by Daniel Silva
“According to Tele Danmark, the call was placed from a mobile phone in Belgium,” he said. “If we contact our brethren in Brussels, we should be able to find out where he was when he made the call.”
“Don’t bother,” Carter said. “He was east of Liège, probably on the A3. It was a different phone than the one he used last night. And it’s no longer on the air.”
He called Hanifah’s mobile, then dialed the apartment again. Gabriel let the phones ring unanswered. Finally, with the deadline hard approaching, he called the number Gabriel had given him. The Agency technicians had patched the line into the recorders and it was being fed live to Washington. Much to the irritation of all those listening, Gabriel allowed the phone to ring four times before answering. His tone, when finally he brought the receiver to his ear, was brisk and businesslike.
“You cut it rather close, Ishaq. I wouldn’t make a habit of it.”
“Where are my wife and son?”
“As of this moment they are sitting aboard a private plane on an airfield outside Copenhagen. What happens to them next depends entirely on you.”
“What about my father?”
“You father is here with me.”
“Where is here?”
“Where I am at the moment is completely unimportant, Ishaq. The only thing that matters now is Elizabeth Halton. You have her, I want her back. We’re going to make it happen, just you and me. No one else needs to be involved. Not your controller. Not your mastermind. Just us.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I can be whoever you want me to be: CIA, FBI, DIA, an agency so fucking secret you’ve never heard of it before. But just be sure of one thing. I’m not bluffing. I made your father disappear from the al-Hijrah Mosque in Amsterdam, and I made your wife and son vanish from Nørrebro. And if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do, I’ll put them all on a plane to Egypt. And you know what happens there, don’t you? I know what happened to your sister, Ishaq. Jihan was her name, right? Your father told me about Jihan. Your father told me everything.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment. Your father has suffered enough because of the Egyptian secret police. Don’t make him suffer again. Have you seen the scars on his arms? Have you seen the scars on his back? Don’t put him through another night in the torture chambers of Egypt.”
Ishaq was silent for a moment. Gabriel listened intently to the noise in the background. The truck was moving again.
“Where are you calling from, Ishaq?”
“Afghanistan.”
“That’s quite a feat of driving, given the fact you were just outside Dortmund when you called last night. My patience is not unlimited. Tell me where you are, or I’ll hang up and you’ll never hear from me again. Do you understand me?”
“And I’ll push a button and the American woman will die a martyr’s death. Do you understand me?”
“We’ve had enough of bombs and blood, Ishaq. You’ve made your point. The world has taken notice of Egypt’s plight. But the president isn’t going to release the sheikh, no matter how many people you kill. It’s not going to happen. You alone have the power to make it stop. Spare Elizabeth Halton’s life. Give her back to me and I’ll give you back your family.”
“And what happens to me?”
“I’m not interested in you. In fact, I couldn’t give a shit about you. What I want is Elizabeth Halton. Leave her somewhere safe, tell me where I can find her, then make your way to Afghanistan or Pakistan or Wherever-the-fuck-istan you want to spend the rest of your life. Just give me the girl back. You love death, we love life. You’re strong, we’re weak. You’ve already won. Just let me have her back.”
“I’m going to find you one day, you bastard. I’m going to find you and kill you.”
“I guess that means you’re not interested in a deal. It’s been nice talking to you, Ishaq. If you happen to change your mind, you have ten minutes to call me back. Think about it carefully. Don’t make the wrong decision. Otherwise, your family is as good as dead. Ten minutes, Ishaq. Then the plane leaves for Cairo.”
Gabriel hung up the phone for a second time. Carter gave him a pat on the back. It was drenched in sweat.
Gabriel slipped from the conference room without a word and made his way to the toilets. He stood before the basin, hands braced on the edge of the cold porcelain, and gazed at his own reflection in the mirror. He saw himself not as he appeared now but as a boy of twenty-one, a gifted artist with the ashes of the Holocaust flowing in his veins. Shamron was standing over his shoulder, hard as an iron bar, urgent as a drumbeat. You will terrorize the terrorists, he was saying. You will be Israel’s avenging angel of death.
But Shamron had neglected to warn Gabriel of the price he would one day pay for climbing into the sewer with terrorists and murderers: a son buried in a hero’s grave on the Mount of Olives, a wife lost in a labyrinth of memory in an asylum on Mount Herzl. Having lost his own family to the terrorists, he had vowed to himself that he would never target the innocent in order to achieve his goals. Tonight, if only for the purposes of deception, he had broken that promise. He felt no guilt over his actions, only a profound sense of despair. The creed of the global jihadists was not just; it was a mental illness. One could not reason with those who massacred the innocent in the belief that they were doing God’s will on earth. One had to kill them before they killed you. And if one had to threaten the family of a murderer to save an innocent life, then so be it.
He splashed icy water on his face and stepped out into the corridor. Carter was leaning against the wall with the calm detachment of a man waiting for a long-delayed train.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I will be when this is over,” Gabriel said. “Did NSA get a fix on him?”
“It appears he was somewhere close to the interchange of the A3 and the A26.”
“Which means he could now be heading in any direction at considerable speed,” said Gabriel. “What about the phone itself?”
“It was different,” Carter said.
“I suppose it’s now off the air?”
Carter nodded.
“Anything else?”
“Washington is worried that you’re pushing him too hard.”
“What would they have me do? Ask him nicely to release her?”
“They just want you to give him a little room to maneuver.”
“And what if he uses that room to kill Elizabeth Halton?”
Carter led the way back to the conference room. As they passed through the doorway, Gabriel looked up at the wall clock. Three minutes remained until the next deadline. Lars Mortensen was drumming his fingers anxiously against the tabletop.
“What are you going to do if he doesn’t call?”
“He’ll call,” Gabriel said.
“How can you be sure?”
It was Ibrahim who answered for him. “Because of Jihan,” he said, fingers still working his prayer beads. “He’ll call because he doesn’t want his wife and son to suffer the same fate as Jihan.”
Mortensen, perplexed by the response, looked to Carter for an explanation. Carter raised his hand in a gesture that said he would explain the reference at a more appropriate time. Gabriel resumed his pacing. Two minutes later, the telephone rang again. He snatched up the receiver and brought it quickly to his ear.
“Ishaq,” he said with an artificial brightness. “I’m glad you called. I assume we have a deal?”
“We do, as long as you agree to my one condition.”
“You’re not in much of a position to make demands, Ishaq.”
“Neither are you.”
“What’s your condition?”
“I’ll give her to my father, but no one else.”
“That’s not necessary, Ishaq. Just stop the car and leave Elizabeth by the side of the road—somewhere safe and dry, somewhere out of harm’s way—then drive away. It doesn’t need to be any more comp
licated than that.”
“I need proof my father is still in Europe.” A pause. “I need proof he’s still alive.”
“Your father is a founding member of the Sword of Allah, Ishaq. Your father isn’t going to go anywhere near my girl.”
“My father is an innocent man. And unless he’s there, you don’t get your girl.”
Gabriel looked at Carter, who nodded his head.
“All right, Ishaq, you win. We’ll do it your way. Just tell me where you want to do it.”
“Are you in Denmark?”
“I told you, Ishaq—it doesn’t matter where I am.”
“It matters to me.”
“Yes, Ishaq. I’m in Denmark. Let’s just do it here, shall we? It’s a small country, lots of open spaces, and the Danish police are willing to let you be on your way after you release Elizabeth.”
“I need a guarantee of safe passage over the border. No checkpoints. No roadblocks. If a policeman so much as looks at me twice, the woman is dead. Do you understand?”
“I understand. We’ll tell the local authorities to stand down. No one is going to bother you. Just tell me how you want to do it.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow and tell you what to do.”
“Tomorrow? That’s not good enough, Ishaq.”
“If tomorrow isn’t good enough, then your girl dies tonight.”
Another glance at Carter. Another nod of the head.
“All right, Ishaq. What time are you going to call me tomorrow?”
“I’ll call at noon Copenhagen time.”
“Too long, Ishaq. I want to hear from you much sooner than that.”
“It’s noon or nothing. It’s your choice.”
“All right, noon it is. Don’t disappoint me.”
The line went dead. Gabriel hung up the phone and buried his face in his hands. “I gave him room to maneuver, Adrian, just like Washington wanted, and he maneuvered me right into a corner.”
“We’ll wait until tomorrow and listen to what he has to say.”
“And what if we don’t like what he has to say?”
“Then we won’t accept the deal.”
“No, Adrian, we’ll do exactly what he tells us to do. Because if we don’t, he’s going to kill her.”
37
Their security had been exceptionally good. They never entered her cell without their faces covered, and not once since the initial seconds of her capture had they spoken a single word to her. They had permitted her no newspapers or reading material of any kind, and a request for a radio to help pass the empty hours had been met by a slow shake of Cain’s head. She had lost track of how long she had been in captivity. She had no idea whether the rest of the world thought she was alive or dead. Nor did she have any clue as to her whereabouts. She might still be in the east of England, she thought, or she might be in a cave complex in Tora Bora. Of one thing, however, she was certain: her captors were moving her on a regular basis.
The proof of movement was plain for her to see. The rooms where she was being held were all variations of the first—white walls, a camp bed, a single lamp, a door with a spy hole—but each was clearly different. She would have been able to discern this even if they had forced her to wear a blindfold, because her senses of smell and hearing were now heightened to an animal acuteness. She could hear them coming long before they slid the notes beneath her door and now could distinguish Cain from Abel by scent alone. Her last cell had stunk of liquid bleach. The one where she was being held now was filled with the pleasant aroma of coffee and Middle Eastern spices. She was in a market, she thought, or perhaps the warehouse of a distributor that supplied grocers in Arab neighborhoods.
Her heightened senses had allowed her to gather one other piece of information: there was a distinct rhythm to her movements. This rhythm was not measured by hours and minutes—time, for all her attempts to capture it, remained a mystery to her—but in the number of meals she was given in each location. It was always the same: four meals of identical content, then a shot of the ketamine, then she would awaken in a new room with new smells. Thus far she had been given three meals in her current location. Her fourth would be coming soon. Elizabeth knew that, in all likelihood, it would be followed several hours later by an injection of ketamine. She would struggle, but her struggle would quickly turn to submission in the face of greater strength and numbers.
Submission…
That was their goal. Submission was the overall goal of the global jihadists and it was the goal of Elizabeth’s captors as well. The global jihadists wanted the West to submit to the will of violent Salafist Islam. Elizabeth’s captors wanted her to submit to the needle and the mind-numbing rhythm of their movements and their notes. They wanted her weak and compliant, a sheep that offers its throat willingly to the ritual knife. Elizabeth had decided that her days of submission were over. She had decided to stage a rebellion, a rebellion she hoped would provide her with information as to her whereabouts, a rebellion fought with the only two weapons available to her—her own life and her knowledge of medicine. She closed her eyes and inhaled the pleasant aroma of coffee and cinnamon. And she waited for Cain to open the door and present her with her fourth meal.
38
COPENHAGEN: 2:52 P.M., THURSDAY
So it comes down to the two of us once again,” Ibrahim said. “I suppose that’s fitting.”
Gabriel cleared the windshield of his Audi A8 sedan with a flick of the wiper blades. The King’s New Square appeared before him, shrouded in a bridal veil of snowfall. Ibrahim was sitting silently in the passenger seat, freshly scrubbed and dressed for his own funeral in a borrowed gray suit and overcoat. His hands were folded primly in his lap, good hand atop ruined hand, and his eyes were on his shoes. Gabriel’s telephone lay in the console. Its signal was being monitored inside the CIA station at the American embassy and at NSA headquarters.
“You’re not going to give me another one of your lectures, are you, Ibrahim?”
“I’m still a professor at heart,” he said. “I can’t help it.”
Gabriel decided to indulge him. A lecture was better than silence.
“Why do you suppose it’s fitting?”
“We have both seen the worst this life has to offer. Nothing can frighten us, and nothing that happens today will surprise us.” He looked up from his shoes and gazed at Gabriel for a moment. “The things they wrote about you in the newspapers after London—it was all true? You were the one who killed the members of Black September?”
Ibrahim interpreted Gabriel’s silence as affirmation the newspapers accounts were all true.
“I remember Munich so clearly,” Ibrahim said. “We spent that day standing around our televisions and radios. It electrified the Arab world. We cheered the capture of your athletes, and when they were massacred at the airport we danced in the streets. In retrospect, our reaction was appalling, but completely understandable. We were weak and humiliated. You were strong and rich. You had beaten us many times. We had finally beaten you, in Germany of all places, land of your greatest catastrophe.”
“I thought you Islamists didn’t believe in the Holocaust. I thought you regarded it as a great lie, foisted upon the world by clever Jews so we could rob the Arabs of their land.”
“I’ve never been one to dabble in self-delusion and conspiracy theory,” Ibrahim said. “You Jews deserve a national home. God knows you need one. But the sooner you give the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Gaza, the better for all of us.”
“And if that means giving it to your spiritual brethren in Hamas?”
“At the rate we’re going, Hamas will look like moderates soon,” Ibrahim said. “And when the Palestinian issue is finally removed from the table, the Arabs will have no one else to blame for their miserable condition. We will be forced to take a hard look in the mirror and solve our problems for ourselves.”
“That’s just one of the reasons why there will never be peace. We’re the scapegoat for Arab failings—th
e pressure valve for Arab unrest. The Arabs loathe us, but they cannot live without us.”
Ibrahim nodded in agreement and resumed the study of his shoes. “Is it also true that you are a famous art restorer?”
This time Gabriel nodded slowly. Ibrahim pulled his lips into an incredulous frown.
“Why, if you have the ability to heal beautiful paintings, do you engage in work such as this?”
“Duty,” said Gabriel. “I feel an obligation to protect my people.”
“The terrorists would say the same thing.”
“Perhaps, but I don’t murder the innocent.”
“You just threaten to send them to Egypt to be tortured.” Ibrahim looked at Gabriel. “Would you have done it?”
Gabriel shook his head. “No, Ibrahim, I wouldn’t have sent you back.”
Ibrahim looked out his window. “The snow is beautiful,” he said. “Is it a good omen or bad?”
“A friend of mine calls weather like this operational weather.”
“That’s good?”
Gabriel nodded. “It’s good.”
“You’ve done this kind of thing before?”
“Only once.”
“How did it end?”
With the Gare de Lyon in rubble, thought Gabriel. “I got the hostage back,” he said.
“This street that he wants us to walk down—do you know it?”
Gabriel lifted his hand from the wheel and pointed across the square. “It’s called Strøget. It’s a pedestrian mall lined with shops and restaurants, two miles long—the longest in Europe, if the hotel brochures are to be believed. It empties into a square called the Rådhuspladsen.”
“We walk and they watch—is that how it works?”
“That’s exactly how it works. And if they like what they see, someone will phone me when we reach the Rådhuspladsen and tell me where to go next.”