The Secret Servant

chats. That’s your specialty, isn’t it, Wazir? Quiet chats with Islamic extremists?”
    “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” al-Zayyat replied. “Trust me, Allon, we’re kicking down doors as we speak, but the Sphinx knew we would. No one in Egypt knows where the girl is. I doubt even Sheikh Tayyib knows the operational details. Your best chance at finding her alive died with Samir al-Masri. The Sword is good at hiding people.”
    “Someone knows,” Gabriel said. “Someone has to know.”
    “The Sphinx knows. Find the Sphinx and you’ll find the girl.” The Egyptian put his hand on the grip of the briefcase. “So have I earned my fifty thousand yet?”
    “I want everything you have on the Sword of Allah,” Gabriel said. “Case files, membership rolls, known front organizations in Europe. Names, addresses, telephone numbers.”
    “It’s in a suitcase in the trunk of my car,” the Egyptian said. “But it’s going to cost you.”
    Gabriel sighed. “How much, Wazir?”
    “Another fifty thousand.”
    “I don’t happen to have another fifty thousand on me.”
    The Egyptian smiled. “I’ll take an IOU,” he said. “I know you’re good for it.”
     
     
     
    The Samsonite suitcase that Wazir al-Zayyat produced from the trunk of his rented Volkswagen contained the lifeblood of one of the world’s most violent terror organizations and was therefore a steal at fifty thousand. When the Egyptian was gone, Gabriel opened a directory of known Sword members and started reading. Five minutes later he came across a name that was familiar to him. He located a photocopy of the corresponding file and examined the photograph. It was dated and of poor quality; even so, Gabriel could tell it was the same man he had encountered a week earlier in Amsterdam. I’m the person you’re looking for in Solomon Rosner’s files , the man had said to him that night. And I’ve come to help you .

16
     
    P ARIS : 3:45 P.M. , F RIDAY
     
    T he knock was cautious and contrite. Dr. Yusuf Ramadan, professor of Near Eastern history at American University in Cairo, looked up from his work and saw a woman standing in the doorway of his office. Like all female employees of the Institute of Islamic Studies, she was veiled. Even so, the professor averted his eyes slightly as she spoke.
    “I’m sorry to interrupt, Professor, but if it’s all right with you, I’ll be leaving now.”
    “Of course, Atifah.”
    “Can I get you anything before I go? More tea, perhaps?”
    “I’ve had too much already.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “In fact, I’m going to be leaving soon myself. I’m meeting a colleague from the Sorbonne for coffee at four-thirty.”
    “Don’t forget your umbrella. It’s still raining.”
    “It’s been raining for five days.”
    “Welcome to Paris. Peace be upon you, Professor Ramadan.”
    “And you, Atifah.”
    The woman slipped out of the office and quietly closed the door. Ramadan spent another ten minutes tapping away at the keyboard of his laptop computer, then placed the computer and his research files into his briefcase and stood up. He was slender and bearded, with receding curly hair, soft brown eyes, and the fine aquiline features often associated with Egyptian aristocracy. He was not of aristocratic birth; indeed, the man now regarded as one of Egypt’s most influential intellectuals and writers was born the son of a postal clerk in a poor village at the edge of the Fayoum Oasis. Brilliant, charismatic, and a self-professed political moderate, he had taken a leave of absence from the university eighteen months earlier and signed on as a visiting scholar in residence with the institute. The ostensible purpose of his stay in Paris was to complete his masterwork, a critical reexamination of the Crusades that promised to be the standard against which all future books on the subject would be measured. When he was not writing, Professor Ramadan could often be seen in the lecture halls of the Sorbonne, or on French television, or even in the corridors of government power. Embraced wholeheartedly by the intelligentsia and media of Paris, his opinions were much in demand on matters ranging from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the American occupation of Iraq and, of course, the scourge of Islamic terror, a topic with which he was intimately familiar.
    He walked over to his narrow window and looked down into the boulevard de la Chapelle. Dark and raw, a halfhearted drizzle: