When Shadows Collide (An Arik Bar Nathan Novel Book 1)

by Nathan Ronen

  He still had quite a way to go in terms of getting acclimated and rooting himself in his new environment. He needed to plan meticulously, study the terrain, and prepare for the execution of his plan, including escape routes, before he surfaced and embarked on the work for which he had been sent.

  An old Uzbek proverb stated, “Patience is the companion of wisdom.” Patience and caution had been Iman al-Uzbeki’s loyal companions for many years now. He had one more trait that others in Al Qaeda or ISIS did not possess: absolute contempt and ideological scorn for the values of the decadent Western world.

  * * *

  50OPEC is the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, an intergovernmental organization of thirteen nations. As of September 2018, its member countries accounted for an estimated 44 percent of global oil production and 81.5 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves, giving OPEC major influence on global oil prices.

  51MI5, or Military Intelligence, Section Five, is the United Kingdom’s domestic counterintelligence and security agency, equivalent to the American NSA and the Israeli Shin Bet.

  52Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, also known as MOIS or VEVAK, is the main intelligence-collection agency in Iran.

  53The Salafi movement is a reform branch within Sunni Islam that developed in Egypt in the late 19th century as a response to Western European imperialism. Salafis maintain that Muslims ought to rely on the Quran, the Sunnah and the consensus of the salafs (the first three generations of Muslims) alone, ignoring all other Islamic hermeneutic teachings.

  54Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is the intelligence and security agency responsible for providing signal intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom.

  Chapter 38

  The Apartment in Whitechapel, East London

  Iman al-Uzbeki moved into the small apartment that the Iranian Embassy in London had rented for him, on the top floor of 12 Settles Street, in a block of new apartment buildings located behind the East London Mosque and London Muslim Center. Most of his neighbors were Pakistani and Arab immigrants who were flourishing financially.

  He entered the apartment once it was dark, still dressed up as Ambassador Alí Rodríguez Araque from Venezuela, taking care to evade his neighbors. The man who exited the apartment the following morning looked entirely different than the man dressed in an elegant Western style who had entered it the night before. He was now wearing the costume of “Mu’alem” (teacher) Ali Hassan Baraqat, an assistant and educator on matters of Islam. He was wearing a white Pakistani skullcap, fake reading glasses, and a cheap and comfortable shalwar-kameez consisting of wide cotton pants and a long-sleeved shirt stretching down below his knees. His feet were clad in simple leather sandals. Using a special makeup kit he always kept with him, he had affixed a wild artificial black beard to his face, with no mustache, in accordance with the Muslim fashion. Iman al-Uzbeki, “the man of a thousand faces,” now resembled many of the men walking around the neighborhood.

  He walked over to East London’s Grand Mosque, where he was scheduled to meet Imam Salah al-Hatib, head of the mosque, who also led the public prayers and preached on site. The imam greeted him warmly. A generous donation from the Iranians to his personal charity fund had made him a passionate supporter of welcoming Muslim brothers from the “old country” who wanted to settle in England and live there as devout Muslims. He didn’t look into the details, cooperating out of religious ideology that was always enhanced by financial returns.

  East London’s Grand Mosque was one of the largest mosques in the United Kingdom. It was an impressive structure in the neighborhood’s main street, with a silver dome topped by the half-crescent and star emblem and four tall minarets. There was a massive cultural center onsite, which, in addition to the sprawling mosque that could hold thousands, also included the London Muslim Centre and the Maryam Centre for cultural and religious studies. Adjacent to the mosque on the east was a spacious commercial center called Al Barakah. Its first floor housed the local covered market.

  “Salaam alaikum,” the sheikh greeted him in Arabic when Iman al-Uzbeki entered and introduced himself. The sheikh looked down at his notebook. “I understand that your name is Ali Hassan Baraqat, and you came to work at the Maryam Centre of Islamic Studies as a teacher of Arabic and Islam, is that right?”

  Iman al-Uzbeki nodded. He understood Arabic but did not speak it fluently, and therefore replied in Urdu. The imam’s attempt at small talk proved unsuccessful. Iman was not cooperative. He acted like a shy, humble guy, his eyes downcast in response to the imam’s assessing gaze.

  “Every Muslim must take a wife. Muslim tradition tells us that Muhammad said that a servant of Allah who marries doubly enhances his religion.”

  “When am I supposed to meet my intended? The woman who is to be my wife?” Iman asked in Urdu in a low voice, lowering his eyes, as appropriate for one impersonating a humble educator and a devout man.

  “You speak Urdu in a strange accent,” the sheik commented.

  “I was born in Pakistan, to an Uzbek father and a Pashtun mother who fled from the terrors of the war in Afghanistan,” al-Uzbeki explained. “They met in Islamabad due to my father’s work as a doctor at the general hospital.”

  In fact, Iman al-Uzbeki’s true origin was from a family of poor farmers and goat herders from the town of Termez in southern Uzbekistan, on the border of Afghanistan. At a young age, he began his training at Uzbekistan’s Muslim organization, funded by the Taliban’s charity fund. He then began to study at a religious college in the city of Peshawar in Pakistan, and at the age of eighteen, joined Al Qaeda where he trained in the mountains under the command of Bin Laden. He had a talent for technology and quickly became the “mad bomb man,” who traveled for continuing education on behalf of the Iranians to a Hezbollah training camp in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. At the age of forty-three, he enjoyed a reputation stemming from twenty-five years of terrorism. He was a cruel, notorious arch-terrorist prominently featured in the wanted list of every intelligence agency in the Western world, with a significant bounty on his head.

  Iman did not bother to tell the imam that he was the one who had developed the first liquid bomb, which could be smuggled inside an airplane in a small water bottle, and that he was the developer of the lethal roadside explosive charges that had killed dozens of British and American soldiers in Iraq.

  The belief in the Muslim world was that his red beard was the devil’s color. Islam’s view of redheads stated that they had been conceived in their mother’s womb during the time intercourse was prohibited, when the woman was menstruating. Red hair was considered a sign of animalistic sexual lust and moral decadence. This time, in the guise of teacher Ali Hassan Baraqat, terrorist Iman al-Uzbeki, who had intimidated the entire world, looked completely different.

  “Before I forget, someone named ‘Ali Baba’ was here, and asked me to give you this envelope.” The sheik handed him a thick envelope sealed with sticky tape.

  Iman immediately recognized the slanting, looping handwriting of ‘Ali Baba,’ his loyal deputy and head of his logistics team, who had arrived in London over a month and a half ago.

  “We’ve already talked to the virtuous bride,” the sheik continued. “She’s British, of Bengali origin, thirty-two years old. A widow with no children. She agreed to the wedding. We scheduled a meeting with her in the mosque in an hour. The qadi (judge) will conduct your wedding ceremony here. Since she’s a widow and you don’t have relatives in London, there will be no negotiation ceremony about the bride price, as custom usually dictates. The ceremony will be short. We’ll prepare modest refreshments, some sweets, and invite the worshippers to recite the al-fātihah55 along with the qadi, as usual.”

  The bride arrived an hour later, accompanied by her two girlfriends and
two older people who turned out to be her uncle and his wife. The intended bride had been living with them since having been widowed. She was wearing a green sari dress with a matching hijab over it, covering her head and body. She did not make direct eye contact with her intended groom, lowering her gaze, but she certainly peeked at him and liked his tall, slender body. She whispered quietly to her two friends, all excited. They had brought assorted traditional sweet pastries to celebrate the happy event.

  Iman openly examined her, like a sheep in Islamabad’s cattle market. She was fat and short, with a squat figure. Her dark face was coarse and full of pockmarks. Al-Uzbeki did not like the shape of her, but after all, this entire marriage was meant to serve a purpose and would not last long, and for right now, this suited him.

  The shepherds in the Hindu Kush Mountains56 near the Tora Bora caves in eastern Afghanistan, in which Iman had hidden along with Al Qaeda’s soldiers, would have referred to her as his “sheep.” The sheep provided you with wool to wear, milk to drink and cheese to eat, and when necessary, could also serve for sexual release. It also provided security when you used it to walk before you in mine fields, and when the time was right, you slaughtered it.

  The qadi arrived with his assistant the faqih (scholar). The faqih took the couple’s hands and joined them together. He placed a large handkerchief over the hands of Iman and his future wife, preceding the signing of the contract with a speech in Arabic and English that included an endorsement for prayer, laden with quotes from the Quran and other traditional texts regarding the advantages of marriage. The couple repeated the prayers after him.

  The brief wedding ceremony ended with the woman stating to her new husband, in the presence of witnesses, “I give myself to you.” She thus became his legal wife and his property. There were none of the expressions of joy, excitement, grandeur, or elegance usually characterizing an Afghan wedding. Such a wedding usually lasted three days, with hundreds of attendants and an orchestra. Al-Uzbeki’s wedding was a simple mercantile transaction, resembling a casual deal to purchase a used car.

  Both of them signed the marriage documents. As an official wedding registrar on behalf of the British Ministry of the Interior, the imam added his signature to the documents as well as the stamp of East London’s Grand Mosque.

  The ceremony was over. Iman al-Uzbeki signaled his bride to follow him. He walked rapidly to their apartment, while she trailed about five steps behind him, covering her head and shoulders with the hijab. He showed her the apartment, gave her an extra set of keys, and told her to come back in the evening. She went down to the street and looked for a cab, which she took to her relatives’ apartment in order to pack her possessions and bring them to the couple’s apartment. In the evening, her husband would take her out for dinner in a nearby Pakistani restaurant, and when they returned, he would send her to bathe and prepare herself. He would have his way with her in order to seal the deal in accordance with the law of Islam and would return to his bedroom to sleep.

  She spoke fluent Urdu and he realized that in contrast to his first impression, his bride was a well-educated girl. She worked as a nurse’s aide in the adjacent Jewish nursing home. He had some tasks for her. He handed her the marriage documents and asked her to go see a local attorney in order to begin his citizenship process and receive his permanent work permit. He gave her the fake passport given to him by Colonel Rizkawi, along with his entry visa into the UK and asked her to do the shopping and manage the household. He had no objections to her keeping her job, but she had to keep the house clean and make him a vegetarian dinner every night. He warned her not to go into his locked room under any circumstances and ordered her to clean his room only under his supervision. They decided to meet for dinner every evening in their home, and he warned her once more not to poke through his room, which would always be locked to her. When he wanted her, he would come to her, he explained. She agreed to the terms. Al-Uzbeki gave her 500 pounds in cash and asked her to buy ten Samsung J7 prepaid phones for him. She was curious to know why he needed the devices, but the glare he directed at her froze the blood in her veins. When she returned from shopping in the evening, he sent her to bathe. She asked how she should call him, and he replied, “Call me Mu’alem.” He did not ask for her name, but she told him it was Aisha.

  He copulated with her as she lay on her back, her legs in the air, and her robe shifted aside. After having his way with her in a meticulously businesslike manner, he left the room without exchanging a word with her and hurried off to shower. He returned to his room, locked it, and opened the thick envelope from ‘Ali Baba.’ After reading its contents, he smiled to himself in contentment.

  His deputy Ali Baba had arrived in London to make the required preparations along with his five assistants, who were skilled fighters. They had taken part alongside him in the battle of Tora Bora57 against coalition forces, escaping to neighboring Pakistan in the middle of the battle, along with other senior members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. They had been part of an Islamic Foreign Legion of sorts, which included warriors from the Islamic Jihad Union as well as from the Caucasus, comprised of Chechen, Dagestan, and Caucasian radical Islam operatives who, in 2010, had carried out terrorist attacks in Moscow. They had arrived in Britain with skillfully forged passports provided to them by Qatari intelligence, headed by Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Qatar was one of the countries with the highest gross national products per person in the world, and the emir invested plenty of funds in support of Islamic Sunni terrorist groups throughout the world, while Qatar’s intelligence services provided logistical assistance and additional funding.

  Iman al-Uzbeki knew that Ali Baba was waiting for seven more suicide bomber handlers. They had plenty of previous experience in dealing with suicide bombers who had exploded in the name of Allah in the streets of Baghdad, Karachi, and Kabul. They knew how to locate their victims and motivate them using the entire arsenal of temptation and psychological warfare in use within the world of radical Islam.

  He instructed the team headed by Ali Baba to rent a rural house and a large warehouse in the industrial area near the Bethnal Green neighborhood, which was adjacent to Whitechapel. He preferred a house tucked away in a distant corner so as to build a dovecote upon it and start raising carrier pigeons. This pastime, called kaftar bazi or “pigeon flying,” was a beloved one among Afghans and Pakistanis. Pigeons were considered sacred in Islam. In Mazar-i-Sharif Mosque in Peshawar, Afghanistan, thousands of white doves were raised. The Pashtun tribes believed they had the ability to foresee the future. The problem was the patience required; a carrier pigeon needed between six weeks and two months to be ready for its task.

  Ali Baba reported that he had found an old house in the Bethnal Green neighborhood that included about half an acre of abandoned farmland and a storehouse. He had also paid a year’s rent in advance and in cash, using the services of a local attorney of Pakistani origin in order to carry out the required registration with local authorities and issue the required permits. He had rented a commercial structure in a nearby industrial area and listed the site as a pesticide and fertilizer storage facility. Using his local accomplices, they founded two shell companies: a gardening company and an exterminator, which shared the same address. This professional cover would protect them from busybodies inquiring why they were purchasing chemicals. They were also instructed to buy two used commercial vehicles, using collaborators who were British citizens for the purchase. Both vehicles displayed the signs of either the gardening company or the exterminator and had been listed under the names of senile elders residing in Muslim nursing homes. By the time Iman al-Uzbek arrived a month and a half later, the storehouse was already full of bags of phosphate, ammonium nitrate, calcium ammonium nitrate, chemical fertilizer, hydrogen tanks, hydrogen peroxide, white benzine, diesel fuel, and ammonia, serving as accelerants for incendiary devices, cleaning detergents and disinfectants, and additional materials in the list Iman had asked them t
o purchase and store.

  In order to manufacture incendiary devices and fragmentation bombs, he still needed fuses as well as HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine), which would enable him to produce the powerful explosives he knew how to make. These would be supplied by Colonel Rizkawi. A day before the central attack would be carried out, they planned to steal an appropriate truck, onto which they would load the high explosives.

  Ali Baba reported that they had bought dozens of kilograms of ball bearings and steel nails. The plan was to mix them into the powerful improvised bombs that Iman had already manufactured in the past. He used them as car bombs that had gone off near police stations and government buildings in Kabul, Lahore, Peshawar, Karachi, and Islamabad.

  Iman was pleased.

  From Ali Baba’s letter, he understood that nearly everything was ready, other than training drivers who would be willing to drive a car or different vehicle laden with explosives in a mission resembling a well-timed military operation in which the suicide bomber was the last link in a fairly lengthy chain.

  Iman was the mastermind, the designer, the conceiver, and the one preparing the bombs and suicide vests. Ali Baba’s role was to handle the entire food chain dealing with logistics as well as preparing the suicide bombers. Every suicide bomber was merely the tip of an iceberg comprised of a fairly large apparatus. They needed to seek out the mentors: the religious ideologists putting together a doctrine of suicide and infecting the right people with it. They also needed to locate suitable candidates in terms of their social status and psychological profiles. Also needed were collection personnel to bring in accurate intelligence regarding the targets. They were required to be tacticians who would choose the primary target and secondary targets, which would serve as distractions, the proper times to carry out each action, and the most effective way to carry it out. They needed technical personnel who would prepare the explosives and tailor the explosive vest that the suicide bombers would wear. They needed several ‘dispatchers’ to make sure everything would work from an operations standpoint, as well as ground operatives to lead the suicide bomber on his way, collaborators to host him in their home on the eve of the mission, and insiders who would get him through roadblocks and barriers. They also had clinical psychologists who would prepare the suicide bombers mentally and physically—a lengthy process.