The Secret Servant (22 page)

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.

G
abriel 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.

“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 complicated 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.”

T
heir 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.