The Messenger Page 9

  Gabriel sat down.

  “You’re wearing Shamron’s jacket,” the prime minister said.

  “Gilah insisted I take it.”

  “It becomes you.” He smiled distantly. “You know, you’re even beginning to look a little like him.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

  “He was very handsome when he was a young man.”

  “He was never young, Prime Minister.”

  “None of us were. We were all old before our time. We gave up our youth to build this country. Shamron hasn’t taken a day off since 1947. And this is how it ends?” The prime minister shook his head. “No, he’ll live. Trust me, Gabriel, I’ve known him longer than even you.”

  “Shamron is eternal. That’s what Gilah says.”

  “Maybe not eternal, but he’s not going to be killed by a bunch of terrorists.”

  The prime minister scowled at his wristwatch.

  “You had something you wanted to discuss with me, sir?”

  “Your promotion to chief of Special Ops.”

  “I’ve agreed to take the position, sir.”

  “I realize that, but perhaps now isn’t the best time for you to be running the division.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  “Because all your attention needs to be focused on tracking down and punishing the men who did this to Shamron.”

  The prime minister lapsed into a sudden silence, as if giving Gabriel an opportunity to mount an objection. Gabriel sat motionless, his gaze downward toward his hands.

  “You surprise me,” the prime minister said.

  “How so?”

  “I was afraid you were going to tell me to find someone else.”

  “One doesn’t turn down the prime minister, sir.”

  “But surely there’s more to it than that.”

  “I was in Rome when the terrorists attacked the Vatican, and I put Shamron in his car tonight. I heard the bomb go off.” He paused. “This network, whoever they are and whatever their goals, needs to be put out of business—and soon.”

  “You sound as though you want vengeance.”

  Gabriel looked up from his hands. “I do, Prime Minister. Perhaps under those circumstances, I’m the wrong man for the job.”

  “Actually, under the circumstances, you are exactly the right man.”

  It was Amos who had spoken these words. Gabriel turned and regarded him carefully for the first time. He was a small, broad man, shaped like a square, with a monkish fringe of dark hair and a heavy brow. He still carried the rank of general in the IDF but was dressed now in a pale-gray suit. His candor was a refreshing change. Lev had been a dental probe of a man, forever prodding and searching for weakness and decay. Amos was more like a tack hammer. Gabriel would have to watch his step around him, lest the hammer fall on him.

  “Just make certain your anger doesn’t cloud your judgment,” Amos added.

  “It never has before,” Gabriel said, holding Amos’s dark gaze.

  Amos gave him a humorless smile, as if to say, There’ll be no shooting up French train stations on my watch, no matter what the circumstances. The prime minister leaned forward and braced himself on his elbows.

  “Do you believe Saudis are behind this?”

  “We have some evidence that points to a Saudi connection to the Brotherhood of Allah,” Gabriel said judiciously, “but we’ll need more intelligence before we start looking for a specific individual.”

  “Ahmed bin Shafiq, for example.”

  “Yes, Prime Minister.”

  “And if it is him?”

  “In my opinion, we’re dealing with a network, not a movement. A network bought and paid for with Saudi money. If we lop off the head, the network will die. But it won’t be easy, Prime Minister. We know very little about him. We don’t even know what he really looks like. It will also be complicated politically because of the Americans.”

  “It’s not complicated at all. Ahmed bin Shafiq tried to kill my closest adviser. And so Ahmed bin Shafiq must die.”

  “And if he’s acting at the behest of Prince Nabil or someone in the Royal Family—a family with close historic and economic ties to our most important ally?”

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  The prime minister gave a sideways glance at Amos.

  “Adrian Carter of the CIA would like a word with you,” Amos said.

  “I was supposed to go to Washington tomorrow to brief him on what we’ve learned about the attack on the Vatican.”

  “Carter has requested a change of venue.”

  “Where does he want to meet?”

  “London.”

  “Why London?”

  “It was Carter’s suggestion,” Amos said. “He wanted a convenient neutral location.”

  “Since when is a CIA safe house in London neutral ground?” Gabriel looked at the prime minister, then Amos. “I don’t want to leave Jerusalem—not until we know whether Shamron is going to live.”

  “Carter says it’s urgent,” Amos said. “He wants to see you tomorrow night.”

  “Send someone else then.”

  “We can’t,” said the prime minister. “You’re the only one invited.”

  11.

  London

  HOW’S THE OLD MAN?” asked Adrian Carter. They were walking side by side in Eaton Place, sheltering from a thin night rain beneath Carter’s umbrella. They had met five minutes earlier, as if by chance encounter, in Belgrave Square. Carter had been the one wearing the mackintosh raincoat and holding a copy of The Independent. He was orthodox when it came to the conventions of tradecraft. According to the office wits at Langley, Adrian Carter left chalk marks on the bedpost when he wanted to make love to his wife.

  “Still unconscious,” Gabriel replied, “but he made it through the night, and he’s not losing any more blood.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  “Last night, I would have said no.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m more worried about how he’s going to come out of it. If he’s left with brain damage or trapped in a body that won’t obey his orders…” Gabriel’s voice trailed off. “Shamron has only one thing in his life, and that’s his work. If he can’t work, he’s going to be miserable—and so will everyone around him.”

  “So what else is new?” Carter glanced toward the doorway of the Georgian house at Number 24. “The flat is in there. Let’s take a walk around the block once, shall we? I like to do things by the book.”

  “Haven’t you heard, Adrian? The Soviet Union collapsed a few years back. The KGB are out of business. You and the Russians are friends now.”

  “One can never be too careful, Gabriel.”

  “Didn’t your security boys set up a surveillance detection route?”

  “There are no boys, Gabriel.”

  “Is that an Agency safe flat?”

  “Not exactly,” Carter said. “It belongs to a friend.”

  “A friend of the Agency?”

  “A friend of the president’s, actually.”

  Carter gave a gentle tug on Gabriel’s coat sleeve and led him down the darkened street. They made a slow tour of Eaton Square, which was silent except for the grumble of the evening traffic on the King’s Road. Carter moved at a ponderous pace, like a man bound for an appointment he would rather not keep. Gabriel was wrestling with a single thought: Why did the deputy director for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency want to talk in a place where his own government wouldn’t be listening?

  They made their way back to Eaton Place. This time Carter led Gabriel down the steps to the basement entrance. As Carter inserted the key into the lock, Gabriel quietly lifted the lid of the rubbish bin and saw it was empty. Carter opened the door and led them inside, into the sort of kitchen that real estate brochures routinely describe as “gourmet.” The countertops were granite and agreeably lit by halogen lamps concealed beneath the custom cabinetry. The floor was covered in the Jerusalem limestone so
admired by English and American sophisticates who wish to connect to their Mediterranean roots. Carter walked over to the stainless-steel range and filled the electric teakettle with water. He didn’t bother asking Gabriel whether he wanted something stronger. He knew Gabriel drank nothing but the occasional glass of wine and never mixed alcohol with business, except for reasons of cover.

  “It’s a maisonette,” Carter said. “The drawing room’s upstairs. Go make yourself comfortable.”

  “Are you giving me permission to have a look round, Adrian?”

  Carter was now opening and closing the cabinet doors with a befuddled expression on his face. Gabriel walked over to the pantry, found a box of Earl Grey tea, and tossed it to Carter before heading upstairs. The drawing room was comfortably furnished but with an air of anonymity common in a pied-à-terre. It seemed to Gabriel that no one had ever loved or quarreled or grieved here. He picked up a framed photograph from a side table and saw a bluff, prosperous American with three well-fed children and a wife who’d had too much cosmetic surgery. Two more photographs showed the American standing stiffly at the side of the president. Both were signed: To Bill with gratitude.

  Carter came upstairs a moment later, a tea tray balanced between his hands. He had a head of thinning curly hair and the sort of broad mustache once worn by American college professors. Little about Carter’s demeanor suggested he was one of the most powerful members of Washington’s vast intelligence establishment—or that before his ascension to the rarified atmosphere of Langley’s seventh floor, he had been a field man of the highest reputation. Carter’s natural inclination to listen rather than speak led most to conclude he was a therapist of some sort. When one thought of Adrian Carter, one pictured a man enduring confessions of affairs and inadequacies, or a Dickensian figure hunched over thick books with long Latin words. People tended to underestimate Carter. It was one of his most potent weapons.

  “Who’s behind it, Adrian?” Gabriel asked.

  “You tell me, Gabriel.” Carter placed the tea tray on the center table and removed his raincoat as if weary from too much travel. “It’s your neighborhood.”

  “It’s our neighborhood, but something tells me it’s your problem. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here in London”—Gabriel looked around the room—“in a borrowed safe flat, with no microphones and no backup from the local station.”

  “You don’t miss much, do you? Humor me, Gabriel. Tell me his name.”

  “He’s a former Saudi GID agent named Ahmed bin Shafiq.”

  “Bravo, Gabriel. Well done.” Carter threw his coat over the back of a chair. “Well done, indeed.”

  CARTER LIFTED the lid of the teapot, savored the aroma, and decided it needed to steep a moment longer.

  “How did you know?”

  “We didn’t know,” Gabriel said. “It was an educated guess, based on a few threads of evidence.”

  “Such as?”

  Gabriel told Carter everything he knew. The blown operation against Professor Ali Massoudi. The surveillance photos and Zurich bank account information found on Massoudi’s computer. The links between Ibrahim el-Banna and the Saudi agent who called himself Khalil. The reports of a Saudi by the same name trolling the refugee camps of southern Lebanon for recruits. All the while Carter was fussing with the tea. He poured the first cup and handed it to Gabriel plain. His own required more elaborate preparation: a careful measure of milk, then the tea, then a lump of sugar. Interrogators referred to such obvious playing for time as displacement activity. Carter was a pipe smoker. Gabriel feared it would make an appearance soon.

  “And what about you?” Gabriel asked. “When did you know it was bin Shafiq?”

  Carter snared a second lump with the tongs and briefly debated adding it to the cup before plopping it unceremoniously back into the bowl. “Maybe I knew the day we asked His Majesty to shut down Group 205,” he said. “Or maybe it was the day bin Shafiq seemed to vanish from the face of the earth. You see, Gabriel, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s that for every action we take there’s bound to be a negative reaction. We drove the Russian bear out of Afghanistan and created a Hydra in the process. We smashed the corporate headquarters of al-Qaeda and now the branch offices are running their own affairs. We shut down bin Shafiq’s shop inside the GID, and now it seems bin Shafiq has gone into private practice.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re asking what drove him over the edge?” Carter shrugged and stirred his tea mournfully. “It didn’t take much. Ahmed bin Shafiq is a true Wahhabi believer.”

  “Grandson of an Ikhwan warrior,” said Gabriel, which earned him an admiring nod from Carter.

  “One may argue about why the Saudis support terrorism,” Carter said. “One may have a learned debate as to whether they truly support the goals of the murderers they arm and finance or whether they are engaged in a clever and cynical policy to control the environment around them and thus ensure their own survival. One may not have such a debate about the man the GID chose to carry out that policy. Ahmed bin Shafiq is a believer. Ahmed bin Shafiq hates the United States, the West, and Christianity, and he would be much happier if your country no longer existed. It was why we insisted that His Majesty shut down his little shop of terror.”

  “So when you forced the king to shut down Group 205, bin Shafiq snapped? He decided to use all the contacts he’d made over the years and launch a wave of terrorism of his own? Surely there’s more to it than that, Adrian.”

  “I’m afraid we may have given him a little shove,” Carter said. “We invaded Iraq against the wishes of the Kingdom and most of its inhabitants. We’ve captured members of al-Qaeda and locked them away in secret prisons where they belong. This doesn’t look good to the Muslim world, and it adds fuel to the fires of jihad. You’ve had a hand in it as well. The Saudis see your Separation Fence for what it is, a unilateral final border, and they’re not pleased with it.”

  “This might come as a shock to you, Adrian, but we don’t care what the Saudis think of our fence. If they hadn’t poured millions into the coffers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, we wouldn’t need one.”

  “Back to my original point,” said Carter, pausing for a moment to sip his tea. “The Islamic world is seething with anger, and Ahmed bin Shafiq, true Wahhabi believer, has stepped forward to raise the flag of jihad against the infidel. He’s used his contacts from his Group 205 days to construct a new network. He’s doing what bin Laden is no longer capable of doing, which is plan and carry out large-scale terror spectaculars like the attack on the Vatican. His network is small, extremely professional, and, as he’s proven conclusively, very lethal.”

  “And it’s bought and paid for with Saudi money.”

  “Most definitely,” said Carter.

  “How high does it go, Adrian?”

  “Very high,” said Carter. “Damned near to the top.”

  “Where’s he operating? Who’s footing the bill? Where’s the money coming from?”

  “AAB Holdings of Riyadh, Geneva, and points in between,” said Carter unequivocally. “Ahmed bin Shafiq is one of AAB’s most successful investments. Can I freshen up your tea?”

  THERE WAS ANOTHER break in the proceedings, this time while Carter tried to divine how to light the gas fire. He stood mystified before the grate for a moment, then, with a glance toward Gabriel, appealed for assistance. Gabriel found the key on the mantel, used it to start the flow of gas, then ignited it with an ornamental match.

  “How many years do you give them, Gabriel? How long before the House of Saud collapses and the Islamic Republic of Arabia rises in its place? Five years? Ten? Or is it more like twenty? We’ve never been really good about making predictions like that. We thought the Soviet empire would last forever.”

  “And we thought Hamas could never win an election.”

  Carter chuckled mirthlessly. “Our best minds give them seven years at the most. His Majesty is prepared to spend that seven years playing the game by the ol
d rules: provide cheap oil and pseudofriendship to us while at the same time paying lip service to the forces of Islam and bribing them not to attack him. And when it’s over, he’ll flee to his string of palaces along the Riviera and live out the rest of his days in a luxury that is too grotesque even to contemplate, hopefully with his head still attached to his body.”

  Carter lifted his palms toward the fire. “It’s not hot,” he said.

  “The logs are made of ceramic. Give it a minute to heat up.”

  Carter appeared incredulous. Gabriel drifted over to the window and peered into the street as a car rolled slowly past and vanished around the next corner. Carter gave up on the fire and returned to his seat.

  “And then there are those in the Royal Family who are willing to play the game by a different set of rules. We’ll call them the True Believers. They think the only way the al-Saud can survive is to renew the covenant they formed with Muhammad Abdul Wahhab two centuries ago in the Najd. But this new covenant has to take into account new realities. The monster that the al-Saud created two hundred years ago now holds all the cards, and the True Believers are prepared to give the monster what it wants. Infidel blood. Jihad without end. Some of these True Believers want to go further. The expulsion of all infidels from the Peninsula. An embargo on oil sales to America and any other country that does business with yours. They believe oil should no longer be treated as simply an unending pool of liquid money that flows from the terminals of Ras Tanura into the Zurich bank accounts of the al-Saud. They want to use it as a weapon—a weapon that could be used to cripple the American economy and make the Wahhabis masters of the planet, just as Allah intended when he placed that sea of oil beneath the sands of the al-Hassa. And some of these True Believers, such as the chairman and CEO of AAB Holdings of Riyadh, Geneva, and points in between, are actually willing to shed a little infidel blood themselves.”