by Daniel Silva
“Even if it gets her killed?”
“You’ve sunk into the depths before, but that’s the lowest.”
“I can go much lower, Melissa. I’ll deny it’s true, and then I’ll denounce you from the podium.”
She turned and reached for the doorknob.
“Wait,” Scanlon said, his tone suddenly conciliatory. “Perhaps we can reach an accommodation.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“How long can you give me?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Twenty,” Scanlon countered.
“Fifteen.”
Scanlon nodded in agreement. Stewart looked at her watch.
“If the phone in my booth doesn’t ring in fifteen fucking minutes,” she said, “I’m going to march out to the lawn and tell the world who’s holding Elizabeth Halton.”
The president was seated at his desk when Nicholas Scanlon entered the Oval Office three minutes later, accompanied by White House Chief of Staff William Burns and National Security Advisor Cyrus Mansfield.
“Why the long faces, gentlemen?” the president asked.
“There’s been a leak, Mr. President,” Scanlon said. “NBC knows who’s holding Elizabeth.”
The president closed his eyes in frustration. For more than a week now, he had been walking a fine line, attempting to show appropriate concern in public for the fate of his friend’s daughter while at the same time making it clear to the terrorists that they had not managed to incapacitate the most powerful man on the planet. Only those closest to the president knew the physical and emotional toll the kidnapping had taken on him.
“What do you suggest, Nick?”
“Taking the bull by the horns, sir. I think it would be better for the country and the rest of the world to hear the news from your mouth than Melissa Stewart’s.”
“How long do we have before she goes on the air with it?”
Scanlon looked at his watch. “Nine minutes, sir.”
The president looked from his press secretary to his national security advisor. “I need to know whether I’m going to be placing any sensitive operations in jeopardy if I go public now. Get the director of the CIA on the line. The secretary of state, too.”
“Yes, sir.”
The president looked at Scanlon again. “Assuming no one has any objections, where would you like to do this?”
“The Briefing Room feels appropriate to me.”
“No questions, though.”
“I’ll make that clear to the reporters beforehand.”
“How are you going to handle Melissa Stewart?”
“We’ll have to promise her something,” Scanlon said. “Something big.”
“Couldn’t we just appeal to her sense of decency and patriotism?”
“We’re talking about Melissa Stewart, Mr. President. I’m not sure she has a pulse, let alone a sense of patriotism.”
The president exhaled heavily. “You can tell her the first interview I do after this is over will be with NBC News. That should make her happy.”
“That’s going to cause me problems elsewhere in the press room, sir.”
“I’m afraid that those are your problems, Nick, not mine.”
“Would you like me to draft a statement for you, sir?”
The president shook his head. “This is one I can handle on my own.”
Melissa Stewart was pulling on her overcoat and preparing to head for the North Lawn when the telephone in her booth rang.
“Cutting it close, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry, Melissa. For a moment I forgot that you’re the center of the universe.”
“I’m late for an important live shot, Nick.”
“Cancel it.”
“What have you got for me?”
“The president is going into the Briefing Room in twenty minutes to tell the world that the Sword of Allah is holding Elizabeth Halton hostage and is demanding the release of Sheikh Abdullah. Before his appearance, you may report that NBC News has learned that Elizabeth Halton is being held by Egyptian militants and that the president is expected to say more on the situation. If you stick to the script, your network will get the first exclusive with the president when this affair is over. If you don’t, I’ll devote the rest of my time at the White House to making your life miserable. Do we have a deal?”
“I believe we do.”
“See you in the Briefing Room in ten minutes. And don’t try to slip one past me, Melissa. I’ll be listening carefully.”
The president of the United States stepped to the podium in the White House Briefing Room at precisely 1:30 P.M. Eastern time and informed the world that his goddaughter had been taken hostage by the Egyptian terror group known as the Sword of Allah. In exchange for Elizabeth’s release, said the president, the terrorists had demanded that the United States free Sheik Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq. It was a demand, the president made clear, that would never be met. He called on the terrorists to release Elizabeth immediately, warned them and their sponsors that they would be brought to justice, and thanked the American people for their prayers and support.
At 1:32, the president stepped away from the podium and left Nicholas Scanlon, his press secretary, to face the stunned press corps alone. Adrian Carter pressed the MUTE button on his remote control and looked toward the door of his office, where Shepard Cantwell, the deputy director for intelligence, was standing in his shirtsleeves and suspenders.
“What did you think?” Cantwell asked.
Carter hesitated before answering. Shepard Cantwell only asked questions of others when he wanted to venture an opinion of his own. Cantwell couldn’t help it. He was Analysis.
“I thought he did as well as expected under the circumstances,” Carter said. “He made it clear to the Sword that we won’t be held hostage and that we won’t negotiate.”
“You’re assuming that’s what the Sword really wants: to negotiate. I’m not so sure about that.” Cantwell came into Carter’s office and sat down. “Our analysts have been poring over every word Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq has ever written or said publicly: sermons, fatwas, transcripts of interviews, anything we can lay our hands on. A couple of years ago he gave an interview to an Arabic-language newspaper from London under conditions of extreme secrecy somewhere inside Egypt. During the interview the sheikh was asked to name the most likely scenario under which the Islamists might seize power in Egypt—an election, a coup, or a popular uprising. The sheikh was very clear in his response. He said the only way the Islamists will ever seize power in Egypt is by inciting the masses to rise up against their oppressors. Demonstrations, rioting, clashes in the street with the army: an intifada of sorts, from the Nile Delta to Upper Egypt.”
“What’s your point, Shep?”
“Sheikh Tayyib is a religious fanatic and mass murderer who also happens to be a very shrewd and clever character. The fact that he is still alive after all these years is proof of that. He had to know we would never bow to his demands to release his brother in exchange for Elizabeth Halton. But maybe he doesn’t really want his brother. Maybe what he really wants is his uprising.”
“And he gets his uprising by provoking a confrontation with us?”
“At this moment the Egyptian security services are tearing the country to pieces in order to help the infidel Americans find the daughter of a billionaire ambassador,” Cantwell said. “Think how that must look to an Egyptian Islamist who lives in desperate poverty, who’s lost a brother or a father to Mubarak’s torture chambers. Those torture chambers are filling up as we speak, and they’re filling because the regime is looking for one American woman.”
“How bad is the situation in Egypt right now?”
“The reports we’re getting from Cairo Station say it’s extremely bad. In fact, it’s worse than anyone there has ever seen it. If this goes on much longer, Sheikh Tayyib is going to get his uprising. And history is going to remember our president as the man who lost Egypt.”
Ca
ntwell stood and started to leave, then stopped and turned suddenly. “One more thing,” he said. “The president just sent our friend the Sphinx a very clear message. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sphinx sent one in return. If I were you, I’d get on the phone to Homeland Security and raise the National Threat Advisory immediately.”
“How high?”
“Red,” said Cantwell as he slipped from the room. “Blood red.”
Carter looked at his watch. It was 1:37 P.M. The Muslim evening prayer had just begun in Amsterdam. He stared at his telephone and waited for it to ring.
24
OUD WEST, AMSTERDAM: 7:09 P.M., MONDAY
A gust of cold wind froze Ibrahim Fawaz in his tracks as he pulled open the door of the al-Hijrah Mosque. This was his twenty-fifth winter in Holland and still he was not accustomed to the cold. Providence and fate had brought him here, to this garden of cinder block and cement in northern Europe, but in his heart he was still an ibn balad from Upper Egypt—a son of the soil and a child of the river. He stood in the vestibule for a moment, turning up his coat collar and tightening his scarf, then stepped tentatively into the street under the watchful gaze of two rosy-cheeked Amsterdam policemen. He exchanged pleasantries with them in fluent Dutch, then turned and set out along the Jan Hazenstraat.
The two police officers were now a permanent fixture outside the mosque. The al-Hijrah had been searched twice by Dutch investigators in the wake of the attack in London. Files and computers had been seized, and the imam and several of his associates had been questioned about their knowledge of Samir al-Masri and the other members of his cell. Tonight the imam had accused the infidels of using the attacks in London and the murder of Solomon Rosner as justification for a crackdown against Islam in the Netherlands. Ibrahim Fawaz had lived through a crackdown against Muslims before, one that had been conducted with a ruthlessness and a savagery that the Europeans, even in their worst nightmares, could scarcely imagine. The imam was only using the police investigation as a pretext to stir up trouble. But then that was what the imam did best. That was why the imam had been sent to Amsterdam in the first place.
A car overtook him. Ibrahim saw his shadow stretch on the pavement in front of him, then disappear as the car slid past. When it was gone, he found that he was in pitch-darkness. It seemed that three lamps near the end of the street were no longer burning. In the small park on the embankment of the canal, a man was seated alone on one of the benches. He had a pinched face, haunted dark eyes, and was as thin as Nile reed grass. A heroin addict, he thought. They were all over Amsterdam. They came from Europe and America to take advantage of Holland’s permissive drug laws, and the generous welfare benefits, and, once hooked, many never found the power or the will to leave again.
Ibrahim lowered his gaze to the pavement and rounded the corner. The sight that greeted him next was far more offensive to his Islamic sensibilities than that of a heroin addict sitting alone in a freezing park. It was also a sight he saw all too often in Amsterdam: two men in leather groping each other in the darkness against the side of a Volkswagen van. Ibrahim stopped suddenly, outraged by the shamelessness of the act he was witnessing, unsure of whether he should hurry past with his gaze averted or flee in the opposite direction.
He decided on the second course of action, but before he could move, the side door of the van slid open and a small troll-like figure reached out and seized him by the throat. Then the two men in leather suddenly lost all interest in each other and turned their passion on him. Someone clamped a hand over his mouth. Someone else squeezed the side of his neck in a way that made his entire body go limp. He heard the door slam shut and felt the van lurch forward. A voice in Arabic ordered him not to move or make a sound. After that, no one spoke. Ibrahim did not know who had taken him or where he was going. He was certain of only one thing: If he did not do exactly what his captors wanted, he would never see Amsterdam or his wife again.
He closed his eyes and began to pray. An image rose from the deepest well of his memory, the image of a bloody child suspended from the ceiling of a torture chamber. Not again, he prayed. Dear Allah, please don’t let it happen again.
PART THREE
THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC
25
NORTHERN GERMANY: 10:18 P.M., MONDAY
The landlords of Housekeeping referred to it as Site 22XB, but among the old hands it was known simply as Château Shamron. It stood one hundred yards from an isolated farm road, at the end of a rutted drive lined with bare plane trees. The roof was steeply pitched and, on that evening, was covered by a dusting of brittle snow. The shutters were missing several slats and drooped at a vaguely drunken angle. In the woodwork of the front doorjamb were four tiny perforations, evidence of a mezuzah removed a long time ago.
The party that arrived at the house that evening entered not by the front door but through the old servants’ entrance off the rear courtyard. They came in four vehicles—a Volkswagen van, two matching Renault sedans, and a rather flashy Audi A8—and had anyone inquired about the purpose of their visit, they would have spoken of a long-planned reunion of old friends. A cursory inspection of the house would have supported their story. The kitchen had been well stocked with food and liquor, and the hearth in the drawing room had been laid with seasoned firewood. A more careful check of the premises, however, would have revealed that the once formal dining room had been made ready for an interrogation and that the house contained several pieces of sophisticated communications equipment unavailable on any commercial market. Such an examination might also have revealed that the small limestone chamber in the basement had been turned into a holding cell—and that the cell was now occupied by an Egyptian man of late middle age who was blindfolded, shackled, and stripped to his underwear. Gabriel regarded him silently for a moment, then climbed the stairs to the pantry, where Yaakov was standing with Sarah at his side.
“How long has he been in there?” Gabriel asked.
“A little over an hour,” replied Yaakov.
“Any problems?”
Yaakov shook his head. “We got out of Amsterdam cleanly, and he behaved himself nicely during the ride.”
“Did you have to use drugs on him?”
“It wasn’t necessary.”
“What about force?”
“I may have given him a couple love taps, but nothing he’ll ever remember.”
“Did anyone speak in front of him?”
“Just a few words in Arabic. Ibrahim did a bit of talking, though. He’s convinced he’s in the hands of the Americans.”
Good, thought Gabriel. That was exactly what he wanted Ibrahim to think. He led Sarah into the drawing room, where Dina and Rimona were reading the Sword of Allah dossiers before a crackling fire, then slipped through a pair of double doors into the dining room. It was empty, except for the rectangular table and two high-backed chairs. Mordecai was balanced on one of the chairs, fitting a miniature transmitter into the cobwebbed chandelier.
“This one’s the backup.” He leaped down off the chair and wiped his dusty hands against the legs of his trousers. “The primary microphone is down here.” He tapped the tabletop. “Put Ibrahim in this chair. That way the mic won’t miss a thing he says.”
“What about the secure link?”
“It’s up and running,” Mordecai said. “I’ll feed the signal live to King Saul Boulevard and they’ll bounce it to Langley. Based on what we’re picking up from the Americans, you’re the hottest ticket in town tonight.”
Mordecai walked out of the room and closed the doors behind him. Sarah looked around at the blank walls. “Surely there’s a good story behind this place,” she said.
“Before the war, it was owned by a prominent Jewish family named Rosenthal,” Gabriel said.
“And when the war broke out?”
“It was confiscated by an SS officer, and the Rosenthal family was deported to Auschwitz. A daughter managed to survive and reclaim the property, but in the fifties she gave up on trying to
stay here and emigrated to Israel. The German people weren’t terribly kind to their fellow countrymen who managed to survive the Holocaust.”
“And the house?”
“She never sold it. When Shamron found out she still owned it, he convinced her to let us have use of it. Shamron always had a way of tucking things away for a rainy day. Houses, passports, people. We used it as a safe house and staging point during the Wrath of God operation. Eli and I spent many long nights here—some good, some not so good.”
Sarah lowered herself into the chair that would soon be occupied by Ibrahim Fawaz and folded her hands on the table. “What’s going to happen here tonight?” she asked.
“That depends entirely on Ibrahim. If he cooperates and tells me the truth, then things will go very smoothly. If he doesn’t…” Gabriel shrugged. “Yaakov is one of Shabak’s most skilled interrogators. He knows how to talk to men who aren’t afraid of death. It’s possible things might get unpleasant.”
“How unpleasant?”
“Are you asking me whether we will torture him?”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
“My goal tonight is to create an ally, Sarah, and one doesn’t create an ally with clubs and fists.”
“What if Ibrahim doesn’t want to be your ally?”
“Then he might soon find himself in a place where men aren’t shy about using extremely violent methods to extract information. But let us hope it doesn’t come to that—for all our sakes.”
“You don’t approve of torture?”
“I wish I could say it doesn’t work, but that’s not the case. Done properly, by trained professionals, placing physical and emotional stress on captured terrorists very often produces actionable intelligence that saves lives. But at what cost to the societies and security services that engage in it? A very high cost, unfortunately. It puts us in the same league as the Egyptians and the Jordanians and Saudis and every other brutal Arab secret police force that tortures its opponents. And ultimately it does harm to our cause because it turns believers into fanatics.”