Daniel Silva - Portrait of a Spy

Abbas stopped at Room 1437 and knocked with the same softness with which Esmeralda tapped on Nadia’s door each morning in Paris. Quite unexpectedly, she thought of the Thomas Tompion clock on her bedside table and of the many unsmiling photographs of her father framed in silver. As she waited for the door to open, she resolved to finally send the clock out for repair. She also vowed to dispose of the photographs. After tonight, she thought, the pretense would come to an end. Her time on earth was limited, and she had no wish to spend her final days beneath the juhayman of a murderer.

When Abbas knocked a second time, the door retreated halfway, revealing a broad-shouldered man dressed in the white kandoura and ghutra of a native Emirati. He wore tinted eyeglasses rimmed in gold and a neatly trimmed beard with patches of gray around the chin. In the center of his flat forehead was a pronounced zebiba prayer scar that looked as though it had been recently irritated. He looked nothing at all like any of the photo illustrations Nadia had been shown in London.

The robed figure opened the door a few inches wider and with a movement of his eyes invited Nadia to enter. He permitted Rafiq al-Kamal to follow, but instructed Abbas to return to the lobby. The robed figure had the accent of a man from Upper Egypt. Behind him stood two more men in pristine white robes and headdresses. They, too, were wearing gold-rimmed eyeglasses and trimmed beards flecked with gray. When the door closed, the Egyptian raised his hand to his ear and said softly, “Your mobile phone, please.”

Nadia drew the BlackBerry from her handbag and surrendered it. The Egyptian immediately handed the device to one of his clones, who disabled it with a swiftness that suggested a facility with technology.

“Now yours,” said Nadia in a clear voice. She nodded toward the other two men and added, “Theirs, too.”

The broad-shouldered Egyptian was clearly unaccustomed to being addressed by women in anything but a subservient manner. He looked toward his two colleagues and with a nod instructed them to disable their mobile devices. They did so without protest.

“Are we finished?” asked Nadia.

“Your bodyguard’s phone,” he said. “And your bag.”

“What about my bag?”

“We would feel more comfortable if you left it here by the door. I assure you that your valuables will be safe.”

Nadia let the bag slip from her shoulder in a way that suggested her patience was at an end. “We don’t have all night, my brothers. If you would like to petition me for another donation, I suggest we get on with it.”

“Forgive us, Miss al-Bakari, but our enemies have enormous technical resources. Surely a woman in your position knows what can happen when people get careless.”

Nadia looked at al-Kamal, who responded by handing over his phone.

“I’m told that you wish to have your bodyguard present during the meeting,” the Egyptian said.

“No,” Nadia said, “I insist on it.”

“You trust this man?” he replied, glancing at al-Kamal.

“With my life.”

“Very well,” he said. “This way, please.”

She followed the three robed men into the sitting room of the suite, where two more men in Emirati dress waited in the half-light. One was seated on a couch watching an account of the latest bombing in Pakistan on Al Jazeera. The other was admiring the view of the skyscrapers along Sheikh Zayed Road. He rotated slowly around, like a statue atop a plinth, and appraised Nadia thoughtfully through tinted glasses rimmed in gold. He did not speak. Neither did Nadia. In fact, at that instant, she was not at all certain she was capable of speech.

“Is something wrong, Miss al-Bakari?” he asked in Jordanian Arabic.

“You just happen to look a great deal like a man who used to work for my father,” she replied without hesitation.

He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he glanced at the television screen and said, “You just missed yourself on the evening news. You’ve had quite a busy day today. My compliments, Miss al-Bakari. Your father would have played it the same way. I hear he was always very skillful in the way he mixed legitimate business with zakat .”

“He taught me well.”

“Do you really intend to build it?”

“The resort?” She gave an ambivalent shrug. “The last thing Dubai needs right now is another hotel.”

“Especially one that serves alcohol and allows drunken foreigners to parade around the beach half-naked.”

Nadia made no response other than to look at the other men in the room.

“It’s just a security precaution on my part, Miss al-Bakari. The walls have eyes as well as ears.”

“It’s remarkably effective,” she said, looking directly into his face. “You haven’t told me your name.”

“You may call me Mr. Darwish.”

“My time is limited, Mr. Darwish.”

“One hour, according to my colleagues.”

“Fifty minutes, actually,” Nadia said, glancing at her watch.

“Our enterprise has suffered a severe setback.”

“So I’ve read.”

“We need additional financing to rebuild.”

“I gave you several million pounds.”

“I’m afraid that nearly all of it has been frozen or seized. If we are to rebuild our organization, particularly in the West, we will need an infusion of new capital.”

“Why should I reward your incompetence?”

“I can assure you, Miss al-Bakari, that we’ve learned from our mistakes.”

“What sorts of changes are you planning to make?”

“Better security, coupled with an aggressive plan to take the fight directly to our competitors.”

“An expansion?” she asked.

“If you are not growing, Miss al-Bakari, you are dying.”

“I’m listening, Mr. Darwish.”

With Nadia’s BlackBerry disabled and her handbag lying on the floor of the entrance hall, audio coverage of the meeting under way in Room 1437 was being supplied, quite literally, by the clothes on her back. Though the transmitter woven into the seams had an extremely short range, it was more than enough to securely broadcast a clear signal to the forty-second floor of the same building. There, behind a door that was double-locked and barricaded by furniture, Gabriel and Eli Lavon waited for their computers to supply the real name of the man who had just introduced himself as Mr. Darwish.

The voice-identification software had declared the first few seconds of the meeting inadequate for comparison. That changed when Mr. Darwish started talking about money. Now the software was rapidly comparing a sample of his voice to previous intercepts. Gabriel was confident of the conclusion the computers were about to make. In fact, he was all but certain of it. The murderer had already signed his name, not with his voice but with the four numbers. They were the numbers of the room where the meeting was taking place. Gabriel had no need to add them, subtract them, multiply them, or rearrange their order in any way. He only had to convert the numbers from a twenty-four-hour clock to a twelve-hour clock: 1437 hours was 2:37 p.m., the time at which Farid Khan had detonated his bomb in Covent Garden.

Five minutes after Nadia’s entry into the suite, the computer handed down its verdict. Gabriel raised his secure radio to his lips and instructed his team to begin preparing to carry out the sentence. It was Malik, he said. And may God have mercy on them all.

THE LANKY RUSSIAN PRESENTED HIMSELF at reception thirty seconds later. He had a fine-boned, bloodless face and eyes the color of glacial ice. His American passport identified him as Anthony Colvin, as did his American Express card. He drummed his fingers on the countertop while waiting for the pretty Filipina to find his reservation. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear as though his life depended on it.