Portrait of a Spy

seriously ill employee. Management wished her well as they helped her into the back of a hotel limousine. Mr. Fowler tipped the valets lavishly before climbing in after her.
    They followed the same route Nadia had taken earlier that evening but arrived at the airport without incident. After a cursory check of their passports, they chose to board the aircraft immediately rather than wait in the luxuriously appointed VIP lounge. A cancellation allowed them to depart earlier than expected, and by one thirty, they were rising over the blackness of the Empty Quarter.
    Two members of the team were not on board. Mikhail was headed toward an isolated beach west of Jebel Ali; Gabriel, to the old quarter of Dubai known as Deira. After leaving his Toyota Land Cruiser along the Corniche, he walked to the shabby little apartment house near the Gold Souk and climbed the staircase that stank of chickpeas and cumin. Alone in the apartment, he sat at the peeling kitchen table, staring at the screen of his BlackBerry. To help pass the time, he replayed the operation in his mind. Somewhere along the line, there had been a leak or an act of betrayal. He was going to find the person responsible. And then he was going to kill him.
    It was another twenty minutes before Mikhail heard the crackle of a voice in his earpiece. It spoke a word or two, no more. Even so, he recognized it. He had heard it many times before—in the hellholes of Gaza, in the hills of southern Lebanon, in the alleyways of Jericho and Nablus and Hebron. He flashed his headlights twice, briefly illuminating the chalky white beach, and drummed his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel as a blacked-out Zodiac bobbed ashore. Four men slipped out, each carrying nylon gear bags. They looked like Arabs. They moved like Arabs. They even wore cologne that made them smell like Arabs. But they were not Arabs. They were members of the elite Sayeret Matkal. And one of them, Yoav Savir, was Mikhail’s former commanding officer.
    “Long time no see,” Yoav said as he climbed into the front passenger seat. “What happened?”
    “We lost someone very important.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Her,” said Mikhail. “Her name is Nadia.”
    “Who’s got her?”
    “Malik.”
    “Which Malik?”
    “The only Malik that matters.”
    “Shit.”
    The lights of the giant Shaybah oil-drilling facility glowed like neon green embers on the wall monitors of Rashidistan. The image was being transmitted live by an unmanned Predator drone, now under the control of a crew at Langley. At Carter’s direction, the aircraft banked eastward, over the string of oases along the Saudi-Emirates border, then followed the main highway back toward Dubai city, its night-vision and thermal-imaging cameras searching the desert floor for any sign of life where ordinarily there was none. As the Predator approached the port of Jebel Ali, its cameras settled briefly on a small Zodiac heading back out to sea, a single figure aglow in the stern. No one in Rashidistan paid much attention to the image because they were monitoring a conversation on Gabriel’s BlackBerry. The computers recognized the number of the caller. They also recognized his voice. It was Malik al-Zubair. The only Malik that mattered.

Chapter 62
Deira, Dubai

    I ’M SURPRISED YOU ANSWERED . P ERHAPS it’s true what they say about you.”
    “What’s that, Malik?”
    “That you are courageous. That you are a man of your word. Personally, I remain skeptical. I’ve never met a Jew who was not a coward and a liar.”
    “I never realized Zarqa had such a large Jewish community.”
    “Thankfully, there are no Jews in Zarqa, only victims of the Jews.”
    “Where is she, Malik?”
    “Who?”
    “Nadia,” said Gabriel. “What have you done with her?”
    “Why would you assume we have her?”
    “Because there’s only one place where you could have gotten this telephone number.”
    “Clever Jew.”
    “Let her go.”
    “You’re not in a position to make demands at the moment.”
    “I’m not demanding anything,” Gabriel said calmly. “I’m asking you to let her go.”
    “As a humanitarian gesture?”
    “Call it whatever you like. Just do the decent thing.”
    “You murdered her father in front of her and you’re asking me to do the decent thing?”
    “What do you want, Malik?”
    “We demand that you release all the brothers who were arrested by the Americans and their allies after your little deception. In addition, we