The Messenger Page 15

  “I don’t know what I expected.”

  “Don’t worry, Uzi. You’ll get the job.”

  Navot pulled over to the side of the street a block from the station.

  “You’ll put in a good word for me at King Saul Boulevard, won’t you, Gabriel? Amos likes you.”

  “What gave you that impression?”

  “I could just tell,” he said. “Everyone likes you.”

  Gabriel climbed out, took his suitcase from the backseat, and disappeared into the station. Navot waited at the curb until five minutes after Gabriel’s scheduled departure, then pulled out into the traffic and drove away.

  THE APARTMENT WAS in darkness when Gabriel arrived. He switched on a halogen lamp and was relieved to see his studio was still intact. Chiara was sitting up in bed as he entered their room. Her hair was newly washed and drawn back from her face by a velvet elastic band. Gabriel removed it and loosened the buttons of her nightgown. The painting lay next to them as they made love. “You know,” she said, “most men just come home from Paris with an Hermès scarf and some perfume.”

  The telephone rang at midnight. Gabriel answered it before it could ring a second time. “I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said a moment later, then hung up the phone.

  “Who was that?” Chiara asked.

  “Adrian Carter.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He wants me to come to Washington right away.”

  “What’s in Washington?”

  “A girl,” said Gabriel. “Carter’s found the girl.”

  16.

  McLean, Virginia

  HOW WAS THE FLIGHT?”

  “Eternal.”

  “It’s the autumn jet-stream patterns,” Carter said pedantically. “It adds at least two hours to flights from Europe to America.”

  “Israel isn’t in Europe, Adrian. Israel is in the Middle East.”

  “Really?”

  “You can ask your director of intelligence. He’ll clear up the confusion for you.”

  Carter gave Gabriel a contemptuous look, then returned his eyes to the road. They were driving toward Washington along the Dulles Access Road in Carter’s battered Volvo. Carter was wearing a corduroy sport jacket with patches on the elbows. It reinforced his professorial image. All that was missing was the canvas book bag and the NPR coffee mug. He was driving well below the posted speed limit and making repeated glances into his rearview mirror.

  “Are we being followed?” Gabriel asked.

  “Traffic cops,” said Carter. “They’re fanatical on this road. Any problems at passport control?”

  “None,” Gabriel said. “In fact, they seemed very happy to see me.”

  It was something Gabriel had never understood about America—the geniality of its border policemen. He’d always found something reassuring in the bored surliness of the Israelis who stamped passports at Ben-Gurion Airport. American customs agents were far too cordial.

  He looked out the window. They had left the Dulles Access Road and were driving now through McLean. He’d been to Virginia just once before, a brief visit to a CIA safe house deep in the horse country near Middleburg. He found McLean to be an archetypal American suburb, neat and prosperous but somehow lifeless. They skirted the downtown commercial district, then entered a residential section with large tract homes. The developments had names like Merrywood and Colonial Estates. A road sign floated toward them: GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE.

  “You’re not actually thinking about taking me into Headquarters, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Carter said. “We’re going into the District.”

  The District, Gabriel knew, was the way Washingtonians referred to their little village on the Potomac. They crossed a highway overpass and entered an area of rolling hills and dense woods. Gabriel, through the trees, glimpsed great houses overlooking the river.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Sarah Bancroft,” Carter replied. “Her father was a senior executive in the international division of Citibank. For the most part Sarah was raised in Europe. She’s comfortable abroad in a way that most Americans aren’t. She speaks languages. She knows which fork to use when.”

  “Education?”

  “She came back here for college. Did a bachelor’s in art history at Dartmouth, then a stretch at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. I take it you’re familiar with the Courtauld?”

  Gabriel nodded. It was one of the world’s most prestigious schools of art. Its graduates included an art dealer from St. James’s named Julian Isherwood.

  “After the Courtauld she did her doctorate at Harvard,” Carter said. “Now she’s a curator at the Phillips Collection in Washington. It’s a small museum near—”

  “I know the Phillips Collection, Adrian.”

  “Sorry,” Carter said earnestly.

  A large whitetail deer darted from the trees and crossed their path. Carter let his foot off the gas and watched the animal bound silently away through the darkening woods.

  “Who brought her to your attention?” Gabriel asked, but Carter made no response. He was hunched over the wheel now and scanning the trees along the edge of the road for more deer. “Where there’s one,” he said, “there’s usually another.”

  “Just like the terrorists,” Gabriel said. He repeated his question.

  “She applied to join us a few months after 9/11,” Carter said. “She’d just finished her Ph.D. She looked interesting on paper, so we brought her in and gave her to the psychiatrists in Personnel. They put her through the wringer and didn’t like what they saw. Too independent-minded, they said. Maybe even a bit too smart for her own good. When we turned her down, she landed at the Phillips.”

  “So you’re offering me one of your rejects?”

  “The word hardly applies to Sarah Bancroft.” Carter reached into the pocket of his corduroy blazer and handed Gabriel a photograph. Sarah Bancroft was a strikingly beautiful woman, with shoulder-length blond hair, wide cheekbones, and large eyes the color of a cloudless summer sky.

  “How old?”

  “Thirty-one.”

  “Why isn’t she married?”

  Carter hesitated a moment.

  “Why isn’t she married, Adrian?”

  “She had a boyfriend while she was at Harvard, a young lawyer named Ben Callahan. It ended badly.”

  “What happened to Ben?”

  “He boarded a flight to Los Angeles at Logan Airport on the morning of September 11, 2001.”

  Gabriel held out the photograph toward Carter. “Zizi’s not going to be interested in hiring someone touched by 9/11. You brought me here for nothing, Adrian.”

  Carter kept his hands on the wheel. “Ben Callahan was a college boyfriend, not a husband. Besides, Sarah never talks about him to anyone. We practically had to beat it out of her. She was afraid Ben’s death would follow her around for the rest of her life, that people would treat her like a widow at age twenty-six. She keeps it very much inside. We did some sniffing around for you this week. No one knows.”

  “Zizi’s security hounds are going to do more than sniff around, Adrian. And if they catch one whiff of 9/11, he’s going to run from her as fast as he can.”

  “Speaking of Zizi, his house is just ahead.”

  Carter slowed to negotiate a bend. A large brick-and-iron security gate appeared on their left. Beyond the gate a long paved drive rose to an enormous faux-chateau mansion overlooking the river. Gabriel looked away as they sped past.

  “Zizi will never find out about Ben,” Carter said.

  “Are you willing to bet Sarah’s life on that?”

  “Meet her, Gabriel. See what you think.”

  “I already know what I think. She’s perfect.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “If we make one mistake, Zizi’s going to drop her down a very deep hole. That’s the problem, Adrian.”

  THE SUDDENNESS with which they reached the center of Washington took Gabriel by sur
prise. One moment they were on a two-lane rural road at the edge of the Potomac gorge, the next they were crawling along Q Street through the Georgetown evening rush. Carter, playing the role of tour guide, pointed out the homes of the neighborhood’s most celebrated residents. Gabriel, head against the window, couldn’t summon the energy even to feign interest. They crossed a short bridge, guarded at each end by a pair of enormous tarnished buffalos, and entered the city’s diplomatic quarter. Just beyond Massachusetts Avenue, Carter pointed to a turreted redbrick structure on the left side of the street. “That’s the Phillips,” he said helpfully. Gabriel looked to his right and saw a bronze version of Mohandas Gandhi hiking across a tiny triangular park. Why Gandhi? he wondered. What did the ideals of the Mahatma have to do with this patch of American global power?

  Carter drove another block and parked in a restricted diplomatic zone outside a tired-looking Latin American embassy. He left the engine running and made no movement to indicate he intended to get out of the car. “This part of town is called Dupont Circle,” he said, still in tour guide mode. “It’s what passes for avant-garde in Washington.”

  An officer of the Secret Service Uniformed Division rapped his knuckle on Carter’s window and gestured for him to move along. Carter, eyes straight ahead, held his ID against the glass, and the officer walked back to his squad car. A moment later something caught Carter’s attention in the rearview mirror. “Here she comes,” he said.

  Gabriel looked out his window as Sarah Bancroft floated virtuously past, dressed in a long dark overcoat with a narrow waist. She held a leather briefcase in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Gabriel heard her voice briefly as she passed. Low, sophisticated, a trace of an English accent—a remnant, no doubt, of her time at the Courtauld and a childhood spent in international schools abroad.

  “What do you think?” asked Carter.

  “I’ll let you know in a minute.”

  She came to the corner of Q Street and 20th Street. On the opposite corner was an esplanade filled with sidewalk vendors and a pair of escalators leading to the Dupont Circle Metro station. The traffic light in Sarah’s direction was red. Without stopping she stepped from the curb and started across. When a taxi driver sounded his car horn in protest, she shot him a look that could melt ice and carried on with her conversation. Then she continued slowly across the intersection and stepped onto the down escalator. Gabriel watched with admiration as she sank slowly from view.

  “Do you have two more just like her?”

  Carter fished a mobile phone from his pocket and dialed. “We’re on,” he said. A moment later a large black Suburban rounded the corner and parked illegally on Q Street adjacent to the escalators. Five minutes after that Gabriel saw her again, this time rising slowly out of the depths of the Metro station. She was no longer speaking into her telephone, nor was she alone. Two of Carter’s agents were with her, a man and a woman, one on each arm, in case she had a sudden change of heart. The back door of the Suburban swung open, and Sarah Bancroft vanished from sight. Carter started the engine and headed back to Georgetown.

  17.

  Georgetown

  THE BLACK SUBURBAN CAME to a stop fifteen minutes later outside a large Federal-style town house on N Street. As Sarah mounted the curved redbrick steps, the door opened suddenly and a figure appeared in the shadows of the portico. He wore creaseless khaki trousers and a corduroy blazer with patches on the elbow. His gaze had a curious clinical detachment that reminded Sarah of the grief counselor she’d seen after Ben’s death. “I’m Carter,” he said, as if the thought had occurred to him suddenly. He didn’t say whether it was his first name or his last, only that it was genuine. “I don’t do funny names anymore,” he said. “I’m Headquarters now.”

  He smiled. It was an ersatz smile, like his brief ersatz handshake. He suggested she come inside and once again managed to leave the impression of sudden inspiration. “And you’re Sarah,” he informed her, as he conveyed her down the wide center hall. “Sarah Bancroft, a curator at the well-regarded Phillips Collection. Sarah Bancroft who courageously offered us her services after 9/11 but was turned away and told she wasn’t needed. How’s your father?”

  She was taken aback by the sudden change in course. “Do you know my father?”

  “Never met him actually. Works for Citicorp, doesn’t he?”

  “You know exactly who he works for. Why are you asking about my father?”

  “Where is he these days? London? Brussels? Hong Kong?”

  “Paris,” she said. “It’s his last post. He’s retiring next year.”

  “And then he’s coming home?”

  She shook her head. “He’s staying in Paris. With his new wife. My parents divorced two years ago. My father remarried right away. He’s a time-is-money sort of man.”

  “And your mother? Where is she?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “See your father much?”

  “Holidays. Weddings. The occasional awkward lunch when he’s in town. My parents divorced badly. Everyone took sides, the children included. Why are you asking me these questions? What do you want from—”

  “You believe in that?” he asked, cutting her off.

  “Believe in what?”

  “Taking sides.”

  “Depends on the circumstances, I suppose. Is this part of the test? I thought I failed your tests.”

  “You did,” said Carter. “With flying colors.”

  They entered the sitting room. It was furnished with the formal but anonymous elegance usually reserved for hotel hospitality suites. Carter helped her off with her coat and invited her to sit.

  “So why am I back?”

  “It’s a fluid world, Sarah. Things change. So tell me something. Under what circumstances do you think it’s right to take sides?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “Sure you have,” Carter said, and Sarah, for the second time, saw her grief counselor, sitting in his floral wingchair with his ceramic mug balanced on his knee, dully prodding her to visit places she’d rather not go. “Come on, Sarah,” Carter was saying. “Give me just one example of when you believe it’s all right to take sides.”

  “I believe in right and wrong,” she said, lifting her chin a little. “Which probably explains why I flunked your little tests. Your world is shades of gray. I tend to be a bit too black and white.”

  “Is that what your father told you?”

  No, she thought, it was Ben who accused her of that failing.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked. “Why am I here?”

  But Carter was still turning over the implications of her last response. “And what about the terrorists?” he asked, and once again it seemed to Sarah as if the thought had just popped into his head. “That’s what I’m wondering about. How do they fit into Sarah Bancroft’s world of right and wrong? Are they evil, or is their cause legitimate? Are we the innocent victims, or have we brought this calamity upon ourselves? Must we sit back and take it, or do we have the right to resist them with all the force and anger we can muster?”

  “I’m an assistant curator at the Phillips Collection,” she said. “Do you really want me to wax lyrical on the morals of counterterrorism?”

  “Let’s narrow the focus of our question then. I always find that helpful. Let’s take for an example the man who drove Ben’s plane into the World Trade Center.” Carter paused. “Remind me, Sarah, which plane was Ben on?”

  “You know which plane he was on,” she said. “He was on United Flight 175.”

  “Which was piloted by…”

  “Marwan al-Shehhi.”

  “Suppose for a moment that Marwan al-Shehhi had managed somehow to survive. I know it’s crazy, Sarah, but play along with me for argument’s sake. Suppose he managed to make his way back to Afghanistan or Pakistan or some other terrorist sanctuary. Suppose we knew where he was. Should we send the FBI with a warrant for his arrest, or should we deal with him in a more efficient
manner? Men in black? Special forces? A Hellfire missile fired from a plane without a pilot?”

  “I think you know what I would do to him.”

  “Suppose I’m interested in hearing it from your own lips before we go further.”

  “The terrorists have declared war on us,” she said. “They’ve attacked our cities, killed our citizens, and tried to disrupt the continuity of our government.”

  “So what should be done to them?”

  “They should be dealt with harshly.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Men in black. Special forces. A Hellfire missile fired from a plane without a pilot.”

  “And what about a man who gives them money? Is he guilty, too? And if so, to what degree?”

  “I suppose it depends on whether he knew what the money would be used for.”

  “And if he knew damned well what it would be used for?”

  “Then he’s as guilty as the man who flew the plane into the building.”

  “Would you feel comfortable—indeed justified—in operating against such an individual?”

  “I offered to help you five years ago,” she said contentiously. “You told me I wasn’t qualified. You told me I wasn’t suited for this sort of work. And now you want my help?”

  Carter appeared unmoved by her protest. Sarah felt a sudden empathy for his wife.

  “You offered to help us, and we treated you shabbily. I’m afraid that’s what we do best. I suppose I could go on about how we were wrong. Perhaps I might try to soothe your feelings with an insincere apology. But frankly, Miss Bancroft, there isn’t time.” His voice contained an edge that had been absent before. “So I suppose what I need now is a straight answer. Do you still feel like helping us? Do you want to fight the terrorists, or would you prefer to go on with your life and hope it never happens again?”

  “Fight?” she asked. “I’m sure you can find people better suited for that than me.”

  “There are different ways to fight them, Sarah.”

  She hesitated. Carter filled the sudden silence by engaging in a prolonged study of his own hands. He wasn’t the kind of man who asked things twice. In that regard he was very much like her father. “Yes,” she said finally. “I’d be willing.”