"The attacks of nine-eleven showed the Americans, and the rest of the world, that even with all of their missiles, and planes, and satellites, and bombs, and technology . . . that we can still bring them to their knees. Just look what a handful of our warriors accomplished." He raised his hands to the side as if he was on the cross.
"And we could still do this . . . right now. Nothing has changed."
I agreed with him on that part. If five guys want to bring down a plane, right now, they can. If they're willing to die in the effort, there's just no stopping it. We walked for a while as I considered his words.
When he spoke again he was much calmer. "You see, the Americans need to let us be a country and go through all of our own problems. It is none of their business if we choose to live as Muslims. We are not asking them to change. We don't want their opinion."
I added, "I'm with you on that. They need to stop being the police of the World."
We walked slowly on. I was moving his thoughts around in my head, putting them in their appropriate locations for later retrieval. I will do that when I'm getting bombarded by new information. I try to relate certain things to key words or other hooks that I can use to get the intel back out of my mind at a later date. But so far, everything we were talking about was ideology. The mind of the terrorist. Or of the revolutionary . . . I'm not sure what is more fitting. I could see his point of view. We had no business, other than the oil business, interfering in the affairs of his and other countries in the middle east. If we want the oil we should just be honest with everybody and say 'hey, we're coming to take your oil!'
But the world doesn't work like that anymore, does it?
There are no more Roman Empires or Khans. Now we support democracy, and Nation building, and sewing the seeds of freedom, and Capitalism. And really, I'm not sure that those things are really working all that well for us right now. Not really working well for anyone.
Who are we to assume that the American way of life is the correct way for the rest of the world? But then again: I wasn't there to study my own philosophy on life nor re-work my political beliefs. I was there only to get intelligence on terrorists and their future endeavors. I was looking for the kinds of things that I could pass along to much smarter people than myself who would fight these terrorists.
"But the world looked at nine-eleven as a strike against innocent non-combatants. Civilians," I posed to him.
He nodded delicately, "Perhaps, but they are fooling people who sit idly by while their government continues to meddle in affairs that are none of their business, and kills people halfway around the world . . . well those people are no longer innocent. Ignorance and inaction is no excuse. They call us terrorists because we use the only tactics that we have available to us. But who are the real terrorists. If we are . . . they are, too."
The lines do blur. What he was saying made sense, and I could tell that he truly believed it. It wasn't just self-assuring propaganda. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Surely, by the definition, the early American resistance that fought the British would be considered terrorists by most measures. We walked for a couple more minutes in silence. We watched this large butterfly get shoved down into the yard, obviously separated from the path of her journey, lost from her flock. She was quite a contrast from the pale concrete with her white and orange splashes of color, set against black wings. She looked tired and lost, but determined. She did all sorts of busy little things with her little arms and antennae as Nasser and I watched. She was gathering the strength to head back up again and pick a fight with the wind.
I could smell smoke drifting in from somewhere outside the prison. And then he said something odd. "Besides . . . the Americans let us do this." His tone seemed colder, more distant.
I glanced at him, turning briefly away from the butterfly.
"Huh?" I didn't get where he was going with that.
"Nine-eleven. Do you really think all of that could have happened if they were really trying to stop us?"
I shrugged. "Negligence, I guess. And like you said, five motivated guys can do just about anything."
"They let us do that," he said, never looking away from the butterfly. We stood there in silence as our toes were etched by the dust.
The butterfly finally took flight, making her way up and over the wall. And I wondered if I had lost something as she disappeared into the abyss beyond the concrete walls that confined us. I was starting to think that maybe I was the naive one.
Was Nasser saying that through negligence and apathy we Americans had let ourselves be attacked by men wielding box cutters? Or was he saying something much more sinister and frightening?
Was there an implication that the U.S. had been complicit in the 9/11 attacks? Perhaps aiding or providing support to the hijackers? Or did the U.S. just stand by, waiting for 9/11 to happen so that they could easily pass through legislation such as the Patriot Act, and gain worldwide support for the 'War on Terror?" A war which seems to only take us into countries with significant mineral and oil reserves. I don't know . . . and I didn't much care. It doesn't really matter. All of it is so far over me that I am just lost in the shuffle.
You know what . . . it was none of my bloody business! I was a spy, and by definition, I had no right to an opinion about anything. I am just a conduit; a piece of material being used by my government - the country that I still loved. The country that mayor may not have loved me back.
I just kept telling myself that I didn't have, want, or need a point of view about any of this. Do the job. Finish the op. No second guessing. No hesitation. If they had asked me to kill Nasser, I would have. I would rather do it than some stranger. lowed my friend that much.
I am my own perfect nightmare.
EIGHTEEN
During the course of my intelligence gathering operation I spent six months in the Spanish prison known as Madrid III, Valdemoro . . . Terrorist University. Of that six months, four were spent with Nasser. I had been given a first-class education on terrorism. My eyes had been opened to just how dangerous and effective these men could be if provoked. And it seemed as if they had been.
In that time I gathered 30 to 40 pages of handwritten notes. I had been continuing to make my information dumps over the non-secure phone lines to my attorney, but there were still so many little details that I had to preserve. It wouldn't do anybody much good if I lost everything I had learned over the last half-year.
I stressed to my attorney that the intelligence guys needed to send somebody out to visit me so that I could pass on information to people who knew the political climate. And there's nobody more in tune with the Spanish pulse than the Company boys that were stationed at the embassy. He said that he would work on it.
I then asked him what the status was of getting Nasser's new computer. He explained to me that the intelligence guys felt it was too expensive. Too expensive? I guess it would push the government over its spending limit to purchase a thousand-dollar computer. Isn't the national debt like two trillion dollars? So what's the difference? I mean, it's not like knowing everything that the leader of Celafia Jihad was doing would be important. I actually thought he was joking at first. Nope. A computer for Nasser would be prohibitively expensive. All this from the government that paid five-hundred bucks for hammers during the Iran/Contra operations.
I had heard things from Nasser about something going down near us after the Hajj. He had said that it would be close to us, so I felt that there was a possible Spanish strike in the works. Upon hearing this my attorney said that he would talk to the intelligence guys and see what could be done. Until then, he said, see if I could fight my extradition. What?
He wanted me to fight extradition so I could stay longer in Spain, gathering intel. He assured me that the intelligence guys he was talking to wanted the same. To me that sounded a bit dodgy because they had total control over my legal status, and could make all kinds of things happen behind closed doors.
I called him a coup
le of days later and he told me to change directions, not to fight extradition, but to now try to get back so that I could de-brief with the Naval Investigative Service, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security, among others.
"So . . . you don't want me to fight extradition?" I asked curiously.
"That's correct," my lawyer said, " . . . get back here as soon as possible." As if I had some control over when I left Spain.
I laughed, "But two days ago you wanted me to stay-"
"I know, but-"
I interrupted, "Well shouldn't you have this conversation with the intelligence guys? They could make a call and get anything they want done." We are talking about the same U.S. Government that is waging the ' War on Terrorism, ' right?
"I'm not sure it works that way. They're in different branches. See the AUSA(Assistant U. S. Attorney) is part of the Justice department. The intelligence guys can't interfere," my attorney explained, and it sounded dubious at best.
"I'm having difficulty believing that the War on Terror doesn't make a difference in a simple extradition case."
"Yeah, but the AUSA is really being a roadblock," he said, almost sheepishly.
"Does he know what al Qaeda is?! At some point somebody's got to step up to this guy and slap him back to reality. What difference do I make? I went to a gun show. I'm not some murderer on the run."
"I know that-"
"Is the AUSA going to apologize when people start getting blown apart, or when A.Q. get a device?" My eyes scanned the area as I spoke, but nobody was near enough to hear me.
"Prosecutors don't think about things like that," he said.
"They want the conviction and the sentence. He's still mad at you for leaving. He was going to use you as his lead witness in the Murder for Hire case against Anthony. When you left it made his case that much more difficult."
"The guy wanted me to lie under oath, and grass up everyone I ever used to be· friends with . . . " I said frustrated. And although it was a shot at the AUSA, it was also a swing at my attorney, because he had advised me to testify against everyone. He said it was his duty as an 'officer of the court.'
"I understand that-"
"Well, then I don't get it," I said. "What you are telling me is that the united States Government's War on Terror can be temporarily suspended because some nobody AUSA got his feelings hurt. Something like that?"
There was a pause.
"Yeah, I guess it is kind of like that," he replied softly. "That is fucking stupid!"
"Well, yeah, it's kind of stupid. Look, we're everything we can. Maybe they'll just bring you back couple days, turn you around, and send you right back." sounded stupid, too.
"Maybe," I said. I could just imagine my attorney sitting in his office slumped in his leather chair, shrugging noncommittally. Not really appreciating the true gravity of my si tuation. It was probably all sorts of fun to go to the bar and whisper to all of his friends that he was handling a spy inside al Qaeda, but it's a whole different animal when your on the other side of the fence. On the inside it can be . . . unforgiving.
"Ok, so what happens when Nasser and his guys get free and start blowing stuff up? You know that they don't even have formal charges pending? Europe won't stand for a Gitmo(Guantanimo Bay, camp X-ray, Terrorist Detainee facility). They'll let these guys go any day."
He didn't really know what to say. "We're going to do everything that we can." That's the typical lawyer answer when there are no answers.
"It's funny to me that I'm over here, in a hotbed of terrorists, and as far as I can tell, the only person holding a hostage is the assistant u.s. attorney in Dallas, Texas. Doesn't that seem wrong to you? He couldn't even make his marriage work."
I knew that I was just venting now, but I needed the release. This whole thing was being poorly handled by complete idiots. Or so it seemed at the time.
"I believe that he'll soften up in time. He just needs his pound of flesh," my attorney assured me. How about a pound of enriched Uranium?
"Time is dead bodies, over here. These guys are for real. This isn't a movie where you can press pause."
"We know, we know."
These are the same people that probably could have stopped 9/11.
"They're trying to get a Nuclear Device," I reminded him.
They were going to try to procure it through some dealers in Split, Yugoslavia, near the Italian border. The mujahadeen had boats and money out of Greece that would aid in the procurement and relocation of said device.
"Nasser's name isn't coming up on their(U.S. Intelligence) radar," my attorney said. Apparently the U.S. Intelligence guys couldn't find out anything about him . . . or at least, they claimed not to. I began to wonder if my attorney was being duped.
"Well," I said, "their radar is broken. He was on TV next to Ossama, so they've definitely got a file on him down here."
"Let me make some calls."
"I'll call you in a couple days," I said, ending the call before I smashed the phone receiver into little bits on the wall.
Two days later I received a fax message from the u.s. embassy, in Madrid. It informed me, in Spanish, that I would be leaving the country soon, and that when I left I could only bring my legal documents and a pair of 'court' clothes, but no personal belongings whatsoever.
This created a potential problem. I had all of these notes that I had been making for several months, and I could not bring them with me. I decided to take my notes and transcribe the key words and details onto the back of some of my legal papers. I figured that there was a good chance that they wouldn't scrutinize the papers too closely. But that was still going to be a risk. If for some reason the authorities took that paperwork, or didn't allow me to bring it back to America, then I was going to be stuck. I needed redundancy.
An idea hit me. I went to my bag and pulled out my court clothes: a charcoal grey Dolce & Gabbana suit, and a bluish-grey dress shirt. I laid the clothes out on my bed and studied them for a few minutes. I decided that they would be perfect.
Over the next couple of days Nasser and I made our plans. I would go back to America and do whatever time that I was required to do, and then I would return to Spain, and join Celafia Jihad. I would head out to one of the active training camps where I would begin teaching Jihadis. Nasser would finance everything and make sure that I was taken care of.
"If all goes well, we will make the Hajj together, brother," Nasser said.
He referred to me as one of the 'brothers. It was the first time he had done that.
"Thank you, Nasser," I said as we hugged each other. "Thanks for giving me a path . . . and a future."
"Insha-allah, we will do many great things. Many things." I handed him my C-bag with all sorts of stuff in it. There was a full set of camouflage fatigues, some jeans, some t-shirts and socks. "I want you to have my things."
He smiled as he took the bag. "I will hold them for you until we see each other again."
"Be careful, Nasser," I said, knowing that at some point I might return. I might have to come back and deal with this dedicated, courageous, honest man. A better man than I'll ever be. I might have to return soon.
Return . . . to kill my friend.
He shrugged, "What choice do we have, really?"
What choice did either of us have?
None.
None at all.
NINETEEN
I spent the next couple of days furiously consolidating my notes. I used the second and third pages of my Spanish court documents - the ones that I figured wouldn't be studied too closely if they were searched. On the backs of these pages I would transcribe my notes as small as I could, keeping most of it in chronological order.
I stretched, paced the room, and tried to put some of the more important details into my long-term memory. I also did my best to put everything I had learned into a kind of mental collage. Sort of a sum-total for everything. What was my objective? To infiltrate al Qaeda. Did I accomplish it? On several levels,
yes. Did I obtain intelligence that could prevent or lessen the blow of future attacks? I believed so. Did I have the ability to continue my work in Spain or abroad? Without a doubt.
So, it seemed as if I had enough intel to be useful to the intelligence guys so that they could penetrate al Qaeda and Celafia Jihad. If my only use was to become an instructor at a terrorist training facility and be able to learn the location and identities of its students, it would still have been a valuable 'get.' I wasn't sure how they would use me, but I was sure that I would be used in some capacity. I already had more in-thefield experience and firsthand knowledge than many of the CIA's field agents ever receive. The reason isn't that I'm some kind of genius, but that I have the right credentials.
When I talked to a terrorist about fighting, and the tactics of killing, it isn't because I learned all about it in my field manuals, it's because I've done it.
I didn't allege to be a fighter . . . I was one. I didn't pretend to be a criminal because, I had become one. And believe it or not, there is a lot to be learned from doing some time in a Prison; much the same as there are lessons to be learned from military service, which I had also done. I've worked in bars, and picked fights, and watched people die. I've travelled the world, and dated models, and wrecked sports cars, and been successful, and lost it all. I've done the gig as a bodyguard, and also as a contractor hunting people who were surrounded by bodyguards. I learned to speak French in the French Foreign Legion; I learned Spanish in Spain. A little Russian, a bit of Arabic.
I've been shot at, and stabbed, and punched, and kicked, and choked. And I've been hunted. There is nothing quite so real as being hunted by other humans who want to kill you. It brings a proper balance to the things in your life that you thought were important. Colors become more pronounced, tastes more flavorful.
I've studied psychology, but not so much that I claim to know what everybody is always thinking. I've studied physics, but not so much that I quit staring up at the stars at night, or squinting at ghosts. I have learned when to stop and smell the roses, and also when to set them on fire for a quick diversion.
Walking Ghost: Welcome to Terrorist University Page 10
