toward the van. The driver hung upside down from his seat belt, blood flowing freely from his burst skull. Ishaq lay in the back, bleeding from his nose and mouth, left leg snapped above the knee like a broken matchstick. Gabriel looked at Mikhail.
“Pull him out by the leg,” he said in Hebrew. “The
“Don’t do this,” Chiara said.
“Walk away.” Gabriel looked at Mikhail. “Do what I tell you or I’ll do it myself.”
Mikhail ducked into the van through the open cargo doors and seized hold of the shattered leg. A moment later Ishaq lay writhing on the ground at Gabriel’s feet. Chiara, unable to bear the sight, walked away across the field. Gabriel looked down at Ishaq and asked, “Where’s my girl?”
“She’s already dead,” Ishaq spat through the blood.
Gabriel held out his hand to Mikhail. “Give me your gun.”
Mikhail handed it over. Gabriel pointed it toward the broken leg and fired once. Ishaq’s screams echoed over the flat landscape and his fingers clawed at the sodden earth. The pheasants took flight and circled above Gabriel’s head.
“Where’s my girl?” Gabriel repeated calmly.
“She’s dead!”
Another shot. Another scream of agony.
“Where’s my girl, Ishaq?”
“She’s already-”
“Where’s my girl, Ishaq?”
“Where’s Elizabeth?”
“Tell me where she is, Ishaq.”
He leveled the gun and prepared to fire again. This time a hand went up, and Ishaq, between cries of pain, began hurling information at Gabriel like stones. Number 17 Ambler Road. Two martyrs. Westminster Abbey. Ten o’clock. God is Great.
58
They barged into her cell with a demeanor she had never seen before. Cain spoke to her for the first time in more than two weeks. “You’re going to be released,” he blurted. “You have twenty minutes to prepare yourself. If you are not ready in twenty minutes, you will be killed.” And then he was gone.
Abel appeared next, bearing a plastic bucket of warm water, a bar of soap, a washcloth and towel, a parcel of clean clothing, and a blond wig. He placed the bucket on the floor and the rest of the things on her cot, then removed her handcuffs and shackles. “Wash carefully and take your time dressing,” he explained calmly. “We brought you something nice to wear. We don’t want the world to think we mistreated you.”
He went out and closed the door. She wanted to scream for joy. She wanted to weep with relief. Instead, model prisoner to the end, she did exactly what they told her to do. She used only fifteen minutes of her allotted time and was seated on the edge of her cot, knees together and trembling, when they entered her cell again.
“You are ready?” Cain asked.
“Yes,” she replied in a low, evenly modulated voice.
“Come, then,” he said.
She stood and followed them slowly up a flight of darkened stairs.
Word of Gabriel’s successful extraction arrived at the Israeli embassy in Old Court Place at 7:48 A.M. It was transmitted via ordinary cell phone by Chiara, who was at that moment seated next to Gabriel in the back of a Volkswagen Passat with a smashed headlamp and crumpled fender. The call was taken by Shamron, who, upon hearing the news, covered his face with his hands and wept. So deep was Shamron’s emotion that for several seconds those gathered around were uncertain whether Gabriel was alive or dead. When it became clear that he was indeed alive and back in their hands, a great roar went up in the room. The brief celebration that followed was intercepted and recorded by the British eavesdroppers at GCHQ-which had monitored all Israeli communications that night-as were Shamron’s pleas for quiet as he listened to the next part of Chiara’s report. Shamron immediately placed two calls, the first to Adrian Carter in the American ops center beneath Grosvenor Square and the second to Graham Seymour, who was with the prime minister and the COBRA committee at Downing Street. Seymour quickly arranged for a police escort to bring Gabriel and the remnants of his team safely into London; then he rushed to the American embassy, as did Shamron. The two men were standing next to Adrian Carter as the battered Passat and its police escorts screeched to a stop at the North Gate.
The car was immediately surrounded by two dozen of the uniformed Met officers standing guard outside the embassy grounds. Shamron’s view was momentarily blocked; then the sea of lime green parted and he glimpsed Gabriel for the first time. He had one arm draped over Yossi’s shoulder and the other over Oded’s. His face was contorted with pain and swelling, and his blue-and-white tracksuit was covered in blood and mud. They brought him through the gate and propped him upright for a moment before the three senior spymasters. Shamron kissed his cheek gently and murmured something in Hebrew that the others could not understand. Gabriel lifted his head slightly and looked at Graham Seymour.
“If you tell me not to complain about a nasty bump on the head, I just may lose my temper.”
“You’re a damned fool-and damned brave.” Seymour looked at Adrian Carter. “Let’s get him inside, shall we?”
Ambassador Robert Halton was waiting in the embassy’s ground floor atrium, along with FBI hostage negotiator John O’Donnell and several other members of the American team. As Gabriel came inside, still clinging to Yossi and Oded for support, they broke into restrained applause, as though they feared too much noise might inflict additional damage to him. Robert Halton walked over to Gabriel and put his hands carefully on his shoulders. “My God, what have they done to you?” He looked at Adrian Carter. “Let’s take him up to my office. The doctors can have a look at him there.”
They shepherded him into a waiting elevator and whisked him up to the ninth floor. Yossi and Oded lowered him onto the couch in the ambassador’s office, but when the doctors tried to enter the room, Graham Seymour held them back and quickly closed the door.
“Twenty minutes ago, a team of Met special operatives raided the house in the Ambler Road where Ishaq claimed Elizabeth was being held. She wasn’t there, but they found plenty of evidence that she had been recently. The Sphinx led us on a wild-goose chase across western Europe, and all the while she’s been here in England, right under our noses. The question is, where is she now?”
“The information Ishaq gave Gabriel about Elizabeth’s location was correct,” said Adrian Carter. “So it stands to reason that the information about what they intend to do with her is also correct.”
“It is,” said Gabriel. “They’re going to execute her outside Westminster Abbey before the start of Christmas services. She’s to be murdered by a pair of suicide bombers, who will take many innocent lives along with their own. I was supposed to be part of the second act, a massive car bombing that would have killed hundreds of your first responders.”
“A bloodbath in front of our most important national symbol on the morning of our Savior’s birth,” said Graham Seymour. “One that is intended to spark an armed uprising in Egypt and bring this country to its knees.” He hesitated, then said: “And one that we cannot allow to happen. As of this moment there are several hundred people congregated outside the north entrance of the Abbey, waiting to be admitted for a service of carols and
