T he note appeared beneath her door. She swung her shackled feet to the floor and shuffled slowly across her cell. It was Cain who stood on the other side awaiting her reply. She could smell him. The note said: Do you want food? “Yes,” she replied in a low, evenly modulated voice. Then, like a model prisoner, she laid down on her cot again and waited for him to come inside.

She heard the sound of a key being shoved into a padlock, followed by the groaning of hinges. This door was louder than the door of her last cell and the sound of it opening always set her teeth on edge. Cain placed the food at the foot of her cot and quickly withdrew. Elizabeth sat up again and scrutinized the meal: a few inches of baguette, a lump of cheese of indeterminate origin, a bottle of Evian water, chocolate because she had been good.

She devoured the food and gulped the water. Then, when she was certain no one was watching through the spy hole, she shoved her fingers down her throat and vomited her fourth meal onto the floor of her cell. Cain burst in two minutes later and glared at her angrily. Her blanket was now wrapped around her shoulders and she appeared to be shivering uncontrollably. “The ketamine,” she whispered. “You’re killing me with the ketamine.”

Abel brought a bucket of water and a rag and made her clean her own vomit. Only when her cell was cleansed of impure female excretions did Cain reappear. He stood as far from her as possible, as though he feared catching whatever was ailing her, and with a terse movement of his hand invited her to explain her affliction.

“Idiopathic paroxysmal ventricular tachycardia.” She paused for a moment and drew a series of rapid heavy breaths. “It is a fancy way of saying that I suffer from sporadic arrhythmia in the lower chambers of my heart: the ventricles. This sporadic arrhythmia has been exacerbated by too many injections of ketamine. My heartbeat is now dangerously rapid and arrhythmic and my blood pressure is extremely low, which is causing the nausea and the chills. If you give me another shot of ketamine, you could very well kill me.”

He stood silently for a moment, gazing at her though the eye slits of his hood, then withdrew. Several minutes later-about twenty, she guessed, but she couldn’t be sure-he returned and handed her a typewritten note:

FOR REASONS WE CANNOT EXPLAIN TO YOU, IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU TO BE MOVED THIS EVENING. IF YOU ARE CONSCIOUS DURING THIS MOVEMENT, YOU WILL BE EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. DO YOU WANT THE KETAMINE OR DO YOU WANT TO BE MOVED WHILE YOU ARE AWAKE?

“No more ketamine,” she said. “I’ll do it conscious.”

Cain looked at her as though she had made the wrong choice, then handed her a second note.

IF YOU SCREAM OR MAKE ANY NOISE WHATSOEVER, WE WILL KILL YOU AND LEAVE YOU BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.

“I understand,” she said.

Cain collected the two notes and slipped out of her cell. Elizabeth stretched out on her cot and stared into the blinding white light. Her rebellion was only a few minutes old, but already she had managed to gather two small pieces of information. She was to be moved by road and at night.

When next they entered her cell, they did so without first alerting her with a note. They bound her quickly in her own woolen blanket and secured it to her body cocoonlike with heavy packing tape. Foam rubber plugs were inserted into her ears, a gag placed over her mouth, and a blindfold tied tightly over her eyes. Now robbed of all senses but touch and smell, she felt them take hold of her body, one at each end, and carry her a short distance. The container into which she was placed was so narrow that the sides pressed hard against her hips and shoulders. It smelled of plywood and glue and vaguely of old fish. A lid was placed over the top, so close that it nearly touched the end of her nose, and several nails were hurriedly hammered into place. She wanted to scream. She did not. She wanted to cry out for her mother. She prayed silently instead and thought of the slender man with gray temples who had tried to save her life in Hyde Park. I will not submit , she thought. I will not submit .

T he lights of the Great Belt Bridge, second-longest suspension bridge in the world, lay like a double strand of pearls over the straits between the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen. Gabriel glanced at the dashboard clock as he headed up the long sweep of the eastern ramp. The trip from Copenhagen to this point should have taken no more than two hours, but the worsening storm had stretched it to nearly four. He returned his eyes to the road and put both hands firmly on the wheel. The bridge was swaying in the high winds. Ibrahim asked again if the weather was truly a good omen. Gabriel replied that he hoped Ibrahim knew how to swim.

It took them twenty minutes to make the eight-mile crossing. On the Funen side of the bridge, a small seaside rail station lay huddled against the storm. A mile beyond the station was a roadside gas station and café. Gabriel topped off the Audi’s tank, then parked outside the café and led Ibrahim inside. It was brightly lit, smartly decorated, and spotlessly clean. In the first room was a well-stocked market and cafeteria-style eatery; in the next was a seating area filled with stranded travelers. There was much animated conversation and, judging from the large number of empty Carlsberg bottles scattered about the pale wooden tables, considerable drinking had taken place.

They bought egg sandwiches and hot tea in the cafeteria and sat at an empty table near the window. Ibrahim ate silently, while Gabriel sipped his tea and stared out at the car. Thirty minutes elapsed before the cell phone finally rang. Gabriel brought it to his ear, listened without speaking, then severed the connection. “Wait here,” he said.

He stopped briefly in the men’s toilet, where he buried his Beretta and phone in the rubbish bin, then went into the market and purchased a large-scale map of Denmark and an English-language tourist guide. When he returned to the dining room, Ibrahim was in the process of unwrapping the second egg sandwich. Ibrahim slipped it into his coat pocket and followed Gabriel outside.

“Here it is,” said Ibrahim. “Lindholm Høje.”

He was hunched over the guidebook, reading it by the light of the overhead lamp. Gabriel kept his eyes fastened to the road.

“What does it say?”

“It’s an old Viking village and cemetery. For centuries it was buried beneath a thick layer of sand. It only was discovered in 1952. According to the book, it has more than seven hundred graves and the remains of a few Viking longhouses.”

“Where is it?”

Ibrahim consulted the book again, then plotted the position of the site on the road map. “Northern Jutland,” he said. “Very northern Jutland, actually.”

“How do I get there?”

“Take the E20 across Funen, then head north on the E45. Lindholm is just after Aalborg. The book says it’s easy to find the place. Just follow the signs.”

“I can’t see the road, let alone the signs.”

“Is that where they’re going to leave the woman?”

Gabriel shook his head. “More instructions. This time they’ll be written. They say they’ll be in the ruins of the longhouse, in the corner farthest from the museum entrance.” He looked briefly at Ibrahim. “It wasn’t Ishaq this time. It was someone else.”

“Egyptian?”

“He sounded Egyptian to me, but I’m no expert.”

“Please,” said Ibrahim dismissively. “Why did they make you get rid of your telephone?”

“No more electronic communication.”

Ibrahim looked down at the map. “It’s a long way from here to Lindholm.”

“Two hours in perfect weather. In this…four at least.”

Ibrahim looked at the clock. “That means it will be Friday morning, if we’re lucky.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “He’s running us up against the deadline.”

“Who? Ishaq?”

A very good question, thought Gabriel. Was it Ishaq? Or was it the Sphinx?…

It took four and a half hours to reach Lindholm and, just as Gabriel had feared, the guidebook’s assurances that the cemetery was easy to find turned out to be false. He drove in circles for twenty minutes through a neighborhood of matching brick houses before finally spotting a postcard-sized sign he had missed three times previously. It was obscured by snow, of course; Gabriel had to climb out of the Audi and brush away the flakes, only to learn that in order to reach the site he had to first scale a formidable hill. The Audi handled the conditions with only a single episode of fishtailing, and two minutes later Gabriel was easing into a car park surrounded by towering pine. He shut down the engine and sat for a moment, his ears ringing from the strain of the drive, before finally opening the door and putting a foot into the snow. Ibrahim stayed where he was.

“You’re not coming?”

“I’ll wait here, if you don’t mind.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of cemeteries.”

“No, just Viking cemeteries.”

“They were only warlike when they took to the seas,” Gabriel said. “Here at home they were largely an agrarian people. The scariest thing we’re likely to run across tonight is the ghost of a vegetable farmer.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just stay here.”

“Suit yourself,” Gabriel said. “If you want to sit here alone, that’s fine with me.”

Ibrahim made a show of thought, then climbed out. Gabriel opened the trunk and removed the flashlight and the tire iron.

“Why are you bringing that?” asked Ibrahim.

“In case we come across any Vikings.” He slipped the tool down the front of his jeans and quietly closed the trunk. “They made me leave my gun back in that service station, too. A crowbar is better than nothing.”

Gabriel switched on the flashlight and set out across the car park with Ibrahim at his side. The snow was six inches deep and within a few steps Gabriel’s brogans were sodden and his feet freezing. Thirty seconds after leaving the car, he stopped suddenly. There were two sets of faint tracks in the snow, one set obviously larger than the other, leading from the car park into the burial ground. Gabriel left Ibrahim alone and followed the footprints back to their point of origin. Judging from the condition of the snow’s surface, it appeared as though a small truck or transit van had entered the lot from a second access road several hours earlier. The larger of the two occupants had stepped into the snow from the driver’s side of the vehicle, the smaller from the passenger side. Gabriel crouched in the snow and scrutinized the smaller prints as though he were examining brushstrokes on a canvas. The prints were feminine, he decided, and whoever had left them had been wearing athletic shoes. There was no evidence of any struggle.