Portrait of a Spy

“Your concerns have been duly noted.”

“And dismissed.”

Carter said nothing.

“Where does that leave me and the rest of my team?”

“Your team will quietly withdraw from the field and be replaced by Agency personnel. You will stay on in an advisory capacity until the show is up and running.”

“And after that?”

“You’ll be eased out of the production.”

“I have news for you, Adrian. The show is already up and running. In fact, the star of the show is making her debut here in Zurich tomorrow afternoon.”

“We’re going to have to postpone that until the new management team is in place.”

Gabriel saw the lights of Rapperswil glowing faintly along the shoreline. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said after a moment. “The star of the show is a diva. She’s very demanding. And she won’t work with just anyone.”

“You’re saying she’ll work for you, the man who killed her father, but not us?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“I’d like to test that proposition for myself.”

“Be my guest. If you wish to speak to Nadia, she can be reached at her office on the Boulevard Haussmann, in the ninth arrondissement of Paris.”

“Actually, we were hoping that you might work with us on the transition.”

“Hope is not an acceptable strategy when lives are at stake.” Gabriel held up the envelope of snapshots. “Besides, if I were advising Nadia, I’d tell her to stay as far away from you and your Farm-fresh field operatives as possible.”

“We’re grown-ups, you and I. We’ve been through the wars together. We’ve saved lives. We’ve done the dirty jobs that no one else wanted to do or had the guts to do. But at this moment in time, I am resenting the hell out of you.”

“I’m glad I’m not alone.”

“Do you really think this is something I want to do? He’s the president, Gabriel. I can either follow his orders or quit. And I have no intention of quitting.”

“Then please tell the president that I wish him nothing but the best,” Gabriel said. “But at some point, you should remind him that Nadia is only the first step toward breaking Rashid’s network. In the end, it won’t be clean or smart or forward-leaning. I just hope the president doesn’t fall out of love when it comes time to make the tough decisions.”

The ferry shuddered as it nudged against the side of the dock. Gabriel stood abruptly. Carter gathered up the empty cups and wrappers and swept the crumbs onto the floor with the back of his hand.

“I need to know your intentions.”

“I intend to return to my command post and tell my team that we’re going home.”

“Is that final?”

“I never make threats.”

“Then do me one favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Drive slowly.”

They left the ferry a few seconds apart and made their way along the slick jetty to a little car park at the edge of the terminal. Carter climbed into the passenger seat of a Mercedes and headed for the German border; Gabriel slipped behind the wheel of his Audi and sped over the Seedamm, toward the opposite side of the lake. Despite Carter’s admonition, he drove very fast. As a result, he was pulling up to the safe house when Carter called him back with the outlines of the new operational accord. Its parameters were simple and unambiguous. Gabriel and his team would be allowed to retain their ascendency in the field so long as the operation did not touch the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia. On this point, said Carter, there was no room for further negotiation. The president would not permit Israeli intelligence to make mischief in the land of Mecca and Medina. Saudi was the game- changer. Saudi was the third rail. If the operation crossed the Saudi border, said Carter, all bets were off. Gabriel killed the connection and sat alone in the darkness, debating what to do. Ten minutes later, he called Carter back and reluctantly accepted the terms. Then he headed into the safe house and told his team they were playing on borrowed time.

Chapter 38 Paris

FROM THE MANY FLOORS OF her mansion on the Avenue Foch, Nadia al-Bakari had carved for herself a comfortable pied-à-terre. It contained an office, a sitting room, her bedroom suite, and a private art gallery hung with twelve of her most cherished paintings. Scattered throughout the apartment were many photographs of her father. In none was he smiling, preferring instead to display the juhayman, the traditional “angry face” of the Arabian Bedouin. The one exception was an unposed photo snapped by Nadia aboard the Alexandra on the final day of his life. His expression was vaguely melancholy, as if he were somehow aware of the fate that awaited him later that night in the Old Port of Cannes.

Framed in silver, the photograph stood on Nadia’s bedside table. Next to it was a Thomas Tompion clock, purchased at auction for the sum of two and a half million dollars and given to Nadia on the occasion of her twenty- fifth birthday. Lately, it had been running several minutes fast, which Nadia found eerily appropriate. She had been gazing at its stately features on and off since waking with a start at three a.m. Craving caffeine, she could feel the onset of a pounding headache. Nevertheless, she remained motionless in her large bed. During the final session of her training, Gabriel reminded her to avoid any changes to her daily schedule—a schedule that several dozen members of her household and personal staff could recite from memory. Without fail, she rose each morning at seven sharp, not a moment sooner or later. Her breakfast tray was to be left on the credenza in her office. Unless otherwise specified, it was to contain a thermos flask of café filtre, a pitcher of steamed milk, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, and two six-inch slices of tartine with butter and strawberry preserves on the side. Her newspapers were to be placed on the right side of her desk —the Wall Street Journal on top, followed by the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Journal, and Le Monde— along with her leather-bound itinerary for the day. The television was to be tuned to the BBC, with the volume muted and the remote within easy reach.

It was now half past six. Thinking of anything but the throbbing in her head, she closed her eyes and willed herself into a gauzy half sleep, which was disturbed thirty minutes later by the butterfly knock of her longtime housekeeper, Esmeralda. As was her custom, Nadia remained in bed until Esmeralda had departed. Then she pulled on a dressing gown and, under the watchful gaze of her father, padded barefoot into her office.

The smell of freshly brewed coffee greeted her. She poured a cup, added milk and three spoonfuls of sugar, and sat down at her desk. On the television screen were images of mayhem in Islamabad, the aftermath of yet another powerful al-Qaeda car bombing that had killed more than a hundred people, nearly all of them Muslims. Nadia left the volume on mute and lifted the leather cover of her itinerary. It was strikingly benign. After two hours of private time, she was scheduled to depart her residence and fly to Zurich. There, in a conference room at the Dolder Grand Hotel, she and her closest aides would meet with executives from a Zug-based optical firm owned in large part by AAB Holdings. Immediately afterward, she would conduct a second meeting, without aides present. The topic was listed as “private,” which was always the case when Nadia’s personal finances were involved.

She closed the leather folder and, as was her custom, spent the next hour reading the newspapers over coffee and toast. Shortly after eight, she logged on to her computer to check the status of the Asian markets, then spent several minutes switching among the various cable news networks. Her tour ended with Al Jazeera, which had moved on from the carnage in Islamabad to report an Israeli military strike in the Gaza Strip that had killed two