Portrait of a Spy

mixed legitimate business with zakat .”
    “He taught me well.”
    “Do you really intend to build it?”
    “The resort?” She gave an ambivalent shrug. “The last thing Dubai needs right now is another hotel.”
    “Especially one that serves alcohol and allows drunken foreigners to parade around the beach half-naked.”
    Nadia made no response other than to look at the other men in the room.
    “It’s just a security precaution on my part, Miss al-Bakari. The walls have eyes as well as ears.”
    “It’s remarkably effective,” she said, looking directly into his face. “You haven’t told me your name.”
    “You may call me Mr. Darwish.”
    “My time is limited, Mr. Darwish.”
    “One hour, according to my colleagues.”
    “Fifty minutes, actually,” Nadia said, glancing at her watch.
    “Our enterprise has suffered a severe setback.”
    “So I’ve read.”
    “We need additional financing to rebuild.”
    “I gave you several million pounds.”
    “I’m afraid that nearly all of it has been frozen or seized. If we are to rebuild our organization, particularly in the West, we will need an infusion of new capital.”
    “Why should I reward your incompetence?”
    “I can assure you, Miss al-Bakari, that we’ve learned from our mistakes.”
    “What sorts of changes are you planning to make?”
    “Better security, coupled with an aggressive plan to take the fight directly to our competitors.”
    “An expansion?” she asked.
    “If you are not growing, Miss al-Bakari, you are dying.”
    “I’m listening, Mr. Darwish.”
    With Nadia’s BlackBerry disabled and her handbag lying on the floor of the entrance hall, audio coverage of the meeting under way in Room 1437 was being supplied, quite literally, by the clothes on her back. Though the transmitter woven into the seams had an extremely short range, it was more than enough to securely broadcast a clear signal to the forty-second floor of the same building. There, behind a door that was double-locked and barricaded by furniture, Gabriel and Eli Lavon waited for their computers to supply the real name of the man who had just introduced himself as Mr. Darwish.
    The voice-identification software had declared the first few seconds of the meeting inadequate for comparison. That changed when Mr. Darwish started talking about money. Now the software was rapidly comparing a sample of his voice to previous intercepts. Gabriel was confident of the conclusion the computers were about to make. In fact, he was all but certain of it. The murderer had already signed his name, not with his voice but with the four numbers. They were the numbers of the room where the meeting was taking place. Gabriel had no need to add them, subtract them, multiply them, or rearrange their order in any way. He only had to convert the numbers from a twenty-four-hour clock to a twelve-hour clock: 1437 hours was 2:37 p.m., the time at which Farid Khan had detonated his bomb in Covent Garden.
    Five minutes after Nadia’s entry into the suite, the computer handed down its verdict. Gabriel raised his secure radio to his lips and instructed his team to begin preparing to carry out the sentence. It was Malik, he said. And may God have mercy on them all.

Chapter 58
Burj Al Arab Hotel, Dubai

    T HE LANKY R USSIAN PRESENTED HIMSELF at reception thirty seconds later. He had a fine-boned, bloodless face and eyes the color of glacial ice. His American passport identified him as Anthony Colvin, as did his American Express card. He drummed his fingers on the countertop while waiting for the pretty Filipina to find his reservation. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear as though his life depended on it.
    “Here we are,” sang the Filipina. “We have you in a one-bedroom deluxe suite on the twenty-ninth floor, for three nights. Is that correct, Mr. Colvin?”
    “If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, lowering the mobile phone, “I’m looking for something on the fourteenth floor.”
    “The twenty-ninth is considered more desirable.”
    “My wife and I spent our honeymoon on the fourteenth. We’d like to stay there again. For sentimental reasons,” he added. “Surely you understand.”
    She didn’t. The Filipina worked twelve-hour shifts and shared a one-room apartment in Deira with eight other girls. Her love life consisted of fending off drunken gropers and rapists who assumed, wrongly, that she moonlighted in Dubai’s thriving sex trade. She clicked a few keys on her computer