Portrait of a Spy (29 page)

“Liberated from what?” Nadia asked, deliberately provoking him.

“From the
sharia
,” said the sheikh. “I’m told you never wear the veil in the West.”

“It is impractical.”

“It is my understanding that more and more of our women are choosing to remain veiled when they travel. I’m told that many Saudi women cover their faces when they are having tea at Harrods.”

“They don’t run large investment companies. And most of them drink more than just tea when they’re in the West.”

“I hear you are one of them.”

Adhere to the truth when possible. . . .

“I confess that I am fond of wine.”

“It is
haram
,” he said in a scolding tone.

“Blame it on my father. He permitted me to drink when I was in the West.”

“He was lenient with you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “he wasn’t lenient. He spoiled me terribly. But he also gave me his great faith.”

“Faith in what?”

“Faith in Allah and His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.”

“If my memory is correct, your father regarded himself as a descendant of Wahhab himself.”

“Unlike the al-Asheikh family, we are not direct descendants. We come from a distant branch.”

“Distant or not, his blood flows through you.”

“So it is said.”

“But you have chosen not to marry and have children. Is this, too, a matter of practicality?”

Nadia hesitated.

Lie as a last resort. . . .

“I came of age in the wake of my father’s murder,” she said. “My grief makes it impossible for me to even contemplate the idea of marriage.”

“And now your grief has led you to us.”

“Not grief,” Nadia said. “Anger.”

“Here in the Nejd, it is sometimes difficult to tell the two apart.” The sheikh gave her a sympathetic smile, his first. “But you should know that you are not alone. There are hundreds of Saudis just like you—good Muslims whose loved ones were killed by the Americans or are rotting to this day in the cages of Guantánamo Bay. And many have come to the brothers in search of revenge.”

“None of them watched their father being murdered in cold blood.”

“You believe this makes you special?”

“No,” Nadia said, “I believe it is my money that makes me special.”

“Very special,” the sheikh said. “It’s been five years since your father was martyred, has it not?”

Nadia nodded.

“That is a long time, Miss al-Bakari.”

“In the Nejd, it is the blink of an eye.”

“We expected you sooner. We even sent our brother Samir to make contact with you. But you rejected his entreaties.”

“It wasn’t possible for me to help you at the time.”

“Why not?”

“I was being watched.”

“By whom?”

“By everyone,” she said, “including the al-Saud.”

“They warned you against taking any action to avenge your father’s death?”

“In no uncertain terms.”

“They said there would be financial consequences?”

“They didn’t go into specifics, except to say the consequences would be grave.”

“And you believed them?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because they are liars.” Bin Tayyib allowed his words to hang in the air for a moment. “How do I know that you are not a spy sent here by the al-Saud to entrap me?”

“How do I know that
you
are not the spy, Sheikh Bin Tayyib? After all, you are the one who’s on the al-Saud payroll.”

“So are you, Miss al-Bakari. At least that’s the rumor.”

Nadia gave the sheikh a withering look. She could only imagine how she must have appeared to him—two coal-black eyes glaring over a black
niqab
. Perhaps there was value to the veil after all.

“Try to see it from our point of view, Miss al-Bakari,” Bin Tayyib continued. “In the five years since your father’s martyrdom, you have said nothing about him in public. You seem to spend as little time in Saudi Arabia as possible. You smoke, you drink, you shun the veil—except, of course, when you are trying to impress me with your piety—and you throw away hundreds of millions of dollars on infidel art.”

Obviously, the sheikh’s test was not yet over. Nadia remembered the last words Gabriel had spoken to her at Château Treville.
You’re Zizi’s daughter. Never let them forget it
.

“Perhaps you’re right, Sheikh Bin Tayyib. Perhaps I should have cloaked myself in a
burqa
and declared my intention to avenge my father’s death on television. Surely that would have been the wiser course of action.”

The sheikh gave a conciliatory smile. “I’ve heard all about your wicked tongue,” he said.

“I have my father’s tongue. And the last time I heard his voice, he was bleeding to death in my arms.”

“And now you want vengeance.”

“I want justice—God’s justice.”

“And what of the al-Saud?”

“They seem to have lost interest in me.”

“I’m not surprised,” Bin Tayyib said. “Even the House of Saud isn’t sure whether it’s going to survive the turmoil sweeping the Arab world. They need friends wherever they can find them, even if they happen to wear the short
thobes
and unkempt beards of the Salaf.”

Nadia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. If the sheikh was speaking the truth, the rulers of Saudi Arabia had renewed the Faustian bargain, the deal with the devil that had led to 9/11 and countless other deaths after that. The al-Saud had no choice, she thought. They were like a man holding a tiger by the ears. If they kept their grip on the beast, they might survive a little longer. But if they released it, they would be devoured in an instant.

“Do the Americans know about this?” she asked.

“The so-called special relationship between the Americans and the House of Saud is a thing of the past,” Bin Tayyib said. “As you know, Miss al-Bakari, Saudi Arabia is forming new alliances and finding new customers for its oil. The Chinese don’t care about things like human rights and democracy. They pay their bills on time, and they don’t poke their noses into things that are none of their business.”

“Things like jihad?” she asked.

The sheikh nodded. “The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, taught us there were Five Pillars of Islam. We believe there is a sixth. Jihad is not a choice. It is an obligation. The al-Saud understand this. Once again, they are willing to look the other way, provided the brothers don’t make trouble inside the Kingdom. That was Bin Laden’s biggest mistake.”

“Bin Laden is dead,” said Nadia, “and so is his group. I’m interested in the one who can make bombs go off in the cities of Europe.”

“Then you are interested in the Yemeni.”

“Do you know him?”

“I’ve met him.”

“Do you have the ability to speak to him?”

“That is a dangerous question. And even if I could speak to him, I certainly wouldn’t bother to tell him about a rich Saudi woman who’s looking for vengeance. You have to believe in what you are doing.”

“I am the daughter of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari and a descendant of Muhammad Abdul Wahhab. I certainly
believe
in what I am doing. And I am after far more than just vengeance.”

“What
are
you after?”

Nadia hesitated. The next words were not her own. They had been dictated to her by the man who had killed her father.

“I wish only to resume the work of Abdul Aziz al-Bakari,” she said gravely. “I will place the money in the hands of the Yemeni to do with as he pleases. And perhaps, if God wills it, bombs will one day explode in the streets of Washington and Tel Aviv.”

“I suspect he would be most grateful,” the sheikh said carefully. “But I am certain he will be unable to offer any sort of guarantees.”

“I’m not looking for any guarantees. Only a pledge that he will use the money wisely and carefully.”

“You are proposing a one-time payment?”

“No, Sheikh Bin Tayyib, I am proposing a long-term relationship. He will attack them. And I will pay for it.”

“How much money are you willing to provide?”

“As much as he needs.”

The sheikh smiled.

“Al-hamdu lillah.”

Nadia remained in the tent of the sheikh for another hour. Then she followed the
talib
along the edge of the
wadi
to her car. The skies poured with rain during the drive back to Riyadh, and it was still raining late the following morning when Nadia and her entourage boarded their plane for the flight back to Europe. Once clear of Saudi airspace, she removed her
niqab
and
abaya
and changed into a pale Chanel suit. Then she telephoned Thomas Fowler at his estate north of Paris to say that her meetings in Saudi Arabia had gone better than expected. Fowler immediately placed a call to a little-known venture capital firm in northern Virginia—a call that was automatically routed to Gabriel’s desk in Rashidistan. Gabriel spent the next week carefully monitoring the financial and legal maneuverings of one Samir Abbas of the TransArabian Bank in Zurich. Then, after dining poorly with Carter at a seafood restaurant in McLean, he headed back to London. Carter let him take an Agency Gulfstream. No handcuffs. No hypodermic needles. No hard feelings.

Chapter 44
St. James’s, London

O
N THE DAY AFTER
G
ABRIEL’S
return to London, the venerable Christie’s auction house announced a surprise addition to its upcoming sale of Venetian Old Masters:
Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene
, oil on canvas, 110 by 92 centimeters, previously attributed to the workshop of Palma Vecchio, now firmly attributed to none other than the great Titian himself. By midday, the phones inside Christie’s were ringing off the hook, and by day’s end, no fewer than forty important museums and collectors had dipped their oars into the water. That evening, the atmosphere in the bar at Green’s Restaurant was electric, though Julian Isherwood was notably not among those present. “Saw him getting into a cab in Duke Street,” Jeremy Crabbe muttered into his gin and bitters. “Looked positively dreadful, poor sod. Said he was planning to spend a quiet evening alone with his cough.”

It is rare that a painting by an artist like Titian resurfaces, and when one does, it is usually accompanied by a good story. Such was certainly the case with
Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene
, though whether it was tragedy, comedy, or morality tale depended entirely on who was doing the telling. Christie’s released an abridged version for the sake of the painting’s official provenance, but in the little West London village of St. James’s, it was immediately written off as well-sanitized hogwash. Eventually, there came to exist an
unofficial
version of the story that unfolded roughly along the following lines.

It seemed that at some point the previous August, an unidentified Norfolk nobleman of great title but shrinking resources reluctantly decided to part with a portion of his art collection. This nobleman made contact with a London art dealer, also unidentified, and asked whether he might be willing to accept the assignment. This London art dealer was busy at the time—truth be told, he was sunning himself in the Costa del Sol—and it was late September before he was able to make his way to the nobleman’s estate. The dealer found the collection lackluster, to put it mildly, though he did agree to take several paintings off the nobleman’s hands, including a very dirty work attributed to some hack in the workshop of Palma Vecchio. The amount of money that changed hands was never disclosed. It was said to be quite small.

For reasons not made clear, the dealer allowed the paintings to languish in his storage rooms before commissioning a hasty cleaning of the aforementioned Palma Vecchio. The identity of the restorer was never revealed, though all agreed he gave a rather good account of himself in a remarkably short period of time. Indeed, the painting was in such fine shape that it managed to catch the wandering eye of one Oliver Dimbleby, the noted Old Master dealer from Bury Street. Oliver acquired it in a trade—the other paintings involved were never disclosed—and promptly hung it in his gallery, viewable by appointment only.

It would not remain there long, however. In fact, just forty-eight hours later, it was purchased by something called Onyx Innovative Capital, a limited liability investment firm registered in the Swiss city of Lucerne. Oliver didn’t deal directly with OIC, but rather with an agreeable bloke named Samir Abbas of the TransArabian Bank. After thrashing out the final details over tea at the Dorchester Hotel, Abbas presented Oliver with a check for twenty-two thousand pounds. Oliver quickly deposited the money into his account at Lloyds Bank, thus consecrating the sale, and began the messy process of securing the necessary export license.

It was at this point that the affair took a disastrous turn, at least from Oliver’s point of view. Because on a dismal afternoon in late January there came to Oliver’s gallery a rumpled figure dressed in many layers of clothing, who, with a single offhand question, sent the apples rolling across the proverbial floor. Oliver would never reveal the identity of the man, except to say he was learned in the field of Italian Renaissance art, particularly the Venetian School. As for the question posed by this man, Oliver was willing to repeat it verbatim. In fact, for the price of a good glass of Sancerre, he would act out the entire scene. For Oliver loved nothing more than to tell stories on himself, especially when they were less than flattering, which was almost always the case.

“I say, Oliver, old chap, but is that Titian spoken for?”

“Not a Titian, my good man.”

“Sure about that?”

“Positive as I can be.”

“Who is it, then?”

“Palma.”

“Really? Rather good for a Palma. Workshop or the man himself?”

“Workshop, love. Workshop.”

It was then the rumpled figure leaned precariously forward to have a closer look—a lean that Oliver re-created nightly at Green’s to uproarious laughter.