Taking Morgan

by David Rose

  Khader cannot stop the grin that spreads across his face, and he clasps Adam’s hand in the Palestinian fashion, with wrists crossing: a gesture of solidarity. “Okay, habibi. You will come. Welcome!”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “Soon we will travel south, first to Khan Younis, where I will hold a briefing, and then to Rafah, where your wife is being held.” Khader points to the map. “She is in the Yebna refugee camp, in an apartment block. It is on the southern edge, right by the Wall and the border with Egypt.” He unfolds a larger-scale chart. “The Wall is here, and the building is here—less than two hundred meters from the frontier. When we get into position, you will be able to see the houses in Egyptian Rafah, on the far side of the Wall. And on the Gaza side, between the Wall and the apartment building, it is open ground.”

  Kahder’s finger stabs the chart. “Here, right in the middle of the open area, you can see there is a little shack. It has been constructed above the opening of one of the tunnels that run beneath the Wall. Beneath it is a vertical shaft, with a winch for the smugglers to bring up their goods. Before we move in, we will secure it. We cannot take the risk of giving the kidnappers any chance of moving Morgan to Egypt, because there we cannot operate; the Egyptian army is no friend of Hamas. I think it is better that you wait there with a few of my men. You will be able to see what is happening, and when it is safe, you can come.”

  “Okay. If you insist.”

  “We believe they will have at least ten men in the apartment building, maybe more. I do not know where they have come from, but in the past few days, there have been more; reinforcements. They must have arrived through the tunnels. They have a heavy machine gun, as well as an RPG launcher, grenades, and Kalashnikovs. But the kidnappers will not be expecting us. We will attack at five tomorrow morning. Probably they will have a guard keeping watch, but at that time only he will be awake. Insh’Allah, when the others wake up and realize they have no chance, they will surrender.”

  “You really think that’s possible? Won’t they reach for their guns and fight? Don’t they want to become shahids?”

  Khader shrugs. “If they wish to die, we are ready to assist them.”

  “So how’s it going to work? I mean, you’re not going to be able to just walk in.”

  “We will have three teams. The first will make a cordon around the building. That will stop them escaping. The second team will use a ladder to get across this gap”—again Khader points to his map—“from the roof of the next building. They will cross the gap, and come down to the kidnappers’ apartment from the roof. There is a stairwell, and Morgan is on the highest floor. The third group will climb the stairs from the ground. The apartment next to the kidnappers’ is empty, but there is a locked door connecting them. They will smash their way through it at the same moment that the others come down from the roof.”

  Adam whistles softly. “But what about Morgan? There’s going to be a lot of smoke, and it will be dark. How are you going to make sure that she isn’t killed?”

  “We will do our best, and put our trust in God. We have no choice.” Khader removes a handgun from his waistband and hands it to Adam.

  “You say you know how to shoot,” Khader says. “But you are not experienced in combat, so I will give you just one magazine. It is for emergencies.”

  It’s so dark now that Morgan can make out only shapes. Abu Mustafa takes a small, squat candle from his pocket, places it on the table, and lights it. Its light is feeble, but at least Morgan can see his face. She’s still on the couch: he’s sitting on a chair, facing her, the flame casting flickering shadows. “Before you say another word, I want to know what has happened to Zainab,” she says in a whisper.

  “She is alive. I hope she will be okay.”

  “What do you mean, you hope she’ll be okay?” Morgan’s voice is rising again, as her anger surges. “Are you out of your mind? She was raped! Has she seen a doctor? What else did that bastard do to her?”

  Abu Mustafa looks helpless, his eyes registering defeat. “Karim has let her go. She has gone to Khan Younis. Insh’Allah her people will take care of her.”

  “You mean she’s gone to her mom and dad? What the hell is she going to say to them? But I don’t understand. Why has Karim let her go? Surely, the first thing she’ll do is give away our location.”

  Abu Mustafa touches Morgan’s shoulder, and she twists away from him, shuddering involuntarily.

  “Please. Don’t be disgusted with me,” he says. “I am not like Aqil and Karim. And however angry you may feel, you must not raise your voice. There are things I must tell you, but if we are disturbed it will not be possible. So listen. Zainab has already given away our location. Letting her go will make no difference. It is because she betrayed him that Karim told Aqil to punish her.”

  “How did she do it?” Morgan asks. “When?”

  “When she left to buy food, she went to the house of a cousin who is a member of Hamas, and she told him everything. But Karim has his own network; people from his clan, people he trusts. One of Karim’s tribe is an officer in the Hamas mukhabarat. He sent Karim a message. I don’t know how. He told him Zainab had betrayed him, and that soon, almost certainly tonight, this building will be attacked.”

  For a moment, Morgan is speechless, struck dumb by guilt and remorse. It is she who encouraged Zainab to give away Karim’s secret, and she who is responsible for her pain and humiliation. She feels the prickle of tears. “So why didn’t he just kill her?”

  “He beat her, like before, to try to make her confess, but she said nothing. That’s when he gave her to Aqil. Afterward he let her live because he believed that to stay alive would be worse.”

  “Jesus. You people are evil.” Morgan still speaks softly, but with fury. “You, Abu Mustafa, you say you are different, but you have contaminated yourself by associating with Karim; you are tainted, stained, haram. And you know what? I hope that when Hamas does storm this building, that you get what’s coming to you. I hope they shoot you and take you prisoner, or maybe torture you before they let you die. You and all of the rest of them. As for this conversation, we’re done.” She twists and faces the wall.

  But Abu Mustafa isn’t done. In a voice of weariness, in measured, trembling words, he carries on speaking, addressing himself to her back through the sultry darkness.

  “I know I will probably die tonight,” Abu Mustafa says, “and I do not relish the prospect. But please. You must listen. I don’t have much time. Maybe you have guessed this already. I am a Jordanian intelligence officer. I have a wife and family in Amman, and everything I told you about missing them so badly is true. And before anything more, I want to say I am so, so sorry for what has happened. I apologize, to you and your family, from the bottom of my heart. But also please believe me when I say that I never thought this operation would go so wrong.”

  “Operation?” Her mouth is arid, her eyes wide. “Operation? You’re a Jordanian agent and you’re telling me that this has all been some kind of operation?” She turns to face him again, hyperventilating. She can’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “What do you mean, Abu Mustafa? What fucking operation?”

  “My assignment for more than a decade has been to infiltrate the extremists—not Hamas, but the crazy people, the taqfiri, like Karim. We began to suspect there were links between what some call al-Qaeda and radical Palestinian groups many years ago. I went in search of them. I traveled to Chechnya, and that’s where I first met Karim.”

  “And? How did I come into this? Where do I fit in?”

  “My agency was working with an Israeli colleague. His first name is Amos; that’s all I know. I don’t know whose idea all this was originally, but I heard it from him. Anyhow, it started with the clashes between Fatah and Hamas. He and his American friends wanted to help Fatah defeat their rivals, just as we did. We all gave them help, guns and training. But that wasn’t enough. We needed a way to push President Abbas and the rest of the Fatah leadership politic
ally, to exert enough pressure to make them act. So they asked me to go to Gaza, to reconnect with Karim, and to persuade him to kidnap an American. The original plan was that after a little time, maybe a couple of weeks, she—that is, you—would be released. Once you were free, and safely out of Gaza, America would have told Abbas that your abduction proved the chaos had become too much, that the time had come to use his forces to restore order. You could say your release was meant to be the signal for a Fatah coup. All the Hamas leaders would have been arrested, and their organization destroyed. It was Amos who recommended you as the victim, by the way, though he told me you worked for the State Department, not the Agency.”

  “You’re losing me, Abu Mustafa,” Morgan says. “You might have helped arrange my abduction, but how the hell did you intend to make sure that I was released?”

  “Because Karim was in on it, too. He didn’t know—he must never know—that I work for the Jordanians. But he knew all about my links with Amos, and he even met him. Three times Amos arranged for us both to pass through Erez. He gave us lunch in Ashkelon, and he and Karim made a deal. In return for carrying out the operation in the way I have described, Karim’s little group, the Janbiya al-Islam, would be given money, far more money than he had ever dreamt of. About two hundred thousand dollars. Half upfront, and half to be paid after you were freed.”

  “He kidnapped me for money? That was all he was interested in? I don’t believe it.”

  “It wasn’t his only motivation. The plan always was that we would force you to make a video. You wouldn’t have been tortured, but you would have begged for your life, begged the Americans to take the necessary steps to ensure your release. The film would have been shown on television across the world. It would have added to the pressure on Fatah and Abbas, but also given Karim what he craves most. He wants to be a famous global jihadist, a mujahid in the same league as bin Laden. This would have helped him get there.”

  Morgan’s comprehension dawns. “So he agreed to all this without knowing who I was. But then he recognized me, and he realized I wasn’t merely a CIA officer, but the very woman he blamed for the death of Khalid. And from that moment, all bets were off.”

  “Yes. But he didn’t tell me, and he didn’t tell Amos. But the truth is, I think he’d known for months. Amos had given him video equipment to bug the apartment where you used to meet Abdel Nasser. Karim used to collect the memory chips after you’d been there, and somehow he got the films to Amos. I’m not sure how, but maybe electronically. I guess he must have watched the videos and recognized you from them. Anyhow, a little while before your last visit, Amos promised he would tell us when you were coming next. He said Fatah was now strong enough to carry out its coup. You would arrive, and then we would pounce.”

  “So what about Abdel Nasser’s bodyguards? And his driver, Akram? Those poor bastards had families too. They were just ordinary guys from Gaza, and you had them shot. You had Abdel Nasser maimed. Was that also part of the scenario?”

  “No. That was Karim and Aqil. They changed the plan without telling me. They were supposed to overpower them, but to leave them alone. I’m pretty sure they kidnapped Abdel Nasser for a reason. Karim suspected that you might not break, but if he threatened to kill Abdel Nasser in front of you, then you would start to confess. Well, he was right.”

  Morgan shakes her head. “I just don’t know what to say. This ‘operation,’ as you call it, is the most fucked-up thing I’ve ever heard of. It’s insane, criminal, deranged, and whoever dreamt it up deserves to be indicted. Jesus.”

  Abu Mustafa looks wretched. “I realize now how stupid it was. And I have paid a very high price. But you know, I never even thought about it going wrong until the moment Karim said he recognized you from Yugoslavia, and that he knew you were CIA. He didn’t do that until the day before you were due to arrive, but he told me then that you were his chance to avenge the death of Khalid. I guess he was so excited, he couldn’t keep it to himself.”

  “He told you that? So why didn’t you get a message to Amos? Explain what had happened, and tell him the plan was off?”

  Abu Mustafa’s voice is mournful. “This has troubled me more than anything. As soon as Karim told me, I knew the operation had to be aborted, that the promises he had made to guarantee your safety would be broken. At that point, before the kidnap, we were still using cell phones, and so I did call Amos. He promised he would, as he put it, ‘act appropriately.’ You had been expected the following day, March 27, but you didn’t show up. I assumed Amos had closed the border, and that everything was cancelled. I began to think about going back to Amman. But then, two days later, you did come. Karim had said we should keep on watching, and so as soon as you arrived, we were ready. It took me by surprise. There was nothing I could do without blowing my cover. But you see what I’m saying? Amos aborted the operation, but only for forty-eight hours. He put it on hold, but then someone decided it was on again.”

  “Well if you couldn’t stop the kidnap, why didn’t you tell Amos where I was once it had happened, so that he could organize a rescue?”

  “A little while later, I got a chance to call him again. I had hidden a phone for emergencies. But Amos’s number had been disconnected. I tried three more times, but I could never get through.”

  Morgan swallows hard. Her head is throbbing again, more painfully than before, and she feels utterly exhausted. “Sweet Jesus. So whoever was controlling this fucked-up mess thought about it for a while, and then determined he not only wanted me kidnapped, but to stay kidnapped. Well, he got his wish. And here we are.”

  “Yes. Here we are. Can I get you anything?”

  “More water.”

  Abu Mustafa puts the bottle to her lips.

  “Thank you. And soon I’m going to need a trip to the ladies’ room.”

  “You probably understand something else now.”

  “What’s that, Abu Mustafa?”

  “I was always trying to protect you. Even when you were being waterboarded, I was doing my best to keep you alive. Karim did want you to confess, but part of him really wanted you to die. But every time you lost consciousness, I made him stop. And afterward when he left questioning you to me, I wasn’t really trying to interrogate you. I wanted to make it all last as long as possible, in the hope that someone would find us.”

  “Well, gee, thanks, Abu Mustafa. You did a super job there.”

  “That’s not all. You must have noticed; Karim has been away a lot. He always knew it would not be safe to keep you in Gaza for very long, even before the Hamas coup. Once he had made the video, he had his calling card, his proof he had a CIA prisoner. So he went through the tunnels, to Sinai. He hooked up with jihadi groups in Egypt, people he knows who come from Yemen. I don’t know where he plans to take you now, but I know he has a vehicle waiting for him. It all took a lot of organizing. He had to make several trips. Wherever it is that you’re going, that’s where he plans to conduct your real interrogation. He knows I’ve got nowhere with you. He thinks I’m soft. Maybe he doesn’t trust me.”

  “So now he’s going to spirit me away and torture me some more, then probably kill me. No doubt, he’ll do it all on video.”

  “That does seem possible.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me all this weeks ago? We could have figured out some way to escape. We could have been working together. That would have given us a better fucking chance than we seem to have now.”

  “Yes. It would have done.” His voice sounds sadder than ever. “I was trying to preserve my cover, pathetic as that sounds. And also I was scared of Karim. He understands much more English than you think. He might have heard us talking, or bugged our conversations. If I had revealed myself to you then, he might easily have killed us both.”

  “So now what? I’m tied up, awaiting an attack that will probably kill us anyway. And if I do survive, I’ll be taken somewhere even worse. And where is Abdel Nasser? What the fuck has happened to him?”

  “I am
sorry once again. I do not know where Abdel Nasser is. And I do not know how to protect you. If I get the chance, I will try to kill Karim. But also let me give you some advice. When the shooting starts, keep your head down.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tuesday, June 26, 2007

  Adam has synchronized his watch with Khader’s, and now he checks it again for the hundredth time since leaving Khan Younis. It’s still only four thirty. It already feels like the longest night of his life, but there are still thirty minutes before the attack is due to begin. The cordon is in place, with the apartment building at its center. A squat, four-story concrete structure, its pale outline shimmers in the light of a three-quarters moon. He hunches in the shadow of the flimsy shack that protects the winch above the tunnel shaft, feeling grateful for the buzz of the insects, for they hide the noise of his rapid, shallow breathing. Rafiq, the cordon team leader, a junior officer with a well-trimmed beard in his early twenties, crouches to Adam’s left. There’s a gentle breeze and it’s pleasantly warm, about the same temperature as a summer day in England. Over there, later today, will be the second day of Wimbledon. For a moment, Adam diverts himself with the thought that, as ever, his mother will be glued to the TV coverage, and is sure to try to share her passion with the kids.

  Behind the apartment block lies Yebna, a warren of rough, box-like dwellings, most of them thrown up to house the flood of Palestinian refugees who fled from Israel in 1948, when Gaza was still part of Egypt. Khader’s drivers parked their trucks at a soccer field well beyond its perimeter, and Adam has accompanied his men’s advance from there, the sandy floors of Yebna’s alleys muffling their steps. Most of the Hamas soldiers carry only AK47s, though a few have heavier, more specialized equipment. None of them wear body armor. They seem well-drilled, and so far as Adam can make out, they are also highly motivated. Lit by the moon, their blue fatigues look gray. Most have put on some kind of camouflage paint, deepening their faces from brown to black. Not a building, not a street lamp, is lit. More minutes pass, and Adam watches as the second team occupies the roof of a second building of similar height, just to the left of the block that supposedly contains Morgan. He silently repeats her name. Is she really there in front of him, less than two hundred feet away, behind those nondescript walls? What will she look like? What kind of shape, physical and mental, will she be in? Will he even recognize her, and what will he say? He has no answers.