“Are you safe?”
“Yes, I think so, but I’m wearing a suicide vest.”
“It might be booby-trapped. Don’t try to take it off.”
“I won’t.”
“Stand by.”
Twice the man on the Operations Desk in Tel Aviv tried to transfer the call to Gabriel’s mobile. Twice there was no answer.
“There seems to be a problem.”
“Where is he?”
“The National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia.”
“Try again.”
A police cruiser flashed past, siren screaming. The two Georgetown students were growing impatient.
“Just a minute,” Natalie said to them in English.
“Please hurry,” replied the owner of the phone.
The man in Tel Aviv tried Gabriel’s phone again. It rang several times before a male voice answered in English.
“Who is this?” asked Natalie.
“My name is Adrian Carter. I work for the CIA.”
“Where’s Gabriel?”
“He’s here with me.”
“I need to speak to him.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Is this Natalie?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you?”
She answered.
“Are you still wearing your vest?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t touch it.”
“I won’t.”
“Can you keep this phone?”
“No.”
“We’re going to bring you in. Walk north on Wisconsin Avenue. Stay on the west side of the street.”
“There’s going to be another attack. Safia is somewhere close.”
“We know exactly where she is. Get moving.”
The connection went dead. Natalie returned the phone and headed north up Wisconsin Avenue.
In the ruins of the National Counterterrorism Center, Carter managed to communicate to Gabriel that Natalie was safe and would momentarily be in FBI custody. Deafened, bleeding, Gabriel had no time for celebration. Mikhail was still inside Café Milano, not twenty feet from the table where Safia Bourihane sat alone, her thumb on her detonator, her eyes on her watch. Carter raised the phone to his ear and again ordered Mikhail to leave the restaurant at once. Gabriel still couldn’t hear what Carter was saying. He only hoped that Mikhail was listening.
Like Saladin, Mikhail surveyed the interior of Café Milano’s elegant dining room before rising. He, too, saw fear on the faces around him, and like Saladin he knew that in a moment many people would die. Saladin had had the power to stop the attack. Mikhail did not. Even if he was armed, which he was not, the chances of stopping the attack were slim. Safia’s thumb was atop the detonator switch, and when she was not staring at her watch, she was staring at Mikhail. Nor was it possible to issue any sort of warning. A warning would only cause a panicked rush to the door, and more would die. Better to let the vest explode with the patrons as they were. The lucky ones at the outer tables might survive. The ones closest to Safia, the ones who had been granted the coveted tables, would be spared the awful knowledge that they were about to die.
Slowly, Mikhail slid from the barstool and stood. He didn’t dare try to leave the restaurant through the front entrance; his path would take him far too close to Safia’s table. Instead, he moved calmly down the length of the bar toward the toilets. The door to the men’s room was locked. He twisted the flimsy latch until it snapped and went inside. A thirtysomething man with gelled hair was admiring himself in the mirror.
“What’s your problem, man?”
“You’ll know in a minute.”
The man tried to leave, but Mikhail seized his arm.
“Don’t go. You’ll thank me later.”
Mikhail closed the door and pulled the man to the ground.
From his vantage point on Prospect Street, Eli Lavon had witnessed a series of increasingly unsettling developments. The first was the arrival at Café Milano of Safia Bourihane, followed a few minutes later by the departure of the large Arab known as Omar al-Farouk. The large Arab was now in the backseat of a Lincoln Town Car, which was parked about fifty yards from Café Milano’s entrance, behind a white Honda Pilot. What’s more, Lavon had called Gabriel several times at the NCTC without success. Subsequently, he had learned, from King Saul Boulevard and the car radio, that the NCTC had been attacked by a pair of truck bombs. Lavon now feared that his oldest friend in the world might be dead, this time for real. And he feared that, in a few seconds, Mikhail might be dead, too.
Just then, Lavon received a message from King Saul Boulevard reporting that Gabriel had been slightly injured in the attack at the NCTC but was still very much alive. Lavon’s relief was short-lived, however, for at that same instant the thunderclap of an explosion shook Prospect Street. The Lincoln Town Car eased sedately from the curb and slid past Lavon’s window. Then four armed men spilled from the Honda Pilot and started running toward the wreckage of Café Milano.
66
WISCONSIN AVENUE, GEORGETOWN
NATALIE HEARD THE EXPLOSION as she was approaching R Street and knew at once it was Safia. She turned and gazed down the length of Wisconsin Avenue, with its graceful rightward bend toward M Street, and saw hundreds of panicked people walking north. It reminded her of the scenes in Washington after 9/11, the tens of thousands of people who had simply left their offices in the world’s most powerful city and started walking. Once again, Washington was under siege. This time, the terrorists weren’t armed with airplanes, only explosives and guns. But the result, it seemed, was far more terrifying.
Natalie turned and joined the exodus moving north. She was growing weary beneath the dead weight of the suicide vest, and the weight of her own failure. She had saved the life of the very monster who had conceived and plotted this carnage, and after her arrival in America she had been unable to uncover a single piece of intelligence about the targets, the other terrorists, or the timing of the attack. She had been kept in the dark for a reason, she was certain of it.
All at once there was a burst of gunfire from the same direction as the explosion. Natalie hurried across R Street and continued north, keeping to the west side of the street as the man named Adrian Carter had instructed. We’re going to bring you in, he had said. But he had not told her how. Suddenly, she was pleased to be wearing the red jacket. She might not be able to see them, but they would see her.