“Come on, Ellis. He does that, he might as well put a billboard over the seventh floor, Traitor works here.”
“How a depth charge is supposed to work. Surface or die. Let’s say he doesn’t do anything. Then you work Hani for a few months, see if he gives you anything.”
A few months—Shafer made the pitch as casually as if he were suggesting a vacation in Florida. Hang out on the beach. The full weight of the proposal hit Wells now. To have any chance, he would have to inhabit this new identity completely. The guards would have to treat him like every other prisoner. No mysterious days out of his cell. No visitors. In fact, none of the guards could know. Only Kirkov, and one or two senior prison officers.
Of course he could have no chances to call Emmie or Anne. He would be as lost to them as if he’d fallen into a coma.
“You don’t like it, we won’t do it. We’ll find another way.”
“I say I didn’t like it? It’s good. We’re not going to come up with anything better.”
“You can say enough is enough.”
Wells wondered if Shafer was still second-guessing him for what had happened in that garage in Hong Kong. “Buvchenko deserved what he got, Ellis.”
“We don’t agree. But it’s not about that.”
“Tell me what it’s about, then.”
“Not too many people get another chance, another family—”
Shafer spoke so quietly that Wells had to lean close to hear him. His caution infuriated Wells, precisely because it put into words the thoughts Wells couldn’t let himself have. “I didn’t come begging for this. You suggested it, all of the sudden you’re having an attack of conscience.”
“I hadn’t thought about your changed circumstances.”
“Changed circumstances?”
Shafer stared into his lap. “You can feel,” he finally said. “Be afraid of missing your family. It’s allowed.”
After a while, Shafer stood, turned to face him. “This is why they all leave you, John.”
“If I’m going to make this work, I need a proper jacket.” A backstory.
Shafer’s eyes softened in his wrinkled face. He looked at Wells with something like pity.
“Not another word, Ellis.”
“Fine. For the jacket, we use somebody real, long as we can be sure he’s dead or disappeared so long ago that nobody at the prison could know him. Someone who froze in the Kush five years ago and the body was never found.”
Wells nodded. The idea of using a real Qaeda jihadi made sense, if they could find the right one.
“More than that. I want to start in Afghanistan. Put me on a list, let a Delta/SOG team pick me up, give me to the flyboys”—the rendition teams. Wells was proposing he be treated like the al-Qaeda commander he was pretending to be even before he arrived at the prison. “The farther upstream I’m inserted, the better. More time to live it.”
“All right.”
Shafer agreed so quickly that Wells wondered if he had planned to make the same suggestion. “You think Kirkov and Vinny will sign off?”
“You know Kirkov better than I do. As for Vinny, it’s no skin off his back, and that’s always his main worry.”
Wells couldn’t argue. Duto would love this mission, which gave him the chance to catch a traitor without having to acknowledge that the man even existed.
“Fine. I’m going back to North Conway, spend a couple of days there. Then Kirkov. Make sure he’s on board before we pitch Vinny.”
“I’ll talk to the tech guys, make sure we can exclude a Snowden-type breach. Also see if we can find any digital fingerprints, downloads, et cetera. Check back in a couple of days.”
“Long as you promise not to talk about feelings, Ellis. Yours or mine.”
6
RAQQA, SYRIA
MOST doctors and nurses at the National Hospital in Raqqa had fled the Islamic State. Those who stayed were a motley bunch, like the humpbacked anesthesiologist the group had coaxed to remain with the promise of a fresh virgin every month. With staff so scarce, the hospital had closed its top two floors.
But Daesh had found its own use for the extra space.
—
THAT THE JIHADIS wanted weapons of mass destruction was no surprise. The Daesh commanders had no qualms about killing civilians. Truly, they hoped for the chance, to provoke the West into revealing its hatred of Muslims. The Islamic State also understood the symbolic value of unconventional weapons, which would show the world how technically advanced it had become.
So after the group consolidated its territory in the summer of 2014, its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, began the Qiyamah Project, after the Arabic word for resurrection. Baghdadi named an Iraqi friend named Omar Haddad as the program’s leader.
Haddad was a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s mukhabarat. He had strangled his first wife to marry her cousin. He decided to focus on anthrax, among the deadliest of all biological weapons. Two million, one kilo, one hundred thousand, Haddad told Baghdadi. For two million dollars, he hoped to produce a kilogram of anthrax spores, enough to kill a hundred thousand people in a crowded city like New York.
Two million dollars was real money for the Islamic State. Baghdadi hesitated. Haddad urged him to imagine dead kaffirs stacked five-high outside hospitals, the United States declaring martial law. After considering for a week, Baghdadi signed off.
Then the Islamic State learned what other terrorist groups had already discovered. Growing anthrax sounded easy enough. The reality was different. Every step—from picking the right strains and designing a laboratory to harvesting the spores—brought new difficulties. The Islamic State had engineers in its ranks but no microbiologists or infectious disease specialists. Specialized fermenters and centrifuges were expensive and impossible to buy legally. The group was reduced to smuggling balky Soviet-era equipment from Serbia. Even the basics of the biology befuddled Haddad, who had not taken a science class since seventh grade.
The Qiyamah Project churned through its initial budget in six months without producing a single batch of anthrax spores. Haddad promised Baghdadi he was close. Another million, that’s all. When the additional money disappeared six months later, Baghdadi shut down the research.
“What now, Caliph?” Haddad asked.
“Now you have the honor of leading a platoon of suicide bombers, Omar.”
When Haddad said he preferred a more conventional unit, Baghdadi hung him in Raqqa’s main square.
Nuclear weapons proved even further out of reach. Even relatively advanced nations like Iran and Brazil had struggled with them. Producing plutonium or enriching uranium required hundreds of scientists working at massive industrial complexes. The Islamic State had no chance. The group made scattered attempts to steal or buy material. But it found only shady arms dealers who promised plutonium and HEU by the kilo but never had any themselves. They inevitably turned out to be criminals, frauds, or police informants—often all three at once.
Baghdadi put aside the Islamic State’s quest for weapons of mass destruction. Until a man who had briefly worked in Haddad’s anthrax laboratory asked to meet him “to talk about Qiyamah.”
—
SOUFIANE KASSANI was a thirty-two-year-old Moroccan who’d been a Web designer before joining the jihad five years before. He came from a wealthy family that owned luxury hotels in Morocco and Tunisia. His parents had sent him to the American School in the Moroccan capital of Rabat. He spoke and read English with an almost native fluency. But the West had never fooled him the way it did his parents. He preferred the simplicity of a one-room mosque to the footmen and filigrees at his family’s hotels. Rich Westerners saw his people as nothing more than an exotic backdrop for their desert adventures. Their mere presence polluted his country.
Even now, Kassani remembered seeing the World Trade Center towers collapse and thinking, Good. They deser
ved it. He happily joined the men fighting for a new caliphate in Syria. He quickly distinguished himself for his piety—unlike many of his fellow fighters, he didn’t have an arrest record and didn’t need to be educated in the Quran—and his brutality. Even by the group’s standards, he was quick to go to the knife, as the jihadis said.
Kassani was small and trim, with strangely gray skin and black eyes. He was not a scientist, but he had taken classes in biology and chemistry at Mohammed V University in Rabat. He had volunteered to help design the anthrax lab, but after a month he asked to be returned to the front lines.
Now he was back in Raqqa, building the group’s websites. He was a mid-level functionary, at best, and for him to ask for an audience with the caliph was shockingly bold.
Kassani heard nothing for a month. Then, after dinner one night, his phone buzzed.
“You know Moataz Street?” An unfamiliar voice.
“Of course.”
“Come to the coffeehouse at the south end. One hour.”
Kassani arrived to find the shop empty but for one man, big, with the cashew skin of an Iraqi and eyebrows so thick they seemed almost painted on his face. The man didn’t introduce himself, much less offer the usual pleasantries. He nodded to a door. “Go back there, take off your clothes. All of them.”
Kassani didn’t argue. He imagined that the Iraqi wanted to be sure he wasn’t hiding some kind of tracking device. The American drones were a constant presence over Raqqa.
The back room was a windowless storage area, empty except for a thin mattress speckled with red-brown stains. Kassani undressed, leaving his shirt and pants in a neat pile. As if by treating them carefully, he could ensure he would have the chance to wear them again.
The Iraqi walked in, holding a hypodermic needle. “Sit on the mattress, left arm out.” He grabbed Kassani’s wrist, inspected the crook of his elbow, lifted the needle. “Want to know what I’m giving you?” Before Kassani could answer, the Iraqi slid the needle into his forearm. An expert stroke, almost parallel to the skin instead of perpendicular. A cool rush spread through Kassani, filled him with a numbing pleasure. His head lolled. The man pinched his cheek hard enough to draw blood.
“You want to hurt the caliph?”
“Of course not.” Kassani’s voice sounded strange in his own ears.
“You believe in the cause?”
“With all my soul.”
“You want to hurt the caliph?”
Kassani tried to shake his head. The man stared at him for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, he laid Kassani down on the mattress. “Sleep.”
—
KASSANI WOKE TO a dull headache, a dry mouth. He felt groggy, dimwitted. He had never tasted even a sip of alcohol, but he guessed he was having what the kaffirs called a hangover from whatever the man had given him.
He realized he was no longer in the coffeehouse. This room was painted yellow and had a barred window high in one wall. The sky outside was the grayish blue of early morning. He was still naked. Whoever had moved him hadn’t brought his clothes. Instead, a plain white shirt and pants were draped over a chair, along with a bottle of water. Kassani made himself rise and dress. He wasn’t surprised to find that the room’s only door was locked from the outside.
Kassani wondered if they planned to torture him. The prospect didn’t bother him as much as he expected. He’d been on the other side for long enough to know that no one had an infinite capacity for agony. Sooner or later, the body shut down. He would hope for sooner.
Outside, the sky brightened and the calls to prayer began. The sound gladdened Kassani. He washed his hands and began his ablutions.
He had just finished when the door opened to reveal the Iraqi man he’d met the day before.
“Ready for the caliph, Soufiane?”
Words Kassani hadn’t expected to hear. He nodded, hoping that his muzzy head would clear enough for him to explain his plan.
“I can’t wait to hear this.” After that last dig, the Iraqi stared silently at Kassani until Baghdadi arrived twenty minutes later.
The caliph had black eyes and a long, thick beard graying on the sides. He wore a heavy black cloak and simple leather sandals. His face was at once kind and all-knowing. As soon as Baghdadi looked at him, Kassani knew he wouldn’t fight back no matter what Baghdadi did. Even if the caliph punched and kicked him until his bones broke. He would trust the man had seen some impurity in him that he didn’t recognize in himself. Those lucky Muslims fourteen hundred years ago must have felt the same when they met the Prophet, peace be upon him.
“As-salaam alaikum, Soufiane.” Behind him, the Iraqi stepped away, stood by the door.
Kassani went to a knee. “Alaikum salaam, my caliph.”
Baghdadi waggled his fingers and Kassani rose.
“I’m sorry for these precautions, but Ghaith insists.”
Kassani nodded. He hardly trusted himself to speak.
“You asked to see me about Qiyamah.” Baghdadi’s voice was barely a whisper, like he knew Kassani couldn’t handle him at full volume. “Speak, then.”
Kassani found his voice. He told the caliph he had seen from the beginning that Haddad couldn’t succeed. He had asked out because he didn’t want to work on a failing project. Ever since, he had researched unconventional weapons, reading all he could online. The Islamic State controlled Internet access even for jihadis. But its rules didn’t apply to Kassani because of his Web work.
“You have an idea?”
“Chemicals.”
“How can we make those if we can’t make the anthrax?”
“Do you know about Aum Shinrikyo? The Japanese?”
Baghdadi looked at his watch, turned and whispered to Ghaith. The Iraqi argued briefly, but Baghdadi shook his head. Ghaith walked out, pulled the door shut behind him, almost slamming it.
“He takes protecting me seriously. But I know I can trust you.”
Kassani felt as if the summer sun had filled the room. “Thank you, Caliph.”
“Now, tell me about these Japanese.”
So Kassani explained the story of Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult whose power had peaked in the early 1990s. Aum Shinrikyo didn’t control its own territory, but in every other way it had advantages over the Islamic State. The Japanese police left it alone. It could buy first-rate manufacturing equipment. It had even spent thirty million dollars to build a laboratory.
“Yet these Japanese couldn’t make anthrax into a weapon. They tried. They even harvested the spores and released them, but they never hurt anyone.”
For the first time, Baghdadi seemed annoyed. “Then why tell me all this?”
“Because with the chemicals, it was different. They succeeded. They made sarin, and another one called VX. They killed people with both—”
“How many—”
“More than twenty. Injured thousands. They would have gone further, but the police came after them, they ran out of time.”
“What happened to them?”
“Some, put to death. Others, still in jail.”
“These Japanese spent thirty million dollars to kill twenty people? This is your idea?”
Kassani felt like a fool. But he couldn’t quit now. “I think they wasted money on the anthrax, Caliph. Sarin is easier. Safe to store, too, with simple precautions.”
“It’s a gas?”
“At normal temperatures, a liquid, but it evaporates quickly. Like water.”
Baghdadi nodded. “How many people does this kill?”
“Depends how much we make. Four or five liters could kill everyone on a subway train, if they couldn’t leave. If you can get it into the air, it doesn’t smell, so people don’t know what’s happening until too late.”
“And you understand how to make it? Not in a general way but exactly?”
“I do
. Specific chemicals, mixed and cooked for a specific length of time. Tricky, but not impossible. I can explain, if you want, Caliph.”
“That’s all right. How long will this take?”
“With money and two or three men, I would guess I can make ten liters in a year. After that, it’ll be faster.”
“And how much money do you want?”
“It depends on how easily I can get the equipment—”
“A number, Soufiane.”
“Three hundred thousand.” Kassani was guessing. He had looked online for the gear he thought he needed, but he wasn’t sure how much bringing it over the border would cost.
“Dollars?”
Kassani nodded.
“Three hundred thousand dollars. You know what happened to Haddad.”
“Caliph, if I fail, I expect you to do the same to me.”
“You don’t fear dying?”
“Not for Allah.”
Baghdadi had big, meaty hands. Now he laid them on Kassani’s shoulders and stared at the Moroccan as though he could see not just Kassani’s thoughts but his very soul. “Then you’ll have the chance. Three hundred thousand and a year to work. No one will bother you. You can do it at the National Hospital, the top floor, the Americans won’t ever bomb there.”
Kassani couldn’t speak. He bowed his head.
“One more thing, Soufiane. Let’s not call it Qiyamah anymore. I want a simpler title. How about the Special Projects Division?”
—
THUS, the Islamic State birthed its Special Projects Division.
As Kassani had said, sarin was relatively easy to make. Scientists at Germany’s IG Farben chemical company had found it in the late 1930s while looking for pesticides. It belonged to a class of molecules called organophosphates, but its structure made it particularly lethal. The Nazis had immediately seen its potential as a weapon. They had decided not to use it, fearing that doing so would provoke a massive counterattack.
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