Portrait of a Spy

The two nights they spent together were the most passionate of Ellis Coyle’s life. They saw each other again three months later, when Coyle invented an excuse to travel to Berlin at taxpayer expense, and again a month after that, when Renate came to Washington to shoot a gathering at the World Bank. Their lovemaking reached new levels, as did their affection for one another. Renate, who was single, pleaded with him to leave his wife. Coyle, his face streaming with tears, said he wanted nothing more. He required just one thing. It would take a bit of time, he told her, but it would not be difficult. Coyle had access to secrets—secrets that he could spin into gold. His days at Langley were numbered. So, too, were the nights he would return to Norah and their little cottage in the Palisades.
    He stepped out of the car and headed inside. Norah was wearing a dowdy pleated skirt, heavy stockings, and a pair of half-moon glasses that Coyle found singularly unbecoming. He accepted her lifeless kiss and replied, “Yes, of course, dear,” when she reminded him that Lucy needed to be walked. “And don’t be long, Ellis,” she said, frowning at the electric bill. “You know how lonely I get when you’re away.”
    Coyle used the techniques taught to him by the Agency to smother his guilt. Stepping outside, he was treated to the sight of Blankman guiding his enormous Mercedes into the second bay of his three-car garage. Lucy growled low in her throat before pulling Coyle in the direction of MacArthur Boulevard. On the opposite side of the wide street was the entrance to the park. A brown wooden sign warned that bicycles were forbidden and that dogs had to remain leashed at all times. At the base of the sign, partially obscured by a clump of weeds, was a chalk mark. Coyle removed Lucy’s leash and watched her bound freely into the park. Then he rubbed out the mark with the toe of his shoe and followed.

Chapter 21
New York City

    A REMARKABLY ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF THE worrisome new terrorist chatter appeared the next morning in the New York Times . Gabriel read the story with more than passing interest on the Amtrak Acela from Washington to New York. His seatmate, a Washington political consultant, spent the entire journey shouting into her mobile phone. Every twenty minutes, a policeman in paramilitary garb strode through the carriage with a bomb-sniffing dog. It seemed the Department of Homeland Security had finally come to realize the trains of Amtrak were rolling terrorist catastrophes waiting to happen.
    A prickly rain greeted Gabriel as he emerged from Penn Station. Nevertheless, he spent the next hour hiking the streets of Midtown Manhattan. At the corner of Lexington Avenue and East Sixty-third Street, he saw Chiara peering into the window of a shoe store, a mobile phone pressed to her right ear. Had she been holding it to her left, it would have meant Gabriel was under surveillance. The right meant he was clean and that it was safe to proceed to the target.
    He walked across town to Fifth Avenue. Dina was perched on the stone wall bordering Central Park, a black-and-white kaffiyeh around her neck. A few paces farther south, Eli Lavon was buying a soft drink from a street vendor. Gabriel brushed past him without a word and headed toward the used-book stalls at the corner of East Sixtieth Street. An attractive woman stood alone at one of the trestle tables, as though killing a few minutes before an appointment. She kept her gaze downward for several seconds after Gabriel’s arrival, then looked at him for a long moment without speaking. She had dark hair, olive-complected skin, and wide brown eyes. A thin smile animated her face. Not for the first time, Gabriel had the uncomfortable feeling he was being studied by a figure from a painting.
    “Was it really necessary for me to take the bloody subway?” Zoe Reed asked resentfully in her posh London accent.
    “We had to make certain you weren’t being followed.”
    “I assume by your presence I’m not.”
    “You’re clean.”
    “What a relief,” she said archly. “In that case, you can take me to the Pierre for a drink. I’ve been on the air since six this morning.”
    “I’m afraid your face is far too well known for that. You’ve become quite the star since coming to America.”
    “I was always a star,” she replied playfully. “It just doesn’t count unless you’re on television.”
    “I hear you’re getting your own show.”
    “Prime time,