The Black Widow Read online

  It was the same man from the café, the clean-shaven man with an angular face who might have been an Arab or a Frenchman or an Italian.

  “How did they miss him?”

  “Good question. And they missed him here, too.”

  Dina pointed toward a third photograph, the same day, an hour later. Safia Bourihane was leaving a women’s clothing store on the Champs-Élysées. The same man was waiting outside on the pavement, pretending to consult a tourist guidebook.

  “Send the photos to King Saul Boulevard,” said Gabriel. “See if anything turns up.”

  “I already have.”

  “And?”

  “King Saul Boulevard has never made his acquaintance.”

  “Maybe this will help.” Gabriel held up the flash drive.

  “What is it?”

  “The life and times of Margreet Janssen.”

  “I wonder how long it will take to find Safia’s secret admirer.”

  “I’d hurry if I were you. The Americans have her file, too.”

  “I’ll beat them,” she said. “I always do.”

  It took Dina fewer than thirty minutes to find the first surveillance photograph of Margreet Janssen and the man who had shadowed Safia Bourihane in Paris. An AIVD team had snapped the picture at a quaint Italian restaurant in central Amsterdam where Margreet, having left her dreary home in Noordwijk, was waiting tables for starvation wages. It wasn’t difficult to spot him; he was dining alone with a volume of Sartre for protection. This time, the camera managed to capture him in focus, though he was somewhat different in appearance. A pair of round eyeglasses had softened the sharp edges of his face; a cardigan sweater lent him a librarian’s unthreatening air. Margreet was his server, and judging from her wide smile she found him attractive—so attractive, in fact, that she agreed to meet him for drinks later at a bar on the edge of the red-light district. The evening ended with a well-executed slap, delivered with Margreet’s right hand to the man’s left cheek and witnessed by the same surveillance team. It was, thought Gabriel, a nice touch of tradecraft. The Dutch wrote the man off as a cad and never tried to establish his identity.

  But what was the connection between the two women, other than the man who might have been an Arab or a Frenchman or an Italian? Dina found that, too. It was a Web site based in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar that sold clothing for Muslim women of piety and taste. Safia Bourihane had surfed it three weeks before the man’s visit to Paris. Margreet Janssen had stopped there just ten days before the slap in Amsterdam. Dina suspected that the site contained a password-protected room where ISIS recruiters could invite promising young women for a private chat. These encrypted rooms had so far proved almost impenetrable to the intelligence services of Israel and the West. Even the mighty National Security Agency, America’s omniscient signals intelligence service, was struggling to keep pace with ISIS’s digital hydra.

  There is no worse feeling for a professional spy than to be told something by an officer from another service that he should have already known himself. Paul Rousseau endured this indignity in a small café on the rue Cler, a fashionable pedestrian shopping street not far from the Eiffel Tower. The French police had erected barricades at the intersections of the cross streets and were checking the handbags and backpacks of everyone who dared to enter. Even Gabriel, who had nothing in his possession other than a manila envelope filled with photographs, was thoroughly searched before being allowed to pass.

  “If this were ever to become public,” said Rousseau, “it would be deeply embarrassing for my service. Heads would roll. Remember, this is France.”

  “Don’t worry, Paul, your secret is safe with me.”

  Rousseau leafed again through the photos of Safia Bourihane and the man who for two days had followed her around Paris undetected by the DGSI.

  “What do you suppose he was doing?”

  “Watching her, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “To make sure she was the right kind of girl. The question is,” said Gabriel, “can you find him?”

  “These photographs were taken more than a year ago.”

  “Yes?” asked Gabriel leadingly.

  “It will be difficult. After all,” said Rousseau, “we still haven’t been able to find out where your team is working.”

  “That’s because we’re better than he is.”

  “Actually, his track record is rather good, too.”

  “He didn’t travel to the café in Saint-Denis on a magic carpet,” said Gabriel. “He took a train, or a bus, or he walked along a street with security cameras.”

  “Our network of CCTV cameras is nowhere near as extensive as yours or the British.”

  “But it exists, especially in a place like Saint-Denis.”

  “Yes,” said Rousseau. “It exists.”

  “So find out how he got there. And then find out who he is. But whatever you do,” Gabriel added, “do it quietly. And don’t mention any of this to our friend from Langley.”

  Rousseau consulted his wristwatch.

  “What time are you seeing him?”

  “Eleven. His name is Taylor, by the way. Kyle Taylor. He’s the chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Apparently, Monsieur Taylor is very ambitious. He’s droned many terrorists. One more scalp, and he might be the next director of operations. At least, that’s the rumor.”

  “That would come as news to the current director.”

  “Adrian Carter?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “I’ve always liked Adrian,” said Rousseau. “He’s a decent soul, and rather too honest for a spy. One wonders how a man like that could survive so long in a place like Langley.”

  As it turned out, it took Rousseau’s Alpha Group just forty-eight hours to determine that the man from the café in Saint-Denis had traveled to Paris from London aboard a Eurostar high-speed train. Surveillance photographs showed him disembarking at the Gare du Nord in late morning and boarding a Métro a few minutes later, bound for the northern suburbs of Paris. He departed Paris the morning after he was photographed on the rue de Rivoli and the Champs-Élysées, also aboard a Eurostar train, this one bound for London.

  Unlike most international trains in Western Europe, the Eurostar requires passengers to clear passport control before boarding. Alpha Group quickly found their man in the manifests. He was Jalal Nasser, born in Amman, Jordan, in 1984, currently residing in the United Kingdom, address unknown. Rousseau dispatched a cable to MI5 in London and, in the dullest language possible, asked whether the British security service had a place of residence for one Jalal Nasser and whether it had reason to suspect his involvement in any form of Islamic extremism. His address arrived two hours later: 33 Chilton Street, Bethnal Green, East London. And, no, said MI5, it had no evidence to suggest that Nasser was anything more than what he claimed to be, which was a graduate student in economics at King’s College. He had been enrolled there, on and off, for seven years.

  Gabriel dispatched Mikhail to London, along with a pair of all-purpose field hands named Mordecai and Oded, and within a few hours of their arrival they managed to acquire a small flat in Chilton Street. They also managed to snap a photograph of Jalal Nasser, the eternal student, walking along Bethnal Green Road with a book bag over one shoulder. It appeared on Gabriel’s mobile phone that evening as he was standing in the nursery of his apartment in Jerusalem, staring down at the two children sleeping peacefully in their cribs.

  “They missed you terribly,” said Chiara. “But if you wake them . . .”

  “What?”

  She smiled, took him by the hand, and led him into their bedroom.

  “Quietly,” she whispered as she loosened the buttons on her blouse. “Very quietly.”

  13

  AMMAN, JORDAN

  EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING Gabriel slipped from the apartment while Chiara and the children were still sleeping and climbed into the back of his armored SUV. His motorcade contained two additional vehicles filled with
well-armed Office security agents. And instead of heading west toward Tel Aviv and King Saul Boulevard, it skirted the gray Ottoman walls of the Old City and spilled down the slopes of the Judean Hills, into the unforgiving flatlands of the West Bank. Stars clung to the cloudless sky above Jerusalem, oblivious to the sun that lay low and fiery above the cleft of the Jordan Valley. A few miles before Jericho was the turnoff for the Allenby Bridge, the historic crossing between the West Bank and the British-created Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The ramp on the Israeli half had been cleared of traffic for Gabriel’s arrival; on the other side idled an impressive motorcade of Suburbans filled with mustachioed Bedouin soldiers. The head of Gabriel’s security detail exchanged a few words with his Jordanian counterpart. Then the two motorcades merged into one and set off across the desert toward Amman.

  Their destination was the headquarters of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department, also known as the Mukhabarat, the Arabic word used to the describe the all-pervasive secret services that safeguarded the fragile kingdoms, emirates, and republics of the Middle East. Surrounded by concentric rings of security men, a locked stainless steel attaché case in one hand, Gabriel strode swiftly across the marble lobby, up a flight of curved stairs, and into the office of Fareed Barakat, the GID’s chief. It was a vast room, four or five times the size of the director’s suite at King Saul Boulevard, and decorated with somber curtains, overstuffed chairs and couches, lustrous Persian carpets, and expensive trinkets that had been bestowed on Fareed by admiring spies and politicians around the world. It was the sort of place, thought Gabriel, where favors were dispensed, judgments were passed, and lives were destroyed. He had upgraded his usual attire for the occasion, exchanging his denim and leather for a trim gray suit and white shirt. Even so, his clothing paled in comparison to the worsted sartorial splendor that hung from the tall slender frame of Fareed Barakat. Fareed’s suits were handmade for him by Anthony Sinclair in London. Like the current king of Jordan, the man he was sworn to protect, he had been expensively educated in Britain. He spoke English like a news presenter from the BBC.

  “Gabriel Allon, at long last.” Fareed’s small black eyes shone like polished onyx. His nose was like the beak of a bird of prey. “It’s good to finally meet you. After reading those stories about you in the newspaper, I was convinced I’d missed my chance.”

  “Reporters,” said Gabriel disdainfully.

  “Quite,” agreed Fareed. “Your first time in Jordan?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “No quiet visits to Amman on a borrowed passport? No operations against one of your many enemies?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Wise man,” said Fareed, smiling. “Better to play by the rules. You’ll discover soon enough that I can be very helpful to you.”

  Israel and Jordan had more in common than a border and a shared British colonial past. They were both westward-looking countries trying to survive in a Middle East that was spinning dangerously out of control. They had fought two wars, in 1948 and 1967, but had formally made peace in the afterglow of the Oslo peace process. Even before that, however, the Office and the GID had maintained close, if cautious, ties. Jordan was universally considered the most fragile of the Arab states, and it was the job of the GID to keep the king’s head on his shoulders and the chaos of the region at bay. Israel wanted the same thing, and in the GID had found a competent and reliable partner with whom they could do business. The GID was a bit more civilized than its brutal Iraqi and Egyptian counterparts, though no less ubiquitous. A vast network of informers watched over the Jordanian people and monitored their every word and deed. Even a stray unkind remark about the king or his family could result in a sojourn of indeterminate length in the GID’s labyrinth of secret detention centers.

  Uzi Navot had warned Gabriel about the rituals that accompanied any visit to Fareed’s gilded lair: the endless cups of sticky-sweet Arab coffee, the cigarettes, the long stories of Fareed’s many conquests, both professional and romantic. Fareed always spoke as though he couldn’t quite believe his own luck, which added to his considerable charm. Where some men wearied under the burden of responsibility, Fareed thrived. He was the lord of a vast empire of secrets. He was a deeply contented man.

  Throughout Fareed’s monologue, Gabriel managed to keep a placid, attentive smile fixed firmly on his face. He laughed when appropriate and posed a leading question or two, and yet all the while his thoughts wandered to the photographs contained in the locked stainless steel briefcase at his ankle. He had never carried a briefcase before—not willingly at least, only for the sake of his cover. It felt like a ball and chain, an anvil. He supposed he should find someone to carry it for him. But inwardly he feared that such a move might nurture in him a taste for privilege that would spiral, inevitably, to a valet, a food taster, and a standing appointment at an exclusive Tel Aviv hair salon. Already, he missed the small thrill of piloting his own automobile down the ski-slope grade of Highway 1. Fareed Barakat would surely have found such sentiments curious. It was said of Fareed that he once jailed his own butler for allowing the Earl Grey tea to steep a minute too long.

  At length, Fareed brought the topic of conversation around to the situation at King Saul Boulevard. He had heard about Gabriel’s pending promotion, and Uzi Navot’s impending demise. He had also heard—from where he refused to say—that Gabriel intended to keep Navot around in some capacity. He thought this a very bad idea, horrendous actually, and told Gabriel so. “Better to sweep the decks and make a fresh start of it.” Gabriel smiled, praised Fareed for his shrewdness and wisdom, and said nothing more on the subject.

  The Jordanian had also heard that Gabriel had recently become a father again. With the press of a button he summoned an aide, who entered the office bearing two gift-wrapped boxes, one enormous, the other quite small. Fareed insisted that Gabriel open both in his presence. The large box contained a motorized Mercedes toy car; the second box, the smaller, a strand of pearls.

  “I hope you’re not offended because the car is German.”

  “Not at all.”

  “The pearls are from Mikimoto.”

  “That’s good to know.” Gabriel closed the box. “I can’t possibly accept these.”

  “You must. Otherwise, I’ll be deeply offended.”

  Gabriel was suddenly sorry he had come to Amman without gifts of his own. But what was one supposed to give a man who jailed his butler for misbrewing a pot of tea? He had only the photographs, which he retrieved from the attaché case. The first showed a man walking along an East London street, a book bag over one shoulder, a man who might have been an Arab or a Frenchman or an Italian. Gabriel handed the photograph to Fareed Barakat, who gave it a brief glance. “Jalal Nasser,” he said, returning the photograph to Gabriel with a smile. “What took you so long, my friend?”

  14

  GID HEADQUARTERS, AMMAN

  FAREED BARAKAT KNEW MORE ABOUT ISIS than any other intelligence officer in the world, and with good reason. The movement had its roots in the grim Amman suburb of Zarqa, where, in a two-story house overlooking a derelict cemetery, there had once lived a man named Ahmad Fadil Nazzal al-Khalayleh, a heavy drinker, a vandal, a vicious street brawler who had so many tattoos the neighborhood children referred to him as “the green man.” His mother was a devout Muslim who believed that only Islam could save her troubled son. She enrolled him for religious instruction at the al-Hussein Ben Ali Mosque, and it was there al-Khalayleh found his true calling. He quickly became a radical and a committed enemy of the Jordanian monarchy, which he was determined to topple with force. He spent several years inside the GID’s secret prisons, including a stint in the notorious desert fortress at al-Jafr. The leader of his cellblock was Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, a firebrand preacher who was one of the foremost theoreticians of jihadism. In 1999, when a young, untested king ascended to the throne after the death of his father, he decided to release more than a thousand criminals and political prisoners in a trad
itional gesture of goodwill. Two of the men he freed were al-Maqdisi and his violent pupil from Zarqa.

  By then, the former street brawler with many tattoos was known as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Not long after his release, he made his way to Afghanistan and pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden. And in March 2003, with the American invasion of Iraq looming, he slipped into Baghdad and formed the resistance cells that would eventually come to be known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. The wave of beheadings and spectacular sectarian bombings carried out by Zarqawi and his associates pushed the country to the brink of all-out civil war. He was the prototype of a new kind of Islamic extremist, willing to use horrifying violence to shock and terrify. Even Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, rebuked him.

  An American air strike ended Zarqawi’s life in June 2006, and by the end of the decade al-Qaeda in Iraq had been decimated. But in 2011 two events conspired to revive its fortunes: the outbreak of civil war in Syria and the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq. Now known as ISIS, the group rose from the ashes and rushed into the power vacuum along the Syria–Iraq border. The land under its control stretched from the cradle of civilization to the doorstep of Europe. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was squarely in its sights. So, too, was Israel.

  Among the thousands of young Muslims from the Middle East and Europe who were drawn to the siren song of ISIS was a young Jordanian named Jalal Nasser. Like Zarqawi, Nasser was from a prominent East Bank tribe, the Bani Hassan, though his family was better off than the Khalaylehs of Zarqa. He attended a private secondary school in Amman and King’s College in London. Soon after the outbreak of civil war in Syria, however, he met with an ISIS recruiter in Amman and inquired about making his way to the caliphate. The recruiter advised Jalal that he could be more useful elsewhere.