At 6:10, the surveillance team at SWIFT’s headquarters on Avenue Adele in La Hulpe, south of the city, reported to the team in the Citadines that they had spotted “Harry” leaving work.
“Showtime,” said Major Kirby. Two of the five men in the apartment had already set off, but the remaining three now departed and walked to the Metro station on Avenue Louise. They were carrying sports bags, marked with the symbols of Adidas and Nike, which contained their weapons: Three Heckler amp; Koch Mark 23 semiautomatic pistols with suppressors, the special operator’s weapon of choice.
The three traveled by subway to Schuman station, melding into the wave of homeward-bound commuters; they found the Brussels railway line, which they took to the Watermael junction. They exited the station and walked west a half mile into the park, where they stationed themselves at the agreed watch posts.
The park cut a deep, green elliptical swath in the southern tier of the city. It was a smaller version of Paris’s Bois de Boulogne: woods and meadows, with sandy paths bordering a kidney-shaped pond in the center of the park.
Joseph Sabah was driving north toward home in his gray Peugeot, meanwhile. He parked in the garage of his apartment building, changed out of his suit into a pair of blue jeans and hugged his dog, Emile, who had greeted his master’s return by racing around in a circle in the living room of the apartment. The dog was now standing in the kitchen next to the leash, waiting for his walk.
Sabah fastened the leash to Emile’s collar and descended the stairs to the street. It was still light outside, the sky illuminated on this summer day as if by a low-watt bulb. The dog couldn’t wait to do his business; he dropped a turd a block from home. Sabah scooped it up in a plastic bag and continued on toward the park; he was carrying a second bag for later in the journey.
They walked along Avenue George Bergmann, the dog sniffing a few of his fellows along the way, and crossed into the park on the Avenue de l’Oree. The dog knew the route. He pulled Sabah south toward the pond on their left, stopping every few seconds when he encountered a new smell. Sabah tugged ineffectually at his leash.
Major Kirby was sitting on a bench along the Avenue de Flores, just inside the park. He saw “Harry” enter and spoke into the microphone in his sleeve to his colleagues, who were arrayed at other looking posts. It was light, and people were out strolling, so it wasn’t easy to conceal their movements. It was so much easier to grab people in the dark.
The team slowly converged toward Sabah, two ahead of him, three behind. He was so slow, stopping and starting with the dog. The idea was to take him on his way back home, when it was darker, but it was still the soft half-light of a summer evening. The trees seemed to enfold the space; amid the green, the noise of the city fell away. You could hear birds calling to each other as they settled down for the night.
Sabah was crossing a wide expanse of grass now, entirely open, which took him to the northern edge of the pond. The dog relieved himself a second time; he was tired and ready to head home. Sabah took out his second bag and gingerly scooped up the droppings. The dog was tugging on the leash now, pulling his master homeward. They cut an arc across the lawn toward a path through the woods that would take them out via the Avenue Victoria.
“Now,” said Kirby into his sleeve. “Close on him.”
Two members of the team entered the wooded path and traversed it seventy yards to the end, where they waited. There were a few people along the path; Kirby had hoped it would be empty by that hour, but they had to work with what they had.
Sabah entered the canopy of trees, the two plastic bags swinging from his hand. Kirby and the other following members of the team were coming up behind. They were on either side of him now, keeping pace. Sabah looked at them, blankly at first, but then more anxiously as they matched his steps. They were in the middle of the wooded area. Kirby looked ahead and behind. He saw only two Belgians, sitting on benches, tired from their walks. This was their best chance.
“Go,” he said. The two men astride Sabah continued to flank him, but now the two at the far end moved rapidly toward them. Sabah was looking anxiously, left and right and ahead, and the dog was barking. One of Kirby’s men in the forward team bumped Sabah as he passed, jabbing him with a needle.
Sabah cried out and the dog yammered, but a moment later the target’s body was crumpling and the two men astride quickly converged to prop him up, pulling his arms over their shoulders and putting a cloth to his mouth so he couldn’t make any more noise. One of the Belgians looked up for a moment. But the team kept going, as if helping a friend home. The dog’s yelps ended suddenly, thanks to another needle, and one of Kirby’s men picked him up and cradled him in his arms.
Kirby called for the driver who had been idling just outside the park to meet them at the Avenue Victoria where it curved toward Franklin Roosevelt. His van was marked with the insignia of the Belgian Croix-Rouge.
The driver was there waiting, clad in the yellow vest of an emergency worker, when they emerged from the grove of trees: two men supporting a sagging body between them; a third carrying a small, furry animal. The door of the van was open, and the group quickly entered. Several passersby stopped to watch, in the curious way people do when they see something unusual happening, but they didn’t attempt to intervene. The van pulled away. Fifty yards up the road, another car picked up the other two members of the team, and in an instant they were off, heading south on the N5 toward Waterloo.
31
It was a tidy locale for a messy endeavor: The house was on a quiet street near a suburban golf club. The residence had a wrought-iron fence, a plush, spongy lawn and ivy growing up the brick facade. The Brussels station kept a tenant there normally, so that the place wouldn’t look empty and suspicious, but the tenant had been temporarily evicted so that this respectable Flemish address could momentarily serve as a “black site,” where an undocumented and certainly illegal event could be handled discreetly.
Kirby’s team had hooded the prisoner, as much to protect their identities as to frighten him. He had revived on the way, thanks to an antidote that counteracted the effects of the tranquilizer. His first query in the van was about his dog, and he seemed very happy when the curly-haired poodle was placed in his lap, even though little Emile was still out cold. He asked a few more frantic questions-where he was, who had taken him, what he had done-but Major Kirby had been instructed not to talk to him, and Sabah eventually gave up.
The ersatz Croix-Rouge van pulled into the driveway around eight p.m. The garage door cranked up to receive them, and the hooded man was gingerly removed from the vehicle and trundled indoors to the living room, where the hood was exchanged for a blindfold and he was offered food and drink.
The interrogator, who called himself “Sam,” sat across from Sabah. He had flown in that day from the big CIA station in Paris. Sophie Marx sat in the next chair, a notebook on her lap.
Sam turned on a tape recorder. His voice was deep and insistent. He spoke stiff French, with a noticeable accent.
“Nous sommes prets a commencer, Monsieur Sabah. Si vous cooperez et vous nous donnez des informations correctes, ce sera un processus tres simple, et vous serriez libre. Mais si vous resistez ou mentez, vous serriez en grand difficulte, je vous assure. Vous vous merderiez!”
He paused, to let the gravity of his words sink in, but Sabah was smiling.
“You are American!” the prisoner said in English. “I am not so frightened now. I thought you might be Al-Qaeda.”
Sabah’s smile widened incongruously below the blindfold. He looked genuinely relieved to have been abducted by Americans.