The Secret Servant

25

The landlords of Housekeeping referred to it as Site 22XB, but among the old hands it was known simply as Château Shamron. It stood one hundred yards from an isolated farm road, at the end of a rutted drive lined with bare plane trees. The roof was steeply pitched and, on that evening, was covered by a dusting of brittle snow. The shutters were missing several slats and drooped at a vaguely drunken angle. In the woodwork of the front doorjamb were four tiny perforations, evidence of a mezuzah removed a long time ago.

The party that arrived at the house that evening entered not by the front door but through the old servants’ entrance off the rear courtyard. They came in four vehicles-a Volkswagen van, two matching Renault sedans, and a rather flashy Audi A8-and had anyone inquired about the purpose of their visit, they would have spoken of a long-planned reunion of old friends. A cursory inspection of the house would have supported their story. The kitchen had been well stocked with food and liquor, and the hearth in the drawing room had been laid with seasoned firewood. A more careful check of the premises, however, would have revealed that the once formal dining room had been made ready for an interrogation and that the house contained several pieces of sophisticated communications equipment unavailable on any commercial market. Such an examination might also have revealed that the small limestone chamber in the basement had been turned into a holding cell-and that the cell was now occupied by an Egyptian man of late middle age who was blindfolded, shackled, and stripped to his underwear. Gabriel regarded him silently for a moment, then climbed the stairs to the pantry, where Yaakov was standing with Sarah at his side.

“How long has he been in there?” Gabriel asked.

“A little over an hour,” replied Yaakov.

“Any problems?”

Yaakov shook his head. “We got out of Amsterdam cleanly, and he behaved himself nicely during the ride.”

“Did you have to use drugs on him?”

“It wasn’t necessary.”

“What about force?”

“I may have given him a couple love taps, but nothing he’ll ever remember.”

“Did anyone speak in front of him?”

“Just a few words in Arabic. Ibrahim did a bit of talking, though. He’s convinced he’s in the hands of the Americans.”

Good, thought Gabriel. That was exactly what he wanted Ibrahim to think. He led Sarah into the drawing room, where Dina and Rimona were reading the Sword of Allah dossiers before a crackling fire, then slipped through a pair of double doors into the dining room. It was empty, except for the rectangular table and two high-backed chairs. Mordecai was balanced on one of the chairs, fitting a miniature transmitter into the cobwebbed chandelier.

“This one’s the backup.” He leaped down off the chair and wiped his dusty hands against the legs of his trousers. “The primary microphone is down here.” He tapped the tabletop. “Put Ibrahim in this chair. That way the mic won’t miss a thing he says.”

“What about the secure link?”

“It’s up and running,” Mordecai said. “I’ll feed the signal live to King Saul Boulevard and they’ll bounce it to Langley. Based on what we’re picking up from the Americans, you’re the hottest ticket in town tonight.”

Mordecai walked out of the room and closed the doors behind him. Sarah looked around at the blank walls. “Surely there’s a good story behind this place,” she said.

“Before the war, it was owned by a prominent Jewish family named Rosenthal,” Gabriel said.

“And when the war broke out?”

“It was confiscated by an SS officer, and the Rosenthal family was deported to Auschwitz. A daughter managed to survive and reclaim the property, but in the fifties she gave up on trying to stay here and emigrated to Israel. The German people weren’t terribly kind to their fellow countrymen who managed to survive the Holocaust.”

“And the house?”

“She never sold it. When Shamron found out she still owned it, he convinced her to let us have use of it. Shamron always had a way of tucking things away for a rainy day. Houses, passports, people. We used it as a safe house and staging point during the Wrath of God operation. Eli and I spent many long nights here-some good, some not so good.”

Sarah lowered herself into the chair that would soon be occupied by Ibrahim Fawaz and folded her hands on the table. “What’s going to happen here tonight?” she asked.

“That depends entirely on Ibrahim. If he cooperates and tells me the truth, then things will go very smoothly. If he doesn’t…” Gabriel shrugged. “Yaakov is one of Shabak’s most skilled interrogators. He knows how to talk to men who aren’t afraid of death. It’s possible things might get unpleasant.”

“How unpleasant?”

“Are you asking me whether we will torture him?”

“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”

“My goal tonight is to create an ally, Sarah, and one doesn’t create an ally with clubs and fists.”

“What if Ibrahim doesn’t want to be your ally?”

“Then he might soon find himself in a place where men aren’t shy about using extremely violent methods to extract information. But let us hope it doesn’t come to that-for all our sakes.”

“You don’t approve of torture?”

“I wish I could say it doesn’t work, but that’s not the case. Done properly, by trained professionals, placing physical and emotional stress on captured terrorists very often produces actionable intelligence that saves lives. But at what cost to the societies and security services that engage in it? A very high cost, unfortunately. It puts us in the same league as the Egyptians and the Jordanians and Saudis and every other brutal Arab secret police force that tortures its opponents. And ultimately it does harm to our cause because it turns believers into fanatics.”

“You condemn torture but have no qualms about killing?”

“No qualms?” He shook his head slowly. “Killing takes its toll, too, but I’m afraid killing is our only recourse. We have to kill the monsters before they kill us. And not with boots on the ground, as you Americans like to say, because that only gives the terrorists another moral victory when we invade their territory. The killing has to take place in the shadows, where no one can see it. We have to hunt them down ruthlessly. We have to terrorize them.” He looked at her again. “Welcome to our war, Sarah. You are now a true citizen of the night.”

“Thanks to you, I’ve been a citizen of the night for several months now.”

There was a knock at the door. It was Yaakov.

“I think he’s ready to talk.”

“You’re sure?”

Yaakov nodded.

“Give him ten more minutes,” Gabriel said. “Then bring him to me.”

They bore him carefully up the stairs and deposited him, still blindfolded and with his hands bound behind his back, in his designated seat. He made no protest, requested nothing, and revealed no sign of any fear. Indeed, he seemed to Gabriel like a martyr heroically waiting for the executioner’s ax to fall. It had been dark in the cellar; now, in the proper light, Gabriel could see his skin was covered in dark blotches. After allowing several minutes to elapse, he reached across the table and removed the blindfold. The Egyptian squinted in the sudden light, then opened his eyes slowly and glared malevolently at Gabriel across the divide.

“Where am I?”

“You are in a great deal of trouble.”

“Why have you kidnapped me?”

“No one has kidnapped you. You have been taken into custody.”

“By whom? For what reason?”

“By the Americans. And we both know the reason.”

“If I am in the hands of the Americans, then why are you here?”

“Because, obviously, I was the one who told them about you.”

“So much for your assurances about protecting me.”

“Those assurances were nullified the moment it became clear that you lied to me.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Really?”

“I told you everything I knew about the plot. If you and your British friends had acted more quickly, you might have been able to prevent it.” The Egyptian appraised him silently for a moment. “I enjoyed reading about your checkered past in the newspapers, Mr. Allon. I had no idea I was dealing with such an important man that night in Amsterdam.”

Gabriel placed a file on the table and slid it across the divide so that it came to rest in front of Ibrahim. The Egyptian looked down at it for a long moment, then lifted his gaze once more to Gabriel.

“Where did you get this?”

“Where do you think?”

He managed a superior smile. “The Americans, the Jews, and the Egyptian secret police: the unholy trinity. And you wonder why you are loathed by the Arabs.”

“Our time together is limited, Ibrahim. You can waste it delivering another one of your lectures, or you can use it wisely by telling me everything you know about the kidnapping of the American woman.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You’re lying, Ibrahim.”

“I am telling you the truth!”

“You are a member of the Sword of Allah.”

“No, I was a member. I left the Sword when I left Egypt.”

“Yes, I remember. You came to Europe for a better life-isn’t that what you told me? But it isn’t true, is it? You were dispatched to Europe by your friend Sheikh Tayyib to establish an operational cell in Amsterdam. The al-Hijrah Mosque, the West Amsterdam Islamic Community Center: they’re both Sword of Allah fronts, aren’t they, Ibrahim?”

“If I am an active member of the Sword of Allah, then why was I working with your spy, Solomon Rosner? Why did I tell him about the plot to shoot down your jetliner? And why did I warn you about Samir al-Masri and his friends from the al-Hijrah Mosque?”

“All valid questions. And you have exactly thirty minutes to answer them to my satisfaction. Thirty minutes to tell me everything you know about the operation to kidnap Elizabeth Halton. Otherwise, I’ll be asked to leave and the Americans will take over. They’re angry right now, Ibrahim. And you know what happens when Americans get angry. They resort to methods that go against their nature.”

“You Israelis do far worse.”

Gabriel cast a desultory glance at his wristwatch. “You’re wasting time. But then, maybe that’s your plan. You think you can hold out until the deadline expires. Four days is a very long time to hold out, Ibrahim. It cannot be done. Start talking, Ibrahim. Confess.”

“I have nothing to confess.”

His words were spoken with little conviction. Gabriel pressed his advantage. “Tell me everything you know, Ibrahim, or the Americans will take over. And if the Americans don’t get the information they want from you using their methods, they’re going to put you on a plane to Egypt and let the SSI take over the questioning.” He looked at the burn marks on the Egyptian’s arms. “You know all about their methods, don’t you, Ibrahim?”

“The cigarettes were the kindest thing they did to me. Rest assured that nothing you say frightens me. I don’t believe there are any Americans-and I don’t believe anyone’s going to send me to Egypt to be interrogated. I am a citizen of the Netherlands. I have my rights.”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair and thumped the side of his fist twice against the double doors. A moment later Sarah was standing at his side and staring unabashedly at Ibrahim, who averted his gaze in shame and squirmed anxiously in his chair.

“Good evening, Mr. Fawaz. My name is Catherine Blanchard, and I am an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. One mile from here, there is a plane fueled and waiting to take you to Cairo. If you have any further questions, I’ll be right outside the door.”

Sarah left the room and closed the doors behind her. Ibrahim glared at Gabriel in anger.

“How dare you let that woman see me like this?”

“Next time you won’t doubt my word.”

The Egyptian looked down at the file. “What does it say about me?”

“It says you were one of the original members of the first Sword of Allah cell in Minya. It says you were a close associate of Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq and his brother, Sheikh Abdullah. It says you organized a terrorist cell at the University of Minya and recruited a number of young students to the radical Islamist cause. It says you wanted to bring down the regime and replace it with an Islamic state.”

“Guilty on all counts,” said Ibrahim. “All but one very important count. There was indeed a Sword cell at the university, but it had nothing to do with terrorism. The Sword of Allah turned to terror only after Sadat’s assassination, not before.” He looked down at the file again. “What else does it say?”

“It says you were arrested the night of Sadat’s murder.”

“And?”

“That’s the last entry.”

“That’s hardly surprising. What happened after my arrest is not something they would want to put down on paper.” Ibrahim looked up from the file. “Would you like to know what happened to me that night? Would you like me to fill in the missing pages of that file you wave in front of me as though it were proof of my guilt?”

“You have thirty minutes to tell me the truth, Ibrahim. You may use them any way you wish.”

“I wish to tell you a story, my friend-the story of a man who lost everything because of his beliefs.”

“I’m listening.”

“May I have some coffee?”

“No.”

“Will you at least remove the handcuffs?”

“No.”

“My arms hurt terribly.”

“Too bad.”

He had been a professor once and spoke like one now. He started his account not with the story of a man but with the struggle of a generation, a generation that had been raised to believe in secular isms-Nasserism, Baathism, Communism, Pan-Arabism, Arab Socialism-only to learn, in June 1967, that all the isms were merely a mask for Arab weakness and decay.

“You were the ones who unleashed the storm,” he said. “The Palestinians had their Catastrophe in forty-eight. For us, it was sixty-seven-six days in June that shook the Arab world to its core. We had been told by Nasser and the secularists that we were mighty. Then you Jews proved in a matter of hours that we were nothing. We went in search of answers. Our search led us home again. Back to Islam.”

“You were in the army in sixty-seven?”

He shook his head. “I’d done my army service already. I was at Cairo University in sixty-seven. Within weeks of the war ending, we organized an illegal Islamist cell there. I was one of its leaders until 1969, when I completed my doctorate in economics. Upon graduation, I had two choices: go to work as a bureaucrat in Pharaoh’s bureaucracy or take a job teaching in Pharaoh’s schools. I chose the latter and accepted a position at the University of Minya in Middle Egypt. Six months later Nasser was dead.”

“And everything changed,” said Gabriel.

“Almost overnight,” Ibrahim said in agreement. “Sadat encouraged us. He granted us freedom and money to organize. We grew our beards. We established youth organizations and charities to help the poor. We did paramilitary training at desert camps funded by the government and Sadat’s wealthy patrons. We lived our lives according to God’s law and we wanted God’s laws to be the laws of Egypt. Sadat promised us that he would institute sharia. He broke his promise, and then he compounded his sins by signing a peace treaty with the Devil, and for that he paid with his life.”

“You approved of Sadat’s assassination?”

“I fell to my knees and thanked God for striking him down.”

“And then the roundups began.”

“Almost immediately,” Ibrahim said. “The state feared that Sadat’s death was only the opening shot of an Islamic revolution that was about to sweep the country. They were wrong, of course, but that didn’t stop them from using the mailed fist against anyone whom they believed was part of the conspiracy or conspiracies to come.”

“They came for you at the university?”

He shook his head. “I left the university at sundown and went home to my apartment. When I arrived no one was there. I asked the neighbors if they had seen my wife and children. They told me they’d been taken into custody. I went to the police station, but they weren’t there, and the police said there was no record of their arrest. Then I went to the Minya headquarters of the SSI.” His voice trailed off, and he looked down at the file in front of him. “Do you know about the bridge over Jahannam, my friend? It is the bridge all Muslims must cross in order to reach Paradise.”

“Narrower than a spider web and sharper than a sword,” Gabriel said. “The good cross swiftly and are rewarded, but the wicked lose their footing and are plunged into the fires of Hell.”

Ibrahim looked up from the file, clearly impressed by Gabriel’s knowledge of Islam. “I’m one of the unfortunate few who’s actually seen the bridge over Jahannam,” he said. “I was made to walk it that night in October 1981 and I’m afraid I lost my footing.”

Gabriel removed Ibrahim’s handcuffs and told him to keep talking.

He was taken to a cell and beaten mercilessly for twelve hours. When the beatings finally ceased, he was brought to an interrogation room and placed before a senior SSI man, who ordered him to reveal everything he knew about planned Islamist terror operations in the Minya region. He answered the question truthfully-that he knew of no plans for any attacks-and was immediately returned to the cell, where he was beaten on and off for several days. Again he was brought before the senior officer and again he denied knowledge of future attacks. This time the SSI man led him to a different cell, where an adolescent girl, naked and unconscious, hung by her hands from a hook in the ceiling. She had been flogged and slashed to ribbons with a razor and her face was distorted by swelling and bleeding. It took Ibrahim a moment to realize that the young girl was his daughter, Jihan.

“They revived her with several buckets of cold water,” he said. “She looked at me and for a moment didn’t recognize me either. The senior man whipped her savagely for several minutes, then the others took her down from the hook and raped her in front of me. My daughter looked at me while she was being mauled by these animals. She pleaded with me to help her. ‘Please, Papa,’ she said. ‘Tell them what they want to know. Make them stop.’ But I couldn’t make them stop. I didn’t have anything to tell them.”

He began to shiver violently. “May I have my clothing now?”

“Keep talking, Ibrahim.”

He lapsed into a long silence. For a moment Gabriel feared he had lost him, but eventually, after another spasm of trembling, he began to speak again.

“They placed me in the cell next door, so that I was forced to endure the screams of my daughter all through that long night. When I was brought before the senior officer for a third time, I told him anything I could think of to ease her suffering. I gave him crumbs from my table, but then crumbs were all I had to give. I gave him the names of other Sword members. I gave him the addresses of apartments where we had met. I gave him the names of students at the university who I believed might be involved in radical activities. I told him what he wanted to hear, even though I knew I was condemning innocent friends and colleagues to the same suffering I had endured. He seemed satisfied with my confession. Even so, I was given one more beating that night. When it was over, I was tossed into a cell and left for dead. For the first time, I was not alone. There was another prisoner there.”

“You recognized him?” Gabriel asked.

“Eventually.”

“Who was it?”

“It was Sheikh Abdullah. He recited the words of the Prophet to me. ‘Rely on God. Don’t be defeated.’ He soothed my wounds and prayed over me for the next two days. I am alive because of him.”

“And your daughter?”

Ibrahim glanced at Gabriel’s wristwatch. “How much time do I have left before I am handed over to the Americans?”

Gabriel removed the watch and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

“May I have my clothing now?”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair and hammered twice on the double doors.

26

The same bright moon that hung over the plains of northern Germany was visible in the skies above the Norfolk coast that evening as Marcia Cromwell, an unmarried woman of thirty-six, headed down the sandy pathway to the beach at Walcott with Ginger, her Welsh springer spaniel, following closely at her heels. Questions about the morality of torture or even the fate of the missing American woman were of no concern to her at that moment. She had just been informed by her latest lover that, after much deliberation, he had decided not to leave his wife and children for her after all. Marcia Cromwell, a lifelong resident of Norfolk, had decided to deal with the pain the same way she had dealt with every other setback, by taking a late-night walk along the North Sea.

At the end of the pathway the beach opened suddenly before her, flat and seemingly limitless in the darkness, with wind-driven waves breaking in a phosphorous arc along the crest of hard dark sand. Ginger was behaving oddly. Usually he was straining at his leash at this point, anxious to be let loose on the beach so he could torment the gulls and sandpipers. Now he was sitting warily at her feet, peering intently into the grove of pine trees at the base of the dunes. Marcia Cromwell removed his leash and encouraged him to head down to the water’s edge. Instead, he immediately trotted off into the trees.

Marcia Cromwell hesitated before going after him. The police had recently uncovered an encampment of vagrant travelers there, and the trees were always strewn with empty beer cans and litter. She called out to Ginger several times, then removed a flashlight from her coat pocket and went in search of him. She spotted him a moment later, pawing at something on the ground at the base of one of the trees. Marcia Cromwell walked over to investigate. Then she began to scream.

The discovery of a corpse on the beach at Walcott immediately triggered activation of the Norfolk Constabulary’s Major Investigation Team. Established in September 2004 to conduct probes into crimes such as homicide, manslaughter, and rape, each team consists of a senior investigating officer, his deputy, an exhibits officer who processes crime-scene evidence, and an inquiry officer who interviews witnesses and suspects. Within thirty minutes of receiving Marcia Cromwell’s call, all four officers were on scene. Only two, the SIO and the exhibits officer, entered the trees at the base of the dunes. They wore yellow protective shoe covers in order to preserve any forensic evidence and examined the corpse by flashlight.

“How long has he been here?” asked the SIO.

“Between forty-eight and seventy-two hours, I’d say.”

“Preliminary cause of death?”

“Single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Execution-style, by the looks of it. But here’s the interesting thing.”

The crime-scene analyst shone a small Maglite at the lower right leg of the corpse.

“A splint?”

“Quite a good one, actually. But look at the wound. The coroner will have to make the final determination, but I’d be willing to wager it was caused by a bullet.”

“Caliber?”

“Looks like a nine-millimeter to me, but that’s not the interesting part. It’s several days older than the head wound, and whoever treated it knew exactly what she was doing?”

“She?”

“Elizabeth Halton is an emergency-room surgeon from Denver, Colorado. I could be wrong, but I think this corpse could well be one of the terrorists from Hyde Park. Didn’t COBRA and the Home Office tell us to be on the lookout for unexplained bullet wounds?”

“Yes, they did,” the SIO said.

“The wound and surrounding tissue exhibit signs of severe infection. I’d say our man was wounded by that Israeli chap during the actual kidnapping. His comrades tried to keep him alive, but apparently they finally gave up and put him out of his misery with a neat bullet in the back of the head. He probably suffered terribly. I suppose there is some justice in the world after all.”

SIO crouched next to the body and examined the lower leg of the corpse, then began searching the corpse itself for evidence. The coat pockets were empty, as were the front pockets of his trousers, but in the back right pocket he found a single sheet of paper, folded in quarters and flattened by many days of pressure. The SIO unfolded it carefully and read it by the beam of his flashlight.

“Draw me up a list of supplies one would need to treat a bullet wound in the field-things that can be purchased over the counter at an ordinary chemist’s shop. And put a very wide cordon around this scene. If your theory about this chap is correct, this beach is going to be invaded soon by several hundred men from the Anti-Terrorist Branch, MI5, the FBI, and the CIA.”

“Done.”

The SIO turned and walked quickly out of the trees. Two minutes later he was behind the wheel of his car, speaking by radio to the duty officer in the Operations and Communications Center. “It looks like the body might be linked to the missing American woman,” he said. “Get the chief constable on the phone immediately and bring him into the picture.”

“Anything else, sir?”

“I found a receipt in his pocket for the Portsmouth-to-Le Havre ferry. If this chap is really one of the terrorists, it could mean that the American girl is now in France.”…

The series of events that occurred next unfolded with precision and remarkable swiftness. The Operations and Communications Center immediately located the Norfolk chief constable, who was dining with friends and family in Norwich, and told him of the discovery. The chief constable stepped away from the table and quietly relayed the information to his superiors at the Home Office, who in turn informed the COBRA committee and the Police Nationale of France. Fifteen minutes after the SIO’s initial dispatch from the beach, news of the discoveries reached the American team at Grosvenor Square. A secure cable was sent priority status from the embassy to all federal agencies involved in the search for Elizabeth Halton, including the CIA.

At 6:18 P.M. Eastern time, a copy reached the hands of Adrian Carter, who at that moment was seated in his regular chair in the CIA’s Global Ops Center, monitoring a highly illegal clandestine interrogation now taking place at a derelict farmhouse in the plains of northern Germany. He read the note quickly and for the first time in more than a week felt a fleeting sense of hope. Then he set the cable aside and stared at his monitor. The feed had been silent for five minutes. Gabriel, it seemed, had taken a break for dinner.

27

They brought his clothing, then they brought him food: rice and beans, hard-boiled eggs and feta cheese, flatbread and sweet tea. He took a single bite, then pushed the plate a few inches toward Gabriel. Gabriel refused at first, but Ibrahim insisted, and so they sat there for several moments, prisoner and interrogator, sharing a simple meal in silence.

“We Muslims have a tradition called Eid,” Ibrahim said. “If a sheep is to be slaughtered, it is given one final meal.” He looked up from his food at Gabriel. “Is that what you are doing now, my friend? Giving your sacrificial lamb one final taste of life?”

“How long did they hold you?” Gabriel asked.

“Six months,” said Ibrahim. “And my release was as undignified as my arrest and incarceration. They turned me onto the streets of Minya in rags and ordered me to go home. When I entered my apartment, my wife screamed. She thought I was an intruder. She didn’t recognize me.”

“I take it your daughter wasn’t there when you arrived.”

Ibrahim tore off a piece of the flatbread and pushed it around the rice for a moment. “She died that night in the torture chambers of Minya. She was raped to death by Mubarak’s secret policemen. They buried her body in a criminal’s grave on the edge of the desert and refused to let me even see it. For them it was just another form of torture.”

He sipped at his tea contemplatively. “My wife blamed me for Jihan’s death. It was her right, of course. If I hadn’t joined the Sword of Allah, Jihan never would have been taken. For many days, my wife refused even to look at me. A week later I was informed by the university that my services were no longer needed. I was a broken man. I’d lost everything. My job. My daughter. My dignity.”

“And so you decided to leave Egypt?”

“I had no choice. To remain would have meant living underground. I wanted to sever my ties with the Sword. I wanted no part of jihadist politics. I wanted a new life, in a place where men did not murder little girls in torture chambers.”

“Why Amsterdam?”

“My wife had family living in the Oud West. They told us that the Muslim community in Holland was growing and that for the most part the Dutch were welcoming and tolerant. I applied for a visa at the Dutch embassy and was granted one straightaway.”

“I take it you neglected to inform the Dutch of your connection to the Sword of Allah.”

“It might have slipped my mind.”

“And the rest of the story you told me that night in Amsterdam?”

“It was all true. I built roads, then I swept them. I made furniture.” He held up his ruined hand. “Even after I lost my fingers.”

“And you had no contact with other Sword members?”

“Most of those who fled Egypt settled in America or London. Occasionally one would blow through Amsterdam with the wind.”

“And when they did?”

“They tried to draw me back into the fight, of course. I told them I was no longer interested in Islamic politics. I told them I wanted to live an Islamic life on my own and leave matters of governance and state to others.”

“And the Sword abided by your wishes?”

“Eventually,” Ibrahim said. “My son wasn’t so accommodating, however.”

“It is because of your son that we’re here tonight.”

Ibrahim nodded.

“A son who is half Egyptian and half Palestinian-a volatile mix.”

“Very volatile.”

“Tell me his name.”

“Ishaq,” the Egyptian said. “My son’s name is Ishaq.”

“It began with harmless questions, the kind of questions any curious adolescent boy might ask of his father. Why did we leave our home in Egypt to come to Europe? Why, if you were once a university professor, do you sweep streets? Why do we live in the land of strangers instead of the House of Islam? For many years, I told him only lies. But when he was fifteen, I told him the truth.”

“You told him you were a member of the Sword of Allah?”

“I did.”

“You told him about your arrest and torture? And about the death of Jihan?”

Ibrahim nodded. “I hoped that by telling Ishaq the truth, I would snuff out any jihadist embers that might be smoldering inside him. But my story had precisely the opposite effect. Ishaq became more interested in Islamic politics, not less. It also turned him into an extremely angry young man. He began to hate. He hated the Egyptian regime and the Americans who supported it.”

“And he wanted revenge.”

“It is something you and the Americans never seem to fully comprehend about us,” Ibrahim said. “When we are wronged, we must seek revenge. It is in our culture, our bloodstream. Each time you kill or torture one of us, you are creating an extended family of enemies that is honor bound to take retribution.”

Gabriel knew of this phenomenon better than most. He scooped up a bit of rice and beans with the bread and motioned Ibrahim to keep talking.

“Ishaq began to withdraw from Dutch society,” he said. “He no longer maintained friendships with Dutch boys and started routinely referring to Dutch girls as temptresses and whores. He wore a kufi and galabiya. He listened only to Arabic music and stopped drinking beer. When he was eighteen, he was arrested for assaulting a homosexual man outside a bar in the Leidseplein. The charges were dropped after I went to the injured man and offered to make restitution.”

“Did he go to university?”

Ibrahim nodded. “At nineteen he was accepted into the school of information and computer sciences at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I hoped that the demands of his studies would temper his Islamic fervor, but once he settled in Rotterdam he became more Islamic in his outlook, not less. He fell in with a group of like-minded young jihadists. He traveled constantly to various marches and meetings. He grew his beard. It was as if my youth were being played out in front of me all over again.” He ate in silence for a moment. “I came to Europe to get away from Islamic politics. I wanted a new life, for myself and for my son. But by the mid-nineties radical Islamist politics had come to the West. And in many ways it was more radical and toxic than the Islam of the Orient. It had been tainted by Saudi money and Saudi imams. It was Wahhabi and Salafist in its outlook. It was toxic and violent.”

“Was he involved in terrorist activities then?”

Ibrahim shook his head. “He was too confused to make a commitment to any one group or idea. He wasn’t sure if he was an Egyptian or a Palestinian. One day he was with the friends of Hamas, the next he was singing the praises of the mujahideen in Afghanistan.”

“So what happened?”

“Osama bin Laden flew airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington,” Ibrahim said. “And everything changed.”

Gabriel was not ready to relinquish the illusion of a waiting American airplane just yet, and so he summoned Sarah with two firm raps on the dining-room door and murmured a few barely intelligible words into her ear about delaying its departure for a few minutes. Then he looked at Ibrahim and said, “You were telling me about 9/11. Please, continue.”

“It was an earthquake, a tear in the fabric of history-not only for the West but for us.”

“Muslims?”

“Islamists,” he said, correcting Gabriel. “The Americans made a terrible miscalculation after 9/11. They saw Muslims dancing in the streets across the Arab world and in Europe and therefore assumed that all Muslims and Islamists supported Osama. They lumped us all together with the global jihadists like bin Laden and Zawahiri. They didn’t realize that for someone like me, a moderate Islamist, the attacks of 9/11 were just as unconscionable and barbaric as they were to the civilized world. We moderate Islamists believed that Osama and al-Qaeda made a terrible tactical blunder by attacking the United States and by picking a fight it could not possibly win. We believed that Osama was an Islamic charlatan who had done more to hurt the cause of Islamism than all the secular apostate regimes combined. What’s more, we believed that the massacre of thousands of innocent people was a decidedly un-Islamic act that violated Islamic law and custom. The nineteen hijackers were invited guests in America and, as such, they were honor bound to behave accordingly. Instead, they slaughtered their hosts. Regardless of how you feel about us and our religion, we Muslims are hospitable people. We do not slaughter our hosts.”

He pushed his plate toward Gabriel again. Gabriel took half of a hard-boiled egg and a lump of feta.

“I take it Ishaq didn’t see it that way.”

“No, he didn’t,” Ibrahim said. “Nine-eleven pushed him to the edge of the precipice.”

“What pushed him over the edge?”

“Iraq.”

“Where was he recruited?”

“He was living in Amsterdam at the time with his wife, an Egyptian girl named Hanifah, and their son, Ahmed. Within days of the American invasion, he traveled to Egypt, where he made contact with the Sword of Allah. The Sword gave him elementary training in their clandestine schools and desert camps, then helped him to travel to Iraq, where he trained and practiced his craft with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. He left Iraq after six months and returned to Amsterdam, where he was in close contact with this man Samir al-Masri. A month later, he moved his family to Copenhagen, where he took a job at something called the Islamic Affairs Council of Denmark. The Council, I’m afraid, is nothing more than a front for jihadist activities.”

“Your son organized a second cell from Copenhagen?”

“So it would appear.”

“And so when Samir and his cell vanished from Amsterdam a few days before the attack, you decided to approach me. You gave me just enough information in hopes of derailing the operation, so that your son might not be caught up in it.”

Ibrahim gave a stoic nod of his head.

“You lied to me,” Gabriel said. “You deceived me in order to save your son’s life.”

“Any decent father would have done the same.”

“No, Ibrahim, not when innocent human lives are at stake. More than three hundred people are dead because of you and your son. If you had told me the truth-the entire truth-we could have stopped the attack together. Instead you gave me crumbs, the same bread crumbs you gave the SSI twenty-five years ago when you tried to save your daughter’s life.”

“And if I’d told you more that night? Where would I have ended up? The Americans would have assumed I was a terrorist. They would have placed me on a plane and shipped me back to Egypt to be tortured again.”

“Did you know London was the target? Did you know they were planning to kidnap Elizabeth Halton and ransom her for your friend, Sheikh Abdullah?”

“I knew nothing of their plans. These boys are extremely well trained. Someone highly skilled is pulling the strings.”

“Someone is.” Gabriel hesitated. “Maybe that someone is you, Ibrahim. Maybe you’re the one who masterminded the entire operation. Maybe you’re the one they call the Sphinx.”

“The willingness to believe outlandish things is an Arab disease, Mr. Allon, not a Zionist one. The more time you waste pursuing silly notions like that, the less time we have to find the ambassador’s daughter and bring her home alive.”

Gabriel seized on a single word of Ibrahim’s last answer, the word we.

“And how are we going to do that?”

“I believe Ishaq is one of the terrorists holding the American woman hostage.”

Gabriel leaned forward in his chair. “Why would you think that?”

“Ishaq left Copenhagen two weeks ago. He told Hanifah that he was going to the Middle East for a research trip on behalf of the Islamic Affairs Council. In order to maintain that fiction, he telephones the apartment every evening at Ahmed’s bedtime.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Hanifah has told me so.”

“Have you spoken to him yourself?”

“I’ve left messages for him, but he never calls me.”

Gabriel placed a notepad and pen on the table and slid them toward Ibrahim.

“I need the address of the apartment in Copenhagen. And I need the telephone number.”

“Hanifah and Ahmed have nothing to do with this.”

“Then they have nothing to fear.”

“I want you to promise me that no harm will come to them.”

“You’re in no position to ask for anything, Ibrahim.”

“Promise me, Mr. Allon. Promise me you won’t harm them.”

Gabriel nodded once. Ibrahim wrote down the information, then pushed the pad toward Gabriel and recited two lines from the twenty-second chapter of Genesis:

“‘So early the next morning, Abraham saddled his ass and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and he set out for the place of which God had told him.’”

“You know your Hebrew scripture,” said Gabriel. “But he’s no longer your son, Ibrahim. He’s infected with the virus of jihad. He’s a monster.”

“Perhaps, but he’ll always be my son.” He looked down at the notepad in shame. “If I remember correctly, the Jews believe that Abraham went to Beersheba after passing God’s test. But what will happen to me? Will I be shipped to Egypt for further questioning or do I remain here?” He looked around the room. “Wherever here is.”

“I suppose that depends on the Americans.”

The disdainful look in Ibrahim’s eyes made it clear how he felt about Americans. “I suggest leaving the Americans out of this,” he said. “It would be better for you and I to cross the bridge over Jahannam alone. Whatever you decide, do it quickly. The ambassador’s daughter is in the hands of a young man whose sister was murdered by Pharaoh’s henchman. If he is ordered to kill her, he will not hesitate.”

28

The interviewer from France 2 was shuffling his note cards, a sign that time was rapidly dwindling. Yusuf Ramadan, professor of Near Eastern history from the American University in Cairo, resident scholar at the Institute of Islamic Studies in Paris, and terror mastermind from the Sword of Allah, knew he would have to make his final point quickly.

“…And so I think the greatest danger of this crisis is not here in Europe but in Egypt itself,” he said in his faultless French. “It is my understanding that the security services of the Egyptian regime have responded with a rather heavy hand, and if this behavior continues, it is likely to provoke a backlash that might very well threaten the stability of the regime itself.”

The interviewer, intrigued by Ramadan’s comment, ignored the instructions of the floor director to conclude the segment. “Are you accusing the government of Egypt of torture, Professor Ramadan?”

“The methods of the Egyptian police and security services are well known,” Ramadan said. “You can be sure they are using torture and other unsavory methods in order to help the Americans find the ambassador’s daughter.”

“Thought-provoking as always, Professor Ramadan. I hope you’ll join us again to help us analyze this ongoing crisis.”

“It would be my pleasure,” said Ramadan, smiling warmly for the camera.

The interviewer informed the audience that France 2’s coverage of the crisis would continue after a commercial break, then he extended his hand toward Ramadan and thanked him privately for agreeing to appear on the program. Ramadan rose from his seat and was escorted off the set by a youthful female production assistant. Five minutes later, he was climbing into a Citroën car waiting outside in the esplanade Henri de France. He looked at his wristwatch. It was 9:25. The men and women of France 2 did not know it but their morning was about to get a good deal more hectic.

At that same moment in Zurich, a black Mercedes-Benz S600 sedan pulled sedately to the curb on the arrivals level of Kloten Airport. The man who emerged from the backseat looked a great deal like the vehicle itself, narrow at the head and a bit wide in the midsection for added stability. His suit was Italian, his overcoat cashmere, his leather suitcase large and expensive-looking. A Swiss policeman was standing watch at the entrance to the terminal with an automatic weapon across his chest. The well-dressed man nodded politely to him, then brushed past and went inside.

He paused for a moment and gazed up at the departure board. The ticket in his breast pocket was for that morning’s United Airlines flight to Dulles Airport. He had purchased the ticket despite the fact that he had no valid visa. It didn’t matter-he wasn’t planning to go to America, let alone board the airplane. He was a shaheed, a martyr, and the journey he was about to take had nothing to do with air travel.

After determining the check-in counters for the flight, the shaheed set out across the glistening modern terminal, towing his suitcase behind him. It had undergone several modifications to suit his specific needs. The sides and wheels had been reinforced to accommodate a larger payload, and the button on the collapsible handle was a detonator. Twelve pounds of pressure, the engineer had said. Just a little push-that’s all it would take to start his journey.

A civilian security agent was standing a few yards from the United Airlines check-in area examining tickets and passports. Behind him, several dozen travelers, mostly Americans, were waiting in line. Because the shaheed had no valid visa, he would be able to get no closer to his victims then the security agent. Their lives would not be spared, however. Along with a hundred pounds of high explosive, the suitcase was packed with thousands of ball bearings and nails. The infidels standing in line would soon be reduced to ribbons of blood-soaked flesh. It would be a beautiful sight, thought the shaheed. He only hoped that his soul might linger in the terminal for a moment after his death so that he might see it.

The security agent finished examining the travel documents of an American woman traveling with two young children, then motioned the shaheed forward. He did as he was instructed and handed the security man his ticket and passport.

“Egyptian?” the security agent asked with barely concealed suspicion.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“You have a valid visa for travel to the United States today?”

“I was told I didn’t need a visa.”

“By whom?”

“By Allah,” he said.

The security agent reached for his radio.

The shaheed put his thumb on the detonator button. Twelve pounds of pressure. Paradise…

Though he did not know it, the shaheed at Kloten Airport was not alone. Two other suicide bombers had been dispatched to European airports that morning-one to Madrid’s Barajas Airport and another to Schwechat in Vienna-and all had been instructed to hit their detonators at the same instant. The martyr in Madrid was one minute late, but his comrade in Vienna did not explode his weapon until 9:35 Central European time. Investigators in Austria would later determine that the martyr, for reasons known only to himself, had stopped in an airport café for one last Viennese coffee before blasting himself to Paradise.

Yusuf Ramadan was made aware of the bombings at 9:38 while stuck in the midmorning traffic along the Seine. It was not Abu Musa who broke the news to him but the production assistant from France 2 who a few moments earlier had escorted him from the building. It seemed that the station was planning extensive coverage of the terrorist attacks and was wondering whether Ramadan would consider spending the day as a paid consultant and commentator. He immediately agreed without bothering to ask the fee and, ten minutes later, was taking his seat once more on the set.

“Welcome back, Professor Ramadan. What do you think these latest attacks mean?”

“They mean that the United States had better open a channel of communication to the Sword of Allah soon,” Ramadan said. “Otherwise I’m afraid a good deal more blood will be shed here in Europe.”

29

They decided a crash meeting was in order and settled on Copenhagen’s airport Hilton Hotel as a suitable site. Adrian Carter arrived first and was sitting in the lounge bar as Gabriel and Sarah strode into the lobby. He directed them toward the elevators with a weary glance, and a moment later they were huddled around the television in Carter’s junior executive suite. Carter turned up the volume very loud. The room had been swept by CIA security, but Carter was a traditionalist when it came to matters of tradecraft and, like Gabriel, regarded electronic gadgetry as a necessary but unfortunate corruption of a once-noble art.

“Zurich, Paris, Vienna: three airport attacks, identical in design and perfectly coordinated.” Carter, staring at the images of carnage and destruction on the screen, shook his head slowly. “One hundred and twenty-nine people confirmed dead, five hundred injured, and Europe’s air transport system in tatters.”

“And what about Europe’s politicians?” asked Gabriel.

“Publicly, they’re saying all the right things: deplorable, barbaric, outrageous. Privately, they’re pleading with us to make a deal with the devil. They’re telling us to end this thing before more blood is shed on their soil. Even our close friend at Downing Street is beginning to wonder whether we should find some way of negotiating our way out of this. The Sphinx, whoever he might be, is a mass murderer and a ruthless bastard, but his timing is impeccable.”

“Any chance that the president is going to bend?”

“Not after this. In fact, he’s more determined than ever that this affair end without a negotiated settlement. That means we have no option but to find Elizabeth Halton before the deadline.” Carter’s gaze moved from the screen to Gabriel. “And as of this moment, your Joe appears to be our best and only hope.”

“He’s not my Joe, Adrian.”

“He is now, at least as far as official Washington is concerned.” Carter lowered the volume a decibel or two. “You caused quite a storm in Washington last night, Gabriel. Your interrogation with Ibrahim Fawaz is now required listening from Langley to the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the National Security Council.”

“How were the reviews?”

“Mixed,” said Carter. “Expert opinion is divided over whether Ibrahim was being truthful or whether he was having you on for a second time. Expert opinion thinks you may have hitched your star to him too quickly. Expert opinion also fears you may have treated him far too gingerly.”

“What does expert opinion have in mind?”

“A second interrogation,” said Carter.

“Conducted by whom?”

“By Agency men with proper Christian names instead of an Israeli assassin.”

“So you’re telling me that I’m being fired?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“You didn’t have to come all the way to Copenhagen to fire me, Adrian. A secure phone call would have sufficed.”

“I felt I owed it to you. After all, I was the one who roped you into this.”

“How decent of you. But tell me something, Adrian. Tell me exactly what your Agency interrogators think they’re going to get from Ibrahim that I didn’t get from him.”

“Full and forthright answers, for starters. Expert opinion believes he was being highly deceptive and evasive in his answers.”

“Oh, really? Did they come up with this on their own, or did the computers do it for them?”

“It was a combination of the two, actually.”

“How much more forthright would you like Ibrahim to be? He’s agreed to help us find Elizabeth Halton, and he’s given us the number of a telephone in Copenhagen that his son is calling every evening.”

“No, he’s given us a number he says his son is calling.”

“And tonight we’ll find out whether he’s telling the truth.”

“Higher authority isn’t willing to wait that long. They want Ibrahim chained to a wall now.”

“Where do they think they’re going to conduct this interrogation?”

“They were wondering whether they could borrow your facility in Germany.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that. In that case, we have two other options. We could take him to one of our facilities in eastern Europe, or we could put him on a plane to Egypt.”

Gabriel shook his head slowly. “Ibrahim’s not going to eastern Europe, Adrian, and he’s not going back to Cairo. No one’s strapping him to any water boards and no one’s chaining him to any more walls.”

“Now you’re being unreasonable.” Carter looked at Sarah, as though she might be able to talk some sense into him. “Where exactly is Ibrahim at the moment?”

Gabriel made no response. When Carter repeated the question, there was an edge to his voice that Gabriel had never heard before.

“He’s back in Amsterdam,” Gabriel said. “In his apartment in the August Allebéplein.”

“Why on earth did you send him back?”

“We had no choice but to put him back,” Gabriel said. “If Ibrahim had vanished from the face of the earth, his wife would have called the Dutch police, and we both would have been faced with a force-ten scandal in Holland.”

“Avoiding a scandal in Holland is not high on our list of priorities at the moment,” Carter said. “We want him, and we want him now. I assume he’s under watch.”

“No, Adrian, that slipped our mind.”

“Do try to control your fatalistic Israeli sense of humor for a few moments.”

“Of course he’s under watch.”

“Then I assume you would have no trouble delivering him into our hands.”

“No trouble at all,” Gabriel said. “But you can’t have him.”

“Be reasonable, Gabriel.”

“I’m the only one who is being reasonable, Adrian. And if your goons go anywhere near him, they’re going to get hurt.”

Carter exhaled heavily. “It appears we have reached an impasse.”

“Yes, we have.”

“I suppose you have an alternative plan,” Carter said. “I also suppose I have no choice but to listen to it.”

“My advice to you is be patient, Adrian.”

“Elizabeth Halton dies at six o’clock Friday night. We don’t have time to be patient.”

“I’ve given you the location and number of a telephone that one of her captors is calling on a regular basis. You have in your arsenal the National Security Agency, the largest and most sophisticated electronic intelligence service in the world, a service that is capable of vacuuming up every fax, phone call, and Internet communication in the world, every second of the day. Give Ishaq’s number in Copenhagen to NSA, and tonight, when Ishaq calls, tell NSA to bring all their considerable resources to bear on answering a single question: Where is he?”

Carter stood up and ambled over to the minibar. He selected a soft drink, then, after consulting the price list, thought better of it. “To do this job right, you need to put a bug on the telephone in that apartment and a full-time surveillance team on Ishaq’s wife and son.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing all day, Adrian? Watching movies in our hotel room?” Gabriel looked at Sarah. “You’re the liaison officer, Sarah. Please give your superior an update on our activities today.”

“Hanifah and Ahmed Fawaz live in a section of Copenhagen called Nørrebro,” Sarah said. “Their apartment is located in a large turn-of-the-century block, almost a city within a city. Each apartment can be accessed by a front door and a rear service door. Late this morning, when Hanifah took Ahmed out for a stroll and some shopping, we slipped in the back door and put a-” She looked at Gabriel. “What was the device called that we put on their phone?”

“It’s called a glass,” said Gabriel. “It provides room coverage along with coverage of any conversations conducted over the telephone.”

“Christ,” Carter said softly. “Please tell me you didn’t involve my officer in a B-and-E job in broad daylight in Copenhagen.”

“She’s well trained, Adrian. You would have been proud of her.”

“We also put a transmitter on the phone at the Islamic Affairs Council of Denmark,” Sarah said. “The junction box is located behind the offices in an alley. That one was easy.”

“You have them under visual surveillance, too, I take it.”

Gabriel frowned at Carter, as though he found the question mildly offensive. Carter looked down at the images of mayhem on the television screen.

“I was sent here to fire you and now I find myself volunteering for a suicide mission.” He shut off the television and looked at Gabriel. “All right, you win. We actually gave NSA the telephone number last night. Assuming that Ishaq is calling from a cell phone, NSA says it will take roughly one hour to pin down the approximate location. At that point we’ll notify the relevant local authorities and start looking.”

“Just make sure those relevant local authorities know that they’ll kill her if anyone tries to rescue her.”

“We’ve already made it clear to our friends here in Europe that if there’s any rescuing to be done, we intend to do it. In fact, we’ve already moved four Delta Force teams into various European capitals for just this scenario. They’re on hot standby. If we come up with hard intelligence on Elizabeth Halton’s whereabouts, those Delta Forces will go in and get her, and we’ll worry about assuaging hurt Euro-feelings later.”

“We have an entire division that deals with that sort of thing, Adrian. If you need any advice, just let us know.”

“You have enough to worry about.” Carter frowned and looked at his watch. “You and your team are now responsible for physical surveillance of the wife and son here in Copenhagen. I’m going to London to explain why I disobeyed a direct order to terminate your involvement in his operation. The fate of Elizabeth Halton is in your hands, Gabriel, along with my career. Please do your best not to drop us.”

30

The Scorpion: Hell on earth, thought Wazir al-Zayyat. One hundred squalid cells containing the most dangerous Islamic radicals and jihadists in Egypt, a dozen interrogation chambers where even the most hardened of Allah’s holy warriors vomited their secrets after just a few hours of “questioning” at the hands of Egypt’s secret police. Few who entered the Scorpion emerged with their souls or their body intact. Those who encountered Wazir al-Zayyat face-to-face rarely lived to talk about it.

The Scorpion was more crowded that afternoon than it had been in many years. Al-Zayyat did not find this particularly remarkable, since he was the man most responsible for the sudden surge of new arrivals. The prisoner now under interrogation in Room 4 was among the most promising: Hussein Mandali, a middle school teacher from the Sword of Allah stronghold of Imbaba. He had been captured twelve hours earlier on suspicion of distributing a recorded sermon by Sheikh Tayyib Abdul Razzaq. That in itself was hardly a novel offense-the sheikh’s scorching sermons were the hip-hop of Egypt’s downtrodden masses-but the content of the sermon found on Mandali was highly significant. In it the sheikh had made reference to the abduction of the American woman in London and had called for a popular uprising against the regime, a set of circumstances that suggested the sermon had been recorded very recently. Al-Zayyat knew that tapes did not appear by magic or by the divine will of Allah. He was convinced that Hussein Mandali was the break he had been looking for.

Al-Zayyat pushed open the door and went inside. Three interrogators were leaning against the gray walls, sleeves rolled up, faces glistening with sweat. Hussein Mandali was seated at the metal table, his face bloodied and swollen, his body covered with welts and burns. A good start, thought al-Zayyat, but not enough to break a boy from the slums of Imbaba.

Al-Zayyat sat down opposite Mandali and pressed the PLAY button on the tape recorder resting in the center of the table. A moment later, the thin, reedy voice of Sheikh Tayyib was reverberating off the walls of the interrogation room. Al-Zayyat allowed the sermon to go on for several minutes before finally reaching down and jabbing the STOP button with his thick forefinger.

“Where did you get this tape?” he asked calmly.

“It was given to me by a man in a coffeehouse in Imbaba.”

Al-Zayyat sighed heavily and glanced at the three interrogators. The beating they administered was twenty minutes in duration and, even by Egyptian standards, savage in its intensity. Mandali, when he was returned to his seat at the interrogation table, was barely conscious and weeping like a child. Al-Zayyat pressed the PLAY button for a second time.

“Where did you get this tape?”

“From a man in-”

Al-Zayyat quickly cut in. “Yes, I remember, Hussein-you got it from a man in a coffeehouse in Imbaba. But what was this man’s name?”

“He didn’t…tell me.”

“Which coffeehouse?”

“I can’t…remember.”

“You’re sure, Hussein?”

“I’m…sure.”

Al-Zayyat stood without another word and nodded to the interrogators. As he stepped into the corridor he could hear Mandali begging for mercy. “Do not fear the henchmen of Pharaoh,” the sheikh was telling him. “Place your faith in Allah, and Allah will protect you.”

31

There had been no time for Housekeeping to acquire proper safe lodging for Gabriel’s team in Copenhagen, and so they had settled instead at the Hotel d’Angleterre, a vast white luxury liner of a building looming over the sprawling King’s New Square. Gabriel and Sarah arrived shortly after 5:30 and made their way to a room on the fourth floor. Mordecai was seated at the writing desk in stocking feet, headphones over his ears, eyes fixed on a pair of receivers like a doctor reading a brain scan for signs of life. Gabriel slipped on the spare set, then looked at Mordecai and grimaced.

“It sounds as though there’s a pile driver in the room.”

“There is,” Mordecai said. “And his name is Ahmed. He’s banging a toy against the floor a few inches from the phone.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“An hour.”

“Why doesn’t she ask him to stop?

“Maybe she’s deaf. God knows I will be soon if he doesn’t stop.”

“Any activity on the line yet?”

“Just one outgoing call,” Mordecai said. “She called Ibrahim in Amsterdam to complain about Ishaq’s prolonged absence. Unless it was an elaborate ruse, she doesn’t know anything.”

Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. It was 5:37. A spy’s life, he thought. Mind-numbing boredom broken by brief interludes of sheer terror. He slipped on the headset and waited for Hanifah’s telephone to ring.

They adopted the uncomfortable silence of strangers at a wake and together endured an evening of frightening banality. Ahmed ramming his toy against the kitchen floor. Ahmed pretending to be a jet airplane. Ahmed kicking a ball against the wall of the sitting room. At 8:15, there was an ear-shattering crash. Though they were never able to accurately identify the object lost, it was of sufficient value to launch Hanifah into a hysterical tirade. A remorseful Ahmed responded by asking whether his father was going to telephone that night. Gabriel, who was pacing the floor as though looking for lost valuables, froze and awaited the answer. He’ll call if he can, Hanifah said. He always does. Ibrahim, it seemed, had been telling the truth after all.

At 8:20, Ahmed was ordered into a bath. Hanifah cleaned up the disaster in the sitting room, then switched on the television. Her choice of channels was illuminative, for it soon became clear she was watching al-Manar, the official television network of Hezbollah. For the next twenty minutes, while Ahmed splashed about in his tub, they were forced to sit through a sermon by a Lebanese cleric who extolled the bravery of the Sword of Allah and called for more acts of terror against the infidel Americans and their Zionist allies.

At 8:43, the sermon was interrupted by the shrill scream of the telephone. Hanifah answered it quickly and, in Arabic, said, “Ishaq, is that you?” It was not Ishaq but a very confused Danish man looking for someone named Knud. Hearing the voice of an Arabic-speaking woman-and, no doubt, the clerical rant in the background-he apologized profusely and hastily rang off. Hanifah returned the receiver to the cradle and shouted at Ahmed to get out of the bath. The Hezbollah preacher shouted back that the time had come for the Muslims of the world to finish the job Hitler had started.

Mordecai looked at Gabriel in exasperation. “Both of us don’t have to sit through this shit,” he said. “Why don’t you get out of here for a few minutes?”

“I don’t want to miss his call.”

“That’s what the recorders are for.” Mordecai handed Gabriel his coat and gave him a little shove toward the door. “Go get something to eat. And take Sarah with you. You two make a nice couple.”

A string quartet was sawing away indifferently at a Bach minuet downstairs in the parlor. Gabriel and Sarah slipped past them without a glance and struck out across the square toward the cafés along the New Harbor. It had turned much colder; Sarah wore a beret, and her coat collar was turned up dramatically. When Gabriel teased her about looking too much like a spy, she seized his arm playfully and pressed her body against his shoulder. They sat outside along the quay and drank freezing Carlsberg beneath a hissing gas heater. Gabriel picked at a plate of fried cod and potatoes while Sarah stared at the colorful floodlit façades of the canal houses on the opposite embankment.

“Better than Langley, I suppose.”

“Anything is better than Langley,” he said.

She looked up at the hard black sky. “I suppose your fate is now in the hands of NSA and its satellites.”

“Yours, too,” Gabriel said. “You would have been wise to go to London with Adrian.”

“And miss this?” She lowered her gaze toward the canal houses. “If he calls tonight, do you think we’ll be able to find her?”

“It depends on how well NSA is able to pinpoint Ishaq’s location. Even if NSA does manage to locate Elizabeth, Washington is going to have another problem-how to get her out alive. Ishaq and his colleagues are more than willing to die, which means that any attempt to storm the hideout will no doubt end violently. But I’m sure expert opinion will come up with a plan.”

“Don’t play the wounded martyr, Gabriel. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I didn’t appreciate some of the things that were said about me in Washington today.”

“Washington is a town without pity.”

“So is Jerusalem.”

“Then you’re going to need a thicker skin when you become the chief of the Office.” She gave him a mischievous sideways glance over the top of her collar. “Adrian says it’s just a rumor, but, judging from your reaction, it’s true.” She raised her glass. “Mazel tov.”

“Condolences would be more appropriate.”

“You don’t want the job?”

“Some men have greatness thrust upon them.”

“You’re in a fine mood tonight.”

“Forgive me, Sarah. Talk of genocide and extermination tends to spoil the evening for me.”

“Oh, that.” She sipped her beer and fought off a shiver. “You know, this restaurant does have an indoor section.”

“Yes, but it’s harder for me to tell whether we’re being watched.”

“Are we?”

“You’re trained in countersurveillance. You tell me.”

“There was a man drinking in the bar when we left the hotel,” she said. “He’s now standing on the other side of the canal with a woman who’s at least fifteen years older than he is.”

“Is he Danish security?”

“He was speaking German in the bar.”

“So.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think he’s Danish security. What do you think?”

“I think he’s a German gigolo who’s going to take that poor woman for every penny she has.”

“Should we warn her?”

“I’m afraid we have enough to worry about tonight.”

“Are you always such a charming date?”

“I didn’t realize this was a date.”

“It’s the closest thing to a date I’ve had in a long time.”

Gabriel gave her a disbelieving look and popped a piece of fish into his mouth. “Do you really expect me to believe you have difficulty attracting men?”

“Perhaps you’ve forgotten, but at the moment I’m living under an assumed identity because of my role in the al-Bakari operation. It makes it rather difficult to meet men. Even my coworkers in the CTC don’t know my real name or anything about my past. I suppose it’s for the best. Anyone I met now wouldn’t stand a chance anyway. I’m afraid my heart has been taken hostage by someone else.” She peered at him over her glass. “Now is the time you’re supposed to bashfully ask me the name of the man who’s kidnapped my heart.”

“Some questions are better left unasked, Sarah.”

“You’re such a stoic, aren’t you, Gabriel?” She took a drink of her beer and resumed her appraisal of the canal houses. “But your heart is spoken for, too, isn’t it?”

“Trust me, Sarah-you can do far better than a fifty-something misanthrope from the Valley of Jezreel.”

“I’ve always been attracted to misanthropic men, especially gifted ones. But I’m afraid my timing has always been lousy. It’s why I studied art instead of music.” She gave him a bittersweet smile. “It’s Chiara, isn’t it?”

Gabriel nodded his head slowly.

“I could always tell,” Sarah said. “She’s a very lucky girl.”

“I’m the lucky one.”

“She’s far too young for you, you know.”

“She’s older than you, but thanks for the reminder anyway.”

“If she ever throws you over for a younger man…” Her voice trailed off. “Well, you know where to find me. I’ll be the lonely former museum curator working the graveyard shift on the Saudi Arabia desk of the Counterterrorism Center.”

Gabriel reached out and touched her face. The cold had added a dab of crimson to her alabaster cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what?”

“We should have never used you. We should have found someone else.”

“There is no one else like me,” she said. “But I guess you already know that.”

A band of Chinese tourists, Europe’s newest packaged invaders, were posing for pictures in the center of the King’s New Square. Gabriel took Sarah by the arm and led her the long way round, while privately he waxed poetic on the splendid irony of a people on the march vacationing in the shrines of a civilization in twilight. They entered the lobby of the d’Angleterre under the admiring gaze of the concierge and climbed the stairs to the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon. Mordecai was pacing nervously as they slipped quietly into the room. He pressed a pair of headphones into Gabriel’s hand and led him over to the recorders. “He called,” he whispered. “He actually called. We’ve got him, Gabriel. You’ve done it.”

32

The truth had come out in Interrogation Room 4 of the Scorpion, but then it always did. Just as Wazir al-Zayyat had suspected, Hussein Mandali was no ordinary middle school teacher. He was a senior operative of the Sword of Allah and commander of an important cell based in Imbaba. He had also confessed to being present when Sheikh Tayyib recorded his sermon calling for an uprising against the regime, a recording session that had taken place Sunday morning in Apartment 2408 of the Ramses Towers, a luxury block north of the Gezira Sporting Club filled with foreigners, film stars, and newly rich friends of the regime. A quick check of the files had revealed that the apartment in question was owned by a company called Nejad Holdings, and a second check had confirmed that Nejad Holdings was controlled by one Prince Rashid bin Sultan al-Saud.

It was not the first time the prince’s name had arisen in connection with Islamic terrorism in Egypt. He’d funneled millions of dollars into the pockets of the Egyptian jihadists over the years, including fronts and entities controlled by the Sword of Allah. But because the prince was a Saudi-and because impoverished Egypt was beholden to Saudi economic aid-al-Zayyat had had no choice but to turn a blind eye to his charitable endeavors. This is different, he thought now. Giving money to Islamist causes was one thing; providing aid and shelter to a terrorist bent on the destruction of the Mubarak regime was quite another. If the SSI managed to find Sheikh Tayyib hiding in a Saudi-owned property, it might very well give al-Zayyat the ammunition he needed to end Saudi meddling in Egypt’s internal affairs once and for all.

Al-Zayyat arrived at the Ramses Towers shortly after 10:30 and found the building surrounded by several hundred raw police recruits. He knew that many of the young officers secretly supported the goals of the Sword-and that many of them, if given the opportunity, would gladly duplicate the actions of Lieutenant Khaled Islambouli and put a bullet through Pharaoh’s chest. He directed his driver to a spot across the street and lowered his window. Aman from his directorate, spotting the official Mercedes, came over at a trot.

“We went in about two minutes ago,” the officer said. “The place was empty, but it was clear someone had been there recently and that whoever it was had left in a hurry. There was food on the table and pans in the kitchen. Everything was still warm.”

Al-Zayyat swore softly. Was it bad luck, or did he have a traitor in his midst-someone inside the SSI who had alerted the sheikh that Mandali had been captured and was talking?

“Close the Zamalek bridges,” he said. “No one gets off the island without a thorough search. Then start knocking on doors inside the Ramses. I don’t care if you have to ruffle the feathers of the rich and famous. I want to make sure the sheikh isn’t still hiding somewhere inside.”

The officer turned and ran back toward the entrance of the building. Al-Zayyat drew his mobile phone from his pocket and dialed a number inside the Scorpion.

“We hit a dry well,” he told the man who answered.

“Shall we have another go at Mandali?”

“No, he’s dry, too.”

“What do you want us to do with him?”

“We never had him,” al-Zayyat said. “We’ve never heard of him. He’s nothing. He’s no one.”

33

Gabriel sat before the recorder, slipped on a pair of headphones, and pressed PLAY.

“I was afraid you were never going to call tonight. Do you know what time it is?”

“I’ve been busy. You’ve seen the news?”

“The bombings? It’s all anyone’s talking about.”

“What are they saying?”

“The Danes are shocked, of course. They’re wondering when it’s going to happen in Copenhagen. Here in Nørrebro, they say Europe is getting what it deserves for supporting the Americans. They want the Americans to release the sheikh.”

“Be careful what you say on the telephone, Hanifah. You never know who’s listening.”

“Who would bother to listen to me? I’m no one.”

“You’re married to a man who works for the Islamic Affairs Council of Denmark.”

“A man who thinks nothing of leaving his wife and child to roam the Middle East conducting research on the state of the Islamic world. Where are you tonight anyway?”

“Istanbul. How’s Ahmed?”

Gabriel pressed STOP, then REWIND, then PLAY.

“Where are you tonight anyway?”

“Istanbul. How’s Ahmed?”

“He misses his father.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“It’s too late, Ishaq. He’s been asleep for almost an hour.”

“Wake him.”

“No.”

“It’s important I speak to him tonight.”

“Then you should have called earlier. Where are you, Ishaq? What’s that noise in the background?”

“It’s just traffic outside my hotel room.”

“It sounds like you’re on a highway.”

“It’s loud here in Istanbul. It’s not like Copenhagen. Did you speak to my father today?”

STOP. REWIND. PLAY.

“Where are you, Ishaq? What’s that noise in the background?”

“It’s just traffic outside my hotel room.”

“It sounds like you’re on a highway.”

“It’s loud here in Istanbul. It’s not like Copenhagen. Did you speak to my father today?”

“This afternoon.”

“He’s well?”

“He seemed so.”

“How’s the weather in Copenhagen?”

“Cold, Ishaq. What do you think?”

“Any strangers around the apartment? Any unfamiliar faces in the streets?”

“A few more police than usual, but it’s calm here.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Why are you so nervous?”

“Because the Muslim communities across Europe are under siege at the moment. Because we are being rounded up and brought in for questioning simply because we happen to speak Arabic or pray toward Mecca.”

“No one’s being rounded up in Copenhagen.”

“Not yet.”

“When does this conference of yours end, Ishaq? When are you coming home?”

“Actually, you’re coming here. Not Istanbul. Some place better.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Go to the bottom drawer of my dresser. I left an envelope for you there.”

“I don’t feel like playing games, Ishaq. I’m tired.”

“Just do as I tell you, Hanifah. You won’t be disappointed. I promise.”

Hanifah gave an exasperated sigh and slammed the receiver down next to the telephone so hard that the sound caused Gabriel’s eardrums to vibrate like a snare drum. The next sounds he heard were distant: the patter of slippered feet, a drawer being yanked open, the rustle of crisp paper. Then, a few seconds later, Hanifah’s startled voice.

“Where did you get this money?”

“Never mind where I got it. Do you have the tickets?”

“Beirut? Why are we going to Beirut?”

“For a holiday.”

“The plane leaves Friday morning. How am I supposed to be ready that soon?”

“Just throw a few things in a bag. I’ll have someone from the Council take you to the airport. A colleague of mine from Beirut will meet you at the airport and take you and Ahmed to an apartment that we’ve been given use of. I’ll come from Istanbul in a couple of days.”

“This is crazy, Ishaq. Why didn’t you tell me until now?”

“Just do as I say, Hanifah. I have to go now.”

“When am I going to hear from you again?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure? You tell me to get on a plane to Beirut and that’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it. You’re my wife. You do as I say.”

“No, Ishaq. Tell me when I’m going to hear from you again or I’m not getting on that plane.”

“I’ll call tomorrow night.”

“When?”

“When it’s convenient.”

“No, not when it’s convenient. I want to know when you’re going to call.”

“Nine-thirty.”

“Whose time, yours or mine?”

“Nine-thirty Copenhagen time.”

“At nine thirty-one, I stop answering the phone. Do you understand me, Ishaq?”

“I have to go now, Hanifah.”

“Ishaq, wait.”

“I love you, Hanifah.”

“Ishaq-”

Click.

“What have you done, Ishaq? My God, what have you done?”

STOP. REWIND. PLAY.

“I want to know when you’re going to call.”

“Nine-thirty.”

“Who’s time, yours or mine?”

“Nine-thirty Copenhagen time.”

“At nine thirty-one, I stop answering the phone. Do you understand me, Ishaq?”

STOP.

Gabriel looked at Mordecai. “I’m going to listen to the spot where Ishaq asks Hanifah to go get the tickets and money. Can you turn down the room coverage so I can hear only Ishaq?”

Mordecai nodded and did as Gabriel asked. The interlude was twenty-three seconds. Gabriel listened to it three times, then removed his headphones and looked at Sarah.

“Tell Adrian not to wait for NSA,” he said. “Tell him that Ishaq is calling from a highway rest stop in Germany-the northwest, judging by the accents of the people I can hear in the background. Tell him he’s traveling with at least one other man. They’re moving her around in a cargo truck or a transit van. He won’t be stopping again for several hours. He just filled the tank with gas.”

34

The Falcon 2000 executive jet began to pitch as it sank into the storm clouds above the plains of eastern Colorado. Lawrence Strauss removed his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. One of Washington’s most powerful lawyers, he was a nervous flier by nature and avoided planes whenever he could-especially private planes, which he regarded as little more than death traps with wings. Given the nature of his current case, Strauss’s client had mandated he fly from Washington, D.C., to Colorado on a borrowed jet under conditions of extreme secrecy. Usually Lawrence Strauss didn’t permit clients to dictate his personal schedule or method of travel, but in this case he had made an exception. The client was a personal friend who also happened to be the president of the United States-and the mission he had given Strauss was so sensitive that only the president and his attorney general knew it existed.

The Falcon came out of the clouds and settled into a stratum of smoother air. Strauss slipped his glasses back on and looked down at the file open on the worktable in front of him: The United States v. Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq. It had been given to him late the previous evening inside the White House by the president himself. Strauss had learned much by reading the government’s case against the Egyptian cleric, mainly that it had been a house of cards. In the hands of a good defense lawyer, it could have been toppled with the flick of a well-presented motion to dismiss. But the sheikh hadn’t had a good defense lawyer; instead he had enlisted the services of a grandstanding civil rights warrior from Manhattan who had walked straight into the prosecutor’s trap. If Lawrence Strauss had been the sheikh’s lawyer, the case would never have gone to trial. Abdullah would have pleaded down to a much less serious offense or, in all likelihood, walked out of the courtroom a free man.

But Lawrence Strauss didn’t take cases like Sheikh Abdullah’s. In fact, he rarely took cases at all. In Washington he was known as the lawyer no one knew but everyone wanted. He never spoke to the press, stayed clear of Washington cocktail parties, and the only time he had been inside a courtroom in the last twenty years was to testify against a man who assaulted him during an early-morning run through northwest Washington’s Battery Kemble Park. Strauss had never won a major trial, and no groundbreaking appeal bore his name. He operated in Washington’s shadows, where political connections and personal friendships counted for more than legal brilliance, and, unlike most of his brethren in the Washington legal community, he possessed the ability to cross political lines. His politics were the politics of pragmatism, his opinion so highly valued that he usually spent several weekends a year at Camp David, no matter which party was in power. Lawrence Strauss was a cutter of deals and a smoother of ruffled feathers, a conciliator and a crafter of compromises. He made problems and prosecutors go away. He believed trials were a roll of the dice, and Lawrence Strauss didn’t play games of chance-except for his Thursday-night poker game, which included the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, two former attorneys general, and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Last week he’d won big. He usually did.

A burst of static came over the plane’s intercom system, followed by the voice of the pilot, informing Strauss that they would be landing in ten minutes. Strauss slipped the file into his briefcase and watched the snow-covered plains rising slowly to receive him. He feared he had been sent on a fool’s errand. He had been dealt a lousy hand, but then so had his opponent. He’d have to bluff. He didn’t like to bluff. Bluffing was for losers. And the only thing Lawrence Strauss hated worse than flying was losing.

The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, also known as the Supermax, and the Alcatraz of the Rockies, stands two miles south of Florence, Colorado, hidden from public view by the rolling brown hills of Colorado’s high desert. Four hundred of the country’s most hardened and dangerous prisoners are incarcerated there, including Theodore Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Eric Rudolph, Matthew Hale, David Lane, and Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, underboss of the Lucchese crime family. Also residing within the walls of the Supermax is a large contingent of Islamic terrorists, including Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard Reid, and Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. Despite the high-profile inmate population, recent investigations had revealed that the prison was dangerously understaffed and far from secure. Prosecutors in California had learned that Mexican mafia leader Ruben Castro was running his Los Angeles criminal enterprises from his cell in the Supermax, while authorities in Spain discovered that World Trade Center conspirator Mohammed Salameh had been in written communication with terror cells linked to the Madrid subway bombings. Lawrence Strauss, as he passed through the outer gate in the back of an FBI Suburban, hoped the beleaguered guards managed to keep a lid on the place until he was airborne again.

The warden was waiting for Strauss in the reception area. He extended his hand solemnly as Strauss came inside and offered a murmured greeting, then turned and led him wordlessly into the bowels of the complex. They passed through a series of barred doors, each of which closed behind them with an irrefutable finality. Strauss had taken a ride with the president once on a nuclear submarine, an experience he had vowed never to repeat. He felt the same way now-confined, claustrophobic, and sweating despite the sharp chill.

The warden led him into a secure interview room. It was divided into two chambers separated by a Plexiglas wall-visitors on one side, prisoner on the other, a telephone line between them. A sign warned that all conversations were subject to electronic monitoring. Strauss looked at the warden and said, “I’m afraid this won’t do.”

“The recording devices and surveillance cameras will be turned off.”

“Under no circumstances is this conversation going to be conducted electronically.”

“It’s good enough for the CIA and the FBI when they come here.”

“I don’t work for the CIA or the FBI.”

“I’m afraid it’s regulations, Mr. Strauss.”

Strauss reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “One phone call-that’s all it will take. One phone call and I get what I want. But let’s not waste valuable time. Let’s find some reasonable compromise.”

“What do you have in mind?”

Strauss told him.

“He hasn’t been out of his cell in weeks.”

“Then the fresh air will do him good.”

“Do you know how cold it is outside?”

“Get him a coat,” Strauss said.

It was beginning to get dark by the time Strauss was shown through a secure doorway leading to the west exercise yard. A folding table and two folding chairs had been placed in the precise center and arc lamps were burning along the top of the electrified fence. Four guards stood like statuary along the perimeter; two more were perched along the parapet of the watchtower with weapons trained downward. Strauss nodded in approval to the warden, then headed into the yard alone and took his seat.

Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq emerged from the cellblock five minutes later in shackles, sandwiched between a pair of hulking guards. He was shorter than Strauss anticipated, five-six perhaps, and thin as a pauper. He wore an orange prison jumpsuit and a tan parka was draped over his boney shoulders. His beard was unkempt, and what little Strauss could see of his face was gray and slack with illness. It was the face of a dying man, he thought, a face that had not seen sunlight in many years. His eyes, however, still shone with a condescending intelligence. Lawrence Strauss was a man who earned his living making instantaneous judgments about people. His first opinion of Sheikh Abdullah was that he was a courageous and committed man-hardly the raving zealot that had been portrayed by the media and the prosecution at the time of his trial. He would be more than a worthy opponent.

As the sheikh lowered himself into the chair, Strauss looked at one of the guards. “Remove his shackles, please.”

The guard shook his head. “It’s against the rules.”

“I’ll take full responsibility.”

“Sorry,” the guard said, “but it’s a rule we never bend at the Max. Prisoners are never unshackled when they’re outside the cell. Right, Sheikh Abdullah?”

The guards gave the sheikh a pat on the back and started back to the cellblock. The Egyptian made no response other than to fix his dark eyes directly on those of Lawrence Strauss.

“Who are you?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“My name is Arthur Hamilton,” said Strauss.

“You work for the American government, Mr. Hamilton?”

Strauss shook his head. “I want to make clear from the outset that I am a private citizen. I have no connection to the government of the United States whatsoever.”

“But surely you didn’t come to this place on your own volition. Surely you have been sent here by others.”

“That is correct.”

“Who sent you here?”

Strauss looked up at the guards in the tower, then gazed directly at Sheikh Abdullah. “I am an emissary of the president of the United States.”

The sheikh accepted this piece of information with an air of detachment. “I’ve been expecting you,” he said calmly. “What can I do for you, Mr. Hamilton?”

“I assume you are aware of the fact that your group has kidnapped the daughter of the American ambassador in London and is threatening to murder her if the United States does not release you and return you to Egypt.”

“Choose your words carefully, Mr. Hamilton. Elizabeth Halton is a legitimate target in our eyes. Her death, should it come to pass, would not be murder, but a justifiable killing.”

“So then you are aware of what has transpired on your behalf?”

“I am fully aware, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Are you in any way connected to the attack?”

“Are you asking me if I ordered it or helped plan it?”

“That is precisely what I’m asking.”

He shook his head slowly. “I have had no contact with the Sword of Allah since my incarceration in this facility. What has been done on my behalf was set in motion without my approval or knowledge.”

“By your brother?”

“I wouldn’t know.” The sheikh gave a fleeting smile. “You are very good at asking questions, Mr. Hamilton. Am I to assume that you are a lawyer?”

“Guilty as charged, Sheikh Abdullah.”

“I appreciate your candor. May I now ask you a question?”

Strauss nodded.

“Will you convert to Islam, Mr. Hamilton?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“As a devout Muslim, I am obligated to do many things, including bringing the gift of Islam to the unbelievers.”

“I’m afraid my allegiances are already spoken for, Sheikh Abdullah.”

“You are a person of the Book?”

“I believe in the law, Sheikh Abdullah.”

“The only law that matters is God’s law.”

“And what would God say about the atrocities that have been committed in Europe on your behalf? What would God say about the murder and kidnapping of innocents?”

“The number of dead pale in comparison to the number who have been tortured and killed by your friend Hosni Mubarak. They are but a pittance compared to the number of innocent Muslims who have died because of the American and British adventure in Iraq.” The sheikh fell silent for a moment. “Do you know what happened in my country after Osama’s airplanes hit your Twin Towers? Your government gave the Mubarak regime a list of names-hundreds of names, Mr. Hamilton. And do you know what Mubarak and his secret police did? They arrested all those men and tortured them mercilessly, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.”

“And this justifies the kidnapping and murder of an innocent woman?”

“Without question.” The sheikh turned his face to the arc lamps. The harsh light washed all color from him. “But the president didn’t send you all the way here from Washington to engage in a debate, did he, Mr. Hamilton?”

“No, Sheikh Abdullah, he did not.”

“What then is the purpose of your visit?”

“The president has dispatched me here to request a favor. He would like you to issue a fatwa condemning the actions of your group and calling for Elizabeth Halton’s immediate release. The president feels your words would have a profound influence on the minds of her captors.”

“Her captors are listening to other voices, Mr. Hamilton. Mine would be mere background noise.”

“The president thinks otherwise.” Strauss’s next words were spoken with care. “And he would be extremely grateful for whatever help you could provide us in this matter.”

“How would the president demonstrate this gratitude?”

“I’m not here to negotiate, Sheikh Abdullah.”

“Of course you are, Mr. Hamilton.”

“The president believes you are a reasonable man who would not want Elizabeth Halton harmed. The president believes bargaining at a time like this would be inappropriate. It would also be against the stated policy of the United States of America.”

“If the president believes I am such a reasonable man, then why did he refer to me as a bloodthirsty terrorist?”

“Sometimes things are said for public consumption that don’t necessarily reflect true feelings,” Strauss said. “As a man of the Middle East, I’m sure you can understand this.”

“More than you might think,” the Egyptian said. “But the president doesn’t need my cooperation in this fatwa. He can tell his clever spies in the CIA to fabricate one.”

“The president feels it won’t be believed by the captors unless it is spoken by you. He would like you to read your statement on camera. We would make provisions here, of course.”

“Of course.” The sheikh tugged thoughtfully at his beard. “Am I to understand that the president of the United States is asking me to end this crisis for him and yet he is offering me nothing in return?”

Strauss removed the file from his briefcase and placed it on the table. “It has come to my attention that the prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia did not turn over to your lawyers certain exculpatory evidence that they were required by law to give them. I believe a well-crafted Section 2255 motion would receive a favorable reception in the courts.”

“How favorable?”

Again Strauss proceeded with caution. “I can foresee a scenario in which your conviction is overturned, at which point the government would have to decide whether to retry you or simply release you. In the meantime, steps can be taken to make your stay here more comfortable.”

“You make it sound as though I am an invited guest.”

“You were an invited guest, Sheikh Abdullah. We granted you permission to enter our country and you repaid our hospitality by conspiring to attack some of our most important landmarks.”

“But you would be willing to take my case nonetheless?”

“It’s not the sort of work I do,” Strauss said. “But I can think of several lawyers who would do a very fine job.”

“And how long would such a process take?”

“Two years,” Strauss said. “Three years at most.”

“Do I look like a man who has three years to live?”

“You have no other options.”

“No, Mr. Hamilton, the president is the one without options. In fact, his options are so limited he has sent you here cap in hand to plead for my help. In return you offer me false hope and expect me to be grateful. But that’s what you Americans always do, isn’t it, Mr. Hamilton? What you don’t seem to understand is that there is more at stake now than just the fate of a single American woman. The Sword has set fire to Egypt. The days of the Mubarak regime are now numbered. And when it falls, the entire Middle East will change overnight.”

Strauss put the file back into his briefcase. “I’m not an expert on the Middle East, but something tells me you have miscalculated. Issue the fatwa, Sheikh Abdullah. Save Elizabeth Halton’s life. Do the decent thing. God will reward you.” He hesitated, then added: “And so will the president.”

“Tell your president that America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists and we don’t negotiate with tyrants. Tell him to comply with the Sword’s demands or he’ll be standing at Andrews Air Force Base soon, watching a coffin coming off an airplane.”

Strauss stood abruptly and looked down at the sheikh. “You’re making a grave mistake. You’re going to die in this prison.”

“Perhaps,” the Egyptian said, “but you’ll die before me.”

“I’m afraid my health is better than yours, Sheikh Abdullah.”

“Yes, but you live in Washington and someday soon our brothers are going to turn it to ashes.” The sheikh turned his face toward the blackening sky. “Enjoy your flight home, Mr. Hamilton. And please give my regards to the president.”

35

You were right about the call coming from Germany,” said Adrian Carter.

They were walking along a gravel footpath in the Tivoli gardens. Carter was wearing a woolen greatcoat and a fur ushanka hat from his days in Moscow. Gabriel wore denim and leather and was hovering dourly at Carter’s shoulder like a restless conscience.

“NSA determined Ishaq was just outside Dortmund when he made his call, probably somewhere along the A1 autobahn. We are now working under the assumption that the kidnappers managed to get Elizabeth out of Britain and are moving her from hiding place to hiding place on the Continent.”

“Did you tell the Germans?”

“The president was on the phone with the German chancellor two minutes after NSA pinned down the location. Within an hour every police officer in the northwest corner was involved in the search. Obviously they didn’t find them. No Ishaq, no Elizabeth.”

“Maybe we should consider ourselves fortunate,” Gabriel said. “If the wrong sort of policeman had stumbled upon them, we might have had a Fürstenfeldbruck on our hands.”

“Why is that name familiar to me?”

“It was the German airfield outside Munich where our athletes were taken in seventy-two. The terrorists thought they were going to board an airplane and be flown out of the country. It was a trap, of course. The Germans decided to stage a rescue attempt. We asked them if we could handle it, but they refused. They wanted to do it themselves. It was amateurish, to put it mildly.”

“I remember,” Carter said distantly. “Within a few seconds, all your athletes were dead.”

“Shamron was standing in the tower when it happened,” Gabriel said. “He saw the entire thing.”

They sat down at a table in an outdoor café. Gabriel ordered coffee and apple cake, then watched as Sarah drifted slowly past. The ends of her scarf were tucked into her coat, a prearranged signal that meant she had detected no signs of Danish security.

“Munich,” said Carter distantly. “All roads lead back to Munich, don’t they? Munich proved that terrorism could bring the civilized world to its knees. Munich proved that terrorism could work. Yasir Arafat’s fingerprints were all over Munich, but two years later he was standing before the General Assembly of the United Nations.” Carter made a sour face and sipped his coffee. “But Munich also proved that a ruthless, merciless, and determined campaign against the murderers could be effective. It took a while, but eventually you were able to put Black September out of business.” He looked at Gabriel. “Did you see the movie?”

Gabriel shot Carter a withering look and shook his head slowly. “I see it every night in my head, Adrian. The real thing-not a fantasy version written by someone who questions the right of my country to exist.”

“I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.” Carter stabbed at his cake without appetite. “But in a way it was easier then, wasn’t it? Eliminate the leaders, and the network dies. Now we are fighting an idea and ideas don’t die so easily. It’s rather like fighting cancer. You have to find the right dosage of medicine. Too little and the cancer grows. Too much and you kill the patient.”

“You’re never going to be able to kill the cancer as long as Egypt keeps churning out terrorists,” Gabriel said. “Ibrahim Fawaz was an exception. When he was tortured and humiliated by the regime, he chose to leave the extremist Islamist movement and get on with what remained of his life. But most of those who are tortured go in the opposite direction.”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could snap our fingers and create a vibrant and viable democracy along the banks of the Nile. But that’s not going to happen any time soon, especially given our track record in Iraq. Which means we’re stuck with Mubarak and his thuggish regime for the foreseeable future. He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch-and yours, too, Gabriel. Or is it your wish to have an Islamic Republic of Egypt along your western flank?”

“In many respects Egypt already is an Islamic republic. The Egyptian government is unable to provide the most basic services to its people and the Islamists have filled the void. They’ve penetrated the elementary schools and the universities, the bureaucracy and the trade unions, the arts and the press, even the courts and the legal guilds. No book can be published, and no film can be produced, that doesn’t first meet the approval of the clerics at al-Azhar. Western influences are slowly being extinguished. It’s only a matter of time before the regime is extinguished, too.”

“Hopefully we’ll have found some other way to fuel our cars before that happens.”

“You will,” said Gabriel. “And we’ll be left to face the beast on our own.”

Gabriel tucked a few bills under his coffee cup and stood. They walked along the far edge of the park, past a row of food kiosks. Sarah was seated at a wooden table, eating a plate of chilled shrimp on black bread. She dropped it unfinished into a rubbish bin as Carter and Gabriel filed slowly past, then followed after them.

“Speaking of Egypt, we nearly caught a break there last night,” Carter said. “The SSI arrested a Sword of Allah operative named Hussein Mandali. He had the misfortune of being caught while in possession of one of Sheikh Tayyib’s tape-recorded sermons-a sermon that had been recorded after the kidnapping. It turns out that Mandali was present at the recording session, which took place at an apartment in Zamalek. The apartment was owned by a Saudi benefactor of the Sword named Prince Rashid bin Sultan. The prince has been on our radar screens for some time. It seems that giving support to Islamic terrorists is something of a hobby for him, like his falcons and his whores.”

Carter fished his pipe from the pocket of his greatcoat. “The SSI searched the apartment and found the premises recently vacated. We requested permission to question Mandali ourselves and were informed that he was unavailable for comment.”

“That means he’s no longer presentable.”

“Or worse.”

“Still want to pack my Joe off to Egypt for an interrogation?”

“You’ve prevailed on that point, Gabriel. The question is what do we do now?”

“Maybe it’s time we had a word with Ishaq.”

Carter stopped walking and looked at Gabriel directly. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

Gabriel told Carter his plan as they walked through the heart of Copenhagen along a quiet cobblestone street.

“It’s risky,” Carter said. “We also have no guarantee he’s going to call back again tonight. We asked the German police to conduct the search as quietly as possible, but it didn’t go unnoticed by German media, and there’s a good chance Ishaq noticed, too. If he’s smart-and we have no evidence to the contrary-he’s bound to suspect his phone call had something to do with it.”

“He’ll call, Adrian. He’s trying to hold on to his family. And as for risk, no option before us is without risk.”

Carter gave it another moment of thought. “We’ll have to come clean with the Danes,” he said finally. “And the president would have to approve it.”

“So call him.”

Carter handed Gabriel the phone. “He’s your friend,” he said. “You call him.”

One hour would elapse before the president gave Gabriel’s gambit his blessing. The operation’s first step came ten minutes after that, not in Copenhagen but in Amsterdam, where, at 12:45 P.M., Ibrahim Fawaz stepped from the al-Hijrah Mosque after midday prayers and started back toward the open-air market in the Ten Kate Straat. As he was nearing his stall at the end of the market, a man came alongside him and touched him lightly on the arm. He had pockmarks across his cheeks and spoke Arabic with the accent of a Palestinian. Five minutes later, Ibrahim was sitting next to the man in the back of a Mercedes sedan.

“No handcuffs or hood this time?”

The man with pockmarked cheeks shook his head slowly. “Tonight we’re going to take a nice comfortable ride together,” he said. “As long as you behave yourself, of course.”

“Where are we going?”

The man answered the question truthfully.

“Copenhagen? Why Copenhagen?”

“A friend of yours is about to cross a dangerous bridge there, and he needs a good man like you to serve as his guide.”

“I suppose that means he’s heard from my son.”

“I’m just the delivery boy. Your friend will fill in the rest of the picture for you after we arrive.”

“What about my daughter-in-law and my grandson?”

The man with pockmarked cheeks said nothing. Instead he glanced into the rearview mirror and, with a flick of his head, ordered the driver to get moving. As the car slipped away from the curb, Ibrahim wondered if they were really going to Copenhagen or whether their true destination was the torture chambers of Egypt. He thought of the words Sheikh Abdullah had spoken to him in another lifetime. Rely on God, the sheikh had said. Don’t be defeated.

Denmark’s not-so-secret police are known as the Security Intelligence Service. Those who work there refer to it only as “the Service,” and among professionals like Adrian Carter it was known as the PET, the initials of its impossible-to-pronounce Danish name. Though its address was officially a state secret, most residents of Copenhagen knew it was headquartered in an anonymous office block in a quiet quarter north of the Tivoli gardens. Lars Mortensen, PET’s profoundly pro-American chief, was waiting in his office when Carter was shown inside. He was a tall man, as Danish men invariably are, with the bearing of a Viking and the blond good looks of a film star. His sharp blue eyes betrayed no emotion other than a mild curiosity. It was rare for an American spy of Adrian Carter’s stature to pop into Copenhagen for a visit-and rarer still that he did so with just five minutes’ warning.

“I wish you would have told us you were coming,” Mortensen said as he nodded Carter into a comfortable Danish Modern armchair. “We could have arranged for a proper reception. To what do we owe the honor?”

“I’m afraid we have something of a situation on our hands.” Carter’s careful tone was not lost on his Danish counterpart. “Our search for Elizabeth Halton has led us onto Danish soil. Well, not us, exactly. An intelligence service working on our behalf.”

“Which service?”

Carter answered the question truthfully. The look in Mortensen’s blue eyes turned from curiosity to anger.

“How long have they been in Denmark?”

“Twenty-four hours, give or take a few hours.”

“Why weren’t we informed?”

“I’m afraid it fell into the category of a hot pursuit.”

“Telephones work during hot pursuits,” Mortensen said. “So do fax machines and computers.”

“It was an oversight on our part,” Carter said, his tone conciliatory. “And the blame lies with me, not the Israelis.”

“What exactly are they doing here?” Mortensen narrowed his blue eyes. “And why are you coming to us now?”

The Danish security chief tapped a silver pen anxiously against his knee while he listened to Carter’s explanation.

“Exactly how many Israelis are now in Copenhagen?”

“I’m not sure, to be honest.”

“I want them on their way out of town in an hour.”

“I’m afraid at least one of them is going to have to stay.”

“What’s his name?”

Carter told him. Mortensen’s pen fell silent.

“I have to take this to the prime minister,” he said.

“Is it really necessary to involve the politicians?”

“Only if I want to keep my job,” Mortensen snapped. “Assuming the prime minister grants his approval-and I have no reason to think he won’t, given our past cooperation with your government-I want to be present tonight when Fawaz calls.”

“It’s likely to be unpleasant.”

“We Danes are tough people, Mr. Carter. I think I can handle it.”

“Then we would be pleased to have you there.”

“And tell your friend Allon to keep his Beretta in his holster. I don’t want any dead bodies turning up. If anyone dies anywhere in the country tonight, he’ll be our top suspect.”

“I’ll tell him,” said Carter.

The curiosity returned to Mortensen’s eyes. “What’s he like?”

“Allon?”

Mortensen nodded.

“He’s a rather serious chap and a bit rough around the edges.”

“They all are,” said Mortensen.

“Yes,” said Carter. “But, then, who can blame them?”

There are few ugly buildings in central Copenhagen. The glass-and-steel structure on the Dag Hammarskjölds Allé that houses the American embassy is one of them. The CIA station there is small and somewhat cramped-Copenhagen was an intelligence backwater during the Cold War and remains so today-but its secure conference room seats twenty comfortably, and its electronics are fully up-to-date. Carter thought they needed a code name, and Gabriel, after a brief deliberation, suggested Moriah, the hill in Jerusalem where God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his only son. Carter, whose father was an Episcopal minister, thought the choice inspired, and from that point forward they were referred to in all Agency communications as the Moriah Team and nothing else.

Ibrahim Fawaz arrived from Amsterdam at six that evening, accompanied by Oded and Yaakov. Lars Mortensen appeared at 6:15 and accepted Gabriel’s act of contrition for the sin of failing to obtain Danish authorization before barging onto Danish soil. Gabriel then requested permission for the rest of his team to remain in Denmark to see the operation through, and Mortensen, clearly starstruck to be in the presence of the legend, immediately agreed. Mordecai and Sarah joined them after breaking camp at the Hotel d’Angleterre, while Eli Lavon came gratefully in from the cold of Nørrebro, looking like a man who had been on near-constant surveillance duty for more than a week.

The hours of the early evening were the province of Mortensen and the Danes. At seven o’clock they disabled the phone line leading to the Nørrebro apartment and forwarded all calls to a number inside the CIA station. Fifteen minutes later two Danish agents-Mortensen wisely chose female agents to avoid a cultural confrontation-paid a quiet visit to the apartment for the expressed purpose of asking a few “routine” questions concerning the whereabouts of one Ishaq Fawaz. Mordecai’s original “glass” was still active and, much to Mortensen’s dismay, it was used by the Moriah Team to monitor the proceedings. They were fifteen minutes in duration and ended with the sound of Hanifah and Ahmed being taken into Danish custody for additional questioning. Hanifah was immediately relieved of her cell phone and the phone was ferried at high speed to the embassy, where Mordecai, with Carter and Mortensen looking over his shoulder, hastily mined it for any nuggets of useful intelligence.

At eight o’clock a scene commenced that Carter would later liken to a deathwatch. They crowded around the rectangular table in the conference room, Americans at one end, Gabriel’s field warriors at the other, and Sarah perched uneasily between them. Mortensen placed himself directly in front of the speaker. Ibrahim sat to his right, nervously working the beads of his tasbih. Only Gabriel was in motion. He was pacing the length of the room like an actor on opening night, with one hand pressed firmly to his chin and his eyes boring into the telephone as though willing it to ring. Sarah tried to assure him that the call would come soon, but Gabriel seemed not to hear her. He was listening to other voices-the voice of Ishaq promising his wife that he would call at 9:30, and the voice of Hanifah warning that if he was one minute late she would refuse to answer. At 9:29, Gabriel ceased pacing and stood over the telephone. Ten seconds later it rang with the harshness of a fire alarm in a night ward. Gabriel reached for the receiver and lifted it slowly to his ear.

36

Gabriel listened for several seconds without speaking. Traffic rushing at speed along wet pavement. The distant blare of a car horn, like a warning of trouble to come.

“Good evening, Ishaq,” he said calmly in Arabic. “I want you to listen very carefully, because I’m only going to say this once. Are you listening, Ishaq?”

“Who is this?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. I have your father, Ishaq. I also have Hanifah and Ahmed. We’re going to make a deal, Ishaq. Just you and me. You’re going to give me Elizabeth Halton, I’m going to give you back your family. If you don’t give me Elizabeth, I’m going to put your family on a plane to Egypt and hand them over to the SSI for questioning. And you know what happens in the interrogation chambers of the SSI, don’t you, Ishaq?”

“Where’s my father?”

“I’m going to give you a telephone number, Ishaq. It’s a number no one else has but me. I want you to write it down, because it’s important you don’t forget it. Are you ready, Ishaq?”

Silence, then: “I’m ready.”

Gabriel recited the number, then said, “Call me on that number in ten minutes, Ishaq. It’s now nine thirty-one. At nine forty-two, I stop answering the phone. Do you understand me, Ishaq? Don’t test my patience. And don’t make the wrong choice.”

Gabriel hung up the phone and looked at Ibrahim.

“Was it him?”

Ibrahim closed his eyes and fingered the beads of his tasbih.

“Yes,” said Ibrahim. “That was my son.”

Carter and Mortensen reached for separate telephones and quickly dialed. Mortensen called one of his men who was inside the offices of Tele Danmark, the Danish telecom company, while Carter dialed a CIA liaison officer at the Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters of the NSA. Five minutes later they hung up simultaneously and eyed each other like poker players across the table. Mortensen laid down his hand first.

“According to Tele Danmark, the call was placed from a mobile phone in Belgium,” he said. “If we contact our brethren in Brussels, we should be able to find out where he was when he made the call.”

“Don’t bother,” Carter said. “He was east of Liège, probably on the A3. It was a different phone than the one he used last night. And it’s no longer on the air.”

He called Hanifah’s mobile, then dialed the apartment again. Gabriel let the phones ring unanswered. Finally, with the deadline hard approaching, he called the number Gabriel had given him. The Agency technicians had patched the line into the recorders and it was being fed live to Washington. Much to the irritation of all those listening, Gabriel allowed the phone to ring four times before answering. His tone, when finally he brought the receiver to his ear, was brisk and businesslike.

“You cut it rather close, Ishaq. I wouldn’t make a habit of it.”

“Where are my wife and son?”

“As of this moment they are sitting aboard a private plane on an airfield outside Copenhagen. What happens to them next depends entirely on you.”

“What about my father?”

“You father is here with me.”

“Where is here?”

“Where I am at the moment is completely unimportant, Ishaq. The only thing that matters now is Elizabeth Halton. You have her, I want her back. We’re going to make it happen, just you and me. No one else needs to be involved. Not your controller. Not your mastermind. Just us.”

“Who do you work for?”

“I can be whoever you want me to be: CIA, FBI, DIA, an agency so fucking secret you’ve never heard of it before. But just be sure of one thing. I’m not bluffing. I made your father disappear from the al-Hijrah Mosque in Amsterdam, and I made your wife and son vanish from Nørrebro. And if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do, I’ll put them all on a plane to Egypt. And you know what happens there, don’t you? I know what happened to your sister, Ishaq. Jihan was her name, right? Your father told me about Jihan. Your father told me everything.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment. Your father has suffered enough because of the Egyptian secret police. Don’t make him suffer again. Have you seen the scars on his arms? Have you seen the scars on his back? Don’t put him through another night in the torture chambers of Egypt.”

Ishaq was silent for a moment. Gabriel listened intently to the noise in the background. The truck was moving again.

“Where are you calling from, Ishaq?”

“Afghanistan.”

“That’s quite a feat of driving, given the fact you were just outside Dortmund when you called last night. My patience is not unlimited. Tell me where you are, or I’ll hang up and you’ll never hear from me again. Do you understand me?”

“And I’ll push a button and the American woman will die a martyr’s death. Do you understand me?”

“We’ve had enough of bombs and blood, Ishaq. You’ve made your point. The world has taken notice of Egypt’s plight. But the president isn’t going to release the sheikh, no matter how many people you kill. It’s not going to happen. You alone have the power to make it stop. Spare Elizabeth Halton’s life. Give her back to me and I’ll give you back your family.”

“And what happens to me?”

“I’m not interested in you. In fact, I couldn’t give a shit about you. What I want is Elizabeth Halton. Leave her somewhere safe, tell me where I can find her, then make your way to Afghanistan or Pakistan or Wherever-the-fuck-istan you want to spend the rest of your life. Just give me the girl back. You love death, we love life. You’re strong, we’re weak. You’ve already won. Just let me have her back.”

“I’m going to find you one day, you bastard. I’m going to find you and kill you.”

“I guess that means you’re not interested in a deal. It’s been nice talking to you, Ishaq. If you happen to change your mind, you have ten minutes to call me back. Think about it carefully. Don’t make the wrong decision. Otherwise, your family is as good as dead. Ten minutes, Ishaq. Then the plane leaves for Cairo.”

Gabriel hung up the phone for a second time. Carter gave him a pat on the back. It was drenched in sweat.

Gabriel slipped from the conference room without a word and made his way to the toilets. He stood before the basin, hands braced on the edge of the cold porcelain, and gazed at his own reflection in the mirror. He saw himself not as he appeared now but as a boy of twenty-one, a gifted artist with the ashes of the Holocaust flowing in his veins. Shamron was standing over his shoulder, hard as an iron bar, urgent as a drumbeat. You will terrorize the terrorists, he was saying. You will be Israel’s avenging angel of death.

But Shamron had neglected to warn Gabriel of the price he would one day pay for climbing into the sewer with terrorists and murderers: a son buried in a hero’s grave on the Mount of Olives, a wife lost in a labyrinth of memory in an asylum on Mount Herzl. Having lost his own family to the terrorists, he had vowed to himself that he would never target the innocent in order to achieve his goals. Tonight, if only for the purposes of deception, he had broken that promise. He felt no guilt over his actions, only a profound sense of despair. The creed of the global jihadists was not just; it was a mental illness. One could not reason with those who massacred the innocent in the belief that they were doing God’s will on earth. One had to kill them before they killed you. And if one had to threaten the family of a murderer to save an innocent life, then so be it.

He splashed icy water on his face and stepped out into the corridor. Carter was leaning against the wall with the calm detachment of a man waiting for a long-delayed train.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I will be when this is over,” Gabriel said. “Did NSA get a fix on him?”

“It appears he was somewhere close to the interchange of the A3 and the A26.”

“Which means he could now be heading in any direction at considerable speed,” said Gabriel. “What about the phone itself?”

“It was different,” Carter said.

“I suppose it’s now off the air?”

Carter nodded.

“Anything else?”

“Washington is worried that you’re pushing him too hard.”

“What would they have me do? Ask him nicely to release her?”

“They just want you to give him a little room to maneuver.”

“And what if he uses that room to kill Elizabeth Halton?”

Carter led the way back to the conference room. As they passed through the doorway, Gabriel looked up at the wall clock. Three minutes remained until the next deadline. Lars Mortensen was drumming his fingers anxiously against the tabletop.

“What are you going to do if he doesn’t call?”

“He’ll call,” Gabriel said.

“How can you be sure?”

It was Ibrahim who answered for him. “Because of Jihan,” he said, fingers still working his prayer beads. “He’ll call because he doesn’t want his wife and son to suffer the same fate as Jihan.”

Mortensen, perplexed by the response, looked to Carter for an explanation. Carter raised his hand in a gesture that said he would explain the reference at a more appropriate time. Gabriel resumed his pacing. Two minutes later, the telephone rang again. He snatched up the receiver and brought it quickly to his ear.

“Ishaq,” he said with an artificial brightness. “I’m glad you called. I assume we have a deal?”

“We do, as long as you agree to my one condition.”

“You’re not in much of a position to make demands, Ishaq.”

“Neither are you.”

“What’s your condition?”

“I’ll give her to my father, but no one else.”

“That’s not necessary, Ishaq. Just stop the car and leave Elizabeth by the side of the road-somewhere safe and dry, somewhere out of harm’s way-then drive away. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.”

“I need proof my father is still in Europe.” A pause. “I need proof he’s still alive.”

“Your father is a founding member of the Sword of Allah, Ishaq. Your father isn’t going to go anywhere near my girl.”

“My father is an innocent man. And unless he’s there, you don’t get your girl.”

Gabriel looked at Carter, who nodded his head.

“All right, Ishaq, you win. We’ll do it your way. Just tell me where you want to do it.”

“Are you in Denmark?”

“I told you, Ishaq-it doesn’t matter where I am.”

“It matters to me.”

“Yes, Ishaq. I’m in Denmark. Let’s just do it here, shall we? It’s a small country, lots of open spaces, and the Danish police are willing to let you be on your way after you release Elizabeth.”

“I need a guarantee of safe passage over the border. No checkpoints. No roadblocks. If a policeman so much as looks at me twice, the woman is dead. Do you understand?”

“I understand. We’ll tell the local authorities to stand down. No one is going to bother you. Just tell me how you want to do it.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you what to do.”

“Tomorrow? That’s not good enough, Ishaq.”

“If tomorrow isn’t good enough, then your girl dies tonight.”

Another glance at Carter. Another nod of the head.

“All right, Ishaq. What time are you going to call me tomorrow?”

“I’ll call at noon Copenhagen time.”

“Too long, Ishaq. I want to hear from you much sooner than that.”

“It’s noon or nothing. It’s your choice.”

“All right, noon it is. Don’t disappoint me.”

The line went dead. Gabriel hung up the phone and buried his face in his hands. “I gave him room to maneuver, Adrian, just like Washington wanted, and he maneuvered me right into a corner.”

“We’ll wait until tomorrow and listen to what he has to say.”

“And what if we don’t like what he has to say?”

“Then we won’t accept the deal.”

“No, Adrian, we’ll do exactly what he tells us to do. Because if we don’t, he’s going to kill her.”

37

Their security had been exceptionally good. They never entered her cell without their faces covered, and not once since the initial seconds of her capture had they spoken a single word to her. They had permitted her no newspapers or reading material of any kind, and a request for a radio to help pass the empty hours had been met by a slow shake of Cain’s head. She had lost track of how long she had been in captivity. She had no idea whether the rest of the world thought she was alive or dead. Nor did she have any clue as to her whereabouts. She might still be in the east of England, she thought, or she might be in a cave complex in Tora Bora. Of one thing, however, she was certain: her captors were moving her on a regular basis.

The proof of movement was plain for her to see. The rooms where she was being held were all variations of the first-white walls, a camp bed, a single lamp, a door with a spy hole-but each was clearly different. She would have been able to discern this even if they had forced her to wear a blindfold, because her senses of smell and hearing were now heightened to an animal acuteness. She could hear them coming long before they slid the notes beneath her door and now could distinguish Cain from Abel by scent alone. Her last cell had stunk of liquid bleach. The one where she was being held now was filled with the pleasant aroma of coffee and Middle Eastern spices. She was in a market, she thought, or perhaps the warehouse of a distributor that supplied grocers in Arab neighborhoods.

Her heightened senses had allowed her to gather one other piece of information: there was a distinct rhythm to her movements. This rhythm was not measured by hours and minutes-time, for all her attempts to capture it, remained a mystery to her-but in the number of meals she was given in each location. It was always the same: four meals of identical content, then a shot of the ketamine, then she would awaken in a new room with new smells. Thus far she had been given three meals in her current location. Her fourth would be coming soon. Elizabeth knew that, in all likelihood, it would be followed several hours later by an injection of ketamine. She would struggle, but her struggle would quickly turn to submission in the face of greater strength and numbers.

Submission…

That was their goal. Submission was the overall goal of the global jihadists and it was the goal of Elizabeth’s captors as well. The global jihadists wanted the West to submit to the will of violent Salafist Islam. Elizabeth’s captors wanted her to submit to the needle and the mind-numbing rhythm of their movements and their notes. They wanted her weak and compliant, a sheep that offers its throat willingly to the ritual knife. Elizabeth had decided that her days of submission were over. She had decided to stage a rebellion, a rebellion she hoped would provide her with information as to her whereabouts, a rebellion fought with the only two weapons available to her-her own life and her knowledge of medicine. She closed her eyes and inhaled the pleasant aroma of coffee and cinnamon. And she waited for Cain to open the door and present her with her fourth meal.

38

So it comes down to the two of us once again,” Ibrahim said. “I suppose that’s fitting.”

Gabriel cleared the windshield of his Audi A8 sedan with a flick of the wiper blades. The King’s New Square appeared before him, shrouded in a bridal veil of snowfall. Ibrahim was sitting silently in the passenger seat, freshly scrubbed and dressed for his own funeral in a borrowed gray suit and overcoat. His hands were folded primly in his lap, good hand atop ruined hand, and his eyes were on his shoes. Gabriel’s telephone lay in the console. Its signal was being monitored inside the CIA station at the American embassy and at NSA headquarters.

“You’re not going to give me another one of your lectures, are you, Ibrahim?”

“I’m still a professor at heart,” he said. “I can’t help it.”

Gabriel decided to indulge him. A lecture was better than silence.

“Why do you suppose it’s fitting?”

“We have both seen the worst this life has to offer. Nothing can frighten us, and nothing that happens today will surprise us.” He looked up from his shoes and gazed at Gabriel for a moment. “The things they wrote about you in the newspapers after London-it was all true? You were the one who killed the members of Black September?”

Ibrahim interpreted Gabriel’s silence as affirmation the newspapers accounts were all true.

“I remember Munich so clearly,” Ibrahim said. “We spent that day standing around our televisions and radios. It electrified the Arab world. We cheered the capture of your athletes, and when they were massacred at the airport we danced in the streets. In retrospect, our reaction was appalling, but completely understandable. We were weak and humiliated. You were strong and rich. You had beaten us many times. We had finally beaten you, in Germany of all places, land of your greatest catastrophe.”

“I thought you Islamists didn’t believe in the Holocaust. I thought you regarded it as a great lie, foisted upon the world by clever Jews so we could rob the Arabs of their land.”

“I’ve never been one to dabble in self-delusion and conspiracy theory,” Ibrahim said. “You Jews deserve a national home. God knows you need one. But the sooner you give the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Gaza, the better for all of us.”

“And if that means giving it to your spiritual brethren in Hamas?”

“At the rate we’re going, Hamas will look like moderates soon,” Ibrahim said. “And when the Palestinian issue is finally removed from the table, the Arabs will have no one else to blame for their miserable condition. We will be forced to take a hard look in the mirror and solve our problems for ourselves.”

“That’s just one of the reasons why there will never be peace. We’re the scapegoat for Arab failings-the pressure valve for Arab unrest. The Arabs loathe us, but they cannot live without us.”

Ibrahim nodded in agreement and resumed the study of his shoes. “Is it also true that you are a famous art restorer?”

This time Gabriel nodded slowly. Ibrahim pulled his lips into an incredulous frown.

“Why, if you have the ability to heal beautiful paintings, do you engage in work such as this?”

“Duty,” said Gabriel. “I feel an obligation to protect my people.”

“The terrorists would say the same thing.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t murder the innocent.”

“You just threaten to send them to Egypt to be tortured.” Ibrahim looked at Gabriel. “Would you have done it?”

Gabriel shook his head. “No, Ibrahim, I wouldn’t have sent you back.”

Ibrahim looked out his window. “The snow is beautiful,” he said. “Is it a good omen or bad?”

“A friend of mine calls weather like this operational weather.”

“That’s good?”

Gabriel nodded. “It’s good.”

“You’ve done this kind of thing before?”

“Only once.”

“How did it end?”

With the Gare de Lyon in rubble, thought Gabriel. “I got the hostage back,” he said.

“This street that he wants us to walk down-do you know it?”

Gabriel lifted his hand from the wheel and pointed across the square. “It’s called Strøget. It’s a pedestrian mall lined with shops and restaurants, two miles long-the longest in Europe, if the hotel brochures are to be believed. It empties into a square called the Rådhuspladsen.”

“We walk and they watch-is that how it works?”

“That’s exactly how it works. And if they like what they see, someone will phone me when we reach the Rådhuspladsen and tell me where to go next.”

“When do we start?”

“Three o’clock.”

“Three o’clock,” Ibrahim repeated. “The hour of death-at least that’s what the Christians believe. Why do you think they chose three o’clock?”

“It gives them a few minutes of daylight to see us properly in Strøget. After that, it will be dark. That gives them the advantage. It makes it harder for me to see them.”

“What about your little helpers?” Ibrahim asked. “The ones who plucked me from that street corner in Amsterdam?”

“Ishaq says if he detects surveillance, the deal is off and Elizabeth Halton dies.”

“So we go alone?”

Gabriel nodded and looked at his watch. It was 2:59. “It’s not too late to back out, you know. You don’t have to do this.”

“I made you a promise in that house two nights ago-a promise that I would help you get the American woman back. It is a promise I intend to keep.” He squeezed his face into a quizzical frown. “Where were we, by the way?”

“We were in Germany.”

“A Jew threatening to torture an Arab in Germany,” Ibrahim replied. “How poetic.”

“You’re not going to give me another one of your lectures, are you, Ibrahim?”

“I’m inclined to, but I’m afraid there isn’t time.” He pointed to the dashboard clock. “The hour of death is upon us.”…

The atmosphere along Strøget was one of feverish festivity. To Gabriel it seemed like the last night before the start of a long-feared war, the night when fortunes are spent and love is made with headlong abandon. But there was no war coming, at least not for the shoppers along Copenhagen’s most famous street, only the holidays. Gabriel had been so absorbed in the search for Elizabeth Halton he had forgotten it was nearly Christmas.

They drifted through this joyous streetscape like detached spirits of the dead, hands thrust into coat pockets, elbows touching, silent. Ishaq had decreed that their journey would be a straight line and would include no stops. That meant that Gabriel was unable to conduct even the most basic countersurveillance maneuvers. It had been more than thirty years since he had walked a European street without checking his tail and to do so now made him feel as though he were trapped in one of those anxiety dreams where he was naked in a world of the fully clothed. He saw enemies everywhere, old and new. He saw men who might be Sword of Allah terrorists and men who might be Danish security-and, in the shelter of a storefront, he swore he saw Eli Lavon playing Christmas carols on a violin. It wasn’t Lavon, only his doppelgänger. Besides, Gabriel remembered suddenly, Lavon couldn’t play the violin. Lavon, for all his gifts, had an ear of stone.

They paused for the first time at the intersection of a cross street and waited for the light to change. A Bengali man pressed a flyer into Gabriel’s palm with such urgency that Gabriel nearly drew his Beretta from his coat pocket. The flyer was for a restaurant near the Tivoli gardens. Gabriel read it carefully to make sure it contained no hidden instructions, then crushed it into a ball and dropped it into a rubbish bin. The light turned to green. He hooked Ibrahim by the elbow and walked on.

It was beginning to grow dark now; the streetlamps were burning more brightly and the lights in the shopwindows glowed with a greeting-card warmth. Gabriel had given up on trying to find the watchers and instead found himself gazing in wonder at the scenes around him. At children eating ice cream despite the falling snow. At the pretty young woman kneeling over the contents of a spilled shopping bag. At carolers dressed like elves singing about the birth of God with voices of angels. He remembered the words Uzi Navot had spoken that first night, as they drove through the hills outside Jerusalem. The Europeans condemned us for Lebanon, but what they don’t understand is that Lebanon is merely a preview of coming attractions. The movie will soon be showing in theaters all across Europe. Gabriel only hoped it wasn’t coming to Copenhagen tonight.

They paused at another crosswalk, then struck out across the vast Rådhuspladsen. On the left side of the square stood City Hall, the spire of its clock tower jutting knifelike into a low cloud. In the center of the square was a brightly lit yuletide tree, fifty feet in height, and, next to the tree, a small kiosk selling sausages and hot cider. Gabriel walked over to the kiosk and joined the queue, but before he reached the service window the phone in his coat pocket rang softly. He brought it to his ear and listened without speaking. A few seconds later, he returned the phone to his pocket and took Ibrahim by the elbow.

“They want us to retrace our steps and go back to the car,” Gabriel said as they walked across the square.

“Then what?”

“They didn’t say.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to do what they tell us to do.”

“Do they know what they’re doing?”

Gabriel nodded. They knew exactly what they were doing.

The Audi was where he had left it and was now covered with a dusting of fresh snow. Sarah was seated alone in the window of a nearby café. She was wearing her beret and it was tilted slightly to the left, which meant that the car had not been tampered with in their absence. Even so, Gabriel dropped his keys onto the paving stones and gave the undercarriage a quick inspection before opening the door and climbing in. The telephone rang immediately after Ibrahim joined him. Gabriel listened to the instructions, then severed the connection and started the engine. He looked once more into the café window and saw that Sarah had lifted her hand into the air. He feared that she was waving good-bye to him in blatant contravention of all known tradecraft, but a few seconds later a waiter appeared and deposited a check at her elbow. Sarah placed a few bills onto the table and stood. Gabriel slipped the car into gear and eased away from the curb. Take your time, Ishaq had said. We have a long night ahead of us.

39

The note appeared beneath her door. She swung her shackled feet to the floor and shuffled slowly across her cell. It was Cain who stood on the other side awaiting her reply. She could smell him. The note said: Do you want food? “Yes,” she replied in a low, evenly modulated voice. Then, like a model prisoner, she laid down on her cot again and waited for him to come inside.

She heard the sound of a key being shoved into a padlock, followed by the groaning of hinges. This door was louder than the door of her last cell and the sound of it opening always set her teeth on edge. Cain placed the food at the foot of her cot and quickly withdrew. Elizabeth sat up again and scrutinized the meal: a few inches of baguette, a lump of cheese of indeterminate origin, a bottle of Evian water, chocolate because she had been good.

She devoured the food and gulped the water. Then, when she was certain no one was watching through the spy hole, she shoved her fingers down her throat and vomited her fourth meal onto the floor of her cell. Cain burst in two minutes later and glared at her angrily. Her blanket was now wrapped around her shoulders and she appeared to be shivering uncontrollably. “The ketamine,” she whispered. “You’re killing me with the ketamine.”

Abel brought a bucket of water and a rag and made her clean her own vomit. Only when her cell was cleansed of impure female excretions did Cain reappear. He stood as far from her as possible, as though he feared catching whatever was ailing her, and with a terse movement of his hand invited her to explain her affliction.

“Idiopathic paroxysmal ventricular tachycardia.” She paused for a moment and drew a series of rapid heavy breaths. “It is a fancy way of saying that I suffer from sporadic arrhythmia in the lower chambers of my heart: the ventricles. This sporadic arrhythmia has been exacerbated by too many injections of ketamine. My heartbeat is now dangerously rapid and arrhythmic and my blood pressure is extremely low, which is causing the nausea and the chills. If you give me another shot of ketamine, you could very well kill me.”

He stood silently for a moment, gazing at her though the eye slits of his hood, then withdrew. Several minutes later-about twenty, she guessed, but she couldn’t be sure-he returned and handed her a typewritten note:

FOR REASONS WE CANNOT EXPLAIN TO YOU, IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU TO BE MOVED THIS EVENING. IF YOU ARE CONSCIOUS DURING THIS MOVEMENT, YOU WILL BE EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. DO YOU WANT THE KETAMINE OR DO YOU WANT TO BE MOVED WHILE YOU ARE AWAKE?

“No more ketamine,” she said. “I’ll do it conscious.”

Cain looked at her as though she had made the wrong choice, then handed her a second note.

IF YOU SCREAM OR MAKE ANY NOISE WHATSOEVER, WE WILL KILL YOU AND LEAVE YOU BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.

“I understand,” she said.

Cain collected the two notes and slipped out of her cell. Elizabeth stretched out on her cot and stared into the blinding white light. Her rebellion was only a few minutes old, but already she had managed to gather two small pieces of information. She was to be moved by road and at night.

When next they entered her cell, they did so without first alerting her with a note. They bound her quickly in her own woolen blanket and secured it to her body cocoonlike with heavy packing tape. Foam rubber plugs were inserted into her ears, a gag placed over her mouth, and a blindfold tied tightly over her eyes. Now robbed of all senses but touch and smell, she felt them take hold of her body, one at each end, and carry her a short distance. The container into which she was placed was so narrow that the sides pressed hard against her hips and shoulders. It smelled of plywood and glue and vaguely of old fish. A lid was placed over the top, so close that it nearly touched the end of her nose, and several nails were hurriedly hammered into place. She wanted to scream. She did not. She wanted to cry out for her mother. She prayed silently instead and thought of the slender man with gray temples who had tried to save her life in Hyde Park. I will not submit, she thought. I will not submit.

40

The lights of the Great Belt Bridge, second-longest suspension bridge in the world, lay like a double strand of pearls over the straits between the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen. Gabriel glanced at the dashboard clock as he headed up the long sweep of the eastern ramp. The trip from Copenhagen to this point should have taken no more than two hours, but the worsening storm had stretched it to nearly four. He returned his eyes to the road and put both hands firmly on the wheel. The bridge was swaying in the high winds. Ibrahim asked again if the weather was truly a good omen. Gabriel replied that he hoped Ibrahim knew how to swim.

It took them twenty minutes to make the eight-mile crossing. On the Funen side of the bridge, a small seaside rail station lay huddled against the storm. A mile beyond the station was a roadside gas station and café. Gabriel topped off the Audi’s tank, then parked outside the café and led Ibrahim inside. It was brightly lit, smartly decorated, and spotlessly clean. In the first room was a well-stocked market and cafeteria-style eatery; in the next was a seating area filled with stranded travelers. There was much animated conversation and, judging from the large number of empty Carlsberg bottles scattered about the pale wooden tables, considerable drinking had taken place.

They bought egg sandwiches and hot tea in the cafeteria and sat at an empty table near the window. Ibrahim ate silently, while Gabriel sipped his tea and stared out at the car. Thirty minutes elapsed before the cell phone finally rang. Gabriel brought it to his ear, listened without speaking, then severed the connection. “Wait here,” he said.

He stopped briefly in the men’s toilet, where he buried his Beretta and phone in the rubbish bin, then went into the market and purchased a large-scale map of Denmark and an English-language tourist guide. When he returned to the dining room, Ibrahim was in the process of unwrapping the second egg sandwich. Ibrahim slipped it into his coat pocket and followed Gabriel outside.

“Here it is,” said Ibrahim. “Lindholm Høje.”

He was hunched over the guidebook, reading it by the light of the overhead lamp. Gabriel kept his eyes fastened to the road.

“What does it say?”

“It’s an old Viking village and cemetery. For centuries it was buried beneath a thick layer of sand. It only was discovered in 1952. According to the book, it has more than seven hundred graves and the remains of a few Viking longhouses.”

“Where is it?”

Ibrahim consulted the book again, then plotted the position of the site on the road map. “Northern Jutland,” he said. “Very northern Jutland, actually.”

“How do I get there?”

“Take the E20 across Funen, then head north on the E45. Lindholm is just after Aalborg. The book says it’s easy to find the place. Just follow the signs.”

“I can’t see the road, let alone the signs.”

“Is that where they’re going to leave the woman?”

Gabriel shook his head. “More instructions. This time they’ll be written. They say they’ll be in the ruins of the longhouse, in the corner farthest from the museum entrance.” He looked briefly at Ibrahim. “It wasn’t Ishaq this time. It was someone else.”

“Egyptian?”

“He sounded Egyptian to me, but I’m no expert.”

“Please,” said Ibrahim dismissively. “Why did they make you get rid of your telephone?”

“No more electronic communication.”

Ibrahim looked down at the map. “It’s a long way from here to Lindholm.”

“Two hours in perfect weather. In this…four at least.”

Ibrahim looked at the clock. “That means it will be Friday morning, if we’re lucky.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “He’s running us up against the deadline.”

“Who? Ishaq?”

A very good question, thought Gabriel. Was it Ishaq? Or was it the Sphinx?…

It took four and a half hours to reach Lindholm and, just as Gabriel had feared, the guidebook’s assurances that the cemetery was easy to find turned out to be false. He drove in circles for twenty minutes through a neighborhood of matching brick houses before finally spotting a postcard-sized sign he had missed three times previously. It was obscured by snow, of course; Gabriel had to climb out of the Audi and brush away the flakes, only to learn that in order to reach the site he had to first scale a formidable hill. The Audi handled the conditions with only a single episode of fishtailing, and two minutes later Gabriel was easing into a car park surrounded by towering pine. He shut down the engine and sat for a moment, his ears ringing from the strain of the drive, before finally opening the door and putting a foot into the snow. Ibrahim stayed where he was.

“You’re not coming?”

“I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of cemeteries.”

“No, just Viking cemeteries.”

“They were only warlike when they took to the seas,” Gabriel said. “Here at home they were largely an agrarian people. The scariest thing we’re likely to run across tonight is the ghost of a vegetable farmer.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just stay here.”

“Suit yourself,” Gabriel said. “If you want to sit here alone, that’s fine with me.”

Ibrahim made a show of thought, then climbed out. Gabriel opened the trunk and removed the flashlight and the tire iron.

“Why are you bringing that?” asked Ibrahim.

“In case we come across any Vikings.” He slipped the tool down the front of his jeans and quietly closed the trunk. “They made me leave my gun back in that service station, too. A crowbar is better than nothing.”

Gabriel switched on the flashlight and set out across the car park with Ibrahim at his side. The snow was six inches deep and within a few steps Gabriel’s brogans were sodden and his feet freezing. Thirty seconds after leaving the car, he stopped suddenly. There were two sets of faint tracks in the snow, one set obviously larger than the other, leading from the car park into the burial ground. Gabriel left Ibrahim alone and followed the footprints back to their point of origin. Judging from the condition of the snow’s surface, it appeared as though a small truck or transit van had entered the lot from a second access road several hours earlier. The larger of the two occupants had stepped into the snow from the driver’s side of the vehicle, the smaller from the passenger side. Gabriel crouched in the snow and scrutinized the smaller prints as though he were examining brushstrokes on a canvas. The prints were feminine, he decided, and whoever had left them had been wearing athletic shoes. There was no evidence of any struggle.

Gabriel rejoined Ibrahim and led him down a footpath into the site. The cemetery fell away before them, down the slope of the hill toward a vast inland bay in the distance. Despite the snowfall it was possible to discern, in the glow of Gabriel’s flashlight, the outlines of individual graves. Some were mounds of stones, some were circles, and still others were shaped like Viking ships. It was not difficult to find the far corner of the longhouse; all Gabriel had to do was follow the twin sets of tracks. He crouched down and probed with his bare hands beneath the surface of the snow. A few seconds later he found what had been left there for him, a small plastic ziplock bag containing a portion of a detailed map. He examined it by the glow of his flashlight. Then he stood and led Ibrahim back to the car.

“Skagen,” said Gabriel as he drove slowly down the hill. “They want us to go to Skagen. Well, almost to Skagen. The spot they circled on the map is a little to the south.”

“You know this place?”

“I’ve never been there, but I know it. There was an artist colony that formed there in the late eighteen hundreds. They were known as the Skagen School of painters. They came there for the light. They say it’s unique-not that we’ll be seeing any of it.”

“Perhaps this is another good omen,” said Ibrahim.

“Perhaps,” said Gabriel.

“Will the ambassador’s daughter be there?”

“It doesn’t say. It just tells us to go to a spot along the North Sea.”

“Was she in the burial ground tonight?”

“They wanted me to think she was,” Gabriel said. “But I don’t believe she was there.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because the woman got out of the vehicle and walked into the cemetery on her own,” Gabriel said. “I saw Elizabeth at the moment of her abduction. She wouldn’t have walked in there on her own. She would have fought them.”

“Unless they told her she was about to be released,” said Ibrahim.

Gabriel gave him an admiring sideways glance. “You’re not bad,” he said.

“I was a professor once,” he said. “And I love detective novels.”

41

She did not know the duration of her journey, for she had tried to think of anything but the clock. It was but a few minutes, she told herself. It was the blink of an eye. She had told herself other lies as well. She was in a comfortable bed, not a wooden box that smelled faintly of fish. She was wearing faded blue jeans and her favorite sweater, not the same dirty tracksuit she had been wearing since the morning of her capture. She could see her favorite mountain range through her favorite window. She was listening to beautiful music. The rest were just scenes from a bad dream. She would wake soon and it would all be over.

She had been prepared for the appalling discomfort-Cain’s note had made it abundantly clear what lay in store for her-but the earplugs had taken her by surprise. They had robbed her of one of her most potent weapons, the ability to hear what was taking place around her, and had reduced her world to a monotonous droning. She had been left with only one sense, the ability to feel motion. She knew that they had driven at high speeds and at moderate speeds, on good roads and bad. Once she’d had the sensation of being in a large city surrounded by people who did not realize she was only inches away. Now she felt certain they were on an unpaved track, in a place near the end of the earth.

They stopped suddenly-so suddenly that her head was pressed painfully against the end of her coffinlike container-and a moment later the droning of the engine went silent. Several minutes elapsed before they finally removed her from the vehicle, and several more passed before she finally heard the screech of the nails being removed by the claw of a hammer. Cold salty air streamed over her face as the lid came off. Hot tears spilled involuntarily into the fabric of her blindfold as she was lifted to her feet. No one spoke to her as she was led inside the new hideout. No one asked about the condition of her arrhythmic heart as she was placed on the cot in her new cell. When the door closed on her again, she removed the blindfold and the earplugs and gazed at a new set of white walls. There was a plate of food-bread, cheese, and chocolate because she had been good during the drive-and there was a yellow bucket for her toilet. She had no idea where they had moved her but was certain of one thing. She could smell the sea.

42

The road from the Baltic port of Frederikshavn to Skagen was abandoned and barely passable. Gabriel sat hunched over the steering wheel for mile after mile as a string of silent snowbound towns flashed past. Their names were full of strange consonant combinations that even Gabriel, whose first language was German, found impenetrable. Danish is not a language, he thought resentfully as he plunged through the gloom. Danish is merely an affliction of the throat.

After leaving the town of Ålbæk, a seemingly endless moonscape of dunes opened before them. The cutoff toward the summer resort town of Kandestederne lay near the northern end of the wasteland; Gabriel, after making the turn, saw a single set of freshly made tire tracks in the snow. He suspected they had been left by the same vehicle that had been at the cemetery in Lindholm Høje.

They sledded past a few small farms, then entered another expanse of dunes-vast dunes this time, dunes the size of foothills. Here and there Gabriel glimpsed the outlines of cottages and small homes. There were no lights burning, no other cars, and no other signs of life. Time, it seemed, had stopped.

The tire tracks bent to the right, into a narrow road, and vanished behind a curtain of snowfall. Gabriel continued straight and stopped a moment later at a small car park overlooking the beach, next to a boarded-up café. He started to switch off the engine, then thought better of it. “Wait here,” he said. “Lock the doors after I get out. Don’t open them for anyone but me.”

He took the tire tool and flashlight and walked over to the café. There were fresh footprints all around-two sets at least, perhaps more. Whoever had left them had come to this spot from the dunes. One set of tracks led down to the beach. They were identical to the ones he had seen at Lindholm. The woman’s.

He glanced back toward the Audi, then turned and followed the tracks across the beach. At the water’s edge, they disappeared. He looked left, then right, but could see no sign of them, so he turned around and headed back to the car. As he drew near, he could see that Ibrahim was leaning forward awkwardly and had his palms pressed to the dashboard. Then he saw a set of fresh tracks leading from the dunes to the rear passenger-side door of the Audi. Just then the window slid down halfway and a gloved hand beckoned him forward. Gabriel hesitated for a few seconds, then obeyed. Along the way he made a slight detour in order to examine the prints. Size six, he reckoned. Adidas or Nike. A woman’s shoe.

He had been wrong about the brand of the shoes. They were Pumas. The woman who was wearing them looked no older than twenty-five. She wore a navy blue peacoat and a wool hat pulled down close to her dark eyes. She was seated directly behind Ibrahim and had a Makarov pointed at his spine. Her hand was vibrating with cold.

“Why don’t you point that gun at the floor before someone gets hurt?” Gabriel said.

“Shut up and put your hands on the steering wheel.”

She spoke very calmly. Gabriel did as he was told.

“Where’s Ishaq?”

“Ishaq who?” she asked.

“Let’s not play any more games. It’s been a long cold night.” He looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Just tell us where we can find Elizabeth Halton and we’ll be on our way.”

“You are the Israeli, yes? The Zionist pig who killed our comrades in Hyde Park?”

“No, I’m an American pig.”

“You speak very good Arabic for an American pig.”

“My father was a diplomat. I grew up in Beirut.”

“Really? Then speak English for me, American pig.”

Gabriel hesitated. The girl leveled the gun at the back of Ibrahim’s head.

“You’ve made your point,” Gabriel said.

She pointed the gun at Gabriel. “I should kill you now,” she said. “But you’re fortunate. You won’t be dying tonight. Others have already laid claim to your life.”

“Lucky me.”

She hit him in the back of the head with the gun, hard enough for Gabriel to see a burst of fireworks before his eyes. When he reached reflexively toward the wound, she hit him again, harder still, and commanded him to put his hands back on the wheel. A moment later he could feel something warm and sticky running along the back of his right ear.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said sincerely.

“Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Turn the car around,” the woman said. “Slowly.”

Gabriel eased the car into gear, executed a careful three-point turn, and headed inland.

“Make the first left into the dunes,” the woman said. “Then follow the tire tracks.”

He did as she instructed. The road was wide enough for only a single car and led to a colony of cottages tucked within the dunes. The cottages were small and wooden and abandoned to the winter. Some were painted Skagen yellow; others inexplicably had grass growing on the roof. Gabriel navigated only by the amber light of the parking lamps. The blood was now running freely down the side of his neck into his shirt collar.

He followed the tracks up a small humpbacked hill, then plunged down the other side and saw another knoll ahead. Fearful of becoming lodged in the snow, he kept his foot on the gas and heard a loud crunching sound when the car ran aground at the bottom of the dip. He gunned it hard up the next hill and swerved to the left, then glided down the other side into the drive of the farthest cottage. A silver LDV Maxus transit van was parked outside, lights doused. Gabriel came to a stop and looked into the rearview mirror for instructions. The woman jabbed Ibrahim in the back with the barrel of the Makarov and told him to open the door. When Gabriel reached for his own latch, she hit him in the back of the head for a third time.

“You stay here in the car!” she snapped. “We’ll give the woman only to Ibrahim-not you, Zionist pig.”

Ibrahim unclasped his safety belt and opened the door. The overhead light burst suddenly on. Gabriel put a hand atop Ibrahim’s forearm and squeezed.

“Don’t go,” he said. “Stay in the car.”

Ibrahim looked at him incredulously. “What are you talking about, my friend? We’ve come all this way.”

“It was all just a game to run out the clock. She’s not here. Your son has lured you here in order to kill you.”

“Why would my son kill me?”

“Because you betrayed him to the Crusaders and the Jews,” Gabriel said. “Because he is a takfiri Muslim and, in his eyes, you are now an apostate worthy only of death. You are worse than a Crusader-even worse than a Jew-because you were once a devout Islamist who has now renounced the path of jihad. The woman is taking you inside to be killed, Ibrahim. Don’t go with her.”

“My son would never harm me.”

“He’s not your son anymore.”

Ibrahim smiled and removed Gabriel’s hand from his arm. “You must have faith, my friend. Let me go. I’ll bring the girl out to you, just as I promised.”

Gabriel felt the barrel of the Makarov pressing against the base of his skull. “Listen to Ibrahim, Zionist pig. He speaks the truth. We do not kill our parents. You are the murderers, not us. Let him bring you the girl, so you can be on your way.”

Ibrahim climbed out of the car before Gabriel could stop him and started toward the cottage. The woman waited until he was several yards away before lowering the gun from Gabriel’s head and setting off after him. As they neared the entrance, a man appeared in the doorway. In the snow and darkness Gabriel could discern little of his appearance-only that his hair had been dyed platinum blond. He greeted Ibrahim formally, with kisses on both cheeks and a hand reverentially over his heart, and led him inside. Then the woman closed the door and the windshield exploded in Gabriel’s face.