by John Weisman
“And what did you make of it?”
“Nothing more than business as usual for Tehran.”
“Perhaps.” Shahristani paused as handwritten menus were set in front of them. The Iranian didn’t bother looking at his. “Green salad,” he said. “And the sole—grilled, please.”
Shahristani nodded at the menu. The waiter picked it up and looked over at Tom. “Monsieur Stafford?”
Quickly, Tom ordered a beet salad and an entrecôte à la moelle. He wanted to get back to the subject at hand.
“You were saying?”
Shahristani inclined his head closer to Tom’s. “Perhaps it is, as you say, business as usual. After all, despite the fact that your government refuses to admit it, Tehran has waged war against the United States for two decades—ever since the Seppah blew up your Beirut embassy in 1983. But I think things are about to get more serious. I believe the Gaza murders were the opening of a new terror campaign. I think Tehran has begun a long-term covert action against Israel and the West—and they are using some new allies as well as their old surrogates to do so.”
Tom looked at his old friend. It was just like Shahristani to see circles within circles—and Tehran in the middle of it all. “C’mon, Shahram—”
The Iranian’s eyes flashed as he exhaled. He slipped into Persian-accented Arabic. “Listen to me, Tom. Gaza was a Seppah operation. It was only one of a series of attacks.”
“A series.”
“Probes and distractions. Like a sidewalk shell game. You understand that Tehran’s long-term objective is to knock the West off balance, agreed? To obtain nuclear weapons, agreed? To use those weapons to change the balance of power in the region forever, agreed?”
“Agreed, agreed, agreed, Shahram. But what’s your point?”
“It is that short-term, Tehran wants continual destabilization. How better than by a marriage of convenience with al-Qa’ida.”
“Go on.” Despite Tom’s skepticism, Shahram was on solid ground. Tehran was already host to perhaps a hundred of al-Qa’ida’s most dangerous senior-level combatants. And the fact that al-Qa’ida was Sunni and Tehran was Shia, or that Iran was Persian and al-Qa’ida was Arab meant little. In the Middle East, the old “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” paradigm still held sway.
“To mark this new alliance, the Seppah will facilitate and help coordinate a major al-Qa’ida strike against the Americans—an attack equal to or bigger than 9/11.”
There he goes again. Tom had heard it all before—and he was hugely dubious. “It’s easy to talk about an alliance between al-Qa’ida and Tehran. I read about it all the time in the Telegraph op-ed pages. It’s a constant litany sung by the neocon pundits. But what about proof?”
Shahristani balanced his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. He took an elegant, gold-cornered Asprey pocket secretary from his jacket pocket and extracted a three-by-five photograph from it.
“This,” he said. “This is proof.” He slid the photograph across the table.
Tom pulled a pair of reading glasses from his breast pocket and slipped them on. He looked down at what appeared to be a surveillance photo. In the foreground was the blurred hood of a car. Behind the vehicle, two men were walking past a café or bistro with sidewalk tables. One man was slightly in front of the other. Tom looked up, puzzled. “Here.” Shahristani handed him a pocket magnifier.
Tom shifted his wine out of the way, laid the photo on the tablecloth, and squinted into the thick glass, playing it back and forth over the photo. Behind the two figures, he saw an awning with writing on it. Squinting, Tom played with the magnifier. “L’Étrier?”
“Justement.”
“Is this Paris?”
“Yes.” Shahristani drew deeply on his cigarette and nodded. “Rue Lambert in Montmartre.”
“Who’s the mark?”
“There are two of them. Don’t you know?”
Tom shrugged. “Never seen either one before.”
“Yes, you have—one of them you know.”
Tom pulled the reading glasses off and looked skeptically at Shahristani. “Stop playing games, Shahram.”
“They are coming from a meeting at a safe house next door to the bistro.” The Iranian stabbed the Dunhill out, leaned over, cupped his hand across the side of his face so what he said couldn’t be lip-read from across the room. “I believe the man in front to be a mercenary currently working for al-Qa’ida. He was born a Moroccan, of that much I am reasonably certain, although one of his two or three current passports is French, and was issued in the name of Tariq Ben Said, born Tunis, August of 1958.”
“Tariq Ben Said.”
“Yes, so let’s call him that. What his real name is, who can tell. When he was first brought to my attention about three years ago, he was working freelance.”
“By whom?”
“By whom?”
“Who brought him to your attention?”
Shahristani deflected Tom’s query. “He is a killer by trade. His instrument of choice is plastique explosive. Clandestine bombs, although I believe the current fashionable term is IED, for improvised explosive device.”
“An IED maker?”
“There is nothing improvised about his bombs, Thomas. He is said to have used case studies.”
Tom shrugged. “Such as?”
“It sounds perverse, but he bases much of his technique on what the Israelis pioneered.”
“Really?”
“Yes. When you look at it coldly, Tom, the Israeli secret services perfected most of the techniques currently used by terrorists. Remotely detonated devices? That’s how Mossad got Ali Hassan Salameh, the operations chief of Black September and architect of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. Remember? In 1979, Mossad remotely exploded a Volkswagen as Salameh’s car passed by on rue Madame Curie in Beirut.” Shahram’s eyes flicked toward the ceiling. “As I recall, the operation was run by a woman—something something Chambers.”11
He returned his gaze to Tom. “Exploding cell phones—they pioneered that technique, too, and put it to good use in counterterror operations on the West Bank and even in Europe. Czech plastique—Semtex—molded into everyday items? That tactic, too, was enhanced by Mossad. And now—”
“Shahram,” Tom interrupted. “Ben Said—please.”
“He is more than a bomb maker, Tom. He is an assassin. Others use a knife or a gun. He uses plastic explosive. He has killed hundreds—hundreds. He is a chameleon. His tactics are fluid; he changes his appearance regularly. He has had plastic surgery half a dozen times. He uses”—the Iranian paused as he searched for the right word—“des prosthétiques—devices to change his appearance.”
“And now?”
“And now he has allied himself with al-Qa’ida.” The Iranian set his water glass down. “For money, of course. Tens of millions of Euros. I have been reliably told that the bomber Ben Said was recently seen in the company of this man.” The Iranian produced a second photograph and slid it across the table. “Yahia Hamzi. Based in Paris. He imports Moroccan wine—a company with the unlikely name Boissons Maghreb, with a small warehouse near the rue du Congo near the Pantin industrial zone. Hamzi himself is secular, not religious at all. But he is very active in civic affairs out beyond the nineteenth.”
Tom examined the photo, which had obviously been duplicated from a passport because a portion of an official seal was visible in the bottom right-hand corner. The clean-shaven man had sharp Arabic features and curly hair—what might almost be described as an Afro. He wore the sort of thick-framed eyeglasses favored by old-fashioned Parisians.
“Hamzi.” Tom looked up from the photo. “The nineteenth, you say?”
“Affirmative.”
It made sense. The nineteenth arrondissement was out near Aubervilliers and Pantin, where there were huge apartment blocks of suburban slums known as banlieues, as bad as the worst Chicago, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles had to offer—filled with North African immigrants. And gangs. Drugs were rampant, ki
llings commonplace. The north end of the nineteenth was a hotbed of Islamist activity. “What’s the Iranian angle?”
“Hamzi uses the importing business to launder money for a Salafiya splinter group known as the CIM, for Combatants Islamiques Marocains.”
Tom took a sip of his wine. “Don’t know of them.”
“No one knows of them. The reason is because CIM does not exist. It is a cover name, created by Seppah to throw hunters like you and me off the scent. Just the way Seppah created the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon during the 1980s to fool Western intelligence. CIA treated the IJO as an Iranian-sponsored organization. It wasn’t. IJO wasn’t Iranian-sponsored; it was a creation entirely molded by Tehran. By the Seppah.”
The Seppah again. Tom frowned. Shahristani wasn’t making sense. “CIM is a Seppah creation?”
“That is my guess. And therefore Hamzi is a Seppah agent. I believe he is also what you might call Ben Said’s banker.”
“Might call?”
In response, Shahristani shrugged. Tom decided to take another tack. “You just said Ben Said is al-Qa’ida’s man.”
“By his own choice. He also takes contracts from Tehran.” Shahristani made a face. “You should have dealt with them years ago.”
“You have no argument from me about that.”
The Iranian nodded. “It appears to me,” he said, “that much of the original structure of al-Qa’ida is fractured. Degraded. Dispersed.”
Tom had no idea where Shahram was going. But he played along. “Agreed.”
“So what do they do? They adapt. They improvise. They metamorphose. They transmogrify.”
“You mean they change identity?”
“No, Thomas. I mean that like a pilot fish on a shark, al-Qa’ida attaches itself to an existing organization, uses it for a while, and then moves on. I believe Ben Said, whose real name could be anything, is also a pilot fish. Now he has attached himself to both al-Qa’ida and the Seppah.”
“Do the French know about Ben Said?”
“No. They keep an eye on Hamzi from time to time—they think he may be engaged in smuggling. But the name Ben Said is unknown to all of Western intelligence.”
Tom’s right index finger pulled at the skin below his right eye, indicating that he was dubious.
Shahristani continued unfazed. “Ask the Israelis. They know there is a bomber out there with a unique talent. They just have no idea who he is.”
“How unique?”
“You know how hard it is to build a miniature explosive device.”
“Of course.” It was true. For all the current hysteria about bombs, Tom knew it was incredibly difficult to make a sophisticated explosive device that was simultaneously powerful and small. Sure, you could use dynamite, C4, RDX, or nitro in a car bomb. But none of those could be miniaturized. You could make a shoe bomb out of Semtex. But there wasn’t a lot of Semtex around these days. Vaclav Havel, God bless him, had quickly destroyed most of the Soviet-era Czechoslovak stocks after he’d become president of the Czech Republic. Besides, what Semtex there was could be detected by the latest generation of explosives-detection sniffers. To be able to create a truly undetectable, miniature IED—that was something. Tom was intrigued. “Has this Ben Said done it?”
The Iranian dismissed Tom’s question with a flick of his hand. “No one knows who he is. No one fit the pieces together.” Shahristani lit a fresh Dunhill and gave Tom a Cheshire cat smirk. “Except me.”
Tom was going to have to wait for his answer. He focused on Shahristani. “Go on.”
The Iranian exhaled smoke through his nose. “Ben Said’s legend began in August of 1978. He was not even twenty, as best I can tell. But it was his bomb design that assassinated the Englishman Lord Louis Mountbatten by blowing up his fishing boat at Mullaghmore in County Sligo. He taught the Lebanese how to perfect car bombs, making them twice as lethal. He has worked with the Chechens. And with Islamists. The sneakers worn by Richard Reid, the British Islamist shoe bomber who frequented the Fins-bury Park mosque in London, were of Ben Said’s design.”
“But Reid’s shoe bomb didn’t work.”
“That was because of time constraints. Al-Qa’ida insisted on using prototypes. The fusing hadn’t been perfected. If they’d waited six more weeks, Reid wouldn’t have needed matches or a lighter. He would have yanked on one of his shoelaces and the plane would have been brought down.”
The Iranian knocked the ash off his cigarette. “For the Chechens, he is rumored to have designed explosives so small Black Widows can wear them onto aircraft.”
“How does he get them past security?”
“I am told he has reformulated Semtex into something twice as powerful and absolutely undetectable. It is time-consuming, dangerous, and he can make only small batches. But with this new formula, he can make bombs the size and shape of tampons. The fuse is self-contained. The bomber goes to the rearmost lavatory, removes the weapon from her privates, sets the fuse, and flushes the IED down the toilet. It’s impossible to retrieve and at cruising altitude the explosion is capable of blowing the tail off the aircraft.”
“Incredible.”
“In 2001, a Wahabist imam in Saudi Arabia paid Ben Said a million dollars to reconfigure the exploding vests used by Palestinian suicide bombers, making them smaller and lighter—and thus less identifiable and more deadly. The French have been on his case since 1995, when Ben Said was hired by GIA—Groupe Islamique Armé. He provided GIA with three bombs, which Algerian Islamists set off in the Paris metro. DST has a thick file. The British, too. And Israel. But no one has ever been able to pinpoint him.”
“So whoever he is, he is a shadow.”
Shahristani nodded in agreement. “A ghost, a wraith.” He indicated the photograph lying on the tablecloth. “It’s altogether possible you are looking at the only surveillance picture of Ben Said that exists.”
Tom squinted at the picture. Ben Said was the taller of the two men. He didn’t look like your typical Hollywood assassin. No muscular build, chiseled profile, or catlike bearing. What Tom saw was a slightly pudgy, clean-shaven man of about forty or so with a square face and a full head of longish dark hair combed straight back. His double-breasted sport coat was open and flapping as he walked, revealing dark trousers held up by a wide belt with an oversize oval buckle. “Who took this? Is it from a credible source?”
“Thomas, please.” Shahristani gave him a sly smile. “Sources and methods, dear boy.” He paused, then stared into Tom’s eyes. “I took the picture, Thomas. And verified who was in it.”
“How?”
“I discovered Ben Said’s safe house.”
“When did you do this, Shahram?”
“Just over two months ago. In August.”
Tom turned his attention back to the photograph. Two steps behind Ben Said was a shorter, older man, also clean-shaven, with a round face, a prominent, Roman-like nose, and gray hair.
“Who’s the number two?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Shahram—”
The Iranian’s expression was grim. “It is Imad Mugniyah, Thomas. Imad Mugniyah. After Usama Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist. The man with a twenty-five-million-dollar bounty on his head.”
9
“WHAT?” TOM WAS INCREDULOUS. “Impossible.” There were only two surveillance photographs of Imad Mugniyah in existence. Tom had copies of both, and this guy was not the man in those pictures. Tom had pinned one of the Mugniyah pictures to the wall of his cubicle at CTC so he could stare at it every single day he went to work. He tapped the photo. “This isn’t Imad Mugniyah.”
“It is. He, too, has had plastic surgery.”
That was news. “When?”
“Most recently, two years ago.”
“We heard nothing about it—not a whisper.”
“Why would you?” Shahristani said dismissively. “You have no agents in the Seppah. You have penetrated no one into Hezbollah—in fact, your CIA officers
are still forbidden to operate in West Beirut. Forbidden—it is insanity. And you have no agents inside the Palestinian terror networks, either.”
“That’s because I work for a private company.”
“You know what I’m saying.” The Iranian’s dark eyes flashed at Tom. “I am telling you the truth. Imad Mugniyah himself killed your three Americans. There were three kilos of Ben Said’s precious new plastique—virtually his entire supply from what I can tell—planted on the motorcade route and detonated using a cell phone. The explosives were sent by Tariq Ben Said on an Air France flight from Paris.”
“Impossible.”
“Not impossible. I told you: Ben Said has been working for years to fabricate a form of plastique that gives off no scent. He’s obviously done it, because the explosive was shipped right under the Israelis’ noses, using a European mule. The plastique was concealed in a suitcase on the September tenth Air France flight to Tel Aviv. That same day, Imad Mugniyah took a train to Rome. The next day he flew Alitalia to Cairo, and he slipped through the Rafah tunnels on the twelfth.” The Iranian saw Tom’s incredulous expression and made a dismissive gesture. “Ben Said himself arrived in Israel the last week of September—just before the Jewish holidays.”
“From where?”
“Paris.”
“Israel is a hard target, Shahram. Why would Ben Said risk exposing himself?”
“The stakes were very high, Thomas. There was a lot of money involved. Ben Said’s presence was Imad Mugniyah’s way of proving to Arafat that Iran and al-Qa’ida are willing to put aside religious differences in order to wage jihad against Israel and the West.”
“Why do they need Arafat?”
“Because Arafat has something both Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said lack: he has an organization that enjoys diplomatic status and is favorably received in the European capitals.” Shahristani made a sour face. “The Europeans are fools. No—worse. They are petit bourgeois who want to keep their thirty-hour work weeks, their full pensions, their government subsidies, and their full bellies, and if paying off terrorists helps them, then so be it.” He rapped his knuckles on the tablecloth. “Europe’s comfortable lifestyle makes it blind to the truth.”
