Daniel Silva - Portrait of a Spy

The miniature GPS tracking beacon lodged in Gabriel’s body told an entirely different story. It was the story of a man who, having been found alive in the Empty Quarter, had been flown by helicopter to Riyadh and deposited at the sprawling compound run by the Mabahith, the secret police division of the Interior Ministry. A week into his stay, it appeared as though he were taken out for a slow drive across Riyadh to the desert east of the city. For several anxious hours, the staff at Rashidistan feared the worst, that he had been executed and buried in the Wahhabi tradition, in a grave with no marker. Eventually, the Agency’s analysts were able to confirm, with palpable relief, that his new location was in fact Riyadh’s main sewage treatment plant. It meant that Gabriel had finally passed the beacon from his intestinal tract. It also meant that he was now off the grid and entirely beyond Langley’s reach.

The bullet had broken two of Gabriel’s ribs and damaged his right lung. The Saudis waited until he was sufficiently recovered before commencing their interrogation. It was conducted by a tall, angular man with a face like a falcon. His olive-drab uniform was starched and pressed, but contained little in the way of insignia. He called himself Khalid. He’d gone to school in England and had the diction of a BBC newsreader.

He began by asking for Gabriel’s name and a brief description of how he had ended up in the Empty Quarter clinging to the corpse of a Saudi woman. Gabriel gave his name as Roland Devereaux of Quebec City. He claimed that he had been kidnapped by Islamic extremists while on business in Dubai, that he had been beaten unconscious and driven into the desert to be killed. There had been an argument among the terrorists that led to an exchange of gunfire. He didn’t know the nature of the argument because he spoke no Arabic.

“None at all?”

“I can order coffee.”

“How do you like it?”

“Medium sweet.”

“What was the nature of your business in Dubai?”

“I work for a freight-forwarding firm.”

“And the woman who died in your arms?”

“I’d never seen her before.”

“Did you ever learn her name?”

Gabriel shook his head, then asked whether his embassy knew where he was.

“Which embassy is that?” asked the Saudi.

“The Canadian Embassy, of course.”

“Oh, yes,” Khalid said, smiling. “What was I thinking?”

“Have you contacted them?”

“We’re working on it.”

The officer jotted a few words in his notebook and departed. Gabriel was handcuffed and returned to his cell. After that, no one spoke to him for many days.

When next Gabriel was taken to the interrogation room, he arrived to find a stack of file folders piled ominously on the table. Khalid the falcon was smoking, something he had refrained from during their first encounter. This time, he posed no questions. Instead, he launched into a monologue not unlike the one Gabriel had endured at the feet of Rashid al-Husseini. In this case, however, the subject was not the inevitable triumph of Salafist Islam but the long and controversial career of an Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon. Khalid’s account was remarkably accurate. Particular attention was paid to Gabriel’s role in the killing of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari and to his subsequent use of Zizi’s daughter as a means of penetrating the terror network of Rashid al-Husseini and Malik al-Zubair.

“It was Nadia who died in your arms in the Empty Quarter,” the Saudi said. “Malik was there, too. We’d like you to tell us how it all happened.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your video confession is all over the Internet and television, Allon. If you don’t cooperate with us, we’ll have no choice but to put you on trial and publicly execute you.”

“How sporting of you.”

“I’m afraid the wheels of Saudi justice do not grind slowly.”

“If I were you, I’d tell His Highness to rethink the part about a public execution. It might cost him his oil fields.”

“The oil fields belong to the people of Saudi Arabia.”

“Oh, yes,” said Gabriel. “What was I thinking?”

For the next several nights, Gabriel’s cell echoed with the screams of men being tortured. Unable to sleep, he developed an infection that required a round of intravenous antibiotics. Several more pounds melted from his slight frame. He grew so thin that when he was delivered for his next interrogation session, even the falcon appeared concerned.

“Perhaps you and I can come to an accommodation,” he suggested.

“What sort of accommodation?”

“You will answer my questions and, in time, I will see that you are returned to your loved ones with your head still attached.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“Because as of this moment, my dear one, I’m the only friend you have.”

There is a truism about interrogations. Sooner or later, everyone talks. Not only terrorists, but professional intelligence officers as well. But it is how they talk, and what they say, that determines whether they will be capable of looking their colleagues in the eye if they are released. Gabriel understood this. So did the falcon.

Together they spent the next week engaged in a delicate ballet of mutual deception. Khalid posed many carefully worded questions to which Gabriel responded with many half-truths and outright lies. The operations he betrayed did not exist. Nor did the paid assets, the safe houses, or the methods of secure communication; it had all been invented in the copious amounts of time Gabriel spent locked in his cell. There were some things he claimed not to know and others he refused to divulge. For example, when Khalid asked for the names of all undercover case officers based in Europe, Gabriel said nothing. He also refused to answer when asked for the names of the officers who had worked with him against Rashid and Malik. Gabriel’s intransigence did not anger the falcon. In fact, he seemed to respect Gabriel more for it.

“Why not give me a few false names I can take to my superiors?” asked Khalid.

“Because your superiors know me well enough to realize I would never betray my closest friends,” said Gabriel. “They would never believe the names were real.”

There is another truism about interrogations. They sometimes reveal more about the man asking the questions than the one answering them. Gabriel had come to believe that Khalid was a true professional rather than a true believer. He was not an altogether unreasonable man. He had a conscience. He could be bargained with. Slowly, gradually, they were able to forge something like a bond. It was a bond of lies, the only kind possible in the secret world.

“Your son was killed that night in Vienna?” Khalid asked suddenly one afternoon. Or perhaps it was already late at night; Gabriel had only a vague grasp of time.

“My son has nothing to do with this.”

“Your son has everything to do with this,” Khalid said knowingly. “Your son is the reason you followed that shahid into Covent Garden. He’s also the reason you allowed Shamron and the Americans to lure you back into the game.”

“You have good sources,” said Gabriel.

Khalid accepted the compliment with a smile. “But there’s one thing I still don’t understand,” he said. “How were you able to convince Nadia to work with you?”

“I’m a professional, like you.”

“Why didn’t you ask for our help?”

“Would you have given it?”

“Of course not.”

The Saudi flipped through the pages of his notebook, frowning slightly, as if trying to decide where to take the questioning next. Gabriel, a skilled interrogator in his own right, knew the performance was all for his benefit. Finally, almost as an afterthought, the Saudi asked, “Is it true she was ill?”