Portrait of a Spy Read online

  “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.”

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p; 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 towa
rd 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.