Portrait of a Spy

“It could be nothing more than a coincidence, Dina.”

“It could be, but I was trained to never believe in coincidences. And so were you.”

“What happened to the operation against Malik?”

“He slipped through our fingers, the same way he slipped away from the Americans in Baghdad. Uzi considered putting Arwish under surveillance, but that turned out not to be necessary. Three days after Malik disappeared, the body of Kemel Arwish was found in the desert east of Damascus. He’d been granted a relatively painless death.”

“Malik had him killed?”

“Maybe it was Malik, maybe it was Rashid. It doesn’t much matter. Arwish was a small fish in a big pond. He’d played the role assigned to him. He’d delivered a message, and after that, he became a liability.”

Gabriel appeared unconvinced. “What else have you got?”

“The design of the suicide belts worn by the shahids in Paris, Copenhagen, and London,” she said. “They were identical to the type of belt Malik used for his attacks during the Second Intifada, which were in turn identical to the type he used in Baghdad.”

“The design didn’t necessarily have to come from Malik. It could have been floating around the sewers of the jihadist underworld for years.”

“There’s no way Malik would have put that design up on the Internet for the world to see. The wiring, the fusing, the shaping of the charge, and the shrapnel are all his innovations. He’s practically telling me that it’s him.”

Gabriel was silent. Dina raised an eyebrow and asked, “No more comments about coincidences?”

Gabriel ignored the remark. “What was his last known location?”

“There were some unconfirmed reports he was back in Zarqa, and our station chief in Turkey heard a nasty rumor he was living in grand fashion in Istanbul. The rumor turned out to be false. As far as the Office is concerned, Malik is a ghost.”

“Even a ghost needs a passport.”

“We believe he’s carrying a Syrian passport that was personally given to him by the great reformer in Damascus. Unfortunately, we have no idea what name he’s using or what he looks like. The last known photograph of Malik was taken more than twenty years ago. It’s useless.”

“Is there someone close to Malik that we can get to? A relative? A friend? An old comrade from his days in Hamas?”

“We tried when Malik was bombing the daylights out of us during the Second Intifada,” Dina said, shaking her head. “There are no al-Zubairs left in Israel or the territories, and the ones in the camp at Zarqa are far too committed to the struggle to collaborate with us.” She paused for a moment. “We might have one thing working in our favor, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I think his network might be running out of money.”

“Says who?”

Dina pointed toward a photograph of Farid Khan, the Covent Garden bomber.

“Says him.”

Chapter 18 Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

IN THE FINAL WEEKS OF his brief but portentous life, Farid Khan, murderer of eighteen innocent souls in the land of his birth, left a series of increasingly desperate postings on an Islamic Internet message board lamenting the fact he didn’t have enough money to buy a proper wedding present for his sister. Apparently, he was considering skipping the wedding to avoid embarrassment. But there was just one problem with the story, Dina pointed out. Allah had blessed the Khan family with four boys, but no girls.

“I believe he was referring to a martyrdom payment—a payment he’d been promised by Malik. That’s the Hamas way. Hamas always looks after the posthumous financial needs of its shahids.”

“Did he ever get the money?”

“A week before the attack, he made one final posting saying that he had been granted the means to buy his sister a gift. He would be able to attend the wedding after all, thanks be to Allah.”

“So Malik eventually kept his word.”

“That’s true, but only after his shahid threatened not to go ahead with the mission. The network might have enough cash on hand to fund another round of attacks, but if Rashid and Malik are going to become the next Bin Laden and Zawahiri—”

“They’re going to need an infusion of working capital.”

“Exactly.”

Gabriel stepped forward and gazed at Dina’s galaxy of names, phone numbers, and faces. Then he turned to Lavon and asked, “How much do you think it would take to create a new jihadist terror group with a truly global reach?”

“Twenty million should do it,” Lavon replied. “Maybe a bit more if you want to give them first-class accommodations and travel.”

“That’s a lot of money, Eli.”

“Terror doesn’t come cheap.” Lavon gave Gabriel a sidelong look. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we have two choices. We can sit here staring at our telephone and e-mail matrixes, hoping a piece of actionable intelligence falls into our lap, or . . .” Gabriel’s voice trailed off.

“Or what?”

“Or we can go into the terrorism business ourselves.”

“And how would we do that?”

“We give them the money, Eli. We give them the money.”

There are two basic types of intelligence, Gabriel needlessly reminded his team. There is human intelligence, or “humint” in the jargon of the trade, and signals intelligence, also known as “sigint.” But the ability to track the flow of money in real time through the global banking system had given spies a powerful third form of intelligence gathering sometimes referred to as “finint,” or financial intelligence. For the most part, finint was highly reliable. Money didn’t lie; it simply went where it was told to go. What’s more, the electronic trail of intelligence left by its movements was predictive in nature. The Islamic terrorists had learned long ago how to deceive Western spy agencies with false chatter, but rarely did they invest precious financial resources in deception. Money usually went to real operatives who were engaged in real plots. Follow the money, said Gabriel, and it would illuminate the intentions of Rashid and Malik like the lights of an airport runway.

But how to go about doing it? That was the question Gabriel and his team wrestled over for the remainder of that long and sleepless night. A clever forgery? No, insisted Gabriel, the jihadist world was far too insular for that. If the team tried to create a wealthy Muslim benefactor out of whole cloth, the terrorists would plop him in front of a camera and saw off his head with a butter knife. The money would have to come from someone with unimpeachable jihadist credentials. Otherwise, the terrorists would never accept it. But where to find someone who straddled both sides of the divide? Someone who would be regarded by the jihadists as genuine and yet would still be willing to work on behalf of Israeli and American intelligence. Call the Old Man, Yaakov suggested. In all likelihood, he would have a name at the tip of his nicotine-stained fingers. And if he didn’t, he would surely know where to find one.

As it turned out, Shamron did have a name, which he murmured into Gabriel’s ear, via secure telephone, a few minutes after four a.m. Washington time. Shamron had been watching this person for many years. The approach would be fraught with risk for Gabriel, both personal and professional, but Shamron had in his file drawers a substantial amount of evidence to suggest it might be received in a positive manner. He took the idea to Uzi Navot, and within minutes, Navot signed off on it. And thus, with a stroke of Navot’s ludicrous gold pen, the return