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.”
“It was an earthquake, a tear in the fabric of history—not only for the West but for us.”
“Muslims?”
“Islamists,” he said, correcting Gabriel. “The Americans made a terrible miscalculation after 9/11. They saw Muslims dancing in the streets across the Arab world and in Europe and therefore assumed that all Muslims and Islamists supported Osama. They lumped us all together with the global jihadists like bin Laden and Zawahiri. They didn’t realize that for someone like me, a moderate Islamist, the attacks of 9/11 were just as unconscionable and barbaric as they were to the civilized world. We moderate Islamists believed that Osama and al-Qaeda made a terrible tactical blunder by attacking the United States and by picking a fight it could not possibly win. We believed that Osama was an Islamic charlatan who had done more to hurt the cause of Islamism than all the secular apostate regimes combined. What’s more, we believed that the massacre of thousands of innocent people was a decidedly un-Islamic act that violated Islamic law and custom. The nineteen hijackers were invited guests in America and, as such, they were honor bound to behave accordingly. Instead, they slaughtered their hosts. Regardless of how you feel about us and our religion, we Muslims are hospitable people. We do not slaughter our hosts.”
He pushed his plate toward Gabriel again. Gabriel took half of a hard-boiled egg and a lump of feta.
“I take it Ishaq didn’t see it that way.”
“No, he didn’t,” Ibrahim said. “Nine-eleven pushed him to the edge of the precipice.”
“What pushed him over the edge?”
“Iraq.”
“Where was he recruited?”
“He was living in Amsterdam at the time with his wife, an Egyptian girl named Hanifah, and their son, Ahmed. Within days of the American invasion, he traveled to Egypt, where he made contact with the Sword of Allah. The Sword gave him elementary training in their clandestine schools and desert camps, then helped him to travel to Iraq, where he trained and practiced his craft with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia. He left Iraq after six months and returned to Amsterdam, where he was in close contact with this man Samir al-Masri. A month later, he moved his family to Copenhagen, where he took a job at something called the Islamic Affairs Council of Denmark. The Council, I’m afraid, is nothing more than a front for jihadist activities.”
“Your son organized a second cell from Copenhagen?”
“So it would appear.”
“And so when Samir and his cell vanished from Amsterdam a few days before the attack, you decided to approach me. You gave me just enough information in hopes of derailing the operation, so that your son might not be caught up in it.”
Ibrahim gave a stoic nod of his head.
“You lied to me,” Gabriel said. “You deceived me in order to save your son’s life.”
“Any decent father would have done the same.”
“No, Ibrahim, not when innocent human lives are at stake. More than three hundred people are dead because of you and your son. If you had told me the truth—the entire truth—we could have stopped the attack together. Instead you gave me crumbs, the same bread crumbs you gave the SSI twenty-five years ago when you tried to save your daughter’s life.”
“And if I’d told you more that night? Where would I have ended up? The Americans would have assumed I was a terrorist. They would have placed me on a plane and shipped me back to Egypt to be tortured again.”
“Did you know London was the target? Did you know they were planning to kidnap Elizabeth Halton and ransom her for your friend, Sheikh Abdullah?”
“I knew nothing of their plans. These boys are extremely well trained. Someone highly skilled is pulling the strings.”
“Someone is.” Gabriel hesitated. “Maybe that someone is you, Ibrahim. Maybe you’re the one who masterminded the entire operation. Maybe you’re the one they call the Sphinx.”
“The willingness to believe outlandish things is an Arab disease, Mr. Allon, not a Zionist one. The more time you waste pursuing silly notions like that, the less time we have to find the ambassador’s daughter and bring her home alive.”
Gabriel seized on a single word of Ibrahim’s last answer, the word we.
“And how are we going to do that?”
“I believe Ishaq is one of the terrorists holding the American woman hostage.”
Gabriel leaned forward in his chair. “Why would you think that?”
“Ishaq left Copenhagen two weeks ago. He told Hanifah that he was going to the Middle East for a research trip on behalf of the Islamic Affairs Council. In order to maintain that fiction, he telephones the apartment every evening at Ahmed’s bedtime.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Hanifah has told me so.”
“Have you spoken to him yourself?”
“I’ve left messages for him, but he never calls me.”
Gabriel placed a notepad and pen on the table and slid them toward Ibrahim.
“I need the address of the apartment in Copenhagen. And I need the telephone number.”
“Hanifah and Ahmed have nothing to do with this.”
“Then they have nothing to fear.”
“I want you to promise me that no harm will come to them.”
“You’re in no position to ask for anything, Ibrahim.”
“Promise me, Mr. Allon. Promise me you won’t harm them.”
Gabriel nodded once. Ibrahim wrote down the information, then pushed the pad toward Gabriel and recited two lines from the twenty-second chapter of Genesis:
“‘So early the next morning, Abraham saddled his ass and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and he set out for the place of which God had told him.’”
“You know your Hebrew scripture,” said Gabriel. “But he’s no longer your son, Ibrahim. He’s infected with the virus of jihad. He’s a monster.”
“Perhaps, but he’ll always be my son.” He looked down at the notepad in shame. “If I remember correctly, the Jews believe that Abraham went to Beersheba after passing God’s test. But what will happen to me? Will I be shipped to Egypt for further questioning or do I remain here?” He looked around the room. “Wherever here is.”
“I suppose that depends on the Americans.”
The disdainful look in Ibrahim’s eyes made it clear how he felt about Americans. “I suggest leaving the Americans out of this,” he said. “It would be better for you and I to cross the bridge over Jahannam alone. Whatever you decide, do it quickly. The ambassador’s daughter is in the hands of a young man whose sister was murdered by Pharaoh’s henchman. If he is ordered to kill her, he will not hesitate.”