Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant

by Daniel Silva

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

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

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

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

  “I think he’s ready to talk.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Yaakov nodded.

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

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

  “Where am I?”

  “You are in a great deal of trouble.”

  “Why have you kidnapped me?”

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

  “By whom? For what reason?”

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

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

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

  “So much for your assurances about protecting me.”

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

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Really?”

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

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

  “Where did you get this?”

  “Where do you think?”

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

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

  “I don’t know anything.”

  “You’re lying, Ibrahim.”

  “I am telling you the truth!”

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

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

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

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

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

  “You Israelis do far worse.”

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

  “I have nothing to confess.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Next time you won’t doubt my word.”

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

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

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

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

  “And?”

  “That’s the last entry.”

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

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

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

  “I’m listening.”

  “May I have some coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Will you at least remove the handcuffs?”

  “No.”

  “My arms hurt terribly.”

  “Too bad.”

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

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

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

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

  “And everything changed,” said Gabriel.

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

  “You approved of Sadat’s assassination?”

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

  “And then the roundups began.”

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

  “They came for you at the university?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Keep talking, Ibrahim.”

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

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

  “You recognized him?” Gabriel asked.

  “Eventually.”

  “Who was it?”

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

  “And your daughter?”

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

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

  “May I have my clothing now?”

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

  26

  NORFOLK, ENGLAND: 10:34 P.M., MONDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Preliminary cause of death?”

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

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

  “A splint?”

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

  “Caliber?”

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

  “She?”

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