The Secret Servant

Washington—Robert Halton was seated at the desk in his private study, where he had remained throughout that long night, waiting for word from the White House Situation Room. Though he had been expecting a call for many hours, the sound of the ringing telephone caused him to recoil involuntarily, as though from a nearby gunshot. As he snatched the receiver from the cradle, he thought for an instant that he could hear the sound of Elizabeth weeping. It must have been a burst of interference on the line—or a hallucination, he would think later—for the voice he heard when he brought the phone to his ear belonged not to his daughter but to Cyrus Mansfield, the president’s national security advisor.
    Halton could tell from Mansfield’s guarded greeting that the news from Denmark was not what he had been praying for, though nothing could have prepared him for what was relayed to him next. Gabriel Allon and his Egyptian asset had been led from Copenhagen to the tip of Denmark, said Mansfield. There had been an incident of some sort at an isolated cottage on the North Sea, the details of which were still unclear. There had been an explosion. There were at least three known deaths. Until additional resources arrived on the scene, including Danish forensic teams, it would be impossible to know whether Elizabeth was among those killed.
    For the remainder of that night, Robert Halton was cast into a new kind of Hell. Cyrus Mansfield called with a maddening regularity, even when there was little new or vital to report. As is common in situations such as these, much of the information was contradictory and later proven wrong. Halton was told there were three bodies in the house, then, thirty minutes later, was informed that there were four. There was evidence Elizabeth had been in Denmark, said Mansfield. There was speculation she might still be there. There had been gunfire. Allon had been gravely wounded. Allon had been killed.
    Finally, at 7:05 A.M . London time, as a gray dawn was breaking over Regent’s Park, the president telephoned to say that Danish fire-and-rescue had found just three bodies in the charred ruins of the residence. According to a statement from Gabriel Allon, who was injured but very much alive, the dead consisted of two terrorists—one male and one female—and the Egyptian asset Ibrahim Fawaz. The National Security Council, the FBI, the CIA, and the State Department were all operating under the assumption that Elizabeth was still alive, and frantic efforts to secure her release would continue until the deadline and beyond. Robert Halton hung up the phone and fell to his knees in a desperate prayer of thanksgiving. Then he stumbled into his bathroom and was violently sick.
    He lay for several minutes on the cold marble floor, his body seemingly paralyzed by anguish and grief. Where are you, Robert Halton? he thought. Where was the business maverick who had turned a small oil exploration company into a global energy conglomerate? Where was the man who, for the sake of his daughter, had stoically endured the loss of his beloved wife? Where was the man who, against all odds, had managed to put his best friend in the White House? He was gone, thought Halton. He had been kidnapped by the terrorists, just as surely as Elizabeth had been.
    He rose to his feet and rinsed his mouth in the sink, then stepped from the bathroom and returned to his office. It was now Friday morning. By nightfall his daughter would be dead. Robert Carlyle Halton, billionaire and kingmaker, had watched helplessly while the combined forces of American intelligence, diplomacy, and law enforcement, along with their counterparts across Europe and the Middle East, had searched in vain for his daughter. He had stood idly by and listened to their empty assurances that eventually Elizabeth would be brought home to him alive. He was prepared to stand idly by no longer. He would now deploy the only weapon available to him, a weapon even the jihadists understood. The course of action he was about to undertake bordered on treason, for, if successful, Halton would be providing the terrorists a weapon they could later use against the United States and its allies. But if treason was necessary to save his daughter, then Robert Halton was prepared to be a traitor, if only for a few hours.
    He walked calmly to his desk and sat down before the computer, imagining for a moment that he was no longer a helpless and grief-stricken father but once