Portrait of a Spy

Washingtonians. Gabriel climbed the curved front steps in the gray half-light of dawn and, as instructed, entered without ringing the bell. Adrian Carter waited in the foyer, dressed in wrinkled chinos, a crewneck sweater, and a tan corduroy blazer. The attire, combined with his tousled thinning hair and unfashionable mustache, gave him the air of a professor from a minor university, the sort who championed noble causes and was a constant thorn in the side of his dean. As director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, Carter had no cause these days other than keeping the American homeland safe from another terrorist attack—though twice each month, schedule permitting, he could be found in the basement of his Episcopal church in suburban Reston preparing meals for the homeless. For Carter, the volunteer work was a meditation, a rare opportunity to thrust his hands into something other than the internecine warfare that raged constantly in the conference rooms of America’s sprawling intelligence community.
    He greeted Gabriel with the circumspection that comes naturally to men of the clandestine world and ushered him inside. Gabriel paused for a moment in the center hallway and looked around. Secret protocols had been made and broken in these drably furnished rooms; men had been seduced into betraying their countries for suitcases filled with American money and promises of American protection. Carter had used the property so often it was known throughout Langley as his Georgetown pied-à-terre. One Agency wit had christened it the Dar-al-Harb, Arabic for the “House of War.” It was covert war, of course, for Carter knew no other way to fight.
    Adrian Carter had not actively sought power. It had been foisted upon his narrow shoulders block by unwanted block. Recruited by the Agency while still an undergraduate, he had spent most of his career waging secret war against the Russians—first in Poland, where he funneled money and mimeograph machines to Solidarity; then in Moscow, where he served as station chief; and finally in Afghanistan, where he encouraged and armed the soldiers of Allah, even though he knew that one day they would rain fire and death upon him. If Afghanistan would prove to be the Evil Empire’s undoing, it would provide Carter with a ticket to career advancement. He monitored the collapse of the Soviet Union not from the field but from a comfortable office at Langley, where he had recently been promoted to chief of the European Division. While his subordinates openly cheered the demise of their enemy, Carter watched the events unfold with a sense of foreboding. His beloved Agency had failed to predict Communism’s collapse, a blunder that would haunt Langley for years. Worse still, in the blink of an eye, the CIA had lost its very reason for existence.
    That changed on the morning of September 11, 2001. The war that would follow would be a war fought in the shadows, a place Adrian Carter knew well. While the Pentagon had struggled to come up with a military response to the horror of 9/11, it was Carter and his staff at the Counterterrorism Center who produced a bold plan to destroy al-Qaeda’s Afghan sanctuary with a CIA-funded guerrilla war guided by a small force of American special operatives. And when the commanders and foot soldiers of al-Qaeda began falling into American hands, it was Carter, from his desk at Langley, who often served as their judge and jury. The black sites, the extraordinary renditions, the enhanced interrogation methods—they all bore Carter’s fingerprints. He felt no remorse over his actions; he hadn’t that luxury. For Adrian Carter, every morning was September 12. Never again, he vowed, would he watch Americans hurling themselves from burning skyscrapers because they could no longer bear the heat of a terrorist fire.
    For ten years, Carter had managed to keep that promise. No one had done more to protect the American homeland from the much-anticipated second attack, and for his many secret sins, he had been pilloried in the press and threatened with criminal prosecution. On the advice of Agency lawyers, he had retained the services of a high-priced Washington attorney, an extravagance that had steadily drained his savings and forced his wife, Margaret, to return to teaching. Friends had urged Carter to forsake the Agency and take a lucrative position in Washington’s flourishing private security industry, but he refused. His failure to prevent the