at home.”
“Yes, it does.”
“But what if we’re looking at this the wrong way?”
“What would be the right way?”
“What if Omar Nawwaf really wanted to warn me about a grave threat?” Khalid checked his wristwatch. “My God, look at the time.”
“It’s early by our standards.”
Khalid placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough for inviting me here.”
“It will be our little secret.”
Khalid smiled. “I considered bringing you a gift, but I knew you wouldn’t accept it, so I’m afraid this will have to do.” He held up a flash drive. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“What’s on it?”
“Some of the financial records I acquired during the affair at the Ritz-Carlton. My uncle Abdullah was a terrible businessman, but a couple of years ago he became a billionaire almost overnight.” He pressed the flash drive into Gabriel’s palm. “Perhaps you can figure out exactly how he did it.”
41
New York–Berlin
On the evening of Khalid’s unlikely visit to Jerusalem, Sarah Bancroft was on a date with the man of her nightmares. His name was David Price, and they had been thrust together by a mutual friend at an auction at Christie’s. David was fifty-seven and did something with money, a virile-looking creature with sleek black hair, gleaming white teeth, and a deep tan he had acquired while on holiday in the Caribbean with his ex-wife and their two college-age children. He took her to a new play the Times had declared important and, afterward, to Joe Allen, where he was well known to the bartenders and the waitstaff. Later, at the entrance of her apartment building on East Sixty-Seventh Street, Sarah avoided his lips as though she were sidestepping a puddle. Upstairs, she rang her mother, something she rarely did, and lamented the state of her love life. Her mother, who knew little of Sarah’s secret past, suggested she take up yoga, which she swore had done wonders for her.
In fairness, it was not entirely David Price’s fault the evening had not gone well. Sarah had been preoccupied by Khalid’s sudden request to once again place him in touch with Gabriel. It was the first contact she had had with either man since returning to New York. She had learned of Khalid’s abdication by watching CNN and had assumed that Reema had been returned safely. Gabriel, however, had told her the truth. Sarah knew that such an act would not go unpunished. The people responsible would be hunted down, there would be an operation of retribution. All the more reason why her mind had wandered during the play—she could scarcely recall a line the actors spoke—and over dinner at Joe Allen. She wanted to be back in the field with Gabriel and Mikhail and the mysterious Englishman named Christopher Keller, not making small talk over liver and onions with a divorced hedgie from Connecticut.
And so Sarah was not at all displeased when three days later she woke to find in her in-box a boarding pass for that evening’s Lufthansa flight to Berlin. She informed her staff of her travel plans, inaccurately, and saw herself to Newark Airport. It seemed her seatmate, an investment banker from Morgan Stanley, had vowed to drink the aircraft dry. Sarah picked at her dinner and then slept until a snow-dusted German field appeared beneath her window. A courier from the Office’s Berlin Station approached her in the arrivals hall and directed her to a waiting BMW sedan. Mikhail was behind the wheel.
“At least it’s not another damn Passat,” she said as she slid into the passenger seat.
Mikhail followed the airport exit ramp to the autobahn and headed into Charlottenburg. Sarah knew the neighborhood well. While still at the CIA, she had spent six months in Berlin working with the German BfV against an al-Qaeda cell plotting another 9/11 from an apartment on Kantstrasse. Mikhail had secretly visited Sarah several times during her assignment.
“It’s good to be back,” said Sarah provocatively. “I’ve always enjoyed Berlin.”
“Especially in late winter.” The guardrails were spattered with dirty snow, and at half past eight in the morning the sky was still dark. “I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky she isn’t living in Oslo.”
“Who?”
Mikhail didn’t answer.
“Were you there when Reema was killed?”
“Close enough,” answered Mikhail. “Keller, too.”
“Is he in Berlin?”
“Keller?” Mikhail shot her a sidelong glance. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious, that’s all.”
“Christopher is otherwise engaged at the moment. It’s just the three of us again.”
“Where’s Gabriel?”
“The safe flat.”
Mikhail turned onto Bundesstrasse and followed it to the Tiergarten. There was a demonstration at the