Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

“Look carefully at the man seated to his left,” said Gabriel. “Do you recognize him?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“How about now?”

Gabriel gave Carter another photograph of the man. This time, it showed him entering the Iranian Embassy in Berlin.

Carter looked up sharply. “Massoud?”

“In the flesh.”

The son of an Episcopal minister, Carter swore under his breath.

“Our sentiments exactly.”

Carter placed the photograph on the table next to the others and stared at it in silence. Massoud Rahimi was one of those rare inhabitants of the secret world who required no introduction. In fact, most never bothered with his family name. He was just Massoud, a man whose fingerprints were on every major act of terrorism linked to Iran since the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. These days, Massoud worked from the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, which doubled as VEVAK’s main Western forward-operating base for terror. He carried a diplomatic passport under another name and claimed to be a low-level functionary in the consular section. Even the Germans, who maintained uncomfortably close trade relations with Iran, didn’t believe a word of it.

“So what’s your theory?” asked Carter.

“Let’s just say we don’t believe it was a coincidence that Massoud and David Girard were riding the same streetcar in Zurich.”

“Do you think Massoud ordered the bombing in St. Moritz?”

“That’s Massoud’s way,” said Gabriel. “He’s never been shy about inflicting a little martyrdom on his own side when he has an important secret to protect.”

“And now you want to find out the nature of that secret.”

“Exactly.”

“How?”

“We were hoping Massoud would agree to tell us himself.”

“You’re thinking about trying to buy him off?”

“Massoud would sooner slit his own wrists than accept money from Jews.”

“A coerced defection?”

“There isn’t time.”

Carter fell into a heavy silence. “I don’t need to remind you that Massoud carries a diplomatic passport,” he said after a moment. “And that makes him untouchable.”

“No one is untouchable. Not when lives are at stake.”

“Massoud is,” Carter responded. “And if you touch so much as a hair on his head, it will be open season on every Israeli diplomat in the world.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, Adrian, it already is. Besides,” Gabriel added, “I didn’t come here for advice.”

“So why are you here?”

“I want to know whether the playing field is clear.”

“I can state categorically that the Agency is nowhere near the field,” said Carter. “But you should know that the Germans thought about making a run at him a couple of years ago.”

“What kind of run?”

“Apparently, Massoud has a taste for the finer things in life. He routinely skims a bit off the top of his operational budget and squirrels it away in banks all over Europe. The BND had him cold. They were planning to sit down with Massoud for a little chat, at the end of which they would give him a simple choice: work for us, or we’ll tell your masters in Tehran that you’re embezzling state funds.”

“How do you know about this?”

“Because the Germans came to me and asked whether the Agency wanted in. They even gave me a copy of the evidence they had against him.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Carter said. “It was during the period when the White House thought it could sweet-talk the Iranians into giving up their nuclear program. The president and his team didn’t want to do anything that might make the Iranians angry. As it turned out, neither did the German chancellor. She was afraid it might interfere with all the business her firms were doing in Iran.”

“So it died,” said Gabriel. “And a murderer sits in Berlin plotting an attack on my country.”

“So it would appear.”

“Where’s that batch of material from the BND?”

“Locked away in the file rooms of Langley.”

“I want it.”

“You can have it,” Carter replied, “but it’ll cost you.”

“How much?”

“I have a long list of questions I’d like answered.”

“Why don’t you just join us for the fun?”

“Because I don’t want to be within a hundred miles of the fun.” Carter looked at Gabriel seriously. “Will you allow me to give you two pieces of advice?”

“If you must.”

“Invent a good cover story,” said Carter. “And whatever you do, don’t screw it up. Otherwise, there’s a very good chance you’re going to start World War Three.”

Carter requested the German documents in a way that left only a wispy contrail in Langley’s atmosphere, and within an hour they were delivered to his doorstep by an Agency courier. Since Carter could not hand over the documents and still maintain any plausible deniability, Gabriel spent the remainder of that warm afternoon on Carter’s porch, committing the details of Massoud’s financial misdeeds to memory. Carter walked him through some of the finer points but devoted most of his time to the list of questions he wanted put to Massoud. He wrote them in longhand and then burned the unused pages of his yellow legal pad. Carter was a spy’s spy whose devotion to tried-and-true tradecraft was absolute. According to the wits at Langley, he left chalk marks on the bedpost when he wanted to make love to his wife.

It was approaching four when Gabriel finished reviewing all the documents, leaving him barely enough time to catch the evening Lufthansa flight to Berlin. As they headed outside to the waiting Escalade, Carter seemed disappointed that Gabriel was leaving. Indeed, he was so oddly attentive that Gabriel was somewhat surprised when he didn’t remind him to buckle his seat belt.

“Something bothering you, Adrian?”

“I was just wondering whether you’re really up for this.”

“The next person who asks me that is—”

“It’s a fair question,” Carter said, cutting Gabriel off. “If one of my men went through what you did in the Empty Quarter, he’d be on permanent vacation.”

“I tried.”

“Maybe you should try harder next time.” Carter shook Gabriel’s hand. “Drop me a postcard from Berlin. And if you happen to get arrested, please try to forget where you got the information about Massoud’s extracurricular activities.”

“It will be our little secret, Adrian. Just like everything else.”

Carter smiled and closed the door. Gabriel saw him one last time, standing curbside with his arm raised as though he were hailing a taxi. Then the Escalade rumbled round a bend, and Carter was gone. Gabriel gazed out the tinted windows at the manicured lawns and the young trees swollen with blossoms, but in his thoughts there were only numbers. The numbers of Massoud’s secret accounts. And the hours remaining until Massoud made the streets run red with blood.

AMONG THE OPERATION’S MANY ENDURING mysteries was how the team’s Berlin safe house came to be located in the district of Wannsee. The head of Housekeeping would claim it was a mere coincidence, that he had chosen the property simply for reasons of availability and function. Only later, when the official history of the affair was being chiseled into stone, would he admit that his decision had been influenced by none other than Ari Shamron. Shamron had wanted to remind Gabriel and the team of what had happened in Wannsee in January 1942, when fifteen senior Nazis gathered over lunch in a lakeside villa to thrash out the bureaucratic details of the extermination of a people. And perhaps, all agreed, he had wanted to remind the team of the potential price of failure.