Dina, Rimona, and Yaakov worked in the dusty library; Lavon and Yossi set up shop in a rambling rumpus room hung with the heads of many dead animals. As for Gabriel, he made a shakedown studio for himself in a light-filled second-floor drawing room overlooking the garden. Because he could not show his face round the art world of London, he dispatched others to procure his supplies. Their missions were special operations unto themselves. Dina and Yossi made separate trips to L. Cornelissen amp; Sons in Russell Street, carefully dividing the order between them so that the girls who worked there would not realize they were filling the order of a professional restorer. Yaakov went to a lighting shop in Earl’s Court to purchase Gabriel’s halogen lamps and then to a master carpenter in Camden Town to collect a custom easel. Eli Lavon saw to the frame. A newly minted expert in all things al-Bakari, he took issue with Gabriel’s decision to go antique Italian. “Zizi’s taste is haute French,” he said. “The Italian will clash with Zizi’s sense of style.” But Gabriel always found that the more muscular carving of the Italian frames best suited Vincent’s impasto style, and so it was an Italian frame that Lavon ordered from the enchanted Bury Street premises of Arnold Wiggins amp; Sons.
Sarah came to them early each evening, always by a different route, and always with Lavon handling the countersurveillance. She was a quick study and, as Gabriel had anticipated, was blessed with a flawless memory. Still, he was careful not to smother her beneath an avalanche of information. They started usually by seven, broke at nine for a family dinner in the formal dining room, then carried on until nearly midnight, when she was shuttled back to her apartment in Chelsea by Yossi, who was staying in a flat across the street.
They spent a week on Zizi al-Bakari himself before branching off into his associates and the other members of his entourage and inner circle. Special attention was paid to Wazir bin Talal, the omnipresent chief of AAB security. Bin Talal was an intelligence service unto himself, with a staff of security agents inside AAB and a network of paid informants scattered around the world that fed him reports about potential threats to AAB properties or Zizi himself. “If Zizi likes the merchandise, it’s bin Talal who does the due diligence,” explained Lavon. “No one gets near the chief without first passing muster with bin Talal. And if anyone steps out of line, it’s bin Talal who lowers the boom.” Yossi’s research uncovered no fewer than a half dozen former al-Bakari associates who had died under mysterious circumstances, a fact that was withheld from Sarah at Gabriel’s request.
In the days that followed, the Surrey safe house was visited by what were known in the Office as “experts with handles.” The first was a woman from Hebrew University who spent two nights lecturing Sarah on Saudi social customs. Next came a psychiatrist who spent two more nights counseling her on ways to combat fear and anxiety while working undercover. A specialist in communications gave her a primer on elementary forms of secret writing. A martial arts trainer taught her the basics of Israeli-style hand-to-hand combat. Gabriel chose Lavon, the greatest watcher in the history of the Office, to give her a crash course in the art of human and electronic surveillance. “You will be entering a hostile camp,” he told her in summation. “Assume they’re watching your every move and listening to your every word. If you do that, nothing can go wrong.”
Gabriel, for the most part, remained a spectator to her training. He greeted her when she arrived at the house each evening, joined the team for dinner, then saw her off again at midnight when she set out for London with Yossi. As the days wore on, they began to detect a restlessness in him. Lavon, who had worked with him more than the others, diagnosed Gabriel’s mood as impatience. “He wants to put her into play,” Lavon said, “but he knows she’s not ready.” He began spending extended periods before the canvas, painstakingly repairing the damage done to Marguerite. The intensity of the work only increased his restiveness. Lavon advised him to take breaks now and again, and Gabriel reluctantly agreed. He found a pair of Wellington boots in the mudroom and ventured out on solitary marches over the footpaths surrounding the village. He dug a rod and reel from a storage room in the cellar and used it to haul an enormous brown trout from the stock pond. In the barn, concealed beneath a tarpaulin, he found an ancient MG motorcar that looked as though it hadn’t been driven in twenty years. Three days later the others heard a sputtering sound emanating from the barn, followed by an explosion that reverberated over the countryside. Yaakov came running down from the house, fearful Gabriel had blown himself to bits, but instead found him standing over the open hood of the MG, covered in engine grease up to his elbows and smiling for the first time since they’d come to Surrey. “It works,” he shouted over the thunderous rattle of the motor. “The damned thing still runs.”
That evening he joined in Sarah’s training session for the first time. Lavon and Yaakov were not surprised, for the topic of discussion was none other that Ahmed bin Shafiq, the man who had become Gabriel’s personal bête noire. He chose Dina, with her pleasant voice and patina of early widowhood, to deliver the briefings. On the first night she lectured on Group 205, bin Shafiq’s secret unit within the GID, and showed how the combination of Wahhabi ideology and Saudi money had wreaked havoc across the Middle East and South Asia. On the second night she recounted bin Shafiq’s journey from loyal servant of the Saudi state to mastermind of the Brotherhood of Allah. Then she described in detail the operation against the Vatican, though she made no mention of the fact that Gabriel had been present at the scene of the crime. Gabriel realized that much of the information was superfluous, but he wanted Sarah to have no doubt in her mind that Ahmed bin Shafiq had earned the fate that awaited him.
On the final night they showed her a series of computer-generated photo illustrations of how bin Shafiq might look now. Bin Shafiq with a beard. Bin Shafiq with a balding pate. Bin Shafiq with a gray wig. With a black wig. With curly hair. With no hair at all. With his sharp Bedouin features softened by a plastic surgeon. But it was the wounded arm that would be her most valuable clue to his identity, Gabriel told her. The scar on the inside of his forearm he would never show. The slightly withered hand that he would never offer and keep safely tucked away, hidden from infidel eyes.
“We know he’s concealed somewhere within Zizi’s empire,” Gabriel said. “He might come as an investment banker or a portfolio manager. He might come as a real estate developer or a pharmaceutical executive. He might come in a month. He might come in a year. He might never come. But if he does come, you can be certain he’ll be well mannered and worldly and seem like anything but a professional terrorist. Don’t look for a terrorist or someone who acts like a terrorist. Just look for a man.”
He gathered up the photo illustrations. “We want to know about everyone who moves in and out of Zizi’s orbit. We want you to gather as many names as you can. But this is the man we’re looking for.” Gabriel placed a photograph on the table in front of her. “This is the man we want.” Another photograph. “This is the man we’re after.” Another. “He’s the reason we’re all here instead of being home with our families and our children.” Another. “He’s the reason we asked you to give up your life and join us.” Another. “If you see him, you’re to get us the name he’s using and the company he’s working for. Get the country of his passport if you can.” Another photograph. “If you’re not sure it’s him, it doesn’t matter. Tell us. If it doesn’t turn out to be him, it doesn’t matter. Tell us. Nothing happens based on your word alone. No one gets hurt because of you, Sarah. You’re only the messenger.”