Portrait of a Spy

She began her account by reminding the team of Malik’s lineage—a lineage that had but one possible outcome. A descendant of the al-Zubair clan—a mixed Palestinian-Syrian family that hailed from the village of Abu Ghosh, on the western approaches to Jerusalem—he had been born in the Zarqa refugee camp in Jordan. Zarqa was a wretched place, even by the deplorable standards of the camps, and a breeding ground for Islamic extremism. An intelligent but aimless young man, Malik spent a great deal of time at the al-Falah Mosque. There he fell under the spell of an incendiary Salafist imam who guided him into the arms of the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas. Malik joined the group’s military wing, the Izzaddin al-Qassam Brigades, and studied the craft of terror with some of the deadliest practitioners in the business. A natural leader and skilled organizer, he rose quickly through the ranks and by the onset of the Second Intifada was a top Hamas terror mastermind. From the safety of the Zarqa camp, he plotted some of the deadliest attacks of the period, including a suicide bombing at a nightclub in Tel Aviv that claimed thirty-three lives.

  “After that attack,” Dina said, “the prime minister signed an order authorizing Malik’s assassination. Malik concealed himself deep inside the Zarqa camp and plotted what would be his biggest strike yet—a bombing at the Western Wall. Fortunately, we managed to arrest the three shahids before they could reach their target. It’s believed to be Malik’s one and only failure.”

  By the summer of 2004, Dina continued, it was clear that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was too small a stage for Malik. Inspired by 9/11, he slipped out of the camp and, disguised as a woman, traveled to Amman to meet with an al-Qaeda recruiter. After reciting the bayat, the personal oath of allegiance to Osama Bin Laden, Malik was smuggled across the border into Syria. Six weeks later, he slipped into Iraq.

  “Malik was far more sophisticated than the other members of al-Qaeda in Iraq,” Dina said. “He’d spent years perfecting his craft against the most formidable counterterrorism forces in the world. Not only was he an expert bomb-maker, he knew how to slip his shahids through even the toughest security. He was thought to have been the mastermind behind some of the insurgency’s deadliest and most spectacular attacks. His crowning achievement was a one-day wave of bombings in the Shiite quarter of Baghdad that killed more than two hundred people.”

  Malik’s final attack in Iraq was a bombing of a Shiite mosque that left fifty worshippers dead. By then, he was the target of a massive search operation being carried out by Task Force 6-26, the joint U.S. special operations and intelligence unit. Ten days after the bombing, the task force learned that Malik was hiding in a safe house ten miles north of Baghdad, along with two other senior al-Qaeda figures. That night American F-16 jets attacked the house with a pair of laser-guided bombs, but a search of the ruins produced only two sets of remains. Neither belonged to Malik al-Zubair.

  “Apparently, he slipped out of the house a few minutes before the bombs fell,” Dina said. “Later, he told his comrades that Allah had instructed him to leave. The incident only reaffirmed his belief that he had been chosen by God to do great things.”

  It was then Malik decided it was time to go international. He had developed a taste for killing Americans in Iraq and wanted to kill them in their homeland, so he traveled to Pakistan to seek funding and support from al-Qaeda’s front office. Bin Laden listened carefully. Then he sent Malik packing.

  “Actually,” Dina added hastily, “it’s believed Ayman al-Zawahiri was behind the decision to turn Malik away empty-handed. The Egyptian had several plots under way against the West and didn’t want them threatened by an upstart Palestinian from Zarqa.”

  “So Malik went to Yemen and offered his services to Rashid instead?” asked Gabriel.

  “Exactly.”

  “Proof,” said Gabriel. “Where’s the proof?”

  “I’m an intelligence analyst,” Dina said unapologetically. “I rarely have the luxury of absolute proof. What I’m offering you is conjecture, supported by a handful of pertinent facts.”

  “For example?”

  “Damascus,” she said. “In the autumn of 2008, the Office got a tip from an asset inside Syrian intelligence that Malik was hiding there, moving constantly among a number of safe houses owned by various members of the al-Zubair clan. At Shamron’s urging, the prime minister authorized us to begin planning for Malik’s long-overdue demise. Uzi was still the chief of Special Ops then. He dispatched a team of field operatives to Damascus—a team that included one Mikhail Abramov,” Dina added, with a glance in his direction. “Within a few days, they had Malik under full-time surveillance.”

  “Go on, Dina.”

  “Malik wasn’t so easy to follow, as Mikhail will tell you. He changed his appearance constantly—facial hair, glasses, hats, clothing, even the way he walked—but the team managed to maintain contact with him. And late on the evening of October 23, they observed Malik entering an apartment owned by a man called Kemel Arwish. Arwish liked to portray himself as a Westernized moderate who wanted to drag his people kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. In truth, he was an Islamist who dabbled at the fringes of al-Qaeda and its affiliates. His ability to travel between the Middle East and the West without suspicion made him valuable as a courier and runner of assorted errands.” Dina looked directly at Gabriel. “Since you’ve been spending a great deal of time familiarizing yourself with Rashid’s CIA files, I trust Kemel’s name and address are familiar to you.”

  “Rashid attended a dinner party at Kemel Arwish’s apartment in 2004 when he went to Damascus on behalf of the CIA,” Gabriel said. “He later told his CIA minder that he and Arwish had discussed many interesting ideas on how to tamp down the fires of jihad.”

  “And if you believe that one . . .”

  “It could be nothing more than a coincidence, Dina.”

  “It could be, but I was trained to never believe in coincidences. And so were you.”

  “What happened to the operation against Malik?”

  “He slipped through our fingers, the same way he slipped away from the Americans in Baghdad. Uzi considered putting Arwish under surveillance, but that turned out not to be necessary. Three days after Malik disappeared, the body of Kemel Arwish was found in the desert east of Damascus. He’d been granted a relatively painless death.”

  “Malik had him killed?”

  “Maybe it was Malik, maybe it was Rashid. It doesn’t much matter. Arwish was a small fish in a big pond. He’d played the role assigned to him. He’d delivered a message, and after that, he became a liability.”

  Gabriel appeared unconvinced. “What else have you got?”

  “The design of the suicide belts worn by the shahids in Paris, Copenhagen, and London,” she said. “They were identical to the type of belt Malik used for his attacks during the Second Intifada, which were in turn identical to the type he used in Baghdad.”

  “The design didn’t necessarily have to come from Malik. It could have been floating around the sewers of the jihadist underworld for years.”

  “There’s no way Malik would have put that design up on the Internet for the world to see. The wiring, the fusing, the shaping of the charge, and the shrapnel are all his innovations. He’s practically telling me that it’s him.”

  Gabriel was silent. Dina raised an eyebrow and asked, “No more comments about coincidences?”

  Gabriel ignored the remark. “What was his last known location?”

  “There were some unconfirmed reports he was back in Zarqa, and our station chief in Turkey heard a nasty rumor he was living in grand fashion in Istanbul. The rumor turned out to be false. As far as the Office is concerned, Malik is a ghost.”

  “Even a ghost needs a passport.”

  “We believe he’s carrying a Syrian passport that was personally given to him by the great reformer in Damascus. Unfortunately, we have no idea what name he’s using or what he looks like. The last known photograph of Malik was taken more than twenty years ago. It’s useless.
”

  “Is there someone close to Malik that we can get to? A relative? A friend? An old comrade from his days in Hamas?”

  “We tried when Malik was bombing the daylights out of us during the Second Intifada,” Dina said, shaking her head. “There are no al-Zubairs left in Israel or the territories, and the ones in the camp at Zarqa are far too committed to the struggle to collaborate with us.” She paused for a moment. “We might have one thing working in our favor, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I think his network might be running out of money.”

  “Says who?”

  Dina pointed toward a photograph of Farid Khan, the Covent Garden bomber.

  “Says him.”

  Chapter 18

  Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

  IN THE FINAL WEEKS OF his brief but portentous life, Farid Khan, murderer of eighteen innocent souls in the land of his birth, left a series of increasingly desperate postings on an Islamic Internet message board lamenting the fact he didn’t have enough money to buy a proper wedding present for his sister. Apparently, he was considering skipping the wedding to avoid embarrassment. But there was just one problem with the story, Dina pointed out. Allah had blessed the Khan family with four boys, but no girls.

  “I believe he was referring to a martyrdom payment—a payment he’d been promised by Malik. That’s the Hamas way. Hamas always looks after the posthumous financial needs of its shahids.”

  “Did he ever get the money?”

  “A week before the attack, he made one final posting saying that he had been granted the means to buy his sister a gift. He would be able to attend the wedding after all, thanks be to Allah.”

  “So Malik eventually kept his word.”

  “That’s true, but only after his shahid threatened not to go ahead with the mission. The network might have enough cash on hand to fund another round of attacks, but if Rashid and Malik are going to become the next Bin Laden and Zawahiri—”

  “They’re going to need an infusion of working capital.”

  “Exactly.”

  Gabriel stepped forward and gazed at Dina’s galaxy of names, phone numbers, and faces. Then he turned to Lavon and asked, “How much do you think it would take to create a new jihadist terror group with a truly global reach?”

  “Twenty million should do it,” Lavon replied. “Maybe a bit more if you want to give them first-class accommodations and travel.”

  “That’s a lot of money, Eli.”

  “Terror doesn’t come cheap.” Lavon gave Gabriel a sidelong look. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking we have two choices. We can sit here staring at our telephone and e-mail matrixes, hoping a piece of actionable intelligence falls into our lap, or . . .” Gabriel’s voice trailed off.

  “Or what?”

  “Or we can go into the terrorism business ourselves.”

  “And how would we do that?”

  “We give them the money, Eli. We give them the money.”

  There are two basic types of intelligence, Gabriel needlessly reminded his team. There is human intelligence, or “humint” in the jargon of the trade, and signals intelligence, also known as “sigint.” But the ability to track the flow of money in real time through the global banking system had given spies a powerful third form of intelligence gathering sometimes referred to as “finint,” or financial intelligence. For the most part, finint was highly reliable. Money didn’t lie; it simply went where it was told to go. What’s more, the electronic trail of intelligence left by its movements was predictive in nature. The Islamic terrorists had learned long ago how to deceive Western spy agencies with false chatter, but rarely did they invest precious financial resources in deception. Money usually went to real operatives who were engaged in real plots. Follow the money, said Gabriel, and it would illuminate the intentions of Rashid and Malik like the lights of an airport runway.

  But how to go about doing it? That was the question Gabriel and his team wrestled over for the remainder of that long and sleepless night. A clever forgery? No, insisted Gabriel, the jihadist world was far too insular for that. If the team tried to create a wealthy Muslim benefactor out of whole cloth, the terrorists would plop him in front of a camera and saw off his head with a butter knife. The money would have to come from someone with unimpeachable jihadist credentials. Otherwise, the terrorists would never accept it. But where to find someone who straddled both sides of the divide? Someone who would be regarded by the jihadists as genuine and yet would still be willing to work on behalf of Israeli and American intelligence. Call the Old Man, Yaakov suggested. In all likelihood, he would have a name at the tip of his nicotine-stained fingers. And if he didn’t, he would surely know where to find one.

  As it turned out, Shamron did have a name, which he murmured into Gabriel’s ear, via secure telephone, a few minutes after four a.m. Washington time. Shamron had been watching this person for many years. The approach would be fraught with risk for Gabriel, both personal and professional, but Shamron had in his file drawers a substantial amount of evidence to suggest it might be received in a positive manner. He took the idea to Uzi Navot, and within minutes, Navot signed off on it. And thus, with a stroke of Navot’s ludicrous gold pen, the return of Gabriel Allon, the wayward son of Israeli intelligence, was made complete.

  The members of the Barak team had engaged in many profound arguments over the years, yet none would ever rival the one that took place within the walls of the house on N Street that morning in December. Chiara dismissed the idea as a dangerous flight of fancy; Dina called it a waste of precious time and resources that would surely come to nothing. Even Eli Lavon, Gabriel’s closest friend and ally, was glum about the prospects for success. “It will turn out to be our version of Rashid,” he said. “We’ll congratulate ourselves on our cleverness. Then, one day, it will blow up in our face.”

  Much to everyone’s surprise, it was Sarah who came to Gabriel’s defense. Sarah knew Shamron’s candidate far better than the others, and Sarah believed in the power of redemption. “She’s not her father’s daughter,” Sarah said. “She’s different. She’s trying to change things.”

  “That’s true,” said Dina, “but that doesn’t mean she would ever agree to work with us.”

  “The worst thing she can do is say no.”

  “Maybe,” said Lavon gloomily. “Or maybe the worst thing she can do is say yes.”

  Chapter 19

  Volta Park, Washington, D.C.

  GABRIEL WAITED UNTIL SUNRISE BEFORE phoning Adrian Carter. Carter was already on his way to Langley, the first stop of a brutally long day. It included a morning of closed-door testimony on Capitol Hill, a midday luncheon with a delegation of visiting spies from Poland, and, lastly, a counterterrorism strategy session in the White House Situation Room, chaired by none other than James McKenna. Shortly after six that evening, exhausted and dispirited, Carter alighted from his armored Ford Escalade on Q Street and, in semidarkness, entered Volta Park. Gabriel waited on a bench near the tennis courts, coat collar up against the cold. Carter sat next to him. The armored SUV rumbled at idle in the street, discreet as a beached whale.

  “Do you mind?” asked Carter, fishing his pipe and tobacco pouch from his coat pocket. “It’s been a rough afternoon.”

  “McKenna?”

  “Actually, the president decided to grace us with his presence, and I’m afraid he didn’t care for what I had to say.” Carter seemed to apply all his considerable powers of concentration to the task of loading his pipe. “I’ve had the privilege of being dressed down by four presidents during my service to this great country of ours. It’s still never a pleasant experience.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The NSA is picking up a great deal of chatter suggesting another attack might be imminent. The president demanded to know the precise details, including the location, timing, and the weapon involved. When I couldn’t answer, he became annoyed.” Carter ignited his pipe, b
riefly illuminating his drawn features. “Twelve hours ago, I might have been willing to dismiss the chatter as insignificant. But now that I know we’re up against Malik al-Zubair, I’m not so optimistic.”

  “When counterterrorism officers feel optimism, innocent people usually end up dead.”

  “Are you always so cheerful?”

  “It’s been a long few days.”

  “How sure is Dina that it’s really him?”

  Gabriel recited the basic elements of her case: his failed attempt to secure Bin Laden’s backing, the meeting at Kemel Arwish’s apartment in Amman, and the unique design of Malik’s suicide belts. Carter demanded no more evidence. He had acted on far less in the past, and he had been expecting this for a long time. Malik was the type of terrorist Carter feared the most. Malik and Rashid working together was his worst nightmare come to life.

  “For the record,” he said, “no one inside the CTC has made any connection yet between Rashid and Malik. Dina got there first.”

  “She usually does.”

  “So what does one do with such information when one is in my position? Does one give it to the analysts toiling in the bowels of the CTC? Does one tell his director and his president?”

  “One keeps it to himself, lest one blow my operation to pieces.”

  “What operation is that?”

  Gabriel rose and led Carter across the park to a second bench overlooking the playground. Leaning close to Carter’s ear, he outlined the plan while a childless swing squeaked faintly in the gentle breeze.

  “This smells like Ari Shamron to me.”

  “With good reason.”

  “What do you have in mind? An anonymous donation to the Islamic charity of your choice?”

  “Actually, we were thinking about something a bit more targeted in nature.”

  “A direct donation to Rashid’s coffers?”

  “Something like that.”

  Wind moved in the trees surrounding the playground, unleashing a downpour of leaves. Carter brushed one from his shoulder and said, “It will take too much time.”