“My advice to you is be patient, Adrian.”

“Elizabeth Halton dies at six o’clock Friday night. We don’t have time to be patient.”

“I’ve given you the location and number of a telephone that one of her captors is calling on a regular basis. You have in your arsenal the National Security Agency, the largest and most sophisticated electronic intelligence service in the world, a service that is capable of vacuuming up every fax, phone call, and Internet communication in the world, every second of the day. Give Ishaq’s number in Copenhagen to NSA, and tonight, when Ishaq calls, tell NSA to bring all their considerable resources to bear on answering a single question: Where is he?”

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 Nørrebro,” 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.”

T he Scorpion: Hell on earth, thought Wazir al-Zayyat. One hundred squalid cells containing the most dangerous Islamic radicals and jihadists in Egypt, a dozen interrogation chambers where even the most hardened of Allah’s holy warriors vomited their secrets after just a few hours of “questioning” at the hands of Egypt’s secret police. Few who entered the Scorpion emerged with their souls or their body intact. Those who encountered Wazir al-Zayyat face-to-face rarely lived to talk about it.

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. “Do not fear the henchmen of Pharaoh,” the sheikh was telling him. “Place your faith in Allah, and Allah will protect you.”

T here 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.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“An hour.”

“Why doesn’t she ask him to stop?

“Maybe she’s deaf. God knows I will be soon if he doesn’t stop.”

“Any activity on the line yet?”

“Just one outgoing call,” Mordecai said. “She called Ibrahim in Amsterdam to complain about Ishaq’s prolonged absence. Unless it was an elaborate ruse, she doesn’t know anything.”

Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. It was 5:37. A spy’s life, he thought. Mind-numbing boredom broken by brief interludes of sheer terror. He slipped on the headset and waited for Hanifah’s telephone to ring.

They adopted the uncomfortable silence of strangers at a wake and together endured an evening of frightening banality. Ahmed ramming his toy against the kitchen floor. Ahmed pretending to be a jet airplane. Ahmed kicking a ball against the wall of the sitting room. At 8:15, there was an ear-shattering crash. Though they were never able to accurately identify the object lost, it was of sufficient value to launch Hanifah into a hysterical tirade. A remorseful Ahmed responded by asking whether his father was going to telephone that night. Gabriel, who was pacing the floor as though looking for lost valuables, froze and awaited the answer. He’ll call if he can, Hanifah said. He always does. Ibrahim, it seemed, had been telling the truth after all.

At 8:20, Ahmed was ordered into a bath. Hanifah cleaned up the disaster in the sitting room, then switched on the television. Her choice of channels was illuminative, for it soon became clear she was watching al-Manar, the official television network of Hezbollah. For the next twenty minutes, while Ahmed splashed about in his tub, they were forced to sit through a sermon by a Lebanese cleric who extolled the bravery of the Sword of Allah and called for more acts of terror against the infidel Americans and their Zionist allies.

At 8:43, the sermon was interrupted by the shrill scream of the telephone. Hanifah answered it quickly and, in Arabic, said, “Ishaq, is that you?” It was not Ishaq but a very confused Danish man looking for someone named Knud. Hearing the voice of an Arabic-speaking woman-and, no doubt, the clerical rant in the background-he apologized profusely and hastily rang off. Hanifah returned the receiver to the cradle and shouted at Ahmed to get out of the bath. The Hezbollah preacher shouted back that the time had come for the Muslims of the world to finish the job Hitler had started.