The Messenger

car while holding an ether-soaked rag over her nose and mouth. She scratched at him. She flailed. She landed several futile kicks to his cast-iron shins. Then the drug took hold, and she felt herself spiraling toward the ground. Someone caught her. Someone placed her in the trunk of a car. A face appeared briefly and looked down at her, inquisitive and oddly earnest. The face of Muhammad . Then the hatch closed, and she was enveloped in darkness. When the car began to move, she passed out.

33.

Zug, Switzerland

    G USTAV S CHMIDT , chief of counterterrorism for the Swiss federal security service, was an unlikely American ally in the war against
    Islamic extremism. In a country where elected politicians, the press, and most of the population were solidly opposed to the United States and its war on terror, Schmidt had quietly forged personal bonds with his counterparts in Washington, especially Adrian Carter. When Carter needed permission to operate on Swiss soil, Schmidt invariably granted it. When Carter wanted to make an al-Qaeda operative vanish from the Federation, Schmidt usually gave him the green light. And when Carter needed a place to put down a plane, Schmidt regularly granted him landing rights. The private airstrip at Zug, a wealthy industrial city in the heart of the country, was Carter’s favorite in Switzerland. Schmidt’s, too.
    It was shortly after midnight when the Gulfstream V executive jet sunk out of the clouds and touched down on the snow-dusted runway. Five minutes later, Schmidt was seated across from Carter in the modestly appointed cabin. “We have a situation,” Carter said. “To be perfectly honest with you, we don’t have a complete picture.” He gestured toward his traveling companion. “This is Tom. He’s a doctor. We think we’ll need his services before the night is over. Relax, Gustav. Have a drink. We may be here awhile.”
    Carter then looked out the window at the swirling snow and said nothing more. He didn’t have to. Schmidt now knew the situation. One of Carter’s agents was in trouble, and Carter wasn’t at all sure he was going to get the agent back alive. Schmidt opened the brandy and drank alone. At times like these he was glad he had been born Swiss.

    A SIMILAR VIGIL was under way at that same moment at the general aviation terminal at Kloten Airport. The man doing the waiting was not a senior Swiss policeman but Moshe, the bodel from Paris. At 12:45 A.M. , four men emerged from the terminal into the snowstorm. Moshe tapped the horn of his Audi A8, and the four men turned in unison and headed his way. Yaakov, Mikhail, and Eli Lavon climbed in the back. Gabriel sat up front.
    “Where is she?”
    “Heading south.”
    “Drive,” said Gabriel.

    S ARAH WOKE to paralyzing cold, her ears ringing with the hiss of tires over wet asphalt. Where am I now? she thought, and then she remembered. She was in the trunk of a Mercedes, an unwilling passenger on Muhammad’s night journey to oblivion. Slowly, bit by bit, she gathered up the fragments of this day without end and placed them in proper sequence. She saw Zizi in his helicopter, glancing at his wristwatch as he sent her to her death. And Jean-Michel, her traveling companion, catching a few minutes of sleep along the way. And finally, she saw the monster, Ahmed bin Shafiq, warning her that his bloodbath at the Vatican was not yet complete. She heard his voice now; the drumbeat cadence of his questions.
    I want to know the name of the man who contacted you on the beach at Saline…
    He is Yaakov, she thought. And he is five times the man you are .
    I want to know the name of the girl with the limp who walked by Le Tetou during Zizi’s dinner party…
    She is Dina, she thought. The avenged remnant .
    I want to know the name of the man who spilled wine on my colleague in Saint-Jean…
    He is Gabriel, she thought. And one day very soon he’s going to kill you .
    They’re gone now, and you’re all alone…
    No, I’m not, she thought. They’re here with me. All of them .
    And in her mind she saw them coming for her through the snowfall. Would they arrive before Muhammad bestowed upon her a painless death? Would they come in time to learn the secret that Ahmed bin Shafiq had so arrogantly spit in her face? Sarah knew she could help them. She had information Muhammad wanted—and it was hers to give at whatever pace, and in whatever detail, she desired. Go slowly, she thought. Take all the time in the world .
    She