Gabriel shook his head slowly. “Ibrahim’s not going to eastern Europe, Adrian, and he’s not going back to Cairo. No one’s strapping him to any water boards and no one’s chaining him to any more walls.”

“Now you’re being unreasonable.” Carter looked at Sarah, as though she might be able to talk some sense into him. “Where exactly is Ibrahim at the moment?”

Gabriel made no response. When Carter repeated the question, there was an edge to his voice that Gabriel had never heard before.

“He’s back in Amsterdam,” Gabriel said. “In his apartment in the August Allebéplein.”

“Why on earth did you send him back?”

“We had no choice but to put him back,” Gabriel said. “If Ibrahim had vanished from the face of the earth, his wife would have called the Dutch police, and we both would have been faced with a force-ten scandal in Holland.”

“Avoiding a scandal in Holland is not high on our list of priorities at the moment,” Carter said. “We want him, and we want him now. I assume he’s under watch.”

“No, Adrian, that slipped our mind.”

“Do try to control your fatalistic Israeli sense of humor for a few moments.”

“Of course he’s under watch.”

“Then I assume you would have no trouble delivering him into our hands.”

“No trouble at all,” Gabriel said. “But you can’t have him.”

“Be reasonable, Gabriel.”

“I’m the only one who is being reasonable, Adrian. And if your goons go anywhere near him, they’re going to get hurt.”

Carter exhaled heavily. “It appears we have reached an impasse.”

“Yes, we have.”

“I suppose you have an alternative plan,” Carter said. “I also suppose I have no choice but to listen to it.”

“My advice to you is be patient, Adrian.”

“Elizabeth Halton dies at six o’clock Friday night. We don’t have time to be patient.”

“I’ve given you the location and number of a telephone that one of her captors is calling on a regular basis. You have in your arsenal the National Security Agency, the largest and most sophisticated electronic intelligence service in the world, a service that is capable of vacuuming up every fax, phone call, and Internet communication in the world, every second of the day. Give Ishaq’s number in Copenhagen to NSA, and tonight, when Ishaq calls, tell NSA to bring all their considerable resources to bear on answering a single question: Where is he?”

Carter stood up and ambled over to the minibar. He selected a soft drink, then, after consulting the price list, thought better of it. “To do this job right, you need to put a bug on the telephone in that apartment and a full-time surveillance team on Ishaq’s wife and son.”