The party that arrived at the house that evening entered not by the front door but through the old servants’ entrance off the rear courtyard. They came in four vehicles-a Volkswagen van, two matching Renault sedans, and a rather flashy Audi A8-and had anyone inquired about the purpose of their visit, they would have spoken of a long-planned reunion of old friends. A cursory inspection of the house would have supported their story. The kitchen had been well stocked with food and liquor, and the hearth in the drawing room had been laid with seasoned firewood. A more careful check of the premises, however, would have revealed that the once formal dining room had been made ready for an interrogation and that the house contained several pieces of sophisticated communications equipment unavailable on any commercial market. Such an examination might also have revealed that the small limestone chamber in the basement had been turned into a holding cell-and that the cell was now occupied by an Egyptian man of late middle age who was blindfolded, shackled, and stripped to his underwear. Gabriel regarded him silently for a moment, then climbed the stairs to the pantry, where Yaakov was standing with Sarah at his side.
“How long has he been in there?” Gabriel asked.
“A little over an hour,” replied Yaakov.
“Any problems?”
Yaakov shook his head. “We got out of Amsterdam cleanly, and he behaved himself nicely during the ride.”
“Did you have to use drugs on him?”
“It wasn’t necessary.”
“What about force?”
“I may have given him a couple love taps, but nothing he’ll ever remember.”
“Did anyone speak in front of him?”
“Just a few words in Arabic. Ibrahim did a bit of talking, though. He’s convinced he’s in the hands of the Americans.”
Good, thought Gabriel. That was exactly what he wanted Ibrahim to think. He led Sarah into the drawing room, where Dina and Rimona were reading the Sword of Allah dossiers before a crackling fire, then slipped through a pair of double doors into the dining room. It was empty, except for the rectangular table and two high-backed chairs. Mordecai was balanced on one of the chairs, fitting a miniature transmitter into the cobwebbed chandelier.
“This one’s the backup.” He leaped down off the chair and wiped his dusty hands against the legs of his trousers. “The primary microphone is down here.” He tapped the tabletop. “Put Ibrahim in this chair. That way the mic won’t miss a thing he says.”
“What about the secure link?”
“It’s up and running,” Mordecai said. “I’ll feed the signal live to King Saul Boulevard and they’ll bounce it to Langley. Based on what we’re picking up from the Americans, you’re the hottest ticket in town tonight.”
Mordecai walked out of the room and closed the doors behind him. Sarah looked around at the blank walls. “Surely there’s a good story behind this place,” she said.
“Before the war, it was owned by a prominent Jewish family named Rosenthal,” Gabriel said.
“And when the war broke out?”
“It was confiscated by an SS officer, and the Rosenthal family was deported to Auschwitz. A daughter managed to survive and reclaim the property, but in the fifties she gave up on trying to stay here and emigrated to Israel. The German people weren’t terribly kind to their fellow countrymen who managed to survive the Holocaust.”
“And the house?”
“She never sold it. When Shamron found out she still owned it, he convinced her to let us have use of it. Shamron always had a way of tucking things away for a rainy day. Houses, passports, people. We used it as a safe house and staging point during the Wrath of God operation. Eli and I spent many long nights here-some good, some not so good.”
Sarah lowered herself into the chair that would soon be occupied by Ibrahim Fawaz and folded her hands on the table. “What’s going to happen here tonight?” she asked.
“That depends entirely on Ibrahim. If he cooperates and tells me the truth, then things will go very smoothly. If he doesn’t…” Gabriel shrugged. “Yaakov is one of Shabak’s most skilled interrogators. He knows how to talk to men who aren’t afraid of death. It’s possible things might get unpleasant.”
“How unpleasant?”
“Are you asking me whether we will torture him?”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
“My goal tonight is to create an ally, Sarah, and one doesn’t create an ally with clubs and fists.”
“What if Ibrahim doesn’t want to be your ally?”
“Then he might soon find himself in a place where men aren’t shy about using extremely violent methods to extract information. But let us hope it doesn’t come to that-for all our sakes.”
“You don’t approve of torture?”
“I wish I could say it doesn’t work, but that’s not the case. Done properly, by trained professionals, placing physical and emotional stress on captured terrorists very often produces actionable intelligence that saves lives. But at what cost to the societies and security services that engage in it? A very high cost, unfortunately. It puts us in the same league as the Egyptians and the Jordanians and Saudis and every other brutal Arab secret police force that tortures its opponents. And ultimately it does harm to our cause because it turns believers into fanatics.”
“You condemn torture but have no qualms about killing?”
“No qualms?” He shook his head slowly. “Killing takes its toll, too, but I’m afraid killing is our only recourse. We have to kill the monsters before they kill us. And not with boots on the ground, as you Americans like to say, because that only gives the terrorists another moral victory when we invade their territory. The killing has to take place in the shadows, where no one can see it. We have to hunt them down ruthlessly. We have to terrorize them.” He looked at her again. “Welcome to our war, Sarah. You are now a true citizen of the night.”
“Thanks to you, I’ve been a citizen of the night for several months now.”
There was a knock at the door. It was Yaakov.
“I think he’s ready to talk.”
“You’re sure?”
Yaakov nodded.
“Give him ten more minutes,” Gabriel said. “Then bring him to me.”
They bore him carefully up the stairs and deposited him, still blindfolded and with his hands bound behind his back, in his designated seat. He made no protest, requested nothing, and revealed no sign of any fear. Indeed, he seemed to Gabriel like a martyr heroically waiting for the executioner’s ax to fall. It had been dark in the cellar; now, in the proper light, Gabriel could see his skin was covered in dark blotches. After allowing several minutes to elapse, he reached across the table and removed the blindfold. The Egyptian squinted in the sudden light, then opened his eyes slowly and glared malevolently at Gabriel across the divide.
“Where am I?”
“You are in a great deal of trouble.”
“Why have you kidnapped me?”
“No one has kidnapped you. You have been taken into custody.”
“By whom? For what reason?”
“By the Americans. And we both know the reason.”
“If I am in the hands of the Americans, then why are you here?”
“Because, obviously, I was the one who told them about you.”
“So much for your assurances about protecting me.”
“Those assurances were nullified the moment it became clear that you lied to me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“Really?”
“I told you everything I knew about the plot. If you and your British friends had acted more quickly, you might have been able to prevent it.” The Egyptian appraised him silently for a moment. “I enjoyed reading about your checkered past in the newspapers, Mr. Allon. I had no idea I was dealing with such an important man that night in Amsterdam.”