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

by Daniel Silva

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

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

  “I was told I didn’t need a visa.”

  “By whom?”

  “By Allah,” he said.

  The security agent reached for his radio.

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

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

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

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

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

  29

  COPENHAGEN: 3:03 P.M., TUESDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “He’s not my Joe, Adrian.”

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

  “How were the reviews?”

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

  “What does expert opinion have in mind?”

  “A second interrogation,” said Carter.

  “Conducted by whom?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “That’s not going to happen.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Why on earth did you send him back?”

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

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

  “No, Adrian, that slipped our mind.”

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

  “Of course he’s under watch.”

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

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

  “Be reasonable, Gabriel.”

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

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

  “Yes, we have.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  30

  TORAH PRISON, EGYPT: 4:19 P.M., TUESDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Where did you get this tape?”

  “From a man in—”

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

  “He didn’t…tell me.”

  “Which coffeehouse?”

  “I can’t…remember.”

  “You’re sure, Hussein?”

  “I’m…sure.”

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