Threat Level

by William Christie

  He’d begged his brother to marry. A man couldn’t hold his new baby in his arms and think the world an evil and useless place. But by then his brother was under their control. They gave him the feeling of belonging.

  He unfolded letters from Afghanistan that contained the wisps of doubt. The people there hated the foreign fighters, hated the new world that the men in beards had created.

  Then a last letter, from Pakistan, in the words his brother had used to speak. Rashid was dead, buried by the American bombs that hit his bunker. And then nothing but more words of God and Paradise, God and death to enemies, God and vengeance.

  Joseph Oan laid that last letter atop the pile in the grill and touched a match to the edge. When the paper and photographs were nothing but ash he replaced the cover on the grill.

  The kitchen window slid open and his wife called that dinner was ready.

  6

  Pakistani cargo trucks made Filipino jeepneys look drab. Abdallah Karim Nimri was sitting by the side of a road in the Layari neighborhood of Karachi, watching the trucks that had come off the N-25 Highway from Quetta drive by.

  He’d been there all morning. Pakistani roads were seldom clear and rarely safe, and Pakistani truck drivers never on schedule. So he waited and watched the trucks. Old British Bedfords; new Japanese Hiros. No two decorated alike, and in brilliant color schemes. The decoration could be anything from Urdu poetry to paintings of the Kaaba and Mosque at Mecca, images of popular Islamic saints, or more secular movie heroes, cricket stars, and idealized representations of desirable women. The chrome was blinding. Even the wheel wells were elaborately painted. The front bumpers were extended to project far out in front, and were of course part of the design. The only common denominator among Pakistani trucks was the built-up caps that towered up to nine feet above the driver’s cab, called the taj or crown. And the two painted eyes to protect the vehicle against the evil eye.

  Finally the truck with the brilliant sapphire-blue and marble-white color scheme came lumbering down the road, belching diesel smoke. The sides had been blocked out into numerous smaller shadowboxes, each containing ornate Islamic calligraphy.

  The trucks were part of a network that reached into the Northwest Tribal Territories and on into Afghanistan. The drivers were devout, but they were also paid. You are free to decline if you wish, they were told when approached. But if they agreed they were liable with their lives, and their families’ lives, for the safety of their cargoes.

  Which was usually computer disks, cassettes, or videotapes. Wrapped boxes filled with cash. Or heroin. Or the occasional human being. The drivers never knew what the packages contained, or the identities of their passengers. Both were passed along the line from driver to driver, stop to stop. Almost undetectable, and almost never intercepted.

  And now this truck squealed to a stop beside Nimri, and a passenger climbed down. A man in his late fifties. The gray had given his beard and hair the color of steel. His shalwar kameez was dark brown to hide the grime of the journey, and he wore a knitted pagris cap.

  He and Nimri greeted formally, touching both cheeks. Nimri led him deeper into the neighborhood. The narrow lanes had no names, and the houses no numbers. The two men stepped carefully over the pools of raw sewage in the streets. Flickering kerosene lamps in windows told that the power was out again. Government employees, even the police, were rare sights in these Karachi neighborhoods.

  They came to an apartment house. Poor, peeling; the screams of children bouncing off the walls. Electric lines of all colors crosshatched overhead like spiderwebs, illegally tapping the main lines. Lean, hard young men with empty eyes watched their approach. Nimri and his companion trudged up the stairs of the building, followed by even more eyes.

  A third-floor door opened at a single knock. A bearded young man in his midtwenties, glowing with undisguised hero-worship, put his hand over his heart and bowed respectfully. He guided them into the sitting room and left them alone. There was the sound of children being harshly quieted elsewhere in the apartment.

  A young wife, covered head to toe in a black burka that revealed only her two large brown eyes, appeared to serve tea and a plate of naan flatbread, olives, and figs. The two guests did not even acknowledge her existence.

  The older man was waiting, so Nimri said, politely, “Thanks to God you have arrived safely. You are well?”

  “Yes, thank you,” said Kasim al-Hariq.

  “God be praised,” said Nimri. After the older man had done so, he took up his glass of tea and sipped from it. A cosmopolitan Egyptian, he enjoyed long stretches of coffee and conversation as much as any Arab. But these Saudis could sit and drink tea and flatter each other exquisitely for three days without ever coming to the point.

  Which was the root of their greatest problem, as far as Nimri was concerned. The sheiks were all sitting up in the mountains, still boasting about the great victories of 2001, while 2002 had belonged to the Americans. Afghanistan was lost and Al Qaeda was on the run.

  His method was not to engage in any but the required pleasantries. To listen respectfully while the old men spoke their fill. And remain silent when they paused. Soon they gave up and came to the point. This had earned him a reputation for impatience among the brotherhood.

  “And you,” said Kasim. “You are well?”

  “I am,” said Nimri. “Well and strong.”

  “So I see,” said Kasim. “You remind me of your father.”

  Kasim al-Hariq brought this up every time they met. Nimri always felt it was the older man’s way of asserting his authority, and always resented it. But it did require a response. “You are too kind.”

  Nimri’s father had been a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. An engineer, and not particularly religious, but he hated the Egyptian government, and the Islamists were the only ones willing to fight. He had been arrested in the mass roundups following the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. The family was told he had died of a heart attack in prison. There were a great many heart attacks in Egyptian prisons.

  Another glass of tea, and to Nimri’s satisfaction Kasim was now the one becoming impatient. “It has been hard,” he stated.

  Nimri nodded over his tea. As always, the battering ram of conversational ritual had broken on his wall of silence.

  “By God’s will, we have survived,” said Kasim. “Iraq will be to America what Afghanistan was to the Russians.”

  All Nimri said was, “Do you see it so?”

  “We call the Americans crusaders,” Kasim replied. “But in truth they are the new Mongols. Destroyers, yes, but a common enemy to unify our people. Except for Palestine, there are no uprisings. The faithful must be roused to action. American arrogance has split their infidel allies in Europe and their apostate puppets in the Middle East. Iraq will bring us new recruits. Their valuable experience there will be as their older brothers had in Afghanistan. When the Americans leave, as did the Russians, we will have a new base for jihad.

  “American power rests upon weak foundations. God willing, an Afghanistan that falls back into chaos. Their Pakistani puppet Musharraf dead, and an Islamic government with nuclear weapons. The Saud royal family drowning in their own fat. The puppets will fall. The Holy Land and its oil will be ours. Jerusalem will be ours. The caliphate will be established, one ruler of one Islamic nation stretching over the world.”

  Nimri was appalled. Was this what they were truly thinking up in the mountains? Convincing themselves that all they had to do was wait for God to deliver them a great victory? Wishful thinking could not defeat the Americans. They could be defeated in Iraq only if they were incredibly foolish. If they turned the country over to a native puppet government, the way they had in Afghanistan, the Iraqis would soon turn against foreign Muslim fighters the same way they turned against all foreigners.

  “Our leadership is intact,” Kasim went on. “The young still seek to join us. The faithful continue to contribute. We still have sufficient cadre to conduct operations. Do y
ou not agree?”

  Nimri agreed that was putting a brave face on the situation, though he did not express this. “Before God, we have demonstrated our faith and our courage,” he said.

  Kasim nodded in satisfaction.

  Nimri continued, “But you must forgive me when I say that I believe God is testing us. We are faced with many dangerous decisions. First among them is future operations. Allowing the local organizations to control their own operations is more secure, but more dangerous to us. Zarqawi was second rate in Afghanistan—now he acts like the king of Iraq. We could split into different factions like the Palestinians. This would be a disaster. After all, our goal is to unify the world of believers.”

  “This is true, God be praised,” said Kasim.

  “Even worse,” said Nimri, “the local planners may not have the skills and judgment we have. Explosions in Istanbul and Riyadh will not shake the Americans.”

  “I agree,” said Kasim.

  “Many things can go wrong. Here in Pakistan, Musharraf promises the Americans many things but has acted only against our leaders, not our organization. But if we try to destroy him, and fail, he will almost certainly try to destroy us.”

  Kasim was looking down at his tea, not pleased.

  “Before all,” said Nimri. “By God, we must strike. If we do not, recruits will seek out those who do. Contributors will not support an inactive organization. We must fight to remain worthy of God, who will give us victory.”

  “It must be a worthy strike,” said Kasim. “Worthy of the operations of the Blessed Tuesday.” Which was what Al Qaeda called September 11, 2001.

  Nimri was so frustrated he wanted to scream. All new attacks now had to be greater than 2001, for the sake of their prestige. The decision to attack the Americans had been correct. The jihadis, the holy warriors, had attempted to destroy the puppet governments of Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, but had been nearly destroyed. Nothing could be done until the Americans left the Middle East. And they had to be forced out, as they were in Lebanon. But after the Blessed Tuesday in 2001, the sheiks did not hit the Americans with more attacks while they were in disarray. Nimri would have sent waves and waves, many smaller attacks after the first massive ones, because the massive ones could only be accomplished with total surprise. But the sheiks had sat back and waited for the Americans to surrender. These Saudis were poisoned by the history of Arabian tribal warfare. They understood raids but not a strategy for a campaign. Now they dreamed of chemicals, germs, radiation weapons, not understanding the practical impossibilities. And there was no reasoning with them.

  But what Nimri said was, “The problem is that such an attack may take years to plan and execute, with the Americans on their guard and hunting us. The Americans will not die in a single fire, no matter how large. They will die from ten thousand wasp stings over a hundred years.”

  Kasim challenged him. “What do you believe we must do?”

  Nimri took a sip of tea to collect himself. “We must protect Abu Abdullah.” This was Osama Bin Laden’s code name. Knowing how badly the Americans wanted him, and how much blood money was on his head, they tried not to even speak his name for fear of betrayal. “He is our inspiration to the world. We must take our losses as a gift from God, to make our organization smaller and more lethal. What was the quantity of our fighters, now will be quality. The same for our hidden sleeper agents in the enemy lands. We may be required to recruit and train them in those lands—trusted brothers calling only on trusted friends, to thwart any infiltrators. Likewise, our funds may be both collected and distributed locally.”

  Nimri had been choosing his words carefully. Now he took even more care. “Large attacks that kill many Americans hurt them terribly and do us honor by God and the faithful around the world. But unless we can accomplish many of these attacks, one after the other, the Americans absorb the blow and the strikes bring them closer to their government. At this time, we do not have the ability to accomplish continuous attacks. So we must split the Americans from their government. We must attack their leaders. If we can kill only a few, then they must be powerful men whose names go around the world.”

  He did not use the example of the Assassins of the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, who terrorized nations not by slaughtering populations but by eliminating rulers with the dagger. The Aassassins had been Nizari Ismailis, a sect that all Sunni Muslims regarded as heretic. Nimri knew that any mention of them would throw Kasim into a rage.

  “Your views have been heard,” Kasim replied.

  Intimately familiar with Saudi indirectness, Nimri sipped his tea in silence.

  Kasim produced a sheaf of papers from his clothing. “You are to be given command of our most important operation.”

  Nimri set down his glass. He had been planning the operation for over a year. And been waiting months for them to make up their minds.

  Children’s voices had been growing louder, and now they were quieted again. Kasim dropped his voice, as if that would foil any eavesdroppers. “Brothers in Chechnya have obtained four Russian shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, the latest model.”

  Nimri had to fight to keep his face expressionless. There were no surface-to-air missiles in his plan.

  “These missiles will be shipped from the port of Odessa,” said Kasim. “When the American president makes his state visit to the Philippines in October, young brothers, led by you, will shoot his helicopter from the sky.”

  Nimri could hardly believe it. “All the American security services will be focusing all their attention on the Philippines.”

  Kasim became animated for the first time. “And all the cameras of the world will film him falling to earth, on fire.”

  Nimri felt a bundle of papers being thrust into his hand. He heard Kasim saying, “Seventy-five thousand American dollars, brother. Precious now, in this time of scarcity. More precious than before. The account number and the bank in Dubai.”

  “My plan is not approved,” said Nimri, feeling like a fool even as he spoke.

  “This is your plan,” said Kasim.

  There was no persuading them. They were too isolated. Nimri knew he did not yet have the stature to persuade them. The only ones who could, the senior brothers, the real planners, were in the hands of the Americans.

  He had to accept the operation. It was either follow their orders or leave. Al Qaeda’s genius was in creating a central organization for funding and planning—The Base, the literal translation of its name. But rather than attempt the almost insurmountable task of trying to establish groups all over the world, operatives were sent to existing groups to capture them with funding beyond their dreams, expand their horizons, send their people for training in Afghanistan, then finally direct their operations. The Al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had first been sent to the Kurdish group, Ansar al-Islam, in northern Iraq. From there he had formed a network to fight the American occupation in the entire country, and was now attracting funding independent of Al Qaeda. For mutual prestige Al Qaeda still claimed him, but Zarqawi had become important enough to be tempted into independence. Nimri did not know if that was the path he should follow. Forming a new organization was tempting. If Zarqawi could do it, anyone could. But it would take at least another year, and then he would have to be on watch for both the Americans and them.

  He was not ready to try that, yet. Not when attrition had brought him within reach of the top of Al Qaeda. A successful strike would give him the prestige to move the organization. But the old men were out of touch. Necessary as symbols, but if listened to now, the organization, that glorious organization that reached into every country in the world, would not survive.

  Kasim was still talking. When he finished, he said to Nimri, “Well?”

  “I must move quickly,” Nimri said. “There is little time until October.” He forced out a smile. “Rest here. I will send my man Hasan to tend to you.”

  “And how is Hasan? I knew his father.”

  “Well,” s
aid Nimri. “Very well.”

  7

  Driving down Highway 85 just south of Detroit, Special Agent Paul Moody said to Beth Royale, “I still don’t understand why we don’t take him down at his house. We have to search it anyway.”

  Beth was watching the notebook computer on her lap. The screen showed a map of the area, and a lighted cursor was moving slowly down Highway 85. “Because you never know what’s going to happen when you kick in someone’s door. Sometimes you do it right, everyone’s nice and shocked and they give right up. Sometimes you do it wrong, they see you coming and you’ve got a siege. And sometimes, even if you do it right, you kick in the door and everyone’s screaming, someone grabs a gun, even if they didn’t want to, because everyone’s screaming. You never know who’s going to come popping out of a blind corner at you; the kids are trying to bite your ankles; the wife’s throwing a hot pot of something off the stove at you; maybe you have to shoot the family dog. We do it that way because that’s what FBI agents do: show up at the bad guy’s door wearing windbreakers that say FBI on them, carrying shotguns.”

  “Okay,” said Moody, sorry that he’d mentioned it.

  “And I grant you,” Beth went on, “it’s fun to put on your windbreaker and carry a shotgun. But when ten agents hit a house, you’ve got neighbors, you’ve got helicopters overhead, and you’re sure as hell going to have press. That’s fine in a criminal case, not a terrorism case.”

  “That’s all well and good,” said Moody. “But the other four perps are getting their doors kicked in.”

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that just because someone jumps off a building, it doesn’t mean you have to be an idiot and follow them?”

  “Now that you mention it, I seem to remember something to that effect.”