by Kenneth Eade
Once he had landed in Vienna, he took a taxi to Sparta Bank. He crossed the lobby to the basement entrance, a stainless steel door with a tiny reinforced window in its top center. He punched in his code on the panel and was prompted for a PIN code, which he entered and the door buzzed open. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he repeated the same process at another door and entered the vault, and approached the attendant on duty. She motioned to a number panel on her desk.
“Your number please.”
Robert punched in the number again, plus his PIN code.
“Follow me please, sir.”
“Thank you.”
Robert followed the attendant through rows of brass colored walls stacked with boxes, until she came to Box 13-460.
“Your key please, sir.”
Robert handed her his key. She inserted it into the keyhole on the left and the bank’s into the one on the right.
“Will you be needing the private room, sir?”
“Yes, please.”
Robert carried his box, following the attendant to a wooden door. She punched a security code into the panel, the door opened and Robert pushed it in. He closed the door, set the box on a wooden table in the center of the room, and opened it. Inside were stacks of currency and passports, some burner phones, a Beretta pistol and a laptop. He riffled through the passports and took the Turkish one, a stack of Turkish lira and a stack of dollars, two burner phones and the laptop. The gun would be problematic. He closed the box and rang the buzzer for the attendant, who helped him store away the box and gave back his key.
Robert flipped his wrist to glance at his watch as he walked up the stairs to the lobby. Precious time was slipping away. He asked the receptionist to call a taxi.
At the airport, he illuminated his laptop and hacked in to the Wi-Fi of a fast food restaurant, where he downloaded an encrypted message from Rahbi Moghadam. He had established a recognition password for Robert and Ayisha. Ayisha would say: “The streets are dangerous,” to which the proper reply would be “One can’t be too careful.” He memorized Ayisha’s statistics and downloaded her picture temporarily until he could memorize her face. He wouldn’t need to save it; the human brain had a better facial recognition program than Facebook, and Robert’s was fine-tuned to perfection.
***
As soon as Robert got through customs with his Turkish passport, he checked the monitors for Turkish Airlines’ incoming flight from San Francisco. He still had time. He didn’t like to rent cars at airports, but this schedule left him little choice. Using an American passport and driver’s license, he rented a Toyota Corolla from Sixt, a European company. He doubled back to the terminal, parked his car in the short-term lot, and hurried inside.
Hiding in plain sight, he parked himself in a back row of chairs in the arrivals hall and waited, all the while observing everyone else. To fit in, he played with his phone like everyone else, in between glances at the arrivals board. Turkish Airlines Flight 80 was due at 6:05 p.m. He had less than an hour to wait.
The faces of the crowd changed with its ebb and flow. Turkish drivers holding up signs with last names drawn on them, families waiting for their loved ones, boyfriends and husbands holding flowers. Reunions, meetings. Robert waited for a break in the familiar pattern, which finally came.
They looked like they had stolen something. Three men in loose-fitting clothing, who could pass for either Turks or Arabs, walking together toward the arrivals area. Robert kept his head down, but his eyes leveled on them as he observed their gait and clothing from their heads to their shoes. They had some of the assemblages of an ISIS uniform: the cheap Casio digital watches they wore and the way they their socks were pulled up halfway to their knees, giving them away.
They stood apart from the crowd, like caged animals looking for a way out. The passengers from the Chicago flight were obviously beginning to shuffle out. Robert could tell because the passengers looked like Americans. And, in between a woman holding a baby and a man wheeling too many suitcases behind her and a Turkish man reuniting with his wife after a business trip, there was Ayisha. She was wearing a long, western style skirt but had a hijab wrapped around her head. The three amigos recognized her, enveloped her and swept her away.
Robert observed the three jihadis loading Ayisha into a Citroën C4 Picasso – obviously a rental as well – which meant they were but a first link in the transport chain. He could have ended the mission right outside the airport, but he didn’t. Getting into his car, he followed the minivan at a distance. Wasting no time, they exited the airport and took the E80 in the direction of Ankara, but Robert had no doubt they were headed for the Turkish border with Syria.
After several hours, instead of Ankara, they continued south on the E80 toward Adana. Robert thought about Ayisha, the girl he had never known and probably never would, the ward under his lethal protection. According to Rahbi, she had been trained in the ways of Islam and professed dedication to her recruiters to the jihad. She probably knew more about their ways than any westerner would be expected to know. The danger was not in the lack of knowledge – it was a given that new recruits needed training – what was dangerous to Ayisha was her familial connection to her sister. If her handlers discovered it, she would be killed immediately. And if Ayisha allowed her emotions to rule her intellect, she would get herself killed.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Citroën finally came to a stop in Gazientep, the petulant Turkish outpost known for smugglers and terrorist financing. Despite Turkey’s rhetoric, its border seemed to be a willing membrane for ISIS oil – responsible for millions of dollars in terrorist financing – as well as a passage for arms going back into Syria. However, since the last time Robert had been here, Turkey had been attempting a resurrection of its relationship with Russia in favor of a lucrative pipeline deal, and, as a result, had been tightening the screws on smuggling and plugging up border leaks.
Robert took a stake-out position and observed the jihadis rustling Ayisha out of the van and into a store. He watched as lights in the windows above the store illuminated. The driver of the van made a U-turn, drove down the street, and took a right on one of the side streets, where he parked the car. Robert kept his eyes on him as he doubled back on foot and disappeared into the store.
He contemplated putting an end to this ridiculous folly right now. He’d go in, blow them all away and take the girl. But the impromptu plan was even more foolish and haphazard than Rahbi and Ayisha’s, and Robert never executed a plan that was not completely airtight, after accounting for all possible variables – everything that could go wrong. There were too many unaccounted for in his thoughts, so he waited until he could be sure they were staying for the night.
Robert was tired, hungry. When the lights flicked out in the upstairs windows and the few men outside had left, he waited an hour, and then went off in search of a bite to eat and a bathroom. The latter he conveniently found in an alley, the former was more of a challenge. Finally, he found an all-night market and grabbed some pre-made sandwiches. After scarfing them down, he set his watch alarm for three hours and closed his eyes.
***
When the alarm went off, everything was still quiet across the street. In fact, the entire day was quiet. There was only a normal ebb and flow of pedestrians on the street and a few cars, store customers, and patrons in the restaurant next door drinking tea and smoking water pipes. The breakfast crowd, the lunch crowd and dinner crowds all came and went without a sign of the jihadis or their charge.
Finally, at nightfall, Robert saw the driver exit the store to fetch the van. He kept his eyes on it as the jihadis loaded Aysisha and two more passengers, both female, then took off. Robert trailed behind them as they merged onto Highway D850 toward Kilis, the Turkish city near the Syrian border, which was no doubt their final destination.
Two-and-a-half hours later, his suspicions were confirmed when the van exited the highway in the city of Kilis. The city was dry. Compared with Istanbul and even Ga
zientep, it had no character or identity. It was a city hopelessly lost, a casualty of the Syrian civil war, which was being waged just kilometers away on the other side of the frontier, and often spilled over violently from its Syrian counterpart.
At about midnight, the van pulled up in front of a small, run-down café and Robert picked a parking place on the street where he could watch what was going on with his night vision glasses. Turkish men sat on metal chairs at cheap tables on the street outside, smoking water pipes and sipping tea and coffee. Three of the jihadis escorted the three girls out of the van. Each was carrying a purse or backpack, but no other luggage. A fat man with a cigar butt in his mouth, dressed in a western style suit, shook the hands of the men and ushered the girls into the coffee shop. Then the jihadis got back into the van and left. Robert suppressed the urge to follow them, instead staying with the girls.
He knew the Turkish government had begun building a huge wall made of concrete blocks to seal off the porous border between Turkey and Syria, but much of the frontier was still marked by a chain link fence reeled with barbed wire, designed mostly to keep people out of Turkey, not in. He figured the fat man was the liaison to the people who would transport the girls to the “wire,” as it was called, where they would cross over into Syria under cover of darkness.
Robert changed into his dishdasha and wrapped his head in red and white checkered keffiyah. He abandoned the rental and approached the café, where he took a seat at the table. A teenage boy came up to him and asked what he would like. Speaking in Arabic, Robert ordered a coffee. When the boy came back in five minutes with it, he asked to speak to the manager.
As Robert figured, the fat man approached his table. No cigar butt protruded from his lips this time, but as he spoke, Robert could see his teeth were stained from chewing on it and probably many others.
“You wanted to speak to me?”
“Yes. My friend told me you may be able to help me reunite with my brother.”
The fat man shook his sweaty head. “What do I know about your brother?”
“He’s in Syria.”
“Where in Syria?”
“Raqqa.”
“But I don’t know you.”
The man sat down across from Robert, sizing him up. He folded his hands and looked into Robert’s eyes. It was a risk, but Robert figured the international ice-breaker would provide him with an advantage. He pulled a wad of lira from his robe and set it in front of him on the table. Then he took a sip of coffee.
“You’ll need papers to cross the Daesh checkpoints.”
“My friend said you would be able to provide all I need.”
“What papers are you traveling with now?”
Robert showed the man his Turkish passport. “So you are a Turkish citizen?”
Robert nodded. “The coffee is good. May I have another cup, please?”
The fat man motioned to the teenage boy.
“I need to leave immediately. I haven’t heard from my brother in weeks.”
“I can provide you with a pass and I can get you to the wire. After that, you’re on your own.”
“How much?”
“Two thousand lira.”
Robert shoved a wad of cash to the man. “There must be someone who can help me get through the checkpoints.”
The boy showed up with the coffee and the fat man put his arm around him.
“Ali here can help you with that. But you have to pay him too.”
“Done.”
“Can you fight?”
“Why would I have to fight?”
“Because, once you get into ISIS territory, you have two choices – join them and fight or be killed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The fat man beckoned to Robert, “Come inside.” He motioned to a small chair that had been set up in front of a white screen background. “Sit there.”
The fat man left. Moments later, he came back with a tripod and a Polaroid camera on top of it. “Take off your shumaq.” Robert complied. “Look forward, no smile.” The man clicked his picture. “The visa is extra two thousand.” Robert nodded and the man took the camera with the tripod away.
About twenty minutes later, he came back holding a paper with Robert’s picture stapled to it, embossed with an ISIS insignia –half of it on the picture and half on the paper. In the bottom right corner was a signature and an official-looking stamp. He handed the paper to Robert, who forked over the extra cash.
“Welcome to Daesh. You leave on the next bus.”
Robert waited on the terrace. He checked his watch – two a.m. About an hour later, a dusty minivan pulled up in front and the driver disembarked and sat at a table. Ali served him a cup of tea, and then disappeared inside. Shortly thereafter, he and two other boys emerged carrying wooden crates. They opened the back of the van and slid them in. They went back into the restaurant and this time came out with two green metal cases, which Robert recognized immediately.
Rocket launchers. U.S. made.
He clenched his fists and bit his bottom lip. The boys made several more trips to pack the van and then emerged with the three girls. All three were clothed in dark abayas with their faces covered. He couldn’t even recognize which one, if any, was Ayisha. As they walked by, he tried to look into their eyes. One set of hazel eyes made contact with his. The girl paused, looking deeply.
That’s her!
He memorized those eyes because in the caliphate where women were covered from head to toe in blackness, this would be the only way to recognize her. Ali came up to Robert.
“We go now. One hundred fifty lira.”
Robert paid the boy and joined him in the front bench seat of the van. He admired the kid. Not only was he a little entrepreneur, he was a brave one. He could see that he had used his money to buy new jeans, sneakers, and a sporty haircut. Ali had learned the benefits of self-employment. He was his own boss.
The girls were seated in back. He didn’t make eye contact because he didn’t want them to remember his face, but even if he did, all he would have seen would have been their eyes. He took it on faith and his memory from studying her eyes in the photograph that Moghadam had given him that one of them was Ayisha. As the van pulled away, the girls began to whisper to each other. It was then he was able to confirm she was, in fact, Ayisha. She was the inquisitive one asking questions, digging for information about ISIS and what these girls were told by their recruiters.
“Silence back there!” the driver ordered, which toned down the girls’ whispering to a murmur.
“Where are you going, Ayisha?”
“I’m going to Raqqa to join my brothers and sisters of Daesh.”
“We are, too.”
“I said be quiet!”
The small talk died down quickly. The girls didn’t even attempt to speak with Ali or Robert and it was just as well. The less information Ayisha knew about him the better. He did begin to suspect, however, that she knew he was her guardian angel, which gave him pause. If she had any suspicions at all, she could easily blow his cover which, in his case, meant the instant death penalty. ISIS didn’t believe in evidence or trials. If you were accused, you were guilty. Court was a waste of time and legal matters tended to proceed from accusation directly to execution.
The van left the highway onto an obscure side road. It was a rough, three-hour drive to the Syrian border, past the Turkish town of Cobaney, a former railway crossing into Syria. It was the only place to enter ISIS territory without having to go through the YPG, the FSA or any number of other whacky paranoid militants’ checkpoints.
At the end of the journey, a snaking fence covered with barbed wire came into focus in the shadows. The van began to approach it, but suddenly stopped and killed its lights. It soon became apparent to Robert why when he saw a Turkish border patrol armed military vehicle was running along the fence. It shone its spotlight along the perimeter as it passed by, and then disappeared like an airplane in the night sky. After it had left, the van turned and
began moving in the opposite direction. Cutting through dusty, unlit side roads, the driver switched off its lights again as it approached the fence and stopped.
“Everybody out! Hurry! Hurry!”
Everybody scrambled out of the van and the driver exited and helped Ali offload the crates and equipment. The driver was nervous and sweaty, and couldn’t empty out the van soon enough. When it was done, he jumped back into the van without a word to anyone, and screamed away in a cloud of dark dust.
The girls were just standing there, lost. Robert gave Ali a look.
“What now?”
Ali lit his battery operated torch and shone it toward the fence, looking for weaknesses in the barrier. He walked far down the perimeter and then waved the light back at Robert.
“Here, under the fence, let’s go!”
The girls followed Robert. Ali lifted the fence and Robert helped him hold it up as the girls crawled through. As soon as they were dusting themselves off on the other side, Ali began to drag the crates to the fence. Robert ran to his aid, picking up the other side of each crate, and together they stacked all the crates next to the hole they had made under the wire.
“I’m smaller, you go first!”
Ali held up the chain link high enough for Robert to squeeze his shoulders through, and he slinked the rest of his body under it like a cat. Then he pulled as Ali shoved the crates under it, one by one. He figured Ali was making more money for making sure the cases made it to their destination. When they were all on the other side, he pulled the fence up for Ali, who slipped through like a little mouse.
“A car will come and take us to Al-Rai. They will probably take you too, but you will have to pay them.”
“No problem.”
