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Chapter 14

Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

THE CAFÉ WAS LOCATED AT the northern end of Georgetown, at the foot of Book Hill Park. Gabriel ordered a cappuccino from the bar and carried it through a pair of open French doors into a small garden with vine-covered walls. Three of the tables were in shadow; the fourth, in brilliant sunlight. A woman sat there alone, reading a newspaper. She wore a black running suit that clung tightly to her slender frame, and a pair of spotless white training shoes. Her shoulder-length blond hair was brushed straight back from her forehead and held in place by an elastic band at the nape of her neck. Sunglasses concealed her eyes but not her remarkable beauty. She removed the glasses as Gabriel approached and tilted her face to be kissed. She seemed surprised to see him.

“I was hoping it would be you,” said Sarah Bancroft.

“Adrian didn’t tell you I was coming?”

“He’s much too old-fashioned for that,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She had a voice and manner of speech from another age. It was like listening to a character from a Fitzgerald novel. “He dropped me a secure e-mail last night and told me to be here at nine. I was to stay until ten-thirty. If no one appeared, I was to leave and go to work as normal. It’s a good thing you came. You know how much I hate being stood up.”

“I see you brought reading material,” Gabriel said, glancing at the newspaper.

“You disapprove?”

“Office doctrine forbids agents to read newspapers in cafés. It’s far too obvious.” He paused, then added, “I thought we trained you better than that, Sarah.”

“You did. But on occasion, I like to behave like a normal person. And a normal person sometimes finds it pleasurable to read a newspaper in a café on a sunny autumn morning.”

“With a Glock concealed at the small of her back.”

“Thanks to you, it’s my constant companion.”

Sarah gave a melancholy smile. The daughter of a wealthy Citibank executive, she had spent much of her childhood in Europe, where she had acquired a Continental education along with Continental languages and impeccable Continental manners. She had returned to America to attend Dartmouth, and later, after spending a year at the prestigious Courtauld Institute of Art in London, she became the youngest woman ever to earn a PhD in art history at Harvard.

But it was Sarah Bancroft’s love life, not her sterling education, that led her into the world of intelligence. While finishing her dissertation, she began dating a young lawyer named Ben Callahan who had the misfortune of boarding United Airlines Flight 175 on the morning of September 11, 2001. He managed to make one telephone call before the plane plunged into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. That call was to Sarah. With Adrian Carter’s blessing, and with the help of a lost van Gogh, Gabriel inserted her into the entourage of a Saudi billionaire named Zizi al-Bakari in a daring bid to find the terrorist mastermind lurking within it. At the conclusion of the operation, she had joined the CIA and was assigned to the Counterterrorism Center. Since then, she had maintained close contact with the Office and had worked with Gabriel and his team on numerous occasions. She had even taken an Office lover, an assassin and field operative named Mikhail Abramov. Judging by the absence of a ring on her finger, the relationship was proceeding at a slower pace than she had hoped.

“We’ve been on-again-off-again for a while,” she said, as if reading Gabriel’s thoughts.

“And at the moment?”

“Off,” she said. “Definitely off.”

“I told you not to become involved with a man who kills for his country.”

“You were right, Gabriel. You’re always right.”

“So what happened?”

“I’d rather not go into all the sordid details.”

“He told me he was in love with you.”

“He told me the same thing. Funny how that works.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“I don’t think I’m capable of being hurt any longer.” It took a moment for Sarah to smile. She wasn’t being honest; Gabriel could see that.

“Do you want me to have a word with him?”

“Heavens, no,” she said. “I’m more than capable of screwing up my life completely on my own.”

“He’s been through a couple of difficult operations, Sarah. The last one was—”

“He told me all about it,” she said. “I sometimes wish he hadn’t come out of the Alps alive.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No,” she said grudgingly, “but it felt good to say it.”

“Maybe it’s for the better. You should find someone who doesn’t live on the other side of the world. Someone here in Washington.”

“And how should I respond when they ask me where I work?”

Gabriel said nothing.

“I’m not getting any younger, you know. I just turned—”

“Thirty-seven,” said Gabriel.

“Which means I’m rapidly approaching old-maid status,” Sarah said, frowning. “I suppose the best I can hope for at this point is a comfortable but passionless marriage to an older man of means. If I’m lucky, he’ll permit me to have a child or two, whom I’ll be forced to raise on my own because he’ll have no interest in them.”

“Surely it’s not as depressing as all that.”

She shrugged and sipped her coffee. “How are things between you and Chiara?”

“Perfect,” said Gabriel.

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Sarah murmured archly.

“Sarah . . .”

“Don’t worry, Gabriel, I got over you a long time ago.”

A pair of middle-aged women entered the garden and sat at the opposite end. Sarah leaned forward in feigned intimacy and, in French, asked Gabriel what he was doing in town. He responded by tapping the front page of her newspaper.

“Since when is our soaring national debt a problem for Israeli intelligence?” she asked playfully.

Gabriel pointed toward the front-page story about the debate raging within the American intelligence community about the provenance of the three attacks in Europe.

“How did you get dragged into it?”

“Chiara and I decided to take a stroll through Covent Garden last Friday afternoon on our way to lunch.”

Sarah’s expression darkened. “So the reports about an unidentified man drawing a weapon a few seconds before the attack—”

“Are true,” said Gabriel. “I could have saved eighteen lives. Unfortunately, the British wouldn’t hear of it.”

“So who do you think was responsible?”

“You’re the terrorism expert, Sarah. You tell me.”

“It’s possible the attacks were masterminded by the old-line al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan,” she said. “But in my opinion, we’re dealing with an entirely new network.”

“Led by whom?”

“Someone with the charisma of Bin Laden who could recruit his own operatives in Europe and call upon cells from other terror groups.”

“Any candidates?”

“Just one,” she said. “Rashid al-Husseini.”

“Why Paris?”

“The ban on the facial veil.”

“Copenhagen?”

“They’re still seething over the cartoons.”

“And London?”

“London is low-hanging fruit. London can be attacked at will.”

“Not bad for a former curator at the Phillips Collection.”

“I’m an art historian, Gabriel. I know how to connect dots. I can connect a few more, if you like.”

“Please do.”

“Your presence in Washington means the rumors are true.”

“What rumors are those?”

“The ones about Rashid being on the Agency’s payroll after 9/11. The ones about a good idea that went very bad. Adrian believed in Rashid and Rashid repaid that trust by building a network right under our noses. Now I suppose Adrian would like you to take care of the problem for him—off the books, of course.”

“Is there any other way?”

“Not where you’re concerned,” she said. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Adrian needs someone to spy on me. You were the obvious candidate.” Gabriel hesitated, then said, “But if you think it would be too awkward . . .”

“Because of Mikhail?”

“It’s possible you’ll be working together again, Sarah. I wouldn’t want personal feelings to interfere with the smooth functioning of the team.”

“Since when has your team ever functioned smoothly? You’re Israelis. You fight with one another constantly.”

“But we never allow personal feelings to influence operational decisions.”

“I’m a professional,” she said. “Given our history together, I shouldn’t think I’d need to remind you of that.”

“You don’t.”

“So where do we start?”

“We need to get to know Rashid a bit better.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“By reading his Agency files.”

“But they’re filled with lies.”

“That’s correct,” said Gabriel. “But those lies are like layers of paint on a canvas. Peel them away, and we might find ourselves staring directly at the truth.”

“No one ever speaks that way at Langley.”

“I know,” Gabriel said. “If they did, I’d still be in Cornwall working on a Titian.”