The Secret Servant

we won’t negotiate.”
    “You’re assuming that’s what the Sword really wants: to negotiate. I’m not so sure about that.” Cantwell came into Carter’s office and sat down. “Our analysts have been poring over every word Sheikh Tayyib Abdul-Razzaq has ever written or said publicly: sermons, fatwas, transcripts of interviews, anything we can lay our hands on. A couple of years ago he gave an interview to an Arabic-language newspaper from London under conditions of extreme secrecy somewhere inside Egypt. During the interview the sheikh was asked to name the most likely scenario under which the Islamists might seize power in Egypt—an election, a coup, or a popular uprising. The sheikh was very clear in his response. He said the only way the Islamists will ever seize power in Egypt is by inciting the masses to rise up against their oppressors. Demonstrations, rioting, clashes in the street with the army: an intifada of sorts, from the Nile Delta to Upper Egypt.”
    “What’s your point, Shep?”
    “Sheikh Tayyib is a religious fanatic and mass murderer who also happens to be a very shrewd and clever character. The fact that he is still alive after all these years is proof of that. He had to know we would never bow to his demands to release his brother in exchange for Elizabeth Halton. But maybe he doesn’t really want his brother. Maybe what he really wants is his uprising.”
    “And he gets his uprising by provoking a confrontation with us?”
    “At this moment the Egyptian security services are tearing the country to pieces in order to help the infidel Americans find the daughter of a billionaire ambassador,” Cantwell said. “Think how that must look to an Egyptian Islamist who lives in desperate poverty, who’s lost a brother or a father to Mubarak’s torture chambers. Those torture chambers are filling up as we speak, and they’re filling because the regime is looking for one American woman.”
    “How bad is the situation in Egypt right now?”
    “The reports we’re getting from Cairo Station say it’s extremely bad. In fact, it’s worse than anyone there has ever seen it. If this goes on much longer, Sheikh Tayyib is going to get his uprising. And history is going to remember our president as the man who lost Egypt.”
    Cantwell stood and started to leave, then stopped and turned suddenly. “One more thing,” he said. “The president just sent our friend the Sphinx a very clear message. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Sphinx sent one in return. If I were you, I’d get on the phone to Homeland Security and raise the National Threat Advisory immediately.”
    “How high?”
    “Red,” said Cantwell as he slipped from the room. “ Blood red.”
    Carter looked at his watch. It was 1:37 P.M . The Muslim evening prayer had just begun in Amsterdam. He stared at his telephone and waited for it to ring.

24
     
    O UD W EST, A MSTERDAM : 7:09 P.M. , M ONDAY
     
    A gust of cold wind froze Ibrahim Fawaz in his tracks as he pulled open the door of the al-Hijrah Mosque. This was his twenty-fifth winter in Holland and still he was not accustomed to the cold. Providence and fate had brought him here, to this garden of cinder block and cement in northern Europe, but in his heart he was still an ibn balad from Upper Egypt—a son of the soil and a child of the river. He stood in the vestibule for a moment, turning up his coat collar and tightening his scarf, then stepped tentatively into the street under the watchful gaze of two rosy-cheeked Amsterdam policemen. He exchanged pleasantries with them in fluent Dutch, then turned and set out along the Jan Hazenstraat.
    The two police officers were now a permanent fixture outside the mosque. The al-Hijrah had been searched twice by Dutch investigators in the wake of the attack in London. Files and computers had been seized, and the imam and several of his associates had been questioned about their knowledge of Samir al-Masri and the other members of his cell. Tonight the imam had accused the infidels of using the attacks in London and the murder of Solomon Rosner as justification for a crackdown against Islam in the Netherlands. Ibrahim Fawaz had lived through a crackdown against Muslims before, one that had been conducted with a ruthlessness and a savagery that the Europeans, even in their worst nightmares, could scarcely imagine. The imam was only using the police investigation as a pretext to stir up trouble. But then that was what the imam did