The Messenger

attacked Shamron’s car. Dina was the last to arrive. Small and dark-haired, she had been standing in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street on October 19, 1994, when a Hamas suicide bomber had turned the Number 5 bus into a coffin for twenty-one people. Her mother and two of her sisters were among those killed; Dina had been seriously wounded and now walked with a slight limp. She had dealt with the loss by becoming an expert in terrorism. Indeed, Dina Sarid could recite the time, place, and butcher’s bill of every act of terror ever committed against the State of Israel. She had once told Gabriel she knew more about the terrorists than they knew about themselves. Gabriel had believed her.
    They divided into two areas of responsibility. Ahmed bin Shafiq and the Brotherhood of Allah became the province of Dina, Yaakov, and Rimona, while Yossi joined Lavon’s excavation of AAB Holdings. Gabriel, at least for the moment, worked largely alone, for he had given himself the unenviable task of attempting to identify every painting ever acquired or sold by Zizi al-Bakari.
    As the days wore on, the walls of Room 456C began to reflect the operation’s unique nature. Upon one wall slowly appeared the murky outlines of a lethal new terrorist network led by a man who was largely a ghost. To the best of their ability they retraced bin Shafiq’s long journey through the bloodstream of Islamic extremism. Wherever there had been trouble, it seemed, there had been bin Shafiq, handing out Saudi oil money and Wahhabi propaganda by the fistful: Afghanistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Pakistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, and, of course, the Palestinian Authority. They were not without significant leads, however, because in carrying out two major attacks, bin Shafiq and the Brotherhood had surrendered more than a dozen names that could be investigated for connections and associations. And then there was Ibrahim el-Banna, the Egyptian imam of death, and Professor Ali Massoudi, the recruiter and talent spotter.
    On the opposite wall there appeared another network: AAB Holdings. Using open sources and some that were not so open, Lavon painstakingly sifted through the layers of Zizi’s financial empire and assembled the disparate pieces like bits of an ancient artifact. At the top of the structure was AAB itself. Beneath it was an intricate financial web of subholding companies and corporate shells that allowed Zizi to extend his influence to nearly every corner of the globe under conditions of near-perfect corporate secrecy. With most of his companies registered in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, Lavon likened Zizi to a financial stealth fighter, capable of striking at will while avoiding detection by enemy radar. Despite the opaque nature of Zizi’s empire, Lavon came to the conclusion the numbers didn’t add up. “Zizi couldn’t possibly have earned enough from his early investments to justify the size of his later acquisitions,” he explained to Gabriel. “AAB Holdings is a front for the House of Saud.” As for trying to find Ahmed bin Shafiq anywhere within Zizi’s financial octopus, Lavon likened it to finding a needle in the Arabian Desert. “Not impossible,” he said, “but you’re likely to die of thirst trying.”
    Yossi saw to Zizi’s personnel. He focused on the relatively small team that worked inside Zizi’s Geneva headquarters, along with companies wholly owned or controlled by AAB. Most of his time, though, was devoted to Zizi’s large personal entourage. Their photographs soon covered the wall above Yossi’s workspace and stood in stark contrast to those of bin Shafiq’s terror network. New photographs arrived each day as Yossi monitored Zizi’s frenetic movements around the globe. Zizi arriving for a meeting in London. Zizi consulting with German automakers in Stuttgart. Zizi enjoying the view of the Red Sea from his new hotel in Sharm el-Sheik. Zizi conferring with the king of Jordan about a possible construction deal. Zizi opening a desalination plant in Yemen. Zizi collecting a humanitarian award from an Islamic group in Montreal whose Web site, Yossi pointed out, contained an open call for the destruction of the State of Israel.
    As for Gabriel’s corner of the room, it was a sanctuary from the realms of terror and finance. His wall was covered not with the faces of terrorists or business executives but with dozens of photographs of French Impressionist prints. And while Lavon and Yossi spent their days