House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(97)
Langley, Virginia
The Counterterrorism Center had once been located in a single room on Corridor F on the sixth floor of CIA Headquarters. With its televisions and ringing telephones and stacks of files, it had looked like the newsroom of a failing metropolitan daily. Its officers worked in small teams dedicated to specific targets: the Red Army Faction, the Irish Republican Army, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Abu Nidal, Hezbollah. There was also a unit, formed in 1996, that focused on a little-known Saudi extremist named Osama bin Laden and his burgeoning network of Islamic terror.
Not surprisingly, the CTC had expanded in size since the attacks of 9/11. It now occupied a half acre of prime Agency real estate on the ground floor of the New Headquarters Building, and was accessed through its own lobby and security turnstiles. Owing to security concerns, the real name of the CTC’s chief was no longer a matter of public record. He was known to the outside world, and to the rest of Langley, only as “Roger.” Kyle Taylor liked the name. No one, he reckoned, was afraid of a man named Kyle. But a Roger was someone to be feared, especially if he commanded a fleet of armed drones and had the power to vaporize a man for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Uzi Navot had first encountered Kyle Taylor a decade earlier, when Taylor was working at the CIA’s station in London. Their dislike of one another was mutual and instantaneous. Navot viewed Taylor—who was fluent in no language other than English, and therefore unsuited for work in the field—as little more than an indoor spy and a boardroom warrior. And Taylor, who harbored a traditional CIA resentment of the Office and Israel, and perhaps a little more, regarded Navot as conniving and not to be trusted. Otherwise, they got on famously.
“Your first time in the Center?” asked Taylor after easing Navot’s path through security.
“No. But it’s been a while.”
“We’ve probably grown since the last time you were here. We had to. On any given day we’re running ops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, and Libya.”
He sounded like a corporate salesman talking about his firm’s unprecedented third-quarter expansion. “And now Morocco,” said Navot quietly, egging Taylor on.
“Actually, given the political sensitivity of the mission, very few people in the building know about it. Even here in the Center,” Taylor added. “It’s special access only. We’re using one of our smaller op rooms. We’ll be totally black.”
Taylor led Navot along a corridor lined with numbered doors, behind which nameless, faceless analysts and operators tracked terrorists and plots around the globe. At the end of the hall was a short flight of metal stairs and another checkpoint, through which Taylor and Navot passed without scrutiny. Beyond it was an ill-lit foyer and a cipher-protected door. Taylor punched the code rapidly into the keypad and stared directly into the lens of the biometric reader. A few seconds later the door opened with a snap.
“Welcome to the Black Hole,” he said, leading Navot inside. “The others are already here.” Taylor introduced Navot to Graham Seymour, perhaps forgetting they were well acquainted, perhaps not, and then to Paul Rousseau. “And Adrian I assume you know.”
“Very well,” said Navot, accepting Carter’s outstretched hand. “Adrian and I have been through the wars together, and we have the scars to prove it.”
It took a moment for Navot’s eyes to fully adjust to the gloom. Outside, it was early morning of what promised to be an oppressive summer’s day, but in the restricted ops room deep inside Langley it was a permanent night. At desks around the perimeter sat several technicians, their youthful faces lit by the glow of computer screens. Two wore flight suits, the two who were piloting the pair of drones now loitering above eastern Morocco without the knowledge of the Moroccan government. Images from the aircraft’s high-resolution cameras flickered on the screens at the front of the room. The Predator, with its two Hellfire missiles, was already above Erfoud. But the Sentinel stealth drone was southeast of Fez, thus granting its camera an unobstructed view of the Palais Faraj. Navot watched as Christopher Keller and Jean-Luc Martel stepped into the hotel’s forecourt. A few seconds later, two Mercedes sedans slipped beneath an archway and turned south toward the mountains.
Navot sat down next to Graham Seymour. Kyle Taylor had pulled Adrian Carter into a corner of the room for a private consultation. The tension between them was obvious.
“Any idea who’s running the show?” asked Navot.
“For the moment,” replied Graham Seymour, “I’d say the ball is in Gabriel’s court.”
“For how long?”
“Until the minute Saladin shows his face. If that happens,” said Seymour, “all bets are off.”
The traffic in the Ville Nouvelle was a nightmare. Even in ancient Fez there seemed to be no escaping it. Eventually, the commercial buildings receded and small plots of cultivated farmland appeared, along with new apartment buildings. They were three-level blockhouses, old before their time, with garages on the ground level. Most of the garages had been converted into tiny restaurants and shops, or were being used as pens for animals. Sheep and goats grazed among newly planted olive trees. Families shared picnic lunches in whatever shade they could find.
Gradually, the land tilted toward the distant peaks of the Middle Atlas, and the olive trees gave way to dense groves of carob and argan and Aleppo pine. Eagles circled overhead, searching for jackals. And above the eagles, thought Christopher Keller, the drones were searching for Saladin.