Daniel Silva - The Secret Servant

It was beginning to grow dark now; the streetlamps were burning more brightly and the lights in the shopwindows glowed with a greeting-card warmth. Gabriel had given up on trying to find the watchers and instead found himself gazing in wonder at the scenes around him. At children eating ice cream despite the falling snow. At the pretty young woman kneeling over the contents of a spilled shopping bag. At carolers dressed like elves singing about the birth of God with voices of angels. He remembered the words Uzi Navot had spoken that first night, as they drove through the hills outside Jerusalem. The Europeans condemned us for Lebanon, but what they don’t understand is that Lebanon is merely a preview of coming attractions. The movie will soon be showing in theaters all across Europe . Gabriel only hoped it wasn’t coming to Copenhagen tonight.

They paused at another crosswalk, then struck out across the vast Rådhuspladsen. On the left side of the square stood City Hall, the spire of its clock tower jutting knifelike into a low cloud. In the center of the square was a brightly lit yuletide tree, fifty feet in height, and, next to the tree, a small kiosk selling sausages and hot cider. Gabriel walked over to the kiosk and joined the queue, but before he reached the service window the phone in his coat pocket rang softly. He brought it to his ear and listened without speaking. A few seconds later, he returned the phone to his pocket and took Ibrahim by the elbow.

“They want us to retrace our steps and go back to the car,” Gabriel said as they walked across the square.

“Then what?”

“They didn’t say.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to do what they tell us to do.”

“Do they know what they’re doing?”

Gabriel nodded. They knew exactly what they were doing.

The Audi was where he had left it and was now covered with a dusting of fresh snow. Sarah was seated alone in the window of a nearby café. She was wearing her beret and it was tilted slightly to the left, which meant that the car had not been tampered with in their absence. Even so, Gabriel dropped his keys onto the paving stones and gave the undercarriage a quick inspection before opening the door and climbing in. The telephone rang immediately after Ibrahim joined him. Gabriel listened to the instructions, then severed the connection and started the engine. He looked once more into the café window and saw that Sarah had lifted her hand into the air. He feared that she was waving good-bye to him in blatant contravention of all known tradecraft, but a few seconds later a waiter appeared and deposited a check at her elbow. Sarah placed a few bills onto the table and stood. Gabriel slipped the car into gear and eased away from the curb. Take your time , Ishaq had said. We have a long night ahead of us .

The note appeared beneath her door. She swung her shackled feet to the floor and shuffled slowly across her cell. It was Cain who stood on the other side awaiting her reply. She could smell him. The note said: Do you want food? “Yes,” she replied in a low, evenly modulated voice. Then, like a model prisoner, she laid down on her cot again and waited for him to come inside.

She heard the sound of a key being shoved into a padlock, followed by the groaning of hinges. This door was louder than the door of her last cell and the sound of it opening always set her teeth on edge. Cain placed the food at the foot of her cot and quickly withdrew. Elizabeth sat up again and scrutinized the meal: a few inches of baguette, a lump of cheese of indeterminate origin, a bottle of Evian water, chocolate because she had been good.

She devoured the food and gulped the water. Then, when she was certain no one was watching through the spy hole, she shoved her fingers down her throat and vomited her fourth meal onto the floor of her cell. Cain burst in two minutes later and glared at her angrily. Her blanket was now wrapped around her shoulders and she appeared to be shivering uncontrollably. “The ketamine,” she whispered. “You’re killing me with the ketamine.”

Abel brought a bucket of water and a rag and made her clean her own vomit. Only when her cell was cleansed of impure female excretions did Cain reappear. He stood as far from her as possible, as though he feared catching whatever was ailing her, and with a terse movement of his hand invited her to explain her affliction.

“Idiopathic paroxysmal ventricular tachycardia.” She paused for a moment and drew a series of rapid heavy breaths. “It is a fancy way of saying that I suffer from sporadic arrhythmia in the lower chambers of my heart: the ventricles. This sporadic arrhythmia has been exacerbated by too many injections of ketamine. My heartbeat is now dangerously rapid and arrhythmic and my blood pressure is extremely low, which is causing the nausea and the chills. If you give me another shot of ketamine, you could very well kill me.”

He stood silently for a moment, gazing at her though the eye slits of his hood, then withdrew. Several minutes later-about twenty, she guessed, but she couldn’t be sure-he returned and handed her a typewritten note:

FOR REASONS WE CANNOT EXPLAIN TO YOU, IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU TO BE MOVED THIS EVENING. IF YOU ARE CONSCIOUS DURING THIS MOVEMENT, YOU WILL BE EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. DO YOU WANT THE KETAMINE OR DO YOU WANT TO BE MOVED WHILE YOU ARE AWAKE?

“No more ketamine,” she said. “I’ll do it conscious.”

Cain looked at her as though she had made the wrong choice, then handed her a second note.

IF YOU SCREAM OR MAKE ANY NOISE WHATSOEVER, WE WILL KILL YOU AND LEAVE YOU BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD.

“I understand,” she said.

Cain collected the two notes and slipped out of her cell. Elizabeth stretched out on her cot and stared into the blinding white light. Her rebellion was only a few minutes old, but already she had managed to gather two small pieces of information. She was to be moved by road and at night.

When next they entered her cell, they did so without first alerting her with a note. They bound her quickly in her own woolen blanket and secured it to her body cocoonlike with heavy packing tape. Foam rubber plugs were inserted into her ears, a gag placed over her mouth, and a blindfold tied tightly over her eyes. Now robbed of all senses but touch and smell, she felt them take hold of her body, one at each end, and carry her a short distance. The container into which she was placed was so narrow that the sides pressed hard against her hips and shoulders. It smelled of plywood and glue and vaguely of old fish. A lid was placed over the top, so close that it nearly touched the end of her nose, and several nails were hurriedly hammered into place. She wanted to scream. She did not. She wanted to cry out for her mother. She prayed silently instead and thought of the slender man with gray temples who had tried to save her life in Hyde Park. I will not submit , she thought. I will not submit .

The lights of the Great Belt Bridge, second-longest suspension bridge in the world, lay like a double strand of pearls over the straits between the Danish islands of Zealand and Funen. Gabriel glanced at the dashboard clock as he headed up the long sweep of the eastern ramp. The trip from Copenhagen to this point should have taken no more than two hours, but the worsening storm had stretched it to nearly four. He returned his eyes to the road and put both hands firmly on the wheel. The bridge was swaying in the high winds. Ibrahim asked again if the weather was truly a good omen. Gabriel replied that he hoped Ibrahim knew how to swim.