Portrait of a Spy

Mikhail was on the air first.

“They’re leaving the room,” he said.

Gabriel didn’t have to ask how many. The answer was outside in the drive. Five SUVs for five men. Gabriel had to establish which of the five was Malik before any of the men set foot outside the hotel. And there was only one way to do it. He gave the order.

“There are five of them and one of me,” Mikhail replied.

“The longer you talk, the greater the chances we’ll lose him.”

Mikhail keyed out without another word. Gabriel glanced down at his laptop to check Nadia’s location.

She was halfway to the airport.

Mikhail secured the room and stepped into the corridor. The Glock was now at the small of his back with the suppressor screwed into place. The loaded syringe was in the outside pocket of his coat. He glanced to his right and saw the five men in white kandouras and ghutras stepping around a corner into the elevator vestibule. He walked normally for a few seconds but quickened his pace after hearing the chime indicating that a carriage had arrived. By the time he reached the vestibule, the five men had entered the elevator and the gleaming gold doors were beginning to close. He shouldered his way inside, mumbling an apology, and stood at the front of the carriage as the doors closed for a second time. In the reflection, he could see five matching men. Five matching beards flecked with gray. Five pairs of matching eyeglasses rimmed in gold. Five prayer scars that looked recently irritated. There was just one difference. Four of the men were staring directly at Mikhail. The fifth seemed to be looking down at his shoes.

Malik . . .

Twenty-two floors above, Samir Abbas, fund-raiser for the global jihadist movement, was catching up on a bit of legitimate work for TransArabian Bank when he heard a knock at the door. He had been expecting it; the Egyptian had said he would send someone when the meeting with Nadia was over. As it turned out, he sent not one man but two. They were dressed like Emiratis, but their accents betrayed them as Jordanians. Abbas admitted them without hesitation.

“The meeting went well?” he asked.

“Very well,” said the older of the two men. “Miss al-Bakari has agreed to make another donation to our cause. We have a few details we need to discuss with you.”

Abbas turned to lead them into the seating area. Only when he felt the garrote biting into his neck did he realize his mistake. Unable to draw a breath or utter a sound, Abbas clawed desperately at the thin metal wire carving into his skin. The lack of oxygen quickly sapped his strength, and he was able to offer only token resistance as the men pushed him facedown to the floor. It was then Abbas felt something else carving into his neck, and he realized they intended to take his head. It was the punishment for infidels and apostates and the enemies of jihad. Samir Abbas was none of those things. He was a believer, a secret soldier in the army of Allah. But in a moment, for reasons he did not understand, he would be a shahid.

Mercifully, Abbas began to lose consciousness. He thought of the money he had hidden in the pantry of his flat in Zurich, and he hoped that Johara or the children might one day find it. Then he forced himself to go still and to submit to the will of God.

The knife made a few more vicious strokes. Abbas saw a burst of brilliant white light and assumed it was the light of Paradise. Then the light was extinguished and there was nothing at all.

Chapter 60 Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai

THE ELEVATOR STOPPED TWICE BEFORE reaching the lobby. A sunburned British woman boarded on the eleventh floor, a Chinese businessman on the seventh. The new arrivals forced Mikhail to retreat deeper into the carriage. He was now standing so close to Malik he could smell the coffee on his breath. The Glock was pressed reassuringly against Mikhail’s spine, but it was the syringe in his coat pocket that occupied his thoughts. He was tempted to shove the needle into Malik’s thigh. Instead, he stared at the ceiling, or at his watch, or at the numbers flashing on the display panel—anywhere but at the face of the murderer standing next to him. When the doors finally opened a third time, he followed the British woman and the Chinese businessman toward the bar.

“He’s the second one from the left,” he said into his phone.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure enough to hit him right now if you tell me to.”

“Not here.”

“Don’t let him leave. Do it now while we have a chance.”

Gabriel went off the air. Mikhail entered the bar, counted slowly to ten, and walked out.

Gabriel was packing up his laptop and conducting a false telephone conversation in rapid French as Malik and his four comrades came floating through the lobby in their white robes. Outside, they engaged in a swirl of handshakes and formal kisses before making their way separately toward the SUVs. Despite the final element of physical deception, Gabriel had no problem tracking Malik as he climbed into the back of one of the Denalis. When the five cars were gone, a pair of Toyota Land Cruisers took their place. Mikhail managed to look vaguely bored as he slipped past the valet and climbed into the front passenger seat of the first. Gabriel entered the second. “Put on your seat belt,” Chiara said as she accelerated away. “These people drive like maniacs.”

The news that Malik was under Office surveillance reached Rashidistan at 10:12 p.m. Dubai time. It provoked a brief outburst of emotion among the skeleton crew, but not among the three spymasters gathered around the pod in the center of the room. Shamron seemed particularly aggrieved as he watched the winking red light making its way along Sheikh Zayed Road.

“It occurs to me that we haven’t heard from our friend Samir Abbas in some time,” he said, eyes still on the wall monitor. “Would it be possible to call his mobile phone from a number he would recognize?”

“Anyone in particular?” asked Carter.

“Make it his wife,” Shamron said. “Samir always struck me as the family type.”

“You just referred to him in the past tense.”

“Did I?” Shamron asked absently.

Carter looked at one of the techs and said, “Make it happen.”

The residents of Dubai are not only among the richest people in the world, but they are also statistically some of its worst drivers. A collision—be it with another car, pedestrian, or object—occurs every two minutes in the emirate, resulting in three fatalities a day on average. The typical driver thinks nothing of slashing across multiple lanes of heavy traffic or tailgating at a hundred miles per hour while talking on his cell phone. As a result, few people took notice of the high-speed chase that occurred shortly after ten p.m. on the road to Jebel Ali. It was just another night at the races.

The road had four lanes in each direction with a grassy median down the center and traffic signals that most locals dismissed as unwanted advice. Gabriel clung to the armrest as Chiara ably maneuvered the big Land Cruiser through the herd of other vehicles just like it. Because it was a Thursday evening, the beginning of the weekend in the Islamic world, the traffic was heavier than on a typical night. Enormous sport-utility vehicles were the norm rather than the exception. Most were driven by bearded men wearing white kandouras and ghutras.

The five cars of Malik’s motorcade were engaged in something like a rolling shell game. They weaved, they swerved, they flashed their high beams for slower traffic to give way—all perfectly appropriate conduct on the anarchic roads of Dubai. Chiara and the three other drivers of the chase team did their best to maintain contact. It was a perilous business. Despite the lawlessness of the roads, the Emirati police didn’t look kindly upon foreigners who got into accidents. Malik knew this, of course. Gabriel wondered what else Malik knew. He was beginning to