Carter stood up and ambled over to the minibar. He selected a soft drink, then, after consulting the price list, thought better of it. “To do this job right, you need to put a bug on the telephone in that apartment and a full-time surveillance team on Ishaq’s wife and son.”
“What do you think we’ve been doing all day, Adrian? Watching movies in our hotel room?” Gabriel looked at Sarah. “You’re the liaison officer, Sarah. Please give your superior an update on our activities today.”
“Hanifah and Ahmed Fawaz live in a section of Copenhagen called Norrebro,” Sarah said. “Their apartment is located in a large turn-of-the-century block, almost a city within a city. Each apartment can be accessed by a front door and a rear service door. Late this morning, when Hanifah took Ahmed out for a stroll and some shopping, we slipped in the back door and put a-” She looked at Gabriel. “What was the device called that we put on their phone?”
“It’s called a glass,” said Gabriel. “It provides room coverage along with coverage of any conversations conducted over the telephone.”
“Christ,” Carter said softly. “Please tell me you didn’t involve my officer in a B-and-E job in broad daylight in Copenhagen.”
“She’s well trained, Adrian. You would have been proud of her.”
“We also put a transmitter on the phone at the Islamic Affairs Council of Denmark,” Sarah said. “The junction box is located behind the offices in an alley. That one was easy.”
“You have them under visual surveillance, too, I take it.”
Gabriel frowned at Carter, as though he found the question mildly offensive. Carter looked down at the images of mayhem on the television screen.
“I was sent here to fire you and now I find myself volunteering for a suicide mission.” He shut off the television and looked at Gabriel. “All right, you win. We actually gave NSA the telephone number last night. Assuming that Ishaq is calling from a cell phone, NSA says it will take roughly one hour to pin down the approximate location. At that point we’ll notify the relevant local authorities and start looking.”
“Just make sure those relevant local authorities know that they’ll kill her if anyone tries to rescue her.”
“We’ve already made it clear to our friends here in Europe that if there’s any rescuing to be done, we intend to do it. In fact, we’ve already moved four Delta Force teams into various European capitals for just this scenario. They’re on hot standby. If we come up with hard intelligence on Elizabeth Halton’s whereabouts, those Delta Forces will go in and get her, and we’ll worry about assuaging hurt Euro-feelings later.”
“We have an entire division that deals with that sort of thing, Adrian. If you need any advice, just let us know.”
“You have enough to worry about.” Carter frowned and looked at his watch. “You and your team are now responsible for physical surveillance of the wife and son here in Copenhagen. I’m going to London to explain why I disobeyed a direct order to terminate your involvement in his operation. The fate of Elizabeth Halton is in your hands, Gabriel, along with my career. Please do your best not to drop us.”
30
T
The Scorpion was more crowded that afternoon than it had been in many years. Al-Zayyat did not find this particularly remarkable, since he was the man most responsible for the sudden surge of new arrivals. The prisoner now under interrogation in Room 4 was among the most promising: Hussein Mandali, a middle school teacher from the Sword of Allah stronghold of Imbaba. He had been captured twelve hours earlier on suspicion of distributing a recorded sermon by Sheikh Tayyib Abdul Razzaq. That in itself was hardly a novel offense-the sheikh’s scorching sermons were the hip-hop of Egypt’s downtrodden masses-but the content of the sermon found on Mandali was highly significant. In it the sheikh had made reference to the abduction of the American woman in London and had called for a popular uprising against the regime, a set of circumstances that suggested the sermon had been recorded very recently. Al-Zayyat knew that tapes did not appear by magic or by the divine will of Allah. He was convinced that Hussein Mandali was the break he had been looking for.
Al-Zayyat pushed open the door and went inside. Three interrogators were leaning against the gray walls, sleeves rolled up, faces glistening with sweat. Hussein Mandali was seated at the metal table, his face bloodied and swollen, his body covered with welts and burns. A good start, thought al-Zayyat, but not enough to break a boy from the slums of Imbaba.
Al-Zayyat sat down opposite Mandali and pressed the PLAY button on the tape recorder resting in the center of the table. A moment later, the thin, reedy voice of Sheikh Tayyib was reverberating off the walls of the interrogation room. Al-Zayyat allowed the sermon to go on for several minutes before finally reaching down and jabbing the STOP button with his thick forefinger.
“Where did you get this tape?” he asked calmly.
“It was given to me by a man in a coffeehouse in Imbaba.”
Al-Zayyat sighed heavily and glanced at the three interrogators. The beating they administered was twenty minutes in duration and, even by Egyptian standards, savage in its intensity. Mandali, when he was returned to his seat at the interrogation table, was barely conscious and weeping like a child. Al-Zayyat pressed the PLAY button for a second time.
“Where did you get this tape?”
“From a man in-”
Al-Zayyat quickly cut in. “Yes, I remember, Hussein-you got it from a man in a coffeehouse in Imbaba. But what was this man’s name?”
“He didn’t…tell me.”
“Which coffeehouse?”
“I can’t…remember.”
“You’re sure, Hussein?”
“I’m…sure.”
Al-Zayyat stood without another word and nodded to the interrogators. As he stepped into the corridor he could hear Mandali begging for mercy.
31
There had been no time for Housekeeping to acquire proper safe lodging for Gabriel’s team in Copenhagen, and so they had settled instead at the Hotel d’Angleterre, a vast white luxury liner of a building looming over the sprawling King’s New Square. Gabriel and Sarah arrived shortly after 5:30 and made their way to a room on the fourth floor. Mordecai was seated at the writing desk in stocking feet, headphones over his ears, eyes fixed on a pair of receivers like a doctor reading a brain scan for signs of life. Gabriel slipped on the spare set, then looked at Mordecai and grimaced.
“It sounds as though there’s a pile driver in the room.”
“There is,” Mordecai said. “And his name is Ahmed. He’s banging a toy against the floor a few inches from the phone.”
