The Secret Servant

anyone dies anywhere in the country tonight, he’ll be our top suspect.”
    “I’ll tell him,” said Carter.
    The curiosity returned to Mortensen’s eyes. “What’s he like?”
    “Allon?”
    Mortensen nodded.
    “He’s a rather serious chap and a bit rough around the edges.”
    “They all are,” said Mortensen.
    “Yes,” said Carter. “But, then, who can blame them?”
     
     
     
    There are few ugly buildings in central Copenhagen. The glass-and-steel structure on the Dag Hammarskjölds Allé that houses the American embassy is one of them. The CIA station there is small and somewhat cramped—Copenhagen was an intelligence backwater during the Cold War and remains so today—but its secure conference room seats twenty comfortably, and its electronics are fully up-to-date. Carter thought they needed a code name, and Gabriel, after a brief deliberation, suggested Moriah, the hill in Jerusalem where God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his only son. Carter, whose father was an Episcopal minister, thought the choice inspired, and from that point forward they were referred to in all Agency communications as the Moriah Team and nothing else.
    Ibrahim Fawaz arrived from Amsterdam at six that evening, accompanied by Oded and Yaakov. Lars Mortensen appeared at 6:15 and accepted Gabriel’s act of contrition for the sin of failing to obtain Danish authorization before barging onto Danish soil. Gabriel then requested permission for the rest of his team to remain in Denmark to see the operation through, and Mortensen, clearly starstruck to be in the presence of the legend, immediately agreed. Mordecai and Sarah joined them after breaking camp at the Hotel d’Angleterre, while Eli Lavon came gratefully in from the cold of Nørrebro, looking like a man who had been on near-constant surveillance duty for more than a week.
    The hours of the early evening were the province of Mortensen and the Danes. At seven o’clock they disabled the phone line leading to the Nørrebro apartment and forwarded all calls to a number inside the CIA station. Fifteen minutes later two Danish agents—Mortensen wisely chose female agents to avoid a cultural confrontation—paid a quiet visit to the apartment for the expressed purpose of asking a few “routine” questions concerning the whereabouts of one Ishaq Fawaz. Mordecai’s original “glass” was still active and, much to Mortensen’s dismay, it was used by the Moriah Team to monitor the proceedings. They were fifteen minutes in duration and ended with the sound of Hanifah and Ahmed being taken into Danish custody for additional questioning. Hanifah was immediately relieved of her cell phone and the phone was ferried at high speed to the embassy, where Mordecai, with Carter and Mortensen looking over his shoulder, hastily mined it for any nuggets of useful intelligence.
    At eight o’clock a scene commenced that Carter would later liken to a deathwatch. They crowded around the rectangular table in the conference room, Americans at one end, Gabriel’s field warriors at the other, and Sarah perched uneasily between them. Mortensen placed himself directly in front of the speaker. Ibrahim sat to his right, nervously working the beads of his tasbih . Only Gabriel was in motion. He was pacing the length of the room like an actor on opening night, with one hand pressed firmly to his chin and his eyes boring into the telephone as though willing it to ring. Sarah tried to assure him that the call would come soon, but Gabriel seemed not to hear her. He was listening to other voices—the voice of Ishaq promising his wife that he would call at 9:30, and the voice of Hanifah warning that if he was one minute late she would refuse to answer. At 9:29, Gabriel ceased pacing and stood over the telephone. Ten seconds later it rang with the harshness of a fire alarm in a night ward. Gabriel reached for the receiver and lifted it slowly to his ear.

36
     
    C OPENHAGEN : 9:30 P.M. , W EDNESDAY
     
    G abriel listened for several seconds without speaking. Traffic rushing at speed along wet pavement. The distant blare of a car horn, like a warning of trouble to come.
    “Good evening, Ishaq,” he said calmly in Arabic. “I want you to listen very carefully, because I’m only going to say this once. Are you listening, Ishaq?”
    “Who is this?”
    “I’ll take that as a yes. I have your father, Ishaq. I also have Hanifah and Ahmed. We’re going to make a deal, Ishaq. Just you and me. You’re