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

by Daniel Silva

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

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

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

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

  35

  COPENHAGEN: 1:15 P.M., WEDNESDAY

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

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

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

  “Did you tell the Germans?”

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

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

  “Why is that name familiar to me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “That means he’s no longer presentable.”

  “Or worse.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “So call him.”

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

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

  “No handcuffs or hood this time?”

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

  “Where are we going?”

  The man answered the question truthfully.

  “Copenhagen? Why Copenhagen?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Which service?”

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

  “How long have they been in Denmark?”

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

  “Why weren’t we informed?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Exactly how many Israelis are now in Copenhagen?”

  “I’m not sure, to be honest.”

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

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

  “What’s his name?”

  Carter told him. Mortensen’s pen fell silent.

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

  “Is it really necessary to involve the politicians?”

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

  “It’s likely to be unpleasant.”

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

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

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

  “I’ll tell him,” said Carter.

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

  “Allon?”

  Mortensen nodded.

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

  “They all are,” said Mortensen.

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

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

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

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

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

  36

  COPENHAGEN: 9:30 P.M., WEDNESDAY

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

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

  “Who is this?”

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

  “Where’s my father?”

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

  Silence, then: “I’m ready.”

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

  Gabriel hung up the phone and looked at Ibrahim.

  “Was it him?”

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

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

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