Portrait of a Spy

spotter and a source of inspiration,” said Carter, “but he’s no operational mastermind. He’s clearly working with someone good. If I had to guess, the three attacks in Europe were carried out by someone who cut his teeth in—”
    “Baghdad,” Gabriel said, finishing Carter’s thought for him.
    “The MIT of terrorism,” Carter added, nodding in agreement. “Its graduates are all PhDs, and they served their internships by matching wits with the Agency and the American military.”
    “All the more reason why you should deal with them.”
    Carter made no reply.
    “Why us, Adrian?”
    “Because the American counterterrorism apparatus has grown so large we can’t seem to get out of our own way. At last count, we had more than eight hundred thousand people with top-secret clearances. Eight hundred thousand ,” Carter repeated incredulously, “and yet we still weren’t able to prevent a single Islamic militant from planting a bomb in the heart of Times Square. Our ability to collect information is unrivaled, but we’re too big and far too redundant to be effective. We are Americans, after all, and when confronted with a threat, we throw large amounts of money at it. Sometimes, it’s better to be small and ruthless. Like you.”
    “We warned you about the perils of reorganizing.”
    “And we would have been wise to listen,” said Carter. “But our unwieldy size is only part of the problem. After 9/11, the gloves came off, and we adopted a whatever-it-takes attitude when it came to dealing with the enemy. These days, we try not to mention the enemy by name, lest we offend him. At Langley, counterterrorism jobs are considered politically risky. All the best officers in the Clandestine Service are learning to speak Mandarin.”
    “The Chinese aren’t actively plotting to kill Americans.”
    “But Rashid is,” Carter said, “and our intelligence suggests he’s planning something spectacular in the very near future. We need to break his network, and we need to do it quickly. But we can’t do that if we’re forced to operate under the new rules put in place by President Hope and his well-intentioned accomplice James McKenna.”
    “So you want us to do your dirty work for you.”
    “I’d do the same for you,” Carter said. “And don’t try to tell me that you lack the capability. The Office was the first Western-oriented intelligence service to establish an analytical unit dedicated to the global jihadist movement. You were also first to identify Osama Bin Laden as a major terrorist, and the first to have a go at killing him. If you’d succeeded, it’s highly likely that 9/11 would never have happened.”
    They arrived at the corner of Thirty-fifth Street. The next block was closed to traffic by a barricade. On the opposite side, children from the Holy Trinity School skipped rope and tossed balls in the street, their joyous screams reverberating off the façades of the surrounding buildings. It was an idyllic scene, full of charm and life, but it made Carter visibly uneasy.
    “Homeland security is a myth,” he said, gazing at the children. “It’s a bedtime story we tell our people to make them feel safe at night. Despite all our best efforts and all our billions spent, the United States is largely indefensible. The only way to prevent attacks on American soil is to snuff them out before they reach our shores. We have to rip apart their networks and kill their operatives.”
    “Killing Rashid al-Husseini might not be a bad idea, either.”
    “We’d love to,” said Carter. “But that won’t be possible until we can find some way into his inner circle.”
    Carter led Gabriel northward along Thirty-fifth Street. He removed his pipe from the pocket of his coat and began absently loading the bowl with tobacco.
    “You’ve been fighting the terrorists longer than anyone else in the business, Gabriel—anyone but Shamron, of course. You know how to penetrate their networks, something we’ve never been very good at, and you know how to turn them inside out. I want you to get inside Rashid’s network and destroy it. I want you to make it go away.”
    “Penetrating jihadist terror networks isn’t the same as penetrating the PLO. They’re far too clannish to accept outsiders into their midst, and their members are largely immune to earthly temptations.”
    “A rose is a rose is a rose. And a network is a network is a network.”
    “Meaning?”
    “I’ll grant you there are