The water boiled, the kettle shut down with a click.
“Would you mind terribly?” asked the Jordanian. “I’m afraid I’m helpless in the kitchen.”
“Sure, Fareed. It’s not as if I have anything better to do.”
“Sugar, please. Lots of sugar.”
Gabriel poured water into a mug, dropped a stale teabag into it, and added three packets of sugar. The Jordanian blew on the tea furtively before raising the mug to his lips.
“How is it?” asked Gabriel.
“Ambrosia.” Fareed started to light a cigarette but stopped when Gabriel pointed toward the NO SMOKING sign. “Couldn’t you have booked a smoking room?”
“They were sold out.”
Fareed returned the cigarette to his gold case and the case to the pocket of his blazer. “Maybe you’re right,” he said with a frown. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.”
They saw him at eleven that morning when he left the shop to collect four takeaway coffees for his colleagues, and again at one that afternoon when he took his lunch break at a café around the corner. Finally, at six, they watched as he left the shop for the last time, trailed by the meekest-looking soul in all of Brussels and by a couple—a tall tweedy man and a woman with childbearing hips—who could scarcely keep their hands off one another. Though he did not know it, his life as he knew it was almost at its end. Soon, thought Gabriel, he would exist only in cyberspace. He would be a virtual person, ones and zeros, digital dust. But only if they could get him cleanly, without the knowledge of his comrades or the Belgian police, without a trace. It would be no easy feat in a city like Brussels, a city of irregular streets and dense population. But as the great Ari Shamron once said, nothing worth doing is ever easy.
Six bridges span the wide industrial canal that separates the center of Brussels from Molenbeek. To cross any of them is to leave the West and enter the Islamic world. As usual, Nabil Awad made the passage over a graffiti-sprayed pedestrian footbridge upon which few native Belgians ever dared to set foot. On the Molenbeek side, parked along an unsightly quay, was a battered van, formerly white, with a sliding side door. Nabil Awad seemed not to notice it; he had eyes only for the lanky man, a non-Arab, walking along the pea-soup-green waters of the canal. It was rare to see a Western face in Molenbeek at night, and rarer still that the owner of the face did not have a friend or two for protection.
Nabil Awad, ever vigilant, paused next to the van to allow the man to pass, which was his mistake. For at that instant the side door slid open on well-greased runners, and two pairs of trained hands wrenched him inside. The man with the non-Arab face climbed into the front passenger seat, the van eased away from the curb. As it passed through the Muslim village known as Molenbeek, past sandaled men and veiled women, past halal markets and Turkish pizza stands, the man in back, now blindfolded and bound, struggled for his life. It was no use; his life as he knew it was over.
At half past six that evening, two men of late middle age, one an elegantly dressed Arab with a bird-of-prey face, the other vaguely Jewish in appearance, departed the hotel on the rue du Lombard and climbed into a car that seemed to materialize from thin air. The hotel’s housekeeping staff entered the room a few minutes later, expecting the usual disaster after a brief stay by two men of suspect appearance. Instead, they found it in pristine condition, save for two dirty cups resting on the windowsill, one stained with tea, the other filled with cigarette butts, a clear violation of hotel policy. Management was furious, but not surprised. This was Brussels, after all, the crime capital of Western Europe. Management added one hundred euros to the bill for additional cleaning and spitefully tacked on a hefty room-service charge for food and drink that had never been ordered. Management was confident there would be no complaints.
25
NORTHERN FRANCE
PAUL ROUSSEAU’S PARTICIPATION IN WHAT came next was limited to the acquisition of a safe property near the Belgian border, the cost of which he buried deep within his operating budget. He warned Gabriel and Fareed Barakat to avoid using any tactic on their prisoner that might remotely be construed as torture. Even so, Rousseau was flying dangerously close to the sun. There was no provision in French law to allow for the extrajudicial capture of a Belgian resident from Belgian soil, even if the Belgian resident was suspected of involvement in an act of terror committed in France. Were the operation ever to become public, Rousseau would surely perish in the resulting scandal. It was a risk he was willing to take. He regarded his counterparts in the Belgian S?reté as incompetent fools who had countenanced the establishment of an ISIS safe haven in the heart of Europe. On numerous occasions, the S?reté had failed to pass along vital intelligence regarding threats against French targets. As far as Rousseau was concerned, he was merely returning the favor.
The safe property was a small isolated farmhouse near Lille. Nabil Awad did not know this, for he had passed the journey blinded by a hood and deafened by earplugs. The cramped dining room had been prepared for his arrival—a metal table, two chairs, a lamp with a bulb like the sun, nothing more. Mikhail and Yaakov secured Nabil Awad to one of the chairs with duct tape, and on Fareed Bakarat’s signal, a barely perceptible nod of his regal head, they removed the hood. Instantly, the young Jordanian recoiled in fear of the dreaded Mukhabarat man seated calmly on the opposite side of the table. For someone like Nabil Awad, a Jordanian from a modest family, it was the worst place in the world to be. It was the end of the line.
The ensuing silence was several minutes in length and unnerved even Gabriel, who was watching from the darkened corner of the room with Eli Lavon at his side. Nabil Awad was already trembling with fear. That was the thing about the Jordanians, thought Gabriel. They didn’t have to torture; their reputation preceded them. It allowed them to think themselves superior to their kindred service in Egypt. The Egyptian version of the Mukhabarat hung its prisoners on hooks before bothering to say hello.