speaking the truth, the rulers of Saudi Arabia had renewed the Faustian bargain, the deal with the devil that had led to 9/11 and countless other deaths after that. The al-Saud had no choice, she thought. They were like a man holding a tiger by the ears. If they kept their grip on the beast, they might survive a little longer. But if they released it, they would be devoured in an instant.

“Do the Americans know about this?” she asked.

“The so-called special relationship between the Americans and the House of Saud is a thing of the past,” Bin Tayyib said. “As you know, Miss al-Bakari, Saudi Arabia is forming new alliances and finding new customers for its oil. The Chinese don’t care about things like human rights and democracy. They pay their bills on time, and they don’t poke their noses into things that are none of their business.”

“Things like jihad?” she asked.

The sheikh nodded. “The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, taught us there were Five Pillars of Islam. We believe there is a sixth. Jihad is not a choice. It is an obligation. The al-Saud understand this. Once again, they are willing to look the other way, provided the brothers don’t make trouble inside the Kingdom. That was Bin Laden’s biggest mistake.”

“Bin Laden is dead,” said Nadia, “and so is his group. I’m interested in the one who can make bombs go off in the cities of Europe.”

“Then you are interested in the Yemeni.”

“Do you know him?”

“I’ve met him.”

“Do you have the ability to speak to him?”

“That is a dangerous question. And even if I could speak to him, I certainly wouldn’t bother to tell him about a rich Saudi woman who’s looking for vengeance. You have to believe in what you are doing.”

“I am the daughter of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari and a descendant of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab. I certainly believe in what I am doing. And I am after far more than just vengeance.”

“What are you after?”

Nadia hesitated. The next words were not her own. They had been dictated to her by the man who had killed her father.

“I wish only to resume the work of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari,” she said gravely. “I will place the money in the hands of the Yemeni to do with as he pleases. And perhaps, if God wills it, bombs will one day explode in the streets of Washington and Tel Aviv.”

“I suspect he would be most grateful,” the sheikh said carefully. “But I am certain he will be unable to offer any sort of guarantees.”

“I’m not looking for any guarantees. Only a pledge that he will use the money wisely and carefully.”

“You are proposing a one-time payment?”

“No, Sheikh Bin Tayyib, I am proposing a long-term relationship. He will attack them. And I will pay for it.”

“How much money are you willing to provide?”

“As much as he needs.”

The sheikh smiled.

“Al-hamdu lillah.”

Nadia remained in the tent of the sheikh for another hour. Then she followed the talib along the edge of the wadi to her car. The skies poured with rain during the drive back to Riyadh, and it was still raining late the following morning when Nadia and her entourage boarded their plane for the flight back to Europe. Once clear of Saudi airspace, she removed her niqab and abaya and changed into a pale Chanel suit. Then she telephoned Thomas Fowler at his estate north of Paris to say that her meetings in Saudi Arabia had gone better than expected. Fowler immediately placed a call to a little-known venture capital firm in northern Virginia—a call that was automatically routed to Gabriel’s desk in Rashidistan. Gabriel spent the next week carefully monitoring the financial and legal maneuverings of one Samir Abbas of the TransArabian Bank in Zurich. Then, after dining poorly with Carter at a seafood restaurant in McLean, he headed back to London. Carter let him take an Agency Gulfstream. No handcuffs. No hypodermic needles. No hard feelings.

Chapter 44 St. James’s, London

ON THE DAY AFTER GABRIEL’S return to London, the venerable Christie’s auction house announced a surprise addition to its upcoming sale of Venetian Old Masters: Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene, oil on canvas, 110 by 92 centimeters, previously attributed to the workshop of Palma Vecchio, now firmly attributed to none other than the great Titian himself. By midday, the phones inside Christie’s were ringing off the hook, and by day’s end, no fewer than forty important museums and collectors had dipped their oars into the water. That evening, the atmosphere in the bar at Green’s Restaurant was electric, though Julian Isherwood was notably not among those present. “Saw him getting into a cab in Duke Street,” Jeremy Crabbe muttered into his gin and bitters. “Looked positively dreadful, poor sod. Said he was planning to spend a quiet evening alone with his cough.”

It is rare that a painting by an artist like Titian resurfaces, and when one does, it is usually accompanied by a good story. Such was certainly the case with Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene, though whether it was tragedy, comedy, or morality tale depended entirely on who was doing the telling. Christie’s released an abridged version for the sake of the painting’s official provenance, but in the little West London village of St. James’s, it was immediately written off as well-sanitized hogwash. Eventually, there came to exist an unofficial version of the story that unfolded roughly along the following lines.

It seemed that at some point the previous August, an unidentified Norfolk nobleman of great title but shrinking resources reluctantly decided to part with a portion of his art collection. This nobleman made contact with a London art dealer, also unidentified, and asked whether he might be willing to accept the assignment. This London art dealer was busy at the time—truth be told, he was sunning himself in the Costa del Sol—and it was late September before he was able to make his way to the nobleman’s estate. The dealer found the collection lackluster, to put it mildly, though he did agree to take several paintings off the nobleman’s hands, including a very dirty work attributed to some hack in the workshop of Palma Vecchio. The amount of money that changed hands was never disclosed. It was said to be quite small.

For reasons not made clear, the dealer allowed the paintings to languish in his storage rooms before commissioning a hasty cleaning of the aforementioned Palma Vecchio. The identity of the restorer was never revealed, though all agreed he gave a rather good account of himself in a remarkably short period of time. Indeed, the painting was in such fine shape that it managed to catch the wandering eye of one Oliver Dimbleby, the noted Old Master dealer from Bury Street. Oliver acquired it in a trade—the other paintings involved were never disclosed—and promptly hung it in his gallery, viewable by appointment only.

It would not remain there long, however. In fact, just forty-eight hours later, it was purchased by something called Onyx Innovative Capital, a limited liability investment firm registered in the Swiss city of Lucerne. Oliver didn’t deal directly with OIC, but rather with an agreeable bloke named Samir Abbas of the TransArabian Bank. After thrashing out the final details over tea at the Dorchester Hotel, Abbas presented Oliver with a check for twenty-two thousand pounds. Oliver quickly deposited the money into his account at Lloyds Bank, thus consecrating the sale, and began the messy process of securing the necessary export license.

It was at this point that the affair took a disastrous turn, at least from Oliver’s point of view. Because on a dismal afternoon in late January there came to Oliver’s gallery a rumpled figure dressed in many layers of clothing, who, with a single offhand question, sent the apples rolling across the proverbial floor. Oliver would never reveal the identity of the man, except to say he was learned in the field of Italian Renaissance art, particularly the Venetian School. As for the question posed by this man, Oliver was willing to repeat it verbatim. In fact, for the price of a good glass of Sancerre, he would act out the entire scene. For Oliver loved nothing more than to tell stories on himself, especially when they were less than flattering, which was almost always the case.

“I say, Oliver, old chap, but is that Titian spoken for?”

“Not a Titian, my good man.”

“Sure about that?”

“Positive as I can be.”

“Who is it, then?”

“Palma.”

“Really? Rather good for a Palma. Workshop or the man himself?”

“Workshop, love. Workshop.”

It was then the rumpled figure leaned precariously forward to have a closer look—a lean that Oliver re-created nightly at Green’s to uproarious laughter.

“Sold, is it?” asked the rumpled figure, tugging at his earlobe.

“Just last week,” said Oliver.

“As a Palma?”

“Workshop, love. Workshop.”

“How much?”

“My good man!”

“If I were you, I’d find some way to wriggle out of it.”

“Whatever for?”

“Look at the draftsmanship. Look at the brushwork. You just let a Titian slip through your fingers. Shame on you, Oliver. Hang your head. Confess your sins.”

Oliver did neither, but within minutes he was on the phone to an old chum at the British Museum who had forgotten more about Titian than most art historians would ever know. The chum hurried over to St. James’s in a deluge and stood before the canvas looking like the only survivor of a shipwreck.

“Oliver! How could you?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“I’d stake my reputation on it.”

“At least you have one. Mine will be in the loo if this gets out.”

“You do have one option.”

“What’s that?”

“Call Mr. Abbas. Tell him the check bounced.”

And don’t think the idea didn’t cross Oliver’s devious little mind. In fact, he spent the better part of the next forty-eight hours trying to find some legally and morally acceptable loophole that he might use to extricate himself from the deal. Finding none—at least not one that would allow him to sleep at night—he called Mr. Abbas to inform him that Onyx Innovative Capital was actually the proud owner of a newly discovered Titian. Oliver offered to take the painting to market, hoping to at least salvage a healthy commission out of the debacle, but Abbas called back the very next day to say OIC was going in a different direction. “Tried to let me down easy,” Oliver said wistfully. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Dimbleby. Lunch next time you’re in Zurich, Mr. Dimbleby. And by the way, Mr. Dimbleby, the lads from Christie’s will be stopping by in an hour.”

They appeared with the suddenness of professional kidnappers and carried the painting over to King Street, where it was examined by a parade of Titian experts from around the globe. Each rendered the same verdict, and, miraculously, not one violated the draconian confidentiality agreement that Christie’s had made them sign for their fee. Even the normally loquacious Oliver managed to keep quiet until after Christie’s unveiled its prize. But then Oliver had reason to hold his tongue. Oliver was the goat who let a Titian slip through his hooves.

But even Oliver seemed to find a bit of pleasure in the frenzy that followed the announcement. And why ever not? It really had been a dreadful winter till that point, with the government austerity and the blizzards and the bombings. Oliver was only happy he was able to lighten the mood, even if it meant playing the fool for drinks at Green’s. Besides, he knew the role well. He had played it many times before, to great acclaim.

On the night of the auction, he gave what would be his final performance to a standing-room-only crowd. At its conclusion, he made three curtain calls, then joined the throng heading over to Christie’s for the big show. Management had been kind enough to reserve a second-row seat for him, directly in front of the auctioneer’s rostrum. Seated to his left was his friend and competitor, Roddy Hutchinson, and to Roddy’s left was Julian Isherwood. The seat to Oliver’s right was unoccupied. A moment later, it was filled by none other than Nicholas Lovegrove, art adviser to the vastly rich. Lovegrove had just flown in from New York. Private, of course. Lovegrove didn’t do commercial anymore.

“Why the long face, Ollie?”

“Thoughts of what might have been.”

“Sorry about the Titian.”

“Win some, lose some. How’s biz, Nicky?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Didn’t realize you dabbled in Old Masters.”

“Actually, they terrify me. Look at this place. It’s like being in a bloody church—all angels and saints and martyrdom and crucifixion.”

“So what brings you to town?”

“A client who wants to venture into new territory.”

“Client have a name?”

“Client wishes to remain anonymous—very anonymous.”

“Know the feeling. Your client planning to venture into new territory by acquiring a Titian?”

“You’ll know soon enough, Ollie.”

“Hope your client has deep pockets.”

“I only do deep pockets.”

“Word on the street is that it’s going to go big.”

“Pre-show hype.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Nicky. You’re always right.”

Lovegrove didn’t bother to dispute this. Instead, he drew a mobile phone from the breast pocket of his blazer and scrolled through the contacts. Oliver being Oliver, he snuck a quick peek at the screen after Lovegrove placed the call. Now isn’t that interesting, he thought. Isn’t that interesting indeed.

Chapter 45 St. James’s, London

THE PAINTING ENTERED THE ROOM at the midway point, like a pretty girl arriving at a party fashionably late. It had been a rather dull party until that moment, and the pretty girl did much to brighten the room. Oliver Dimbleby sat up a bit straighter in his folding chair. Julian Isherwood fussed with the knot of his necktie and winked at one of the women on the telephone dais.

“Lot Twenty-seven, the Titian,” purred Simon Mendenhall, Christie’s slinky chief auctioneer. Simon was the only man in London with a suntan. It was beginning to smudge the collar of his custom-made shirt. “Shall we begin at two million?”

Terry O’Connor, the last Irish tycoon with any money, did the honors. Within thirty seconds, the bid in the room stood at six and a half million pounds. Oliver Dimbleby leaned to his right and murmured, “Still think it was hype, Nicky?”

“We’re still in the first turn,” Lovegrove whispered, “and I hear there’s a strong headwind on the backstretch.”

“I’d recheck the forecast if I were you, Nicky.”

The bidding stalled at seven. Oliver, with a scratch of his nose, nudged it to seven and a half.

“Bastard,” muttered Lovegrove.

“Anytime, Nicky.”

Oliver’s bid reignited the frenzy. Terry O’Connor steamrolled his way through several consecutive bids, but the other contenders refused to back down. The Irishman finally lowered his paddle at twelve, at which point Isherwood accidentally entered the fray when Mendenhall mistook a discreet cough for a bid of twelve and a half million pounds. It was no matter; a few seconds later a telephone bidder stunned the room by offering fifteen million. Lovegrove pulled out his phone and dialed.

“Where do we stand?” asked Mr. Hamdali.

Lovegrove gave him the lay of the land. In the time it had taken him to place the call, the telephone bid had already been eclipsed. It was back in the room with Terry O’Connor at sixteen.

“Mr. O’Connor fancies himself a pugilist, does he not?”

“Welterweight champ at university.”

“Let’s hit him with a stiff uppercut, shall we?”

“How stiff?”

“Enough to know we mean business.”

Lovegrove caught Mendenhall’s eye and raised two fingers.

“I have twenty million in the room. It’s not with you, madam. Nor with you, sir. And it’s not with Lisa on the telephone. It’s in the room, with Mr. Lovegrove, at twenty million pounds. Do I have twenty million five?”

He did. It was with Julian Isherwood. Terry O’Connor immediately took it to twenty-one. The telephone bidder countered at twenty-two. A second entered at twenty-four, followed soon after by a third at twenty-five. Mendenhall was twisting and turning like a flamenco dancer. The bidding had taken on the quality of a fight to the death, which was exactly what he wanted. Lovegrove lifted his phone to his ear and said, “Something doesn’t smell right to me.”

“Bid again, Mr. Lovegrove.”

“But—”

“Please bid again.”

Lovegrove did as he was instructed.

“The bid is now twenty-six million, in the room, with Mr. Lovegrove. Will someone give me twenty-seven?”

Lisa waved her hand from the telephone desk.

“I have twenty-eight on the telephone. Now it’s twenty-nine at the back of the room. Now thirty. Now it’s at thirty-one with Mr. O’Connor in the room. Thirty-two now. Thirty-three. No, I won’t take thirty-three and half, because I’m looking for thirty-four. And it looks as though I may have it with Mr. Isherwood. Do I? Yes, I do. It’s in the room, thirty-four million, with Mr. Isherwood.”

“Bid again,” said Hamdali.

“I would advise against it.”

“Bid again, Mr. Lovegrove, or my client will find an adviser who will.”

Lovegrove signaled thirty-five. In the space of a few seconds, the telephone bidders ran it past forty.

“Bid again, Mr. Lovegrove.”

“I would—”

“Bid.”

Mendenhall acknowledged Lovegrove’s bid of forty-two million pounds.

“Now it’s forty-three with Lisa on the telephone. Now it’s forty-four with Samantha. And forty-five with Cynthia.”

And then came the lull Lovegrove was looking for. He glanced at Terry O’Connor and saw the fight had gone out of him. To Hamdali he said, “How badly does your client want this painting?”

“Badly enough to bid forty-six.”

Lovegrove did so.

“The bid is now forty-six, in the room, with Mr. Lovegrove,” said Mendenhall. “Will anyone give me forty-seven?”

On the telephone desk, Cynthia began waving her hand as though she were trying to signal a rescue helicopter.

“It’s with Cynthia, on the phone, at forty-seven million pounds.”

No other telephone bidders followed suit.

“Shall we end this?” asked Lovegrove.

“Let’s,” said Hamdali.

“How much?”

“My client likes round numbers.”

Lovegrove arched an eyebrow and raised five fingers.

“The bid is fifty million pounds,” said Mendenhall. “It’s not with you, sir. Nor with Cynthia on the telephone. Fifty million, in the room, for the Titian. Fair warning now. Last chance. All done?”

Not quite. For there was the sharp crack of Mendenhall’s gavel, and the elated gasp of the crowd, and a final excited exchange with Mr. Hamdali that Lovegrove couldn’t quite hear because Oliver Dimbleby was shouting something into his other ear, which he couldn’t quite hear, either. And then there were the disingenuous handshakes with the losers, and the obligatory flirtation with the press over the identity of the buyer, and the long walk upstairs to Christie’s business offices, where the final paperwork was buttoned up with an air of funereal solemnity. It was approaching ten o’clock by the time Lovegrove signed his name to the last document. He emerged from Christie’s portentous doorway to find Oliver and the boys milling about in King Street. They were heading over to Nobu for a spicy tuna roll and a look-see at the latest Russian talent. “Join us, Nicky,” bellowed Oliver. “Revel in the company of your English brethren. You’ve been spending too much time in America. You’re no bloody fun any longer.”

Lovegrove was tempted but knew the outing was likely to end badly, so he saw them into a caravan of taxis and headed back to his hotel on foot. Walking along Duke Street, he saw a man emerge from Mason’s Yard and climb into a waiting car. The man was of medium height and build; the car was a sleek Jaguar sedan that reeked of British officialdom. So did the handsome silver-haired figure already seated in the back. Neither cast so much as a glance in Lovegrove’s direction as he walked past, but he had the uncomfortable impression they were sharing a private joke at his expense.

He felt the same way about the auction—the auction in which he had just played a starring role. Someone had been had tonight; Lovegrove was sure of it. And he feared it was his client. It was no skin off Lovegrove’s back. He had earned several million pounds just for raising his finger in the air a few times. Not a bad way to make a living, he thought, smiling to himself. Perhaps he should have accepted Oliver’s invitation to the post-auction bash. No, he thought, rounding the corner into Piccadilly, it was probably better he’d begged off. Things would end badly. They usually did whenever Oliver was involved.

Chapter 46 Langley, Virginia

THREE BUSINESS DAYS LATER, THE venerable Christie’s auction house, King Street, St. James’s, deposited the sum of fifty million pounds—less commissions, taxes, and numerous transactional fees—into the Zurich branch of TransArabian Bank. Christie’s received confirmation of the transfer at 2:18 p.m. London time, as did the two hundred men and women gathered in the subterranean op center known as Rashidistan. There arose in the room a loud cheer that echoed throughout the chambers of the American intelligence community and even inside the White House itself. The celebration did not last long, however, for there was a great deal of work to be done. After many weeks of toil and worry, Gabriel’s operation had finally borne fruit. Now the harvest would commence. And after the harvest, God willing, would come the feast.

The money spent a restful day in Zurich before moving on to TransArabian’s headquarters in Dubai. Not all of it, though. At the direction of Samir Abbas, who had power of attorney, two million pounds were wired into a small private bank on Zurich’s Talstrasse. Additionally, Abbas authorized large donations to a number of Islamic groups and charities—including the World Islamic Fund for Justice, the Free Palestine Initiative, the Centers for Islamic Studies, the Islamic Society of Western Europe, the Islamic World League, and the Institute for Judeo-Islamic Reconciliation, Gabriel’s personal favorite. Abbas also allotted himself a generous consulting fee, which, curiously, he drew in cash. He gave a portion of the money to the imam of his mosque to do with as he pleased. The rest he concealed in the pantry of his Zurich apartment, an act that was captured by the camera of his compromised computer and projected live onto the giant screens of Rashidistan.

Owing to TransArabian’s long-suspected links to the global jihadist movement, Langley and the NSA were already well acquainted with its ledger books, as were the terror-finance specialists at Treasury and the FBI. As a result, Gabriel and the staff in Rashidistan were able to monitor the money almost in real time as it flowed through a series of fronts, shells, and dummy corporations—all of which had been hastily created in lax jurisdictions in the days following Nadia’s meeting with Sheikh Bin Tayyib in the Nejd. The speed with which the money moved from account to account demonstrated that Rashid’s network possessed a level of sophistication that belied its size and relative youth. It also revealed—much to Langley’s alarm—that the network had already expanded far beyond the Middle East and Western Europe.

The evidence of Rashid’s global reach was overwhelming. There was the three hundred thousand dollars that appeared suddenly in the account of a trucking firm in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. And the five hundred thousand dollars paid to a commercial construction company in Caracas. And the eight hundred thousand dollars funneled to an Internet consulting firm based in Montreal—a firm owned by an Algerian previously linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The largest single payment—two million dollars—went to QTC Logistics, a freight forwarding and customs brokerage firm based in the judicially porous Gulf emirate of Sharjah. Within hours of the money’s arrival, the Rashidistan team was monitoring QTC’s phones and poring over its records dating back three years. The same was true of the Internet firm in Montreal, though the physical surveillance of the Algerian was delegated to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Gabriel argued strenuously against bringing the Canadians into the investigation but was overruled by Adrian Carter and his newfound ally at the White House, James A. McKenna. It was just one of many battles, large and small, that Gabriel would lose as the operation slipped further and further from his grasp.

As the intelligence streamed into the op center, the staff produced an updated network matrix that dwarfed the one assembled by Dina and Gabriel’s team following the first attacks. McKenna dropped by every few days just to marvel at it, as did members of the various congressional committees involved in intelligence and homeland security. And on a snowy afternoon in late February, Gabriel spotted the president himself standing on the upper observation deck with the CIA director and Adrian Carter standing proudly at his side. The president was clearly pleased by what he saw. It was clean. It was smart. It was forward-leaning. A partnership between Islam and the West to defeat the forces of extremism. Brainpower over brute force.

The operation had been Gabriel’s creation, Gabriel’s work of art, yet it had so far failed to provide any firm leads regarding the whereabouts of the network’s operational mastermind or its inspirational leader. Which is why it came as a surprise to Gabriel when he started hearing rumors about pending arrests. He confronted Adrian Carter the next day in the center’s soundproof conference room. Carter spent a moment rearranging the contents of a file before finally confirming the rumors were true. Gabriel tapped the green badge hanging around his neck and asked, “Does this allow me to offer an opinion?”

“I’m afraid it does.”

“You’re about to make a mistake, Adrian.”

“It wouldn’t be my first.”

“My team and I went to a great deal of time and effort to put this operation in place. And now you’re going to blow it sky-high by pulling a few operatives off the street.”

“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” Carter said impassively.

“Who’s that?”

“Someone who has the power to rule by executive fiat. I’m the deputy director for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. I have superiors in this building. I have ambitious counterparts from other agencies with competing interests. I have a director of national intelligence, congressional committees, and James A. McKenna. And, last but not least, I have a president.”

“We’re spies, Adrian. We don’t make arrests. We save lives. You have to be patient, just like your enemies. If you continue to let the money flow, you’ll be able to stay one step ahead of them for years. You’ll watch them. You’ll listen to them. You’ll let them waste valuable time and effort plotting and planning attacks that will never take place. And you’ll make arrests only as a last resort—and only if they’re necessary to prevent a bomb from exploding or a plane from falling out of the sky.”

“The White House disagrees,” said Carter.

“So this is political?”

“I’d rather not speculate on the motives behind it.”

“What about Malik?”

“Malik is a rumor. Malik is a hunch on Dina’s part.”

Gabriel studied Carter skeptically. “You don’t believe that, Adrian. After all, you were the one who said the European bombings were planned by someone who cut his teeth in Baghdad.”

“And I stand by that. But the goal of this operation was never to find one man. It was to dismantle a terror network. Thanks to your work, we believe we have enough evidence to take down at least sixty operatives in a dozen countries. When was the last time anyone arrested sixty of the bad guys? It’s an amazing accomplishment. It’s your accomplishment.”

“Let’s just hope they’re the right sixty operatives. Otherwise, it might not stop the next attack. In fact, it might push Rashid and Malik to accelerate their planning.”

Carter unwound a paper clip, the last in all of Langley, but said nothing.

“Have you considered what this is going to mean for Nadia’s security?”

“It’s possible Rashid might find the timing of the arrests suspicious,” Carter admitted. “That’s why we plan to protect her with a series of well-placed leaks to the press.”

“What kind of leaks?”

“The kind that portray the arrests as the culmination of a multi-year investigation that began while Rashid was still in America. We believe it will sow discord inside his inner circle and leave the network paralyzed.”

“Do we?”

“That is our hope,” said Carter without a trace of irony in his voice.

“Why wasn’t I consulted about any of this?” asked Gabriel.

Carter held up his paper clip, which was now perfectly straight. “I thought that’s what we were doing now.”

The conversation was their last for several days. Carter kept to the seventh floor while Gabriel spent most of his time overseeing the withdrawal of his troops from the field. By the end of February, the Agency had assumed total responsibility for the physical and electronic surveillance of Nadia al-Bakari and Samir Abbas. Of Gabriel’s original operation nothing remained but a pair of empty safe houses—one in a small village north of Paris, another on the shores of Lake Zurich. Ari Shamron decided to stick Château Treville in his back pocket but ordered the Zurich house shut down. Chiara handled the paperwork herself before flying to Washington to be with Gabriel. They settled into an Office flat on Tunlaw Road, across the street from the Russian Embassy. Carter put a pair of watchers on them, just to be on the safe side.

With Chiara in Washington, Gabriel sharply curtailed the amount of time he spent in Rashidistan. He would arrive at Langley in time for the morning senior staff meeting, then spend a few hours peering over the shoulders of the analysts and the data miners before returning to Georgetown to meet Chiara for lunch. Afterward, if the skies were clear, they would do a bit of shopping or stroll the pleasant streets discussing their future. At times, it seemed they were merely resuming the conversation that had been interrupted by the bombing in Covent Garden. Chiara even raised the subject of working at Isherwood’s gallery. “Think about it,” she said when Gabriel objected. “That’s all I’m saying, darling. Just think about it.”

For the moment, though, Gabriel could think only of Nadia’s security. With Carter’s approval, he reviewed the Agency’s plans for Nadia’s long-term protection and even had a hand in drafting the material that would be leaked to the American press. Mainly, he waged a tireless campaign from within Rashidistan to prevent the arrests from happening, telling anyone who would listen that the Agency, by bowing to political pressure, was about to make a catastrophic blunder. Carter stopped attending meetings where Gabriel was present. There was no point. The White House had ordered Carter to bring down the hammer. He was now in constant contact with friends and allies in a dozen countries, coordinating what was to be the single biggest haul of jihadist militants and operatives since the fall of Afghanistan.

On a Friday morning in late March, Gabriel pulled him aside long enough to say that he was planning to leave Washington to return to England. Carter suggested Gabriel stay a little longer. Otherwise, he was going to miss the big show.

“When does it start?” asked Gabriel gloomily.

Carter looked at his watch and smiled.

Within hours the dominoes began to fall. They toppled so quickly, and on such a wide scale, that the press struggled to keep pace with the unfolding story.

The first arrests took place in the United States, where FBI SWAT teams executed a series of simultaneous raids in four cities. There was the cell of Egyptians in Newark that was planning to derail a New York–bound Amtrak train. And the cell of Somalis in Minneapolis that was plotting chemical attacks against several downtown office buildings. And the cell of Pakistanis in Denver that was in the final stages of a plot to murder hundreds of people with a series of attacks on crowded sporting facilities. Most alarming, however, was Falls Church, Virginia, where a six-member cell was in the final stages of a plan to attack the new U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. On one of the suspect’s computers, the FBI found casing photos of tourists and schoolchildren waiting to be admitted. Another suspect had recently rented an isolated warehouse to begin preparing the peroxide-based bombs. The money had come from the Algerian in Montreal, who was arrested at the same time, along with eight other Canadian residents.

In Europe, the haul was even larger. In Paris, the terrorists were plotting to attack the Eiffel Tower and the Musée d’Orsay. In London, they had targeted the Millennium Wheel and Parliament Square. And in Berlin, they were preparing a Mumbai-style assault on visitors to the Holocaust memorial near the Brandenburg Gate. Copenhagen and Madrid, victimized by the first round of attacks, yielded additional cells. So did Stockholm, Malmö, Oslo, and Rome. Across the Continent, bank accounts were frozen and businesses were shut down. All thanks to Nadia’s money.

One by one, prime ministers, presidents, and chancellors appeared before the press to proclaim that disaster had been averted. The American president spoke last. Resolute, he described the threat as the most serious since 9/11 and hinted that more arrests were coming. When asked to describe how the cells had been uncovered, he deferred to his counterterrorism adviser, James McKenna, who refused to answer. He went to great pains, however, to point out that the breakthrough had been achieved without resorting to tactics used by the previous administration. “The threat has evolved,” declared McKenna, “and so have we.”

The following morning, the New York Times and the Washington Post carried lengthy articles describing a multi-agency intelligence and law enforcement triumph nearly a decade in the making. In addition, both papers ran editorials lauding the president’s “twenty-first century vision for the struggle against global extremism,” and by that evening, on the cable talk shows, members of the opposing political party looked disheartened. The president had done more than eliminate a dangerous terror network, said one noteworthy strategist. He had just guaranteed himself another four years in office. The race for 2012 was over. It was time to start thinking about 2016.

Chapter 47 The Palisades, Washington, D.C.

THAT SAME EVENING, THE CIA director summoned the staff to the Bubble, Langley’s futuristic auditorium, for a pep rally. Ellis Coyle chose not to attend. Such events, he knew, were as predictable as his nights at home with Norah. There would be the usual drivel about pride restored and an Agency on the mend, an Agency that had finally found its place in a world without the Soviet Union. Coyle had heard the same speech from seven previous directors, all of whom had left the CIA weaker and more dysfunctional than they had found it. Drained of talent, weakened by the reorganization of the American intelligence community, the Agency was a smoldering ruin. Even Coyle, a professional dissembler, could not sit in the Bubble and pretend that the arrest of sixty suspected terrorists heralded a brighter future—especially since he knew the truth about how the breakthrough had been achieved.

There was a four-car pileup on Canal Road. As a result, Coyle was able to listen to the end of Atlas Shrugged during the drive home. He arrived in the Palisades to find Roger Blankman’s house ablaze with a Gatsbyesque light and dozens of luxury cars lining the narrow street. “He’s having another party,” said Norah as she accepted Coyle’s loveless kiss. “It’s a fund-raiser of some sort.”

“I suppose that’s why we weren’t invited.”

“Don’t be petty, Ellis. It doesn’t suit you.”

She added an inch of Merlot to her glass as Lucy entered the kitchen, leash in mouth. Coyle attached it dutifully to her collar and together they walked to Battery Kemble Park. Near the base of the wooden sign, at a precise forty-five-degree angle falling left to right, was a chalk mark. It meant there was a package waiting for Coyle at drop site number three. Coyle rubbed out the mark with the toe of his shoe and entered.

It was dark in the trees, but Coyle had no need of a flashlight; he knew the footpath the way a blind man knows the streets around his home. From MacArthur Boulevard, it ran flat for only a few paces before rising sharply up the slope of the hill. At the top of the park was a clearing where the hundred-pound guns of the old battery had once stood. To the right was a narrow tributary spanned by a wooden footbridge. Drop site number three was just beyond the bridge beneath a fallen oak tree. It was difficult to access, especially for a man of early middle age with chronic back problems, but not for Lucy. She knew each of the drop sites by the sound of its spoken number, and could clean them out in a matter of seconds. What’s more, unless the Bureau had discovered some way to speak to dogs, she could never be called to testify. Lucy was a perfect field agent, thought Coyle: smart, capable, fearless, and utterly loyal.

Coyle paused for a moment to listen for the sound of footfalls or voices. Hearing nothing, he gave Lucy the command to empty drop site three. She darted into the woods, her black coat rendering her all but invisible, and splashed into the streambed. A moment later, she came scrambling up the embankment with a stick in her mouth and dropped it obediently at Coyle’s feet.

It was about a foot in length and approximately two inches in diameter. Coyle took hold of each end and gave a sharp twist. It came apart easily, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside the compartment was a small slip of paper. Coyle removed it, then reassembled the stick and gave it to Lucy to return to the drop site. In all likelihood, Coyle’s handler would collect it before dawn. He wasn’t the smartest intelligence officer Coyle had ever encountered, but he was thorough in a plodding sort of way, and he never made Coyle wait for his money. That was hardly surprising. The officer’s service faced many threats, both internal and external, but a shortage of money was not one of them.

Coyle read the message by the glow of his mobile phone and then dropped the slip of paper into a plastic Safeway bag. It was the same bag he used five minutes later to collect Lucy’s nightly offering. Tightly knotted, it swung like a pendulum, beating warmly against Coyle’s wrist, as he strode down the footpath toward home. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought. A few more secrets, a few more trips into the park with Lucy at his side. He wondered whether he would really have the nerve to leave. Then he thought of Norah’s dowdy eyeglasses, and his neighbor’s enormous house, and the book about Winston Churchill he had listened to while stuck in traffic. Coyle had always admired Churchill’s decisiveness. In the end, Coyle would be decisive, too.

Across the river at Langley, the party continued for much of the next week. They celebrated their hard work. They celebrated the superiority of their technology. They celebrated the fact that they had finally managed to outwit their enemy. Mainly, though, they celebrated Adrian Carter. The operation, they said, would surely be regarded as one of Carter’s finest. The black marks had been erased; the sins had been forgiven. Never mind that Rashid and Malik were still out there somewhere. For now, they were terrorists without a network, and it was all Carter’s doing.

Rashidistan remained open for business, but its ranks were thinned by a wave of hasty reassignments. What had begun as a highly secretive intelligence-gathering endeavor was now a matter largely for policemen and prosecutors. The team no longer tracked the flow of money through a terror network. Instead, it engaged in heated debates with lawyers from the Justice Department over what evidence was admissible and what should never see the light of day. None of the lawyers bothered to ask the opinion of Gabriel Allon, the legendary but wayward son of Israeli intelligence, because none knew he was there.

With the operation winding down, Gabriel devoted most of his time and energy to leaving it. At the request of King Saul Boulevard, he conducted a series of exit briefings and negotiated a permanent system of sharing the intelligence harvest, knowing full well the Americans would never live up to the terms. The accord was signed with great fanfare in a sparsely attended ceremony in the director’s office, after which Gabriel proceeded to the Office of Personnel to hand in his green credentials. What should have taken five minutes consumed more than an hour as he was forced to sign countless written promises, none of which he had any intention of keeping. When Personnel’s lust for ink had finally been satisfied, a uniformed guard escorted Gabriel down to the lobby. He remained there for a few minutes to watch a new star being carved into the CIA’s Memorial Wall, then headed into the first violent thunderstorm of Washington’s all-too-brief spring.

By the time Gabriel reached Georgetown, the rain had ended and the sun was again shining brightly. He met Chiara for lunch at a quaint outdoor café near American University, then walked her back to Tunlaw Road to pack for the flight home. Arriving at the apartment building, they found an armored black Escalade waiting outside the entrance, its tailpipe gently smoking. A hand beckoned. It belonged to Adrian Carter.

“Is there a problem?” asked Gabriel.

“I suppose that depends entirely on how you look at it.”

“Can you get to the point, Adrian? We have a plane to catch.”

“Actually, I’ve taken the liberty of canceling your reservations.”

“How thoughtful of you.”

“Get in.”