Portrait of a Spy Read online

  And so it was with a sense of foreboding that Shamron watched Nadia al-Bakari come slowly to life on the canvas. As the painting neared completion, Gabriel worked harder than ever. Yet at the same time, he appeared reluctant to finish. Beset by a rare case of indecision, he made countless minor additions and subtractions. Shamron privately relished Gabriel’s apparent inability to let go of the painting. Every day Gabriel delayed completion was another day Shamron would have with him.

  Eventually, the revisions stopped and Gabriel began the process of making peace with his work. Not just Nadia—all of it. Shamron saw the shadow of death lift gradually from Gabriel’s face. And on a clear morning in late August, he entered Gabriel’s makeshift studio to find him looking remarkably like the gifted young man he had plucked from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in the terrible autumn of 1972. Only Gabriel’s hair was different. Then it had been almost as black as Nadia’s. Now it was stained with gray at the temples—smudges of ash on the prince of fire.

  He was standing before the canvas with one hand pressed to his chin and his head tilted slightly to one side. Nadia glowed under the intense white light of the halogen work lamps. It was a portrait of an unveiled woman. A portrait of a martyr. A portrait of a spy.

  Shamron watched Gabriel for several minutes without speaking. Finally, he asked, “Is it finished, my son?”

  “Yes, Abba,” replied Gabriel after a moment, “I think it is.”

  The shippers came the next morning. By the time Gabriel returned from his walk along the cliffs, Shamron had gone. It was better that way, he told Chiara before leaving. The last thing Gabriel needed now was another messy scene.

  Chapter 69

  New York City

  IT WAS SARAH BANCROFT’S IDEA to hold the gala opening of the Nadia al-Bakari wing on the anniversary of 9/11. The head of New York’s Joint Terrorism Task Force suggested it might be wiser, given the current level of Middle East unrest, if she chose a less symbolic date, but Sarah held firm. The event would be held the evening of September 11. And if the task force couldn’t find a way to secure it, Sarah knew people who could.

  The demonstrators arrived for the party early, jamming West Fifty-third Street by the thousands. Most were feminists and human rights activists who supported Nadia’s goals of sweeping change in the Middle East, but a few wild-eyed jihadis from Brooklyn and New Jersey showed up to denounce her as a heretic. None seemed to notice Gabriel and Chiara as they stepped from the back of an Escalade and slipped into the museum. A security guard escorted them upstairs to MoMA’s business offices, where they found Sarah struggling with the zipper of her evening gown. Everywhere there were stacks of MoMA’s official monograph for the collection. Gabriel’s portrait of Nadia was on the cover.

  “You pushed us to the limit,” Sarah said, kissing his cheek. “We almost had to go with a backup cover.”

  “I had a bit of difficulty making a few final decisions.” Gabriel looked around the large office. “Not bad for a former curator from the Phillips Collection. I hope your colleagues never find out about the little sabbatical you took after leaving Isherwood Fine Arts in London.”

  “They’re under the impression I spent several years engaged in a private course of study in Europe. The hole in my provenance seems to have only added to my allure.”

  “Something tells me your love life will be much improved.” He glanced at her dress. “Especially after tonight.”

  “It’s Givenchy. It was scandalously expensive.”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Chiara, helping Sarah with the zipper, “and so are you.”

  “It’s funny how different the world looks when you’re not sitting in a dark room at Langley tracking the movements of terrorists.”

  “Just don’t forget they’re out there,” Gabriel said. “Or that some of them know your name.”

  “I suspect I’m the most carefully watched museum curator in the world.”

  “Who’s handling it?”

  “The Agency,” said Sarah, “with help from the joint task force. I’m afraid they’re rather annoyed with me at the moment. So is Adrian. He’s trying to find some way of keeping me on the payroll.”

  “How is he?”

  “Much better now that James McKenna has left the White House.”

  “Did he land on his feet?”

  “According to the rumor mill, he’s going to the Institute of Peace.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be very happy there.” Gabriel picked up a copy of the monograph and examined the cover.

  “Would you like to see the real thing before the crowd arrives?”

  He looked at Chiara. “Go,” she said, “I’ll wait here.”

  Sarah led him downstairs to the entrance of the al-Bakari wing. The caterers were laying out tables of canapés and opening the first bottles of champagne. Gabriel walked over to Nadia’s portrait and read the biographical plaque mounted next to it. The description of the circumstances surrounding her death was far from accurate. Her father was described only in passing.

  “It’s not too late,” said Sarah.

  “For what?”

  “To sign your name to the painting.”

  “I considered it.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not ready to be a normal person. Not yet.”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready, either. But at some point . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Come,” she said, leading him through a passageway, “you have to see the rest to believe it. Our old friend Zizi had remarkable taste for a terrorist.”

  They walked alone through rooms hung with paintings, Sarah in her evening gown, Gabriel in his black tie. In another time, they might have been playacting in one of Gabriel’s operations. But not now. With Nadia’s help, Gabriel had returned Sarah to the world where he had found her, at least for the moment.

  “There’s more,” she was saying, gesturing toward a wall hung with Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Sisley. “Much more. We can only display about a quarter of what Nadia gave us. We’re already making arrangements to lend portions of the collection to museums around the world. I think Nadia would have liked that.”

  They entered a room hung with paintings by Egon Schiele. Sarah walked over to a portrait of a young man who looked vaguely like Mikhail. “I told you not to say anything to him,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Gabriel. “You really shouldn’t have.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re one of the most gifted deceivers I’ve ever met, but you’ve never been able to lie to the people you care about. Especially women.”

  “Why didn’t you invite him tonight?”

  “And how would I have introduced him?” asked Sarah. “I’d like you to meet my friend, Mikhail Abramov. Mikhail is an assassin for the Israeli secret service. He helped to kill the man who once owned these paintings. We did a few ops together. It was fun while it lasted.” She gave another glance in Gabriel’s direction. “Do you see my point?”

  “There are ways to get around things like that, Sarah, but only if you’re willing to make the effort.”

  “I’m still willing.”

  “Does he know that?”

  “He knows.” She turned away from the canvas and touched the side of Gabriel’s face. “Why do I have this terrible feeling I’m never going to see you again?”

  “Send me a picture to clean every once in a while.”

  “I can’t afford you.”

  She looked at her watch. It was the one Nadia had been wearing at the time of her abduction. It was still set three minutes fast.

  “I need to practice my speech once before the guests arrive,” she said. “Would you care to make a few remarks this evening?”

  “I’d rather go back to my cell in Riyadh.”

  “I still don’t know exactly what I’m going to say about her.”

  “Tell the truth,” said Gabriel. “Just not all of it.”

  At the stroke of seven, the art wor
ld, in all its folly and excess, came spilling into the Nadia al-Bakari Wing of the Museum of Modern Art. Gabriel and Chiara remained at the cocktail reception for only a few minutes before retreating to a parapet above the atrium to listen to the speeches. Sarah addressed the crowd last. Somehow, she managed to walk the fine line between truth and fiction. Her speech was part eulogy, part call to action. Nadia had given the world more than just her art, said Sarah. She had given her life. Her body was now buried in an unmarked grave in the Nejd, but this exhibit would be her memorial. As the art world roared its approval, Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated in the breast pocket of his jacket. He slipped into a quiet corner to take the call, then returned to Chiara’s side.

  “Who was it?” she asked.

  “Adrian.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He’d like us to come down to Langley.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  Chapter 70

  Langley, Virginia

  RASHID HAD BEEN CARTER’S FOLLY, Carter’s bright idea gone terribly wrong. Gabriel had cleaned up the worst of the mess. Khalid the falcon, with his parting gift, had given Carter the means to sweep up the rest.

  The gift had been a young Saudi jihadi named Yusuf. Langley and the NSA had been tracking his phone for several months. Yusuf was now one of Rashid’s most trusted couriers. Rashid gave Yusuf coded messages; Yusuf delivered the messages to the faithful. He was expecting a phone call that evening from a man in Germany. Yusuf believed the man was the leader of a new cell in Hamburg. But there was no new cell in Hamburg. Carter and the team at Rashidistan had invented it.

  “He’s sitting in the front passenger seat of that Daihatsu,” Carter explained, nodding toward one of the giant display screens in the Rashidistan op center. “At the moment, they’re traveling on a remote road in the Rafadh Valley of Yemen. They picked up two men about an hour ago. We believe one of them is Rashid. In ten minutes, our phantom cell leader from Hamburg is going to call Yusuf. We’ve asked him to keep Yusuf talking for as long as possible. If we get lucky, Rashid will say something while the call is hot. As you know, Rashid is a bit on the loquacious side. He used to drive his Agency handlers crazy. He never shuts his damn mouth.”

  “Who makes the decision whether to take the shot?” Gabriel asked.

  “NSA will tell me if they can pick up any other voices in the background and whether they can make a positive match. If the computers say he’s there, we hit him. If there’s even a sliver of doubt, we hold our fire. Remember, the last thing we want to do is kill Yusuf before he can lead us to the prize.”

  “I want to listen,” Gabriel said.

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  Gabriel slipped on a set of headphones. Ten minutes crawled past. Then the agent in Hamburg dialed. Two men began conversing in Arabic. In his mind, Gabriel set them aside. They were unimportant now. They were but a doorway to the man with a beautiful and seductive tongue. Talk to me, thought Gabriel. Tell me something important, even if it’s only another lie.

  Yusuf and the ersatz Hamburg cell leader were still speaking, but the conversation was clearly starting to wind down. Thus far, there had been no sound in the background other than the rattle of the SUV over the pitted Yemeni road. Finally, Gabriel heard what he had been waiting for. It was an offhand remark, nothing more. He didn’t bother to mentally translate it; he was listening only to the tone and timbre of the voice. He knew it well. It was the voice that had condemned him to death in the Empty Quarter.

  Do you wish to submit to the will of Islam and become a Muslim?

  Gabriel turned to Adrian Carter. He was speaking tensely into the phone connected to the NSA. Gabriel was tempted to ask what they were waiting for, but he knew the answer. They were waiting for the computers to tell them what he already knew, that the voice in the background was Rashid’s. He watched the SUV careening along the road in Yemen and listened as the two jihadis, one real, the other a clever forgery, concluded their call. Carter slammed down the phone in a flash of uncharacteristic anger. “Sorry to bring you all the way down here for nothing,” he said. “Maybe next time.”

  “There’s not going to be a next time, Adrian.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it ends here, right now.”

  Carter hesitated. “If I order the Predator to fire,” he said, “four people will die, including Yusuf.”

  “They’re four terrorists,” said Gabriel. “And one of them is Rashid al-Husseini.”

  “Are you sure?” Carter asked one last time.

  “Take the shot, Adrian.”

  Carter reached for the phone connected to the Predator control room, but Gabriel stopped him.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Carter.

  “Nothing,” said Gabriel. “Just wait a minute.”

  He was staring at the clock. Thirty seconds later, he nodded his head and said, “Now.” Carter relayed the order, and the Daihatsu disappeared in a flash of brilliant white. A few members of the Rashidistan team began to applaud, but Carter sat with his hands over his face, saying nothing at all.

  “I’ve done this a hundred times,” he said finally, “and each time I still feel like I’m going to be sick.”

  “He deserved to die—for Nadia, if nothing else.”

  “So why do I feel this way?”

  “Because, in the end, it’s never clean or smart or forward-leaning, even when you take the shot from a room on the other side of the world.”

  “Why did you make me wait?”

  “Look at the time in Yemen.”

  It was 10:03 a.m., the moment United Airlines Flight 93 plunged into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, instead of its likely target, the dome of the U.S. Capitol. Carter said nothing more. His right hand was shaking.

  After that, there was just one last issue still to be resolved. In the end, it came down to a simple business transaction: five million dollars for a name. It was provided by Faisal Qahtani, Shamron’s old source from the Saudi GID. Fittingly enough, the five million dollars were deposited into the Zurich branch of TransArabian Bank.

  They put the target under surveillance and spent weeks debating what to do. From his lakeside throne in Tiberias, Shamron decreed that only biblical justice would suffice. But Uzi Navot, in a sign of his rising influence, managed to overrule him. Gabriel had nearly given up his life in a quest for American equity, and under no circumstances would Navot squander it on an ill-advised covert operation in the heart of the American capital. Besides, he said, giving the Americans the name of a traitor would add still more value to King Saul Boulevard’s side of the ledger.

  Navot waited until his next official visit to Washington to whisper the name to Adrian Carter. In return, he made only one request. Carter readily agreed. It was, he said, the least they could do.

  The Bureau took over the surveillance and started tearing through phone records, credit card bills, and computer hard drives. Before long, they had more than enough to proceed to the next stage. They sent a plane to Cornwall. Then they put a chalk mark at the base of the brown wooden sign along MacArthur Boulevard and waited.

  The chalk mark was in the shape of a cross. It intrigued Ellis Coyle, because it was the first time it had been used. It meant Coyle’s handler wished to conduct a crash face-to-face meeting. It was risky—any direct contact between source and case officer was inherently dangerous—but it was also a rare opportunity.

  Coyle rubbed out the mark with the toe of his shoe and entered the park with Lucy at his heels. The leash was still attached to the dog’s collar. Coyle didn’t dare remove it. A bitter old dowager from Spring Valley had confronted him recently about his failure to collect Lucy’s droppings. There had been threats of community sanction, perhaps even a word with the authorities. The last thing Coyle needed now was an encounter with the police, not when he was just a few weeks from retirement. He promised to end his rebellious ways and began secretly plotting the demise of the dowager’s hateful litt
le pug.

  It was a few minutes past nine, and the clearing at the top of the trail was in darkness. Coyle glanced toward the picnic tables and saw the dark silhouette of a man seated alone. He led Lucy around the perimeter of the clearing, checking for evidence of surveillance, before walking over. Only when he was a few feet away did he realize that the man was not his usual handler from Saudi intelligence. He had gray temples and green eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. He looked at the dog in a way that made Coyle shiver.

  “I’m sorry,” Coyle said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  He turned to leave. The man spoke to his back.

  “Who did you think I was?”

  Coyle turned. The man with bright green eyes hadn’t moved.

  “Who are you?” Coyle asked.

  “I’m the one you sold to Saudi intelligence for thirty pieces of silver, along with Nadia al-Bakari. If it were up to me, I’d send you to hell for what you did. But this is your lucky night, Ellis.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to watch your face while they put the handcuffs on you.”

  Coyle stepped away in fear and began frantically looking around. The man at the table gave a half smile.

  “I was wondering whether you would accept your fate with the same dignity she accepted hers. I suppose I have my answer.”