Portrait of a Spy

they’re in the West.”
    “I hear you are one of them.”
    Adhere to the truth when possible. . . .
    “I confess that I am fond of wine.”
    “It is haram ,” he said in a scolding tone.
    “Blame it on my father. He permitted me to drink when I was in the West.”
    “He was lenient with you?”
    “No,” she said, shaking her head, “he wasn’t lenient. He spoiled me terribly. But he also gave me his great faith.”
    “Faith in what?”
    “Faith in Allah and His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”
    “If my memory is correct, your father regarded himself as a descendant of Wahhab himself.”
    “Unlike the al-Asheikh family, we are not direct descendants. We come from a distant branch.”
    “Distant or not, his blood flows through you.”
    “So it is said.”
    “But you have chosen not to marry and have children. Is this, too, a matter of practicality?”
    Nadia hesitated.
    Lie as a last resort. . . .
    “I came of age in the wake of my father’s murder,” she said. “My grief makes it impossible for me to even contemplate the idea of marriage.”
    “And now your grief has led you to us.”
    “Not grief,” Nadia said. “Anger.”
    “Here in the Nejd, it is sometimes difficult to tell the two apart.” The sheikh gave her a sympathetic smile, his first. “But you should know that you are not alone. There are hundreds of Saudis just like you—good Muslims whose loved ones were killed by the Americans or are rotting to this day in the cages of Guantánamo Bay. And many have come to the brothers in search of revenge.”
    “None of them watched their father being murdered in cold blood.”
    “You believe this makes you special?”
    “No,” Nadia said, “I believe it is my money that makes me special.”
    “Very special,” the sheikh said. “It’s been five years since your father was martyred, has it not?”
    Nadia nodded.
    “That is a long time, Miss al-Bakari.”
    “In the Nejd, it is the blink of an eye.”
    “We expected you sooner. We even sent our brother Samir to make contact with you. But you rejected his entreaties.”
    “It wasn’t possible for me to help you at the time.”
    “Why not?”
    “I was being watched.”
    “By whom?”
    “By everyone,” she said, “including the al-Saud.”
    “They warned you against taking any action to avenge your father’s death?”
    “In no uncertain terms.”
    “They said there would be financial consequences?”
    “They didn’t go into specifics, except to say the consequences would be grave.”
    “And you believed them?”
    “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Because they are liars.” Bin Tayyib allowed his words to hang in the air for a moment. “How do I know that you are not a spy sent here by the al-Saud to entrap me?”
    “How do I know that you are not the spy, Sheikh Bin Tayyib? After all, you are the one who’s on the al-Saud payroll.”
    “So are you, Miss al-Bakari. At least that’s the rumor.”
    Nadia gave the sheikh a withering look. She could only imagine how she must have appeared to him—two coal-black eyes glaring over a black niqab . Perhaps there was value to the veil after all.
    “Try to see it from our point of view, Miss al-Bakari,” Bin Tayyib continued. “In the five years since your father’s martyrdom, you have said nothing about him in public. You seem to spend as little time in Saudi Arabia as possible. You smoke, you drink, you shun the veil—except, of course, when you are trying to impress me with your piety—and you throw away hundreds of millions of dollars on infidel art.”
    Obviously, the sheikh’s test was not yet over. Nadia remembered the last words Gabriel had spoken to her at Château Treville. You’re Zizi’s daughter. Never let them forget it .
    “Perhaps you’re right, Sheikh Bin Tayyib. Perhaps I should have cloaked myself in a burqa and declared my intention to avenge my father’s death on television. Surely that would have been the wiser course of action.”
    The sheikh gave a conciliatory smile. “I’ve heard all about your wicked tongue,” he said.
    “I have my father’s tongue. And the last time I heard his voice, he was bleeding to death in my arms.”
    “And now you want vengeance.”
    “I want justice—God’s justice.”
    “And what of the al-Saud?”
    “They seem to have lost interest in me.”
    “I’m not surprised,” Bin Tayyib said. “Even the House of Saud isn’t sure whether it’s going to survive the turmoil sweeping the Arab world.