Even if it didn’t, even if the Americans made all the videos and the records disappear, they could never hide the attack itself. Other mujahids would know what Kassani had done. They’d know that without giant factories, they, too, could create sarin.
So would their targets.
“Now what?” Kassani asked, as Ghaith pulled up at the hospital’s front entrance.
Ghaith reached across Kassani, opened the front passenger door, his big arm touching Kassani’s chest. The Iraqi stank of stale sweat and sour milk. He seemed more comfortable now that they’d left the desert behind. “What do you think? Get back to work. And faster.”
—
KASSANI DID. When his men asked him how the experiment had gone, he told them, As expected. No one asked more. He was tempted to bring in more workers, but he didn’t want to take time to train them. Instead, he pressed his team. He hadn’t forgotten the carelessness that had killed Bashir. But he saw at the same time that he and his men had fallen a little in love with playing chemists. He told them to quit trying to improve the process and instead put as many batches through as they could.
A week later, he had just added a new and nearly full liter bottle of DF to the others in his locker when the stairwell door swung open and slammed against the wall. Even before he looked, Kassani knew he’d see Ghaith. The Iraqi treated the lab like it belonged to him.
“Get enough for one prisoner. Time for another test.”
Kassani grabbed one of the hundred-milliliter bottles he had poured the week before, went to the cabinet where he kept the safety equipment—
“None of that.”
“You want me to mix it without a respirator?”
“When it’s time to use it, whoever puts it out isn’t going to be wearing one of those, right?” Ghaith didn’t wait for an answer. “Come on, the caliph wants to see.”
Kassani tried to remember how quickly the newly mixed sarin had begun to fume the week before. A few seconds. And that had been in the heat of the desert. He’d use a long-necked beaker, fill it a quarter of the way. He should be all right. The Aum Shinrikyo cultists in Tokyo had punctured plastic bags filled with premixed sarin inside subway cars and walked away uninjured. The sarin hadn’t become airborne in lethal quantities until they were gone. Though their preparation was much less pure than his.
Kassani had bought thick plastic bags for this eventuality. He had ampules of atropine, too, an injectable drug that blocked sarin’s effects. Atropine wasn’t risk-free. In high doses, it could cause heart attacks. But it beat the alternative.
—
GHAITH LED Kassani to the basement of the hospital and pulled open a black-painted door to reveal a concrete tunnel barely two meters high. Kassani hadn’t known it existed, though now that he did it made sense. The Americans knew the Islamic State brought fighters here. Their drones would surely monitor the hospital’s entrances.
The tunnel was warm and stale. Dim emergency lights stretched backward into darkness. Claustrophobia was Kassani’s secret fear. He stopped short, bumping into Ghaith.
The Iraqi shoved him ahead. “If I can fit, you can, too.” Ghaith pushed past him, then pulled the steel door shut behind them both.
Kassani couldn’t help feeling that this tunnel led nowhere but to his own funeral. Still, he silently followed. After five minutes, the tunnel crossed another, a four-way underground junction. Ghaith turned right.
“A whole maze under here.”
“You think the caliph would be alive if the Americans could see his face?”
Two more tunnels later, Ghaith led them up a flight of stairs to another steel door. He rapped until it swung open. Kassani expected an empty building or garage.
But they stepped into an ordinary living room, with a couch, a coffee table, a big-screen television. A sullen young Iraqi wearing a pistol stood by the tunnel door. “Salaam alaikum—”
Without a word, Ghaith raised his massive right hand and slapped the Iraqi so hard that the younger man went to one knee.
“Uncle—”
Ghaith shoved the man onto his back, put a knee on his chest. “Ask the password before you unlock the door. If you don’t hear the right answer, you make sure you’re ready to shoot if you open it.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle. Truly.”
“You’re protecting the caliph. Next time, I won’t just hit you. You understand?”
Abu Bakr stepped into the room. “Everything all right?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Kassani. “Ghaith says that Allah has blessed us. That you’ve succeeded. I’d like to see for myself.”
Once again, the caliph’s presence struck Kassani. “Of course, Your Eminence. But I must warn you, it’s dangerous.”
“I didn’t mean in person. There’s a shed in the yard. After you’re done, we’ll pour gasoline on it and burn it. That’ll destroy the gas, yes?”
“It should.” Muslims weren’t supposed to be cremated, but considering what they were about to do, whoever was inside the shed had bigger worries. “But how will you see?”
Abu Bakr turned on the flat-screen to reveal a color feed from a wireless camera. A figure in a black robe sat trussed to a chair.
Not a robe. An abbaya. At first Kassani couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. “A woman, Caliph?” She turned her head to look at the camera. She had long black hair and bruises under her eyes. She was beautiful. And she wasn’t a woman. She was a girl. Maybe fifteen.
“A Yazidi whore. She injured one of our men.”
Ghaith laughed. “Grabbed his—”
“Enough,” Abu Bakr said. “I personally have considered the evidence. She looks innocent, but she belongs to the devil. Don’t let her tempt you, Soufiane.”
If the caliph says so—
“Where is she?”
—
LIKE MANY Arab houses, the home had a small backyard enclosed by high concrete walls, a chance for women to get air without being seen. In the middle was a small wooden shed, maybe three meters on each side. Kassani had never seen one like it anywhere in Syria. Where had it come from? No matter. He realized that he was trying to distract himself.
He opened the door. He hoped the girl didn’t speak Arabic.
Not a girl. An apostate whore who deserved this punishment.
Inside, the air was hot and dry. An extension cord powered a lamp and a camera pointed at her chair.
She hardly looked as he stepped close. Her face was shiny with sweat, but her eyes showed no fear, only the dull certainty of pain. “If you’re going to do it, you’ll need to unlock me,” she said. “Unless you’re so small that it fits even with my legs closed. I’ve seen a few of those.”
“Don’t speak this way.”
“Why not? Will you convince me it’s my duty to let you rape me?”
“How old are you?”
She laughed, the sound a skeleton’s rattling bones. “I used to be thirteen. Now I’m nothing.”
Kassani wondered if he could find another way. Maybe Abu Bakr had another prisoner nearby.
“Soufiane,” the caliph said. “Trust in Allah.” The voice came out of nowhere. Kassani needed a moment to see the camera had a speaker attached. Then he knew he would have no reprieve. He needed to choose. The Yazidi or the caliph.
“Soufiane—” the girl said.
“Quiet.”
“Are you sure? Some of your friends liked me to moan—”
He knelt beside her, reached out, squeezed her neck until her eyes bulged and her tongue hung out. She smelled foul, infected. The caliph was right. “I said quiet, whore.”
Now that he’d decided, he felt better. He’d planned to use a bowl, put it under her chair and run for the house. But as he looked at her devil eyes, he found a better way.
He flipped her chair on its back. The girl’s eyes were wide now
. She muttered to him, but he no longer cared what she had to say. Behind him he heard the camera moving to follow the girl. Good. He pulled on two sets of gloves, laid out the bottles of DF and isopropyl alcohol, the tall mixing stick, the long-necked beaker.
The girl devil squirmed in the chair and began to speak more loudly, not Arabic, words he couldn’t understand. He clouted her hard enough that she groaned and went still. He no longer cared what she said, but he needed her not to move.
He poured the DF into the beaker. Then the crucial step, the isopropyl. He stirred the potion quickly but delicately, like the bartenders at his family’s infidel hotels. The liquid bubbled as it turned to sarin. He lifted the beaker, holding it by its base, as far from his body as he could.
He tipped the clear glass over and poured the liquid on the girl’s face.
—
BY THE TIME Kassani escaped the shed and kicked the door shut behind him, he realized that he’d gotten a whiff of the stuff, too. His nose was running wildly, and he could see straight ahead but not to the sides. Like a curtain was being pulled over his eyes. He threw off his gloves, reached in his bag for the needle loaded with atropine. But he couldn’t seem to pick it up, his fingers wouldn’t listen. Now a spastic pain hit him behind the eyes. Maybe he’d gotten more than a whiff—
He made himself relax. He was walking, breathing, he just needed that ampule. He didn’t understand what had happened. He’d left quickly. He found the needle again, wrapped his fingers around it, went to a knee. He tried to pull off the plastic cap. But his hands trembled, and the ampule slipped away.
He reached down, knowing he had to have it, the poison was taking control, his throat was tightening—
He couldn’t see it—
Suddenly Ghaith was beside him.
“Calm. This?” Ghaith held the needle before his eyes. Kassani nodded, he wasn’t sure he could speak, and pounded his right thigh to show Ghaith where to inject him. Ghaith grinned, and for a moment Kassani thought the Iraqi was going to walk away. He’s always wanted me to die—
But Ghaith pulled the cap and jabbed the needle through Kassani’s pants and into his thigh. A moment later, the relief came, spreading up Kassani’s legs and then everywhere. Kassani’s hands rested, and the curtain over his eyes opened, though his head was aflame. Ghaith pulled him up and tugged him inside, into the kitchen.
“What happened?”
Kassani wiped his chin. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He didn’t have to ask about the girl. He could hear her screams and the wild clanking of the chains coming through the speakers in the living room. She didn’t sound like the devil now. She sounded like a dying thirteen-year-old. Amazing to think that he had been only a breath or two from joining her. Though he didn’t understand. He’d left the shack—
Then he saw the wet spot on his left thigh. Off. Take it off. He pulled down his pants, tossed them into the backyard. “Those burn.” He forced out the words though his tongue felt loose in his mouth. His heart fluttered, a side effect of the atropine. “Thank you.”
“Thank the caliph. He told me to check.”
Kassani closed his eyes and waited for the girl’s screams to stop. When he opened them again a few minutes later, Abu Bakr sat next to him. Was it only his imagination or did the caliph smell of cologne?
“It works.” Abu Bakr patted him on the shoulder. “Almost too well, I’d say.”
“Thank you for sending Ghaith.”
“You see, I chose her to test you.”
Relief filled Kassani, relief and the understanding that he had given his soul to this man. He’d proven his loyalty. He was already forgetting about the girl. Who was she? Nothing. A test. One he’d passed.
“You told Ghaith last week you had five liters, Soufiane.”
“Yes.”
“For a big room, maybe two hundred people sitting, a high ceiling, how much do we need?”
Two hundred people, a high ceiling. A strangely specific question. The caliph must have a target in mind already. “Can you tell me more about the place? Is it everyone packed in close?”
“Close, yes.”
Kassani waited for more information, but the caliph was done. “A room like that, the sarin will need a while to spread. If people can leave quickly, most of them will run as soon as they feel symptoms. Can we lock them in?”
“Assume yes.”
“Then it would depend how quickly we can get it into the air. If there are pipes, ducts, if it’s coming from more than one place. To be honest, Caliph, these are engineering questions. Beyond me.”
“But we’d need more than we have now.”
“Yes. Twenty liters would be better. Fifteen is the minimum.”
Abu Bakr nodded. Kassani sensed someone else had given him a similar answer.
“How quickly can you do that?”
“This week, we made almost a liter. We’re nearly at six.”
Bakr shook his head.
“If we work every day, even Fridays, twelve hours, we could make two liters a week.” If we don’t kill ourselves trying. “Maybe two and a half.” Kassani felt as though he were negotiating with Allah Himself. “That’s ten in four weeks. Plus what we have now. Four more weeks and we’ll have almost sixteen.”
“Four weeks.” The caliph nodded. “And you can move it without too much trouble?”
“Yes. As long as it’s DF, it’s safe. Easy for a man to carry. Even a man pretending to be a refugee. Though it might look odd, why does one refugee have so many water bottles?”
“You just worry about making it.”
14
NEAR TROYAN, BULGARIA
THE CASTLE suited Wells better than he expected.
A fact that might not say much for his mental health.
—
HE’D ARRIVED in Bulgaria after a long week at Bagram. The Black Hawk touched tarmac. The operators dragged him to a cement room and hosed him clean. A Delta medic showed up with a wide-gauge needle and a rehydration bag. They held him down while he screamed they were poisoning him.
The next morning, the interrogators asked him what he’d been doing in Nangalam, how long he had been a courier for al-Qaeda, what he knew about the Pakistani Taliban. He shrugged and grunted like he’d forgotten how to speak. We found your passport, they said. We know your real name. We know you speak English. Why waste our time pretending you don’t?
They didn’t torture him—not exactly. But after the third interrogation session where he wouldn’t answer questions or even confirm his name, they moved him to a windowless cell that had bright fluorescent lights and loud atonal music that never turned off. For his protection, they said. Sleep was impossible. Time stretched until it snapped. After a day, maybe two, Wells left Khalili and the cell behind. He found himself home in Montana, sitting at the kitchen table with his parents. His mom ladled overcooked spaghetti. His dad sipped from a highball glass. A typical supper. His folks had loved him, but they were World War II babies, not exactly emotionally aware.
They didn’t notice him now, not even when he tried to tell them how much he’d missed them. He’d been undercover on his first mission in Afghanistan when they died. Hadn’t even known they were gone until he came back to Hamilton to see them. One of his great regrets. Now they were growing old again. This time, he had no choice but to watch. The minutes were years. His mother turned stooped and frail, his father jowly and soft. All along, he couldn’t make them hear him.
Finally, the kitchen was empty, and Wells felt the strange warmth of tears on his cheeks. Real or a dream, he didn’t know.
The interrogators came for him then. They asked more questions he wouldn’t answer and moved him back to a regular cell. A cell where he could sleep. When he woke, the guards told him he was being taken to another prison, one that wasn’t in Afghanistan. They didn’t say where. He didn’t ask.
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—
FIVE GUARDS flew him west on a Gulfstream. They shackled his hands and legs to his seat but otherwise treated him decently. They didn’t hood or sedate him. They let him use the toilet, as long as he left the door open. They even offered him the same energy bars they were eating. Wells thought about turning them down, decided not to bother. Samir Khalili had already proved himself, and he had no idea when he’d get his next real meal.
You don’t know how good you’ve got it, the head guard said, as Wells crunched his third PowerBar. Free snacks. If we had some near beer, it’d practically be cocktail hour. In a week, you’ll be begging to come back, buddy. Too bad the rides only go one way.
Wells closed his eyes. He woke to find the plane already on the ground. The guards hooded him, tightened his cuffs, pulled him out. The European air was cool and clammy, nothing like Afghanistan, with a chemical tang Wells couldn’t place. His hood was not quite blackout dark. Through its fabric, he saw blue police lights flashing on a black van. Behind him, the Gulfstream’s engines spooled down.
Enjoy your stay, Sammy, the head guard said. Two men grabbed him, wrenched him toward the van. Even before they spoke, Wells knew they weren’t American. One smelled of cheap perfumed soap, the other of plum brandy and cigarettes.
They threw him into the cargo compartment, slammed the doors. The van stayed motionless, and a guard beat him, steady as a lumberjack chopping a log, grunting with each strike, sending spikes of pain through Wells’s arms and ribs.
The beating stopped. Started again. A different guard. The rhythm now was slower, smoother, the blows aimed carefully at his knees and shoulders and shins, vulnerable spots. Wells didn’t try to defend himself. They’d hit him harder if he resisted.
To pass the time, he counted the shots as dispassionately as if he were watching someone else take them. Fivesixseveneight . . . Nothing to see here. Wells had never thought of himself as a masochist. Maybe he’d become one without even knowing. How many beatings had he endured over the years? Twelvethirteenfourteen . . . Did he seek out this abuse as punishment for his own violence?
The Prisoner Page 21
