Portrait of a Spy

  The girl with spiky black hair handed Carter a file. Then he led Gabriel into a soundproof conference room. A single window looked onto the floor of the op center. “Here’s your boy,” Carter said, handing Gabriel an eight-by-ten photograph. “The Saudi dilemma incarnate.”

  Gabriel looked down at the photograph and saw Sheikh Marwan Bin Tayyib staring unsmilingly back at him. The Saudi cleric wore the long unkempt beard of a Salafi Muslim and the expression of a man who did not care to have his photograph taken. His red-and-white ghutra hung from his head in a way that revealed the white taqiyah skullcap beneath it. Unlike most Saudi men, he did not secure his headdress with the black circular cord known as an agal. It was a display of piety that told the world he cared little about his appearance.

  “How much do you know about him?” Gabriel asked.

  “He comes from the Wahhabi heartland north of Riyadh. In fact, there’s a mud hut in his hometown where Wahhab himself is said to have stayed once. The men of his town have always regarded themselves as keepers of the true faith, the purest of the pure. Even now, foreigners aren’t welcome. If one happens to come to town, the locals hide their faces and walk the other way.”

  “Does Bin Tayyib have ties to al-Qaeda?”

  “They’re tenuous,” said Carter, “but undeniable. He was a key figure in the awakening of Islamic fervor that swept the Kingdom after the takeover of the Grand Mosque in 1979. In his doctoral thesis, he argued that secularism was a Western-inspired plot to destroy Islam and ultimately Saudi Arabia. It became required reading among certain radical members of the House of Saud, including our old friend Prince Nabil, the Saudi interior minister who to this day refuses to admit that nineteen of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of his country. Nabil was so impressed by Bin Tayyib’s thesis he personally recommended him for the influential post at the University of Mecca.”

  Gabriel handed the photograph back to Carter, who looked at it disdainfully before returning it to the file.

  “This isn’t the first time Bin Tayyib’s name has been connected to Rashid’s network,” he said. “Despite his radical past, Bin Tayyib serves as an adviser to Saudi Arabia’s much-vaunted terrorist rehabilitation program. At least twenty-five Saudis have returned to the battlefield after graduating from the program. Four are believed to be in Yemen with Rashid.”

  “Any other connections?”

  “Guess who was the last person to be seen in Rashid’s presence on the night he crossed back over to the other side.”

  “Bin Tayyib?”

  Carter nodded. “It was Bin Tayyib who issued the invitation for Rashid to speak at the University of Mecca. And it was Bin Tayyib who served as his escort on the night of his defection.”

  “Did you ever raise this with your friends in Riyadh?”

  “We tried.”

  “And?”

  “It went nowhere,” Carter admitted. “As you know, the relationship between the House of Saud and the members of the clerical establishment is complicated, to say the least. The al-Saud can’t rule without the support of the ulema. And if they were to move against an influential theologian like Bin Tayyib at our behest . . .”

  “The jihadists might take offense.”

  Nodding his head, Carter delved back into the file folder and produced two sheets of paper—transcripts of NSA intercepts.

  “Our friend from TransArabian Bank made two interesting phone calls from his office this morning—one to Riyadh and a second to Jeddah. In the first call, he says he’s doing business with Nadia al-Bakari. In the second, he says he has a friend who wants to discuss spiritual matters with Sheikh Bin Tayyib. Separately, the two calls appear entirely innocent. But put them together . . .”

  “And it leaves no doubt that Nadia al-Bakari, a woman of unimpeachable jihadist credentials, would like to have a word with the sheikh in private.”

  “To discuss spiritual matters, of course.” Carter returned the transcripts to the file. “The question is,” he said, closing the cover, “do we let her go?”

  “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “Because it would violate all our standing agreements with the Saudi government and its security services. The Hadith clearly states that there shall not be two religions in Arabia. And the al-Saud have made it clear they won’t tolerate two intelligence services, either.”

  “When are you going to realize they are the problem rather than the solution?”

  “The day we no longer need their oil to power our cars and our economy,” Carter said. “We’ve arrested and killed hundreds of Saudi citizens since 9/11, but not inside Saudi Arabia itself. The country is off limits to infidels like us. If Nadia goes to see Sheikh Bin Tayyib, she has to go alone, without backup.”

  “Can we bring the mountain to Muhammad?”

  “If you’re asking whether Bin Tayyib can travel outside Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Nadia, the answer is no. He’s on too many watch lists for that. No European country in its right mind would let him in. If Bin Tayyib bites, we have no choice but to send Nadia up the mountain by herself. And if the al-Saud find out she’s there on our behalf, heads will roll.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you created an entire separate government agency to handle this,” Gabriel said, pointing at the op center beyond the window. “But that’s your problem now, Adrian. Under the terms of our most recent operational accord, this is the point where I hand over the keys and fade quietly into the background.”

  “I’m wondering whether you might accept a few amendments,” said Carter cautiously.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Before I became the leader of the world’s largest counterterrorism force, I actually recruited and ran spies. And if there’s one thing a spy hates, it’s change. You found Nadia. You recruited her. It makes sense for you to continue running her.”

  “You want me to serve as her case officer?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “Under your supervision, of course.”

  “The White House is adamant that the Agency assume overall control of the operation. I’m afraid my hands are tied.”

  “It’s not like you to hide behind higher authority, Adrian.”

  Carter made no reply. Gabriel appeared to give the matter serious thought, but in reality his mind was already made up. He tilted his head toward the soundproof glass and asked, “Do you have any room out there for me?”

  Carter smiled. “I’ve already made an ID badge so you can get into the building unescorted,” he said. “It’s green, of course.”

  “Green is the color of our enemy.”

  “Islam isn’t the enemy, Gabriel.”

  “Oh, yes, I forgot.”

  Carter stood and escorted Gabriel to a small gray cubicle in the far corner of the op center. It contained a desk, a chair, an internal-line telephone, a computer, a document safe, a burn bag, and a coffee cup with the CIA emblem on the side. The girl with spiky black hair brought him a stack of files and then returned wordlessly to her pod. As Gabriel opened the first file, he looked up and saw Carter admiring the view of Rashidistan from the observation platform. He looked pleased with himself. He had a right to. The operation was his now. Gabriel was just another private contractor, a man in a gray box with a green badge around his neck.

  Chapter 41

  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

  THE BOEING BUSINESS JET OWNED and operated by AAB Holdings entered the airspace of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at precisely 5:18 p.m. As was customary, its British pilot immediately informed the passengers and crew of this development so that any females on board could begin exchanging their Western clothing for appropriate Islamic dress.

  Ten of the women on board the plane did so at once. The eleventh, Nadia al-Bakari, remained in her usual seat, working through a thick stack of paperwork, until the first lights of Riyadh appeared like bits of amber scattered across the desert floor. A century earlier, the Saudi capital had been little more than a mud-walled desert outpost, all bu
t unknown to the Western world, a speck on the map somewhere between the slopes of the Sarawat Mountains and the shores of the Persian Gulf. Oil had transformed Riyadh into a modern metropolis of palaces, skyscrapers, and shopping malls. Yet in many respects the trappings of petrowealth were a mirage. For all the billions the al-Saud had spent trying to modernize their sleepy desert empire, they had squandered billions more on their yachts, their whores, and their vacation homes in Marbella. Worse still, they had done little to prepare the country for the day the last well ran dry. Ten million foreign workers toiled in the oil fields and the palaces, yet hundreds of thousands of young Saudi men could find no work. Oil aside, the country’s biggest exports were dates and Korans. And bearded fanatics, thought Nadia grimly, as she watched the lights of Riyadh grow brighter. When it came to producing Islamic extremists, Saudi Arabia was a market leader.

  Nadia lifted her gaze from the window and glanced around the interior of the aircraft. The forward seating compartment was arranged in the manner of a majlis, with comfortable chairs along the fuselage and rich Oriental rugs spread across the floor. The seats were occupied by AAB’s all-male senior staff—Daoud Hamza, the legal team of Abdul & Abdul, and, of course, Rafiq al-Kamal. He was staring at Nadia with a look of transparent disapproval, as if silently trying to remind her it was time to change her clothing. They were about to touch down in the land of invisible women, which meant Rafiq would become more than just Nadia’s bodyguard. He would also serve as her male chaperone and by law would be obligated to accompany her everywhere she went in public. In a few minutes’ time, Nadia al-Bakari, one of the world’s richest women, would have the rights of a camel. Fewer, she thought resentfully, for even a camel was permitted to show its face in public.

  Without a word, she rose to her feet and made her way toward the back of the aircraft to her elegantly appointed private quarters. Opening the closet, she saw her Saudi uniform hanging limply from the rod: a simple white thobe, an embroidered black abaya cloak, and a black niqab facial veil. Just once, she thought, she would like to walk the streets of her country in loose-fitting white clothing rather than inside a constricting black cocoon. It wasn’t possible, of course; even wealth on the scale of the al-Bakaris offered no protection against the fanatical mutaween religious police. Besides, this was hardly the moment to test Saudi Arabia’s social and religious norms. She had come to her homeland to meet privately with Sheikh Marwan Bin Tayyib, the dean of the department of theology at the University of Mecca. Surely the esteemed religious scholar would find it odd if, on the eve of that meeting, Nadia was arrested by the bearded ones for failing to wear proper Islamic attire.

  Reluctantly, she shed her pale Oscar de la Renta pantsuit and with clerical slowness robed herself in black. With the niqab now hiding the face God had given her, she stood before the mirror and examined her appearance. Only her eyes were visible, along with a tempting trace of flesh around her ankles. All other visual proof of her existence had been erased. In fact, her return to the forward passenger cabin provoked scarcely a glance from her male colleagues. Only Daoud Hamza, a Lebanese by birth, bothered to acknowledge her presence. The others, all Saudis, kept their eyes conspicuously averted. The illness had returned, she thought, the illness that was Saudi Arabia. It didn’t matter that Nadia was their employer. Allah had made her a woman, and upon arrival in the land of the Prophet, she would assume her proper place.

  Their landing at King Khalid International Airport coincided with the evening prayer. Forbidden to pray with the men, Nadia had no choice but to wait patiently while they completed this most important pillar of Islam. Then, surrounded by several veiled women, she headed awkwardly down the passenger stairs, struggling not to trip over the hem of her abaya. A frigid wind was ripping over the tarmac, bringing with it a thick brown cloud of Nejdi dust. Leaning into the wind for balance, Nadia followed her male colleagues toward the general aviation terminal. There they went their separate ways, for the terminal, like every other public space in Saudi Arabia, was segregated by gender. Despite the AAB luggage tags, their bags were carefully searched for pornography, liquor, or any other hint of Western decadence.

  Emerging from the opposite side of the building, she climbed into the back of a waiting Mercedes limousine with Rafiq al-Kamal for the twenty-two-mile drive into Riyadh. The dust storm had reduced visibility to only a few meters. Occasionally, the headlamps of an approaching car bobbed toward them like the running lights of a small ship, but for the most part, they seemed entirely alone. Nadia wanted desperately to remove her niqab but knew better. The mutaween were always on the lookout for unveiled women riding in automobiles—especially rich Westernized women returning home from Europe.

  After fifteen minutes, the skyline of Riyadh finally pricked the brown-black gloom. They sped past Ibn Saud Islamic University and navigated a series of traffic circles to the King Fahd Road, the main thoroughfare of Riyadh’s thriving new al-Olaya financial district. Directly ahead rose the silver Kingdom Center tower, looking like a misplaced modern attaché case waiting to be reclaimed by its errant owner. In its shadow was the glittering new Makkah Mall, which had reopened after the evening prayer and was now under assault by hordes of eager shoppers. Baton-wielding mutaween moved among the crowds in pairs, looking for evidence of inappropriate conduct or relationships. Nadia thought of Rena, and for the first time since her summons to the house in Seraincourt, she felt a stab of genuine fear.

  It receded a moment later when the car turned onto Musa Bin Nusiar Street and headed into al-Shumaysi, a district of walled palaces populated by al-Saud princes and other Saudi elite. The al-Bakari compound lay at the western edge of the district on a street patrolled constantly by police and troops. An ornate blend of East and West, the palace was surrounded by three acres of reflecting pools, fountains, lawns, and palm groves. Its towering white walls were designed to keep even the most determined enemy at bay but were no match for the dust, which was billowing across the forecourt as the limousine slipped through the security gate.

  Standing at attention in the portico were the ten members of the permanent household staff, Asians all. Emerging from the back of her Mercedes, Nadia would have liked to greet them warmly. Instead, playing the role of a distant Saudi heiress, she walked past without a word and started up the sweeping central staircase. By the time she reached the first landing, she had torn the niqab from her face. Then, in the privacy of her rooms, she removed her clothing and stood naked before a full-length mirror, until a wave of dizziness drove her to her knees. When it passed, she washed the dust of the Nejd from her hair and lay on the floor with her ankles together and her arms extended, waiting for the familiar feeling of weightlessness to carry her away. It was nearly over, she thought. A few months, perhaps only a few weeks. Then it would be done.

  It was just half past eleven a.m. at Langley, but in Rashidistan the atmosphere was one of permanent evening. Adrian Carter sat at the command desk, a secure phone in one hand, a single sheet of white paper in the other. The phone was connected to James McKenna at the White House. The sheet of paper was a printout of the latest cable from the CIA’s Riyadh Station. It stated that NAB, the Agency’s not-so-cryptic cipher for Nadia al-Bakari, had arrived home safely and appeared to be under no surveillance—jihadist, Saudi, or anything in between. Carter read the cable with a look of profound relief on his face before dealing it across the desk to Gabriel, whose face remained expressionless. They said nothing more to each other. They didn’t need to. Their affliction was shared. They had an agent in hostile territory, and neither one of them would have a moment’s peace until she was back on her plane again, heading out of Saudi airspace.

  At noon Washington time, Carter returned to his office on the seventh floor while Gabriel headed to the house on N Street for some much-needed sleep. He woke at midnight and by one a.m. was back in Rashidistan, with his green badge around his neck and Adrian Carter sitting tensely at his side. The next cable from Riyadh arrived fifteen minutes later. I
t said NAB had departed her walled compound in al-Shumaysi and was now en route to her offices on al-Olaya Street. There she remained until one in the afternoon, when she was driven to the Four Seasons Hotel for a luncheon with Saudi investors, all of whom happened to be men. Upon departure from the hotel, her car turned right onto King Fahd Street—curious, since her office was in the opposite direction. She was last seen ten minutes later, heading north on Highway 65. The CIA team made no attempt to follow. NAB was now entirely on her own.

  Chapter 42

  Nejd, Saudi Arabia

  THE WIND BLEW ITSELF OUT at midday, and by late afternoon, peace had once more been imposed upon the Nejd. It would be a temporary peace, as most were in the harsh plateau, for in the distant west, black storm clouds were creeping over the passes of the Sarawat Mountains like a Hejazi raiding party. It had been two weeks since the first rains, and the desert floor was aglow with the first hesitant growth of grass and wildflowers. Within a few weeks, the land would be as green as a Berkshire meadow. Then the blast furnace would reignite and from the sky not a drop of rain would fall—not until the next winter when, Allah willing, the storms would once again come rolling down the slopes of the Sarawat.

  To the people of the Nejd, the rain was one of the few welcome things to come from the west. They regarded nearly everything else, including their so-called countrymen from the Hejaz, with contempt and scorn. It was their faith that made them hostile to outside influences, a faith that had been given to them three centuries earlier by an austere reformist preacher named Muhammad Abdul Wahhab. In 1744, he formed an alliance with a Nejdi tribe called the al-Saud, thus creating the union of political and religious power that would eventually lead to the creation of the modern state of Saudi Arabia. It had been an uneasy alliance, and from time to time, the al-Saud had felt compelled to put the bearded zealots of the Nejd in their place, sometimes with the help of infidels. In 1930, the al-Saud had used British machine guns to massacre the holy warriors of the Ikhwan in the town of Sabillah. And after 9/11, the al-Saud had joined forces with the hated Americans to beat back the modern-day version of the Ikhwan known as al-Qaeda. Yet through it all, the marriage between the followers of Wahhab and the House of Saud had endured. They were dependent on one another for their very survival. In the unforgiving landscape of the Nejd, one could not ask for much more.