The Secret Servant (13 page)

T
he Gulfstream V executive jet touched down at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington and taxied to a secure hangar with floors as smooth as polished marble. Gabriel descended the airstair, Samsonite bag in hand, and headed toward a waiting Suburban with Virginia license plates. The two CIA security men inside did not speak as he tossed the suitcase into the backseat and climbed in after it. Gabriel was used to this sort of behavior by the Americans. They were trained by their counter-intelligence people to believe that Office agents viewed every encounter with Agency personnel, no matter how mundane, as an opportunity for intelligence gathering. He was tempted to pose an inappropriate question or two, just to keep the myth alive. Instead he asked only where they were taking him.

“Headquarters,” said the man in the passenger seat.

“I don’t want to go to Headquarters.”

“You’ll go into the building black. No one will know you’re there.”

“Why can’t we meet in a safe house, the way we usually do?”

“Your contact doesn’t have time to leave the building today. I’m sure you can understand that.”

Gabriel was about to object again but stopped himself. Twice in the past year his photograph had appeared in the world’s newspapers, once for his actions inside the Vatican, and again for his attempt to prevent the kidnapping of Elizabeth Halton. Making his first appearance at Langley didn’t seem to matter much in comparison. Besides, if Shamron and the prime minister had their way, it wouldn’t be his last.

There was little traffic on the road at that hour on a Saturday, and it took them just thirty minutes to make the drive from Andrews to the woods of Langley. After a brief pause at the heavily fortified gatehouse for a credential check, they headed up the long immaculate drive toward the OHB, the Original Headquarters Building. Because Gabriel was entering the building “black,” they sped past the main entrance and turned into an underground parking garage. One of the security men helped Gabriel with the Samsonite bag; the other led the way into a secure elevator. A card key was inserted, buttons were pushed, and a moment later they were ascending rapidly toward the seventh floor. When the doors opened, two more security men were waiting in the foyer, guns visible beneath their blazers. Gabriel was escorted along a carpeted corridor to a secure door, beyond which lay a suite of spacious offices occupied by the most powerful intelligence officers in the world. The man standing in the anteroom, dressed in gray flannel trousers and a wrinkled oxford cloth shirt, looked as though he had wandered in by mistake.

“How was the flight?” asked Adrian Carter.

“You have a very nice plane.”

He shook Gabriel’s hand warmly and looked at the bag.

“Planning to stay long, or just a day or two?”

“Only as long as I’m welcome,” Gabriel said.

“I hope you brought more than clean shirts and underwear.”

“I did.”

Carter gave a fatigued smile and led Gabriel wordlessly into his office.

Gabriel accepted a cup of black coffee and lowered himself onto Carter’s couch. Carter picked up a remote control from the edge of his tidy desk and fired it at a bank of television monitors. Elizabeth Halton’s image immediately appeared on one of the screens. She was seated on the floor of a featureless room, dressed in the same cold-weather running suit she had been wearing in Hyde Park the morning of her kidnapping. In her hands was a copy of the
Times
, headlined with her own abduction. Four men were standing behind her: black jumpsuits, black balaclavas, green headbands with crossed swords and crescent moons. The one directly behind Elizabeth had a large knife in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other. He was reading a statement in Egyptian-accented Arabic.

“I take it you don’t require translation,” Carter said.

Gabriel, listening intently, shook his head. “He says he’s from the Sword of Allah. He says they want you to release Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq from prison and return him to Egypt by six
P.M
. London time next Friday. He says that if you don’t comply with their demands, the ambassador’s daughter will die. There will be no extensions, no negotiations, and no more contact. If there is any attempt at a rescue, Elizabeth Halton will be killed immediately.”

The image turned to hash. Carter killed it with a flick of his remote and looked at Gabriel.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“I learned about the Sword of Allah connection yesterday. It’s why I’m here.”

“How did you find out?”

“Sources and methods, Adrian. Sources and methods.”

“Come now,” Carter said mildly. “A woman’s life is at stake. Now is not the time to be territorial.”

“Just because we are technically at peace with Egypt doesn’t mean we don’t spy on them. We need to know whether the regime is going to stand or fall. We need to know whether we are about to be facing a hostile Islamic republic armed with advanced American weaponry. And we don’t always get the information we need from our friends here at Langley.”

“Your spy is SSI, I take it?”

Gabriel gave a sigh of resignation. “Our spy is in the business of keeping Mubarak and his regime alive.”

Carter took that as confirmation of his suspicions. “Why is it that we’ve spent upward of fifty billion dollars propping up that regime, but you found out about the Sword connection before we did?”

“Because we’re better than you, Adrian, especially in the Middle East. We’ve always been better and we always will be. You have your unquestioned military might and the power of your economy, but we have a nagging fear that we might not survive. Fear is a far more powerful motivation than money.”

Carter placed the remote thoughtfully on his desk and sat down in his executive swivel chair.

“When did you get the video?” Gabriel asked.

Carter told him.

“Has word gotten out to the British media?”

“Not yet,” Carter said. “It’s our wish that it doesn’t—at least not right away. We’d like to preserve the luxury of planning our response without the media screaming at us at every turn.”

“I wouldn’t count on MI5 and Scotland Yard safeguarding your secret for long. Someone will leak it, just the way they leaked my involvement and arrest.”

“Don’t be too hard on Graham Seymour,” Carter said. “We need him and so do you. We brethren of the secret world don’t burn each other at the stake at times like these. We band together and bind our wounds. We have to. The barbarians are at the gates.”

“The barbarians broke down the gates a long time ago, Adrian. They’re living among us now and devouring our children.” Gabriel sipped his coffee. “What is the position of the president?”

“It’s not one I’d wish on my worst enemy,” Carter replied. “As you know, he is a deeply religious man, and he takes his responsibilities as Elizabeth’s godfather very seriously. That said, he knows that if he complies with the demands of the kidnappers, no American diplomat anywhere in the world will ever be safe again. He also knows that if Sheikh Abdullah Abdul-Razzaq is allowed to return to Egypt, the Mubarak government will find itself in a very precarious state. For all its problems, Egypt is still the most important country in the Arab world. If Egypt goes Islamic it will have a disastrous ripple effect across the entire region—disastrous for my country
and
yours. That means Elizabeth Halton is going to die one week from now, unless we can somehow find her and free her first.”

Carter walked over to the window and peered out toward the leafless trees along the river. “You’ve been in a position like this, Gabriel. What would you do if you were the president?”

“I’d tell my biggest, meanest sons of bitches to do whatever it takes to find her.”

“And if we can’t? Do we make a deal and save our child from the barbarians?”

Gabriel left the question unanswered. Carter gazed silently out the window for a moment. “My doctor says the stress of this job is bad for my heart. He says I need to get more exercise. Take a walk with me, Gabriel. It will do us both good.”

“It’s twenty degrees outside.”

“The cold air is good for you,” Carter said. “It lends clarity to one’s thoughts. It steels one’s resolve for the travails that lay ahead.”

They slipped from the OHB through a side exit and set out along a paved jogging trail through the trees overlooking the river. Carter was bundled in a thick toggle coat and wool hat. Gabriel had only the leather jacket he’d taken with him the previous morning to Cyprus and within a few moments he was numb with cold.

“All right,” Carter said. “No one’s listening now. How did you know they were going to strike in London?”

“No one’s
listening
?” Gabriel looked around at the trees. “This place is littered with cameras, motion sensors, and hidden microphones.”

“That’s true,” said Carter. “But answer the question anyway.”

Gabriel told him about the tip he had received from Ibrahim Fawaz, the photographs he discovered during his hasty search of Samir al-Masri’s apartment, and the lines on the legal pad he had correctly identified as a sketch of Hyde Park.

“Amazing,” said Carter with genuine admiration in his voice. “And what was the great Gabriel Allon doing in Amsterdam?”

“I’m afraid you don’t get to know that part of the story.”

Carter, a consummate professional, moved on without objection. “Ibrahim Fawaz sounds like exactly the sort of Muslim we’ve been looking for—a man who’s willing to expose the extremists and terrorists residing within his community and his mosque.”

“That’s what I thought, too. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Inside that suitcase I brought with me is a substantial portion of the SSI’s dossier on the Sword of Allah. Guess whose file I found in there?”

“Your source is Sword of Allah?”

Gabriel nodded. “Before leaving Egypt, Dr. Ibrahim Fawaz served as a professor of economics at the University of Minya. According to his file, he was one of the group’s earliest organizers. He was arrested after Sadat’s assassination. The file is a bit vague on the reasons why, along with the duration of his detainment.”

“They usually are,” Carter said. “Why did he leave Egypt and come to Europe? And why did he tell you there was a plot being organized from within the al-Hijrah Mosque in west Amsterdam?”

“Obviously someone needs to put those very questions to him—and sooner rather than later. He lied to me or didn’t tell me the whole story. Either way, he was being deceptive. He’s hiding something, Adrian.”

They came to the intersection of two pathways. Carter guided Gabriel to the left, and together they set out through a stand of leafless trees. Carter dug a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from the pocket of his overcoat and slowly loaded the bowl. “They don’t let us smoke in the building anymore,” he said, pausing to ignite the tobacco with an elegant silver lighter.

“I wish we’d pass a similar rule.”

“Can you imagine Shamron without his Turkish cigarettes?” Carter started walking again, trailing a plume of maple-scented smoke behind him like a steam engine. “I suppose we have two options. Option one, we pass along your information about Fawaz to the Dutch police and allow them to bring him in for questioning, with the FBI in close attendance, of course.”

“Option number two?”

“We pick him up for an off-the-record chat, in a place where the usual rules of interrogation don’t apply.”

“You know which option I would vote for.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Carter said. “I think you should go to Amsterdam and personally supervise the operation.”

“Me?”
Gabriel shook his head. “I’m afraid my role in this affair is officially over. Besides, it’s not as if the CIA doesn’t have experience in these kinds of operations.”

“We do indeed,” Carter said. “But, unfortunately, we’ve screwed up quite a few of them—under my watch, I’m ashamed to say. The Europeans are no longer willing to turn a blind eye to our extralegal activities on their soil, and our own covert operatives are so afraid of prosecution at home and abroad that they no longer undertake sensitive missions without first consulting a lawyer. Our intrepid director has his finger firmly in the air and has detected that, for the moment, the wind is no longer at our backs. The days when we roamed Europe and the Middle East, breaking laws and limbs as we saw fit, are now over. The doors of the secret prisons are now closed, and we no longer deliver our enemies into the hands of men who dream up novel uses for rubber hoses and cattle prods. We’ve put away our brass knuckles. We’re a club fit for gentlemen from Princeton and Yale again, but that’s as it should be.”

“We like to keep our gentlemen from Princeton and Yale confined to King Saul Boulevard, where they can’t get into trouble.”

Carter walked in silence for a moment with his eyes on the pavement. “We’ve been preparing for something like this to happen for a long time. Our brethren at the FBI have overall responsibility for hostage recovery efforts under a scenario like this. We are gathering intelligence, of course, and liaising with allied services in Europe and the Middle East. We would regard you and your team as a black element of our larger multinational effort. You would, in effect, be a subcontractor of the Agency. It’s unconventional, but, given our past association, I think we can make it work.”

“I would need the approval of the prime minister.” Gabriel hesitated. “And, of course, Shamron would have to sign off on it.”

“I’ll set up a secure link to Jerusalem from my office. I promise no one will listen in.”

“I’ll call from our embassy, if you don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself.” Carter paused and knocked his pipe against the trunk of a tree. “Did your source happen to tell you who he thinks is behind this?”

Gabriel answered the question. Carter nodded and stuffed more tobacco into his pipe. “We know all about the Sphinx,” he said. “We think he’s the one who planned the attack on the tourists at the Pyramids three years ago that left seventeen Americans dead. We also think he’s responsible for the murder of two of our diplomats in Cairo. One of them was CIA, by the way. There’s a star for him on the wall in the main lobby. I’m afraid the Sphinx has something of a reputation when it comes to dealing with those who arrest or kill Sword personnel. Thanks to your efforts in London, you can be sure you’re at the top of his hit list. You’ll need to watch your step when you’re back in the field.”