by Daniel Silva
There was a four-car pileup on Canal Road. As a result, Coyle was able to listen to the end of Atlas Shrugged during the drive home. He arrived in the Palisades to find Roger Blankman’s house ablaze with a Gatsbyesque light and dozens of luxury cars lining the narrow street. “He’s having another party,” said Norah as she accepted Coyle’s loveless kiss. “It’s a fund-raiser of some sort.”
“I suppose that’s why we weren’t invited.”
“Don’t be petty, Ellis. It doesn’t suit you.”
She added an inch of Merlot to her glass as Lucy entered the kitchen, leash in mouth. Coyle attached it dutifully to her collar and together they walked to Battery Kemble Park. Near the base of the wooden sign, at a precise forty-five-degree angle falling left to right, was a chalk mark. It meant there was a package waiting for Coyle at drop site number three. Coyle rubbed out the mark with the toe of his shoe and entered.
It was dark in the trees, but Coyle had no need of a flashlight; he knew the footpath the way a blind man knows the streets around his home. From MacArthur Boulevard, it ran flat for only a few paces before rising sharply up the slope of the hill. At the top of the park was a clearing where the hundred-pound guns of the old battery had once stood. To the right was a narrow tributary spanned by a wooden footbridge. Drop site number three was just beyond the bridge beneath a fallen oak tree. It was difficult to access, especially for a man of early middle age with chronic back problems, but not for Lucy. She knew each of the drop sites by the sound of its spoken number, and could clean them out in a matter of seconds. What’s more, unless the Bureau had discovered some way to speak to dogs, she could never be called to testify. Lucy was a perfect field agent, thought Coyle: smart, capable, fearless, and utterly loyal.
Coyle paused for a moment to listen for the sound of footfalls or voices. Hearing nothing, he gave Lucy the command to empty drop site three. She darted into the woods, her black coat rendering her all but invisible, and splashed into the streambed. A moment later, she came scrambling up the embankment with a stick in her mouth and dropped it obediently at Coyle’s feet.
It was about a foot in length and approximately two inches in diameter. Coyle took hold of each end and gave a sharp twist. It came apart easily, revealing a hidden compartment. Inside the compartment was a small slip of paper. Coyle removed it, then reassembled the stick and gave it to Lucy to return to the drop site. In all likelihood, Coyle’s handler would collect it before dawn. He wasn’t the smartest intelligence officer Coyle had ever encountered, but he was thorough in a plodding sort of way, and he never made Coyle wait for his money. That was hardly surprising. The officer’s service faced many threats, both internal and external, but a shortage of money was not one of them.
Coyle read the message by the glow of his mobile phone and then dropped the slip of paper into a plastic Safeway bag. It was the same bag he used five minutes later to collect Lucy’s nightly offering. Tightly knotted, it swung like a pendulum, beating warmly against Coyle’s wrist, as he strode down the footpath toward home. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought. A few more secrets, a few more trips into the park with Lucy at his side. He wondered whether he would really have the nerve to leave. Then he thought of Norah’s dowdy eyeglasses, and his neighbor’s enormous house, and the book about Winston Churchill he had listened to while stuck in traffic. Coyle had always admired Churchill’s decisiveness. In the end, Coyle would be decisive, too.
Across the river at Langley, the party continued for much of the next week. They celebrated their hard work. They celebrated the superiority of their technology. They celebrated the fact that they had finally managed to outwit their enemy. Mainly, though, they celebrated Adrian Carter. The operation, they said, would surely be regarded as one of Carter’s finest. The black marks had been erased; the sins had been forgiven. Never mind that Rashid and Malik were still out there somewhere. For now, they were terrorists without a network, and it was all Carter’s doing.
Rashidistan remained open for business, but its ranks were thinned by a wave of hasty reassignments. What had begun as a highly secretive intelligence-gathering endeavor was now a matter largely for policemen and prosecutors. The team no longer tracked the flow of money through a terror network. Instead, it engaged in heated debates with lawyers from the Justice Department over what evidence was admissible and what should never see the light of day. None of the lawyers bothered to ask the opinion of Gabriel Allon, the legendary but wayward son of Israeli intelligence, because none knew he was there.
With the operation winding down, Gabriel devoted most of his time and energy to leaving it. At the request of King Saul Boulevard, he conducted a series of exit briefings and negotiated a permanent system of sharing the intelligence harvest, knowing full well the Americans would never live up to the terms. The accord was signed with great fanfare in a sparsely attended ceremony in the director’s office, after which Gabriel proceeded to the Office of Personnel to hand in his green credentials. What should have taken five minutes consumed more than an hour as he was forced to sign countless written promises, none of which he had any intention of keeping. When Personnel’s lust for ink had finally been satisfied, a uniformed guard escorted Gabriel down to the lobby. He remained there for a few minutes to watch a new star being carved into the CIA’s Memorial Wall, then headed into the first violent thunderstorm of Washington’s all-too-brief spring.
By the time Gabriel reached Georgetown, the rain had ended and the sun was again shining brightly. He met Chiara for lunch at a quaint outdoor café near American University, then walked her back to Tunlaw Road to pack for the flight home. Arriving at the apartment building, they found an armored black Escalade waiting outside the entrance, its tailpipe gently smoking. A hand beckoned. It belonged to Adrian Carter.
“Is there a problem?” asked Gabriel.
“I suppose that depends entirely on how you look at it.”
“Can you get to the point, Adrian? We have a plane to catch.”
“Actually, I’ve taken the liberty of canceling your reservations.”
“How thoughtful of you.”
“Get in.”
PART THREE
THE EMPTY QUARTER
Chapter 48
The Plains, Virginia
THE HOUSE STOOD ON THE highest point of the land, shaded by a coppice of oak and elm. It had a tarnished copper roof and a handsome double-decker porch overlooking a green pasture. The neighbors had been led to believe that the owner was a wealthy Washington lobbyist named Hewitt. There was no Washington lobbyist named Hewitt, at least not one associated with the charming forty-acre gentleman’s farm located two miles east of The Plains on Country Road 601. The name had been chosen randomly by the computers of the Central Intelligence Agency, which owned and operated the farm through a front company. The Agency also owned the John Deere tractor, the Ford pickup truck, the Bush Hog rotary cutter, and a pair of bay horses. One was named Colby; the other was called Helms. According to Agency wits, they were subjected, like all CIA employees, to annual polygraphs to make certain they hadn’t switched sides, whatever side that might be.
The following afternoon, both horses were nibbling on the new grass in the lower pasture as the Escalade bearing Gabriel and Chiara came churning up the long gravel drive. A CIA security man admitted them into the house, then, after relieving them of their coats and mobile devices, pointed them toward the great room. Entering, they saw Uzi Navot peering longingly at the buffet and Ari Shamron attempting to coax a cup of coffee from the pump-action thermos. Seated near the dormant fireplace, dressed for a long weekend in the English countryside, was Graham Seymour. Adrian Carter sat next to him, frowning at something James McKenna was whispering urgently in his ear.
The men gathered in the room represented a secret brotherhood of sorts. Since the attacks of 9/11, they had worked together on numerous joint operations, most of which the public knew nothing about. They had fought for one another, killed for one another, and in some cases bled for on
e another. Despite the occasional disagreement, their bond had managed to transcend time and the fickle whims of their political masters. They saw their mission in stark terms—they were, to borrow a phrase from their enemy, the “Shura Council” of the civilized world. They took on the unpleasant chores no one else was willing to perform and worried about the consequences later, especially when lives were at stake. James McKenna was not a member of the council, nor would he ever be. He was a political animal, which meant by definition he was part of the problem. His presence promised to be a complicating factor, especially if he planned to spend the entire time whispering in Carter’s ear.
McKenna was clearly most comfortable when seated at a rectangular table, so at his suggestion, they moved into the formal dining room. It was obvious why Carter did not like him; McKenna was everything Carter was not. He was young. He was fit. He looked good behind a podium. He was also supremely sure of himself, regardless of whether that certainty was warranted or supported by the facts. McKenna had no blood on his hands and no professional sins in his past. He had never confronted his enemy over the barrel of a gun or questioned him in an interrogation room. He didn’t even speak any of his enemy’s languages. Yet he had read many briefing books about him and had spoken with great sensitivity about him in many meetings. His main contribution to the literature of counterterrorism was a piece he had once written for Foreign Affairs magazine in which he argued the United States could absorb another terrorist attack and emerge stronger for it. The piece had captured the attention of a charismatic senator, and when the senator became president, he placed much of the responsibility for the country’s safety in the hands of a political hack who had once spent a week at Langley getting coffee for the director.
There ensued an awkward moment over who would sit at the head of the table, Carter or McKenna. In the unwritten rules of the brotherhood, chairmanship of meetings was determined by geography, but there were no bylaws about what to do when confronted by a political interloper. Eventually, McKenna surrendered the head of the table to Carter and settled in next to Graham Seymour, who seemed to threaten him less than the quartet of Israelis. Carter placed his pipe and his tobacco pouch on the table for later deployment, then lifted the lid of a secure notebook computer. Stored on its hard drive was a copy of an NSA intercept. It was a phone call, placed at 10:36 a.m. Central European Time the previous day, between the Zurich branch of TransArabian Bank and the Paris offices of AAB Holdings. The parties to the call had been Samir Abbas, a banker with uncomfortably close ties to questionable Islamic charities, and his new client, Nadia al-Bakari. They had spoken for two minutes and twelve seconds, in formal Arabic. Carter distributed copies of an NSA translation. Then he pulled up the audio file on the computer and clicked play.
The first voice on the recording belonged to Nadia’s executive secretary, who asked Abbas to hold while she transferred the call. Nadia picked up exactly six seconds later. After the obligatory Islamic expression of peace, Abbas said he had just spoken to “an associate of the Yemeni.” It seemed the Yemeni’s enterprise had suffered a string of recent setbacks and was in desperate need of additional financing. The associate wished to appeal to Nadia personally and was willing to discuss future plans, including several pending deals in America. This associate, whom Abbas described as “extremely close” to the Yemeni, had suggested Dubai as a meeting site. Apparently, he was a frequent visitor to the fabulously rich emirate and even kept a modest apartment in the Jumeirah Beach district. Needless to say, the associate of the Yemeni was well aware of Miss al-Bakari’s security concerns and would be willing to meet her in a place where she would feel both safe and comfortable.
“Where?”
“The Burj Al Arab.”
“When?”
“A week from Thursday.”
“I’m supposed to be in Istanbul that day on business.”
“The associate’s schedule is very busy. It will be his one and only chance to meet with you for the foreseeable future.”
“When does he need an answer?”
“I’m afraid he needs it now.”
“What time would he like to see me?”
“Nine in the evening.”
“My bodyguards won’t permit any changes.”
“The associate assures me there won’t be any.”
“Then please tell him I’ll be at the Burj next Thursday evening at nine p.m. And tell him not to be late. Because I never invest money with people who are late for meetings.”
“I assure you he won’t be late.”
“Will there be anyone else in attendance?”
“Just me—unless, of course, you would rather go alone.”
“Actually, I would prefer it if you came.”
“Then I would be honored to be at your side. I’ll be waiting in the lobby. You have my mobile number.”
“I’ll see you next Thursday, Inshallah.”
“Inshallah, Miss al-Bakari.”
Carter clicked pause.
“The next recording is a call that was placed to Samir’s home just six hours earlier. He was sleeping soundly at the time and wasn’t pleased when the phone rang. His mood changed when he heard the voice at the other end. The gentleman never bothered to identify himself. He placed the call from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, using a cell phone that had no history and no longer seems to be operative. There’s some dropout and a great deal of background noise. Here’s a sample.”
Carter clicked play.
“Tell her we need more money. Tell her we’re willing to discuss future plans. Make it clear that we’re sending someone important.”
Pause.
“So who exactly is the close associate of the Yemeni who wishes to meet with Nadia?” Carter asked rhetorically. “This phone call appears to provide the answer. It took a bit of work because of the poor quality, but NSA was able to manipulate the recording and conduct voice-match analysis. They ran it through every database we have, including databases of radio and cell phone communications collected in Iraq during the height of the insurgency. One hour ago, they came up with a match. Anyone care to venture a guess as to the identity of the man Samir Abbas was speaking to?”
“I’m tempted to say it was Malik al-Zubair,” Gabriel said, “but that’s not possible. You see, Adrian, Malik is a rumor. Malik is a hunch on Dina’s part.”
“No, he’s not,” Carter conceded. “Dina was right. Malik is for real. He was in Jeddah two days ago. And he may or may not be coming to the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai next Thursday evening to have a word with his new patron, Nadia al-Bakari. The question is, what do we do about it?”
Carter rapped his pipe against the rim of his ashtray. The Shura Council was now in session.
Chapter 49
The Plains, Virginia
IT WAS AN AMERICAN OPERATION, which meant it was an American decision to make. McKenna clearly had no intention of offering the first opinion, lest the ground shift suddenly beneath his feet, so he adroitly deferred to Carter, who began, in typical Carter fashion, with a detour. It was to a place called Forward Operating Base Chapman, a CIA post in remote eastern Afghanistan, where, in December 2009, a CIA asset named Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi came calling to deliver a report to his handlers. A Jordanian physician with links to the jihadist movement, Dr. Balawi had been providing the CIA with critical information used to target al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan. His true mission, however, was to penetrate the CIA and Jordanian intelligence—a mission that came to a disastrous conclusion that day when he detonated a bomb hidden beneath his coat, killing seven CIA officers. It was among the worst single attacks against the Agency in its history, and certainly the worst during Adrian Carter’s long career as director of operations. It demonstrated that al-Qaeda was willing to expend extraordinary time and effort to exact revenge against the intelligence services that pursued it. And it proved that when spies ignore the basic rules of tradecraft, officers could end up dead.
“Are you suggesting that Nadia
al-Bakari is in league with al-Qaeda?” asked McKenna.
“I’m suggesting nothing of the sort. In fact, it is my opinion that when the secret history of the global war on terror is finally written, Nadia will be regarded as one of the most valuable assets who ever worked on the side of the West. Which is why I would hate to lose her because we got greedy and sent her into a situation we shouldn’t have.”
“Malik isn’t inviting her to South Waziristan,” McKenna said. “He’s asking to meet with her in one of the most famous hotels in the world.”
“Actually,” Carter replied, “we don’t know whether it’s going to be Malik al-Zubair or Nobody al-Nobody. But that’s beside the point.”
“What is the point?”
“It violates tradecraft. You remember tradecraft, don’t you, Jim? Rule one says we control as many environmental factors as possible. We choose the time. We choose the place. We pick out the furniture. We order the drinks. And, if possible, we serve the drinks. And we sure as hell don’t let someone like Nadia al-Bakari get within a country mile of a man like Malik.”
“But sometimes we play the hand we’re dealt,” McKenna countered. “Isn’t that what you told the president the day after we lost those seven CIA officers?”
Gabriel noticed a rare flash of anger in Carter’s eyes, but when he spoke again, his voice was as calm and underpowered as ever. “My father was an Episcopal minister, Jim. I don’t play cards.”