“Looks like a nine-millimeter to me, but that’s not the interesting part. It’s several days older than the head wound, and whoever treated it knew exactly what she was doing?”
“Elizabeth Halton is an emergency-room surgeon from Denver, Colorado. I could be wrong, but I think this corpse could well be one of the terrorists from Hyde Park. Didn’t COBRA and the Home Office tell us to be on the lookout for unexplained bullet wounds?”
“Yes, they did,” the SIO said.
“The wound and surrounding tissue exhibit signs of severe infection. I’d say our man was wounded by that Israeli chap during the actual kidnapping. His comrades tried to keep him alive, but apparently they finally gave up and put him out of his misery with a neat bullet in the back of the head. He probably suffered terribly. I suppose there is some justice in the world after all.”
SIO crouched next to the body and examined the lower leg of the corpse, then began searching the corpse itself for evidence. The coat pockets were empty, as were the front pockets of his trousers, but in the back right pocket he found a single sheet of paper, folded in quarters and flattened by many days of pressure. The SIO unfolded it carefully and read it by the beam of his flashlight.
“Draw me up a list of supplies one would need to treat a bullet wound in the field-things that can be purchased over the counter at an ordinary chemist’s shop. And put a very wide cordon around this scene. If your theory about this chap is correct, this beach is going to be invaded soon by several hundred men from the Anti- Terrorist Branch, MI5, the FBI, and the CIA.”
“Done.”
The SIO turned and walked quickly out of the trees. Two minutes later he was behind the wheel of his car, speaking by radio to the duty officer in the Operations and Communications Center. “It looks like the body might be linked to the missing American woman,” he said. “Get the chief constable on the phone immediately and bring him into the picture.”
“Anything else, sir?”
“I found a receipt in his pocket for the Portsmouth-to-Le Havre ferry. If this chap is really one of the terrorists, it could mean that the American girl is now in France.”…
The series of events that occurred next unfolded with precision and remarkable swiftness. The Operations and Communications Center immediately located the Norfolk chief constable, who was dining with friends and family in Norwich, and told him of the discovery. The chief constable stepped away from the table and quietly relayed the information to his superiors at the Home Office, who in turn informed the COBRA committee and the Police Nationale of France. Fifteen minutes after the SIO’s initial dispatch from the beach, news of the discoveries reached the American team at Grosvenor Square. A secure cable was sent priority status from the embassy to all federal agencies involved in the search for Elizabeth Halton, including the CIA.
At 6:18 P.M. Eastern time, a copy reached the hands of Adrian Carter, who at that moment was seated in his regular chair in the CIA’s Global Ops Center, monitoring a highly illegal clandestine interrogation now taking place at a derelict farmhouse in the plains of northern Germany. He read the note quickly and for the first time in more than a week felt a fleeting sense of hope. Then he set the cable aside and stared at his monitor. The feed had been silent for five minutes. Gabriel, it seemed, had taken a break for dinner.
27
They brought his clothing, then they brought him food: rice and beans, hard-boiled eggs and feta cheese, flatbread and sweet tea. He took a single bite, then pushed the plate a few inches toward Gabriel. Gabriel refused at first, but Ibrahim insisted, and so they sat there for several moments, prisoner and interrogator, sharing a simple meal in silence.
“We Muslims have a tradition called Eid,” Ibrahim said. “If a sheep is to be slaughtered, it is given one final meal.” He looked up from his food at Gabriel. “Is that what you are doing now, my friend? Giving your sacrificial lamb one final taste of life?”
“How long did they hold you?” Gabriel asked.
“Six months,” said Ibrahim. “And my release was as undignified as my arrest and incarceration. They turned me onto the streets of Minya in rags and ordered me to go home. When I entered my apartment, my wife screamed. She thought I was an intruder. She didn’t recognize me.”
“I take it your daughter wasn’t there when you arrived.”
Ibrahim tore off a piece of the flatbread and pushed it around the rice for a moment. “She died that night in the torture chambers of Minya. She was raped to death by Mubarak’s secret policemen. They buried her body in a criminal’s grave on the edge of the desert and refused to let me even see it. For them it was just another form of torture.”
He sipped at his tea contemplatively. “My wife blamed me for Jihan’s death. It was her right, of course. If I hadn’t joined the Sword of Allah, Jihan never would have been taken. For many days, my wife refused even to look at me. A week later I was informed by the university that my services were no longer needed. I was a broken man. I’d lost everything. My job. My daughter. My dignity.”
“And so you decided to leave Egypt?”
“I had no choice. To remain would have meant living underground. I wanted to sever my ties with the Sword. I wanted no part of jihadist politics. I wanted a new life, in a place where men did not murder little girls in torture chambers.”
“Why Amsterdam?”
“My wife had family living in the Oud West. They told us that the Muslim community in Holland was growing and that for the most part the Dutch were welcoming and tolerant. I applied for a visa at the Dutch embassy and was granted one straightaway.”
“I take it you neglected to inform the Dutch of your connection to the Sword of Allah.”
“It might have slipped my mind.”
“And the rest of the story you told me that night in Amsterdam?”
“It was all true. I built roads, then I swept them. I made furniture.” He held up his ruined hand. “Even after I lost my fingers.”
“And you had no contact with other Sword members?”
“Most of those who fled Egypt settled in America or London. Occasionally one would blow through Amsterdam with the wind.”
“And when they did?”
“They tried to draw me back into the fight, of course. I told them I was no longer interested in Islamic politics. I told them I wanted to live an Islamic life on my own and leave matters of governance and state to others.”
“And the Sword abided by your wishes?”
“Eventually,” Ibrahim said. “My son wasn’t so accommodating, however.”
“It is because of your son that we’re here tonight.”
Ibrahim nodded.
“A son who is half Egyptian and half Palestinian-a volatile mix.”
“Very volatile.”
“Tell me his name.”
“Ishaq,” the Egyptian said. “My son’s name is Ishaq.”
“It began with harmless questions, the kind of questions any curious adolescent boy might ask of his father. Why did we leave our home in Egypt to come to Europe? Why, if you were once a university professor, do you sweep streets? Why do we live in the land of strangers instead of the House of Islam? For many years, I told him only lies. But when he was fifteen, I told him the truth.”
