Portrait of a Spy

secret police division of the Interior Ministry. A week into his stay, it appeared as though he were taken out for a slow drive across Riyadh to the desert east of the city. For several anxious hours, the staff at Rashidistan feared the worst, that he had been executed and buried in the Wahhabi tradition, in a grave with no marker. Eventually, the Agency’s analysts were able to confirm, with palpable relief, that his new location was in fact Riyadh’s main sewage treatment plant. It meant that Gabriel had finally passed the beacon from his intestinal tract. It also meant that he was now off the grid and entirely beyond Langley’s reach.
    The bullet had broken two of Gabriel’s ribs and damaged his right lung. The Saudis waited until he was sufficiently recovered before commencing their interrogation. It was conducted by a tall, angular man with a face like a falcon. His olive-drab uniform was starched and pressed, but contained little in the way of insignia. He called himself Khalid. He’d gone to school in England and had the diction of a BBC newsreader.
    He began by asking for Gabriel’s name and a brief description of how he had ended up in the Empty Quarter clinging to the corpse of a Saudi woman. Gabriel gave his name as Roland Devereaux of Quebec City. He claimed that he had been kidnapped by Islamic extremists while on business in Dubai, that he had been beaten unconscious and driven into the desert to be killed. There had been an argument among the terrorists that led to an exchange of gunfire. He didn’t know the nature of the argument because he spoke no Arabic.
    “None at all?”
    “I can order coffee.”
    “How do you like it?”
    “Medium sweet.”
    “What was the nature of your business in Dubai?”
    “I work for a freight-forwarding firm.”
    “And the woman who died in your arms?”
    “I’d never seen her before.”
    “Did you ever learn her name?”
    Gabriel shook his head, then asked whether his embassy knew where he was.
    “Which embassy is that?” asked the Saudi.
    “The Canadian Embassy, of course.”
    “Oh, yes,” Khalid said, smiling. “What was I thinking?”
    “Have you contacted them?”
    “We’re working on it.”
    The officer jotted a few words in his notebook and departed. Gabriel was handcuffed and returned to his cell. After that, no one spoke to him for many days.
    When next Gabriel was taken to the interrogation room, he arrived to find a stack of file folders piled ominously on the table. Khalid the falcon was smoking, something he had refrained from during their first encounter. This time, he posed no questions. Instead, he launched into a monologue not unlike the one Gabriel had endured at the feet of Rashid al-Husseini. In this case, however, the subject was not the inevitable triumph of Salafist Islam but the long and controversial career of an Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon. Khalid’s account was remarkably accurate. Particular attention was paid to Gabriel’s role in the killing of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari and to his subsequent use of Zizi’s daughter as a means of penetrating the terror network of Rashid al-Husseini and Malik al-Zubair.
    “It was Nadia who died in your arms in the Empty Quarter,” the Saudi said. “Malik was there, too. We’d like you to tell us how it all happened.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Your video confession is all over the Internet and television, Allon. If you don’t cooperate with us, we’ll have no choice but to put you on trial and publicly execute you.”
    “How sporting of you.”
    “I’m afraid the wheels of Saudi justice do not grind slowly.”
    “If I were you, I’d tell His Highness to rethink the part about a public execution. It might cost him his oil fields.”
    “The oil fields belong to the people of Saudi Arabia.”
    “Oh, yes,” said Gabriel. “What was I thinking?”
    For the next several nights, Gabriel’s cell echoed with the screams of men being tortured. Unable to sleep, he developed an infection that required a round of intravenous antibiotics. Several more pounds melted from his slight frame. He grew so thin that when he was delivered for his next interrogation session, even the falcon appeared concerned.
    “Perhaps you and I can come to an accommodation,” he suggested.
    “What sort of accommodation?”
    “You will answer my questions and, in time, I will see that you are returned to your loved ones with your head still