The Messenger

“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-a-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