The Towers Still Stand

by Daniel Rosenberg

  “Right; I agree,” the President replied. “Over and out, everyone.”

  “Thanks, Mr. President.” Cheney hung up the phone. Virgil still stood looking at the VP as Cheney sat straight in his chair and stared back.

  “Do you need anything?” Cheney asked, reaching up to re-set his eyeglasses.

  “Only your assurance that we’re going to follow the President’s instructions to pursue the possible Bin Laden connection to this and not just focus on Iraq,” Virgil replied, looking straight at him. “I know you’ve had an eye on Iraq ever since you got here, but I’m not convinced Saddam had anything to do with this.”

  “Virgil, I don’t think you take Saddam seriously enough,” Cheney replied, staring Virgil back down. “We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t investigate any connection Hussein might have, and I expect you to do just that. Is that understood?”

  Virgil just kept looking Cheney in the eye.

  Finally, Cheney sighed, and said, “Of course we’ll pursue Bin Laden as well. It’s what the President has ordered us to do. I just want to make sure we don’t forget Saddam is out there. We know Bin Laden and Saddam despise each other, but remember, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ “

  “All right; I see the sense in that,” Virgil replied, not sure if he really did. He turned and limped out of the office.

  The Vice President stared at the door for a while after Virgil left, and then picked up his phone again.

  CHAPTER 8

  Kandahar, Afghanistan: 8 p.m. local time

  The sun had set over the dusty city an hour earlier, and the last remnants of twilight glowed purple and red on the horizon. Sunset prayers were over, and it would still be some time until the Isha prayers before bedtime. Though it was still warm, temperatures were down significantly since sunset, and stars had begun to twinkle brightly. There wasn’t widespread electricity in this part of the world, and with the moon waning to a thin crescent, this was a night a stargazer would treasure.

  In the nondescript hut, now lit inside by the pale glow of candles, Bin Laden, also known as the Sheik, sat on the floor, receiving more visitors. His son-in-law, Sulaiman Abu-Ghaith, head wrapped in white over his dark beard and mustache, sat with the Sheik and with the Sheik’s technical adviser as the technician worked the radio dial and the antenna, trying to get a clear signal. The radio could pick up broadcasts from all over the world, and the technician was trying to get the feed from Al Jazeera, which broadcast in Arabic from Qatar. The Sheik was no fan of the Qatar government or of Al Jazeera, both of which he considered to be under the control of infidels, but even he had to admit it was the best possible source for the news they were waiting to hear.

  The Sheik exchanged small talk with his son-in-law, but it was plain he was under stress, the technician thought. By this point, the mission should have been launched, and, if successful, would be the world’s biggest news. But when he finally was able to get Al Jazeera tuned in, they heard only the ordinary news. The biggest story in the Muslim world now was the assassination over the weekend of Ahmad Shah Massoud, known as the “Lion of Panjshir” and the Sheik’s sworn enemy as head of the Northern Alliance, which was fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Sheik, of course, was aware of this news, which had first broken two days earlier, and he showed no emotion as broadcasters read the latest bulletins about the assassination. The technician was pretty sure the Sheik had known all about that assassination before it even had occurred. He wasn’t privy to all of the Sheik’s plans, but it would take a simple-minded man not to put two and two together this time.

  Now, at the top of the hour, the newscast turned toward events outside of the Muslim world, and the Sheik leaned forward almost eagerly when the broadcaster began saying the words, “Today in the United States…”

  “This could be it,” his son-in-law said, tapping his fingers on the concrete floor where he was sitting. The Sheik turned toward him and motioned him with one hand to stay silent.

  “There are reports that two commercial planes collided over a small town about 50 miles north of New York City today,” the news anchor said. “The accident happened only in the last hour or so, and details are scarce, but it appears at least one of the planes had been hijacked. We’re still waiting for the U.S. government to make comments about this tragedy, and for more details on the possible hijacking. It’s believed more than 150 passengers and crew were aboard the two planes, an American Airlines and a United Airlines plane, both bound from Boston to Los Angeles. If all perished, this would be the worst mid-air collision in U.S. history…”

  The broadcast feed, which had been somewhat weak, blurred out to static, and the technician started playing with the controls again, trying to get it back, but the Sheik motioned him to turn it off.

  “We know what we need to know,” the Sheik said. His face showed no particular emotion and seemed as calm as ever. But Sulaiman thought he could detect disappointment in his father-in-law’s deep eyes, even in the soft glow of the candlelight. He himself wasn’t sure how to feel. He’d known for several days about this operation, and had sent his wife and children to Kuwait to keep them safe in case of possible ramifications, but he hadn’t been in on the planning. He knew this operation meant everything to his father-in-law, and to hear of this horrible failure was certainly shocking, if failure it was. The Sheik certainly seemed to think so.

  “How can you be sure, sir, that the planes that collided are the ones flown by the brothers?” he asked.

  “I cannot be sure, but I have a strong sense that they were. The coincidence would be too great,” the Sheik said. “Didn’t the Director tell us two of the planes would take off from Boston heading for Los Angeles?” He looked at the ground for a while and then looked up again.

  “This is my failure,” the Sheik pronounced. “I chose the crews personally, and they couldn’t carry out the mission.” He shook his head. “The fault can’t lie with Atta. I had the utmost confidence in him. He was unshakeable. If I hadn’t chosen him for this mission, he might have risen far in our organization. No, one of the other pilots must have failed.”

  “Weren’t there more than two planes?” Sulaiman asked, trying to remember the scraps of information he knew about the operation. “What will happen to the two that didn’t collide?”

  The Sheik didn’t seem surprised by this question.

  “The Director and I planned for possible failures,” he replied. “If the Director did his job, the brothers on the other planes have already received orders to stand down. We will keep them on the ground there if possible to plan for future actions.”

  The Sheik struggled slowly to his feet, and Sulaiman got up too to provide support should his father-in-law need it. He had noticed the Sheik limping earlier.

  “I need to get communications quickly to the Director,” the Sheik said. “We can’t communicate electronically, but he will be sending me a message about the operation at some point in the next day. Sulaiman, I need you to get word to him that he is to come to me.”

  Sulaiman nodded. “I’ll leave now for the Continental. I’m staying there and they have Internet access. I can contact him from there.”

  The Sheik signaled that this was OK. His son-in-law wasn’t being tracked by any foreign agencies, they knew, and frequently served as a source of safe communications for the Sheik when he had to get word out of the country. Sulaiman prepared to leave. He embraced his father-in-law.

  “May Allah look over you,” the Sheik said, letting go of the younger man. Sulaiman pushed through the curtain and was gone. The Sheik stood in the center of the room, and no one disturbed him. He stood there for a long time.

  CHAPTER 9

  Karachi, Pakistan: 11:30 p.m. local time

  The Director was angry. He was fuming. His dark face had turned as red as a turnip. At times like this, no one wanted to come near him, not even his most trusted accomplices. But tonight, they had no choice.

  The Director and his men had gathered
in the back room of a popular Karachi night club to watch the proceedings on television. They were prepared to celebrate once the news hit, almost like a group of sports fans awaiting their team’s victory. The room was theirs alone, curtained off from the rest of the place and guarded discreetly by a rather large, bearded man with no visible weapon, but a bulge in his right hip pocket. Life carried on as always at the rowdy club, with drink flowing and popular music blasting out of speakers, but that was a world apart for the small group of men sitting in the room behind the curtain with the Director.

  By 9:30, the Director, his narrow face highlighted by a neatly-trimmed mustache and beard, had drummed his fingers on the table in anticipation, a twinkle in his usually sleepy eyes. The televisions in the room, some tuned to Al Jazeera and others to CNN, competed for attention in English and Arabic. The Director knew both languages well, and, although he’d grown up in Kuwait, was able to move around the huge city of Karachi like a native. It was he who, along with a few others, had designed this operation, had lobbied for it with the Sheik even against long odds, and had put all aspects of the plan into place.

  For the Director, the motive may have started out as a religious one, but over time it had become more of an all-consuming obsession. He’d nearly come to blows several times with others in the group as he resisted their plans for other martyrdom operations. He feared those would distract them from their ultimate goal and perhaps unwittingly draw attention their way, interfering with the main plan. Although the Director was close in some ways to the Sheik, their relationship wasn’t always a placid one. The Sheik’s calm demeanor couldn’t have contrasted more with the hot-headedness of the Director, and they often disagreed on tactics. The Director chafed at the Sheik’s efforts to pick the hijackers, saying the Sheik relied too much on some inner sense rather than a complex, researched scrutiny. That was an argument he had lost, and the Sheik had chosen men for the operation, sometimes after just talking to them for a few minutes. They both agreed Atta was the best man to lead, but had clashed on the muscle men for the operation.

  No one in the room, other than the Director, was certain when the TV reports would start broadcasting the news, because none other than him knew exactly when the operation would begin. But it was morning in the United States, and the Director had gathered them here, so it was apparent he expected something to happen. And soon.

  When CNN began broadcasting reports of a plane collision in New York State, the Director jumped up from the table and began shaking his fist at the screen. Luckily, there were no waitstaff in the room, or they would have had a hard time figuring out why a tragic plane crash thousands of miles away could have caused someone to get so angry.

  “No – it can’t be!” the Director yelled. “No!”

  “What happened?” asked one of his men, who had just come back from the bathroom and was now walking toward the Director.

  “What do you mean, what happened, you bhen chot!” the Director fumed, spittle flying from his mouth, using an epithet that implied the man had engaged in illicit relations with his own sister. It was one of many Urdu swears he’d picked up from his years living in the country. He shoved the man, and the surprised victim of his rage fell backward, bumping his head on the floor. “Look at the damn television! That’s what’s happened!” the Director yelled. The man picked himself off the floor, rubbing a bump on his head, wondering at the strength of the 5’4 Director.

  Ramzi, the Director’s most trusted co-conspirator, got up slowly from his chair and walked across the carpeted floor toward the Director, who now was staring down at the ground in front of one of the televisions, where the news program had moved on from the plane collision to the latest word on the assassination of Mashood. Ramzi, a younger man who had worked closely on this holy operation with the Director for months and who had tried but failed to travel to the United States to serve as one of the hijackers, put one trembling hand on the Director’s shoulder. The Director turned to him, his eyes blazing with anger at this interruption.

  “Sir,” Ramzi said quietly. “We must contact the others – now.”

  The Director grew visibly calmer and nodded. “Yes; as we planned.”

  Ramzi left the room with his phone. He hadn’t addressed the Director by name, because he, like the others, wasn’t sure what the Director’s actual name was. The Director had about a dozen different aliases, and didn’t reveal personal information to even his closest associates. But Ramzi knew the Director was the man who had planned the hijackings, with authority from the Sheik.

  In the following hours, as the group watched the news disconsolately, it became clear that the Director had been correct. Both of the planes had been theirs, they knew. Although the Director, like the others, never touched alcohol, the effect of the news, as the night continued, was like that of heavy drinking. He stumbled around the room, sometimes banging his fist against the walls. He ordered the televisions turned off. He refused food.

  “Everyone – out!” he finally fumed. “Out!”

  The men gratefully rose to their feet and left before he could change his mind. Only Ramzi stayed. The diminutive man, who looked less like a terrorist and more like a young medical student, wearing Western clothes including a pink Oxford shirt with heavily starched collars and a carefully trimmed black mustache, continued sitting quietly in his seat. He was a thin man and didn’t tend to eat much. There was an untouched plate of pita bread in front of him on the table.

  Now the Director marched up and grabbed a slice. He smeared hummus on it and stuffed some quickly into his mouth. He chewed loudly and smacked his lips. Aside from his mustache and beard, he looked far from militant. He wore clothes that fit right into the modern Karachi scene, and no one would have picked him out in a crowd in the streets of Karachi. His looks belied his fierce militancy, and few would have guessed that not long ago he’d worn a long, bushy beard that made him look a little like the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

  As the Director chewed, crumbs falling on the floor in front of him, Ramzi looked quietly down at the table.

  “What is your diagnosis?” he finally said.

  The food had calmed the Director down somewhat, as did the presence of his trusted lieutenant and the departure of the others. The televisions were off now, but they could still hear the crowds of infidels whooping it up in the front of the nightclub.

  The Director shrugged and sat down, tired at last.

  “It’s too early to make a diagnosis,” he replied. “But if I had to guess, it would be that some of the men weren’t up to the task. Not Atta; he was well suited and trustworthy. I picked him myself to lead the operation. But I had my doubts about some of the others, and I expressed them many times to the Sheik, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  He played with the half-eaten piece of bread in his hands, twisting it and causing small chunks to break off onto the table. He put the bread down and began pushing the chunks around in front of him into patterns only he could decipher.

  “I had doubts too,” Ramzi said quietly. “I was particularly concerned about Jarrah. I never felt his heart was really in it. He wasn’t a true brother. Remember how he lived with that German girlfriend?”

  “What are you talking about him for?” the Director asked petulantly, turning to look at Ramza from under his bushy eyebrows. “He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s on his plane now, probably going to land in California soon. If Atta is gone, Jarrah is the best one we have left. You confirmed he and Hanjour received our message, correct?”

  “I did,” Ramzi said. “They stood down. No one will know what they were planning, assuming they all keep their mouths shut.”

  “That reminds me,” the Director said. “We have to take care of Moussaoui. He’s a loose cannon. They arrested him three weeks ago and he’s liable to wag his lips. Please make him your next job. We need to put that ‘pagal bandar’ out of commission.”

  Ramzi took out a little notebook and a pencil and wrote down the order. Then he tucked the not
ebook back in his pocket. They sat silently for a while.

  “What next?” Ramzi asked, finally.

  The Director, who had been in an almost trancelike state, opened his eyes. He didn’t speak right away, but thought for a while.

  “First thing is, I go visit the Sheik,” he finally said. “Like it or not, we can’t do anything without getting him on board, Allah bless him. He may have mucked up this operation, but we need his backing and his money if we’re going to get this done.”

  “Get what done?” Ramzi asked.

  The Director looked at him with contempt.

  “Do you really think I’m going to let this stop us?” he asked. “Do you really think I’m going to let those incompetents prevent us from our ultimate goal? We’re carrying on. We’ll bring back the ones we don’t need, but the leaders will stay. We will work with them to make this martyrdom operation happen. We’re going to bite off the snake’s head. I don’t care if it takes us 10 more years to achieve our goals. The towers are mine!”

  CHAPTER 10

  Los Angeles International Airport: Noon local time

  American Flight 77 landed uneventfully at LAX. Hanjour and his accomplices walked dejectedly down the jet way to a destination that they hadn’t planned on living to see. Those among them who had checked their luggage picked up their bags, and the five of them piled into a cab. “Where are we going?” one of them asked Hanjour.

  “I know a place,” Hanjour replied. The cab sped out of the airport.

  CHAPTER 11

  San Francisco International Airport: 12:30 p.m. local time

  Jarrah and his helpers also arrived at an unplanned destination, and stood in the waiting area after disembarking, unsure where to go. Jarrah checked his phone for instructions and motioned the men over. He talked to them quietly. They nodded. After they dispersed, Jarrah sat down at the airport McDonald’s, ordered a coffee, and looked again at his phone. He’d missed a call from Alev. He’d put her as far out of his mind as possible these last few weeks, but now he could see her again if he wanted to. He put his face in his hands.