by Nick Louth
Rifat picked up the packet and offered it to Ibrahim, but the bombmaker waved him away. ‘Put on a pair of latex gloves. I want you now to measure out fifty grammes’.
A Siemens digital weighing machine was laid out, and the gloves donned. At Ibrahim’s encouragement, Rifat pulled opened the foil packet, and with his fingers broke off brown lumps of explosive and put them on the machine until they totalled exactly fifty grammes.
‘There is one further advantage to PETN. It is easy to make. Your mother could do it with a kitchen mixer given the right instructions and precautions. You need equal amounts of acetaldehyde and formaldehyde, each available from commercial bulk chemical suppliers, and for the nitration you need a nitric acid solution of ninety-six to ninety-eight per cent potency and the gradual adding of a solid alcohol. Dilute with water, filter, and then let recrystallise in a mixture of acetone and water, and you get the right range of particle sizes. That’s really all you need to do. That’s why we make our bombs here in Yemen. There’s no difficulty getting the raw materials, and there’s no shortage among the faithful of volunteers to do it. You’ll make some next week. But if you come to do it in London, where there are registers and approved purchaser schemes for such feedstocks we will need to make alternative arrangements.’
Ibrahim then sorted through the Zip-loc bag, and picked up a tiny circuit-tester lightbulb, no bigger than a thumbnail, connected to a mobile phone SIM card. ‘This is what we need.’
‘Just a lightbulb?’
‘Not just. It’s been drilled through from the bottom, and a powder of lead azide poured in, and then resealed. This chemical burns readily when an electric charge is applied. That will produce the required temperature for the PETN to combust. Being connected to the SIM card will connect all the points we need: from remote signal, to electrical circuit, to conflagration, then detonation, all in a millisecond.’
Under Ibrahim’s instruction, Rifat assembled the bomb. Carefully, he rolled together the clay-like PETN, and made a layer around the bulb, then wrapped the entire package in a small plastic bag. It was smaller than a cigarette packet. Ibrahim then handed him an airline cushion which had already been slit. Rifat pushed the packet inside, then strapped the cushion down onto one of the seats.
‘Good,’ said Ibrahim. ‘That’s all set. Ibrahim took down the lights, packed up the tools and plastic and moved them into a side cave beyond blast range. They then returned to the truck. Ibrahim sat in the driver’s seat, and grinned at Rifat. ‘Now to see if your bomb works.’ He took out his mobile phone. ‘This is about the only cave in the area a signal will penetrate. Here. You do it.’ He relayed the number, and Rifat punched it into the phone.
The calling signal rang for two seconds. The moment it stopped, a sharp crack and rumble was heard from within the cave. They waited fifteen minutes before going back in, and Ibrahim took a fire extinguisher from the back of the pick-up. There was still plenty of smoke, most of it from the smouldering remains of the seat on which the device had been placed. Ibrahim gave the seat a quick spray from the extinguisher, coating it in white powder. Once again they had to retreat for a minute or two from the gases before returning to look at the damage.
There was a sharp split in the aluminium panel. Not a fist-sized hole like one of the previous attempts, but a bifurcation about nine centimetres long, and three wide. Ibrahim waggled his head from side to side. ‘Not the clear breach I’d have liked to see, but certainly enough for decompression. Especially at altitude. At thirty five thousand feet, the pressure would tear this panel right open like tin foil.’
He turned to Rifat. ‘Inshallah, that would bring the plane down, if you had your martyr in the correct seat. Somewhere over the wings near the fuel tanks would be perfect.’
Ibrahim clapped an arm around Rifat’s shoulder. ‘You should be pleased. There will be more training next week. This is sacred work, for our brothers and our cause. Then you must return home. Some months after that you will be called to go to London. We have some very important work for you there. But that lies in the future.’
Rifat smiled. Yes, I have got some important work in London, he thought. It’s been so obvious for such a long time what I should do about the BBC man Wyrecliffe. Like wiring a bomb, there is a hesitation about making the final connection. The imam said it would come to me, and now it has. I have the knowledge, I have the means and I have every reason to make it happen. He thought back to shooting the Yemeni girl, and the applause he got, how it made him feel more of a man. I have killed, and I enjoyed it. Killing your father is a much bigger task, but now, finally, I am equal to it.
* * *
The next day, a new group of six Al Qaeda volunteers arrived for training. They were all male, and in their twenties. Three were British Asians. Another was a tall African, and two were Yemenis. They slept in a different and more substantial building further down the valley, ate their meals in the open, and were taken away by pick-up each day. This was for training that involved weapons and Islamic study, according to Ibrahim. The trainer was a terrifying-looking man, with a bushy henna-streaked beard, huge shoulders and a crude artificial foot made of wood and leather. Ibrahim, watching the man load the truck outside, whispered that this man’s name was Omar, and he was the first to have beheaded a Western hostage on video. ‘He showed it to the trainees yesterday,’ Ibrahim said. ‘I can take you to the house after they have gone, if you like, so you can watch it. But keep it on mute, the first time,’ Ibrahim smiled. ‘The screaming is louder than the ninth circle of hell.’
‘Perhaps later,’ Rifat muttered, trying not to sound squeamish. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be making PETN?’ He tried to sound enthusiastic.
Ibrahim grinned. ‘Okay.’ He sent Rifat to the building where he had first been dropped off. This house, a ruin from external appearance, had a series of underground rooms, including a well-lit kitchen, and a storeroom amply supplied with all the ingredients that a bombmaker needed. Electricity was supplied by solar panels which were draped with a torn fishing net to disguise them from observation drones. Though only producing two-thirds of their potential power, the Yemeni sun was powerful enough to meet all their needs, and charge the batteries required to produce lighting at night. Only water had to be brought in.
While waiting for Ibrahim to return, Rifat sat at the folding metal table in the centre of the kitchen, and noticed a refrigerator. Feeling thirsty, he went over to it and pulled open the door. There was no Coke or lemonade, not even mineral water. Just a few jars and packages. However, there was a blue bottle, labelled in French. Aqua Fortis, it said, with a big label that he couldn’t read. Maybe it was mineral water. He was just reaching for it when the door behind him opened and someone shouted something behind him. Rifat turned suddenly, saw it was the frightening trainer Omar, and started to close the fridge door. But the bottle tipped, falling. Rifat went to catch it, this time close enough so that his hands did reach it before it hit the hard flagstones of the floor. His hands cushioned the fall, and at first he thought he’d saved it, rolling the bottle along the floor. But when he held it up, he saw the saw the neck was fractured. Fluid steamed on his hands, and only then did the searing, burning agony begin.
* * *
It was several weeks before the bandages came off. At over ninety per cent concentration aqua fortis, or nitric acid, causes indelible scarring. Rifat had splashed the back of both hands, a mishap destined to give him pain and sensitivity to light and temperature. But this only served to forge his purpose. Heat, pain and destiny. He would feel all three, every day, for the rest of his life.
Rifat’s tuition continued as soon as his hands were healed. Ibrahim was very concerned that the burns would make him unable to do the intricate detonator and electronics assembly work required of him. But by some good luck it was only the backs of his hands that were painful, and over the next few weeks he was gradually able to return to his training.
One bright morning he awoke to see Ibrahim standing under the awning, binoculars tra
ined to the sky in the gap between two canvas sheets.
‘What is it?’ Rifat said.
‘Predators. I think there are two. Take a look.’
Rifat at first had trouble keeping the binoculars steady enough, but then spied them, two pale grey cylinders, no bigger than wisps of cotton apparently floating high in the sky. ‘They’re so high!’ he said.
‘Maybe twenty thousand feet. But don’t be fooled,’ Ibrahim said. ‘They can see everything from up there. It’s a little concerning. Inshallah, we don’t normally get them loitering here. They normally pass right over and down towards Aden.’
Ibrahim al-Asiri had studied drones as if his life depended on it. As indeed it did. The General Atomics MQ1 Predator could stay overhead at a single spot for up to fourteen hours, was inaudible in loiter mode, and invisible at cruising altitude to all but powerful binoculars. Yet, these seemingly harmless specks carried laser-guided Hellfire missiles accurate enough to destroy a single vehicle in a traffic jam leaving those around virtually unscathed. The Israelis had done so many times in Gaza. The only saving grace, Ibrahim said, was that because of an arrangement with the Yemeni government no drone could strike here without White House authorisation. That is why there had been so few attacks here compared to Pakistan or Afghanistan.
‘Do we have a spy in the government?’ Rifat asked, amazed at the knowledge his boss and mentor had gleaned of US military strategy.
Ibrahim laughed, almost the only time Rifat had ever seen him do so. The process did not seem to fit the unearthly milky eye, nor the drooping skin on the left-hand side of his face. ‘No, Rifat. We don’t have such reliable spies. This insight I actually read online in the New York Times, and Haaretz.’
‘You trust an Israeli newspaper!’ Rifat exclaimed.
‘For this, yes. You must understand, the western media has a thousand big mouths and they are always open, spilling secrets that we can use. In the New York Times they even had a picture that I could hardly believe,’ seethed Ibrahim. ‘It was of the Predator control rooms. Those American bastards who fly the drones are back home in Arizona, sitting in big easy chairs feeding their fat faces on snacks and listening to music on iPods while they are slaughtering our brothers half a world away. What cowards they are! One day we will do to them what they do to us. This is my dream, Rifat. To strike with the length of God’s arm into the very hearts of these unbelievers,’ he spat.
It was that comment that gave Rifat an idea. It was an idea combining telecommunications, electronics and surgery, that was to revolutionise Al Qaeda and its power to cause terror. It was an idea that would marry the power of the willing martyr and the unwilling dupe in the most powerful challenge to Western authority since September 11 2001. And it was the idea that he hoped would finally elevate Rifat ibn Juluwi Aziz al Khalifa so high into the echelons of terrorist infamy, that his name would not only be known by analysts in the offices of the CIA, MI6, GCHQ and Mossad. His name would become familiar to the readers of the world’s newspapers too. For the self-confessed child of a whore, who confidently expected an untimely death, it seemed an appropriate accolade. It was his destiny, and he welcomed it.
Book Three
Chapter Seventeen
London
November 18, 2010
For an entire year Cantara vanished entirely from Wyrecliffe’s life. Though he thought about her frequently, he had only tried to ring a couple of times since receiving her last message to stay away. That was usually after he’d had a drink or two. On one occasion it had been while he was in Afghanistan over Christmas. It was stupid, he knew he shouldn’t have done it, and he never got a reply. After six months, with his Today contract winding down and Emily Lance shadowing him once a week on the programme, he became busier with some of the fill-in work that Radio 4 was keen for him to do. That included a documentary about the history of Yorkshire, and an emergency fill-in as chair of Have I Got News For You, whose quick-fire comedy he’d found terrifying and left him feeling flat-footed. All the time he was networking as hard as possible to get a frontline, high-profile reporting job, ideally in the Middle East. It wasn’t going to be easy.
It was a year and a week after he had last seen her that Wyrecliffe next heard Cantara’s name. He’d been out drinking hard the night before in an old West End haunt with BBC Middle East Editor and long-time friend Gerald Monaghan, who was on a rare visit to London. Monaghan, a grizzled veteran of no less than seventeen regional conflicts, had a hide as thick as a rhino, legacy of endless dealing with complaints about bias this way or that and of the wavering support of bureaucrats above him. He’d let Wyrecliffe know that the BBC’s Lebanon job was already occupied and unlikely to become vacant for a while. It was all highly competitive. The truth was, as Monaghan had hinted, that the newer generation of reporters were every bit as tough as the old guard, but spoke better Arabic and knew their way around new technology. Reporters were being asked to do more, not just radio and TV, but Internet features, text and video blogs, tweets, you name it. As Monaghan told him over a long and rather nostalgically bibulous meal, it was hard to find the news under all that lot.
‘The trouble with the Middle East remains the same,’ said Monaghan, after they had moved onto their second bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape. ‘It is that the debate never moves on. So long as the Americans back Israel, there’s no pressure for a two-state solution to the Palestinian issue. And while regimes in Egypt, Syria and Saudi pay lip service to the cause of peace, the current impasse serves them well. The sectarian faultlines between Sunni and Shia and the rise of fundamentalism are terrifying prospects because they unleash the Arab street. Democracy may be a cause, but it may well not be the endpoint, as the Iranian revolution amply demonstrated.’
‘What catalysts for change are out there then?’
Monaghan gazed thoughtfully. ‘Fall of the house of Saud, perhaps. An Iranian nuclear test. An Al Qaeda strike on oil exports in Kuwait or Saudi. That kind of thing. Always possible.’
‘What about editorial resources? Any improvement?’ Wyrecliffe asked.
‘Fuck all,’ Monaghan said, chewing appreciatively at the belly pork he so missed in Jerusalem. ‘So if I were you I’d stay with Today. At least you have a contract where you can afford to buy us both a bite to eat.’
‘Well, I do intend to leave. Not sure I can yet.’
‘You’d mentioned an interview in Cairo for a post with one of the new networks? Which was it?
‘Arab Satellite Broadcasting.’
‘Ah yes, run by the adorable Taseena Christadopoulos.’ Monaghan made an appreciative movement with his mouth, as if swilling a particularly fine wine.
‘I was due to fly out tomorrow, but she e-mailed me yesterday to defer it for a couple of weeks,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘Budgets seem to be a problem.’
‘Yes, same all over I’m afraid. Blame the global financial crisis. We’re all in the same boat. Take my advice. Stay with the Beeb.’
Disappointed by that outcome, Wyrecliffe had slept fitfully and didn’t feel quite a hundred per cent for the next morning’s show. Things weren’t going well anyway. Newsreader Charlotte Green has just finished the bulletin at ten past eight, and Jim Naughtie was embarking on his big political interview of the day, with the employment secretary. Wyrecliffe was listening on his headphones to the direction from the gallery. His next interviewee, a rape victim from Congo, but speaking from the safety of Abidjan in Ivory Coast, had dropped off the line. The producer said they would switch in a piece from BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin about proposed EU regulations on cargo ship discharges, which would involve a brief two-way interview from the Essex marshes. Meanwhile, the agency feeds ticked up a newsflash from Reuters.
Airliner crashes on approach to Cairo airport – witnesses
The Harrabin interview went ahead, but there were no further details on the Cairo story, which the gallery had been wanting to incorporate into the 8.30am bulletin. Finally, just as the sport segment was finishing Reuter
s followed up with:
Cairo (Nov 18) Reuters – An airliner has crash-landed on approach to Cairo airport killing at least 120 people, airport officials said on Wednesday. Eyewitnesses said the aircraft seemed to be on fire as it approached and came down ten miles (15km) north west of the city, and burst into flames. Emergency services are at the crash scene which is just west of the village of Izbat an Naj on the Nile delta. The aircraft, an Airbus A310 EgyptAir flight made an emergency landing at 8.40am local time (07.40 GMT).
‘The plane was very low and trailing fire as it came over our apartment block,’ said a caller into Egyptian local radio. ‘I could see a hole in the fuselage. It crashed just past where my sister lives. It was terrible.’
Airport officials say all flights from the airport have been cancelled, and incoming flights will be diverted. Passengers have been told not to come to the airport, but to contact their airlines or travel companies.
MORE
Were trying to get Helen, the gallery said, referring to Helen Dassani the BBC’s Cairo correspondent. We need to know how many were on the flight. Chris, do the agency copy as a break-in. Wyrecliffe acknowledged the request with a thumbs up to the glass box opposite, gave a time check and then said: ‘Some news just breaking about an air crash near Cairo.’ He summarised the story from Reuters, while the gallery dithered over whether they had actually got Helen or not. On standby on line three they had the British Airways manager for the Middle East on a mobile phone in the car park at Cairo airport. Some enterprising research assistant in London had dug him up very rapidly from the contact database, and he was being prepped in the background, against some awful background noise which sounded like generators or compressors or something. Another researcher was ringing round aviation experts for someone who could talk with authority on the safety record of EgyptAir.
The next piece of Reuters copy came in stating that the control tower had received a message from the pilot five minutes before the crash talking about an explosion on board. It was still unclear where the flight was coming from or how many were on board. Meanwhile the interviewee had volunteered to move to a quieter location but that would take a few minutes, and still they didn’t have Helen Dassani. Helen, five seconds the gallery finally said. Jim Naughtie then asked, off mic, whether the flight number had been confirmed. No it hadn’t.
