Daniel Silva - Portrait of a Spy

THREE BUSINESS DAYS LATER, THE venerable Christie’s auction house, King Street, St. James’s, deposited the sum of fifty million pounds—less commissions, taxes, and numerous transactional fees—into the Zurich branch of TransArabian Bank. Christie’s received confirmation of the transfer at 2:18 p.m. London time, as did the two hundred men and women gathered in the subterranean op center known as Rashidistan. There arose in the room a loud cheer that echoed throughout the chambers of the American intelligence community and even inside the White House itself. The celebration did not last long, however, for there was a great deal of work to be done. After many weeks of toil and worry, Gabriel’s operation had finally borne fruit. Now the harvest would commence. And after the harvest, God willing, would come the feast.

The money spent a restful day in Zurich before moving on to TransArabian’s headquarters in Dubai. Not all of it, though. At the direction of Samir Abbas, who had power of attorney, two million pounds were wired into a small private bank on Zurich’s Talstrasse. Additionally, Abbas authorized large donations to a number of Islamic groups and charities—including the World Islamic Fund for Justice, the Free Palestine Initiative, the Centers for Islamic Studies, the Islamic Society of Western Europe, the Islamic World League, and the Institute for Judeo-Islamic Reconciliation, Gabriel’s personal favorite. Abbas also allotted himself a generous consulting fee, which, curiously, he drew in cash. He gave a portion of the money to the imam of his mosque to do with as he pleased. The rest he concealed in the pantry of his Zurich apartment, an act that was captured by the camera of his compromised computer and projected live onto the giant screens of Rashidistan.

Owing to TransArabian’s long-suspected links to the global jihadist movement, Langley and the NSA were already well acquainted with its ledger books, as were the terror-finance specialists at Treasury and the FBI. As a result, Gabriel and the staff in Rashidistan were able to monitor the money almost in real time as it flowed through a series of fronts, shells, and dummy corporations—all of which had been hastily created in lax jurisdictions in the days following Nadia’s meeting with Sheikh Bin Tayyib in the Nejd. The speed with which the money moved from account to account demonstrated that Rashid’s network possessed a level of sophistication that belied its size and relative youth. It also revealed—much to Langley’s alarm—that the network had already expanded far beyond the Middle East and Western Europe.

The evidence of Rashid’s global reach was overwhelming. There was the three hundred thousand dollars that appeared suddenly in the account of a trucking firm in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. And the five hundred thousand dollars paid to a commercial construction company in Caracas. And the eight hundred thousand dollars funneled to an Internet consulting firm based in Montreal—a firm owned by an Algerian previously linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The largest single payment—two million dollars—went to QTC Logistics, a freight forwarding and customs brokerage firm based in the judicially porous Gulf emirate of Sharjah. Within hours of the money’s arrival, the Rashidistan team was monitoring QTC’s phones and poring over its records dating back three years. The same was true of the Internet firm in Montreal, though the physical surveillance of the Algerian was delegated to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. Gabriel argued strenuously against bringing the Canadians into the investigation but was overruled by Adrian Carter and his newfound ally at the White House, James A. McKenna. It was just one of many battles, large and small, that Gabriel would lose as the operation slipped further and further from his grasp.

As the intelligence streamed into the op center, the staff produced an updated network matrix that dwarfed the one assembled by Dina and Gabriel’s team following the first attacks. McKenna dropped by every few days just to marvel at it, as did members of the various congressional committees involved in intelligence and homeland security. And on a snowy afternoon in late February, Gabriel spotted the president himself standing on the upper observation deck with the CIA director and Adrian Carter standing proudly at his side. The president was clearly pleased by what he saw. It was clean. It was smart. It was forward-leaning. A partnership between Islam and the West to defeat the forces of extremism. Brainpower over brute force.

The operation had been Gabriel’s creation, Gabriel’s work of art, yet it had so far failed to provide any firm leads regarding the whereabouts of the network’s operational mastermind or its inspirational leader. Which is why it came as a surprise to Gabriel when he started hearing rumors about pending arrests. He confronted Adrian Carter the next day in the center’s soundproof conference room. Carter spent a moment rearranging the contents of a file before finally confirming the rumors were true. Gabriel tapped the green badge hanging around his neck and asked, “Does this allow me to offer an opinion?”

“I’m afraid it does.”

“You’re about to make a mistake, Adrian.”

“It wouldn’t be my first.”

“My team and I went to a great deal of time and effort to put this operation in place. And now you’re going to blow it sky-high by pulling a few operatives off the street.”

“I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” Carter said impassively.

“Who’s that?”

“Someone who has the power to rule by executive fiat. I’m the deputy director for operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. I have superiors in this building. I have ambitious counterparts from other agencies with competing interests. I have a director of national intelligence, congressional committees, and James A. McKenna. And, last but not least, I have a president.”

“We’re spies, Adrian. We don’t make arrests. We save lives. You have to be patient, just like your enemies. If you continue to let the money flow, you’ll be able to stay one step ahead of them for years . You’ll watch them. You’ll listen to them. You’ll let them waste valuable time and effort plotting and planning attacks that will never take place. And you’ll make arrests only as a last resort—and only if they’re necessary to prevent a bomb from exploding or a plane from falling out of the sky.”

“The White House disagrees,” said Carter.

“So this is political?”

“I’d rather not speculate on the motives behind it.”

“What about Malik?”

“Malik is a rumor. Malik is a hunch on Dina’s part.”

Gabriel studied Carter skeptically. “You don’t believe that, Adrian. After all, you were the one who said the European bombings were planned by someone who cut his teeth in Baghdad.”

“And I stand by that. But the goal of this operation was never to find one man. It was to dismantle a terror network. Thanks to your work, we believe we have enough evidence to take down at least sixty operatives in a dozen countries. When was the last time anyone arrested sixty of the bad guys? It’s an amazing accomplishment. It’s your accomplishment.”

“Let’s just hope they’re the right sixty operatives. Otherwise, it might not stop the next attack. In fact, it might push Rashid and Malik to accelerate their planning.”

Carter unwound a paper clip, the last in all of Langley, but said nothing.

“Have you considered what this is going to mean for Nadia’s security?”

“It’s possible Rashid might find the timing of the arrests suspicious,” Carter admitted. “That’s why we plan to protect her with a series of well-placed leaks to the press.”