“What’s in Washington?”

“A girl,” said Gabriel. “Carter’s found the girl.”

16.

HOW WAS THE FLIGHT?”

“Eternal.”

“It’s the autumn jet-stream patterns,” Carter said pedantically. “It adds at least two hours to flights from Europe to America.”

“ Israel isn’t in Europe, Adrian. Israel is in the Middle East.”

“Really?”

“You can ask your director of intelligence. He’ll clear up the confusion for you.”

Carter gave Gabriel a contemptuous look, then returned his eyes to the road. They were driving toward Washington along the Dulles Access Road in Carter’s battered Volvo. Carter was wearing a corduroy sport jacket with patches on the elbows. It reinforced his professorial image. All that was missing was the canvas book bag and the NPR coffee mug. He was driving well below the posted speed limit and making repeated glances into his rearview mirror.

“Are we being followed?” Gabriel asked.

“Traffic cops,” said Carter. “They’re fanatical on this road. Any problems at passport control?”

“None,” Gabriel said. “In fact, they seemed very happy to see me.”

It was something Gabriel had never understood about America -the geniality of its border policemen. He’d always found something reassuring in the bored surliness of the Israelis who stamped passports at Ben-Gurion Airport. American customs agents were far too cordial.

He looked out the window. They had left the Dulles Access Road and were driving now through McLean. He’d been to Virginia just once before, a brief visit to a CIA safe house deep in the horse country near Middleburg. He found McLean to be an archetypal American suburb, neat and prosperous but somehow lifeless. They skirted the downtown commercial district, then entered a residential section with large tract homes. The developments had names like Merrywood and Colonial Estates. A road sign floated toward them: GEORGE BUSH CENTER FOR INTELLIGENCE.

“You’re not actually thinking about taking me into Headquarters, are you?”

“Of course not,” Carter said. “We’re going into the District.”

The District, Gabriel knew, was the way Washingtonians referred to their little village on the Potomac. They crossed a highway overpass and entered an area of rolling hills and dense woods. Gabriel, through the trees, glimpsed great houses overlooking the river.

“What’s her name?”

“Sarah Bancroft,” Carter replied. “Her father was a senior executive in the international division of Citibank. For the most part Sarah was raised in Europe. She’s comfortable abroad in a way that most Americans aren’t. She speaks languages. She knows which fork to use when.”

“Education?”

“She came back here for college. Did a bachelor’s in art history at Dartmouth, then a stretch at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. I take it you’re familiar with the Courtauld?”

Gabriel nodded. It was one of the world’s most prestigious schools of art. Its graduates included an art dealer from St. James’s named Julian Isherwood.

“After the Courtauld she did her doctorate at Harvard,” Carter said. “Now she’s a curator at the Phillips Collection in Washington. It’s a small museum near-”

“I know the Phillips Collection, Adrian.”

“Sorry,” Carter said earnestly.

A large whitetail deer darted from the trees and crossed their path. Carter let his foot off the gas and watched the animal bound silently away through the darkening woods.

“Who brought her to your attention?” Gabriel asked, but Carter made no response. He was hunched over the wheel now and scanning the trees along the edge of the road for more deer. “Where there’s one,” he said, “there’s usually another.”

“Just like the terrorists,” Gabriel said. He repeated his question.

“She applied to join us a few months after 9/11,” Carter said. “She’d just finished her Ph.D. She looked interesting on paper, so we brought her in and gave her to the psychiatrists in Personnel. They put her through the wringer and didn’t like what they saw. Too independent-minded, they said. Maybe even a bit too smart for her own good. When we turned her down, she landed at the Phillips.”

“So you’re offering me one of your rejects?”

“The word hardly applies to Sarah Bancroft.” Carter reached into the pocket of his corduroy blazer and handed Gabriel a photograph. Sarah Bancroft was a strikingly beautiful woman, with shoulder-length blond hair, wide cheekbones, and large eyes the color of a cloudless summer sky.

“How old?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Why isn’t she married?”

Carter hesitated a moment.

“Why isn’t she married, Adrian?”

“She had a boyfriend while she was at Harvard, a young lawyer named Ben Callahan. It ended badly.”

“What happened to Ben?”

“He boarded a flight to Los Angeles at Logan Airport on the morning of September 11, 2001.”

Gabriel held out the photograph toward Carter. “Zizi’s not going to be interested in hiring someone touched by 9/11. You brought me here for nothing, Adrian.”

Carter kept his hands on the wheel. “Ben Callahan was a college boyfriend, not a husband. Besides, Sarah never talks about him to anyone. We practically had to beat it out of her. She was afraid Ben’s death would follow her around for the rest of her life, that people would treat her like a widow at age twenty-six. She keeps it very much inside. We did some sniffing around for you this week. No one knows.”

“Zizi’s security hounds are going to do more than sniff around, Adrian. And if they catch one whiff of 9/11, he’s going to run from her as fast as he can.”

“Speaking of Zizi, his house is just ahead.”

Carter slowed to negotiate a bend. A large brick-and-iron security gate appeared on their left. Beyond the gate a long paved drive rose to an enormous faux-chateau mansion overlooking the river. Gabriel looked away as they sped past.

“Zizi will never find out about Ben,” Carter said.

“Are you willing to bet Sarah’s life on that?”

“Meet her, Gabriel. See what you think.”

“I already know what I think. She’s perfect.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“If we make one mistake, Zizi’s going to drop her down a very deep hole. That’s the problem, Adrian.”

THE SUDDENNESS with which they reached the center of Washington took Gabriel by surprise. One moment they were on a two-lane rural road at the edge of the Potomac gorge, the next they were crawling along Q Street through the Georgetown evening rush. Carter, playing the role of tour guide, pointed out the homes of the neighborhood’s most celebrated residents. Gabriel, head against the window, couldn’t summon the energy even to feign interest. They crossed a short bridge, guarded at each end by a pair of enormous tarnished buffalos, and entered the city’s diplomatic quarter. Just beyond Massachusetts Avenue, Carter pointed to a turreted redbrick structure on the left side of the street. “That’s the Phillips,” he said helpfully. Gabriel looked to his right and saw a bronze version of Mohandas Gandhi hiking across a tiny triangular park. Why Gandhi? he wondered. What did the ideals of the Mahatma have to do with this patch of American global power?

Carter drove another block and parked in a restricted diplomatic zone outside a tired-looking Latin American embassy. He left the engine running and made no movement to indicate he intended to get out of the car. “This part of town is called Dupont Circle,” he said, still in tour guide mode. “It’s what passes for avant-garde in Washington.”

An officer of the Secret Service Uniformed Division rapped his knuckle on Carter’s window and gestured for him to move along. Carter, eyes straight ahead, held his ID against the glass, and the officer walked back to his squad car. A moment later something caught Carter’s attention in the rearview mirror. “Here she comes,” he said.