Portrait of a Spy

refrigerating their homes, offices, swimming pools, and artificial ski slopes. Only the foreign laborers did without air-conditioning. They toiled beneath the merciless sun—in some cases, for up to sixteen hours a day—and lived in squalid fly-infested bunkhouses without so much as a fan to cool them. So wretched was their existence that hundreds chose suicide each year, a fact denied by the Ruler and his business associates.
    For the eighty thousand charmed citizens of Dubai, life could not have been much better. The government paid for their health care, housing, and education, and guaranteed their employment for life—provided, of course, they refrained from criticizing the Ruler. Their grandparents had subsisted on camel’s milk and dates; now an army of foreign workers powered their economy and saw to their every whim and need. The men floated imperiously about the city in pristine white kandoura s and ghutra s. Few expatriates ever spoke to an Emirati. When they did, the exchange was rarely pleasant.
    There was a strict hierarchy inside the foreign community as well. The Brits and other well-to-do expatriates sequestered themselves in the smart districts of Satwa and Jumeirah while the proletariat of the developing world lived mainly on the other side of Dubai Creek, in the old quarter known as Deira. To wander its streets and squares was to walk through many different countries—here a province of India, here a village in Pakistan, here a corner of Tehran or Moscow. Each community had imported a little something from home. From Russia had come crime and women, both of which could be found in abundance at the Odessa, a discotheque and bar located not far from the Gold Souk. Gabriel sat alone at a darkened banquette near the back, a glass of vodka at his elbow. At the next table, a red-faced Brit was fondling an underfed waif from the Russian hinterland. None of the girls bothered Gabriel. He had the look of a man who had come only to watch.
    That was not true, however, of the lanky blond-haired Russian who entered the Odessa with a flourish a few minutes after midnight. He sauntered over to the bar to pat a couple of the more shapely backsides before making his way to the table where Gabriel sat. One of the girls immediately tried to join them, but the lanky Russian waved her away with a long, pale hand. When the waitress finally came, he ordered vodka for himself and another for his friend.
    “Drink something,” said Mikhail. “Otherwise, no one will think you’re really a Russian.”
    “I don’t want to be a Russian.”
    “Neither do I. That’s why I moved to Israel.”
    “Was I followed from my hotel?”
    Mikhail shook his head.
    Gabriel poured his drink between the seat cushions of the banquette and said, “Let’s get out of here.”
    Mikhail spoke only Russian as they walked to the apartment house near the Corniche. It was a typical Gulf-style building, a four-level blockhouse with a few covered parking spaces on the ground level. The stairwell smelled of chickpeas and cumin, as did the flat on the top floor. It had a two-burner stove in the kitchen and a pullout couch in the sitting room. Powdery desert sand covered every surface. “The neighbors are from Bangladesh,” Mikhail said. “There are at least twelve of them in there. They sleep in shifts. Someone needs to tell the world the way these people are really treated here.”
    “Let it be someone other than you, Mikhail.”
    “Me? I’m just an enterprising young man from Moscow trying to make his fortune in the city of gold.”
    “Looks like you came at the wrong time.”
    “No kidding,” said Mikhail. “A few years ago, this place was swimming in money. The Russian mafia used the real estate industry to launder their fortunes. They’d buy apartments and villas and then sell them a week later. These days, even the girls at the Odessa are struggling to make ends meet.”
    “I’m sure they’ll manage somehow.”
    Mikhail removed a suitcase from the only closet and popped the latches. Inside were eight pistols—four Berettas and four Glocks. Each had matching suppressors.
    “The Berettas are nines,” Mikhail said. “The Glocks are forty-fives. Man-stoppers. They make big holes and a lot of noise, even with the suppressors. This weapon, however, makes no noise at all.”
    He removed a zippered cosmetics bag. Inside were hypodermic needles and several vials labeled INSULIN . Gabriel took two needles and two bottles of the