House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(41)
They continued southward along the river, past the fringes of Arlington National Cemetery, and turned onto Memorial Bridge. On the opposite bank, aglow as though lit from within, was the Lincoln Memorial. Normally, traffic flowing from Virginia to Washington was routed onto Twenty-Third Street. But the three SUVs of Gabriel’s motorcade eased slowly over a concrete median and then parked in the esplanade on the memorial’s southern flank. A few uniformed U.S. Park Police officers stood in the darkness, but otherwise the space was deserted. Just then, Gabriel’s phone pulsed with an incoming text. He exited the SUV, made his way to the base of the memorial’s steps, and with one hand pressed to the small of his back began to climb.
A heavy tarpaulin, moving in the faint wind, stretched across the entrance. Gabriel shouldered his way through the breach and stepped hesitantly into the central chamber. Lincoln peered down contemplatively from his marble throne, as though aggrieved by the damage around him. The base of the statue was pockmarked with tiny craters. So were the murals by Jules Guérin and the Ionic columns separating the central chamber from the side chambers, north and south. One of the columns had suffered significant structural damage at its base. It was there that a member of Saladin’s network had placed a backpack filled with explosives and ball bearings. The blast had been powerful enough to send a shiver through the White House. Twenty-one people had died inside the memorial, another seven on the steps, where the terrorist opened fire with a handgun. And it was only the beginning.
Gabriel passed between a pair of scarred columns and entered the north chamber, where Adrian Carter, his face tilted upward, was reading the words of Lincoln’s second inaugural address. He lowered his gaze toward Gabriel’s face and frowned.
“It seems the rumors were true after all,” he said.
“What rumors are those?”
“About you being inside the headquarters of the Alpha Group when that bomb went off.”
“Bad timing on my part.”
“Your specialty.”
Carter resumed his study of the towering panel. He wore a toggle coat, wrinkled chinos, and shoes that looked as though they had been designed for walking in the woods of New England. The attire, combined with his tousled thinning hair and unfashionable mustache, gave him the air of a professor from a minor university, the sort who championed noble causes and was a constant thorn in the side of his dean. In truth, Carter was the chief of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, the longest serving in Agency history. His summons of Gabriel was a violation of protocol; generally speaking, the ramsad did not meet with deputies. Adrian Carter, however, was a special case. He was a spy’s spy, a legend who in the dark days after 9/11 had drawn up the Agency’s plan to destroy al-Qaeda and roll up its global networks. The black sites, the renditions, the enhanced interrogation methods—they all bore his fingerprints. For a decade and a half he had been able to tell himself, and his critics, that for all his many sins he had managed to protect the American homeland from a second terror spectacular. And in the blink of an eye, Saladin had made a liar of him.
“My father brought me here to see Dr. King in sixty-three,” Carter said. “He was involved in the civil rights movement, my father. He was an Episcopal minister.” He glanced at Gabriel. “Did I ever mention that?”
“Once or twice.”
“I remember being very proud of my country that day,” Carter went on. “I felt anything was possible. And I was proud when we elected our first African American president, despite all the nasty things he said about the Agency during the campaign. He and I had our disagreements over the years, but I never forgot what he represented. His election was a miracle. And it never would have happened were it not for the words Martin Luther King spoke here that day. This is our sacred space, our hallowed ground. Which is why I’ll never forgive Saladin for what he did.”
Carter turned away from the panel and moved slowly into the central chamber, where he paused at the feet of Lincoln.
“You’re the expert. Can it be restored?”
“Marble isn’t my medium,” replied Gabriel. “But, yes, almost anything can be restored.”
“And what about my country?” asked Carter suddenly. “Can it be fixed?”
“Your divisions are hairline cracks compared to ours. America will find its way.”
“Will it? I’m not so sure.” Carter took Gabriel by the arm. “Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
23
Georgetown, Washington
It is not easy for the chief of the Office and the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency to stroll unnoticed in Washington, even in the hour before dawn, but they did their best. Only a single bodyguard trailed them along the footpath at the edge of the Potomac; the rest were confined to the constellation of black Suburbans that moved in their orbit. Carter’s pace was deliberate, thoughtful. For that much at least, Gabriel was grateful. His back was ablaze with pain, a fact he could not hide from his old friend.
“How bad is it?” asked Carter.
“Unfortunately, they say I’m going to live.”
“I hope the flight wasn’t too hard on you.”
“The Gulfstream made it tolerable.”
“It belongs to a friend of mine named Bill Blackburn. Bill used to work in the Special Activities Division. He was a real knuckle-dragger back in the day. Central America, mainly. Did a final lap in Afghanistan after nine-eleven. He owns a private intelligence shop now. Calls it Black Ops.”