House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(80)
A small delegation was too much to hope for. They arrived on a Boeing jetliner emblazoned with the official seal of the United States and traveled to the site of the conference—a disused MI6 training facility located in a rambling Victorian manor house in Surrey—in a long noisy motorcade that slashed its way through the countryside as though it were dodging IEDs in the Sunni Triangle of occupied Iraq. From one of the vehicles emerged Morris Payne, the Agency’s new director. Payne was West Point, Ivy League law, private enterprise, and a former deeply conservative member of Congress from one of the Dakotas. He was big and bluff, with a face like an Easter Island statue and a baritone voice that rattled the beams in the old house’s vaulted entrance hall. He greeted Graham Seymour and Amanda Wallace first—they were the hosts after all, not to mention distant family—before turning the full force of his water-cannon personality on Gabriel.
“Gabriel Allon! So good to finally meet you. One of the greats. A legend, truly. We should have done this a long time ago. Adrian tells me you slipped into town without coming to see me. I won’t hold that against you. I know you and Adrian go way back. You’ve done good work together. I hope to continue that tradition.”
Gabriel reclaimed his hand and looked at the men surrounding the new director of the world’s most powerful intelligence service. They were young and lean and hard, ex-military like their boss, all well schooled in the sharp elbows of Washington bureaucratic combat. The change from the previous administration was striking. If there was a silver lining it was that they were reasonably fond of Israel. Perhaps too fond, thought Gabriel. They were proof that one needed to be careful what one wished for.
Tellingly, Adrian Carter was not among those in the director’s close orbit. He was at that moment crawling out of an SUV along with the rest of the senior operators. Most were unfamiliar to Gabriel. One, however, he recognized. He was Kyle Taylor, the chief of the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center. Taylor’s presence was a troubling gauge of Langley’s intentions; it was said of Taylor that he would drone his mother if he thought it would earn him Carter’s job and his seventh-floor office. He wore his relentless ambition like a carefully knotted necktie. Carter, however, looked as though he had just been awakened from a nap. He walked past Gabriel with only the smallest of nods.
“Don’t get too close,” Carter whispered. “I’m contagious.”
“What do you have?”
“Leprosy.”
Morris Payne was now pumping Paul Rousseau’s hand as though trying to earn his vote. At Graham Seymour’s prompting, he moved into the old house’s formal dining room, which long ago had been converted into a safe-speech facility. There was a basket at the entrance for mobile phones and, on the Victorian sideboard, an array of refreshments that no one touched. Morris Payne sat down at the long rectangular table, flanked on one side by his hard young aides and on the other by Kyle Taylor, the drone master. Adrian Carter was relegated to the far end—the spot, thought Gabriel, where he could doodle to his heart’s content and dream of a job in the private sector.
Gabriel lowered himself into his assigned seat and promptly turned over the little name placard that some industrious MI6 functionary had placed there. To his left, and directly across from Morris Payne, was Graham Seymour. And to Seymour’s left was Amanda Wallace, who looked as though she feared being splattered by blood. Morris Payne’s reputation preceded him. During his brief tenure he had largely completed the task of transforming the CIA from an intelligence service into a paramilitary organization. The language of espionage bored him. He was a man of action.
“I know you’re all in crisis mode,” Payne began, “so I won’t waste anyone’s time. You’re all to be commended. You prevented a calamity. Or at least delayed one,” he added. “But the White House is insisting—and, frankly, we agree—that Langley needs to take the lead on this and bring the operation home. With all due respect, it makes the most sense. We have the reach and the capability, and we have the technology.”
“But we have the source,” responded Gabriel. “And all the reach and technology in the world won’t replace him. We found him, we burned him, and we recruited him. He’s ours.”
“And now,” said Payne, “you’re going to turn him over to us.”
“Sorry, Morris, but I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.”
Gabriel glanced toward the end of the table and saw Adrian Carter attempting to suppress a smile. It was hardly an auspicious beginning. Unfortunately, it went rapidly downhill from there.
Voices were raised, the table pounded, threats issued. Threats of retaliation. Threats of cooperation suspended and critical aid withheld. Not long ago, Gabriel would have had the luxury of calling the director’s bluff. Now he had to proceed with caution. The British were not the only ones who were dependent on Langley’s technological might. Israel needed the Americans even more, and under no circumstances could Gabriel afford to alienate his most valuable strategic and operational partner. Besides, for all his bluster and bravado, Morris Payne was a friend who saw the world roughly as Gabriel did. His predecessor, a fluent speaker of Arabic, had made a point of referring to Jerusalem as al-Quds. Things could definitely be worse.
At Graham Seymour’s suggestion, they broke for food and drink. Afterward, the mood lightened considerably. Morris Payne admitted that during the flight across the Atlantic he had taken the time to review Gabriel’s Agency file.