IN WASHINGTON THE RAINS HAD finally ended, and a blast of cold, clear air had scrubbed the last remaining clouds from the sky. The great marble monuments glowed white as bone in the sharp sunlight; a brisk wind chased fallen leaves through the streets of Georgetown. Only the Potomac River bore the scars of the deluge. Swollen by runoff, clogged with tree limbs and debris, it flowed brown and heavy beneath Key Bridge as Saladin drove toward Virginia. He was dressed for a weekend in the English countryside—corduroy trousers, a woolen crewneck sweater, a dark-green Barbour jacket. He turned right onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway and headed west.
The roadway ran along the bank of the river for about a quarter mile before climbing to the top of the gorge. Trees in autumn leaf blazed in the bright sunlight, and across the muddy river traffic flowed along a parallel parkway. Even Saladin had to admit it was a welcome change from the harsh world of western Iraq and the caliphate. The comfortable leather seat of the luxury German sedan held him with the tenderness of a cupped hand. A member of the network had left it for him in a small parking lot at the corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, a painful walk of several blocks from the Four Seasons Hotel. Saladin was tempted to put the machine through its paces and test his skills on the smooth, winding road. Instead, he kept assiduously to the posted speed limit while other drivers rode his rear bumper and made obscene gestures as they roared past on his left. Americans, he thought—always in a hurry. It was both their greatest strength and their undoing. How foolish they were to think they could snap their fingers and alter the political landscape of the Middle East. Men like Saladin did not measure time in four-year election cycles. As a child he had lived on the banks of one of the four rivers that flowed out of the Garden of Eden. His civilization had flourished for thousands of years in the harsh and unforgiving land of Mesopotamia before anyone had ever heard of a place called America. And it would survive long after the great American experiment receded into history. Of this, Saladin was certain. All great empires eventually collapsed. Only Islam was forever.
The car’s navigation system guided Saladin onto the Capital Beltway. He drove south, across the Dulles Access Road, past the shopping malls of Tysons Corner, to Interstate 66, where he once again headed west, toward the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains. The eastbound lanes were still clogged with morning commuter traffic, but before Saladin stretched several car-lengths of empty asphalt, a rarity for the metropolitan Washington motorist. Again, he kept diligently to the speed limit while other traffic overtook him. The last thing he needed now was a traffic stop; it would put at risk an elaborate plot that taken months of meticulous planning. Paris and Amsterdam had been dress rehearsals. Washington was Saladin’s ultimate target, for only the Americans had the power to unleash the chain of events he was attempting to bring about. A final review of the plan with his primary Washington operative was all that remained. It was dangerous—there was always the possibility the operative had been compromised—but Saladin wanted to hear from the man’s lips that everything was in place.
He passed the exit for a town with the quintessentially American-sounding name of Gainesville. The traffic thinned, the terrain turned hilly, the blue peaks of the Shenandoah seemed within reach. He had been driving for three-quarters of an hour, and his right leg was beginning to throb from the effort of controlling his speed. To distract himself from the pain, he allowed his mind to drift. It settled quickly on the man he had seen in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel the previous evening.
Gabriel Allon . . .
It was possible Allon’s presence in Washington was entirely coincidental—after all, the Israeli had worked closely with the Americans for many years—but Saladin doubted that was the case. Several Israeli citizens had died in the Paris attack, along with Hannah Weinberg, a woman who was a personal friend of Allon’s and an asset of Israeli intelligence. It was entirely possible that Allon had taken part in the post-attack investigation. Perhaps he had learned of the existence of Saladin’s network. And perhaps he had learned, too, that the network was about to carry out an attack in America. But how? The answer to that question was quite simple. Saladin had to assume that Allon had managed to penetrate his network—it was, thought the Iraqi, Allon’s special talent. And if Allon knew about the network, the Americans knew about it, too. Most of Saladin’s operatives had infiltrated the country from abroad through the porous American visa and immigration system. But several operatives, including the man Saladin was about to meet, were American based, and therefore more vulnerable to U.S. counterterrorism efforts. They were critical to the operation’s success, but they were the weak link in the network’s long chain.
The navigation system advised Saladin to leave Interstate 66 at Exit 18. He followed the instructions and found himself in a town called Markham. No, he thought, it was not a town, it was a tiny collection of houses with covered porches looking out upon overgrown lawns. He headed south along Leeds Manor Road, past fenced pastures and barns, until he came to a town called Hume. It was slightly larger than the first. Still, there were no shops or markets, only an auto repair shop, a country inn, and a couple of churches where the infidels worshiped their blasphemous version of God.
The navigation system was now essentially useless; the address of Saladin’s destination was far too remote. He turned right onto Hume Road and followed it six-tenths of a mile, until he came to an unpaved track. It bore him across a pasture, over a ridge of wooded hills, and into a small dell. There was a black pond, its surface smooth as glass, and a timbered A-frame cottage. Saladin switched off the engine; the silence was like the silence of the desert. He opened the trunk. Concealed inside were a 9mm Glock 19 and a high-performance sound and flash suppressor, both of which had been purchased legally in Virginia by a member of Saladin’s network.
The gun in his left hand, his cane in the right, Saladin cautiously entered the cottage. Its furnishings were rustic and sparse. In the kitchen he boiled a pot of water—it smelled as though it came unfiltered from the pond—and coaxed a cup of weak tea from an elderly bag of Twinings. Returning to the sitting room, he lowered himself onto the couch and gazed through the triangular picture window, toward the ridge of hills he had just crossed. After a few minutes a little Korean sedan appeared, trailing a cloud of dust. Saladin concealed the gun beneath an embroidered pillow that read GOD BLESS THIS HOUSE. Then he blew on his tea and waited.
Saladin had never met the operative in person, though he knew him to be a green-carded Egyptian citizen named Qassam el-Banna, five foot nine inches in height, 165 pounds, tightly curled hair, light brown eyes. The man who entered the cottage matched that description. He appeared nervous. With a nod, Saladin instructed him to sit. Then in Arabic he said, “Peace be upon you, Brother Qassam.”
The young Egyptian was clearly flattered. Softly, he repeated the traditional Islamic greeting of peace, though without the name of the man he was addressing.
“Do you know who I am?” asked Saladin.
“No,” answered the Egyptian quickly. “We’ve never met.”