Carter fished his pipe from the pocket of his greatcoat. “The SSI searched the apartment and found the premises recently vacated. We requested permission to question Mandali ourselves and were informed that he was unavailable for comment.”

“That means he’s no longer presentable.”

“Or worse.”

“Still want to pack my Joe off to Egypt for an interrogation?”

“You’ve prevailed on that point, Gabriel. The question is what do we do now?”

“Maybe it’s time we had a word with Ishaq.”

Carter stopped walking and looked at Gabriel directly. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

Gabriel told Carter his plan as they walked through the heart of Copenhagen along a quiet cobblestone street.

“It’s risky,” Carter said. “We also have no guarantee he’s going to call back again tonight. We asked the German police to conduct the search as quietly as possible, but it didn’t go unnoticed by German media, and there’s a good chance Ishaq noticed, too. If he’s smart—and we have no evidence to the contrary—he’s bound to suspect his phone call had something to do with it.”

“He’ll call, Adrian. He’s trying to hold on to his family. And as for risk, no option before us is without risk.”

Carter gave it another moment of thought. “We’ll have to come clean with the Danes,” he said finally. “And the president would have to approve it.”

“So call him.”

Carter handed Gabriel the phone. “He’s your friend,” he said. “You call him.”

One hour would elapse before the president gave Gabriel’s gambit his blessing. The operation’s first step came ten minutes after that, not in Copenhagen but in Amsterdam, where, at 12:45 P.M., Ibrahim Fawaz stepped from the al-Hijrah Mosque after midday prayers and started back toward the open-air market in the Ten Kate Straat. As he was nearing his stall at the end of the market, a man came alongside him and touched him lightly on the arm. He had pockmarks across his cheeks and spoke Arabic with the accent of a Palestinian. Five minutes later, Ibrahim was sitting next to the man in the back of a Mercedes sedan.

“No handcuffs or hood this time?”

The man with pockmarked cheeks shook his head slowly. “Tonight we’re going to take a nice comfortable ride together,” he said. “As long as you behave yourself, of course.”

“Where are we going?”

The man answered the question truthfully.

“Copenhagen? Why Copenhagen?”

“A friend of yours is about to cross a dangerous bridge there, and he needs a good man like you to serve as his guide.”

“I suppose that means he’s heard from my son.”

“I’m just the delivery boy. Your friend will fill in the rest of the picture for you after we arrive.”

“What about my daughter-in-law and my grandson?”