“Tuesday.”
“A few hours before the French president arrives,” Carter pointed out.
“I doubt it’s a coincidence.”
“Which hotel?”
“Key Bridge Marriott.”
“Rental car?”
“Hertz.”
“I don’t suppose they gave her a target, too.”
“Sorry, Adrian, but that’s not Saladin’s style.”
“It was worth asking. After all, she did save his life.”
Gabriel frowned but said nothing.
“I assume,” said Carter, “that you intend to let her get on that plane.”
“With your approval,” said Gabriel. “And you would be wise to let her into the country.”
“Put her under watch—is that what you’re suggesting? Wait for the other members of the attack cell to make contact? Roll them up before they can strike?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“What if she’s not the only operational asset? What if there are other teams? Other targets?”
“You should assume there are other teams and targets, Adrian. A lot of them, in fact. Saladin told Natalie that she was going to be involved in something big—big enough to leave the United States with no choice but to put boots on the ground in Syria.”
“What if they don’t make contact with her? Or what if she’s part of a second wave of attacks?”
“Forgive me for not bringing you the entire plot gift wrapped, Adrian, but that’s not the way it works in the real world.”
Fareed Barakat smiled. It wasn’t often he was given a front-row seat to a spat between the Americans and the Israelis.
“How much does Jalal Nasser know?” asked Carter.
“Should I call and ask him? I’m sure he’d love to help us.”
“Maybe it’s time to pull him in for a little chat.”
Fareed shook his head gravely. “Bad idea.”
“Why?”
“Because in all likelihood he doesn’t know the entire picture. Furthermore,” added Fareed, “if we arrest Jalal, it will send a signal to Saladin that his network has been compromised.”
“Maybe that’s exactly the signal we should send him.”
“He’ll lash out, Adrian. He’ll hit you any way he can.”
Carter exhaled slowly. “Who’s handling the surveillance in London?”
“We’re working jointly with the British.”
“I need in on that, too.”
“Three’s a crowd, Adrian.”
“I don’t give a shit.” Carter frowned at his wristwatch. It was half past eight on a Saturday morning. “Why do these things always seem to break on the weekend?” Greeted by silence, he looked at Gabriel. “In a few minutes, several hundred employees of my government are going to learn that the Office has an agent deep inside ISIS. Are you prepared for that?”
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Once she gets off that plane, she’s no longer your agent. She’ll be our agent, and it will be our operation. Are we clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Gabriel. “But whatever you do, make damn sure nothing happens to her.”
Carter reached for the phone and dialed. “I need to speak to the director. Now.”
48
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
QASSAM EL-BANNA WOKE TO THE call to prayer. He had been dreaming, about what he could not recall—his dreams, like contentment, eluded him. From an early age, while still a boy in the Nile Delta of Egypt, he believed he was destined for greatness. He had studied hard in school, won admission to a mildly prestigious university in the eastern United States, and after a lengthy struggle had convinced the Americans to let him remain in the country to work. And for all his efforts he had been rewarded with a life of uninterrupted tedium. It was a distinctly American tedium of traffic jams, credit card debt, fast food, and weekend trips to the Tysons Corner mall to push his son past shop windows hung with photographs of unveiled, half-naked women. For a long time he blamed Allah for his plight. Why had he given him visions of greatness, only to make him ordinary? What’s more, Qassam was now forced by the folly of his ambition to reside in the House of War, in the land of the unbelievers. After much reflection he had come to the conclusion that Allah had placed him in America for a reason. Allah had provided Qassam el-Banna with a path to greatness. And with greatness would come immortality.
Qassam lifted his Samsung from the bedside table and silenced the muezzin’s tinny nasally wail. Amina had slept through it. Amina, he had discovered, could sleep through anything—the cry of a child, thunder, fire alarms, the tap of his fingers on the keyboard of his laptop. Amina, too, was disappointed, not with Allah but with Qassam. She had come to America with reality-TV visions of a life in Bel Air, only to find herself living around the corner from a 7-Eleven off Carlin Springs Road. She berated Qassam daily for failing to earn more money and consoled herself by driving them deeper into debt. Her latest acquisition was a new luxury car. The dealership had approved the sale despite their abysmal credit rating. Only in America, thought Qassam.
He slipped soundlessly from bed, unfurled a small mat, and prayed for the first time that day. He pressed his forehead only lightly to the floor to avoid giving himself a dark callused prayer mark—it was known as a zabiba, the Arabic word for raisin—like the marks on the religious men from his village. Islam had left no visible marks on Qassam. He did not pray in any of the Northern Virginia mosques and avoided other Muslims as much as possible. He even tried to play down his Arabic name. At his last place of employment, a small IT consulting firm, he had been known as Q or Q-Ban, which he liked because of its vaguely Hispanic and hip-hop sensibilities. He was not one of those Muslims with his face on the ground and his ass in the air, he would say to his colleagues over beers in his faintly accented English. He came to America because he wanted to escape all that. Yes, his wife wore a hijab, but that had more to do with tradition and fashion than faith. And, yes, he had named his son Mohamed, but it had nothing to do with the Prophet. That much, at least, was true. Qassam el-Banna had named his son after Mohamed Atta, the operational leader of the 9/11 plot. Atta, like Qassam, was a son of the Nile Delta. It was not the only trait they had in common.