The Secret Servant Page 21

  “You are a person of the Book?”

  “I believe in the law, Sheikh Abdullah.”

  “The only law that matters is God’s law.”

  “And what would God say about the atrocities that have been committed in Europe on your behalf? What would God say about the murder and kidnapping of innocents?”

  “The number of dead pale in comparison to the number who have been tortured and killed by your friend Hosni Mubarak. They are but a pittance compared to the number of innocent Muslims who have died because of the American and British adventure in Iraq.” The sheikh fell silent for a moment. “Do you know what happened in my country after Osama’s airplanes hit your Twin Towers? Your government gave the Mubarak regime a list of names—hundreds of names, Mr. Hamilton. And do you know what Mubarak and his secret police did? They arrested all those men and tortured them mercilessly, even though they had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.”

  “And this justifies the kidnapping and murder of an innocent woman?”

  “Without question.” The sheikh turned his face to the arc lamps. The harsh light washed all color from him. “But the president didn’t send you all the way here from Washington to engage in a debate, did he, Mr. Hamilton?”

  “No, Sheikh Abdullah, he did not.”

  “What then is the purpose of your visit?”

  “The president has dispatched me here to request a favor. He would like you to issue a fatwa condemning the actions of your group and calling for Elizabeth Halton’s immediate release. The president feels your words would have a profound influence on the minds of her captors.”

  “Her captors are listening to other voices, Mr. Hamilton. Mine would be mere background noise.”

  “The president thinks otherwise.” Strauss’s next words were spoken with care. “And he would be extremely grateful for whatever help you could provide us in this matter.”

  “How would the president demonstrate this gratitude?”

  “I’m not here to negotiate, Sheikh Abdullah.”

  “Of course you are, Mr. Hamilton.”

  “The president believes you are a reasonable man who would not want Elizabeth Halton harmed. The president believes bargaining at a time like this would be inappropriate. It would also be against the stated policy of the United States of America.”

  “If the president believes I am such a reasonable man, then why did he refer to me as a bloodthirsty terrorist?”

  “Sometimes things are said for public consumption that don’t necessarily reflect true feelings,” Strauss said. “As a man of the Middle East, I’m sure you can understand this.”

  “More than you might think,” the Egyptian said. “But the president doesn’t need my cooperation in this fatwa. He can tell his clever spies in the CIA to fabricate one.”

  “The president feels it won’t be believed by the captors unless it is spoken by you. He would like you to read your statement on camera. We would make provisions here, of course.”

  “Of course.” The sheikh tugged thoughtfully at his beard. “Am I to understand that the president of the United States is asking me to end this crisis for him and yet he is offering me nothing in return?”

  Strauss removed the file from his briefcase and placed it on the table. “It has come to my attention that the prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia did not turn over to your lawyers certain exculpatory evidence that they were required by law to give them. I believe a well-crafted Section 2255 motion would receive a favorable reception in the courts.”

  “How favorable?”

  Again Strauss proceeded with caution. “I can foresee a scenario in which your conviction is overturned, at which point the government would have to decide whether to retry you or simply release you. In the meantime, steps can be taken to make your stay here more comfortable.”

  “You make it sound as though I am an invited guest.”

  “You were an invited guest, Sheikh Abdullah. We granted you permission to enter our country and you repaid our hospitality by conspiring to attack some of our most important landmarks.”

  “But you would be willing to take my case nonetheless?”

  “It’s not the sort of work I do,” Strauss said. “But I can think of several lawyers who would do a very fine job.”

  “And how long would such a process take?”

  “Two years,” Strauss said. “Three years at most.”

  “Do I look like a man who has three years to live?”

  “You have no other options.”

  “No, Mr. Hamilton, the president is the one without options. In fact, his options are so limited he has sent you here cap in hand to plead for my help. In return you offer me false hope and expect me to be grateful. But that’s what you Americans always do, isn’t it, Mr. Hamilton? What you don’t seem to understand is that there is more at stake now than just the fate of a single American woman. The Sword has set fire to Egypt. The days of the Mubarak regime are now numbered. And when it falls, the entire Middle East will change overnight.”

  Strauss put the file back into his briefcase. “I’m not an expert on the Middle East, but something tells me you have miscalculated. Issue the fatwa, Sheikh Abdullah. Save Elizabeth Halton’s life. Do the decent thing. God will reward you.” He hesitated, then added: “And so will the president.”

  “Tell your president that America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists and we don’t negotiate with tyrants. Tell him to comply with the Sword’s demands or he’ll be standing at Andrews Air Force Base soon, watching a coffin coming off an airplane.”

  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 h
ave 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.”