The Secret Servant

43

It would be nearly an hour before word of the disaster in northern Denmark reached Washington, and another thirty minutes would elapse before the first news reached Winfield House, the official residence of the American ambassador to the United Kingdom. Despite the lateness of the hour-it was 3:15 A.M. in London and 10:15 P.M. in Washington-Robert Halton was seated at the desk in his private study, where he had remained throughout that long night, waiting for word from the White House Situation Room. Though he had been expecting a call for many hours, the sound of the ringing telephone caused him to recoil involuntarily, as though from a nearby gunshot. As he snatched the receiver from the cradle, he thought for an instant that he could hear the sound of Elizabeth weeping. It must have been a burst of interference on the line-or a hallucination, he would think later-for the voice he heard when he brought the phone to his ear belonged not to his daughter but to Cyrus Mansfield, the president’s national security advisor.

Halton could tell from Mansfield’s guarded greeting that the news from Denmark was not what he had been praying for, though nothing could have prepared him for what was relayed to him next. Gabriel Allon and his Egyptian asset had been led from Copenhagen to the tip of Denmark, said Mansfield. There had been an incident of some sort at an isolated cottage on the North Sea, the details of which were still unclear. There had been an explosion. There were at least three known deaths. Until additional resources arrived on the scene, including Danish forensic teams, it would be impossible to know whether Elizabeth was among those killed.

For the remainder of that night, Robert Halton was cast into a new kind of Hell. Cyrus Mansfield called with a maddening regularity, even when there was little new or vital to report. As is common in situations such as these, much of the information was contradictory and later proven wrong. Halton was told there were three bodies in the house, then, thirty minutes later, was informed that there were four. There was evidence Elizabeth had been in Denmark, said Mansfield. There was speculation she might still be there. There had been gunfire. Allon had been gravely wounded. Allon had been killed.

Finally, at 7:05 A.M. London time, as a gray dawn was breaking over Regent’s Park, the president telephoned to say that Danish fire-and-rescue had found just three bodies in the charred ruins of the residence. According to a statement from Gabriel Allon, who was injured but very much alive, the dead consisted of two terrorists-one male and one female-and the Egyptian asset Ibrahim Fawaz. The National Security Council, the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department were all operating under the assumption that Elizabeth was still alive, and frantic efforts to secure her release would continue until the deadline and beyond. Robert Halton hung up the phone and fell to his knees in a desperate prayer of thanksgiving. Then he stumbled into his bathroom and was violently sick.

He lay for several minutes on the cold marble floor, his body seemingly paralyzed by anguish and grief. Where are you, Robert Halton? he thought. Where was the business maverick who had turned a small oil exploration company into a global energy conglomerate? Where was the man who, for the sake of his daughter, had stoically endured the loss of his beloved wife? Where was the man who, against all odds, had managed to put his best friend in the White House? He was gone, thought Halton. He had been kidnapped by the terrorists, just as surely as Elizabeth had been.

He rose to his feet and rinsed his mouth in the sink, then stepped from the bathroom and returned to his office. It was now Friday morning. By nightfall his daughter would be dead. Robert Carlyle Halton, billionaire and kingmaker, had watched helplessly while the combined forces of American intelligence, diplomacy, and law enforcement, along with their counterparts across Europe and the Middle East, had searched in vain for his daughter. He had stood idly by and listened to their empty assurances that eventually Elizabeth would be brought home to him alive. He was prepared to stand idly by no longer. He would now deploy the only weapon available to him, a weapon even the jihadists understood. The course of action he was about to undertake bordered on treason, for, if successful, Halton would be providing the terrorists a weapon they could later use against the United States and its allies. But if treason was necessary to save his daughter, then Robert Halton was prepared to be a traitor, if only for a few hours.

He walked calmly to his desk and sat down before the computer, imagining for a moment that he was no longer a helpless and grief-stricken father but once again a steady and assured CEO and magnate. A click of the mouse brought a letter onto the screen. It had been composed by Halton during the first week of the crisis and saved for this very moment. His eyes scanned the arid prose: Due to present circumstances…unable to continue in my role as your ambassador in London…an honor and pleasure to serve…Robert Carlyle Halton… He added the proper date, clicked the print icon, and watched the letter slide onto his desk. After adding his signature, he loaded the letter into his fax machine. He did not send it just yet. The CEO had a few more deals to close.

He picked up the telephone and dialed a local London number. The number was located inside Number 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the British prime minister, and was answered instantly by Oliver Gibbons, the prime minister’s chief of staff. Halton and Gibbons had spoken several times during the past two weeks and there was no need for formalities. Halton said he needed to speak to the prime minister urgently; Gibbons responded by saying that the prime minister was in a breakfast meeting and would not be free for another twenty minutes. The meeting apparently ended sooner than anticipated because, twelve minutes later, the prime minister returned the call. “I’m about to try something desperate,” Halton said. “And I want to know whether I can count on you and your authorities to make it happen.”

The conversation that ensued next was brief-later, at the official inquest, much would be made of the fact it was just six minutes in length-and concluded with a promise by the prime minister that the police and intelligence services of Britain would do anything necessary to help Halton in his endeavor. Halton thanked the prime minister, then dialed a number in his own embassy. It was answered by Stephen Barnes, the deputy public affairs officer. His boss, Jack Hammond, had been killed in Hyde Park the morning of Elizabeth ’s abduction. Barnes had been given a field promotion of sorts and had served ably as the embassy’s chief spokesman throughout the crisis.

“I need to make a statement to the press, Steve. I’d like to do it here at Winfield House instead of the embassy. It will be important. The networks need to know that they should carry it live and in its entirety-especially the European networks and the Arab satellite channels.”

“What time?”

“Noon should be fine. Can you arrange it by then?”

“No problem,” Barnes said. “Is there anything I can draft for you?”

“No, I can handle this one without a text. I do need you to prepare the ground for me, though.”

“How so?”

“Do you have any contacts at al-Jazeera?”

Barnes said he did. He had taken al-Jazeera’s London bureau chief to lunch a couple times in a futile effort to get the network to stop broadcasting al-Qaeda propaganda messages.

“Give your friend a call now. Let it leak that I’m about to make an offer to the kidnappers.”

“What sort of offer?”

“One they can’t refuse.”

“Is there something else I should know, Mr. Ambassador?”

“I’m resigning my post, Steve. You can call me Bob.”

“Yes, Mr. Ambassador.”

Halton hung up the phone, then stood up and headed toward his bedroom to shower and change. He was no longer Ambassador Robert Halton, the desperate and broken American diplomat who had no choice but to watch his daughter die. He was once again Robert Carlyle Halton, multibillionaire and kingmaker, and he was going to get Elizabeth back, even if it took every penny he had.

44

Your chariot has arrived, Mr. Allon.”

Lars Mortensen lifted his hand and pointed toward the heavy gray sky. Gabriel looked up and watched a Gulf stream V sinking slowly toward the end of the runway at Aalborg Airport. The slight movement caused his head to begin throbbing again. It had taken eighteen sutures, administered by a sleepy Skagen doctor, to close the three wounds in his scalp. His face bore a crosshatched pattern of tiny cuts, inflicted by the exploding safety glass of the windshield. Somehow he had managed to shield his eyes at the instant of detonation, though he had no memory of doing it.

He could recall the events of the rest of the evening, however, with faultless clarity. Ordered by the kidnappers to relinquish his telephone in Funen, he had been forced to drive the crippled Audi with its blasted-out windshield three miles in order to find a public phone. He had rung Carter and Mortensen from the parking lot of a small market on the outskirts of Skagen and, in language fit for an insecure line, had told them what had transpired. Then he had driven back to the dunes and watched the cottage burn slowly to the ground. Twenty more minutes would elapse before he heard the distant scream of the sirens and saw the first police and firefighters stumble bewildered onto the scene. A uniformed policeman had peppered Gabriel with questions while an ambulance attendant wiped the blood from his face. Talk to Lars Mortensen of the PET, was all Gabriel said. Mortensen will explain everything.

“You’re sure about the body count in the cottage?” Gabriel asked Mortensen now.

“You’ve asked me that ten times.”

“Answer it again.”

“There were only three-the two terrorists and the old man. No Elizabeth Halton.” Mortensen fell silent as the Gulfstream set down on the runway and flashed past their position with the roar of reversing engines. “Not exactly the way the story of Abraham and Isaac turned out in the Bible. I still can’t quite believe he actually set up his own father to be killed.”

“It’s the al-Qaeda version,” said Gabriel. “Murder anyone who dares to oppose you, even your own flesh and blood.”

The Gulfstream had reached the end of the runway and was now taxiing back toward their position on the tarmac.

“You’ll do your best to keep my role in this affair a secret?” Gabriel asked.

“There’s always a chance it could leak out up here. Unfortunately, you came in contact with many people last night. But as far as my service is concerned, you and your team were never here.”

Gabriel zipped his leather jacket and extended his hand. “Then it was a pleasure not meeting you.”

“The pleasure was mine.” Mortensen gave Gabriel’s hand an admonitory squeeze. “But the next time you come to Denmark, do me the courtesy of telling me first. We’ll have lunch. Who knows? Maybe we’ll actually have something pleasant to talk about.”

“I suppose anything’s possible.” Gabriel climbed out of the car, then peered at Mortensen through the open door. “I nearly forget something.”

“What’s that?”

He told him about the Beretta he had been forced to leave at the rest stop on Funen. Mortensen frowned and murmured something in Danish under his breath.

“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said. “It slipped my mind.”

“I don’t suppose you removed the bullets before throwing it into that rubbish bin.”

“Actually, it was quite loaded.”

“If I were you, I’d get on that plane before I change my mind about covering up your hand in this mess.”

Gabriel set out across the tarmac toward the Gulfstream. The airstair had been lowered; Sarah was leaning against the side of the open doorway, hands in the pockets of her jeans, legs crossed at the ankles. Carter was seated at the front of the cabin and was deep in conversation on the telephone. He nodded Gabriel into the opposite seat, then hung up and regarded him speculatively as the plane rose once more into the slate gray sky.

“Where’s my team?” asked Gabriel.

“They slipped quietly out of Copenhagen early this morning. They were understandably vague about their destination. I assume they were headed toward Amsterdam.”

“And us?”

“The British have granted us landing rights at London City Airport. I’m going to the embassy to wait out the deadline. You will be escorted to Heathrow, no questions asked. I assume you can find your own way home from there.”

Gabriel nodded slowly.

“Consider yourself fortunate, Gabriel. You get to go home. I get to go to London and face the music for our failure here last night. You’re not exactly popular in Washington at the moment. In fact, there are a good many people baying for your blood, the president included. And this time I’m in the shit with you.”

“A career free of scandal is not a proper career at all, Adrian.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Shamron.”

Carter managed a weak smile. “The Office operates by a different set of standards than the Agency. You accept the occasional mistake if it occurs in the service of a noble cause. We don’t tolerate failure. Failure is not an option.”

“If that were the case, they would have turned the lights out at Langley a long time ago.”

Carter squinted as a sudden burst of sunlight came slanting through the cabin window. He pulled down the shade and stared at Gabriel for a long moment in silence.

“She wasn’t there, Adrian. She was never there. In all likelihood she’s still somewhere in Britain. It was all an elaborate deception orchestrated by the Sphinx. They planted that ferry reservation number on the body of the man I wounded in Hyde Park and left him in the dunes of Norfolk for the British to find. The Sphinx instructed Ishaq to remain in touch with his wife in Copenhagen, knowing that eventually NSA, or someone else, would overhear him and make the connection. And when we did make the connection, the Sphinx played it out slowly, so there would be almost no time left before the deadline. He wants you frustrated and dejected and tearing yourself to shreds behind the scenes. He wants you to feel you have no choice but to release Sheikh Abdullah.”

“Fuck Sheikh Abdullah,” said Carter with uncharacteristic venom. He quickly regained his composure. “Do you think Ibrahim was a part of this grand illusion?”

“Ibrahim was the real thing, Adrian. Ibrahim was the answer to our prayers.”

“And you got him killed.”

“You’re tired, Adrian. You haven’t slept in a long time. I’m going to do my best to forget you ever said that.”

“You’re right, Gabriel. I haven’t slept.” Carter glanced at his watch. “Seven hours is all we have-seven hours until an extraordinary young woman is put to death. And for what?”

Carter was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. He brought it to his ear, listened in silence, then rang off.

“Robert Halton just faxed his letter of resignation to the White House Situation Room,” he said. “I suppose the pressure finally got to him.”

“Wrong, Adrian.”

“You can think of another explanation?”

“He’s going to try to save his daughter’s life by negotiating directly with the kidnappers.”

Carter snatched up the telephone again and quickly dialed. Gabriel reclined his seat and closed his eyes. His head began to throb. A preview of coming attractions, he thought.

45

There was a small Internet café around the corner from the Islamic Affairs Institute with decent coffee and pastries and even better jazz on the house sound system. Yusuf Ramadan ordered a café crème and thirty minutes of Web time, then he sat down at a vacant computer terminal in the window overlooking the street. He typed in the address for the home page of the BBC and read about the developments in London, where Ambassador Robert Halton had just resigned his post and offered twenty million dollars in exchange for his daughter’s release. While the news appeared to have come as a shock to the BBC, it was no surprise to the Egyptian terrorist known as the Sphinx. The perfectly executed operation in Denmark had no doubt broken the ambassador’s will to resist. He had now decided to take matters into his own hands, just as Yusuf Ramadan had always known he would. Robert Halton was a billionaire from Colorado -and billionaires from Colorado did not allow their daughters to be sacrificed on the altar of American foreign policy.

Ramadan watched a brief clip of the ambassador’s Winfield House news conference, then visited the home pages of the Telegraph, Times, and Guardian to read what they had to say. Finally, with ten minutes to spare on his thirty-minute chit, he typed in the address of a Karachi-based site that dealt with Islamic issues. The site was administered by an operative of the Sword of Allah, though its content was so benign it never attracted more than a passing glance from the security services of America and Europe. Ramadan entered a chat room as DESMOND826. KINKYKEMEL324 was waiting for him. Ramadan typed: “I think the Sword of Allah should take the deal. But they should definitely ask for more money. After all, the ambassador is a billionaire.”

KINKYKEMEL324: How much more?

DESMOND826: Thirty million feels right.

KINKYKEMEL324: I think the Zionist oppressor should pay, too.

DESMOND826: The ultimate price, just as we discussed during our last conversation.

KINKYKEMEL324: Then it will be done, in the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful.

DESMOND826: Master of the day of judgment.

KINKYKEMEL324: Show us the straight path.

DESMOND826: Peace be upon you, KK.

KINKYKEMEL324: Ciao, Dez.

Ramadan logged out and drank his café crème. “Ruby, My Dear,” by Coltrane and Monk, was now playing on the stereo. Too bad all Americans weren’t so sublime, he thought. The world would be a much better place.

46

The first calls arrived at the embassy switchboard before Ambassador Halton disappeared through the doorway of Winfield House. FBI hostage negotiator John O’Donnell, who had been given just five minutes’ warning of the pending statement, had hastily broken the staff of the ops center into two teams: one to dispense with obvious charlatans and criminal conmen, another to conduct additional screening of any call that sounded remotely legitimate. It was O’Donnell himself who assigned the calls to the appropriate teams. He did so after a brief conversation, usually thirty seconds in length or less. His instincts told him that none of the callers he had spoken to thus far were the real kidnappers, even the callers he had passed along to the second team for additional vetting. He did not share this belief with any of the exhausted men and women gathered around him in the embassy basement.

Two hours after Robert Halton’s appearance before the cameras, O’Donnell picked up a separate line and dialed the switchboard. “How many do you have on hold?”

“Thirty-eight,” the operator said. “Wait…make that forty-two…forty-four…forty-seven. You see my point.”

“Keep them coming.”

O’Donnell hung up and quickly worked his way through ten more calls. He assigned seven to team number one, the team that dealt with obvious cranks, and three to the second team, though he knew that none of the callers represented the real captors of Elizabeth Halton. He was about pick up another call when his private line rang. He answered that line instead and heard the voice of the switchboard operator.

“I think I’ve got the call you’re looking for.”

“Voice modifier?”

“Yep.”

“Send him down on this line after I hang up.”

“Got it.”

O’Donnell hung up the phone. When it rang ten seconds later, he brought the receiver swiftly to his ear.

“This is John O’Donnell of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How can I help you?”

“I’ve been trying to get through to you for a half hour,” said the electronically modified voice.

“We’re doing the best we can, but when twenty million is on the table, the nutcases tend to come out of the woodwork.”

“I’m not a nutcase. I’m the one you want to talk to.”

“Prove it to me. Tell me where you left the DVD of Elizabeth Halton.”

“We left it under the rowboat on the beach at Beacon Point.”

O’Donnell covered the mouthpiece of the receiver and pleaded for quiet. Then he looked at Kevin Barnett of the CIA and motioned for him to pick up the extension.

“I take it you’re interested in taking the deal,” O’Donnell said to the caller.

“I wouldn’t be calling otherwise.”

“You have our girl?”

“We have her.”

“I’m going to need proof.”

“There isn’t time.”

“So we’ll have to make some time. Just answer one question for me. It will just take a minute.”

Silence, then: “Give me the question.”

“When Elizabeth was a little girl, she had a favorite stuffed animal. I need you to tell me what kind of animal it was and what she called it. I’m going to give you a separate number. You call me back when you’ve got the answer. Then we’ll discuss how to make the exchange.”

“Make sure you pick up the phone. Otherwise, your girl dies.”

The line went dead. O’Donnell hung up the phone and looked at Barnett.

“I’m almost certain that was our boy.”

“Thank God,” said Barnett. “Let’s just hope he has our girl.”

She woke with the knock, startled and damp with sweat, and stared at the blinding white lamp over her cot. She had been dreaming, the same dream she always had whenever she managed to sleep. Men in black hoods. A video camera. A knife. She raised her cuffed hands to her throat and found that the tissue of her neck was still intact. Then she looked at the cement floor and saw the note. An eye was glaring at her through the spy hole as if willing her to move. It was dark and brutal: the eye of Cain.

She sat up and swung her shackled feet to the floor, then stood and shuffled stiffly toward the door. The note lay faceup and was composed in a font large enough for her to read without bending down to pick it up. It was a question, as all their communications were, but different from any other they had put to her. She answered it in a low, evenly modulated voice, then returned to her cot and wept uncontrollably. Don’t hope, she told herself. Don’t you dare hope.

John O’Connell’s private number in the ops center rang at 3:09. This time he didn’t bother identifying himself.

“Do you have the information I need?”

“The animal was a stuffed whale.”

“What did she call it?”

“Fish,” the man said. “She called it Fish and nothing else.”

O’Donnell closed his eyes and pumped his fist once.

“Right answer,” he said. “Let’s put a deal together. Let’s bring my girl home in time for Christmas.”

The man with the modified voice listed his demands, then said: “I’m going to call back at five fifty-nine London time. I want a one-word answer: yes or no. That’s it: yes or no. Do you understand me?”

“I understand perfectly.”

The line went dead again. O’Donnell looked at Kevin Barnett.

“They’ve got her,” he said. “And we are completely fucked.”

A Jaguar limousine was waiting at the edge of the tarmac as Adrian Carter’s Gulfstream V touched down at London City Airport. As Gabriel, Carter, and Sarah came down the airstair, a long, boney hand poked from the Jaguar’s rear passenger-side window and beckoned them over.

“Graham Seymour,” said Gabriel theatrically. “Don’t tell me they sent you all the way out here to give me a lift to Heathrow.”

“They sent me out here to give you a lift,” Seymour said, “but we’re not going to Heathrow.”

“Where are we going?”

Seymour left the question momentarily unanswered and instead gazed quizzically at Gabriel’s face. “What in God’s name happened to you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It usually is,” he said. “Get in. We don’t have much time.”

47

Graham Seymour’s limousine turned into Whitehall and stopped a few seconds later at the security gates of Downing Street. He lowered his window and flashed his identification to the uniformed Metropolitan Police officer standing watch outside the fence. The officer examined it quickly, then signaled to his colleagues to open the gate. The Jaguar eased forward approximately fifty yards and stopped again, this time before the world’s most famous door.

Gabriel emerged from the limousine last and followed the others into the entrance hall. To their right was a small fireplace and next to the fireplace an odd-looking Chippendale hooded leather chair once used by porters and security men. To their left was a wooden traveling chest, believed to have been taken by the Duke of Wellington into battle at Waterloo in 1815, and a grandfather clock by Benson of Whitehaven that so annoyed Churchill he ordered its chimes silenced. And standing in the center of the hall, in an immaculately tailored suit, was a handsome man with pale skin and black hair shot with gray at the temples. He advanced on Gabriel and cautiously extended his hand. It was cold to the touch.

“Welcome to Downing Street,” said the British prime minister. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“Please forgive my appearance, Prime Minister. It’s been a long few days.”

“We heard about your misadventure in Denmark. It appears you were deceived. We all were.”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

“We treated you shabbily after the attack in Hyde Park, but the fact that your name and face appeared in the newspapers has provided us with an opportunity to save Elizabeth Halton’s life. I’m afraid we need your rather serious help, Mr. Allon. Are you prepared to listen to what we have to say?”

“Of course, Prime Minister.”

The prime minister smiled. It was a replica of a smile, thought Gabriel, and about as warm as the December afternoon.

They hiked up the long Grand Staircase, beneath portraits of British prime ministers past.

“Our logs contain no evidence of any previous visits by you to Downing Street, Mr. Allon. Is that the case, or have you slipped in here before?”

“This is my first time, Prime Minister.”

“I suppose it must seem rather different from your own prime minister’s office.”

“That’s putting it mildly, sir. Our staterooms are decorated in early kibbutz chic.”

“We’ll meet in the White Room,” the prime minister said. “Henry Campbell-Bannerman died there in 1908, but, as far as I know, no one has died there today.”

They passed through a set of tall double doors and went inside. The heavy rose-colored curtains were drawn, and the Waterford glass chandelier glowed softly overhead. Robert Halton was seated on a striped couch, next to Dame Eleanor McKenzie, the director general of MI5. Her counterpart from M16 was pacing, and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was off in one corner, speaking quietly into a mobile phone. After a set of hasty introductions, Gabriel was directed to the end of the second couch, where he sat beneath the mournful gaze of a Florence Nightingale statuette. A log fire was burning brightly in the hearth. A steward brought tea that no one drank.

The prime minister lowered himself into the wing chair opposite the fireplace and brought the proceedings to order. He spoke calmly, as though he were explaining a bit of dull but important economic policy. At noon London time, he said, Ambassador Halton submitted his resignation to the White House and made an offer of twenty million dollars’ ransom to the terrorists in exchange for his daughter’s freedom. Shortly after two o’clock London time, the terrorists made contact with FBI negotiators in the American embassy and, after providing proof that they were indeed holding Elizabeth captive, made a counteroffer. They wanted thirty million dollars instead of twenty. If the money was delivered as instructed-and if there were no traps or arrests-Elizabeth would be released twenty-four hours later.

“So why am I here?” asked Gabriel, though he already knew the answer.

“You are an intelligent man, Mr. Allon. You tell me.”

“I’m here because they want me to the deliver the money.”

“I’m afraid that is correct,” said the prime minister. “At five fifty-nine London time, they are going to call the FBI negotiator at the embassy. They want a one-word answer: yes or no. If the answer is no, Elizabeth Halton will be executed immediately. If it is yes-meaning that you have agreed to all their demands-she will be released forty-eight hours from now, give or take a few hours.”

A heavy silence fell over the room. It was broken by Adrian Carter, who objected on Gabriel’s behalf. “The answer is no,” he said. “It is an obvious trap. I can think of three possible outcomes, none of them pleasant.”

“We all know the pitfalls, Mr. Carter,” said the director-general of MI6. “There’s no need to review them now.”

“Humor me,” said Carter. “I’m just a dull-witted American. Scenario number one, Gabriel will be killed immediately after delivering the money. Scenario number two, he will be taken captive, tortured savagely for some period of time, and then killed. The third scenario, however, is probably the most likely outcome.”

“And what’s that?” asked the prime minister.

“Gabriel will take Elizabeth Halton’s place as a hostage. The Sword of Allah and al-Qaeda will then make demands on the Israeli government instead of ours, and we’ll all be right back at square one.”

“With one important difference,” added Graham Seymour. “Much of the world will be rooting for the Sword to kill him. He is an Israeli and a Jew, an occupier and an oppressor, and therefore in the eyes of many in Europe and the Islamic world he is worthy of death. His murder would be a major propaganda victory for the terrorists.”

“But his cooperation will buy us something we have in exceedingly short supply at the moment,” said Eleanor McKenzie. “If we say yes tonight, we will be granted at least twenty-four additional hours to look for Miss Halton.”

“We’ve been looking for her for two weeks,” said Carter. “Unless someone has made some serious inroads that I’m not aware of, twenty-four additional hours aren’t going to make much of a difference.”

Gabriel looked at Robert Halton. It had been more than a week since Gabriel had seen him last, and in those days the ambassador’s face appeared to have aged many years. The prime minister would have been wise to conduct this conversation without Halton present, because to say no at this moment would be an act of almost unspeakable cruelty. Or perhaps that was exactly the reason the prime minister had invited him here. He had left Gabriel no option but to agree to the scheme.

“They’re going to make additional demands,” Gabriel said. “They’ll demand that I come alone. They’ll warn that if I’m followed, the deal is off and Elizabeth dies. We’re going to abide by those rules.” He looked at Seymour and Carter. “No surveillance, British or American.”

“You can’t go into this thing with no one watching your back,” said the chief of the Metropolitan Police.

“I don’t intend to,” said Gabriel. “MI5 and the Anti-Terrorist Branch of Scotland Yard will give us all the intelligence and support we require, but this will be an Israeli operation from start to finish. I will bring whomever and whatever I need into the country to conduct it. Afterward, there will be no scrutiny and no inquiries. If anyone is killed or wounded during the recovery of Elizabeth, no one from my team will be questioned or prosecuted.”

“Out of the question,” said Eleanor McKenzie.

“Done,” said the prime minister.

“How long will it take you to assemble the cash?”

“Every major bank in the City is already involved,” the prime minister said. “The task should be complete by late tomorrow afternoon. Obviously it’s a large consignment and therefore it will be somewhat unwieldy. They think it will fit into two large rolling duffel bags.”

Gabriel glanced from face to face. “Don’t even think about putting any tracking devices in the cash or the bags.”

“Understood,” said the prime minister. “It occurs to me that tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Clearly it is not a coincidence.”

“No, Prime Minister, I suspect they’ve been preparing for this for a long time.” Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. “Can someone give me a lift to the American embassy? There’s a telephone call coming there in a few minutes that I’d like to take.”

“Graham will take you,” the prime minister said. “We’ll give you a police escort. The traffic in central London this time of day is really quite dreadful.”

On the wall above John O’Donnell’s workstation was a large digital clock with red numerals set against a black background. Gabriel, however, had eyes only for the telephone. It was a modern device, with access to twenty lines, including extension 7512, which was available nowhere else in the building. Extension 7512 was O’Donnell’s private reserve. Now it belonged to Gabriel, along with O’Donnell’s warm chair and O’Donnell’s wrinkled legal pad.

The clock rolled over to 17:59 and the seconds began their methodical march from:00 to:59. Gabriel kept his eyes on the phone-on the green light in the box marked 7512, and on the small crack in the receiver, inflicted by O’Donnell during a blind rage early in the crisis. A minute later, when the clock rolled over to 18:00:00, there was an audible gasp in the room. Then, at 18:01:25, Gabriel heard one of O’Donnell’s team members begin to weep. He did not share the pessimism of his audience. He knew the terrorists were cruel bastards who were just using the opportunity of the deadline to have a spot of fun at the expense of their American and Israeli opponents.

At 18:02:17, the telephone finally rang. Gabriel, unwilling to cause his audience any additional stress, answered before it could ring a second time. He spoke in English, with his heavy Hebrew accent, so there would be no misunderstanding about who was on the line.

“The answer is yes,” he said.

“Be ready at ten o’clock tomorrow night. We’ll give you the instructions then.”

Under normal circumstances, a professional negotiator like O’Donnell would have begun the delay tactics: trouble assembling the money, trouble getting the permission of local authorities for the handover, anything to keep the hostage alive and the kidnappers talking. But this was not a normal situation-the terrorists wanted Gabriel-and there was no point delaying the inevitable. The sooner it started, the sooner it would be over.

“You’ll call on this number?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I look forward to hearing from you.”

Click.

Gabriel stood, pulled on his leather jacket, and started toward the stairs.

“Where do you think you’re going?” asked Carter.

“I’m leaving.”

“You can’t just leave.”

“I can’t stay here, Adrian. I have work to do.”

“Let us give you a lift. We can’t have you wandering around London unprotected.”

“I think I can look after myself, Adrian.”

“At least let me rustle you up a gun.”

“What are you boys carrying these days?”

“Browning Hi-Power,” said Carter. “It doesn’t have the grace and beauty of your Berettas, but it’s quite lethal. Would you like one magazine or two?”

Gabriel frowned.

“I’ll bring you two,” said Carter. “And an extra box of ammo for laughs.”

Five minutes later, with Carter’s loaded Browning pressing against the base of his spine, Gabriel slipped past the Marine guard at the North Gate and turned into Upper Brook Street. The sidewalk along the embassy fence was closed to pedestrian traffic and lined with Metropolitan Police officers in lime green jackets. Gabriel crossed to the opposite side of the street and headed toward Hyde Park. He spotted the motorcyclist two minutes later as he rounded the corner into Park Lane. The bike was a powerful BMW and the figure seated atop it was long-legged and helmeted. Gabriel noticed the bulge beneath the leather jacket-the left side, for the right-handed cross draw. He continued north to Marble Arch, then headed west along the Bayswater Road. As he was approaching Albion Gate he heard the roar of the BMW bike at his back. It came alongside him and braked to an abrupt stop. Gabriel swung his leg over the back and wrapped his arms around the rider’s waist. As the bike shot forward he heard the sound of a woman singing. Chiara always sang when she was at the controls of a motorcycle.

48

She drove for fifteen minutes through the streets of Belgravia and Brompton to make certain they were not being followed, then made her way to the Israeli embassy, located in Old Court Place just off Kensington High Street. Shamron was waiting for them in the office of the station chief, a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette in one hand and a handsome olive-wood cane in the other. He was angrier than Gabriel had seen him in many years.

“Hello, Ari.”

“What do you think you’re playing at?”

“How did you get here so quickly?”

“I left Ben-Gurion this morning after learning about your exploits in Denmark. It was my intention to ease your way through Heathrow and bring you home again. But when I placed a call to the station to let them know I had arrived, I was told you had just left Downing Street.”

“I tried to steal some matches for you, but I was never alone.”

“You should have consulted with us before agreeing to this!”

“There wasn’t time.”

“There was abundant time! You see, Gabriel, it would have been a very short consultation. You would have asked for clearance to undertake this mission and I would have told you no. End of consultation.” He crushed out his cigarette and looked at Gabriel malevolently for a long moment without speaking. “But to back out of this arrangement now is not an option. Can you imagine the headlines? Vaunted Israeli intelligence service, afraid to rescue the American girl. You’ve left us no choice but to proceed. But that’s exactly what you intended, isn’t it? You are a manipulative little bastard.”

“I learned from the master.”

Shamron stuck another cigarette between his lips, cocked the lid of his old Zippo lighter, and fired. “I held my tongue when you decided to return to Amsterdam to kidnap and interrogate this man Ibrahim Fawaz. I held my tongue again when you went to Copenhagen and tried to negotiate with his son. If I had obeyed my first instinct, which was to bring you home, it wouldn’t have come to this. You had no right to agree to this assignment without first obtaining the permission of your director and your prime minister. If it were anyone but you, I would bring you up on charges and throw you into the Judean Wilderness to atone for your sins.”

“You can do that when I get home.”

“You’re liable to come home in a box. You don’t need to commit suicide in order to get out of being the next chief, Gabriel. If you don’t want the job, just say so.”

“I don’t want the job.”

“I know you don’t really mean that.”

“God, but you’re sounding more and more like a Jewish mother every day.”

“And you are providing me ample proof that you are not up to the job. By way of deception, thou shalt do war-this is our creed. We are not shaheeds, Gabriel. We leave the suicide missions to Hamas and all the other Islamic psychopaths who wish to destroy us. We move like shadows, strike like lightning, and then we vanish into thin air. We do not volunteer to serve as delivery boys for rich Americans, and we certainly don’t sacrifice ourselves for no good reason. You are one of the elite. You are a prince of a very small tribe.”

“And what do we do about Elizabeth Halton? Let her die?”

“If it is the only way to end this madness, then the answer is yes.”

“And if it were your daughter, Ari? If it were Ronit?”

“Then I would shake hands with the Devil himself in order to get her back again. But I wouldn’t ask the Americans to do it for me. Blue and white, Gabriel. Blue and white. We do things for ourselves, and we do not help others with problems of their own making. The Americans threw in their lot with the secular dictatorships of the Middle East a long time ago, and now the oppressed are rising up and taking their revenge on symbols of American power. On September eleventh it was the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Now it is the innocent daughter of the American ambassador to London.”

“And next it will be us.”

“And we will fight them-alone.” Shamron managed a faint smile of reminiscence. “I remember a boy who came home from Europe in 1975, a boy who looked twenty years older than he really was. A boy who wanted nothing more do to with this life in the shadows, nothing more to do with fighting and killing. What happened to this boy?”

“He became a man, Ari. And he is sick to death of this shit. And he will not let this woman be murdered because the Americans refuse to release a dying sheikh from prison.”

“And is this man prepared to die on behalf of this cause?” He looked at Chiara. “Is he prepared to give up his life with this beautiful woman in order to save one he does not know?”

“Trust me, Ari, I’m not a martyr, and the only people who are going to die are the terrorists. When we lost Ibrahim, we lost our only way into the conspiracy. Now, by demanding that I deliver the money, they’ve opened the door to us again. And we’re all going to walk through it, together.”

“You’re telling me that I should think of you as nothing more than an agent of penetration?”

Gabriel nodded. “Taking possession of money will be a major operational undertaking for them. It will expose their operatives and their means of communication. And if they do seize me, it will expose some of their hideouts and safe properties, which will give us additional names and telephone numbers. The British and the Americans have agreed to stay away and leave it to us. We’re going to fight them, Ari, right here on British soil, just the way we’ve always fought them. We’re going to kill them, and we’re going to bring that girl home to her father alive.” Gabriel paused, then added: “And then maybe they will stop blaming us for all their problems.”

“I don’t care what they say about us. You are like a son to me, Gabriel, and I cannot afford to lose you. Not now.”

“You won’t.”

Shamron appeared suddenly fatigued by the confrontation. Gabriel used his silence as an opportunity to close the door on the debate and press forward.

“Where’s the rest of my team?”

“They returned to Amsterdam after the debacle in Denmark,” Shamron said. “They can all be here by morning.”

“I’m going to need Mikhail and his gun.”

Shamron smiled. “Gabriel and Michael: the angel of death and the angel of destruction. If you two can’t bring the woman out alive, then I don’t suppose anyone can.”

“So you’ll give me your blessing?”

“Only my prayers,” he said. “Get some sleep, my son. You’re going to need it. We’ll assemble here at nine in the morning and start planning. Let us hope we are not planning a funeral.”

The apartment on the Bayswater Road was precisely as he had left it the morning of the attack. His half-drunk cup of coffee stood on the desk by the window, next to the London A-Z atlas, which was still open to map number 82. In the bedroom his clothes lay scattered about, evidence of the haste with which he had dressed in the moments before disaster had struck. Samir al-Masri’s notebook, with his mountaintops and sand dunes and spider web of intersecting lines, lay on the unmade bed next to the woman with riotous auburn hair. A Beretta pistol protruded from the front of her faded blue jeans. Gabriel removed the weapon and placed his hand softly against her abdomen.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“An insatiable desire to touch something beautiful.”

“You know what I’m asking you, Gabriel. Why did you agree to the demands of the kidnappers?”

Gabriel, silent, deftly unsnapped Chiara’s jeans. Chiara pushed his hand away, then reached up to his face. He recoiled from her touch. His skin was throbbing again.

“It’s because of Dani, isn’t it? You know what it’s like to lose a child to the terrorists. You know how it makes you hate, how it can destroy your life.” She ran her fingers through the ash-colored hair at his temples. “Everyone always thought it was Leah who made you burn. They seemed to forget that you lost a son. It’s Dani who drives you. And it’s Dani who’s telling you to take this insane assignment.”

“There’s nothing insane about it.”

“Am I the only person to at least consider the possibility that these terrorists have no intention of releasing Elizabeth Halton-that they will take Ambassador Halton’s money and then kill her?”

“No,” said Gabriel. “That is exactly what they’re going to do.”

“Then why are we engaging in this folly of a ransom payment?”

“Because it is the only way to save her. They’re not going to kill her in some cellar where no one can see it. They kidnapped her in a terrorist spectacular and they’ll kill her in one.” He paused, then added: “And me with her.”

“We are not shaheeds,” she said, parroting the words of Shamron. “We leave the suicide missions to Hamas and all the other Islamic psychopaths who wish to destroy us.”

Gabriel tugged at the zipper of her jeans. Once again she pushed his hand away.

“Did you enjoy working with Sarah again?”

“She performed better than I expected.”

“You trained her, Gabriel. Of course she performed well.”

Chiara lapsed into silence.

“Is there something you want to know?” Gabriel asked.

“Whose idea was it for her to work with you on this operation?”

“It was Carter’s. And it wasn’t an idea. It was a demand. They wanted an American component to our team.”

“He could have picked someone else.” She paused. “Someone who didn’t happen to be in love with you.”

“What are you talking about, Chiara?”

“She’s in love you, Gabriel. Everyone could see it during the al-Bakari operation-everyone but you, that is. You’re rather thick when it comes to matters of the heart.” She looked at him in the darkness. “Or maybe you’re not so thick after all. Maybe you’re secretly in love with her, too. Maybe you want Sarah watching your back tomorrow instead of me.”

His third attempt to remove her jeans met no resistance. The cashmere sweater was a joint operation. Chiara dealt with the brassiere alone and guided his hands to her breasts.

“Fraternization between employees in Office safe houses is strictly forbidden,” she said through his kisses.

“Yes, I know.”

“You’re going to be a terrible chief.”

He was about to take issue with her statement when the blue light on the telephone flashed. When Gabriel reached for it, Chiara seized his hand.

“What if it’s the Memuneh?” he asked.

She rolled on top of him. “Now I’m the Memuneh.”

She pressed her mouth against his. The blue light flashed unanswered.

“Marry me,” she said.

“I’ll marry you.”

“Now, Gabriel. Marry me now.”

“I do,” he said.

“Don’t die on me tomorrow night.”

“I won’t die.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise you.”

49

Gabriel woke suddenly and with the sensation of having slept an eternity. He glanced at the alarm clock, then looked at Chiara. She lay tangled in the blankets next to him like a Greek statue toppled from its plinth. He slipped out of bed quietly and listened to the news on the radio while he made coffee. According to the BBC there had been no response to Ambassador Halton’s offer of ransom, and the fate of his missing daughter was still unknown. Londoners had been warned to expect heavy security along the city’s main shopping streets and in the Underground and rail stations. Gabriel took comfort in the weather forecast: light rain with intervals of brightness.

He drank his first cup of coffee, then spent an inordinate amount of time standing beneath the shower. The cuts on his face made shaving impossible. Besides, there was something he liked about the look of several days’ growth on his cheeks. Chiara stirred as he entered the bedroom. She drew him into the bed and made drowsy love to him one last time.

They left the apartment together at ten minutes to nine and climbed aboard Chiara’s BMW bike. The forecasted rain had not yet started, nor was there evidence of the expected rush of Christmas Eve shoppers. They sped down Bayswater Road to Notting Hill, then followed Kensington Church Street to Old Court Place. A small knot of protesters was gathered in the street outside the embassy; they waved Israeli flags emblazoned with swastikas and shouted something about Jews and Nazis as Gabriel and Chiara slipped through the open gate and disappeared inside.

The rest of the team had already arrived and was gathered in the largest of the embassy’s meeting rooms, looking like a band of refugees from a natural disaster. All of Gabriel’s original team was there, along with the entire staff of the London Station and several other European stations as well. Uzi Navot had made the trip overnight from King Saul Boulevard and had brought with him another half-dozen field operatives. It occurred to Gabriel that this would be the largest and most important Office operation ever conducted on European soil-and yet they had no idea how it would unfold.

He sat down at the conference table next to Shamron, who was dressed in khaki trousers and his leather bomber jacket. They looked at one another in silence for a long moment; then Shamron rose slowly to his feet and called the room to order.

“At ten o’clock this evening, Gabriel is going to walk into Hell,” he said. “It is our job to make sure he comes out the other end alive. I want ideas. No idea, no matter how meshuganah, is beyond consideration.”

Shamron sat down again and opened the floor to debate. Everyone in the room started talking at once. Gabriel threw his head back and laughed out loud. It was good to be home again.

They worked through the morning, broke for a working lunch, then worked throughout the afternoon. At 5:30, Gabriel drew Chiara into an empty office and kissed her one final time. Then, wishing to avoid an awkward scene with Shamron, he slipped out of the embassy alone and headed through the streets of Kensington toward Mayfair. As he crossed Hyde Park, he paused briefly at the place where on the morning of the attack he had come upon the body of Chris Petty, the American Diplomatic Security agent. A few yards beyond lay a pile of wilted memorial flowers and a crude cardboard placard of tribute to the fallen Americans. Then, on the spot where Samir al-Masri had died in Gabriel’s grasp, there was a second memorial to the “Hyde Park Martyrs,” as the terrorists had become known to their supporters in London. Here was the coming clash of civilizations, thought Gabriel, played out on a few square yards of a London park.

He crossed the open lawns at the eastern edge of the park and entered Upper Brook Street. Adrian Carter was standing next to the Marine guard at the North Gate, puffing nervously on his pipe. He greeted Gabriel as though mildly surprised to see him, then took him by the arm and led him inside.

The duffel bags of money were waiting in Ambassador Halton’s top-floor office, surrounded by a detachment of DS agents. Gabriel inspected them, then looked at Carter.

“No beacons, right, Adrian?”

“No beacons, Gabriel.”

“What kind of car did you get me?”

“A Vauxhall Vectra, dark gray and unassuming.”

“Where is it now?”

“Upper Brook Street.”

“The bags fit in the truck?”

“We checked it out. They fit.”

“Put the money inside now.”

Carter frowned. “I don’t know about you, Gabriel, but I never leave my wallet in the car, let alone thirty million in cash.”

“At this moment the embassy is surrounded by a hundred Metropolitan Police officers,” Gabriel said. “No one is going to break into the car.”

Carter nodded at the DS agents, and a moment later the bags were gone.

“You, too, Adrian. I’d like to have a word with the ambassador alone.”

Carter opened his mouth as though he were about to object, then thought better of it. “I’ll be down in the ops center,” he said. “Don’t be late, Gabriel. The show can’t start without you.”

Precisely what was said between Gabriel Allon and Ambassador Robert Halton never became known and was not included in any record of the affair, overt or secret. Their conversation was brief, no more than a minute in duration, and the DS agent standing guard outside the ambassador’s office later described Gabriel as looking damp-eyed but determined as he emerged and made his way toward the ops center. This time the kidnappers did not make him wait. The call, according to the clock above John O’Donnell’s workstation, came at 20:00:14. Gabriel reached for it instantly, though he remembered thinking as he did so that he would be happy never to speak into a telephone again for as long as he lived. His greeting was calm and somewhat vague; his demeanor, as he listened to the instructions, was that of a traffic officer recording the details of a minor accident. He posed no questions, and his face registered no emotion other than profound irritation. At 20:00:57, he was heard to murmur: “I’ll be there.” Then he stood and pulled on his coat. This time Carter made no attempt to stop him as he started toward the stairs.

He paused for a moment in the ground-floor atrium to slip on his miniature earpiece and throat microphone, then nodded silently to the Marine guard as he exited the embassy grounds through the North Gate. Carter’s Vauxhall sedan was parked in a flagrantly illegal space on the corner of North Audley Street. The keys resided in Gabriel’s coat pocket, along with a GPS beacon the size of a five-pence coin. He opened the trunk and quickly inspected the cargo before adhering the beacon near the driver’s-side taillight. Then he climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. A moment later he was turning into Oxford Street and marveling at the crush of last minute shoppers. Carter’s watchers followed him as far as Albany Street, where they photographed him making a left turn and heading north. That would be their last contact with him. As far as the Americans and British were concerned, Gabriel had now disappeared from radar.

That was not the case, however, at the Israeli embassy in South Kensington, where, in one of the more bizarre coincidences of the entire affair, a group of well-meaning Christians had chosen that night to conduct a candlelight vigil calling for peace in the Holy Land. Inside the building, Ari Shamron and Uzi Navot were holding a vigil of their own. Their thoughts were not of peace or the holidays or even of home. They were huddled round a smoky table in the makeshift operations room, moving their forces into place, and watching a winking green light heading along the eastern fringe of Regent’s Park toward Hampstead.

50

He parked where they told him to park, in the Constantine Road at the southern tip of Hampstead Heath. There was no other traffic moving in the street, and Gabriel, as he had made his final approach, detected no signs of surveillance, opposition or friendly. He shut off the engine and pressed the interior trunk release, then opened the center console hatch and dropped the keys inside. A gentle rain had started to fall. As he stepped outside, he cursed himself for failing to bring a hat.

He walked to the back of the car and removed the first duffel. As he was reaching for the second, he heard noises at his back and wheeled around to find a pack of young carolers advancing festively toward him. For a mad instant he wondered whether they might be the Sphinx’s watchers but quickly dismissed that notion as they bade him a Happy Christmas and paraded obliviously by. He placed the second bag in the street and closed the trunk. The carolers were now singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” outside a small brick cottage strung with holiday lights. A sign in the window read: GIVE US PEACE IN OUR TIME.

Gabriel towed the duffel bags a few yards along the street, then crossed a footbridge over a set of sunken railroad tracks and entered the heath. To his right was a darkened running track. In the cement esplanade outside the padlocked gate, four immigrant men in their twenties were kicking a football about beneath the amber glow of a sodium lamp. They appeared to pay Gabriel no heed as he labored past and started up the slope of Parliament Hill, toward the bench where they had told him to wait for their next contact. He arrived to find it occupied by a small man with a frayed coat and matted beard. His accent, when he spoke to Gabriel, was East London and leaden with drink.

“Happy Christmas, mate. What can I do for you?”

“You can get off the bench.”

“It’s my bench tonight.”

“Not anymore,” said Gabriel. “Move.”

“Piss off.”

Gabriel drew Adrian Carter’s Browning Hi-Power and leveled it at the man’s head. “Get the fuck out of here and forget you ever saw me. Do you understand?”

“Loud and fucking clear.”

The man got quickly to his feet and melted into the darkness of the Heath. Gabriel ran his hand along the back and underside of the bench and found a mobile phone taped to the bottom of the seat on the left side. He quickly removed the battery and searched the phone for any concealed explosive charges. Then he reconnected the battery and pressed the POWER button. When the telephone was back online, he spoke quietly into his throat microphone.

“Nokia E50.”

“Number?” asked Uzi Navot.

Gabriel recited it.

“Any recent activity.”

“It’s clean.”

“Text activity?”

“Nothing.”

Gabriel stared down at the lights of London and waited for the phone to ring. Fifteen minutes later, he heard a thin, tinny version of the Adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. He silenced it with a press of a button and raised the phone to his ear. It took them only thirty seconds to deliver the next set of instructions. Gabriel dropped the phone into the rubbish bin next to the bench, then took hold of the duffel bags and started walking.

At the makeshift command center inside the Israeli embassy, Uzi Navot laid down the handset of his secure radio and snatched up the receiver of his telephone. He quickly dialed a number for Thames House, the riverfront headquarters of MI5, and ten seconds later heard the voice of Graham Seymour.

“Where is he now?” Seymour asked.

“Heading across Hampstead Heath toward Highgate. They just told him that if he has a radio or a weapon on him at the next stop, Elizabeth Halton will be executed immediately. In a few seconds he’s going to be off the air.”

“What can we do for you?”

“Trace a telephone.”

“Give me everything you have on it.”

Navot gave Seymour the model and telephone number.

“I don’t suppose they were foolish enough to leave any information in the calling history.”

“The phone was clean, Graham.”

“We’ll run it and see if we come up with anything. But I wouldn’t hold out much hope. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of jihadists in our local telecommunications industry. They’re damned clever when it comes to covering their tracks with phones.”

“Just give us anything you come up with.”

Navot slammed down the phone and picked up the radio handset again. He grunted a few words in terse Hebrew, then looked at Shamron. He was pacing the room slowly, leaning heavily on his cane.

“You’re wasting your time chasing that phone, Uzi. You should be chasing the watchers instead.”

“I know, boss. But where are the watchers?”

Shamron stopped in front of a computer monitor and peered at a grainy night-vision image of four young men playing football outside the padlocked Hampstead Heath running track.

“At least one of them is right there in front of you, Uzi.”

“We’ve had them under watch since before Gabriel arrived. No phone calls. No text messaging. Only football.”

“Then you should assume that’s what the Sphinx told him to do,” Shamron said. “That’s the way I would have done it-an old-school, physical signal. If Gabriel is clean, keep playing football. If Gabriel is being followed, have an argument of some sort. If Gabriel has a radio, take a cigarette break.” Shamron poked at the screen. “Like that boy is doing right there.”

“You think one of them is a spotter?”

“I’d bet my life on it, Uzi.”

“That means that there’s someone else in the heath who can see him-someone with a cell phone or a two-way pager.”

“Exactly,” said Shamron. “But you’re never going to find him. He’s already gone by now. Your only option is to follow the spotter.”

Navot looked at the screen. “I don’t have the resources to follow four men.”

“You don’t have to follow four. You only have to follow one. Just make sure you pick the right one.”

“Which one is that?”

“Eli has good instincts about these things,” Shamron said. “Let Eli decide. And whatever you do, make sure you get another beacon on Gabriel before he leaves Highgate. If we lose him now, we might never find him again.”

Navot reached for his radio. Shamron started pacing again.

Gabriel jettisoned the Browning and the radio in a stand of trees at the center of the heath, then crossed the levee between the Highgate Ponds and made his way to Millfield Lane. Taped to the nearest lamppost was a snapshot of a dark blue BMW station wagon. The car itself was fifty yards farther along the lane, outside a large freestanding brick house with a string of smiling reindeer on the lawn. Gabriel opened the rear hatch and peered inside. The keys lay in plain sight, in the center of the cargo area. He removed them, placed the bags inside, then subjected the vehicle to a thorough inspection before climbing behind the wheel and tentatively turning the key.

The engine started right away. Gabriel opened the glove box and saw a single sheet of paper, which he examined by the ambient light of the dashboard. Listed on the page was a detailed set of driving instructions-a journey that would take him from Highgate to a headland for the distant reaches of Essex appropriately named Foulness Point. On the passenger seat was a well-thumbed Bartholomew Road Atlas. It was dated 1995 and opened to map number 25. The drop site was was marked with an X. The surrounding waters were labeled in red: DANGER ZONE.

Gabriel slipped the car into gear and eased away from the curb under the watchful gaze of the smiling reindeer. He turned right into Merton Lane, just as they instructed him to do, and headed east along the edge of the Highgate Cemetery. In Hornsey Lane, a male pedestrian in a shoddy mackintosh raincoat stepped in his path. Gabriel put his foot hard on the brake, too late to avoid a minor collision that sent the pedestrian tumbling to the asphalt. The man bounced quickly to his feet and pounded his fist on the hood in a rage; then, after reaching briefly beneath the passenger side wheel well, he stormed off. Gabriel watched him go, then made his way to the Archway Road. He turned left and headed for the M25.

At that same moment in Hampstead Heath, the vagrant returned to his encampment atop Parliament Hill. He spent a few seconds picking through the rubbish bin, as if looking for a morsel of something edible, then settled himself once more on his bench overlooking the cityscape of London. His thoughts were focused not on food or even drink but on the four young men now filing over the footbridge to the Constantine Road. We think one of them is the spotter, Uzi Navot had said. The Memuneh wants you to decide. He already had. It was the one in the denim jacket, black high-top Converse sneakers, and Bob Marley knit cap. He was good for so young a man, but Lavon was better. Lavon was the best there ever was. He waited until the four men were out of sight, then he removed his false beard and tattered overcoat and started after them.

For the first ninety minutes of Gabriel’s journey, the weather had held to a persistent drizzle, but as he crossed the drawbridge leading to Foulness Island, God in His infinite wisdom unleashed a torrential downpour that turned the road into a river. There were no headlamps in his rearview mirror and none coming toward him from the opposite direction. Gabriel, as he sped past dormant farms and grassy tidal creeks, allowed himself to wonder if this would be his last earthly vision-not the Jezreel Valley of his birth, not Jerusalem or the narrow streets of his beloved Venice, but this windswept headland at the edge of the North Sea.

Five miles beyond the drawbridge, Gabriel glimpsed a sign amidst the deluge, warning that soon the road would end. For reasons known only to himself, he took careful note of the time, which was 12:35. A quarter-mile later he turned into an abandoned car park at Foulness Point and, as instructed, switched off the engine. Leave the keys in the ignition, the voice had said to him in Hampstead Heath. Take the bags out to the point and place them on the beach. For a few desperate seconds he considered hurling the money into the car park and driving at the speed of light back to London. Instead he extracted the bags slowly, then dragged them through an opening in the earthen seawall and down a sandy path to the narrow beach.

As he was nearing the water’s edge he heard a noise that sounded like the wind in the dune grass. Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed the movement of something black which, on a clear night, he might have mistaken for a passing moon shadow. He never saw the one who delivered a sledgehammer blow to the side of his head, nor did he ever see the needle that was rammed into the side of his neck. Chiara appeared, dressed in a white gown stained with blood, and pleaded with him not to die. Then she receded into flashing blue light and was gone.

Shamron and Navot stood side by side in the command post, staring wordlessly at the flashing green light. It had not moved for ten minutes. Shamron knew it never would.

“You’d better send someone out there to have a look,” he said, “just to make sure.”

Navot raised the handset of his radio to his lips.

Yossi had followed Gabriel’s beacon as far as Southend-on-Sea and was sheltering in an all-night café overlooking the Thames Estuary when he received Navot’s urgent call. Thirty seconds later, he was behind the wheel of his Renault sedan and driving at a thoroughly unsafe speed toward Foulness Point. When he turned into the car park, he saw the BMW station wagon standing alone with its rear hatch open and the keys still in the ignition. He drew a flashlight from the glove box and followed a set of fresh footprints down to the beach. There were more footprints there of varying sizes, along with a set of parallel grooves that led from the center of the beach to the water’s edge. The grooves had been left by the toes of a man, Yossi thought-a man who was unconscious or worse. He brought his radio to his lips and raised Navot at the command post. “He’s gone,” Yossi said. “And it looks like they took him away by boat.”

Navot lowered his handset and looked at Shamron.

“I doubt these lads took him into the North Sea on a night like this, Uzi.”

“I agree, boss. But where did they take him?”

Shamron walked over to the map. “Here,” he said, poking at a spot on the other side of the river Crouch. “It’s lined with marinas and other places to land small craft. And the only way to get across it at this time of night is by boat, which means we’re going to have to take the long way around.”

Navot returned to the radio and ordered his teams to give chase. Then he picked up the phone and broke the news to Graham Seymour at MI5 Headquarters.

51

He was lost in a gallery of memory hung with portraits of the dead. They spoke to him as he drifted slowly past-Zwaiter and Hamidi; the brothers al-Hourani; Sabri and Khaled al-Khalifa, father and son of terror. They welcomed him to the land of martyrs and celebrated his death with sweets and song. At the end of the gallery, a bloodless boy with bullet holes in his face guided Gabriel through the doors of a church in Venice. The nave was hung with a cycle of paintings depicting scenes from his life and above the main altar was an unfinished canvas, clearly painted by the hand of Bellini, portraying Gabriel’s death. The master himself was standing in the sanctuary. He took Gabriel by the hand and led him into a garden in Jerusalem, where a woman scarred by fire sat in the shade of an olive tree with a cherubic boy on her lap. Look at the snow, the woman was saying to the child. The snow absolves Vienna of its sins. The snow falls on Vienna while the missiles rain on Tel Aviv. He heard someone calling his name. He went into the church but found it empty. When he returned to the garden, the woman and the boy were gone.

When finally he woke, it was with the sensation that he had drunk himself sick. His headache was catastrophic, his mouth felt as though it were filled with a wad of cotton wool, and he feared he might throw up, even though it had been many hours since he had taken food. He opened his eyes slowly and, without moving a muscle, took stock of his situation. He lay on his back atop a narrow camp bed, in a small chamber with walls as white as porcelain. His hands were cuffed and the cuffs were attached to an iron loop in the wall behind his head so that his arms were stretched painfully backward. His clothing and wristwatch had been removed; his mouth had been taped closed. A searing white light shone fiercely into his face.

He closed his eyes, fought off a wave of nausea, and shivered violently from the cold. A good hiding place, this. Surely much planning and enterprise had gone into creating it. Despite the almost clinical cleanliness of the chamber, there were foul smells on the air, the smell of feces and body odor, the odor of a woman held for a long time in captivity. Elizabeth Halton had been here before him-he was certain of it. Was she still close by, he wondered, or had they moved her to another location to make way for the new tenant?

There were noises beyond the door. Gabriel turned his head a few degrees and saw an eye glaring at him through the peephole. Next he heard the sound of a padlock opening, followed by the groan of the cold hinges. A single man entered his cell. He was no more than thirty, slightly built and dressed in a collared shirt with a burgundy V-necked pullover. He gazed at Gabriel quizzically for a long moment through a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, as if he had been looking for a library or bookshop and had stumbled onto this scene instead. Gabriel found something familiar in the arrangement of the man’s features. Only when he tore the tape from Gabriel’s face and in Arabic wished him a pleasant evening did he understand why. The voice belonged to a young man from the Oud West in Amsterdam-a young man who was half Egyptian and half Palestinian, a volatile mix.

It belonged to Ishaq Fawaz.

He vanished as quickly as he had appeared. A few minutes later, four men entered his cell. They hit him several times in the abdomen before uncuffing his hands, then, after lifting him to his feet, hit him some more. The chamber was too small for a proper beating and so, after a brief conference, they dragged him naked up a flight of stairs and into a darkened warehouse space. Gabriel struck first, a move that seemed to catch them off guard. He managed to incapacitate one of them temporarily before the other three jumped onto his back and drove him onto the cold cement floor. There they throttled, kicked, and pounded on him for several minutes until, from somewhere in the warehouse, came an order to cease and desist. They let him lay there for some time, vomiting his own blood, before finally returning him to his cell and securing his hands to the wall again. He fought to remain conscious but could not. The door of the church in Venice was still ajar. He slipped inside and saw Bellini standing atop his work platform high above the main altar, putting the finishing touches on the canvas depicting Gabriel’s death. Gabriel climbed slowly upward and, with Bellini at his side, began to paint.

52

The spotter was good. Cairo good. Baghdad good.

The route he had taken from Hampstead Heath had been long and needlessly complicated: four different buses, two long hikes, and a final tube ride on the Victoria Line from King’s Cross to Walthamstow Central. Now he was walking up the Lea Bridge Road with a mobile phone pressed to his ear and Eli Lavon trailing a hundred yards behind him. He turned into Northumberland Road and thirty seconds later entered a small terraced house with a pebble dash exterior. There were lights burning in the windows on the second floor, evidence of other operatives inside.

Lavon circled around the block and made his way back to Lea Bridge Road. On the opposite side of the road was an empty bus shelter with an adequate view of the target house. As he lowered himself wearily onto the bench, he could hear Uzi Navot relaying the address to Graham Seymour at MI5 Headquarters. Lavon waited until Navot was finished, then murmured into his throat mic: “I can’t stay here for long, Uzi.”

“You won’t have to. The cavalry is on the way.”

“Just tell them to come quietly,” Lavon said. “But hurry. I’m about to freeze to death.”

It took MI5 and the Anti-Terrorist Branch of Scotland Yard just ten minutes to produce a list of the four men now using 23 Northumberland Road as a legal address and just twenty minutes to acquire the records of every telephone call placed from the residence for the previous two years. Calls placed to numbers that appeared on government watch lists, or to phones located in areas known for the extremism of their Islam, were automatically flagged for additional scrutiny. The records of calls placed from those numbers during the past two years were pulled as well. As a result, within an hour of Lavon’s first contact, MI5 and Scotland Yard had constructed a matrix of several thousand numbers and more than five hundred corresponding names.

Shortly after three A.M., a copy of the matrix was placed before the special MI5 task force that had been working around the clock since Elizabeth Halton’s disappearance. Five minutes later Graham Seymour personally delivered a second copy of the document to the fourth-floor conference room, which was occupied at that moment by three rather young women. One was an attractive American in her early thirties with shoulder-length blond hair and skin the color of alabaster. The other two were both Israelis, a curt Rubenesque woman with the bearing of a soldier and a small dark-haired girl who walked with a slight limp. Though all three had entered the United Kingdom on false passports, Seymour had agreed to let them into Thames House on the condition they did so under their real names. The Rubenesque Israeli was Major Rimona Stern of AMAN, the Israeli military intelligence service. The quiet girl was an analyst for the Israeli foreign intelligence service named Dina Sarid. The American’s credentials identified her as Irene Moore, a CIA desk officer attached to the Counterterrorism Center at Langley…

They accepted the document gratefully, then divided it among themselves. The American and the Rubenesque Israeli took the telephone numbers. The girl with the slight limp handled the names. She was good with names-Graham Seymour could see that. But there was something else: the intense seriousness of purpose, the stain of early widowhood in her dark eyes. She had been touched by terror, he thought. She was both victim and survivor. And she had a mind like a mainframe computer. Graham Seymour was convinced the matrix of names and numbers contained a valuable clue. And he had no doubt who would find it first.

He slipped out of the conference room and returned to the ops center. Waiting on his desk when he arrived was a dispatch from the Essex Police Headquarters in Chelmsford. A shallow-bottomed craft had been discovered abandoned along the northern banks of the river Crouch near Holliwell Point. Based on the condition of the outboard engine, it appeared that the boat had been used that evening. Graham Seymour picked up the phone and dialed Uzi Navot’s line at the Israeli command post in Kensington.

Thirty seconds later, Navot hung up the phone and relayed the news to Shamron.

“It looks like you were right about them taking him over the river.”

“You doubted me, Uzi?”

“No, boss.”

“He’s alive,” Shamron said, “but he won’t be for long. We need a break. One name. One telephone number. Something.”

“The girls are looking for it.”

“Let’s hope they find it, Uzi. Soon.”

53

The next time Gabriel awakened, his body was being washed. For an instant he feared they had killed him and that he was witnessing the ritual cleansing of his own corpse. Then, as he passed through another layer of consciousness, he realized it was only his captors trying to clean up the mess they had made of him.

When they were finished, they unchained his hands long enough to clothe him in a tracksuit and a pair of slip-on sandals, then withdrew without further violence. Some time later, a half hour perhaps, Ishaq returned. He regarded Gabriel with a perverted calmness for several moments before posing his first question.

“Where are my wife and son?”

“Why are you still here? I would have thought you would have been long gone by now.”

“To Pakistan? Or Afghanistan? Or Wherever-the-fuck-istan?”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “Back to the House of Islam, refuge of murderers.”

“I was planning to go there,” Ishaq said with a smile, “but I asked to come back here to deal with you, and my request was granted.”

“Lucky you.”

“Now, tell me where my wife and son are.”

“What time is it?”

“Five minutes till midnight,” said Ishaq, proud of his wit. Then he gave his watch an exaggerated glance. “Four minutes, actually. Your time is running out. Now, answer my question.”

“I suspect they’re in the Negev by now. We have a secret prison there for the worst of the worst. It is the equivalent of a galactic black hole. Those who enter are never heard from again. Hanifah and Ahmed will be well taken care of.”

“You’re lying.”

“You’re probably right, Ishaq.”

“When we were negotiating over the phone, you told me you were an American. You told me that my family was going to Egypt to be tortured. Now you tell me they are in Israel. You see my point?”

“Have you attempted to make one?”

“You are not to be trusted-that is my point. But, then, that is not surprising. You are, after all, a Jew.”

“The patricide lectures me about the immorality of deceit.”

“No, Allon, it was you who murdered my father. I saved him.”

“I know my brain is a little fuzzy at the moment, Ishaq, but you’re going to have to explain that one to me.”

“My father was once a member of the Sword of Allah, but he turned his back on jihad and lived the life of an apostate in the land of strangers. Then he compounded his offenses by throwing in his lot with you, the Jewish murderer of Palestinian mujahideen. Under the laws of Islam my father was condemned to Hell for his actions. I gave him a martyr’s death. My father is now a shaheed and therefore he is guaranteed a place in Paradise.”

The words had been spoken with such a profound seriousness that Gabriel knew further debate was pointless. It would be like arguing with a man who believed the earth was flat or that American astronauts had never landed on the moon. He felt suddenly like Winston Smith in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love. Freedom is slavery. Two and two make five. Murder of one’s father is divine duty.

“You were good in Denmark,” Gabriel said. “Very professional. You must have been planning that for a long time. I don’t suppose killing your own father was part of the original plan, but you improvised extraordinarily well.”

“Thank you,” Ishaq said earnestly.

“Why weren’t you there for the finale? And why wasn’t I killed along with him?”

Ishaq smiled calmly but made no response. Gabriel answered his own question.

“You and the Sphinx had other plans for me, didn’t you-plans that were laid the moment my picture appeared in the London papers after the kidnapping?”

“Who is this person you refer to as the Sphinx?”

Gabriel ignored him and pushed on. “The Sphinx knew that if the Americans didn’t release Elizabeth, eventually her father would take matters into his own hands. He knew that Robert Halton would offer the only thing he had: money. He also knew that someone would have to deliver the money. He waited for Halton to make the offer, then he seized the opportunity to take his revenge.”

“And yet you came anyway.” Ishaq was unable to prevent a note of astonishment from creeping into his voice. “Surely you knew this would be your fate. Why would you do such a thing? Why would you be willing to trade your life for another-for the spoiled daughter of an American billionaire?”

“Where is she, Ishaq?”

“Do you really think I would tell you, even if I knew where she was?”

“You know exactly where she is. She’s an innocent, Ishaq. Even under your perverted notion of takfir, you have no right to kill her.”

“She is the daughter of the American ambassador, the goddaughter of the American president, and spoke out in favor of the war in Iraq. She is a legitimate target, under our laws or anyone else’s.”

“Only a terrorist would consider Elizabeth Halton a legitimate target. We had a deal. Thirty million dollars for Elizabeth’s life. I expect you to live up to that deal.”

“You are in no position to make demands, Allon. Besides, our laws permit us to lie to infidels when necessary and to take the infidels’ money when it suits our needs. Thirty million dollars will go a very long way toward funding our global jihad. Who knows? Perhaps we’ll even be able to use it to buy a nuclear weapon-a weapon we can use to wipe your country off the map.”

“Keep the money. Buy your fucking weapon. But let her go.”

Ishaq pulled a frown, as if bored by the topic. “Let us return to my original question,” he said. “Where are Hanifah and Ahmed?”

“They were in custody in Copenhagen. When you demanded that I deliver the money, we went to the Danes and asked for your wife and son as collateral. The Danes, of course, granted our request without hesitation. If I don’t come back alive from this-and if Elizabeth Halton is not freed-your family will disappear from the face of the earth.”

He appeared shaken but put on a defiant face. “You’re lying.”

“Whatever you say, Ishaq. But trust me, if anything happens to me, you’ll never see them again.”

“Even if it is true that you have taken them to Israel as collateral, once the world learns they are being held, great pressure will be brought to bear in order to secure their release. Your government will have no recourse but to bend.” He stood abruptly and looked at his watch. “It is now two minutes to midnight. We have something we need from you before your execution. Give it to us without a struggle and your death will be relatively painless. If you insist on fighting us again, the boys will have their way with you. And this time, I won’t call them off.”

He opened the door and took a step outside, then turned and looked at Gabriel once more. “It occurs to me that soon you will be a shaheed, too. If you convert to Islam before your death, your place in Paradise will be assured. I can help, if you wish. The procedure is really quite simple.”

Ishaq, receiving no answer, closed the door and secured it with a padlock. Gabriel closed his eyes. Two and two make four, he thought. Two and two make four.

54

I think I may have found something.”

Graham Seymour looked up. It was the Israeli girl with dark hair and a limp: Dina Sarid. He gestured toward the empty chair next to his desk in the operations room. The girl remained standing.

“According to British Telecom records, twenty-seven calls have been placed from the telephone in the Northumberland Road residence to a phone located at Number Fourteen Reginald Street in Luton during the past eighteen months. Five of these calls were placed after the disappearance of Elizabeth Halton.”

Seymour frowned. Luton, a heavily Muslim suburb north of London, was one of MI5’s worst problems.

“Go on,” he said.

“According to your matrix, the telephone in Luton is located in the home of a man named Nabil Elbadry. Mr. Elbadry runs an import-export business and several other enterprises. He does not appear on any of your lists of known terrorist sympathizers or jihadi activists.”

“So what’s the problem?” Seymour asked.

“When I saw the name a few minutes ago, I knew I’d seen it somewhere before.”

“Where?”

“In a cache of Sword of Allah files we obtained from the Egyptian SSI.”

Seymour felt his stomach begin to burn. “Keep going, Miss Sarid.”

“Five years ago, the Egyptians arrested a man named Kemel Elbadry in Cairo. Under interrogation at the Torah Prison complex, he admitted to taking part in several Sword of Allah operations inside Egypt.”

“What does this have to do with Nabil Elbadry from Luton?”

“According to Kemel’s file, he had a brother named Nabil who immigrated to England in 1987. That corresponds exactly with the details on Nabil Elbadry’s immigration records.”

“Is Kemel still in custody?”

“He’s dead.”

“Executed?”

“Unclear.”

Graham Seymour stood up and called for quiet in the operations room.

“Nabil Elbadry,” he shouted. “Number Fourteen Reginald Street, Luton. I want to know everything there is to know about this man and his business interests and I want to know it in five minutes or less.”

He looked at the girl. She nodded her head once and limped slowly back to the conference room.

The boys in black came for him ten minutes after Ishaq left the cell. As they led him up the narrow stairs, Gabriel prepared himself for another beating. Instead, upon his arrival in the warehouse, he was lowered rather cordially into a folding aluminum chair.

He looked straight ahead and saw the lens of a video camera. Ishaq, now playing the role of director and cinematographer, ordered the four men in black to stand at Gabriel’s back. Three held Heckler amp; Koch compact submachine guns. One held a knife ominously. Gabriel knew his time had not yet come. His hands were cuffed in front. Infidels about to suffer the profound indignity of beheading always had their hands bound in back.

Ishaq made a few minor changes to the arrangement of his props, then stepped from behind his camera and handed Gabriel his script. Gabriel looked down. Then, like an actor unhappy with his lines, he tried to hand it back.

“Read it!” Ishaq demanded.

“No,” replied Gabriel calmly.

“Read it or I’ll kill you now.”

Gabriel let the script fall from his hands.

It took Graham Seymour’s task force only ten minutes to assemble a detailed inventory of all business interests and properties registered to Nabil Elbadry of Reginald Street, Luton. His eyes stopped halfway down the list. A company in which Elbadry was a minority partner owned a warehouse in West Dock Street in Harwich, not far from the ferry port. Seymour stood and went quickly to the map. Harwich was approximately forty miles from the spot where the Essex police had discovered the abandoned boat. He walked back to his desk and dialed the Israeli command post in Kensington.

Ishaq snatched up the fallen pages, then, after composing himself, read the statement on Gabriel’s behalf. Gabriel had committed many crimes against Palestinians and Muslims, Ishaq declared, and for these crimes he would soon face the justice of the sword. Gabriel did not listen to the entire recitation of his sins. Instead he looked down at the floor of the warehouse and wondered why Ishaq had not bothered to obscure his face before stepping in front of the camera. He knew the answer, of course: Ishaq was a martyr in the making and they were going to die together. When Ishaq was finished reading Gabriel’s death sentence, he walked over to the camera and checked to make certain it had recorded properly. Satisfied, he signaled the boys in black to commence their next beating. It seemed to last an eternity. The stab of the needle was an act of mercy. Gabriel’s eyes fell shut and he felt himself drowning in black water.

“How long will it take you to get your teams in place, Uzi?”

“I moved everyone that way after the Essex police found the boat. I can have three teams in Harwich in twenty minutes or less. The question is, what do we do when we get there?”

“First we determine whether he’s really there and, if so, whether he is still alive. Then we wait.”

“Wait? For what, boss?”

“We came here to get the American girl, Uzi. And we’re not leaving without her.”

55

Harwich, ancient port of fifteen thousand souls at the confluence of the rivers Stour and Orwell, lay darkened and slumbering beneath a steady onslaught of rain. The waters of Ramsey Creek were empty of commercial craft, and only a handful of cars had gathered at the ferry terminal for the morning’s first passage to the Continent. The medieval town center was tightly shuttered and abandoned to the gulls.

It was into this setting that six field operatives from the foreign intelligence service of the State of Israel arrived at precisely 4:45 A.M. on Christmas morning. By five o’clock they had confirmed that the warehouse in West Dock Road was indeed occupied, and by 5:15 they had managed to place a small wireless camera in the corner of a broken window at the back. They were now carefully dispersed among the surrounding streets. Yaakov had taken up a post hundred yards from the warehouse in the Station Road. Yossi was encamped in the Refinery Road. Oded and Mordecai had hastily concealed the surveillance van beneath an overpass of the A120. Mikhail and Chiara, who had spent that night atop the BMW bike, were sheltering in the back of the van, staring at the screen of the video receiver. The image there was poorly framed and prone to static. Even so, they could see clearly what was taking place inside the warehouse. Four men dressed in black were loading large drums of liquid into the back of a Vauxhall panel van, under the supervision of a slender Egyptian-looking man in a burgundy V-necked sweater.

At 5:40, the five men slipped out of camera range. Then, ten minutes later, they returned with the final component of their weapon of mass murder-a man in a blue-and-white tracksuit, bound and trussed in packing tape, his face bloodied and swollen.

“Please tell me he’s alive, Mikhail.”

“He’s alive, Chiara.”

“How can you tell?”

“They wouldn’t be putting him in with the bomb if he was dead.”

But the best evidence he was alive, Mikhail thought darkly, was his head. If Gabriel were dead, it wouldn’t still be attached to his shoulders. He didn’t share this observation with Chiara. She’d been through enough that night already.

At 5:55, the four men in black stripped down to their street clothes. Three climbed into a Mercedes cargo truck and departed. The fourth climbed behind the wheel of the Vauxhall panel van, while the Egyptian-looking man with the burgundy sweater joined Gabriel in the back. At precisely six A.M., the van turned into West Dock Street and made its way toward the entrance of the A120. Four vehicles followed carefully after it. Yaakov took the first shift at the point, while Chiara and Mikhail brought up the rear on the BMW bike. Mikhail sat on the back. The gunner’s seat.

Gabriel opened one eye, then, slowly, the other. He tried to move his limbs but could not. The crown of his head was pressing against something metallic. He was able to twist his neck just enough to see that the object was a steel drum. There were other drums, five more in fact, linked by a network of wires leading to a detonator switch on the console next to the driver. Ishaq was seated opposite Gabriel. His legs were crossed and a gun lay in his lap. He was smiling, as though proud of the clever way in which he had unveiled the method of Gabriel’s pending execution.

“Where are we going?” Gabriel asked.

“Paradise.”

“Does your driver know the way, or is he just following his nose?”

“He knows,” said Ishaq. “He’s been preparing for this ride for a very long time.”

Gabriel twisted his head around and looked at him. He was several years younger than Ishaq, clean shaven, and had both hands on the wheel like a novice out for his first drive alone.

“I want to sit up,” Gabriel said.

“It’s probably better if you stay down. If you sit up, it’s going to hurt.”

“I don’t care,” Gabriel said.

“Suit yourself.”

He took hold of Gabriel’s shoulders and propped him carelessly against the passenger-side wall of the cargo hold. Ishaq was right. It did hurt to sit up. In fact, it hurt so damned much he nearly fainted. But at least now he could see out through a portion of the windshield. It was still dark out, but one side of the sky was gradually turning a deep, luminous blue-the first light, Gabriel reckoned, of Christmas morning. Judging from the modest speed they were making, and the absence of any other traffic noise, they were traveling on a B-road. He glimpsed a road sign as it flashed past: SHRUB END 3. Shrub End? Where in God’s name was Shrub End?

He closed his eyes from the pain and heard an engine note not their own. It was high and tight, the sound of a high-performance motorcycle approaching from behind at considerable speed. He opened his eyes and watched as it flashed past in a cyclone of road spray. Then he looked at Ishaq again and for a second time asked where they were going. This time Ishaq only smiled. It was a martyr’s smile. Gabriel closed his eyes and thought of the motorcycle. Go for the kill shot, he thought. But then Mikhail knew no other kind.

Uzi Navot lowered the handset of the radio and looked at Shamron.

“Mikhail says they’re still in the same position that they were when they left the warehouse. One driving, one in the back with Gabriel. He says he can get the driver cleanly, but there’s no way he can get them both.”

“You have to make them stop, Uzi-someplace where an explosion won’t take innocent life.”

“And if they won’t stop?”

“Have a backup plan ready.”…

Gabriel tried not to think about them. He tried not to wonder how they had tracked him down, how long they had been watching and following, or how they planned to extract him. As far as Gabriel was concerned, they did not exist. They were nonpersons. Ghosts. Lies. He thought of anything else. The pain of his broken ribs. The burning numbness of his limbs. Shamron, leaning on his olive-wood cane. We move like shadows, strike like lightning, and then we vanish into thin air. Strike soon, Gabriel thought, because he feared he couldn’t keep his balance atop the bridge over Jahannam much longer.

He made a clock in his head and watched the second hand go round. He listened for other vehicles and read the road signs as they flashed past: HECKFORDBRIDGE…BIRCH…SMYTH’S GREEN…TIP-TREE…GREAT BRAXTED…Even Gabriel, Office-trained expert in European geography, could not place their whereabouts. Finally, he saw a sign for Chelmsford and realized they were heading toward London from the northeast, along the route of the ancient Roman road. As they were approaching a village called Langford, the driver slowed suddenly. Ishaq seized hold of his pistol and brought it up near his chest in a defensive position. Then he looked quickly at the driver.

“What’s wrong?” he murmured in Arabic.

“There’s an accident ahead. They’re waving for me to stop.”

“Police?”

“No, just the drivers.”

“Don’t stop.”

“It’s blocking the road.”

“Go around,” snapped Ishaq.

The driver turned the wheel hard to the left. The van heeled a few degrees to port as it tipped onto the shoulder and the machine-gun thumping of the tires over the rumble strips sent shock waves of pain through Gabriel’s body. As they shot past the wreck, he saw a tall balding man in his forties waving his arms plaintively and pleading for the van to stop. A man with pockmarked cheeks was standing next to him, gazing at his smashed headlight as though trying to concoct a suitable story for his wife. Gabriel looked at Ishaq as the van lurched back onto the road and sped on toward London.

“It’s Christmas, Ishaq. What kind of person leaves two motorists stranded on the road on Christmas morning?”

Ishaq responded by shoving Gabriel hard to the floor. Gabriel’s view was now limited to the soles of Ishaq’s shoes-and the base of the six barrels filled with explosives-and the wiring leading to the detonator switch on the console. Ishaq, in his rush to reach London on schedule, had inadvertently thwarted the first rescue attempt. The second, Gabriel knew, would involve no subterfuge. He closed his eyes and listened for the sound of the motorcycle.

Navot ordered Yossi and Yaakov back into the smashed cars and looked one final time at Shamron for guidance. “I’m afraid this has gone on long enough,” Shamron said. “Put them down in a field where no one else gets hurt. And get him out in one piece.”

Ishaq was reading quietly from a copy of the Quran when Gabriel heard the drone of the approaching bike. He focused his gaze on the gun, which lay in Ishaq’s lap, and coiled his bound legs for a single strike. The engine note rose steadily in volume for several more seconds, then went suddenly silent. Ishaq looked up from his Quran and peered out the windshield. When the bike didn’t appear, he looked at Gabriel in alarm, as though he had a premonition of what would come next. As he grabbed for the gun, there was an explosion of glass and blood in the front seat. The driver, hit several times in the head, slumped to the left and with a spasm of his lifeless hand took the wheel with him. Ishaq tried to level the gun at Gabriel as the van hurtled from the roadway, but Gabriel lifted his bound legs and kicked the weapon from Ishaq’s grasp. Ishaq made one last desperate lunge for it. And then the van began to roll.

56

He came to rest in wet earth, blinded with pain, struggling for breath. A woman was shouting into his face and pulling at the packing tape that bound him. Her voice was muffled by the helmet and her face invisible behind the dark visor. “Are you all right, Gabriel?” she was saying. “Can you hear me? Answer me, Gabriel! Can you hear me? Damn you, Gabriel! You promised me you wouldn’t die! Don’t die!”

57

There had been a fine old hedgerow along the side of the road. They had burst through it, like the tip of a pencil through tissue paper, and plunged into a farmer’s field. The van had come to rest on its roof and its contents were now strewn over the muddy ground like children’s toys on the floor of a nursery. Not fifty yards away from the van’s final resting spot, a gathering of fat pheasant were pulling at the earth as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. At the edge of the field, lights were coming on in a limestone cottage, the first moments of a Christmas morning the occupants would not soon forget.

“Where’s Ishaq?” asked Gabriel as Chiara cut away the last of the packing tape.

“Inside the van.”

“Is he alive?”

“Yes.”

“Is he conscious?”

“Barely,” she said. “You were thrown from the van early. He wasn’t so lucky.”

“Put me on my feet.”

“Just stay down, Gabriel. You’re hurt badly.”

“Do what I say, Chiara. Put me on my feet.”

Gabriel groaned in pain as she lifted him upright. He took a step forward and staggered. Chiara seized hold of his arm and kept him from falling.

“Lie down, Gabriel. Wait for the ambulance.”

“No ambulances. Help me walk.”

Mikhail came over at an awkward trot, gun still in his hand, and together with Chiara helped Gabriel slowly toward the van. The driver hung upside down from his seat belt, blood flowing freely from his burst skull. Ishaq lay in the back, bleeding from his nose and mouth, left leg snapped above the knee like a broken matchstick. Gabriel looked at Mikhail.

“Pull him out by the leg,” he said in Hebrew. “The broken leg.”

“Don’t do this,” Chiara said.

“Walk away.” Gabriel looked at Mikhail. “Do what I tell you or I’ll do it myself.”

Mikhail ducked into the van through the open cargo doors and seized hold of the shattered leg. A moment later Ishaq lay writhing on the ground at Gabriel’s feet. Chiara, unable to bear the sight, walked away across the field. Gabriel looked down at Ishaq and asked, “Where’s my girl?”

“She’s already dead,” Ishaq spat through the blood.

Gabriel held out his hand to Mikhail. “Give me your gun.”

Mikhail handed it over. Gabriel pointed it toward the broken leg and fired once. Ishaq’s screams echoed over the flat landscape and his fingers clawed at the sodden earth. The pheasants took flight and circled above Gabriel’s head.

“Where’s my girl?” Gabriel repeated calmly.

“She’s dead!”

Another shot. Another scream of agony.

“Where’s my girl, Ishaq?”

“She’s already-”

Pop.

“Where’s my girl, Ishaq?”

“Allahu Akbar!”

Pop.

“Where’s Elizabeth?”

“Allahu Akbar!”

Pop. Pop.

“Tell me where she is, Ishaq.”

He leveled the gun and prepared to fire again. This time a hand went up, and Ishaq, between cries of pain, began hurling information at Gabriel like stones. Number 17 Ambler Road. Two martyrs. Westminster Abbey. Ten o’clock. God is Great.

58

They barged into her cell with a demeanor she had never seen before. Cain spoke to her for the first time in more than two weeks. “You’re going to be released,” he blurted. “You have twenty minutes to prepare yourself. If you are not ready in twenty minutes, you will be killed.” And then he was gone.

Abel appeared next, bearing a plastic bucket of warm water, a bar of soap, a washcloth and towel, a parcel of clean clothing, and a blond wig. He placed the bucket on the floor and the rest of the things on her cot, then removed her handcuffs and shackles. “Wash carefully and take your time dressing,” he explained calmly. “We brought you something nice to wear. We don’t want the world to think we mistreated you.”

He went out and closed the door. She wanted to scream for joy. She wanted to weep with relief. Instead, model prisoner to the end, she did exactly what they told her to do. She used only fifteen minutes of her allotted time and was seated on the edge of her cot, knees together and trembling, when they entered her cell again.

“You are ready?” Cain asked.

“Yes,” she replied in a low, evenly modulated voice.

“Come, then,” he said.

She stood and followed them slowly up a flight of darkened stairs.

Word of Gabriel’s successful extraction arrived at the Israeli embassy in Old Court Place at 7:48 A.M. It was transmitted via ordinary cell phone by Chiara, who was at that moment seated next to Gabriel in the back of a Volkswagen Passat with a smashed headlamp and crumpled fender. The call was taken by Shamron, who, upon hearing the news, covered his face with his hands and wept. So deep was Shamron’s emotion that for several seconds those gathered around were uncertain whether Gabriel was alive or dead. When it became clear that he was indeed alive and back in their hands, a great roar went up in the room. The brief celebration that followed was intercepted and recorded by the British eavesdroppers at GCHQ-which had monitored all Israeli communications that night-as were Shamron’s pleas for quiet as he listened to the next part of Chiara’s report. Shamron immediately placed two calls, the first to Adrian Carter in the American ops center beneath Grosvenor Square and the second to Graham Seymour, who was with the prime minister and the COBRA committee at Downing Street. Seymour quickly arranged for a police escort to bring Gabriel and the remnants of his team safely into London; then he rushed to the American embassy, as did Shamron. The two men were standing next to Adrian Carter as the battered Passat and its police escorts screeched to a stop at the North Gate.

The car was immediately surrounded by two dozen of the uniformed Met officers standing guard outside the embassy grounds. Shamron’s view was momentarily blocked; then the sea of lime green parted and he glimpsed Gabriel for the first time. He had one arm draped over Yossi’s shoulder and the other over Oded’s. His face was contorted with pain and swelling, and his blue-and-white tracksuit was covered in blood and mud. They brought him through the gate and propped him upright for a moment before the three senior spymasters. Shamron kissed his cheek gently and murmured something in Hebrew that the others could not understand. Gabriel lifted his head slightly and looked at Graham Seymour.

“If you tell me not to complain about a nasty bump on the head, I just may lose my temper.”

“You’re a damned fool-and damned brave.” Seymour looked at Adrian Carter. “Let’s get him inside, shall we?”

Ambassador Robert Halton was waiting in the embassy’s ground floor atrium, along with FBI hostage negotiator John O’Donnell and several other members of the American team. As Gabriel came inside, still clinging to Yossi and Oded for support, they broke into restrained applause, as though they feared too much noise might inflict additional damage to him. Robert Halton walked over to Gabriel and put his hands carefully on his shoulders. “My God, what have they done to you?” He looked at Adrian Carter. “Let’s take him up to my office. The doctors can have a look at him there.”

They shepherded him into a waiting elevator and whisked him up to the ninth floor. Yossi and Oded lowered him onto the couch in the ambassador’s office, but when the doctors tried to enter the room, Graham Seymour held them back and quickly closed the door.

“Twenty minutes ago, a team of Met special operatives raided the house in the Ambler Road where Ishaq claimed Elizabeth was being held. She wasn’t there, but they found plenty of evidence that she had been recently. The Sphinx led us on a wild-goose chase across western Europe, and all the while she’s been here in England, right under our noses. The question is, where is she now?”

“The information Ishaq gave Gabriel about Elizabeth’s location was correct,” said Adrian Carter. “So it stands to reason that the information about what they intend to do with her is also correct.”

“It is,” said Gabriel. “They’re going to execute her outside Westminster Abbey before the start of Christmas services. She’s to be murdered by a pair of suicide bombers, who will take many innocent lives along with their own. I was supposed to be part of the second act, a massive car bombing that would have killed hundreds of your first responders.”

“A bloodbath in front of our most important national symbol on the morning of our Savior’s birth,” said Graham Seymour. “One that is intended to spark an armed uprising in Egypt and bring this country to its knees.” He hesitated, then said: “And one that we cannot allow to happen. As of this moment there are several hundred people congregated outside the north entrance of the Abbey, waiting to be admitted for a service of carols and readings that begins at ten-thirty. Our only option is to seal off Westminster and quickly evacuate everyone from the area.”

“A move that will automatically condemn Elizabeth to death,” said Gabriel. “If the shaheeds arrive in Westminster to find the Abbey evacuated and under siege, they’ll resort to their backup plan, which is to kill her instantly, no matter where they are.”

“Forgive my bluntness,” said Seymour, “but that is a vastly better outcome than their primary plan.”

“I didn’t go through Hell to give up on her now,” Gabriel said. “There is another way.”

“Which is?”

“Ishaq told us that Elizabeth would be accompanied by two men,” Gabriel said. “He told us-”

Graham Seymour held up his hand. “Don’t go any further, Gabriel. It’s madness.”

“We wait for the shaheeds to arrive, Graham. And then we kill them before they can kill Elizabeth.”

“We?”

“What do you think you’re going to do? Shoot them like snipers from a long way off? Shoot them like gentlemen from twenty paces? You have to let them get close. And then you have to kill them before they can hit their detonator switches. That means headshots at close range. It’s not pleasant, Graham. And if the gunmen hesitate for an instant, it will end in disaster.”

“The Met has a unit called SO19: the Blue Berets. They’re special firearms officers, trained for this very sort of thing. If memory serves, we sent them to Israel for training.”

“You did,” said Shamron. “And they’re very good. But they’ve never been placed in a live situation like this. You need gunmen who’ve done something like this before-gunmen who aren’t going to fold under the pressure.” Shamron paused, then added: “You need gunmen like Gabriel and Mikhail.”

“Gabriel can barely stand up,” Seymour said.

“Gabriel will be fine,” Shannon said without bothering to consult him. “Let us finish what we started.”

“How are you going to be sure it’s really her?”

Gabriel looked at Robert Halton. “If anyone can tell, it’s her own father. Put him in the yard on the north side of the Abbey with a miniature radio. He’ll be able to see anyone approaching from Whitehall or Victoria. When he sees Elizabeth, send the signal to us. Mikhail and I will take care of the rest.”

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Seymour said. “How are they going to get Elizabeth to walk to her own execution?”

Gabriel thought of what Ibrahim had said the night of his death in Denmark. “They’ll tell her she’s about to be released,” he said. “That way she’ll go willingly and do exactly what they tell her.”

“Bastards,” Seymour said softly. He glanced at his watch. “I take it you have all the firearms and ammunition you need?”

Gabriel nodded slowly.

“What about communications?”

“They can borrow radios from our embassy security staff,” Carter said. “Our DS agents work routinely with the Met on protective details. We can all tie in on the same secure frequency.”

Seymour looked at Gabriel. “What do we do about him? He can’t go to Westminster looking like that?”

“I’m sure we can find something for him to wear here,” Carter said. “We have two hundred people down in the basement who came to London from Washington with suitcases filled with clothing.”

“What about his face? He looks bloody awful.”

“Fixing his face, I’m afraid, would require a Christmas miracle.”

Graham Seymour frowned, walked over to the ambassador’s desk, and dialed the phone.

“I need to speak to the prime minister,” he said. “Now.”

59

The Gothic towers of Westminster Abbey-England’s national house of worship, setting for royal coronations since William the Conqueror, and burial ground for British monarchs, statesmen, and poets-sparkled in the crisp winter sunlight. The bright interval promised by the forecasters the previous morning had finally materialized.

Gabriel did not wonder if it was a good omen or bad. He was only pleased to have the radiant warmth of the sun against his swollen cheek. He was seated on a bench in Parliament Square, dressed in borrowed clothes and borrowed wraparound sunglasses over his battered eyes. The doctors at the embassy had given him enough codeine to temporarily dull the pain of his injuries. Even so, he was leaning slightly against Mikhail for support. The younger man’s leather jacket was still damp from a night pursuing Gabriel across Essex by motorcycle. His right hand was tapping a nervous rhythm against his faded blue jeans.

“Stop,” said Gabriel. “You’re giving me a fucking headache.”

Mikhail stopped for a moment, then started up again. Gabriel stared toward the triangular-shaped lawn on the north side of the Abbey. Adrian Carter was standing beneath a bare-limbed tree along Victoria Street, wearing the ushanka hat he had worn the afternoon they had walked together in the Tivoli gardens of Copenhagen. Standing next to him, with a fedora on his head, dark glasses over his eyes, and a wire in his ear, was Ambassador Robert Halton. And next to Halton was Sarah Bancroft, formerly of the Phillips Collection museum in Washington, D.C., lately of the Central Intelligence Agency, and now a fully indoctrinated citizen of the night. Of all those present, only Sarah truly had a sense of the atrocity that was about to occur. Would she watch? Gabriel wondered. Or this time would she take the opportunity to look the other way?

He glanced around the sunlit streets of Westminster. Eli Lavon and Dina Sarid were loitering in Great George Street, Yaakov and Yossi were flirting with Major Rimona Stern outside the Houses of Parliament, and Mordecai was standing in the shadow of Big Ben with a tourist guidebook open in his hands. Graham Seymour was in an unmarked command vehicle on the other side of Victoria Street in Storey’s Gate, along with the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the chief of SO19, the special operations division. Twenty of SO19’s best gunmen had been summoned at short notice and were now scattered around the Abbey and the surrounding streets of Westminster. Gabriel could hear their clipped communications in his ear, but thus far he had only been able to pick out a half dozen of them. It didn’t matter if he knew their identities. It only mattered that they knew his.

“Was it bad?” Mikhail asked. “The beatings, I mean.”

“They were just having a bit of fun,” said Gabriel dismissively. He was in no mood to relive the previous night. “It was nothing compared to what Ibrahim endured at the hands of the Egyptian secret police.”

“Did it feel good to shoot him like that?”

“Ishaq?”

The younger man nodded.

“No, Mikhail, it didn’t feel good. But then, it didn’t feel bad either.” Gabriel lifted his hand and pointed toward the north entrance of the Abbey. “Look at all those people over there. Many of them would soon be dead if I hadn’t acted the way I did.”

“If we don’t hit our targets, they still may die.” Mikhail looked at Gabriel. “You sound as if you’re trying to convince yourself that you were morally justified in torturing him.”

“I suppose I am. I crossed a line. But then we’ve all crossed a line. The Americans crossed a line after 9/11, and now they’re trying to find their way back to the other side. Unfortunately, the goals of the terrorists haven’t changed-and the generation soon to emerge from the killing fields of Iraq is going to be much more violent and volatile than the ones who came out of Afghanistan.”

“We dare to fight back, and the terrorists accuse us of being the real terrorists.”

“It’s their secret weapon, Mikhail. Get used to it.”

Gabriel heard a crackle in his earpiece. He looked toward the north entrance of the Abbey and saw the vast doors swing slowly open. Graham Seymour had arranged for the Abbey’s staff to admit the Christmas worshippers earlier than was customary, a simple maneuver that would drastically reduce the number of potential targets. Gabriel only hoped the shaheeds didn’t deduce from the change that they were walking into a trap.

“Where was I?” Gabriel asked.

“You were talking about secret weapons.”

“Last night, Mikhail. Where was I last night?”

“Harwich.”

“I’ve always wanted to visit Harwich,” Gabriel said. “How much did Chiara see?”

“Only the end, when they were loading you into the van.” Mikhail put a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I wish you would have let me shoot that bastard for you.”

“Relax, Mikhail. It’s Christmas.”

“Not for us,” Mikhail said. “I only hope Ishaq wasn’t lying.”

“He wasn’t,” said Gabriel.

“What if they bring her somewhere else?”

“They won’t. You have your cigarettes?”

Mikhail tapped the left-hand pocket of his jacket.

“And your lighter?” asked Gabriel.

“I have everything. We just need Elizabeth.”

“She’s coming,” said Gabriel. “It will be over soon.”

The car was a Ford Fiesta, pale gray and well worn. Abel, the one with green eyes, handled the driving, while Cain sat next to her in the backseat. Absent their balaclava masks, she saw their faces for the first time and was shocked by their youth. They wore heavy coats, were carefully shaven, and smelled of sandalwood cologne. Cain was squeezing her arm with his left hand and holding a gun in his right. Elizabeth tried not to look at the weapon or to even think about it. Instead she stared silently out her window. It had been more than two weeks since she had been outside; two weeks since she had seen another human other than Cain and Abel and their masked accomplices; two weeks since she had seen the sun or had possessed even the most basic sense of time. The window was her portal on reality. Cain and Abel were from the world of the damned, she thought. On the other side of the glass was the land of the living.

For a few minutes her surroundings were unfamiliar. Then the entrance of the Camden Town Underground station flashed past, and from there she was able to track their route south across London. Despite the pleasant weather, the streets were oddly quiet. In the Tottenham Court Road she saw holiday wreaths and realized it was probably Christmas morning.

They crossed Oxford Street and headed down Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square, then made their way along Whitehall to Westminster. As they turned into Victoria Street, Elizabeth saw a crowd milling about beneath the North Tower of the Abbey. Standing beneath a leafless tree, next to a tired-looking man in an ushanka hat, was a tall, distinguished-looking figure in a fedora who bore a sharp resemblance to her father. It wasn’t her father, of course. Her Colorado-born father would never be caught dead in a hat like that.

A moment later they turned into Abbey Orchard Street. Abel pulled into an illegal spot and shut down the engine. Cain slipped the gun into his coat pocket and squeezed her arm tightly.

“We’re going to take a very short walk,” he said. “At the end of it, you will be released. Get out of the car slowly and put both your hands in the pockets of your raincoat. We will lead you where we want you to go. Keep your eyes on the ground and don’t say a word. If you don’t do exactly what we tell you, I’ll shoot you in the heart. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” she said calmly.

Cain reached across Elizabeth Halton’s lap and opened her door. She swung her legs out of the car and stepped into the street, her first step toward freedom.

The hands of Big Ben lay at 9:57 when Gabriel’s earpiece crackled. The voice he heard was Adrian Carter’s.

“Victoria Street,” said Carter calmly. “She’s about to cross Storey’s Gate into the Sanctuary. She’s wearing a blond wig and a tan raincoat.”

“Shaheeds?”

“One on each arm.”

“Halton has just condemned two men to death, Adrian. Is he sure?”

“He’s sure.”

“Get him out of there. Now.”

Carter took Robert Halton by the elbow and led him toward Great George Street, with Sarah trailing two paces behind. Gabriel and Mikhail stood in unison and started walking. Sarah was watching them. Look away, he thought. Keep walking and look away.

They paused for a few seconds on the corner of Parliament Square to allow a London bus to rattle past, then quickly crossed the street and entered the grounds of the Abbey. Mikhail walked on Gabriel’s left, his breath shallow and fast, the footfalls sharp and crisp, like an echo of Gabriel’s own. Gabriel’s Beretta was on his left hip and the butt was pressing painfully against a broken rib. A split second is all he would have. A split second to get his weapon off his hip and into firing position. When he was a boy, like Mikhail, he could do it in the time it took most men to clap their hands. And now? He walked on.

They passed through the thin shadows beneath the trees where Carter and Halton had been standing a few seconds earlier. When they emerged again into the sunlight, they saw Elizabeth and her escorts for the first time, moving deliberately along the sidewalk close to the northern façade of the Abbey. Her eyes were concealed behind a large pair of movie-starlet sunglasses, and her hands were in her coat pockets. A shaheed was holding each arm. Their free hands were shoved into the outward-facing pockets of their heavy jackets.

“They’ve got their fingers on the detonator switches, Mikhail. You see it?”

“I see it.”

“Do you see the people behind them? When we start shooting, you can’t miss.”

“I won’t miss.”

“You have your cigarettes?”

“I’m ready.”

“Keep walking.”

Two hundred worshippers were still standing outside the North Tower, waiting patiently to be admitted. Gabriel put a hand on Mikhail’s elbow and nudged him along the fringes of the crowd, onto the intersecting walkway. Elizabeth and the terrorists were directly in front of them, forty yards away and closing fast. One second, thought Gabriel. One second.

Cain’s fingers were digging into her upper arm and his hand was shaking with fear. She wondered why they had decided to release her in a crowded public place like Westminster Abbey. Then Cain murmured something to Abel in Arabic that made her feel as though a stone had been laid over her heart and Elizabeth realized that she had been brought to this place not to be freed but to be executed.

She glanced from one terrorist to the other. The heavy coats, the look of death in their eyes, the trembling hands…They were going to die here, too, she thought. They were shaheeds wrapped in suicide belts. And in a few seconds she would be a shaheed, too.

She looked toward the crowd of people gathered outside the Abbey’s North Tower. They were the real targets. Elizabeth had been kidnapped in a bloodbath and it appeared they planned to execute her in one as well. She couldn’t allow more innocent blood to be shed because of her. She had to do something to save as many lives as she could.

“Look down,” Cain snapped.

No, Elizabeth thought. I will not look down. I will not submit.

And then she saw him…

The angular man of medium height with wraparound sunglasses and ash-colored temples. The man walking along the edge of the crowd with a younger pale man at his side. It was the same man who had tried to save her in Hyde Park-she was sure of it. And he was going to try to save her again now.

But how could he possibly do it?

Cain and Abel had their hands in their pockets. It would only take them an instant to hit their detonators. It was an instant Elizabeth had to take from the terrorists and give to the two men advancing toward her-the two men who had just stopped walking and were in the process of lighting cigarettes. I will not submit, she thought. Then she drove the toe of her left foot into her right heel and felt herself falling to the pavement.

Cain caught her, a single reflexive act of kindness that would cost him his life. When she was upright again, she saw the two men draw their guns like twin flashes of lightning and start shooting. Cain’s face disappeared behind a blossom of blood and brain tissue, while Abel’s green eyes simultaneously exploded inside their sockets. The gunmen streaked past her in a blur, guns in their outstretched hands, as if they were chasing after their own bullets. Cain fell to the ground first, and the man with gray temples leaped onto his chest and fired several more rounds into his head, as though he were trying to shoot him into the ground. Then he tore Cain’s hand from his coat pocket and yelled at Elizabeth to run away. Model prisoner to the end, she sprinted across the lawn of the Abbey toward Victoria Street, where the distinguished-looking man with the fedora hat was suddenly standing with his arms open to receive her. She hurled herself against his chest and wept uncontrollably. “It’s all right, Elizabeth,” said Robert Halton. “I’ve got you now. You’re safe, my love.”