He opened the door and took a step outside, then turned and looked at Gabriel once more. “It occurs to me that soon you will be a shaheed, too. If you convert to Islam before your death, your place in Paradise will be assured. I can help, if you wish. The procedure is really quite simple.”

Ishaq, receiving no answer, closed the door and secured it with a padlock. Gabriel closed his eyes. Two and two make four, he thought. Two and two make four.

I think I may have found something.”

Graham Seymour looked up. It was the Israeli girl with dark hair and a limp: Dina Sarid. He gestured toward the empty chair next to his desk in the operations room. The girl remained standing.

“According to British Telecom records, twenty-seven calls have been placed from the telephone in the Northumberland Road residence to a phone located at Number Fourteen Reginald Street in Luton during the past eighteen months. Five of these calls were placed after the disappearance of Elizabeth Halton.”

Seymour frowned. Luton, a heavily Muslim suburb north of London, was one of MI5’s worst problems.

“Go on,” he said.

“According to your matrix, the telephone in Luton is located in the home of a man named Nabil Elbadry. Mr. Elbadry runs an import-export business and several other enterprises. He does not appear on any of your lists of known terrorist sympathizers or jihadi activists.”

“So what’s the problem?” Seymour asked.

“When I saw the name a few minutes ago, I knew I’d seen it somewhere before.”

“Where?”

“In a cache of Sword of Allah files we obtained from the Egyptian SSI.”

Seymour felt his stomach begin to burn. “Keep going, Miss Sarid.”

“Five years ago, the Egyptians arrested a man named Kemel Elbadry in Cairo. Under interrogation at the Torah Prison complex, he admitted to taking part in several Sword of Allah operations inside Egypt.”

“What does this have to do with Nabil Elbadry from Luton?”

“According to Kemel’s file, he had a brother named Nabil who immigrated to England in 1987. That corresponds exactly with the details on Nabil Elbadry’s immigration records.”

“Is Kemel still in custody?”

“He’s dead.”

“Executed?”

“Unclear.”

Graham Seymour stood up and called for quiet in the operations room.

“Nabil Elbadry,” he shouted. “Number Fourteen Reginald Street, Luton. I want to know everything there is to know about this man and his business interests and I want to know it in five minutes or less.”

He looked at the girl. She nodded her head once and limped slowly back to the conference room.

The boys in black came for him ten minutes after Ishaq left the cell. As they led him up the narrow stairs, Gabriel prepared himself for another beating. Instead, upon his arrival in the warehouse, he was lowered rather cordially into a folding aluminum chair.

He looked straight ahead and saw the lens of a video camera. Ishaq, now playing the role of director and cinematographer, ordered the four men in black to stand at Gabriel’s back. Three held Heckler amp; Koch compact submachine guns. One held a knife ominously. Gabriel knew his time had not yet come. His hands were cuffed in front. Infidels about to suffer the profound indignity of beheading always had their hands bound in back.

Ishaq made a few minor changes to the arrangement of his props, then stepped from behind his camera and handed Gabriel his script. Gabriel looked down. Then, like an actor unhappy with his lines, he tried to hand it back.

“Read it!” Ishaq demanded.

“No,” replied Gabriel calmly.

“Read it or I’ll kill you now.”

Gabriel let the script fall from his hands.

It took Graham Seymour’s task force only ten minutes to assemble a detailed inventory of all business interests and properties registered to Nabil Elbadry of Reginald Street, Luton. His eyes stopped halfway down the list. A company in which Elbadry was a minority partner owned a warehouse in West Dock Street in Harwich, not far from the ferry port. Seymour stood and went quickly to the map. Harwich was approximately forty miles from the spot where the Essex police had discovered the abandoned boat. He walked back to his desk and dialed the Israeli command post in Kensington.

Ishaq snatched up the fallen pages, then, after composing himself, read the statement on Gabriel’s behalf. Gabriel had committed many crimes against Palestinians and Muslims, Ishaq declared, and for these crimes he would soon face the justice of the sword. Gabriel did not listen to the entire recitation of his sins. Instead he looked down at the floor of the warehouse and wondered why Ishaq had not bothered to obscure his face before stepping in front of the camera. He knew the answer, of course: Ishaq was a martyr in the making and they were going to die together. When Ishaq was finished reading Gabriel’s death sentence, he walked over to the camera and checked to make certain it had recorded properly. Satisfied, he signaled the boys in black to commence their next beating. It seemed to last an eternity. The stab of the needle was an act of mercy. Gabriel’s eyes fell shut and he felt himself drowning in black water.

“How long will it take you to get your teams in place, Uzi?”

“I moved everyone that way after the Essex police found the boat. I can have three teams in Harwich in twenty minutes or less. The question is, what do we do when we get there?”

“First we determine whether he’s really there and, if so, whether he is still alive. Then we wait.”

“Wait? For what, boss?”

“We came here to get the American girl, Uzi. And we’re not leaving without her.”

H arwich, ancient port of fifteen thousand souls at the confluence of the rivers Stour and Orwell, lay darkened and slumbering beneath a steady onslaught of rain. The waters of Ramsey Creek were empty of commercial craft, and only a handful of cars had gathered at the ferry terminal for the morning’s first passage to the Continent. The medieval town center was tightly shuttered and abandoned to the gulls.

It was into this setting that six field operatives from the foreign intelligence service of the State of Israel arrived at precisely 4:45 A.M. on Christmas morning. By five o’clock they had confirmed that the warehouse in West Dock Road was indeed occupied, and by 5:15 they had managed to place a small wireless camera in the corner of a broken window at the back. They were now carefully dispersed among the surrounding streets. Yaakov had taken up a post hundred yards from the warehouse in the Station Road. Yossi was encamped in the Refinery Road. Oded and Mordecai had hastily concealed the surveillance van beneath an overpass of the A120. Mikhail and Chiara, who had spent that night atop the BMW bike, were sheltering in the back of the van, staring at the screen of the video receiver. The image there was poorly framed and prone to static. Even so, they could see clearly what was taking place inside the warehouse. Four men dressed in black were loading large drums of liquid into the back of a Vauxhall panel van, under the supervision of a slender Egyptian-looking man in a burgundy V-necked sweater.

At 5:40, the five men slipped out of camera range. Then, ten minutes later, they returned with the final component of their weapon of mass murder-a man in a blue-and-white tracksuit, bound and trussed in packing tape, his face bloodied and swollen.

“Please tell me he’s alive, Mikhail.”

“He’s alive, Chiara.”

“How can you tell?”

“They wouldn’t be putting him in with the bomb if he was dead.”

But the best evidence he was alive, Mikhail thought darkly, was his head. If Gabriel were dead, it wouldn’t still be attached to his shoulders. He didn’t share this observation with Chiara. She’d been through enough that night already.

At 5:55, the four men in black stripped down to their street clothes. Three climbed into a Mercedes cargo truck and departed. The fourth climbed behind the wheel of the Vauxhall panel van, while the Egyptian-looking man with the burgundy sweater joined Gabriel in the back. At precisely six A.M., the van turned into West Dock Street and made its way toward the entrance of the A120. Four vehicles followed carefully after it. Yaakov took the first shift at the point, while Chiara and Mikhail brought up the rear on the BMW bike. Mikhail sat on the back. The gunner’s seat.

Gabriel opened one eye, then, slowly, the other. He tried to move his limbs but could not. The crown of his head was pressing against something metallic. He was able to twist his neck just enough to see that the object was a steel drum. There were other drums, five more in fact, linked by a network of wires leading to a detonator switch on the console next to the driver. Ishaq was seated opposite Gabriel. His legs were crossed and a gun lay in his lap. He was smiling, as though proud of the clever way in which he had unveiled the method of Gabriel’s pending execution.

“Where are we going?” Gabriel asked.

“Paradise.”

“Does your driver know the way, or is he just following his nose?”

“He knows,” said Ishaq. “He’s been preparing for this ride for a very long time.”

Gabriel twisted his head around and looked at him. He was several years younger than Ishaq, clean shaven, and had both hands on the wheel like a novice out for his first drive alone.

“I want to sit up,” Gabriel said.

“It’s probably better if you stay down. If you sit up, it’s going to hurt.”

“I don’t care,” Gabriel said.

“Suit yourself.”

He took hold of Gabriel’s shoulders and propped him carelessly against the passenger-side wall of the cargo hold. Ishaq was right. It did hurt to sit up. In fact, it hurt so damned much he nearly fainted. But at least now he could see out through a portion of the windshield. It was still dark out, but one side of the sky was gradually turning a deep, luminous blue-the first light, Gabriel reckoned, of Christmas morning. Judging from the modest speed they were making, and the absence of any other traffic noise, they were traveling on a B-road. He glimpsed a road sign as it flashed past: SHRUB END 3. Shrub End? Where in God’s name was Shrub End?