Daniel Silva - The Messenger

Gabriel was silent. Lavon could read his thoughts.

We’ll get her, Gabriel was thinking. Let’s just hope there’s something left of her when we do .

WORD OF THE DISASTER in Saint-Barthélemy arrived in the Operations Room at King Saul Boulevard within ten minutes of Gabriel’s return to Sun Dancer . Amos Sharrett, the director-general, was upstairs in his office at the time and was informed of the developments by the duty officer. Despite the lateness of the hour, he immediately woke the prime minister and told him the news. Five minutes later there was a second secure call from Sun Dancer, this one to Langley, Virginia. It went not to the Ops Center but to the private line of Adrian Carter’s seventh-floor office. Carter took the news calmly, as he did most things, and toyed with a stray paper clip as Gabriel made his request. “We have a plane in Miami at the moment,” Carter said. “It can be on the ground in Saint Maarten by dawn.”

Carter hung up the phone and gazed toward the bank of television monitors on the opposite side of the room. The president was in Europe on his fence-mending tour. He had spent the day meeting with the new German chancellor while outside the police had waged running street battles across Berlin with anti-American demonstrators. More of the same was expected at the president’s final two stops: Paris and Rome. The French were bracing for a wave of Muslim rioting, and the Carabinieri were anticipating demonstrations on a scale not seen in the Italian capital in a generation-hardly the scenes of transatlantic harmony the White House imagemakers had been hoping for.

Carter switched off the television and locked his papers in his wall safe, then took his overcoat from the hook on the back of his door and slipped out. The secretaries had gone for the night, and the vestibule was in shadow except for a trapezoid of light that shone from a half-open door on the opposite side. The door led to the office of Shepard Cantwell, the deputy director of intelligence, Carter’s counterpart on the analytical side of the Agency. From inside the room came the clattering of a computer keyboard. Cantwell was still there. According to the Agency wits, Cantwell never left. He simply locked himself into his wall safe some time around midnight and let himself out again at dawn, so he could be at his desk when the director arrived.

“That you, Adrian?” Cantwell inquired in his lazy Back Bay drawl. When Carter poked his head into Cantwell’s lair, the DDI stopped typing and looked up over a batch of files. He was prim as a prior and twice as crafty. “Christ, Adrian, you look like death warmed over. What’s bothering you?”

When Carter mumbled something vague about the chaos surrounding the president’s goodwill trip to Europe, Cantwell launched into a dissertation about the false dangers of anti-Americanism. Cantwell was analysis. He couldn’t help it.

“It’s always fascinated me, Adrian, this ludicrous need of ours to be powerful and loved at the same time. The American president reached halfway around the world and toppled the ruler of Mesopotamia in an afternoon. Not even Caesar could manage that. And now he wants to be adored by those who oppose him. The sooner we stop worrying about being liked, the better off we’ll be.”

“You’ve been reading Machiavelli again, Shep?”

“Never stopped.” He interlaced his fingers behind his neck and splayed his elbows, treating Carter to an unwanted view of his armpits. “There’s a nasty rumor going round the village, Adrian.”

“Really?” Carter gave his wristwatch a glance that Cantwell seemed not to notice.

“According to the rumor you’re involved in some sort of special operation against a well-to-do friend of the al-Saud. And your partners in this endeavor-again, I’m just telling you what I’ve heard, Adrian -are the Israelites.”

“You shouldn’t listen to rumors,” Carter said. “How far has it traveled?”

“Beyond Langley,” replied Cantwell, which was another way of saying it had reached some of the brother agencies that had been steadily encroaching on CIA turf ever since the dreaded reorganization of the American intelligence community.

“How far beyond?”

“Far enough so that some people in town are starting to get nervous. You know how the game is played, Adrian. There’s a pipeline between Riyadh and Washington, and it flows green with cash. This town is awash with Saudi money. It pours into the think tanks and the law firms. Hell, the lobbyists dine out on the stuff. The Saudis have even managed to devise a system for bribing us while we’re still in office. Everyone knows that if they look out for the al-Saud while they’re working for Club Fed, the al-Saud will look out for them when they return to the private sector. Maybe it will be in the form of a lucrative consulting contract or some legal work. Maybe a chair at some insipid institute that spouts the Saudi party line. And so when rumors start flying around town that some cowboy at Langley is going after one of the most generous benefactors of this unholy system, people get nervous.”

“Are you one of them, Shepard?”

“Me?” Cantwell shook his head. “I’m heading back to Boston the minute my parole comes through. But there are other people in the building planning to hang around town and cash in.”

“And what if the generous benefactors of this unholy system are also filling the coffers of the people who fly airplanes into our buildings? What if these friends of ours are up to their necks in terror? What if they’re willing to make any deal with the devil necessary to ensure their survival, even if it leads to dead Americans?”

“You shake their hands and smile,” said Cantwell. “And you think of the terrorism as an inconvenient surcharge on your next tank of gas. You still driving that old Volvo of yours?”

Cantwell knew exactly what Carter drove. Their assigned spaces were next to each other in the west parking lot. “I can’t afford a new car,” Carter said. “Not with three kids in college.”

“Maybe you should sign up for the Saudi retirement plan. I see a lucrative consulting contract in your future.”

“Not my style, Shep.”

“So what about those rumors? Any truth to them?”

“None at all.”

“Glad to hear it,” Cantwell said. “I’ll be sure to set everyone straight. Night, Adrian.”

“Night, Shep.”

Carter went downstairs. The executive parking lot was nearly empty of other cars. He climbed into his Volvo and headed toward Northwest Washington, following the route he and Gabriel had taken eight weeks earlier. As he passed Zizi al-Bakari’s estate, he slowed and peered through the bars of the gate, toward the hideous faux-chateau mansion perched on the cliff overlooking the river. Don’t touch her, Carter thought savagely. Harm one hair on her head, and I’ll kill you myself . As he headed over Chain Bridge, he glanced down at his dash. A warning light was glowing red. How appropriate, he thought. His gas tank was nearly empty.

AT THAT same moment, Sun Dancer was rounding Grande Pointe and returning to the anchorage off Gustavia. Gabriel stood alone in the prow, field glasses pressed to his eyes, gazing at the afterdeck of Alexandra, where the ship’s crew were serving a hastily prepared dinner for thirty. Gabriel saw them as figures in a painting. The Boating Party, he thought. Or was it The Last Supper ?

There was Zizi, seated regally at the head of the table, as though the events of the evening had been a welcome diversion from the monotony of an otherwise ordinary journey. At his left hand sat his beautiful daughter, Nadia. At his right hand, stabbing at his food without appetite, was his trusted second in command, Daoud Hamza. Farther down the table were the lawyers, Abdul amp; Abdul, and Herr Wehrli, minder of Zizi’s money. There was Mansur, maker of travel arrangements, and Hassan, chief of communications, secure and otherwise. There was Jean-Michel, tender of Zizi’s fitness and supplementary security man, and his sullen wife, Monique. There was Rahimah Hamza and her lover, Hamid, the beautiful Egyptian film star. There was a quartet of anxious-looking bodyguards and several attractive women with guiltless faces. And then, seated at the far end of the table, as far from Zizi as possible, there was a beautiful woman in saffron silk. She provided the balance to the composition. She was innocence to Zizi’s evil. And Gabriel could see that she was frightened to death. Gabriel knew he was witnessing a performance. But for whose benefit was it being staged? His or Sarah’s?