Portrait of a Spy

art world roared its approval, Gabriel’s BlackBerry vibrated in the breast pocket of his jacket. He slipped into a quiet corner to take the call, then returned to Chiara’s side.
    “Who was it?” she asked.
    “Adrian.”
    “What does he want?”
    “He’d like us to come down to Langley.”
    “When?”
    “Now.”

Chapter 70
Langley, Virginia

    R ASHID HAD BEEN C ARTER’S FOLLY , Carter’s bright idea gone terribly wrong. Gabriel had cleaned up the worst of the mess. Khalid the falcon, with his parting gift, had given Carter the means to sweep up the rest.
    The gift had been a young Saudi jihadi named Yusuf. Langley and the NSA had been tracking his phone for several months. Yusuf was now one of Rashid’s most trusted couriers. Rashid gave Yusuf coded messages; Yusuf delivered the messages to the faithful. He was expecting a phone call that evening from a man in Germany. Yusuf believed the man was the leader of a new cell in Hamburg. But there was no new cell in Hamburg. Carter and the team at Rashidistan had invented it.
    “He’s sitting in the front passenger seat of that Daihatsu,” Carter explained, nodding toward one of the giant display screens in the Rashidistan op center. “At the moment, they’re traveling on a remote road in the Rafadh Valley of Yemen. They picked up two men about an hour ago. We believe one of them is Rashid. In ten minutes, our phantom cell leader from Hamburg is going to call Yusuf. We’ve asked him to keep Yusuf talking for as long as possible. If we get lucky, Rashid will say something while the call is hot. As you know, Rashid is a bit on the loquacious side. He used to drive his Agency handlers crazy. He never shuts his damn mouth.”
    “Who makes the decision whether to take the shot?” Gabriel asked.
    “NSA will tell me if they can pick up any other voices in the background and whether they can make a positive match. If the computers say he’s there, we hit him. If there’s even a sliver of doubt, we hold our fire. Remember, the last thing we want to do is kill Yusuf before he can lead us to the prize.”
    “I want to listen,” Gabriel said.
    “That’s why you’re here.”
    Gabriel slipped on a set of headphones. Ten minutes crawled past. Then the agent in Hamburg dialed. Two men began conversing in Arabic. In his mind, Gabriel set them aside. They were unimportant now. They were but a doorway to the man with a beautiful and seductive tongue. Talk to me , thought Gabriel. Tell me something important, even if it’s only another lie .
    Yusuf and the ersatz Hamburg cell leader were still speaking, but the conversation was clearly starting to wind down. Thus far, there had been no sound in the background other than the rattle of the SUV over the pitted Yemeni road. Finally, Gabriel heard what he had been waiting for. It was an offhand remark, nothing more. He didn’t bother to mentally translate it; he was listening only to the tone and timbre of the voice. He knew it well. It was the voice that had condemned him to death in the Empty Quarter.
    Do you wish to submit to the will of Islam and become a Muslim?
    Gabriel turned to Adrian Carter. He was speaking tensely into the phone connected to the NSA. Gabriel was tempted to ask what they were waiting for, but he knew the answer. They were waiting for the computers to tell them what he already knew, that the voice in the background was Rashid’s. He watched the SUV careening along the road in Yemen and listened as the two jihadis, one real, the other a clever forgery, concluded their call. Carter slammed down the phone in a flash of uncharacteristic anger. “Sorry to bring you all the way down here for nothing,” he said. “Maybe next time.”
    “There’s not going to be a next time, Adrian.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because it ends here, right now.”
    Carter hesitated. “If I order the Predator to fire,” he said, “four people will die, including Yusuf.”
    “They’re four terrorists,” said Gabriel. “And one of them is Rashid al-Husseini.”
    “Are you sure?” Carter asked one last time.
    “Take the shot, Adrian.”
    Carter reached for the phone connected to the Predator control room, but Gabriel stopped him.
    “What’s wrong?” asked Carter.
    “Nothing,” said Gabriel. “Just wait a minute.”
    He was staring at the clock. Thirty seconds later, he nodded his head and said, “Now.” Carter relayed the order, and the Daihatsu disappeared in a flash of brilliant white. A few members