The Towers

by David Poyer

  “Yes.”

  “They do not know?”

  “No. To them she will be one of yours.”

  The heavyset woman harrumphed, looking Aisha up and down like a poor cut of meat. Then turned and waddled away. A square of light appeared as a door opened, revealing dimly lit steps.

  Heading up.

  She turned to see all three of her friends standing beside the car. Making no move to follow. “You’re not coming?” she muttered.

  “We can’t come, Aisha. They’d notice us.”

  “And our husbands—”

  “They are all men, you see. These Salafis.”

  She saw; oh, yes. But what about her? “They won’t notice me?” she whispered.

  No response from the shadowy figures beside the chromium sparkle of the Mercedes. At last, a barely audible mutter. “You will see. But be careful.”

  The heavyset woman called angrily. Aisha flinched; hesitated. And at last turned and followed her to the stairs.

  * * *

  THE kitchen was extremely small, hot, and, with four women working furiously, crowded. A single overhead bulb flashed off boiling pots, gleaming trays, plates of hummus, chef’s knives dicing tiny chilis. A fan with a bent blade went clack-clack-clack but didn’t cool the air. Aisha smelled mint and chives and coriander, garlic and cardamom, coffee and cumin. And the women themselves, powerfully unwashed under many layers of unlaundered black cloth. Small bowls crowded the sideboard. A teapot whistled on an electric plate. The women hardly spoke, bustling about as if each knew in advance where the other was going to step. But whenever Aisha made a move, she bumped into someone. Eyes studied her from within basketlike masks. Their hands were African black, much darker than her own. Prespiration ran down under her dress. She panted in the steamy heat. The women explained nothing, said nothing, just worked. They were making salta, a heavily seasoned meat stew, and shafout with lahuh bread, like pita bread soaked in a spicy buttermilk sauce. A tray held dates, honey pastries, Turkish-style cakes, walnut and chocolate cookies, sweet egg breads. A refrigerator chugged. If not for the fear in her belly, she might have felt hungry.

  She finally guessed who these women must be. The Al-Akhdam were black Yemenis, descendants of Ethiopian slaves. More like the untouchables of India than anything else. Their very name meant “servant” or “slave,” and they were confined to tumbledown ghettos, restricted to trash collection, sewer work, when they could get work at all.

  And cooking, of course. Just like her grandmother’s mother, back in Carolina. Their flat, quick gazes cut her like honed knives. The largest and oldest seemed to be in charge, but the youngest looked no more than twelve. Whom did they belong to? She didn’t even want to ask, to upset whatever arrangement Hiyat had made to slip her in among them. She seized a rag and began wiping countertops, sinks, stovetops. The worn cloth snagged on congealed grease. She blinked sweat from her eyes. She couldn’t catch her breath. What the hell was she doing?

  A bead curtain clacked and swayed, cutting the room beyond into strips of color. Still scrubbing, she eased between the women, toward it. Peered through.

  This room was brightly lit. Eight or nine men sat on a figured carpet, listening with rapt attention to something being read aloud. The air was thick with some unfamiliar perfume. Some wore Saudi-style robes. Others, slacks and Western-style shirts. Not all were bearded, but all had a focused, humorless look. Most were in their twenties. Only one, sitting in an easy chair, was older, the back of his head tinted with gray. He faced away from her, so she couldn’t see his face. He was the one reading, in a droning singsong.

  Her vision shifted, narrowed. Weapons lay beside each man or leaned in the corners. AKs, mostly, and a few pistols. Curved magazines lay about, and gray-green boxes of Chinese-made cartridges.

  She wondered if there were antitank missiles somewhere too. In a closet, in a crawl space. Under a carelessly thrown rug.

  A heavy hand on her shoulder, pulling her back. “Do not look at them,” the older woman grated.

  “I’m sorry.” Aisha dropped her eyes. Stepped back.

  A clap of the hands. “Bring us coffee,” a male voice called peremptorily. “And tea.”

  The big woman held her gaze. The hand tightened on her shoulder. “You take tea,” she said slowly, in that unfamiliar dialect. Spacing her words, so Aisha understood. “Follow her.” She jerked her head, and Aisha found herself looking down at the twelve-year-old.

  Who with perfect sangfroid lifted a carafe and slipped through the beads into the diwan.

  Aisha hung back, starting to shake. She couldn’t. Then she reminded herself sternly, This is the chance you wanted.

  The beads rattled more loudly as she lurched through, tottering on weak knees. Trying to balance a tray that suddenly weighed a ton. On it shifted and rattled sugar, Nescafé, chocolate-coated French mints.

  The men did not look up. They were silent, listening to a tape that spun through a cassette player. The older man leaned over it. From it squawked a thin, high voice she didn’t recognize.

  “Hundreds of people used to doubt you and few only would follow you until this huge event happened. Now hundreds are coming to join you. The only ones who stay behind will be the mentally impotent and the hypocrites. Hundreds of people will go out to Afghanistan.”

  Then came another voice, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck.

  She knew this one: deliberate, educated, dignified. The man who inspired his disciples to suicide for his lost caliphate. Who’d murdered thousands and intended to kill many thousands more.

  “We calculated in advance the number of casualties,” bin Laden mused. “Who would be killed, based on the position of the tower. We calculated that three or four floors would be hit. I was the most optimistic of all. Due to my experience in this field, I thought the fire from the fuel in the plane might melt the steel frame and collapse not only the area where the plane hit, but all the floors above it. This was all we had hoped for.”

  “Allah be praised,” said the first voice.

  Unable to feel her hands as they gripped the tray, Aisha moved from guest to guest following the girl, whose sure little feet stepped between outstretched legs and rifles, careful to touch no one. The listeners did not look up as they passed, save to take a teacup from the girl and hold it as she poured, or to help themselves to sugar or mints on Aisha’s extended tray. Each man took only one mint. They were riveted to the voices, one thready and deferential, the other carefully enunciated, as if to remain audible through many copyings of the tape.

  “I listened to the news and I was sitting. We were not thinking about anything, and all of a sudden, God willing, the news came and everyone was overjoyed. Everyone until the morning was talking about what was happening and we stayed until four o’clock, listening to the news, every time a little different. Everyone was joyous and saying, ‘God is great,’ ‘God is great,’ ‘We are thankful to God,’ ‘Praise God.’ And I was happy for the joy of my brothers. That day the congratulations were coming on the phone nonstop. ‘God is great, praise be to God.’”

  She approached the older man, who was still hunched over the player, face lowered so she couldn’t see it. He waved her away impatiently, not looking up.

  Get a grip, Aisha. Start acting like a federal agent. She pushed the tray forward, to force him to glance up. Age fifty to fifty-five, large nose, dark complexion, Arabic extraction. Was that a wen on the right cheek? An old scar to the left temple?

  Looking annoyed, he glanced up from the player, and she stared full into the face of Abu-Hamid Al-Nashiri.

  Her blood froze and her breath stopped. Remembering a basement, and this man’s curses, and his blow. His very smell was familiar. She waited an endless time for him to shout, to draw the ornate dagger at his belt.

  Instead he dropped his gaze and gestured her away. She took a shaky breath, sucking damp cloth into her mouth, and remembered, All he can see is my eyes. She took a step back. Then another, easing h
er weight away on numb legs.

  She turned her back as soon as she could and moved from man to man, bending to serve, scrutinizing each face, noting each distinctive mark, estimating ages. Her heart hammered so hard, sparkling flakes drifted up from the corners of her vision. One younger man glanced up, and her heart froze again; but his gaze slid off as if her face were black ice.

  Their fingerprints. She had to sequester the teacups. If only she could get a photograph. Her camera was in her bag. But the thought of poking a lens through the bead curtain chilled her marrow. Those ornately hafted knives would so easily slide out of those belts.

  “He told me a year ago: He saw in a dream, we were playing a soccer game against the Americans. When our team showed up in the field, they were all pilots! He said, ‘So I wondered if that was a soccer game or a pilot game?’ Our players were pilots. He didn’t know anything about the operation until he heard it on the radio. He said the game went on and we defeated them. That was a good omen for us.”

  She stepped over a rifle and approached the last one in the room, a sullen-looking youth who sat cross-legged a few feet from the others. Listening, but with a faint sneer. At what, she couldn’t tell. Eighteen to twenty, short hair, no beard or mustache, no visible scars or marks, a black TRANSFORMERS T-shirt and ragged jeans the color of dusty skies. The girl offered him hot water, but he refused with an irritated gesture, as if brushing away a fly. The girl stepped away and Aisha almost followed, but turned back and offered the tray one last time.

  The boy glanced up, then away. He reached for a mint, fumbled among them, came up with four. He was popping them when a frown creased his brow. His eyes came back to the tray. Followed it to her hand. Up her wrist.

  To her watch, which had slid down as she bent to serve. He examined it, then lifted his eyes to her face.

  She realized too late what she’d done wrong.

  She’d looked back, met him gaze to gaze.

  He seized her wrist. “Uncle! Come look at this. Look what the slave is wearing!”

  She stood rooted, unable to move. Tried to tug her hand free. But the boy held on. She groped for the pistol with her other hand, under the abaya. She’d never shot well weak-handed, but she’d take out Al-Nashiri first. Then the boy, since he was closest. By then the others would have their rifles up, and she wouldn’t have to worry about who to shoot next.

  Instead a resounding slap to the nape of her neck jerked her whole body, and the tray catapulted out of her hands. The boy screamed as hot water flew into his face, followed by a hail of thin mints. The next moment Aisha was cowering under a stream of mingled abuse and apologies by the large woman, who was hauling her bodily out of the diwan by one ear. It hurt like hell. Aisha moaned, and then, when the woman shook her and pinched harder, even louder. She was hauled through the bead curtain, the men shouting, the boy’s keen rising above the rest. Then slaps cracked. “Shut up, stupid boy! Silence!” the older man roared. “The sheikh speaks from the Place of Kings, and there will be silence when he speaks!”

  When Al-Nashiri came through the bead curtain, livid and scowling, Aisha was already on the floor, being beaten with soup ladles. As he entered, the woman handed him a stick. “This clumsy Sudanese is new. Hardly even speaks the language. Here, I am not strong enough to beat her as she deserves.”

  Aisha rolled over just in time as the stick whistled down. Pulled arms and legs to her stomach, presenting her back, both instinctively and to protect the pistol; striking something that hard under her clothing would instantly give her away. The Kevlar absorbed most of the blows, but they still hurt. One on the head made her ears ring, and stars danced before her eyes. She clutched her face, holding the cloth in place. Above all else, he must not recognize her.

  The Saudi straightened, breathing hard. “No meal for her tonight,” he ordered. The woman followed him to the curtain, wringing her hands, apologizing again and again, asking him to beat her too, ducking her head and striking her breast. Aisha thought she might be overdoing it, but maybe not.

  When he was gone, the beads swayed and clacked. No one spoke in the kitchen for a long moment. Aisha took her hand off the pistol under the abaya. Then dropped it to another pocket.

  She made absolutely sure the flash was off as she aimed the little camera between the still-swaying beads. They were gathered around the player again; the soft, cultured voice spoke on and on. Pressing the camera to the jamb so it would not pick up the shaking from her hands, she took a photograph. Then another, zooming in on faces.

  Another.

  A hand on her back, murmured pleas to stop, to leave.

  One more. Hands shaking, she plunged the camera back into the folds of her abaya. Turned to the sink and found a net bag she stuffed teacups and mugs into, one after the other.

  The back stairs, dimly lit and tilted as in a dream. The cups jangling in the bag.

  The Mercedes idling, dark shapes taking her arms, ushering her in. Her pulse hammering in a splitting headache. Lifting her hand to the second car that came rolling out of the night: the SUV that had trailed them from the compound, Benefiel’s young, anxious face peering out through the windshield as he rolled up.

  “Hello? Scott?” she said into her cell.

  Doanelson’s voice, a little slurred. Into the bourbon, no doubt. “Uh—yeah. Who’s this? Aisha?”

  “Get on the line to Al-Safani,” she told him. “I know exactly where these guys are.”

  * * *

  THE next morning, in the deputy chief’s office. With that eminence himself, thunder-browed, leaning back as he pondered the charges Caraño had just brought. Benefiel was sitting mouse-reticent to the side, out of the line of fire. But not, Aisha thought, out of the blast zone. She sat with hands folded, waiting for the guillotine.

  She’d gone back up the service stairs alone, while the assault team assembled. Led the four serving women back down, gently, quietly, until they were out of the way and safe. Then nodded to the colonel, who stood in full gear by a line of fidgeting, nervous-looking interior security troops. Just as in the first assault, when the girl had died, they carried AKs and tear gas grenades and flash-bangs and resembled goggled monsters in their Czech masks. Al-Safani’s expression had been a mixture of inscrutability and irony as he listened to her describe how many terrorists there were, which floor they were on, how they were armed, how many accesses to the apartment there were.

  The DCM swiveled lazily. Time stretched out. She surreptitiously checked her cell for any texts from Washington. Nothing yet.

  Finally he said, “Tell me again what they said about bin Laden.”

  She focused, trying to recall each word and even the way it had been uttered. “It was Al-Nashiri. He said, ‘The sheikh speaks from the Place of Kings.’”

  “The Place of Kings.” The DCM rolled that around on his palate; the FBI supervisory special agent frowned. “Where is the Place of Kings?”

  “I have no idea. But he must.”

  “As a matter of fact, he did.” The DCM picked up a sheaf of faxed paper, let it fall. “This time they were expeditious. I think the gloves really are off, now.”

  “As long as the president thinks it benefits him more than it handicaps him, to be seen working with us.”

  The diplomat sighed. Tilted his head this way and that. Brought his chair down and swung to face her. “I’m not pleased, Agent Ar-Rahim. I expect my orders to be obeyed. State can’t host other agencies if they’re off on their own.”

  “I understand that, sir.”

  “On the other hand, an intel coup … Can’t gainsay that. Especially if what NSA expects to be in their cell phones is actually there.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The intercom. “Sir, Mr. Abdulilah on line one.”

  “Thanks, Cheryl. Be right with him.… I’m going to defer further comment. There’s a president-to-president call scheduled early this afternoon. What happened last night may get brought up. Anyway, I’m going to defer forming an opinion
until then.”

  She kept her expression neutral, even let Caraño hold the door for her. He gave her a sour look but didn’t say anything until they were outside. At which time he muttered, “This isn’t personal.”

  “I never thought it was, sir.”

  “I think it was ballsy. Uh, gutsy. Just not well advised. Not well advised at all. I’m the supervisor on scene. You take tasking and direction from me. Not go off on your own special mission, risking the lives of two agents. I can’t overlook that, no matter what the DCM decides.”

  “You’ve made that clear, Special Agent. Just one thing. A favor.”

  “What?”

  “Leave the kid out of it.”

  “Tim?” The FBI agent considered. “Leave him out of my report? Sorry, can’t do that, Agent Ar-Rahim. He was off reservation too.”

  She briefly considered how to answer him and could think of nothing that really suited. So she just turned away. She had a message back to MEFO to draft, after all.

  * * *

  THEY met again late that day, out front of the embassy, where three shining black automobiles were drawn up idling. A smooth, placid face turned toward her in the rosy light of the dying sun. “Agent Ar-Rahim,” he said, bowing slightly. “Peace be upon you.”

  “And upon you, brother.”

  The DCM nodded soberly. “Mr. Abdulilah has news for us.”

  “It is good news, I believe,” the little minister with the coal-black eyes said. “Passed to your president by mine. The men we took into custody last night have confessed. They have given much information about their activities in this country, and their plots against the persons of our brothers across the border in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We have information about the current location of Osama bin Laden, which we will pass to you immediately. We have also recovered significant quantities of armaments, stolen from our army stocks by sympathizers.”

  “I’m very glad to hear that,” she said. “Working together, we can do wonders.”

  The DCM said, “An NSA team’s on its way. I’ve requested access to the recovered computers and cell phones.” He looked past Abdulilah to where Gamish sat stone-faced in the lead limo. “The general expects to work with us—following these electronic records, and of course the results of the interrogations—to roll up the ALQ network in this country and possibly in others as well. In Yemen and overseas.”