Daniel Silva - The Secret Servant

At 6:18 P.M. Eastern time, a copy reached the hands of Adrian Carter, who at that moment was seated in his regular chair in the CIA’s Global Ops Center, monitoring a highly illegal clandestine interrogation now taking place at a derelict farmhouse in the plains of northern Germany. He read the note quickly and for the first time in more than a week felt a fleeting sense of hope. Then he set the cable aside and stared at his monitor. The feed had been silent for five minutes. Gabriel, it seemed, had taken a break for dinner.

They brought his clothing, then they brought him food: rice and beans, hard-boiled eggs and feta cheese, flatbread and sweet tea. He took a single bite, then pushed the plate a few inches toward Gabriel. Gabriel refused at first, but Ibrahim insisted, and so they sat there for several moments, prisoner and interrogator, sharing a simple meal in silence.

“We Muslims have a tradition called Eid,” Ibrahim said. “If a sheep is to be slaughtered, it is given one final meal.” He looked up from his food at Gabriel. “Is that what you are doing now, my friend? Giving your sacrificial lamb one final taste of life?”

“How long did they hold you?” Gabriel asked.

“Six months,” said Ibrahim. “And my release was as undignified as my arrest and incarceration. They turned me onto the streets of Minya in rags and ordered me to go home. When I entered my apartment, my wife screamed. She thought I was an intruder. She didn’t recognize me.”

“I take it your daughter wasn’t there when you arrived.”

Ibrahim tore off a piece of the flatbread and pushed it around the rice for a moment. “She died that night in the torture chambers of Minya. She was raped to death by Mubarak’s secret policemen. They buried her body in a criminal’s grave on the edge of the desert and refused to let me even see it. For them it was just another form of torture.”

He sipped at his tea contemplatively. “My wife blamed me for Jihan’s death. It was her right, of course. If I hadn’t joined the Sword of Allah, Jihan never would have been taken. For many days, my wife refused even to look at me. A week later I was informed by the university that my services were no longer needed. I was a broken man. I’d lost everything. My job. My daughter. My dignity.”

“And so you decided to leave Egypt?”

“I had no choice. To remain would have meant living underground. I wanted to sever my ties with the Sword. I wanted no part of jihadist politics. I wanted a new life, in a place where men did not murder little girls in torture chambers.”

“Why Amsterdam?”

“My wife had family living in the Oud West. They told us that the Muslim community in Holland was growing and that for the most part the Dutch were welcoming and tolerant. I applied for a visa at the Dutch embassy and was granted one straightaway.”

“I take it you neglected to inform the Dutch of your connection to the Sword of Allah.”

“It might have slipped my mind.”

“And the rest of the story you told me that night in Amsterdam?”

“It was all true. I built roads, then I swept them. I made furniture.” He held up his ruined hand. “Even after I lost my fingers.”

“And you had no contact with other Sword members?”

“Most of those who fled Egypt settled in America or London. Occasionally one would blow through Amsterdam with the wind.”

“And when they did?”

“They tried to draw me back into the fight, of course. I told them I was no longer interested in Islamic politics. I told them I wanted to live an Islamic life on my own and leave matters of governance and state to others.”

“And the Sword abided by your wishes?”

“Eventually,” Ibrahim said. “My son wasn’t so accommodating, however.”

“It is because of your son that we’re here tonight.”

Ibrahim nodded.

“A son who is half Egyptian and half Palestinian-a volatile mix.”

“Very volatile.”

“Tell me his name.”

“Ishaq,” the Egyptian said. “My son’s name is Ishaq.”

“It began with harmless questions, the kind of questions any curious adolescent boy might ask of his father. Why did we leave our home in Egypt to come to Europe? Why, if you were once a university professor, do you sweep streets? Why do we live in the land of strangers instead of the House of Islam? For many years, I told him only lies. But when he was fifteen, I told him the truth.”

“You told him you were a member of the Sword of Allah?”

“I did.”

“You told him about your arrest and torture? And about the death of Jihan?”

Ibrahim nodded. “I hoped that by telling Ishaq the truth, I would snuff out any jihadist embers that might be smoldering inside him. But my story had precisely the opposite effect. Ishaq became more interested in Islamic politics, not less. It also turned him into an extremely angry young man. He began to hate. He hated the Egyptian regime and the Americans who supported it.”

“And he wanted revenge.”

“It is something you and the Americans never seem to fully comprehend about us,” Ibrahim said. “When we are wronged, we must seek revenge. It is in our culture, our bloodstream. Each time you kill or torture one of us, you are creating an extended family of enemies that is honor bound to take retribution.”

Gabriel knew of this phenomenon better than most. He scooped up a bit of rice and beans with the bread and motioned Ibrahim to keep talking.

“Ishaq began to withdraw from Dutch society,” he said. “He no longer maintained friendships with Dutch boys and started routinely referring to Dutch girls as temptresses and whores. He wore a kufi and galabiya. He listened only to Arabic music and stopped drinking beer. When he was eighteen, he was arrested for assaulting a homosexual man outside a bar in the Leidseplein. The charges were dropped after I went to the injured man and offered to make restitution.”

“Did he go to university?”

Ibrahim nodded. “At nineteen he was accepted into the school of information and computer sciences at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I hoped that the demands of his studies would temper his Islamic fervor, but once he settled in Rotterdam he became more Islamic in his outlook, not less. He fell in with a group of like-minded young jihadists. He traveled constantly to various marches and meetings. He grew his beard. It was as if my youth were being played out in front of me all over again.” He ate in silence for a moment. “I came to Europe to get away from Islamic politics. I wanted a new life, for myself and for my son. But by the mid-nineties radical Islamist politics had come to the West. And in many ways it was more radical and toxic than the Islam of the Orient. It had been tainted by Saudi money and Saudi imams. It was Wahhabi and Salafist in its outlook. It was toxic and violent.”

“Was he involved in terrorist activities then?”

Ibrahim shook his head. “He was too confused to make a commitment to any one group or idea. He wasn’t sure if he was an Egyptian or a Palestinian. One day he was with the friends of Hamas, the next he was singing the praises of the mujahideen in Afghanistan.”

“So what happened?”

“Osama bin Laden flew airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington,” Ibrahim said. “And everything changed.”

Gabriel was not ready to relinquish the illusion of a waiting American airplane just yet, and so he summoned Sarah with two firm raps on the dining-room door and murmured a few barely intelligible words into her ear about delaying its departure for a few minutes. Then he looked at Ibrahim and said, “You were telling me about 9/11. Please, continue.”