Portrait of a Spy

removed the pack of Virginia Slims from her handbag, lit one, and then offered the pack to Gabriel. With a curt wave of his hand, he declined.
    “I’m afraid your question displays a profound ignorance of Saudi culture,” she said finally. “My father was highly Westernized, but he was still first and foremost a Saudi male, which meant he held my life in his hands, quite literally. Even in death, I was afraid of my father. And even in death, I never permitted myself to feel anything like disappointment in him.”
    “But you were hardly a typical Saudi child.”
    “That’s true,” she conceded. “My father granted me a great deal of freedom when we were in the West. But that freedom did not extend to Saudi Arabia or to our personal relationship. My father was like the al-Saud. He was the absolute monarch of our family. And I knew exactly what would happen if I ever stepped out of line.”
    “He threatened you?”
    “Of course not. My father never spoke a cross word to me. He didn’t have to. Women in Saudi Arabia know their place. From the time of their first menses, they’re hidden away beneath a veil of black. And heaven help them if they ever bring dishonor upon the male who holds sway over them.”
    She was sitting slightly more erect now, as if mindful of her posture. The uncertain light of the fire had erased the first evidence of aging from her face. For now, she seemed the insolent, shockingly beautiful young woman whom they had first seen several years earlier floating across the paving stones of Mason’s Yard. Nadia had been an afterthought during the operation against her father, an annoyance. Even Gabriel could not quite believe that the spoiled daughter of Zizi al-Bakari had been transformed into the elegant, thoughtful woman seated before him now.
    “Honor is very important to the psyche of the Arab man,” she continued. “Honor is everything. It was a lesson I learned quite painfully when I was just eighteen. One of my best friends was a girl named Rena. She came from a good family, not nearly as rich as ours, but prominent. Rena had a secret. She’d fallen in love with a handsome young Egyptian man she’d met in a Riyadh shopping mall. They were meeting secretly in the man’s apartment. I warned Rena that she was playing a dangerous game, but she refused to stop seeing the man. Eventually, the mutaween , the religious police, caught her and the Egyptian together. Rena’s father was so mortified he took the only course of action available to him, at least in his mind.”
    “An honor killing?”
    Nadia nodded her head slowly. “Rena was bound in heavy chains. Then, with the rest of her family looking on, she was thrown into the swimming pool of her home. Her mother and sisters were forced to watch. They said nothing. They did nothing. They were powerless.”
    Nadia lapsed into silence. “When I found out what had happened,” she said finally, “I was devastated. How could a father be so barbaric and primitive? How could he kill his own child? But when I asked my father those questions, he told me it was Allah’s will. Rena had to be punished for her reckless behavior. It simply had to be done.” She paused. “I never forgot how my father looked as he spoke those words. It was the same expression I saw on his face several years later when he was watching the collapse of the World Trade Center. It was a terrible tragedy, he said, but it was Allah’s will. It simply had to be done.”
    “Did you ever suspect your father was involved in terrorism?”
    “Of course not. I believed that terrorism was the work of the crazy jihadis like Bin Laden and Zawahiri, not a man like my father. Zizi al-Bakari was a businessman and an art collector, not a mass murderer. Or so I thought.”
    Her cigarette had burned down to a stub. She crushed it out and immediately lit another.
    “But now, with the passage of enough time, I can see that there is a link between Rena’s death and the murder of three thousand innocent people on 9/11. Each had a common ancestor—Muhammad Abdul Wahhab. Until his ideology of hatred is neutralized, there will be more terrorism and more women like Rena. Everything I do is for her. Rena is my guide, my beacon.”
    Nadia glanced toward the corner of the room where Lavon sat alone, veiled by darkness.
    “Is Max still worried?”
    “No,” Gabriel said, “Max isn’t worried in the least.”
    “What is Max thinking?”
    “Max believes it would be an honor to