Daniel Silva - Portrait of a Spy

“You know, Gabriel, I never looked at it in those terms.” Carter picked up the last potato chip. “Do you mind?”

“Enjoy.”

Carter popped the chip in his mouth and spent a long moment thoughtfully brushing the salt from his fingertips. “You have a right to be angry,” he said finally. “If I were you, I’d be angry, too.”

“Why?”

“Because I sailed into town with a cheap story thinking I could slip it past you, and you deserve better. The truth is that the president and his faithful if ignorant servant James A. McKenna aren’t concerned that the al-Bakari operation is going to fail. In fact, they’re afraid it’s going to succeed.”

“Try again, Adrian. It’s been a long few days.”

“It seems the president is head over heels in love.”

“Who’s the lucky girl?”

“Nadia,” murmured Carter into his crumpled paper napkin. “He’s crazy about her. He loves her story. He loves her courage. More important, he loves the operation you’ve built around her. It’s exactly the kind of thing he’s been looking for. It’s clean. It’s smart. It’s forward-leaning. It’s built for the long haul. It also happens to dovetail nicely with the president’s view of the world. A partnership between Islam and the West to defeat the forces of extremism. Brainpower over brute force. He wants Rashid’s network taken down and tied up with a bow before the next election, and he doesn’t want to share credit.”

“So he wants to go it alone? No partners?”

“Not entirely,” Carter said. “He wants us to bring in the French, the British, the Germans, and the Spaniards, since they were the ones attacked.”

“What about the partridge in a pear tree?”

“He works for a private security firm now. Doing quite nicely, from what I hear.”

“Need-to-know,” Gabriel said. “It isn’t an advertising slogan, Adrian. It’s a sacred creed. It keeps operations from being blown. It keeps assets alive.”

“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.

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.