The Secret Servant

11

I wouldn’t complain too much about a nasty bump on the head.”

Graham Seymour’s limousine lurched out of the forecourt of New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, and turned into Broadway. The MI5 man looked very tired. He had a right to. Bombs had exploded in the Underground at Marble Arch, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, and Charing Cross. Six American diplomats and security men had been slaughtered in Hyde Park and the daughter of the American ambassador, Elizabeth Halton, was missing and presumed kidnapped. And thus far the only person to be arrested was Gabriel Allon.

“They asked me to put my hands in the air and drop the gun,” said Gabriel. “I complied with their order.”

“Do try to see it from their point of view. You were about to shoot a man in the head and were surrounded by eight other bodies. You’re damned lucky they even gave you a chance to surrender. They would have been well within their rights to use lethal force. That’s what they’re trained to do when confronted by a man they believe might be a suicide bomber.”

“Wouldn’t that have been perfect. The one person who tried to prevent the attacks, shot dead by London police.” Greeted by Graham Seymour’s angry silence, Gabriel pressed his case. “You should have listened to me, Graham. You should have raised the threat level and rousted a few of your known terrorists. Maybe Elizabeth Halton and the rest of the Americans would have stayed in their embassy instead of going for a morning jog in Hyde Park.”

“And I told you to stay out of it.”

“Is that why you left me sitting in that holding cell for sixteen hours, Graham? Is that why you let them file charges against me? Is that why you let them take my fingerprints and my photograph?”

“Forgive me for not coming to your rescue sooner, Gabriel. I’ve been a little busy.”

Gabriel looked out at the wet streets of Westminster. They were abandoned, except for the uniformed Met officers standing watch at every other corner. Graham Seymour did have a point. London had just experienced its bloodiest single day since the Second World War. Gabriel could hardly complain about spending most of it inside New Scotland Yard.

“How many dead, Graham?”

“The toll is much higher than the attacks of July 2005,” Seymour said. “So far we’re at three hundred dead, with more than two thousand injured. But these bombings obviously had a second purpose-to create an atmosphere of chaos in the capital that allowed the kidnappers to slip away undetected. Unfortunately, it worked to perfection. Whoever planned this attack was bloody diabolical-and damned good.”

“What have you picked up about the identity and affiliation of the bombers?”

“They’re all second-generation British boys from Finsbury Park and Walthamstow in East London. All four are of Egyptian heritage, and all four were members of a small storefront mosque in Walthamstow called the al-Salaam Mosque.”

“The Mosque of Peace,” Gabriel said. “How appropriate.”

“The imam has disappeared and so have several other members of the flock. Based on what we know now, it appears local boys handled the bombing operation, while your boy Samir and his associates saw to the kidnapping.”

“Have you been able to trace the vans?”

“They were all purchased by companies owned or controlled by a man called Farouk al-Shahaki. He’s a London-born entrepreneur of Egyptian heritage with business interests across Britain and in the Middle East.”

“Where is he?”

“He boarded a flight for Pakistan last night. We’ve asked the Pakistani ISI to find him.”

“Good luck,” said Gabriel. “Were you able to follow them on street surveillance cameras as they left Hyde Park?”

“For a time,” Seymour said. “Then they turned into an alley with no camera coverage and we lost them. We found the vans in a garage in Maida Vale that had been rented by one of the suicide bombers.”

“Any claim of responsibility?”

“Too many to keep track of at the moment. Clearly it has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack. I suppose we’ll learn more when the kidnappers make their demands.”

“It would be better for everyone if you found Elizabeth Halton before her captors start making demands.”

“We’re operating under the assumption she’s still somewhere inside the British mainland. We’ve got men at every airport, train station, and ferry terminal in the country. The Coastguard is attempting to seal our shoreline, no easy undertaking since it measures nearly eight thousand miles in length. SO13 are questioning informants and those suspected of terrorist sympathies, along with known associates of the suicide bombers. They’re also conducting house-to-house searches in predominantly Muslim districts of the city. Our Muslim countrymen are already getting angry. If we’re not careful, things could get out of hand very quickly.” Seymour looked at Gabriel. “Too bad you didn’t manage to wound one or two of those terrorists you killed in Hyde Park. We need information badly.”

“I may have,” Gabriel said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I fired several shots into the back of one of those vans. Keep an eye out for Arabs coming into hospital trauma centers with unexplained bullet wounds.”

The limousine turned into Millbank and headed along the Thames toward Lambeth Bridge. Seymour ’s mobile phone chirped. He brought it to his ear, murmured a few words, then rang off. “The Americans,” he said by way of explanation. “As you might expect, they’re on war footing. They’ve put the embassy and all its personnel and dependents on lockdown status. They’ve also issued a terrorist travel alert for the United Kingdom, which hasn’t exactly gone over well with Downing Street or the Foreign Office, since it puts us on a par with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Two hundred investigators from CIA, FBI, and the departments of State and Justice touched down at Heathrow earlier this evening and set up shop at Grosvenor Square. They have an open line to the State Department Task Force in Washington and another one to COBRA, the special committee chaired by the Home Secretary that oversees the British government response to a national emergency such as this.”

“Are they behaving themselves?”

Seymour exhaled heavily. “As well as can be expected, given the circumstances. For now, this is essentially a matter for the British police, which means there’s little for them to do except sit on the sidelines and pressure us to look harder and faster. They’ve made it clear that despite the appalling loss of British life, our first priority must be finding Elizabeth Halton. They’ve also made clear that they have no intention of negotiating for her release.”

“If they do negotiate, no American diplomat anywhere in the world will ever be safe again,” Gabriel said. “It’s a difficult lesson we learned a long time ago.”

“We prefer a more subtle interpretation of that principle. If a good-faith negotiation can bring that woman back alive, then I don’t see the harm in it.”

“I suppose that depends entirely on what you have to give up to get her back.”

Gabriel looked out the window at the Thames. Eight thousand miles of coastline, countless marinas and private airfields… He knew from personal experience that a terrorist with enough intelligence and money could move a hostage almost at will. A year earlier, his wife had been kidnapped from her bedroom in an exclusive British psychiatric hospital. She was on a boat bound for France before anyone even knew she was missing.

“It seems you and the Americans have everything in hand,” he said. “Which means there’s nothing left for me to do but leave London and pretend I was never here.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible, Gabriel.”

“Which part?”

“Both.”

Seymour removed a copy of that morning’s Times from his briefcase and handed it to Gabriel. The banner headline read: TERROR AND KIDNAPPING IN LONDON. But it was the headline at the bottom of the page that seized Gabriel’s attention: ISRAEL INTELLIGENCE OFFICER INVOLVED IN AMBUSH IN HYDE PARK. Beneath the headline was a grainy image of Gabriel pointing his Beretta into the face of Samir al-Masri. Inside was a second photograph: the mug shot taken of him in New Scotland Yard in the hours after the attack.

“The photograph of you in the park was taken by a passerby with a mobile phone camera. Poor quality, but quite dramatic. Congratulations, Gabriel. I suppose you now have another group of terrorists that would like your head on a platter.”

Gabriel switched on his reading lamp and scanned the article. It contained his real name, along with a largely accurate depiction of his professional exploits.

“Is your service responsible for this?”

“Trust me, Gabriel, I have enough headaches at the moment. I don’t need one more. The sourcing is vague, but obviously the leak must have come from someone at the Met. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a senior officer attempting to curry favor with an important newspaper. Regardless of how it happened, it does mean that you’re not going to be allowed to leave the country until all the questions of your involvement in this affair are sorted out and aired in a proper forum.”

“The details of my involvement in this affair are quite clear, Graham. I came to London to warn you that a cell of terrorists from Amsterdam was probably in England preparing for a major attack. You chose to ignore that warning. Would you like me to air that in front of a proper forum?”

Seymour appeared to give the question serious thought before responding. “You are charged with several serious offenses, including entering Britain on a false passport, illegal possession of a firearm, and the unlawful discharge of that firearm in a public place.”

“I discharged my illegal firearm into three terrorist murderers.”

“It doesn’t matter. You have to remain in Britain until we get this sorted out. To release you now would be to invite wailing and gnashing of teeth from all quarters.” Seymour gave a weak smile. “Don’t worry, Gabriel. We’ve arranged comfortable quarters for you. You’re lucky. You get to leave London. The rest of us have to stay here and live with the aftermath of this attack.”

“Does my service know I’m in custody?”

“They will shortly. We’ve just notified the legal liaison officer at your embassy, as well as your declared chief of station.”

The car turned into the driveway of Thames House, MI5’s imposing riverfront headquarters. Vauxhall Cross, the headquarters of MI6, the foreign intelligence service, stood on the opposite side of the river overlooking the Albert Embankment.

“My driver will run you out to one of our safe houses,” Seymour said. “Don’t even consider attempting to escape. He’s well armed and an excellent shot.”

“Where would I go, Graham? I don’t have a passport.”

“I’m sure you could come up with one.”

Seymour reached for the door but stopped himself. “Is there anything else you can tell us, Gabriel? Anything that might help us locate Elizabeth Halton?”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“Everything except the name of your source in Amsterdam.”

“I promised to protect him, Graham. You remember what it means to protect a source.”

“At times like these, sources aren’t for protecting. They’re to be used and burned.”

“I’d rather not torch this one, Graham. He risked his life by coming to us.”

“Have you at least considered the possibility that he’s somehow linked to this affair?”

“He’s not.”

“I hope you’re right,” Seymour said. “It’s been my experience that sources rarely tell the whole truth. In fact, more times than not, they lie. That’s what sources do. That’s why they’re sources in the first place.”

Gabriel’s temporary home turned out to be a charming limestone cottage, surrounded by two hundred acres of private land, in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds. The manager of the facility, a bluff, ginger-haired MI5 veteran called Spencer, briefed Gabriel on the rules of his stay the following morning over a leisurely meal in the light-filled breakfast room. Gabriel would be granted access to television, radio, and the London papers, though, of course, no telephones. All the rooms of the main cottage were available for his use, though he was to keep interaction with the household staff to a bare minimum. He could walk the grounds alone, but if he wished to go into the village, it would be necessary to arrange an escort. All his movements would be monitored and recorded. Any attempt to escape would end in failure and result in the revocation of all privileges.

Gabriel occupied his time by carefully monitoring the progress of the British investigation. He rose early each morning and read the stack of London newspapers that awaited him in the breakfast room with his tea and toast. Then he would retire to the library and search the British and American television news channels for reliable information about the identity of the perpetrators and the fate of Elizabeth Halton. Seventy-two hours after her abduction there was still no authenticated claim of responsibility and no demands from her captors. Ambassador Halton made a stoic appeal for his daughter’s release, as did the American president and the British prime minister. As the days ground slowly on, the television experts began to speculate that the ambassador’s daughter had already been murdered by her captors or was somehow killed in the initial attack. Gabriel regarded the speculation as premature and almost certainly incorrect. He had seen the elaborate operation in action. Eventually, he knew, the kidnappers would surface and make their demands.

On the afternoon of his fourth day in captivity, he arranged for a ride into the village and spent an hour roaming the shops of the high street. He bought a wool sweater for Chiara and a handsome oak walking stick for Shamron. When he returned to the cottage, he found Spencer waiting for him in the gravel forecourt, waving a single sheet of paper as though it held news of great import from a distant corner of the realm. It did. The British had agreed to drop all charges against Gabriel in exchange for his testimony at the official inquiry into the attacks. A seat was being held for him on that evening’s flight to Tel Aviv and arrangements had been made for private and expedited boarding. A car would collect him in an hour. The car, however, turned out to be a convoy. The vehicles were of American manufacture, as was the distinguished-looking man, clothed in diplomatic gray, seated in the back of the limousine. “Good afternoon, Mr. Allon,” said Ambassador Robert Halton. “Let me give you a lift to the airport. I’d like a word.”

“You have me to thank for your release,” the ambassador said. “When I found out you were still in custody, I telephoned the prime minister and told him to free you at once.”

“I knew the Americans wielded considerable influence at Downing Street, but I never knew you had the power to free prisoners.”

“The last thing the prime minister wanted was to see me make my demand in public. The polls show that I am now the most popular man in Britain. Please tell me why the press bother to even take such a poll.”

“I’ve given up trying to understand the press, Ambassador Halton.”

“That same poll found a majority of Britons believe I brought this calamity upon myself because of my friendship with the president and my outspoken support for the war in Iraq. The war is now being used by our enemies to justify all manner of sins. So is our support for the State of Israel.”

“I’m afraid it will be for a long time to come.”

The ambassador removed his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. He looked as though he had not slept in many days. “I only wish I could free my daughter with a phone call. It’s not easy to be a powerful man made powerless. I’ve had everything in life I wanted, but they took from me the one thing I cannot afford to lose.”

“I just wish I’d arrived a few seconds earlier,” Gabriel said. “If I had, I might have been able to stop them from taking your daughter.”

“Don’t blame yourself for what happened. If there’s anyone to blame, it’s me. I was the one who took this job. I was the one who asked Elizabeth to put her life on hold and come here with me. And I was the one who let her go running in Hyde Park three mornings a week even though I feared something like this could happen.”

The American ambassador put his glasses back on and gazed at Gabriel thoughtfully for a moment. “But imagine my surprise when I heard that the mysterious man who killed three of the terrorists in Hyde Park was you. The president is my closest friend, Mr. Allon. If it weren’t for you, he might have been killed at the Vatican earlier this year.”

Actually, it was the pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Luigi Donati, who had saved the president’s life. Gabriel had only killed the assassin, a convert to radical Islam who had managed to penetrate the ranks of the Swiss Guard.

“What are the British telling you about the prospects of finding your daughter?” he asked.

“Maddeningly little, I’m afraid. They conducted raids at three locations today where they thought she might be being held. The intelligence turned out to be incorrect. What I don’t understand is why the terrorists haven’t made any demands yet.”

“Because they know the uncertainty is causing you a great deal of pain. They want you to be grateful when they finally come forward and make their demands.”

“You’re sure they want something in return?”

“Yes, Mr. Ambassador. But you have to be prepared for the fact that it’s almost certainly something you can’t give them.”

“I’m trying to remind myself that there are larger principles and issues of policy involved than the fate of my daughter,” the ambassador said. “I’m preparing myself for the possibility that my daughter might have to die to keep diplomats safe around the world. But it hardly seems a fair tradeoff, Mr. Allon. And I’m not at all sure it’s a price I’m prepared to pay. In fact, I’m quite certain I’d give them anything they wanted to get my daughter back alive.”

“That’s what they want, Mr. Ambassador. That’s why they’re waiting to make their demands.”

“Your government has experience in these kinds of matters. What do you think they want?”

“Prisoners,” Gabriel said. “That’s almost always what they want. It might be several prisoners. Or it might be just one important prisoner.”

“Like one of the 9/11 masterminds that we’re holding?”

“It depends on who’s taken her.”

“I’m considering offering a sizeable reward for information.”

“How sizeable?”

“Fifty million dollars.”

“A reward like that will almost certainly bring out the charlatans and the con artists. And then the British will find themselves buried beneath a blizzard of false tips and leads. It will get in the way of the investigation rather than help it. For the time being, I would recommend keeping your wallet closed, Mr. Ambassador.”

“That’s probably sound advice.” He looked at Gabriel for a moment without speaking. “I don’t suppose there’s any way I can convince you to stay in London for a few days and help find my daughter?”

“I’m afraid I have to go home and face the music for getting my picture in the newspaper. Besides, this is a matter for you and the British. Obviously, if we happen to pick up any intelligence, we’ll pass it along right away.”

The telephone rang. The ambassador lifted the receiver out of the console and brought it to his ear. He listened for a moment, face tense, then murmured, “Thank you, Prime Minister.” He hung up the phone and looked at Gabriel. “The Metropolitan Police just raided a house in Walthamstow in East London. Nothing.” He lapsed into a contemplative silence. “It just occurred to me that you were the last person to see my daughter-the last decent person, I should say.”

“Yes, Mr. Ambassador, I suppose I was.”

“Did you see her face?”

Gabriel nodded. “Yes, sir, I saw her face.”

“Did they harm her?”

“It didn’t look as though she was injured.”

“Was she frightened?”

Gabriel answered truthfully. “I’m sure she was very frightened, sir, but she didn’t go willingly. She fought them.”

The ambassador’s eyes shone suddenly with tears.

“I’m glad she fought them,” Robert Halton said. “I hope she’s fighting them right now.”

12

She had fought them. Indeed she had fought them with more rage, and for much longer, than they had anticipated. She had fought them as they raced up the Edgware Road from Hyde Park, and she had fought them in the mews garage in Maida Vale, where they had transferred her to a second van. She had clawed and kicked. She had spit in their faces and called them murderous cowards. In the end, they had been forced to use the needle on her. She didn’t like the needle. She didn’t fight them anymore.

Her room was small and square, with cinder-block walls painted bone white and a cement floor. It contained nothing except for a folding army cot with a bricklike pillow and a scratchy woolen blanket that smelled of mothballs and disinfectant. Her hands were cuffed and her legs shackled, and they left the light on always so that she had no idea whether it was day or night. There was a spy hole in the metal door through which a malevolent brown eye watched her constantly. She dreamed of ramming a scalpel into it. When she slept, which was seldom, her dreams were filled with violence.

Interaction with her captors was kept to an absolute minimum and strictly regulated. The ground rules were established early on the first day, after she had awakened from the drugs. All communication was conducted in writing, with notes slipped beneath the door of her cell. Upon receipt of such a note, she was to reply yes or no in a low voice. Any deviation from the procedures, they warned, would result in a loss of food and water. Thus far they had asked her only two questions. One was: Do you want food? The other was: Do you wish to use the toilet? Each time a question appeared beneath her door, she replied yes, regardless of whether she was hungry or needed to relieve herself. Saying yes to them meant a break from the tedium of staring at the featureless white walls. Saying yes meant a moment of contact with her kidnappers, which, no matter how much she loathed them, she found strangely comforting.

Her food never varied: a bit of bread and cheese, a bottle of water, a few pieces of chocolate if she had been behaving herself. Her toilet was a yellow plastic bucket. Only two of the kidnappers ever entered her cell. They wore balaclava hoods in her presence to conceal their faces, but she learned to recognize them by their eyes. One had brown eyes; the other had green eyes that she found perversely beautiful. She nicknamed “brown eyes” Cain and “green eyes” Abel. Cain always brought her food, but poor Abel was the one who had to collect her bucket. He was kind enough to avert his green eyes when he did so.

She played mind games with herself to fill the long empty hours. She floated down endless ski runs through perfect crystalline air. She performed difficult surgeries and reread all her dreary medical school textbooks. She spoke often to her mother. But it was the moment of her capture she thought of most. It played ceaselessly in her memory, like a loop of videotape over which she had no control: the men in black jumpsuits pouring out of the vans, the shredded bodies of her friends lying in Hyde Park, the man who had tried to save her. She had glimpsed him briefly as they were forcing her into the back of the van, an angular figure with gray temples, crouched on one knee with a gun in his outstretched hands. She wondered often who he was. She hoped that one day, if she were ever rescued, she would have an opportunity to thank him.

If she were ever rescued… For some reason she found it easier to contemplate her own death than to picture the moment of her liberation. She knew that she was almost certainly the target of a massive search, but her hope of ever being found faded as the days ground slowly past-and as the notes came with a mind-deadening regularity. Do you want food?…Do you wish to use the toilet?… But on the fifth day, as the man with gray temples was boarding a jetliner at Heathrow Airport, a different note appeared. It said: One of my men needs a doctor. Will you help us? “Yes,” she replied in a low voice, and a moment later Cain and Abel entered her cell and lifted her gently to her feet.

They led her wordlessly up a flight of steep narrow stairs, slowly, so that she did not trip over the shackles. At the top of the stairs they passed through a creaking metal door and entered a small warehouse. It was abandoned and dark, except for a single utility lamp burning above a cluster of cots in the far corner. On one of the cots lay a man whose face was not covered by a balaclava. It was twisted into a grimace of pain and damp with sweat. Cain lifted the blanket, exposing his right leg.

“Jesus Christ,” Elizabeth said softly.

The bullet had entered below the knee and had shattered the crown of the tibia. The entrance wound was about two centimeters in diameter and was imbedded with bits of debris from the clothing he had been wearing the morning of the attack. The surrounding skin was now reddish brown and badly swollen, and red streaks had begun to radiate up the thigh. It was obvious he was suffering from a severe local infection and was on the verge of sepsis. She reached toward his wrist, but one of the terrorists seized her arm. It was the one with brown eyes: Cain.

“I have to take his pulse.”

She pulled away from Cain’s grasp and placed her fingertips on the inside of his wrist. The pulse was rapid and weak. Next she placed her hand upon his forehead and found it was damp and burning with fever.

“He needs to go to a trauma center right away. A good one.”

Cain shook his head.

“If he doesn’t, he’ll die.”

The terrorist lifted a gloved hand and pointed his finger at Elizabeth ’s face like a loaded gun.

“Me? I can’t do anything for him here. He needs to be in a sterile environment. He needs to go to a hospital now.”

Once again the terrorist shook his head.

“If I help him, will you let me go?”

This time he didn’t bother to respond. Elizabeth looked down at the wounded man. He was no more than twenty-five, she guessed, and if she didn’t intervene immediately he would die a very painful death within thirty-six hours. It was a death he deserved, but that didn’t matter now. He was a human being in great pain, and Elizabeth was oath bound to treat him. She looked at the brown-eyed terrorist.

“I’ll need some things. We are still in Britain, aren’t we?”

The terrorist hesitated, then nodded.

“Then your friend is in luck. It’s still possible to get some very strong over-the-counter antibiotics here. Get me a piece of paper and something to write with. I’ll make you a list. Get me everything I ask for. If you don’t, your friend is going to die.”

13

The VIP reception room was empty when Gabriel arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport later that same evening. He walked the long white corridor alone and stepped into the frigid night air. Shamron’s armored limousine was idling in the traffic circle, cigarette smoke wafting through the half-open rear window. Parked behind it was a second car filled with absurdly young security men, a new addition to his detail since the attempt on his life. Shamron had spent his old age surrounded by children with guns. Gabriel feared it would be his fate, too.

He climbed into the back of the limousine and closed the door. Shamron regarded him silently, then lifted a liver-spotted hand and gestured to his driver to move. A moment later, as they were speeding into the Judean Hills toward Jerusalem, he placed a stack of Israeli newspapers in Gabriel’s lap: Haaretz, Maariv, Yediot Aharonot, the Jerusalem Post. Gabriel’s photograph appeared on the front page of each.

“I send you to Amsterdam for a few days of quiet reading and this is what you bring me? You know, Gabriel, there are easier ways of getting out of dinner with the prime minister.”

“I was actually looking forward to it.”

Shamron gave him a dubious look. “At least the tone of the articles is positive-not like the drubbing we usually endure when our agents are exposed in the field. Once again you’re a national hero. Haaretz has dubbed you ‘ Israel ’s not-so-secret super-agent.’ That’s my favorite.”

“I’m glad you find this all so entertaining.”

“I don’t find it the least bit entertaining,” Shamron said. “We took the extraordinary step of sending you to London to make certain that the British understood the seriousness of our warning. They chose to ignore it, and the result was a holocaust in the Underground and the daughter of the American ambassador in the hands of Islamic terrorists.”

“Not to mention six dead American diplomats and security men.”

“Yes, everyone seems to have forgotten them.” Shamron ignited another cigarette. “How did you know they were going to hit in Hyde Park?”

“I didn’t know. It was just a theory that unfortunately turned out to be correct.”

“And what led you to this theory?”

Gabriel told him about the image on the legal pad he’d taken from Samir al-Masri’s apartment in Amsterdam. Shamron smiled. He regarded Gabriel’s flawless memory as one of his finest achievements. Gabriel had come to him with the mechanism in place, but it was Shamron who taught him how to use it.

“So you warned them not once but twice,” Shamron pointed out. “It’s no wonder the British were behaving like such jackasses during the negotiations for your release. I got the distinct impression that they were using your arrest and incarceration as a means of bringing pressure to bear against us.”

“For what purpose?”

“So that your testimony at the inevitable public inquiry into the attacks doesn’t reflect the true nature of your two conversations with Graham Seymour.”

“ Seymour ’s covering his ass?”

“He’s entered the final lap of a long and distinguished career. He can almost see his country house and his knighthood and comfortable seat on the board of a respectable financial house in the City. He doesn’t want some gunslinging Israeli to trip him up as he nears the finish line.”

“The last thing I’m going to do is fall on my sword to protect Graham Seymour’s reputation and retirement.”

“No, but you’re not going to go out of your way to embarrass him either. We’ll need to concoct some subtle variation on the truth that protects both your reputation and his.” Shamron smiled; concocting subtle variations on the truth was one of his favorite pastimes. “Burning Graham Seymour serves no useful purpose. You’re going to need him, and his friends, in your next life.”

“And what life is that?”

Shamron scrutinized Gabriel through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Being deliberately obtuse serves no useful purpose either, Gabriel. You know very well what we have in store for you. The time has come for you to lead. The keys to the throne room are within your grasp.”

“Perhaps, Ari, but there’s only one problem. I don’t want them. I have other things I want to do with the rest of my life.”

“I’m afraid it’s time for you to put away childish things.”

“You’re referring to restoration?”

“I am.”

“You didn’t consider it a childish thing when you were using it as cover to conceal an assassin.”

“Restoration served both our needs for a long time,” Shamron said, “but its season has faded.”

They passed the charred hulk of an armored personnel carrier, a remnant of the fierce fighting that took place in the Bab al-Wad during Israel ’s War of Independence.

“I’ve been in the Cabinet Room in times of crisis,” Gabriel said. “I’ve seen our leaders tear each other to shreds. It’s not the way I want to spend the next ten years. Besides, when all those former generals look at me, they’re just going to see a boy with a gun.”

“You’re not a boy any longer. You are approaching the age when men in government reach the summit of their careers. You’ll just reach yours a little sooner than most. You were always a bit of a wunderkind.”

Gabriel held up the copy of Haaretz. “And what about this?”

“The scandals?” Shamron shrugged. “A career free of scandal is not a proper career at all. For the most part, your scandals have earned you valuable allies in Washington and the Vatican.”

“They’ve earned me enemies, too.”

“They would be your enemies regardless of your actions. And they’ll be your enemies long after your body is placed next to Dani’s on the Mount of Olives.” Shamron crushed out his cigarette. “Don’t worry, Gabriel, this is not something that’s going to happen overnight. Amos’s death will be a slow one, and only a handful of people will even know the patient is terminal.”

“How long?”

“A year,” Shamron said. “Perhaps eighteen months at the most. Plenty of time for you to repair a few more paintings for your friend in Rome.”

“There’s no way you’ll be able to keep it a secret for a year, Ari. You always said that the worst place to try to keep a secret is inside an intelligence service.”

“At the moment only three people are privy to it-you, me, and the prime minister.”

“And Uzi.”

“I needed to bring Uzi into the picture,” Shamron said. “Uzi serves as my eyes inside the Office.”

“Maybe that’s why you want me there.”

Shamron smiled. “No, Gabriel, I want you there so I can close my eyes.”

“You’re not thinking of dying, are you, Ari?”

“I’d just like to take a short nap.”

Gabriel turned and peered out the rear window of the limousine. The chase car was following closely behind them. He looked at Shamron and asked whether there had been any news from London about Elizabeth Halton.

“Still nothing from her captors,” Shamron said. “And nothing from the British, at least nothing they’re willing to say in public. But it is possible that we might be coming into some useful intelligence.”

“From where?”

“ Egypt,” said Shamron. “Our most important asset inside the SSI sent us a signal early this morning that he had something for us.”

The full name of the SSI was the General Directorate of State Security Investigations, a polite way of saying the Egyptian secret police.

“Who is he?” Gabriel asked.

“Wazir al-Zayyat, chief of the Department for Combatting Religious Activity. Wazir has one of the toughest jobs in the Middle East: making certain Egypt ’s homegrown Islamic extremists don’t bring down the regime. Egypt is the spiritual heartland of Islamic fundamentalism, and of course the Egyptian Islamists are a major component of al-Qaeda. Wazir knows more about the state of the global jihadist movement than anyone in the world. He keeps us apprised of the stability of the Mubarak regime and passes along any intelligence that suggests Egyptian terrorists are targeting us.”

“What does he have for us?”

“We won’t know until we sit down with him,” Shamron said. “We meet with him outside the country.”

“Where?”

“ Cyprus.”

“Who’s his case officer?”

“Shimon Pazner.”

Pazner was the chief of station in Rome, which doubled as the headquarters for Office operations throughout the Mediterranean.

“When is Pazner going to Cyprus?”

“He leaves in the morning.”

“Tell him to stay put in Rome.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m going to Cyprus to meet with the Egyptian.”

Shamron greeted Gabriel’s declaration with an obstinate silence. “Your involvement in this affair is officially over,” he said finally. “This is an American and British problem now. We have enough of our own to worry about.”

Gabriel pushed back. “I was there when it happened, Ari. I want us to do anything we can to find her.”

“And we will. Shimon Pazner has been handling Wazir for three years now. He’s more than capable of going to Cyprus and conducting a crash debriefing.”

“I’m sure he is, but I’m going to go to Cyprus for him.”

Shamron’s old stainless steel lighter flared in the darkness. “You’re not the Memuneh yet, my son. Besides, have you forgotten that your picture is in all the newspapers?”

“I’m not going behind the Iron Curtain, Ari.”

Shamron touched his cigarette to the flame and extinguished it with a flick of his sturdy wrist. “You use my own words against me,” he said. “Go ahead, Gabriel, go to Cyprus tomorrow. Just make sure Identity does something about that face of yours. You made yourself another enemy with your actions in Hyde Park.”

“Graham Seymour said the same thing.”

“Well,” Shamron said reflectively, “at least he was right about something.”

When Gabriel entered his apartment twenty minutes later, he found lights burning in the sitting room and a faint trace of vanilla on the air. He tossed his bag onto the new couch and walked into the bedroom. Chiara was perched at the end of the bed, scrutinizing her toes with considerable interest. Her body was wrapped in bath towels, and her skin was very dark from the sun. She looked up at Gabriel and smiled. It was as if it had been several minutes since they had seen each other last and not several weeks.

“You’re here,” she said in mock surprise.

“Shamron didn’t mention that I was coming home tonight?”

“He may have.”

Gabriel walked over and removed the towel from her hair. Heavy and wet, it tumbled riotously onto her dark shoulders. She lifted her face to be kissed and loosened the towel around her body. Maybe Shamron was right, Gabriel thought as she pulled him onto the bed. Maybe he would let Pazner go to Cyprus to meet with the Egyptian after all.

They were both famished after making love. Gabriel sat at the small table in the kitchen, watching the news on television, while Chiara made fettuccine and mushrooms. She was wearing one of Gabriel’s dress shirts, unbuttoned to her abdomen, and nothing else.

“How did you find out that I’d been arrested?”

“I read it in the newspapers like everyone else.” She poured him a glass of red wine. “You were all the rage in Buenos Aires.”

“What kind of work were you doing there?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“I know you were watching members of a Hezbollah cell. I just want to know whether you were part of the actual surveillance team or just an escort officer?”

“I was part of the team,” she said. “I don’t do much escort work anymore.”

“Why did they pull you out?”

“Overexposure to the targets.” Elizabeth Halton’s face appeared suddenly on the television screen. “Pretty girl,” Chiara said. “Why did they take her?”

“I may find out tomorrow.” He told her about his trip to Cyprus.

“What about your dinner with the prime minister?”

Gabriel looked up from the television. “How did you know about that?”

“Shamron told me.”

“So much for operational security,” he said. “What exactly did he say to you?”

She placed the fettuccine in the water to boil and sat down next to him. “He said that you had agreed to succeed Amos as director.”

“I’ve agreed to no such thing.”

“That’s not what Shamron says.”

“Shamron has a long history of hearing exactly what he wants to hear. What else did he say?”

“He wants us to get our personal life in order as soon as possible. He doesn’t think it’s proper for the director to be living with a woman out of wedlock, especially one who happens to be an employee of the Office. He thinks we should accelerate our wedding plans.” She placed a finger beneath his chin and turned his face toward hers. “You agree, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Gabriel hastily. He had learned that any hesitation to engage in a discussion of wedding plans was always wrongly interpreted by Chiara as a reluctance to marry. “We should get married as soon as possible.”

“When?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a very simple question, Gabriel. When do you think we should get married?”

“Late spring,” he said. “Before it gets too hot.”

“May?”

“May would be perfect.”

Chiara removed her fingertip from beneath Gabriel’s chin and nibbled nervously at her nail. “How am I going to plan a wedding in six months?”

“Hire a professional planner to help you.”

“A wedding isn’t an operation, Gabriel. It’s supposed to be planned by family, not a professional.”

“What about Gilah Shamron? She’s the closest thing to a mother I have.”

“Gilah has enough on her plate at the moment looking after her husband.”

“All the more reason to ask her to help with the wedding. Trust me, she’ll jump at the chance.”

“It’s not a bad idea, actually. No wonder Shamron wants you to be the chief. The first thing we have to do is settle on a guest list.”

“That’s easy,” Gabriel said. “Just invite everyone from the Office, Shabak, AMAN, most of the Cabinet, and half of the Knesset. Oh, and don’t forget the prime minister.”

“I’m not sure I want the prime minister to attend my wedding.”

“You’re afraid of being overshadowed by a chubby octogenarian?”

“Yes.”

“The prime minister has three daughters of his own. He’ll make certain not to steal the limelight on your big day.”

“Our big day, Gabriel.” The water began to boil over. She stood up and walked back over to the stove. “Are you sure you have to go to Cyprus tomorrow?”

“I want to hear what the Egyptian has to say with my own ears.”

“But you’ve only just come home.”

“It’s just for a day or two. Why don’t you come with me? You can work on that suntan of yours.”

“It’s cold in Cyprus this time of year.”

“So you want me to go alone?”

“I’ll come,” she said. “You didn’t say anything about the way I decorated the apartment. Do you like it?”

“Oh, yes,” he said hastily. “It’s lovely.”

“I found a ring on the coffee table. Did you put a hot drink on it without a coaster?”

“It was Uzi,” Gabriel said.

Chiara poured the fettuccine into a colander and frowned. “He’s such a slob,” she said. “I don’t know how Bella can live with him.”

14

The items she had requested lay arranged on an adjacent cot: isopropyl alcohol, cotton swabs, rubber gloves, tweezers, needle-nose pliers, a straight razor, codeine and cephalin tablets, four-by-four sterile pads, medical tape, two eighteen-inch strips of wood, two rolls of bandaging, and two liters of bottled water. She held out her cuffed hands to the one she thought of as Cain. He shook his head.

“I can’t do this with my hands cuffed.”

He hesitated, then removed them.

“The drugs you gave me after you kidnapped me-you have more, I assume.”

Another hesitation, then a reluctant nod.

“I need them. Otherwise, your friend is going to suffer terribly.”

He walked over to the van and returned a moment later with a syringe wrapped in plastic and a vial of clear liquid. Elizabeth looked at the label: KETAMINE. No wonder she’d suffered such terrible hallucinations while the drug was in her system. Anesthesiologists almost never used ketamine without a secondary sedative such as Valium. These idiots had given her several injections of the drug with nothing to blunt its side effects.

She loaded an appropriate dosage, two hundred and fifty milligrams, and injected it into the wounded man’s upper arm. As he slipped slowly into unconsciousness, she broke the needle off the syringe and placed it in the plastic sack from the chemist shop where Cain had purchased the medical supplies. The name and address of the shop were written on the bag in blue lettering. Elizabeth recognized the village. It was located on the Norfolk coastline, northeast of London.

She lifted the blanket and adjusted the lamp, so that the light shone directly into the wound. The round was lodged within the fracture fragments. She opened the bottle of rubbing alcohol and poured a generous amount directly into the wound, then wiped away the puss and other infectious material with a cotton swab. When the wound was sufficiently clean, she sterilized the straight razor and used it to debride the ragged necrotic material along the edges. Then she sterilized the tweezers and spent the next twenty minutes carefully removing fragments of shattered bone and filaments of embedded fabric. Finally, she sterilized the needle-nose pliers and slipped them carefully into the wound. The round was out a moment later, deformed from its impact with the terrorist’s tibia but intact.

She gave the bullet to Cain as a souvenir and prepared for the final stage of the procedure: the dressing and the splint. First she flushed the wound thoroughly with the sterile water, then covered it with a four-by-four sterile pad. Last, she laid the two strips of wood along each side of his lower leg from the knee to the ankle and bound the splint tightly with the rolls of bandaging. When she was finished, she propped the leg on a pillow and looked at Cain.

“When he wakes up, give him two of the cephalin tablets. Then give him one tablet every four hours. Keep the leg elevated. I’d like to see him every two hours, if that’s possible. If not, I’ve given you seventy-two hours at the most. After that he’s going to need to go into a hospital.”

She held out her hands. Cain applied the cuffs and led her downstairs to her cell. As she lay down on her cot, she felt an almost drunken sense of elation. The crude surgery, the brisk commands: she had been in control, if only for a few moments. And she had managed to uncover a single piece of valuable information. She was still in England, still within reach of the British police and intelligence services.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but an hour later she was jolted by a knock at the door. We have a present for you, the note said. Lay down on your cot. She did as she was told and watched as Cain and Abel entered her cell. They put packing tape across her mouth and a hood over her head. She fought them. She fought them even after they gave her the needle.

15

Much can be gleaned about the value of a source by the accommodations that are made to handle him. For the debriefings of Wazir al-Zayyat, the Office had purchased a lovely whitewashed villa on the southern coast of Cyprus with a small swimming pool and a shaded terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Gabriel and Chiara arrived several hours before the Egyptian was due. Gabriel had hoped to spend the time relaxing, but Chiara, alone with him for the first time in weeks, wanted to use the opportunity to discuss wedding plans. Place settings and flowers, guest lists and music-this is how Israel ’s legendary secret agent passed the time before the arrival of the Egyptian spy. He wondered what Haaretz and the rest of the Israeli newspapers would write about him if they knew the truth.

Shortly after two in the afternoon, Gabriel glimpsed a Volkswagen sedan speeding along the coast road. It passed by the villa and disappeared around a bend, then, five minutes later, approached from the opposite direction. This time it slowed and turned into the drive. Gabriel looked at Chiara. “You’d better wait upstairs in the bedroom,” he said. “From what I’ve read about Wazir, your presence will only be a distraction.”

Chiara gathered up her papers and bridal magazines and vanished. Gabriel went into the kitchen and opened one of the cabinets. Inside was the control panel for the built-in recording system. He put in a fresh set of tapes and pressed the RECORD button, then went into the entrance hall and opened the front door as al-Zayyat was coming up the steps. The Egyptian froze and regarded Gabriel suspiciously for a moment through the lenses of his mirrored sunglasses. Then a trace of a smile appeared beneath his dense mustache and he extended a clublike hand in Gabriel’s direction.

“To what do I owe the honor, Mr. Allon?”

“Something came up in Rome,” Gabriel said. “Shimon asked me to fill in.”

The Egyptian pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and studied Gabriel again, this time with obvious skepticism. His eyes were dark and bottomless. They were not a pair of eyes Gabriel would ever want to see on the other side of an interrogation table.

“Or maybe you volunteered to come here to see me,” the Egyptian said.

“Now, why would I do that, Wazir?”

“Because if what I read in the newspapers is true, you now have something of a personal stake in the outcome of this case.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.”

“At least not the Egyptian papers.”

Al-Zayyat followed Gabriel into the villa, then walked over to the drinks cabinet with a proprietary air and loosened the cap on a new bottle of single-malt Scotch. “You’ll join me?” he asked, waving the bottle at Gabriel.

“I’m driving,” Gabriel replied.

“What is it with you Jews and alcohol?”

“It makes us do silly things with lampshades.”

“What kind of agent-runner doesn’t have a drink with a source?” Al-Zayyat poured himself a very large glass and put the cap back on the bottle without tightening it. “But then you’re not an agent-runner, are you, Allon?” He drank half the whisky in a single swallow. “How’s the old man? Back on his feet?”

“Shamron is fine,” Gabriel said. “He sends his regards.”

“I hope he sent more than regards.”

Gabriel looked at the leather briefcase laying in a rectangle of sunlight on the sailcloth couch. Al-Zayyat sat next to it and popped the latches. Satisfied by the contents, he closed the briefcase and looked at Gabriel.

“I know who kidnapped the ambassador’s daughter,” he said. “And I know why they did it. Where would you like me to start?”

“The beginning,” said Gabriel. “It tends to put things in proper perspective.”

“You’re just like Shamron.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

The Egyptian’s gaze wandered over the bag again. “There’s fifty thousand, right?”

“You can count it if you like.”

“That won’t be necessary. Do you want me to sign a receipt?”

“You sign the receipt when you get your money,” Gabriel said. “And you get your money after I hear the information.”

“Shimon always gave me the money first.”

“I’m not Shimon.”

The Egyptian swallowed the rest of his whisky. Gabriel refilled his glass and told him to start talking.

The beginning, the Egyptian said, was the day in September 1970 when Nasser died and his vice president, Anwar Sadat, came to power in Egypt. Nasser had regarded Egypt ’s Islamic radicals, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, as a grave threat to his regime and had used mass arrests, executions, and torture to keep them in their place. Sadat had tried a different approach.

“Sadat had none of Nasser ’s charisma and no popular base of support,” al-Zayyat said. “He was also a rather religious man. He was more afraid of the Communists and the Nasserites than the Brothers, and so he made what would turn out to be a fatal reversal of Egypt ’s approach to Islamic extremism. He branded the Communists and the Nasserites as enemies of his new regime and let the Brothers out of jail.”

And then he compounded the mistake, al-Zayyat explained. He allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to operate openly and encouraged them to spread their fiery brand of Islam abroad, especially into the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. He also encouraged and funded the creation of groups that were even more radical than the Brotherhood. One was al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, or the Islamic Group. Another was al-Jihad. In October 1981, al-Jihad turned on the man who had helped bring it into existence, assassinating Sadat as he stood on a military reviewing stand outside Cairo. In the eyes of the Islamists, Sadat’s sins were many, but none so egregious as his peace treaty with Israel. Before opening fire, Sadat’s assassin, Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli, screamed: “I have killed Pharaoh, and I do not fear death.”

“The Gama’a and al-Jihad, of course, are with us still,” al-Zayyat said. “Their goal is to destroy the Mubarak regime, replace it with an Islamic republic, and then use Egypt as a base of operations to wage a global jihad against the West and Israel. Both groups are signatories of al-Qaeda’s declaration of war against the Crusaders and the Jews, and both are formally under the umbrella of Osama bin Laden’s command structure. Egyptians make up more than half of al-Qaeda’s core personnel, and they hold five of the nine positions in the ruling Shura Council. And, of course, Osama’s right-hand man is Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Jihad.”

“So Egypt is no different than the Saudis,” Gabriel said. “You thought you could reach accommodation with the Islamic terrorists by giving them money and encouragement and deflecting their rage outward. And now they’re threatening to destroy you.”

“You did the same thing, my friend. Don’t forget that the Office and Shabak gave money and support to Hamas in the early days because you thought the Islamists were a good counterweight to the secular leftists of the PLO.”

“Point taken,” Gabriel said. “But please don’t tell me I’m supposed to pay you fifty thousand dollars to tell me that al-Qaeda is responsible for kidnapping the daughter of the American ambassador to London. I could have saved my money and just turned on CNN instead. They have lots of experts saying the same thing.”

“It’s not just al-Qaeda,” al-Zayyat said. “It’s a joint operation, a merging of assets, if you will.”

“Who’s the other partner?”

The Egyptian walked over to the drinks cabinet and refilled his glass. “There were other groups besides the Gama’a and al-Jihad that formed in the seventies. More than fifty in all. Some were just cells of university students that couldn’t organize a bucket brigade. Others were good. Very good.” He took a drink of the whisky. “Unfortunately, a group that sprang up at the University of Minya was one of the good ones. They called themselves the Sword of Allah.”

The Sword of Allah… Gabriel knew the name, of course. Anyone who worked in the field of Islamic terrorism did. In the late 1970s, after Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem, a group of university students, professors, and civil servants from the Upper Egyptian town of Minya had coalesced around a fiery Islamist cleric named Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq. Sheikh Tayyib adopted a simple program for seizing power in Egypt: inflict as much terror and bloodshed on Egyptian society as possible and the regime would collapse under its own weight. In the early 1990s, he nearly succeeded. Flushed with the prospects of success, the sheikh decided to take his campaign global, long before there was such a thing known as al-Qaeda. He sent emissaries to Europe to open branch offices of the Sword among the burgeoning Muslim communities there and dispatched his older brother and closest advisor, Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq, to suburban Washington to wage jihad against the most important patron of the Egyptian regime: the government of the United States. In 1998, Sheikh Abdullah was found guilty on charges of conspiring to bomb the State Department, the Capitol, and the headquarters of the FBI and was sentenced to life in prison. He had recently been diagnosed with cancer. Freeing the sheikh before his death was now one of the Sword’s top priorities.

“Al-Qaeda has been itching to hit London again for a long time,” al-Zayyat said. “And, of course, Sheikh Tayyib wants to get his brother back from the Americans. They decided to merge the two priorities into a single terror spectacular. Al-Qaeda handled the bombings, while the Sword and its European networks saw to the hostage-taking side of the operation.”

“What evidence do you have of Sword involvement?”

“You had the proof in your own hands for a few seconds in Hyde Park,” the Egyptian said. “Samir al-Masri, former student of engineering at the University of Minya, is a member of the Sword of Allah and one of its more talented terrorist operatives.”

“It would have been helpful, Wazir, if you’d told the Dutch he was living quietly in west Amsterdam.”

“We didn’t know he was in Holland or we would have.” The Egyptian sat down on the couch next to his bag of money. “Samir left Egypt a few months after the Americans went into Iraq. When the insurgency started up, he joined forces with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and perfected his craft. Apparently he slipped out of Iraq shortly before Zarqawi’s death and made his way to Europe via Damascus. If you want to blame anyone for the fact that Samir was living quietly in west Amsterdam, blame the Syrians. And the Dutch, of course. Christ, they’ll let anyone into their country.”

“What else do you have besides Samir’s connection?”

“The al-Hijrah Mosque.”

“What about it?”

“The imam there is a graduate of al-Azhar in Cairo and a member of the Sword of Allah.”

“That’s still not enough.”

“This discussion is academic,” al-Zayyat said. “In twenty-four hours you’ll have proof the Sword of Allah is behind this. That’s when they’ll offer to trade Elizabeth Halton for Sheikh Abdullah.”

“How can you be so sure about the timing?”

“The Sword has carried out a number of kidnappings inside Egypt. Most of the time the outside world doesn’t even hear about them. Their method of operation is always the same. They wait one week before making demands. And if they set a deadline for killing the girl, they’ll do it when the second hand reaches twelve. And there won’t be any extensions or delays.”

“The Americans will never release Sheikh Abdullah.”

“If they don’t, the Sword of Allah and al-Qaeda are going to send the American president’s goddaughter home in a bag-or what’s left of her, I should say. They’ll kill her the same way they took her. With a great deal of bloodshed.”

“Have you told the Americans about any of this?”

Al-Zayyat shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Orders from on high,” said al-Zayyat. “Our fearless leader is afraid his patrons in Washington will be angry when they find out the plot to kidnap the ambassador’s daughter originated in Egypt. He’s trying to delay the day of reckoning as long as possible. In the meantime, he’s directed the SSI and the other security services to gather as much intelligence as possible.”

“Who’s the mastermind?”

“If I had to guess, it goes all the way to the top.”

“Zawahiri?”

The Egyptian nodded.

“But surely there’s someone between him and the operatives,” Gabriel said. “Someone like Khaled Sheikh Mohammad. Someone who made the trains run on time.”

“There is.” Al-Zayyat held his tumbler of whisky up to the sunlight and contemplated its color for a moment without speaking. “And if I had to venture a guess as to his identity, I’d say it’s almost certainly the work of the Sphinx.”

“Who’s the Sphinx?”

“We’re not sure who he is, but we know his handiwork all too well. All told, he’s killed more than a thousand people inside Egypt -tourists, government ministers, wealthy friends of the regime. We assume he’s highly educated and very well connected. We believe he has agents of influence and spies at the highest level of Egyptian society and government, including inside my service. He operates through cutouts like Samir. We’ve never been able to get close to him.”

“Could he have planned something like this from Egypt?”

“Highly unlikely,” al-Zayyat said. “He’s probably in Europe. In fact, I’d be willing to wager a fair amount of money that he is. The Sword has been very quiet in Egypt for the last year. Now we know why.”

“Where’s Sheikh Tayyib?”

“The same place he’s been for the last fifteen years: underground. He moves between a string of hideouts in Upper Egypt and the oasis towns of the Western Desert. We also think he moves in and out of Libya and the Sudan.”

“Find him,” Gabriel said.

“Elizabeth Halton will be dead long before we ever find the sheikh.”

“Start rounding up Sword operatives and bringing them in for quiet chats. That’s your specialty, isn’t it, Wazir? Quiet chats with Islamic extremists?”

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” al-Zayyat replied. “Trust me, Allon, we’re kicking down doors as we speak, but the Sphinx knew we would. No one in Egypt knows where the girl is. I doubt even Sheikh Tayyib knows the operational details. Your best chance at finding her alive died with Samir al-Masri. The Sword is good at hiding people.”

“Someone knows,” Gabriel said. “Someone has to know.”

“The Sphinx knows. Find the Sphinx and you’ll find the girl.” The Egyptian put his hand on the grip of the briefcase. “So have I earned my fifty thousand yet?”

“I want everything you have on the Sword of Allah,” Gabriel said. “Case files, membership rolls, known front organizations in Europe. Names, addresses, telephone numbers.”

“It’s in a suitcase in the trunk of my car,” the Egyptian said. “But it’s going to cost you.”

Gabriel sighed. “How much, Wazir?”

“Another fifty thousand.”

“I don’t happen to have another fifty thousand on me.”

The Egyptian smiled. “I’ll take an IOU,” he said. “I know you’re good for it.”

The Samsonite suitcase that Wazir al-Zayyat produced from the trunk of his rented Volkswagen contained the lifeblood of one of the world’s most violent terror organizations and was therefore a steal at fifty thousand. When the Egyptian was gone, Gabriel opened a directory of known Sword members and started reading. Five minutes later he came across a name that was familiar to him. He located a photocopy of the corresponding file and examined the photograph. It was dated and of poor quality; even so, Gabriel could tell it was the same man he had encountered a week earlier in Amsterdam. I’m the person you’re looking for in Solomon Rosner’s files, the man had said to him that night. And I’ve come to help you.

16

The knock was cautious and contrite. Dr. Yusuf Ramadan, professor of Near Eastern history at American University in Cairo, looked up from his work and saw a woman standing in the doorway of his office. Like all female employees of the Institute of Islamic Studies, she was veiled. Even so, the professor averted his eyes slightly as she spoke.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Professor, but if it’s all right with you, I’ll be leaving now.”

“Of course, Atifah.”

“Can I get you anything before I go? More tea, perhaps?”

“I’ve had too much already.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “In fact, I’m going to be leaving soon myself. I’m meeting a colleague from the Sorbonne for coffee at four-thirty.”

“Don’t forget your umbrella. It’s still raining.”

“It’s been raining for five days.”

“Welcome to Paris. Peace be upon you, Professor Ramadan.”

“And you, Atifah.”

The woman slipped out of the office and quietly closed the door. Ramadan spent another ten minutes tapping away at the keyboard of his laptop computer, then placed the computer and his research files into his briefcase and stood up. He was slender and bearded, with receding curly hair, soft brown eyes, and the fine aquiline features often associated with Egyptian aristocracy. He was not of aristocratic birth; indeed, the man now regarded as one of Egypt ’s most influential intellectuals and writers was born the son of a postal clerk in a poor village at the edge of the Fayoum Oasis. Brilliant, charismatic, and a self-professed political moderate, he had taken a leave of absence from the university eighteen months earlier and signed on as a visiting scholar in residence with the institute. The ostensible purpose of his stay in Paris was to complete his masterwork, a critical reexamination of the Crusades that promised to be the standard against which all future books on the subject would be measured. When he was not writing, Professor Ramadan could often be seen in the lecture halls of the Sorbonne, or on French television, or even in the corridors of government power. Embraced wholeheartedly by the intelligentsia and media of Paris, his opinions were much in demand on matters ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the American occupation of Iraq and, of course, the scourge of Islamic terror, a topic with which he was intimately familiar.

He walked over to his narrow window and looked down into the boulevard de la Chapelle. Dark and raw, a halfhearted drizzle: Paris in winter. It had been many days since the sun had made its last appearance, and even then it was only a furtive peak from behind the blanket of cloud. Ramadan longed to be back in Cairo: the thunder of the traffic, the smells both putrid and magical, the music of a thousand muezzins, the kiss of the desert wind at night…It had been six months since his last visit. Soon, he thought. Soon it would be over and he would go home again. And if things went according to plan, the country to which he would return would be very different from the one he had left behind. Strange to think that it had all been set in motion here, in dreary Paris, from his tiny office in the eighteenth arrondissement.

He pulled on his overcoat and hat, then snatched up his briefcase and umbrella and stepped into the corridor. As he passed by the staff lounge he saw several colleagues gathered around the television, watching a briefing by the commissioner of London ’s Metropolitan Police. Mahmoud Aburish, the tubby, owl-like director of the institute, motioned for Ramadan to join him. Ramadan walked over and looked up at the screen.

“What’s he saying?”

“No word yet from the kidnappers,” said Aburish. “And no clues about the woman’s whereabouts.”

“Do you believe him?”

“The British are very good, but judging from the expression on that man’s face, he’s not holding any cards up his sleeve.” Aburish regarded Ramadan through his smudged eyeglasses. “You’re the resident expert on matters like these, Yusuf. Who do you think has kidnapped this woman? And what on earth do they want?”

“I suppose we’ll know soon enough,” Ramadan said.

“How goes the writing?”

“It goes, Mahmoud, just not as quickly as I had hoped. In fact, I’m having drinks with my French publisher in a few minutes to tell him I won’t be able to deliver the manuscript on time. He’s not going to be pleased. Neither are my British and American publishers.”

“Is there anything the institute can do?”

“You’ve done more than you’ll ever know, Mahmoud.”

Aburish gazed toward the television as Dame Eleanor McKenzie, the director general of MI5, stepped before the television cameras. Yusuf Ramadan, the man known to the Egyptian security services only as the Sphinx, slipped silently from the lounge and headed downstairs.

Though Yusuf Ramadan had been far from forthright during his brief encounter with Mahmoud Aburish, he had been truthful about one thing. He was indeed having drinks with his French publisher that evening-at Fouquet’s on the Champs-Elysées, to be precise-but not until five o’clock. He had one appointment before then, however, on the Quai de Montebello directly across the Seine from Notre-Dame. The man waiting for him there was tall and heavily built, dressed in a dark cashmere overcoat with a silk scarf knotted rakishly at his throat. His real name was Nidal Mutawalli, though Ramadan referred to him only as Abu Musa. Like Ramadan, he was from the Fayoum Oasis. They had grown up together, attended school together, and then gone their separate ways-Ramadan into the world of books and writing, Abu Musa into the world of finance and money. The jihad and their shared hatred of the Egyptian regime and its American backers had reunited them. It was Abu Musa, Yusuf Ramadan’s childhood friend, who allowed him to keep his identity a secret from the Egyptian security services. They were, quite literally, two of the most dangerous men on earth.

A light drizzle was drifting through the lamplight along the Seine embankments and beading like teardrops on the plastic sheets covering the stalls of the bouquinistes. Ramadan wandered over to a trestle table stacked with books and thumbed a worn volume of Chekhov. Abu Musa joined him a moment later and picked up a copy of L’Etranger by Camus.

“Have you read him?” Abu Musa asked.

“Of course,” said Ramadan. “I’m sure you’ll find it to your liking.”

Ramadan moved on to the next table of books. Abu Musa joined him again a moment later, and again they exchanged a few harmless-sounding words. On it went like this for the next ten minutes as they moved slowly together down the row of booksellers, Ramadan leading, Abu Musa trailing after him. I’ve always enjoyed the poetry of Dryden… I saw this play the last time I was in London… The DVD has been shot and is ready to be handed over… We’re ready to make the phone call on your orders…

Ramadan picked up a copy of Hemingway and held it up for Abu Musa to see. “This has always been one of my favorites,” he said. “Allow me to give it to you as a gift.”

He handed the bookseller a five-euro note, then, after jotting a brief inscription on the title page of the volume, presented it formally to Abu Musa with his hand over his heart. They parted a moment later as Emmanuel, the thirteen-ton bell in Notre-Dame’s south tower, tolled five o’clock. Abu Musa disappeared into the streets of the Latin Quarter; Yusuf Ramadan crossed to the other side of the river and walked in the Tuileries gardens, thinking about the question Mahmoud Aburish had posed to him earlier that afternoon. Who do you think has kidnapped this woman? And what on earth do they want? Because of the meeting that had just transpired in plain sight along the banks of the Seine, the Americans soon would be told the answers to those questions. Whether they chose to inform the rest of the world was none of Professor Ramadan’s concern-at least not yet.

He walked for several minutes more in the gardens, checking his tail for signs of surveillance and thinking about his pending meeting with his French publisher on the Champs-Elysées. He supposed he had to come up with some suitable explanation as to why his book was now hopelessly behind schedule. He would think of something. The Sphinx was an extremely good liar.

17

There was one telephone in the makeshift operations center that was never used for outgoing calls. It was attached to a sophisticated digital recording device and linked to the call-tracing network of the Metropolitan Police. The receiver itself was red, and the ringer volume was set to foghorn level. Only one person was allowed to touch it: Supervisory Special Agent John O’Donnell, head of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group and the Bureau’s chief hostage negotiator.

The telephone had rung forty-seven times since the disappearance of Elizabeth Halton. Thus far none of the calls had been deemed credible by O’Donnell or his counterparts at the Met, though the demands of some of the callers had managed to provide a few brief interludes of comedy in what were otherwise very dark days. One caller said he would release Elizabeth Halton in exchange for the sum of one hundred thousand British pounds. O’Donnell agreed to the deal, and the man was arrested later that evening in the parking lot of a pub in West Sussex. One demanded a date with a famous American actress of questionable talent. One said he would free his American captive in exchange for tickets to that weekend’s Arsenal-Chelsea football match. One called because he was depressed and needed someone to talk to. O’Donnell chatted with him for five minutes to make sure Scotland Yard had a good trace and bade the man good evening as officers moved in for the arrest.

The call that arrived at the embassy’s main switchboard shortly after six that evening was different from the start. The voice was male and electronically disguised, the first caller to employ such a device. “I have information about Elizabeth Halton,” he calmly told the switchboard operator. “Transfer me to the appropriate individual. If more than five seconds elapse, I will hang up and she will die. Do you understand me?”

The operator made it clear that she did indeed understand and politely asked the caller to stand by. Two seconds later, O’Donnell’s phone sounded in the ops center. He snatched the red receiver from the cradle and brought it quickly to his ear. “This is John O’Donnell of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said crisply. “How can I help you?”

“The beach at Beacon Point,” the electronically altered voice said. “Look beneath the overturned rowboat. This will be our first and only contact.”

The line went dead.

O’Donnell hung up the phone and listened to the call again on his recorder, then picked up the receiver of a separate dedicated line that rang automatically at Scotland Yard.

“That sounded legit to me,” O’Donnell said.

“I concur,” said the Met officer at the other end of the line.

“Did you get a trace?”

“It was placed with a mobile phone. Something tells me we’re not going to catch this one. He sounded like a real pro.”

“Where’s Beacon Point?”

“The south coast, about ten miles east of Plymouth.”

“How far from central London?”

“About a hundred and fifty miles.”

“I want to be on site for the retrieval-whatever it is.”

“The Royal Navy has been kind enough to leave a Sea King at the London Heliport for just this kind of scenario.”

“Where’s the heliport?”

“South bank of the Thames between the Battersea and Wandsworth bridges.”

“Tell them to warm up the engines. Can you give me a lift through town?”

“I’ll have a pair of patrol cars outside the embassy in two minutes.”

“Send them to Upper Brook Street,” O’Donnell said. “There are no reporters back there.”

“Right.”

The flight to the south coast was ninety minutes in duration and thoroughly unpleasant because of high winds swirling ahead of a strong Atlantic storm front. As the Sea King swooped down toward Beacon Point, O’Donnell looked out his window and saw arc lamps blazing away on the little sand beach and blue police lights flashing along roads linking the surrounding villages of Kingston, Houghton, and Ringmore. The landing zone was a small patch of moorland behind the beach. O’Donnell was met there by the officer in charge, a stubby deputy chief constable from the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary aptly named Blunt. He briefed the FBI man as they walked down a sandy pathway to the beach.

“We’ve determined that the beach and surrounding grounds are free of bombs or any other weaponry,” he said. “About twenty minutes ago we used a remote-control robotic device to have a look under the overturned boat.”

“Anything there?” O’Donnell asked.

“Nothing that we could see with the camera, but it’s possible something could be buried beneath it. We decided to wait until you arrived before moving the boat.”

They clambered out of the dunes and stopped about twenty yards from the boat. An eight-foot dinghy with peeling gray and white paint, it was surrounded by a half-dozen policemen in blast-protection suits and visors. With a terse nod, Blunt spurred them into action, and the boat was soon resting on its hull. Taped to the seat in the stern was a DVD in a clear plastic case. Blunt retrieved it and immediately handed it to O’Donnell, who carried it back to the helicopter and inserted it into a laptop computer. As the image flickered to life on the screen, O’Donnell swore beneath his breath and looked at the British police official.

“I need a favor from you.”

“Anything,” said Blunt, his tone grave.

“Tell your men it was just a hoax. Apologize to them for the inconvenience, and thank them on behalf of the American people and Ambassador Halton for their fine work tonight.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr. O’Donnell.”

O’Donnell glanced at the screen. “This DVD does not exist. Now do you understand?”

Blunt nodded. He understood perfectly.

18

The Gulfstream V executive jet touched down at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and taxied to a secure hangar with floors as smooth as polished marble. Gabriel descended the airstair, Samsonite bag in hand, and headed toward a waiting Suburban with Virginia license plates. The two CIA security men inside did not speak as he tossed the suitcase into the backseat and climbed in after it. Gabriel was used to this sort of behavior by the Americans. They were trained by their counter-intelligence people to believe that Office agents viewed every encounter with Agency personnel, no matter how mundane, as an opportunity for intelligence gathering. He was tempted to pose an inappropriate question or two, just to keep the myth alive. Instead he asked only where they were taking him.

“Headquarters,” said the man in the passenger seat.

“I don’t want to go to Headquarters.”

“You’ll go into the building black. No one will know you’re there.”

“Why can’t we meet in a safe house, the way we usually do?”

“Your contact doesn’t have time to leave the building today. I’m sure you can understand that.”

Gabriel was about to object again but stopped himself. Twice in the past year his photograph had appeared in the world’s newspapers, once for his actions inside the Vatican, and again for his attempt to prevent the kidnapping of Elizabeth Halton. Making his first appearance at Langley didn’t seem to matter much in comparison. Besides, if Shamron and the prime minister had their way, it wouldn’t be his last.

There was little traffic on the road at that hour on a Saturday, and it took them just thirty minutes to make the drive from Andrews to the woods of Langley. After a brief pause at the heavily fortified gatehouse for a credential check, they headed up the long immaculate drive toward the OHB, the Original Headquarters Building. Because Gabriel was entering the building “black,” they sped past the main entrance and turned into an underground parking garage. One of the security men helped Gabriel with the Samsonite bag; the other led the way into a secure elevator. A card key was inserted, buttons were pushed, and a moment later they were ascending rapidly toward the seventh floor. When the doors opened, two more security men were waiting in the foyer, guns visible beneath their blazers. Gabriel was escorted along a carpeted corridor to a secure door, beyond which lay a suite of spacious offices occupied by the most powerful intelligence officers in the world. The man standing in the anteroom, dressed in gray flannel trousers and a wrinkled oxford cloth shirt, looked as though he had wandered in by mistake.

“How was the flight?” asked Adrian Carter.

“You have a very nice plane.”

He shook Gabriel’s hand warmly and looked at the bag.

“Planning to stay long, or just a day or two?”

“Only as long as I’m welcome,” Gabriel said.

“I hope you brought more than clean shirts and underwear.”

“I did.”

Carter gave a fatigued smile and led Gabriel wordlessly into his office.

Gabriel accepted a cup of black coffee and lowered himself onto Carter’s couch. Carter picked up a remote control from the edge of his tidy desk and fired it at a bank of television monitors. Elizabeth Halton’s image immediately appeared on one of the screens. She was seated on the floor of a featureless room, dressed in the same cold-weather running suit she had been wearing in Hyde Park the morning of her kidnapping. In her hands was a copy of the Times, headlined with her own abduction. Four men were standing behind her: black jumpsuits, black balaclavas, green headbands with crossed swords and crescent moons. The one directly behind Elizabeth had a large knife in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. He was reading a statement in Egyptian-accented Arabic.

“I take it you don’t require translation,” Carter said.

Gabriel, listening intently, shook his head. “He says he’s from the Sword of Allah. He says they want you to release Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq from prison and return him to Egypt by six P.M. London time next Friday. He says that if you don’t comply with their demands, the ambassador’s daughter will die. There will be no extensions, no negotiations, and no more contact. If there is any attempt at a rescue, Elizabeth Halton will be killed immediately.”

The image turned to hash. Carter killed it with a flick of his remote and looked at Gabriel.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I learned about the Sword of Allah connection yesterday. It’s why I’m here.”

“How did you find out?”

“Sources and methods, Adrian. Sources and methods.”

“Come now,” Carter said mildly. “A woman’s life is at stake. Now is not the time to be territorial.”

“Just because we are technically at peace with Egypt doesn’t mean we don’t spy on them. We need to know whether the regime is going to stand or fall. We need to know whether we are about to be facing a hostile Islamic republic armed with advanced American weaponry. And we don’t always get the information we need from our friends here at Langley.”

“Your spy is SSI, I take it?”

Gabriel gave a sigh of resignation. “Our spy is in the business of keeping Mubarak and his regime alive.”

Carter took that as confirmation of his suspicions. “Why is it that we’ve spent upward of fifty billion dollars propping up that regime, but you found out about the Sword connection before we did?”

“Because we’re better than you, Adrian, especially in the Middle East. We’ve always been better and we always will be. You have your unquestioned military might and the power of your economy, but we have a nagging fear that we might not survive. Fear is a far more powerful motivation than money.”

Carter placed the remote thoughtfully on his desk and sat down in his executive swivel chair.

“When did you get the video?” Gabriel asked.

Carter told him.

“Has word gotten out to the British media?”

“Not yet,” Carter said. “It’s our wish that it doesn’t-at least not right away. We’d like to preserve the luxury of planning our response without the media screaming at us at every turn.”

“I wouldn’t count on MI5 and Scotland Yard safeguarding your secret for long. Someone will leak it, just the way they leaked my involvement and arrest.”

“Don’t be too hard on Graham Seymour,” Carter said. “We need him and so do you. We brethren of the secret world don’t burn each other at the stake at times like these. We band together and bind our wounds. We have to. The barbarians are at the gates.”

“The barbarians broke down the gates a long time ago, Adrian. They’re living among us now and devouring our children.” Gabriel sipped his coffee. “What is the position of the president?”

“It’s not one I’d wish on my worst enemy,” Carter replied. “As you know, he is a deeply religious man, and he takes his responsibilities as Elizabeth ’s godfather very seriously. That said, he knows that if he complies with the demands of the kidnappers, no American diplomat anywhere in the world will ever be safe again. He also knows that if Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq is allowed to return to Egypt, the Mubarak government will find itself in a very precarious state. For all its problems, Egypt is still the most important country in the Arab world. If Egypt goes Islamic it will have a disastrous ripple effect across the entire region-disastrous for my country and yours. That means Elizabeth Halton is going to die one week from now, unless we can somehow find her and free her first.”

Carter walked over to the window and peered out toward the leafless trees along the river. “You’ve been in a position like this, Gabriel. What would you do if you were the president?”

“I’d tell my biggest, meanest sons of bitches to do whatever it takes to find her.”

“And if we can’t? Do we make a deal and save our child from the barbarians?”

Gabriel left the question unanswered. Carter gazed silently out the window for a moment. “My doctor says the stress of this job is bad for my heart. He says I need to get more exercise. Take a walk with me, Gabriel. It will do us both good.”

“It’s twenty degrees outside.”

“The cold air is good for you,” Carter said. “It lends clarity to one’s thoughts. It steels one’s resolve for the travails that lay ahead.”

They slipped from the OHB through a side exit and set out along a paved jogging trail through the trees overlooking the river. Carter was bundled in a thick toggle coat and wool hat. Gabriel had only the leather jacket he’d taken with him the previous morning to Cyprus and within a few moments he was numb with cold.

“All right,” Carter said. “No one’s listening now. How did you know they were going to strike in London?”

“No one’s listening?” Gabriel looked around at the trees. “This place is littered with cameras, motion sensors, and hidden microphones.”

“That’s true,” said Carter. “But answer the question anyway.”

Gabriel told him about the tip he had received from Ibrahim Fawaz, the photographs he discovered during his hasty search of Samir al-Masri’s apartment, and the lines on the legal pad he had correctly identified as a sketch of Hyde Park.

“Amazing,” said Carter with genuine admiration in his voice. “And what was the great Gabriel Allon doing in Amsterdam?”

“I’m afraid you don’t get to know that part of the story.”

Carter, a consummate professional, moved on without objection. “Ibrahim Fawaz sounds like exactly the sort of Muslim we’ve been looking for-a man who’s willing to expose the extremists and terrorists residing within his community and his mosque.”

“That’s what I thought, too. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Inside that suitcase I brought with me is a substantial portion of the SSI’s dossier on the Sword of Allah. Guess whose file I found in there?”

“Your source is Sword of Allah?”

Gabriel nodded. “Before leaving Egypt, Dr. Ibrahim Fawaz served as a professor of economics at the University of Minya. According to his file, he was one of the group’s earliest organizers. He was arrested after Sadat’s assassination. The file is a bit vague on the reasons why, along with the duration of his detainment.”

“They usually are,” Carter said. “Why did he leave Egypt and come to Europe? And why did he tell you there was a plot being organized from within the al-Hijrah Mosque in west Amsterdam?”

“Obviously someone needs to put those very questions to him-and sooner rather than later. He lied to me or didn’t tell me the whole story. Either way, he was being deceptive. He’s hiding something, Adrian.”

They came to the intersection of two pathways. Carter guided Gabriel to the left, and together they set out through a stand of leafless trees. Carter dug a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from the pocket of his overcoat and slowly loaded the bowl. “They don’t let us smoke in the building anymore,” he said, pausing to ignite the tobacco with an elegant silver lighter.

“I wish we’d pass a similar rule.”

“Can you imagine Shamron without his Turkish cigarettes?” Carter started walking again, trailing a plume of maple-scented smoke behind him like a steam engine. “I suppose we have two options. Option one, we pass along your information about Fawaz to the Dutch police and allow them to bring him in for questioning, with the FBI in close attendance, of course.”

“Option number two?”

“We pick him up for an off-the-record chat, in a place where the usual rules of interrogation don’t apply.”

“You know which option I would vote for.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Carter said. “I think you should go to Amsterdam and personally supervise the operation.”

“Me?” Gabriel shook his head. “I’m afraid my role in this affair is officially over. Besides, it’s not as if the CIA doesn’t have experience in these kinds of operations.”

“We do indeed,” Carter said. “But, unfortunately, we’ve screwed up quite a few of them-under my watch, I’m ashamed to say. The Europeans are no longer willing to turn a blind eye to our extralegal activities on their soil, and our own covert operatives are so afraid of prosecution at home and abroad that they no longer undertake sensitive missions without first consulting a lawyer. Our intrepid director has his finger firmly in the air and has detected that, for the moment, the wind is no longer at our backs. The days when we roamed Europe and the Middle East, breaking laws and limbs as we saw fit, are now over. The doors of the secret prisons are now closed, and we no longer deliver our enemies into the hands of men who dream up novel uses for rubber hoses and cattle prods. We’ve put away our brass knuckles. We’re a club fit for gentlemen from Princeton and Yale again, but that’s as it should be.”

“We like to keep our gentlemen from Princeton and Yale confined to King Saul Boulevard, where they can’t get into trouble.”

Carter walked in silence for a moment with his eyes on the pavement. “We’ve been preparing for something like this to happen for a long time. Our brethren at the FBI have overall responsibility for hostage recovery efforts under a scenario like this. We are gathering intelligence, of course, and liaising with allied services in Europe and the Middle East. We would regard you and your team as a black element of our larger multinational effort. You would, in effect, be a subcontractor of the Agency. It’s unconventional, but, given our past association, I think we can make it work.”

“I would need the approval of the prime minister.” Gabriel hesitated. “And, of course, Shamron would have to sign off on it.”

“I’ll set up a secure link to Jerusalem from my office. I promise no one will listen in.”

“I’ll call from our embassy, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself.” Carter paused and knocked his pipe against the trunk of a tree. “Did your source happen to tell you who he thinks is behind this?”

Gabriel answered the question. Carter nodded and stuffed more tobacco into his pipe. “We know all about the Sphinx,” he said. “We think he’s the one who planned the attack on the tourists at the Pyramids three years ago that left seventeen Americans dead. We also think he’s responsible for the murder of two of our diplomats in Cairo. One of them was CIA, by the way. There’s a star for him on the wall in the main lobby. I’m afraid the Sphinx has something of a reputation when it comes to dealing with those who arrest or kill Sword personnel. Thanks to your efforts in London, you can be sure you’re at the top of his hit list. You’ll need to watch your step when you’re back in the field.”

“I assume you’ve told the Egyptians about the video and the demands?”

“We felt we had no choice,” Carter said. “They’ve pledged their full support, and they’ve also made it clear to us that caving in to the Sword’s demands would be a very bad idea. The Egyptian foreign minister is traveling to Washington secretly later today to reinforce that point with the secretary of state and the president. He’s bringing along a team from the Interior Ministry and representatives of all the Egyptian security and intelligence services. We’re adding Egyptian components to our task force here and in London.”

“Just make sure no one mentions our little black operation in front of them. The Islamists have penetrated every level of Egyptian society and government, including the security services. You can be sure the Sphinx has contacts inside the SSI.”

“Your operation does not exist, and no one will know about it but me.” Carter looked at his watch. “How long will it take you to deploy in Amsterdam?”

“I have a man there already who can begin surveillance of the target immediately.”

“One man? I hope’s he’s good.”

“He is.”

“And the rest of your team?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“That leaves only five days before the deadline.” Carter said. “Take my plane back to Ben-Gurion. That will save you several critical hours. We’ll need someone from the Agency on your team in order to coordinate your activities with the larger effort. Otherwise we run the risk of tripping over each other in the field.”

“I don’t want anyone from the CIA on my team. He’ll just get in the way. And besides, I fully anticipate we’ll be doing things that violate American law. I can’t have him stopping every five minutes to consult with his Washington lawyer.”

“I’m afraid I have to insist.”

“All right, Adrian, we’ll let you come along.”

“Nothing would make me happier, but leaving Headquarters is not an option, at least not at the moment. I do have another candidate in mind, someone who’s experienced in the field and has been forged by fire. And the best part is you trained her.”

Gabriel stopped walking. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m quite serious.”

“Where is she?”

“The Saudi desk at the Counterterrorism Center.”

“How soon can she be ready to leave?”

“I’ll make one phone call and she’s yours.”

19

The lights of the French coastline pricked the darkness off the prow of the Portsmouth-to-Le Havre ferry. The man seated near the observation windows in the upper lounge glanced at his wristwatch. Thirty minutes remained of the five-hour crossing. He signaled the waitress and, with a small gesture of his hand, ordered another Carlsberg, his fourth of the journey. She brought it a moment later and placed it suggestively on his table. She had bleached-blond hair and a jeweled stud in her lower lip. Her name tag said CHRISTINE. The man stared directly at her, the way infidel men always stared at their women, and allowed his eyes to wander over her breasts.

“You have a name?” she asked.

“Thomas,” he said.

It wasn’t his real name. It was borrowed, like his borrowed driver’s license and borrowed British passport. His Yorkshire accent was the real thing. He was a Yorkshire lad, born and bred.

“I could be wrong, Thomas, but I think you have an admirer.”

“Oh, really? Who?”

The waitress glanced toward the other side of the lounge. Seated alone at a table near the opposite window was a small woman in her mid-twenties with short dark hair and stormy black eyes. She was dressed in tight jeans and a snug-fitting pullover embroidered with the word OUI.

“She’s been looking at you ever since we left Portsmouth,” the waitress said. “Can’t keep her eyes off you, actually.”

“Not my type.”

“What is your type?”

He remembered the words his controller had spoken during the final briefing. Whatever you do, don’t sit by yourself looking as though you are a terrorist. Strike up a conversation. Buy someone a drink. Flirt with a girl if there’s a girl to flirt with.

“I like girls named Christine who serve drinks on Channel ferries.”

“You don’t say.”

She smiled at him. He felt his stomach churn with rage.

“When are you going back to England?” she asked.

“Tomorrow, midday.”

“What a coincidence. I’m going back on the same boat. I’ll see you then, I hope.”

“Cheers to that.”

The waitress walked back to the bar. The man with the Yorkshire accent raised his beer to his lips and, before taking a swallow, begged Allah for forgiveness. He had done other things during the past few days for which he had sought Allah’s pardon. He had shaved his beard for the first time since he was a teenager and had dyed his dark hair platinum blond to look more like a native European. He had eaten pork sausage in a roadside café in Britain and had spoken to many women with unveiled faces. He had sought no absolution, however, for his role in the kidnapping of the American woman. Her father served the Crusader regime-a regime that oppressed Muslims around the world, a regime that supported Israel while the Palestinians suffered, a regime that supported an apostate thug like Hosni Mubarak who grew rich while the Egyptian people slipped deeper into poverty and despair with each passing day. The American woman was nothing more than a tool to be used to secure the release of Sheikh Abdullah from the Crusader jail, an infidel cow that could be taken to market and, if necessary, slaughtered without mercy and without fear of Allah’s retribution.

A voice crackled over the ship’s loudspeaker. It was the captain informing the passengers that the ferry would soon make landfall. The man in the bar finished the rest of his beer, then headed down a flight of stairs to the vehicle-loading deck. The silver LDV Maxus panel van was parked in the center column, three rows from the stern. He opened the rear doors and peered into the darkened cargo area. Inside were several dozen large crates that bore the markings of a fine bone china from a manufacturer in Yorkshire. The shipment, which was fully documented, was bound for an exclusive shop in the French city of Strasbourg -a shop that happened to be owned by an Egyptian with close links to the Sword of Allah. Several of the crates had been opened by British police at the Portsmouth ferry terminal, presumably in an effort to locate the missing American woman. Their search had uncovered nothing besides fine bone china from Yorkshire.

The man closed the rear doors, then walked around to the driver’s side and climbed behind the wheel. The dark-haired girl from the lounge bar was now seated in the passenger seat, her snug-fitting pullover concealed by a heavy leather jacket.

“It looked to me like you actually enjoyed flirting with that infidel cow,” the girl said.

“I wanted to slap her face the entire time.”

“She’s definitely going to remember you,” the girl said. “In fact, she’s going to remember us both.”

He smiled. That was exactly the point.

Five minutes later the ferry eased into the landing at Le Havre. The man with platinum blond hair and a Yorkshire accent guided the van onto French soil and headed for Rennes.

20

So whose bright idea was this anyway?” asked Sarah Bancroft. “Yours or Adrian’s?”

Gabriel looked at the woman seated opposite him in the passenger cabin of the CIA Gulfstream V. She had shoulder-length blond hair, skin the color of alabaster, and eyes like a cloudless summer sky. Dressed as she was now, in a cashmere pullover, trim faded jeans, and shapely leather boots, she was dangerously attractive.

“It was definitely Adrian ’s.”

“You, of course, balked at the suggestion.”

“Absolutely.”

“Why did you cave?”

“It was either a knuckle dragger from the Clandestine Service or you. Naturally I chose you.”

“It’s good to know one is wanted.”

“I didn’t want anyone. Adrian insisted we include someone from the Agency and you seemed like the least harmful option. After all, we trained you. You know some of our personnel and you know how we operate. You know the difference between a bodel and a neviot officer. You speak our language.” He frowned. “Well, almost. I suppose the fact you don’t speak Hebrew is an advantage. It means we can still talk about you behind your back.”

“I can only imagine the things you all said about me.”

“Rest assured it was all complimentary, Sarah. You were the quickest study any of us had ever seen. But then we always knew you would be. That’s why we chose you in the first place.”

Actually, it was Adrian Carter who had chosen her. You find the painting, Carter had said. I’ll get you the girl. The painting Gabriel had found was a lost masterpiece by van Gogh called Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table, which had vanished after Vincent’s death into the private collection of a Paris lawyer. Carter had managed to find a lost masterpiece of his own, a European-educated, multilingual art historian who was working as a curator at the Phillips Collection museum in Washington, D.C. Gabriel had used her to penetrate the business entourage of a Saudi billionaire terrorist financier named Zizi al-Bakari, and her life had never been the same since.

“You know, Gabriel, if I’m not mistaken, that might well have been the first compliment you ever paid me. During my preparation for the al-Bakari operation you barely said a word to me. You left me in the hands of your instructors and the other members of your team. Why was that?” Greeted by silence, she answered her own question. “Maybe you had to keep your distance. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been able to send me into Zizi’s camp. Who knows? Maybe you liked me a little too much.”

“My feelings for you were strictly professional, Sarah.”

“I wasn’t suggesting otherwise.” She was silent for a moment. “You know, after the operation ended, I missed you all terribly. You were the first real family I ever had.” She hesitated, then added: “I even missed you, Gabriel.”

“I almost got you killed.”

“Oh, that.” She looked down and made a church steeple of her ringless fingers. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. It was a beautiful operation. I’ll let you in on a little secret. The Agency isn’t as good as the Office. Our operations are like bricks and mortar. Yours are like…” She paused, searching for the right word. “Like art,” she said. “They’re like one of your grandfather’s paintings.”

“My grandfather was a German Expressionist,” Gabriel said. “Some of his paintings were rather chaotic and violent.”

“And so are your operations.”

Sarah reclined her seat and propped one boot on the armrest of Gabriel’s chair. An image flashed in Gabriel’s memory: Sarah, in a black veil, chained to a torturer’s table in a chalet in the mountains of Switzerland.

“You’re looking at me that way again,” she said.

“Which way is that?”

“The way you used to look at that van Gogh we sold Zizi. You used to look at me and Marguerite Gachet the same way. You’re assessing me. You’re looking for losses and abrasions. You’re wondering whether the canvas can be brought back to life or whether it’s beyond repair.”

“What’s the answer?”

“The canvas is fine, Gabriel. It doesn’t need any work at all. In fact, it’s quite suitable for hanging just as it is.”

“No more nightmares? No more sessions with the Agency psychologists?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” She looked down again, and a shadow seemed to pass over her eyes. “No one at Langley knows what Elizabeth Halton is going through better than I do. Maybe that’s why Adrian chose me for this assignment. He’s a former case officer. He knows how to push buttons.”

“I’ve noticed that.”

She looked up at him as the Gulfstream swept down the runway. “So where are we going?”

“First we’re going to make a brief stop in Tel Aviv to assemble my team. Then we’re going to Amsterdam to have a quiet word with a man who’s going to help us find Elizabeth Halton.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Probably not.”

“Tell me about him,” she said.

Gabriel waited until the plane was airborne. Then he told her everything.

It was shortly after dawn the next morning when they arrived at King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. Gabriel stopped briefly at the Operations Desk to collect Eli Lavon’s first surveillance photographs and watch reports from Amsterdam, then led Sarah along a subterranean corridor to a doorway marked 456C. For many years the room was nothing but a dumping ground for obsolete computers and worn-out office furniture, often used by the night staff as a place for romantic trysts. Now it was known throughout King Saul Boulevard as Gabriel’s Lair. Affixed to the door was a faded paper sign, written in his own stylish Hebrew hand, that read: TEMPORARY COMMITTEE FOR THE STUDY OF TERROR THREATS IN WESTERN EUROPE. The sign had served him well through two tumultuous operations. Gabriel decided to leave it for now.

He opened the combination lock, then switched on the fluorescent lights and stepped inside. The room was precisely as he had left it a year earlier. One wall was covered by surveillance photographs, another by a diagram of a global business empire, and a third by a collection of Impressionist prints. Gabriel’s chalkboard stood forlornly in the corner, its surface bare except for a single name: SARAH BAN-CROFT. She followed him inside tentatively, as though entering a forgotten room from her childhood, and stared at the photographs: Zizi al-Bakari with his spoiled daughter, Nadia, at his side; Abdul and Abdul, his American-educated lawyers; Herr Wehrli, his Swiss banker; Mr. bin Talal, his chief of security; Jean-Michel, his French personal trainer and Sarah’s main tormentor. She turned around and looked at Gabriel.

“You planned it all from here?”

He nodded his head slowly. She looked around the room with her eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“Somehow I expected something more…” Her voice trailed off, then she added: “Something more impressive.”

“This is the Office, Sarah, not Langley. We like to do things the old-fashioned way.”

“Obviously.” She looked at his chalkboard. “I haven’t seen one of those since I was in grade school.”

Gabriel smiled, then began removing the debris of the al-Bakari operation from the walls of the room as the other members of his team trickled slowly through the door. No introductions were necessary, for Sarah knew and adored them all. The first to arrive was Yossi, a tall, balding intellectual from the Office’s Research division who had read classics at Oxford and still spoke Hebrew with a pronounced British accent. Next came Dina Sarid, a veritable encyclopedia of terrorism from the History division who could recite the time, place, and casualty count of every act of violence ever committed against the State of Israel. Ten minutes later came Yaakov, a battle-hardened case officer from the Arab Affairs Department of Shabak, followed by Rimona, an IDF major who served as an analyst for AMAN, Israel ’s military intelligence service. Oded, a brooding, all-purpose field operative who specialized in snatches, arrived at eight with breakfast for everyone, and Mordecai, a wispy figure who dealt in all things electronic, stumbled in fifteen minutes later looking as though he had not slept the night before. The last to arrive was Mikhail, a gray-eyed gunman of Russian birth, who had single-handedly killed half of the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It was because of Mikhail and his proficiency with a handgun that Sarah was alive. She kissed his cheek as Gabriel walked to the front of the room and pinned Lavon’s surveillance photographs to the bulletin board.

“Now tat we’re all reacquainted,” he said, “it’s time to get to work. This is the man who’s going to lead us to Elizabeth Halton. He is a founding member of Sword of Allah, currently living in Amsterdam. We’re going to make him vanish into thin air, then we’re going to squeeze him dry. We have to work quickly, and we’re not going to make any mistakes.”

The Office prided itself on its ability to improvise in times of crisis, but even the vaunted Office chafed under the pressure of Gabriel’s demands. Safe accommodations were his biggest concern, and Housekeeping, the division that maintained and acquired Office properties, was his most stubborn opponent. Unlike cities such as Paris, London, and Rome, where the Office maintained dozens of safe flats, Amsterdam had no standing inventory of secure lodging. That meant accommodations had to be acquired quickly and on the open market, something the notoriously deliberate Housekeeping never liked to do. By ten o’clock they had taken a six-month lease on a two-bedroom apartment on the Herengracht canal, and by eleven they had secured a luxury houseboat on the Prinsengracht called the Heleen. That left only a site for the interrogation. Gabriel needed something large enough for his entire team and remote enough so that their presence would go undetected. He had a property in mind-a tumbledown country house outside Oldenburg that they had used during the Wrath of God operation-and eventually he was able to pry it from Housekeeping’s grasp.

Once Housekeeping capitulated, the rest fell like dominoes. By noon Travel had lined up a string of untraceable rental cars, and by one Identity had coughed up enough clean passports to allow every member of the team to travel as a European. Banking section initially balked at Gabriel’s request for a briefcase filled with petty cash, but at one-thirty he staged what amounted to an armed stickup and left Banking ten minutes later carrying a handsome attaché case filled with fifty thousand dollars and another fifty thousand in well-circulated euros.

By the middle of the afternoon the first members of his team were slipping quietly from King Saul Boulevard and heading off to Ben-Gurion. Oded, Mordecai, and Rimona left at three-thirty and boarded a flight to Brussels. Yossi, Yaakov, and Dina left an hour later on a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. Gabriel and Sarah left last and, shortly after eight o’clock, they were taking their seats in the first-class section of El Al’s evening flight to Paris. As the rest of the passengers filed on board, Gabriel telephoned Chiara to tell her he had been in the country and was leaving again. She didn’t ask where he was going. She didn’t need to know.

21

The Cairo slum known as Imbaba is one of the most desperately poor places on earth. Located just across the Nile from the fashionable island district of Zamalek, Imbaba is so crowded its rickety tenement buildings often collapse beneath the weight of their occupants. The alleys are unpaved, without names, and in perpetual darkness. They run with raw sewage and are choked with mounds of uncollected garbage. At night they are ruled by packs of wild dogs. The children of Imbaba wear rags, drink from cesspools, and live in fear of being eaten alive by the rats. There is little running water, only brief interludes of electricity, and even less hope. Only Islam. Radical Islam. It is written on the crumbling walls in green spray paint: ISLAM IS THE ANSWER…ONLY THE SWORD CAN SAVE US…

The mood in Imbaba that morning was more tense than usual. Riot police were roaming the alleyways and SSI men in plain clothes were surveying their surroundings from coffee shops and falafel stands. Hussein Mandali, a fourth-grade teacher at the Imbaba middle school, had seen it like this before. The security forces were about to move in for a sweep. Any man with a beard and a galabiya-or any woman in a niqab-would be arrested and thrown into the Scorpion, the dreaded facility inside Cairo’s Torah Prison complex reserved for Islamists. Everyone, regardless of sex, would spend at least a few minutes on the torture table. Pharaoh’s secret police did not concern themselves much with laws or rules of evidence. Their task was to instill fear, and they did so with ruthless efficiency.

Hussein Mandali did not wear a beard, though he did dress in the galabiya, the only garment he could afford on his pittance of a salary. Egypt ’s education system, like nearly everything else in the country, was crumbling. Teachers earned nothing and students learned little. For many years the country’s twenty-five thousand public schools had been under the control of Islamists. As a result they were little more than factories that each year churned out thousands of young men and women committed to the destruction of the regime and its supporters in the West. Hussein Mandali knew this phenomenon all too well. He lectured his students daily on the rewards of jihad and martyrdom, and told them it was their sacred duty to kill Americans and Jews and topple their puppet, Hosni Mubarak. The children of Imbaba were always willing recruits. The proof of Pharaoh’s indifference to their plight was all around them.

A group of police officers was standing guard at the end of the street. They eyed Mandali suspiciously as he slipped past without a word and set out along the cacophonous boulevard overlooking the western bank of the Nile. Two minutes later he turned left onto a bridge and crossed over onto Zamalek. How different it was here, he thought. Zamalek was an island of privilege surrounded by a sea of misery, a place where the vast majority of Egypt ’s population could not afford to buy a pastry or a cup of coffee. Zamalek would soon feel the wrath of Egypt ’s legions of downtrodden Muslims, Mandali thought. So would the entire world.

He followed July 26 Street across the island, then wandered for a time through the quiet side streets north of the Gezira Sporting Club to make certain he wasn’t being followed. Thirty minutes after leaving Imbaba, he approached a luxury high-rise apartment house called the Ramses Towers. The tall Sudanese standing guard over the entrance was a member of the Sword of Allah. He guided Mandali into the marble lobby and instructed him to use the back staircase so that none of the other tenants would see a poor man in their gilded elevator. As a result, Mandali was heavily winded when he presented himself at the door of Apartment 2408 and knocked in the prescribed fashion: two knocks, followed by a brief pause, then three more knocks.

The door was opened a few seconds later by a man dressed in a pale gray galabiya. He admitted Mandali into a formal entrance hall, then showed him into a magnificent sitting room overlooking the Nile. Seated cross-legged on the floor, dressed in a white galabiya and a crocheted white skullcap, was an elderly man with a long gray beard. Hussein Mandali kissed the old man’s leathery cheeks and sat before him.

“You have news from the street?” asked Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq.

“Mubarak’s forces have surrounded Imbaba and have started to infiltrate the district. In other parts of the country, the army and the police are hitting us very hard. Fayoum, Minya, Asyut, and Luxor have all seen heavy raids. The situation is tense. One spark and it could explode.”

The sheikh fingered his prayer beads and looked at the other man. “Bring me a tape recorder,” he said, “and I’ll give you a spark.”

The man laid the recorder at the feet of the sheikh and switched it on. One hour later Hussein Mandali was once again picking his way through the alleys of Imbaba, this time with a cassette tape concealed inside his sock. By nightfall the sermon would be circulating through a network of popular mosques and underground jihadists cells. After that it would be in the hands of Allah. Hussein Mandali was sure of only one thing. The open sewers of Imbaba would soon be flowing red with the blood of Pharaoh’s soldiers.

22

Heleen was squat and boxy, painted chocolate brown and trimmed in red. Flower boxes lined her gunwales, and a skiff with an outboard motor bobbed at her stern. Her interior had been recently renovated; stainless-steel appliances shone in the small but sophisticated kitchen, and Scandinavian-style furniture adorned the comfortable sitting room. Three modern paintings of questionable taste had been removed from the walls and in their place hung a large-scale map of Amsterdam and several dozen surveillance photographs of a Muslim man of late middle age. A notebook computer with secure communications software stood on the glass dining-room table, and before it sat a small figure who seemed to be wearing all of his clothing at once. Gabriel pleaded with him to extinguish his cigarette. The overnight drive from Paris had left him with a splitting headache.

“If Ibrahim Fawaz is a terrorist, he certainly doesn’t act like one,” Eli Lavon said. “He doesn’t engage in anything that might be construed as a rudimentary countersurveillance, and his movements are predictable and direct.”

Gabriel looked up at the map of Amsterdam on the wall, where Ibrahim’s daily routine was represented by a thick red line. It ran from his apartment in the August Allebéplein to the West Amsterdam Islamic Community Center, then to the Ten Kate Market, and finally to the al-Hijrah Mosque. Times of arrival and departure were meticulously noted and supported by photographic evidence.

“Where?” Gabriel asked. “Where should we take him?”

Lavon stood and walked over to the map. “In my learned opinion, there’s only one spot that’s suitable. Here”-he stabbed the map twice with his stubby forefinger-“at the end of the Jan Hazenstraat. He walks by there on the way home from evening prayers at the mosque. It’s reasonably quiet for Amsterdam, and if we can take out the streetlamps he’ll never see us coming.” He turned and looked at Gabriel. “When are you thinking about doing it?”

The answer came from the kitchen, where Sarah was making a fresh pot of coffee. “Tonight,” she said. “We have no choice but to take him tonight and start the interrogation.”

“Tonight?” Lavon looked at Gabriel and gave him an incredulous smile. “A year ago I was teaching this child how to walk the street like a professional. Now she is telling me that I have to kidnap a man from a densely populated European city after watching him for less than forty-eight hours.”

“Unfortunately, the child is right, Eli. We have to do it tonight and get started.”

Lavon sat down again and folded his arms. “Do you remember how long I watched Zwaiter in Rome before we even began talking about how to kill him? Three weeks. And that was for an assassination, not a kidnapping. And you know what Shamron always says about kidnap operations.”

“He says it’s much easier to leave a dead man on a sidewalk than it is to get a live one into a getaway car.” Gabriel smiled. “Shamron does have a way with words, doesn’t he?”

Sarah brought the pot of coffee to the table and sat down next to Gabriel. Lavon lit a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling in frustration.

“The police in this city are on high alert because of the links between the Amsterdam cell and the attack in London,” he said. “We need to watch Ibrahim for at least another week. We have to plan a primary escape route, a backup escape route, and a backup to the backup escape route. We have to put the snatch zone under twenty-four-hour surveillance, so we know there won’t be any surprises on the night of the operation. Have I forgotten anything?”

“The dry runs,” said Gabriel. “We should make at least three dry runs. And in a perfect world we would do all those things. But in the real world, Elizabeth Halton has less than five days to live. We prepare as much as we can, but we take him tonight.”

“And we pray to God we all don’t end up in jail, which is what’s going to happen if we make a mistake.” Lavon gazed despondently at his wristwatch. “Let’s take a walk over to the Oud West. Who knows? It might be our last opportunity for a very long time.”

The bustling outdoor market that ran for several blocks along the Ten Kate Straat reflected the altered demographics of Amsterdam ’s Oud West neighborhood. There were dates and lentils, barrels filled with olives and chickpeas, shwarma stands and falafel vendors, and three different halal butchers. Gabriel paused briefly in the open-air shoe store and picked through a pile of counterfeit American basketball shoes, the ultimate status symbol of the young, even among the street toughs of west Amsterdam. At the stall on the opposite side of the street, Sarah was scrutinizing a canvas book bag emblazoned with the face of Che Guevara, while Lavon was feigning interest in a hooded sweatshirt that proclaimed FREE PALESTINE NOW!

Lavon looked at Gabriel and gave an almost imperceptible nod of his head, the signal that he had detected no surveillance. A moment later they were all three walking side by side toward the far end of the market. The stall where Ibrahim Fawaz worked in the afternoon was occupied by an elderly Moroccan man in a white djellaba. Sarah paused to examine an electric teakettle while Gabriel and Lavon walked on to the end of the market. On the opposite side of the street, in a drab, postwar building, was the al-Hijrah Mosque. Two bearded men were conversing outside on the pavement, under the watchful gaze of two uniformed Amsterdam policemen. Twenty yards away was a dark van with blacked out windows.

“It hasn’t moved in forty-eight hours,” Lavon said.

“Dutch security?”

Lavon nodded. “If I had to guess, I’d say they have a static post in the building across the street as well.”

Gabriel looked back toward the kitchen supplies stall and motioned for Sarah to join them. Then they turned to the left and walked along the Jan Hazenstraat. It was a quiet street lined with squat, mismatched tenement buildings and small storefronts. At the far end, overlooking a broad canal, was a tiny park with a few benches, a swing set, and a pair of rusted hobbyhorses on steel springs. Gabriel rounded the corner to the left and paused: more apartment blocks, but no storefronts or cafés, nothing that would be open after dark.

“Evening prayers begin tonight at six thirty-seven,” Lavon said. “Which means that Ibrahim will be passing by this spot at approximately seven o’clock. Once he comes around the corner, no one in the van or the static post will be able to see him. We just have to make sure we get him without making any noise. I recommend we put the getaway vehicle on this corner where the Dutch agents can’t see it. Then we have to do something that makes Ibrahim slow down long enough so that we can get him cleanly.”

Gabriel thought of the night he and Ibrahim had walked along the Amstel River together and a single image flashed in his memory-Ibrahim Fawaz lowering his gaze in disgust as two men strolled toward them arm in arm.

“He doesn’t like homosexuals,” Gabriel said.

“Few Islamists do,” Lavon replied. “What do you have in mind?”

Gabriel told him. Lavon smiled.

“To whom do you intend to give this assignment?”

“Mikhail and Yaakov,” Gabriel said without hesitation.

“Perfect,” said Eli Lavon. “But you tell them. Those boys make me nervous.”

23

There was no mistaking the perpetrator of the assault on the door of Nicholas Scanlon’s office. Two knocks, sharp as a tack hammer. The White House press secretary allowed ten uncomfortable seconds to elapse before looking up from his work. Melissa Stewart, NBC’s chief White House correspondent, was leaning against the doorjamb, her arms folded defiantly, her newly tinted hair tousled from her last live shot on the North Lawn.

“What’s on your mind, Melissa?”

“We need to talk.”

“No paper in the ladies’ room again?”

Stewart stepped inside the office and closed the door.

“Please come in, Melissa,” Scanlon said sarcastically. “Have a seat.”

“I’d love to, Nick, but I’m in a bit of a rush.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Confirm a story.”

Scanlon shuffled the papers on his desk and played for time. “What have you got?”

“I know who’s holding Elizabeth Halton hostage.”

“Do tell, Melissa. We’d all like to know.”

“It’s the Sword of Allah, Nick. A few days ago a DVD of Elizabeth was left in the countryside of southern England. They want Sheikh Abdullah back, and if we don’t have him on a plane bound for Egypt by Friday night, they’re going to kill her.”

“What’s your source?”

“That doesn’t sound like a denial.”

“Answer the question, please.”

“You don’t really expect me to divulge my source, do you?”

“At least characterize the nature of the source for me.”

“Law enforcement,” she said. “But that’s as far as I go.”

Scanlon swiveled his chair around and gazed through his bulletproof window toward the North Lawn. A fucking leak… It was a miracle they had managed to keep a lid on it this long. It had been just six months since Scanlon had left his lucrative job as a lobbyist and public relations executive to come to work for the president, but in that time he had been given ample evidence of Washington’s proclivity to leak. And the worse the news, the faster it gushed out. He wondered what would possibly motivate a federal law enforcement official to slip a piece of news like this to a reporter. He rotated his chair around and looked into Melissa Stewart’s large blue eyes. But of course, he thought.

“You still sleeping with that guy from the Bureau?”

“Stay out of my personal life, Nick.”

“I’m going to give you a piece of advice, and I hope you take it in the spirit it is offered. This is not a story you want to be first on.”

“That doesn’t sound like a denial either.”

“As you can imagine, we are in the middle of some very delicate operations around the globe right now-operations that will be placed in jeopardy if this news is revealed before we’re ready.”

“I’m sorry, Nick, but this is just too big to sit on. If it’s true, we have to go with it. The American people deserve to know who’s holding Ambassador Halton’s daughter.”

“Even if it gets her killed?”

“You’ve sunk into the depths before, but that’s the lowest.”

“I can go much lower, Melissa. I’ll deny it’s true, and then I’ll denounce you from the podium.”

She turned and reached for the doorknob.

“Wait,” Scanlon said, his tone suddenly conciliatory. “Perhaps we can reach an accommodation.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“How long can you give me?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Twenty,” Scanlon countered.

“Fifteen.”

Scanlon nodded in agreement. Stewart looked at her watch.

“If the phone in my booth doesn’t ring in fifteen fucking minutes,” she said, “I’m going to march out to the lawn and tell the world who’s holding Elizabeth Halton.”

The president was seated at his desk when Nicholas Scanlon entered the Oval Office three minutes later, accompanied by White House Chief of Staff William Burns and National Security Advisor Cyrus Mansfield.

“Why the long faces, gentlemen?” the president asked.

“There’s been a leak, Mr. President,” Scanlon said. “NBC knows who’s holding Elizabeth.”

The president closed his eyes in frustration. For more than a week now, he had been walking a fine line, attempting to show appropriate concern in public for the fate of his friend’s daughter while at the same time making it clear to the terrorists that they had not managed to incapacitate the most powerful man on the planet. Only those closest to the president knew the physical and emotional toll the kidnapping had taken on him.

“What do you suggest, Nick?”

“Taking the bull by the horns, sir. I think it would be better for the country and the rest of the world to hear the news from your mouth than Melissa Stewart’s.”

“How long do we have before she goes on the air with it?”

Scanlon looked at his watch. “Nine minutes, sir.”

The president looked from his press secretary to his national security advisor. “I need to know whether I’m going to be placing any sensitive operations in jeopardy if I go public now. Get the director of the CIA on the line. The secretary of state, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

The president looked at Scanlon again. “Assuming no one has any objections, where would you like to do this?”

“The Briefing Room feels appropriate to me.”

“No questions, though.”

“I’ll make that clear to the reporters beforehand.”

“How are you going to handle Melissa Stewart?”

“We’ll have to promise her something,” Scanlon said. “Something big.”

“Couldn’t we just appeal to her sense of decency and patriotism?”

“We’re talking about Melissa Stewart, Mr. President. I’m not sure she has a pulse, let alone a sense of patriotism.”

The president exhaled heavily. “You can tell her the first interview I do after this is over will be with NBC News. That should make her happy.”

“That’s going to cause me problems elsewhere in the press room, sir.”

“I’m afraid that those are your problems, Nick, not mine.”

“Would you like me to draft a statement for you, sir?”

The president shook his head. “This is one I can handle on my own.”

Melissa Stewart was pulling on her overcoat and preparing to head for the North Lawn when the telephone in her booth rang.

“Cutting it close, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry, Melissa. For a moment I forgot that you’re the center of the universe.”

“I’m late for an important live shot, Nick.”

“Cancel it.”

“What have you got for me?”

“The president is going into the Briefing Room in twenty minutes to tell the world that the Sword of Allah is holding Elizabeth Halton hostage and is demanding the release of Sheikh Abdullah. Before his appearance, you may report that NBC News has learned that Elizabeth Halton is being held by Egyptian militants and that the president is expected to say more on the situation. If you stick to the script, your network will get the first exclusive with the president when this affair is over. If you don’t, I’ll devote the rest of my time at the White House to making your life miserable. Do we have a deal?”

“I believe we do.”

“See you in the Briefing Room in ten minutes. And don’t try to slip one past me, Melissa. I’ll be listening carefully.”

The president of the United States stepped to the podium in the White House Briefing Room at precisely 1:30 P.M. Eastern time and informed the world that his goddaughter had been taken hostage by the Egyptian terror group known as the Sword of Allah. In exchange for Elizabeth ’s release, said the president, the terrorists had demanded that the United States free Sheik Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq. It was a demand, the president made clear, that would never be met. He called on the terrorists to release Elizabeth immediately, warned them and their sponsors that they would be brought to justice, and thanked the American people for their prayers and support.

At 1:32, the president stepped away from the podium and left Nicholas Scanlon, his press secretary, to face the stunned press corps alone. Adrian Carter pressed the MUTE button on his remote control and looked toward the door of his office, where Shepard Cantwell, the deputy director for intelligence, was standing in his shirtsleeves and suspenders.

“What did you think?” Cantwell asked.

Carter hesitated before answering. Shepard Cantwell only asked questions of others when he wanted to venture an opinion of his own. Cantwell couldn’t help it. He was Analysis.

“I thought he did as well as expected under the circumstances,” Carter said. “He made it clear to the Sword that we won’t be held hostage and that we won’t negotiate.”

“You’re assuming that’s what the Sword really wants: to negotiate. I’m not so sure about that.” Cantwell came into Carter’s office and sat down. “Our analysts have been poring over every word Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq has ever written or said publicly: sermons, fatwas, transcripts of interviews, anything we can lay our hands on. A couple of years ago he gave an interview to an Arabic-language newspaper from London under conditions of extreme secrecy somewhere inside Egypt. During the interview the sheikh was asked to name the most likely scenario under which the Islamists might seize power in Egypt -an election, a coup, or a popular uprising. The sheikh was very clear in his response. He said the only way the Islamists will ever seize power in Egypt is by inciting the masses to rise up against their oppressors. Demonstrations, rioting, clashes in the street with the army: an intifada of sorts, from the Nile Delta to Upper Egypt.”

“What’s your point, Shep?”

“Sheikh Tayyib is a religious fanatic and mass murderer who also happens to be a very shrewd and clever character. The fact that he is still alive after all these years is proof of that. He had to know we would never bow to his demands to release his brother in exchange for Elizabeth Halton. But maybe he doesn’t really want his brother. Maybe what he really wants is his uprising.”

“And he gets his uprising by provoking a confrontation with us?”

“At this moment the Egyptian security services are tearing the country to pieces in order to help the infidel Americans find the daughter of a billionaire ambassador,” Cantwell said. “Think how that must look to an Egyptian Islamist who lives in desperate poverty, who’s lost a brother or a father to Mubarak’s torture chambers. Those torture chambers are filling up as we speak, and they’re filling because the regime is looking for one American woman.”

“How bad is the situation in Egypt right now?”

“The reports we’re getting from Cairo Station say it’s extremely bad. In fact, it’s worse than anyone there has ever seen it. If this goes on much longer, Sheikh Tayyib is going to get his uprising. And history is going to remember our president as the man who lost Egypt.”

Cantwell stood and started to leave, then stopped and turned suddenly. “One more thing,” he said. “The president just sent our friend the Sphinx a very clear message. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sphinx sent one in return. If I were you, I’d get on the phone to Homeland Security and raise the National Threat Advisory immediately.”

“How high?”

“Red,” said Cantwell as he slipped from the room. “Blood red.”

Carter looked at his watch. It was 1:37 P.M. The Muslim evening prayer had just begun in Amsterdam. He stared at his telephone and waited for it to ring.

24

A gust of cold wind froze Ibrahim Fawaz in his tracks as he pulled open the door of the al-Hijrah Mosque. This was his twenty-fifth winter in Holland and still he was not accustomed to the cold. Providence and fate had brought him here, to this garden of cinder block and cement in northern Europe, but in his heart he was still an ibn balad from Upper Egypt-a son of the soil and a child of the river. He stood in the vestibule for a moment, turning up his coat collar and tightening his scarf, then stepped tentatively into the street under the watchful gaze of two rosy-cheeked Amsterdam policemen. He exchanged pleasantries with them in fluent Dutch, then turned and set out along the Jan Hazenstraat.

The two police officers were now a permanent fixture outside the mosque. The al-Hijrah had been searched twice by Dutch investigators in the wake of the attack in London. Files and computers had been seized, and the imam and several of his associates had been questioned about their knowledge of Samir al-Masri and the other members of his cell. Tonight the imam had accused the infidels of using the attacks in London and the murder of Solomon Rosner as justification for a crackdown against Islam in the Netherlands. Ibrahim Fawaz had lived through a crackdown against Muslims before, one that had been conducted with a ruthlessness and a savagery that the Europeans, even in their worst nightmares, could scarcely imagine. The imam was only using the police investigation as a pretext to stir up trouble. But then that was what the imam did best. That was why the imam had been sent to Amsterdam in the first place.

A car overtook him. Ibrahim saw his shadow stretch on the pavement in front of him, then disappear as the car slid past. When it was gone, he found that he was in pitch-darkness. It seemed that three lamps near the end of the street were no longer burning. In the small park on the embankment of the canal, a man was seated alone on one of the benches. He had a pinched face, haunted dark eyes, and was as thin as Nile reed grass. A heroin addict, he thought. They were all over Amsterdam. They came from Europe and America to take advantage of Holland ’s permissive drug laws, and the generous welfare benefits, and, once hooked, many never found the power or the will to leave again.

Ibrahim lowered his gaze to the pavement and rounded the corner. The sight that greeted him next was far more offensive to his Islamic sensibilities than that of a heroin addict sitting alone in a freezing park. It was also a sight he saw all too often in Amsterdam: two men in leather groping each other in the darkness against the side of a Volkswagen van. Ibrahim stopped suddenly, outraged by the shamelessness of the act he was witnessing, unsure of whether he should hurry past with his gaze averted or flee in the opposite direction.

He decided on the second course of action, but before he could move, the side door of the van slid open and a small troll-like figure reached out and seized him by the throat. Then the two men in leather suddenly lost all interest in each other and turned their passion on him. Someone clamped a hand over his mouth. Someone else squeezed the side of his neck in a way that made his entire body go limp. He heard the door slam shut and felt the van lurch forward. A voice in Arabic ordered him not to move or make a sound. After that, no one spoke. Ibrahim did not know who had taken him or where he was going. He was certain of only one thing: If he did not do exactly what his captors wanted, he would never see Amsterdam or his wife again.

He closed his eyes and began to pray. An image rose from the deepest well of his memory, the image of a bloody child suspended from the ceiling of a torture chamber. Not again, he prayed. Dear Allah, please don’t let it happen again.