45
PARIS: 2:17 P.M., FRIDAY
There was a small Internet café around the corner from the Islamic Affairs Institute with decent coffee and pastries and even better jazz on the house sound system. Yusuf Ramadan ordered a café crème and thirty minutes of Web time, then he sat down at a vacant computer terminal in the window overlooking the street. He typed in the address for the home page of the BBC and read about the developments in London, where Ambassador Robert Halton had just resigned his post and offered twenty million dollars in exchange for his daughter’s release. While the news appeared to have come as a shock to the BBC, it was no surprise to the Egyptian terrorist known as the Sphinx. The perfectly executed operation in Denmark had no doubt broken the ambassador’s will to resist. He had now decided to take matters into his own hands, just as Yusuf Ramadan had always known he would. Robert Halton was a billionaire from Colorado—and billionaires from Colorado did not allow their daughters to be sacrificed on the altar of American foreign policy.
Ramadan watched a brief clip of the ambassador’s Winfield House news conference, then visited the home pages of the Telegraph, Times, and Guardian to read what they had to say. Finally, with ten minutes to spare on his thirty-minute chit, he typed in the address of a Karachi-based site that dealt with Islamic issues. The site was administered by an operative of the Sword of Allah, though its content was so benign it never attracted more than a passing glance from the security services of America and Europe. Ramadan entered a chat room as DESMOND826. KINKYKEMEL324 was waiting for him. Ramadan typed: “I think the Sword of Allah should take the deal. But they should definitely ask for more money. After all, the ambassador is a billionaire.”
KINKYKEMEL324: How much more?
DESMOND826: Thirty million feels right.
KINKYKEMEL324: I think the Zionist oppressor should pay, too.
DESMOND826: The ultimate price, just as we discussed during our last conversation.
KINKYKEMEL324: Then it will be done, in the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful.
DESMOND826: Master of the day of judgment.
KINKYKEMEL324: Show us the straight path.
DESMOND826: Peace be upon you, KK.
KINKYKEMEL324: Ciao, Dez.
Ramadan logged out and drank his café crème. “Ruby, My Dear,” by Coltrane and Monk, was now playing on the stereo. Too bad all Americans weren’t so sublime, he thought. The world would be a much better place.
46
GROSVENOR SQUARE, LONDON: 2:10 P.M., FRIDAY
The first calls arrived at the embassy switchboard before Ambassador Halton disappeared through the doorway of Winfield House. FBI hostage negotiator John O’Donnell, who had been given just five minutes’ warning of the pending statement, had hastily broken the staff of the ops center into two teams: one to dispense with obvious charlatans and criminal conmen, another to conduct additional screening of any call that sounded remotely legitimate. It was O’Donnell himself who assigned the calls to the appropriate teams. He did so after a brief conversation, usually thirty seconds in length or less. His instincts told him that none of the callers he had spoken to thus far were the real kidnappers, even the callers he had passed along to the second team for additional vetting. He did not share this belief with any of the exhausted men and women gathered around him in the embassy basement.
Two hours after Robert Halton’s appearance before the cameras, O’Donnell picked up a separate line and dialed the switchboard. “How many do you have on hold?”
“Thirty-eight,” the operator said. “Wait…make that forty-two…forty-four…forty-seven. You see my point.”
“Keep them coming.”
O’Donnell hung up and quickly worked his way through ten more calls. He assigned seven to team number one, the team that dealt with obvious cranks, and three to the second team, though he knew that none of the callers represented the real captors of Elizabeth Halton. He was about pick up another call when his private line rang. He answered that line instead and heard the voice of the switchboard operator.
“I think I’ve got the call you’re looking for.”
“Voice modifier?”
“Yep.”
“Send him down on this line after I hang up.”
“Got it.”
O’Donnell hung up the phone. When it rang ten seconds later, he brought the receiver swiftly to his ear.
“This is John O’Donnell of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How can I help you?”
“I’ve been trying to get through to you for a half hour,” said the electronically modified voice.
“We’re doing the best we can, but when twenty million is on the table, the nutcases tend to come out of the woodwork.”
“I’m not a nutcase. I’m the one you want to talk to.”
“Prove it to me. Tell me where you left the DVD of Elizabeth Halton.”
“We left it under the rowboat on the beach at Beacon Point.”
O’Donnell covered the mouthpiece of the receiver and pleaded for quiet. Then he looked at Kevin Barnett of the CIA and motioned for him to pick up the extension.
“I take it you’re interested in taking the deal,” O’Donnell said to the caller.
“I wouldn’t be calling otherwise.”
“You have our girl?”
“We have her.”
“I’m going to need proof.”
“There isn’t time.”
“So we’ll have to make some time. Just answer one question for me. It will just take a minute.”
Silence, then: “Give me the question.”
“When Elizabeth was a little girl, she had a favorite stuffed animal. I need you to tell me what kind of animal it was and what she called it. I’m going to give you a separate number. You call me back when you’ve got the answer. Then we’ll discuss how to make the exchange.”
“Make sure you pick up the phone. Otherwise, your girl dies.”
The line went dead. O’Donnell hung up the phone and looked at Barnett.
“I’m almost certain that was our boy.”
“Thank God,” said Barnett. “Let’s just hope he has our girl.”
She woke with the knock, startled and damp with sweat, and stared at the blinding white lamp over her cot. She had been dreaming, the same dream she always had whenever she managed to sleep. Men in black hoods. A video camera. A knife. She raised her cuffed hands to her throat and found that the tissue of her neck was still intact. Then she looked at the cement floor and saw the note. An eye was glaring at her through the spy hole as if willing her to move. It was dark and brutal: the eye of Cain.
She sat up and swung her shackled feet to the floor, then stood and shuffled stiffly toward the door. The note lay faceup and was composed in a font large enough for her to read without bending down to pick it up. It was a question, as all their communications were, but different from any other they had put to her. She answered it in a low, evenly modulated voice, then returned to her cot and wept uncontrollably. Don’t hope, she told herself. Don’t you dare hope.