Portrait of a Spy

a part of his life never written about in the pages of Forbes and the Wall Street Journal . Just a few minutes, she reminded herself. That’s all it would take. A few minutes in one of the safest hotels in the world, and a monster with the blood of thousands on his hands would receive the justice he deserved.
    Abbas stopped at Room 1437 and knocked with the same softness with which Esmeralda tapped on Nadia’s door each morning in Paris. Quite unexpectedly, she thought of the Thomas Tompion clock on her bedside table and of the many unsmiling photographs of her father framed in silver. As she waited for the door to open, she resolved to finally send the clock out for repair. She also vowed to dispose of the photographs. After tonight, she thought, the pretense would come to an end. Her time on earth was limited, and she had no wish to spend her final days beneath the juhayman of a murderer.
    When Abbas knocked a second time, the door retreated halfway, revealing a broad-shouldered man dressed in the white kandoura and ghutra of a native Emirati. He wore tinted eyeglasses rimmed in gold and a neatly trimmed beard with patches of gray around the chin. In the center of his flat forehead was a pronounced zebiba prayer scar that looked as though it had been recently irritated. He looked nothing at all like any of the photo illustrations Nadia had been shown in London.
    The robed figure opened the door a few inches wider and with a movement of his eyes invited Nadia to enter. He permitted Rafiq al-Kamal to follow, but instructed Abbas to return to the lobby. The robed figure had the accent of a man from Upper Egypt. Behind him stood two more men in pristine white robes and headdresses. They, too, were wearing gold-rimmed eyeglasses and trimmed beards flecked with gray. When the door closed, the Egyptian raised his hand to his ear and said softly, “Your mobile phone, please.”
    Nadia drew the BlackBerry from her handbag and surrendered it. The Egyptian immediately handed the device to one of his clones, who disabled it with a swiftness that suggested a facility with technology.
    “Now yours,” said Nadia in a clear voice. She nodded toward the other two men and added, “Theirs, too.”
    The broad-shouldered Egyptian was clearly unaccustomed to being addressed by women in anything but a subservient manner. He looked toward his two colleagues and with a nod instructed them to disable their mobile devices. They did so without protest.
    “Are we finished?” asked Nadia.
    “Your bodyguard’s phone,” he said. “And your bag.”
    “What about my bag?”
    “We would feel more comfortable if you left it here by the door. I assure you that your valuables will be safe.”
    Nadia let the bag slip from her shoulder in a way that suggested her patience was at an end. “We don’t have all night, my brothers. If you would like to petition me for another donation, I suggest we get on with it.”
    “Forgive us, Miss al-Bakari, but our enemies have enormous technical resources. Surely a woman in your position knows what can happen when people get careless.”
    Nadia looked at al-Kamal, who responded by handing over his phone.
    “I’m told that you wish to have your bodyguard present during the meeting,” the Egyptian said.
    “No,” Nadia said, “I insist on it.”
    “You trust this man?” he replied, glancing at al-Kamal.
    “With my life.”
    “Very well,” he said. “This way, please.”
    She followed the three robed men into the sitting room of the suite, where two more men in Emirati dress waited in the half-light. One was seated on a couch watching an account of the latest bombing in Pakistan on Al Jazeera. The other was admiring the view of the skyscrapers along Sheikh Zayed Road. He rotated slowly around, like a statue atop a plinth, and appraised Nadia thoughtfully through tinted glasses rimmed in gold. He did not speak. Neither did Nadia. In fact, at that instant, she was not at all certain she was capable of speech.
    “Is something wrong, Miss al-Bakari?” he asked in Jordanian Arabic.
    “You just happen to look a great deal like a man who used to work for my father,” she replied without hesitation.
    He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he glanced at the television screen and said, “You just missed yourself on the evening news. You’ve had quite a busy day today. My compliments, Miss al-Bakari. Your father would have played it the same way. I hear he was always very skillful in the way he