"Retired last year."
"His idea?"
"No."
"Figures. If you're going to screw up, first thing you have to do is get rid of anyone who might have a clue." A pause. "I was an Asia desk man myself, Patrick."
"I know, but you've moved onward and upward. I need your help on a little project."
There was a smile in Hugh's voice when he replied. "I don't think the U.S. government can afford me."
"If we can afford the Mossad, we can afford you."
"What?"
"It's a long story. Let me run my topic by you first," Patrick said. "I'm tracking a terrorist calling himself Isa."
"Head of Abdullah," Hugh said immediately, and Patrick could hear keys clicking in the background, "formerly of the Zarqawi group, believed to have formed his own group after Zarqawi's death, responsible for the bus bombing in Baghdad in, what was it, December oh-five. That Isa?"
"That's the one."
"Never heard of him."
It surprised a laugh out of Patrick. "Very funny." He sobered. "This guy isn't done, Hugh. I've got all kinds of rumors filtering in through the usual sources and a few unusual ones." Patrick told Hugh about Karim. "I think Isa's recruiting and I think he's got plans. Just one time I'd like to get the jump on one of these bastards."
"Yeah, I heard about just missing al-Zawahiri. Bad luck." That blown operation had been all over the front pages for weeks now. "You think you got another mole at Langley?"
"That, or bin Laden's intel is better than ours."
Which wouldn't be hard, both of them thought and Rincon charitably didn't say. "What do you need, Patrick?"
"Anything you've got on him. Anything you can get on him until he's either dead or my beck-and-call boy in Gitmo."
"All right. I'll put together a package and send it over. Along with a rate schedule."
"Yeah, yeah."
"Payable upon delivery, Patrick. You sure the new man will go for that?"
Patrick thought back to Kallendorf's first briefing. "The new man will go for anything that gets results."
AFGHANISTAN, DECEMBER 2006
"Never doubt that they are looking for him, master. It is only a matter of time. They will find him, and they will interrogate him, and he will tell them everything he knows about us."
"Do you tell me that he will betray us? Has Isa ever proved himself disloyal, in all his years of service?"
Ansar covered his slip smoothly. "Not of his own will, master, certainly. But it is well known by those who know that no man can long bear torture without offering everything he has to make it stop."
"He could lie."
"He could." Ansar let his response lie there without elaboration. It needed none, and he knew it.
The old man meditated on this intelligence, so long that the rest of them wondered if he'd fallen asleep.
At last he stirred. A frail hand came up to comb his beard. "Is there tea?"
There was a brief hiatus in the discussion while hot mint tea in thick glasses was brought on a silver tray carried by a thin boy with curious eyes. He served the old man first, and set the tray on the rug in the middle of the circle of men. He retreated to the door and loitered there, hoping to remain. He was frustrated in this when he intercepted a dismissive scowl, and slunk out.
The wooden door closed with not quite a slam, raising a rectangular puff of dust from the mud brick walls surrounding it. The dust caught in the single ray of thin winter sunshine streaming in through the window and hung motionless in the still air. The old man coughed, and sipped his tea. It brought color to his pale, drawn cheeks. "Zarqawi trusted him."
They exchanged glances. "He did," one of them said, "but, and forgive me, master, as we all know, Zarqawi Musab al-Zarqawi was ruled more by his instincts than by his intellect. It is entirely possible that he was… deceived."
"Still, Ansar, in how many years, did Isa ever fail him?"
"Then who betrayed Zarqawi?" the first speaker said bluntly.
"You think it was Isa?"
"I do," Ansar said firmly. He may have had doubts but this was about power. There was no room for uncertainties in this argument. The old man was in poor health. After the first attacks that had toppled the government, after the American forces' attention had been redirected to Iraq, he had never been in any real danger of apprehension, but a life lived on the run, even with the resources the old man had, was wearing on the individual. And on his organization.
The old man meditated over his tea, the veins in his hands standing out beneath the soft folds of crepe skin. His thin body looked lost in the folds of his robes. "How did they find out about the bus bombing in Baghdad?"
They exchanged glances. "He told them, master."
"After, yes." The old man sipped his tea. "Of course, it is natural to wish to take credit for a blow dealt on behalf of the one true God. Allahu akbar."
"Allahu akbar," came in a soft murmur in reply.
"But someone told them of the attack before it happened. They were waiting for him. They nearly caught him. The bus was a target of opportunity, not the intended one. And even then, I don't think he would have told, had credit not been given wrongly to al-Zawahiri."
There was silence. Into it the old man said, his voice a gentle thread of sound, "It was the last time they have gotten close to him." He sipped tea. "I notice also that we have not heard from him directly since Zarqawi died. Is this not so?"
Uncertain glances were exchanged.
"Almost six months," the old man said.
There was a murmur of agreement. Ansar said boldly, "All the more reason to find him, master. I say this not out of distrust or a wish to punish, only to discover information. If he is planning an attack, we should know of it."
The old man shifted on his pillows. Courteously, Ansar leaned over and put a hand to his elbow to help him, and received equally courteous thanks.
When the old man spoke again his voice was thready but perfectly audible. "I have a wish to see Isa again, to speak with him, to take counsel of him."
Ansar could say only, "Yes, master."
"And if he should somehow have become convinced that I would no longer greet him as brother, that my arms are no longer open to embrace him…" The old man let his voice trail away.
Ansar leaned in to catch the fading words, and for the first time since they had entered the room, the old man's eyes opened. He looked at Ansar with a cold, clear, steady gaze that entirely belied the air of frailty that clung to him.
"And, Ansar," he said, that bare thread of sound somehow infused with a sudden menace, "if I thought that Isa had been betrayed to the infidel, I would spare no effort to discover the traitor in our midst."
In spite of the chill mountain air that penetrated the room, Ansar found himself sweating. There was only one answer. "Yes, master."
The old man nodded once and gave a dismissive wave. "Leave me."
They filed out, their robes sweeping the dirt floor of the house as they went. Outside, the pale December sunshine filtered down through the steep sides of the valley, an inconsequential and transient warmth. It was a tiny village, the houses built around a spring-fed pool. Above the village was a long, man-made cave that had once been home to a Buddhist shrine, the figures and paintings long since destroyed by the mullahs. The road that led to the village was wide enough for a motorcycle and no more. The road, the houses, the sparse vegetation, the rocky outcroppings of tor and crag, all were covered with a thick layer of snow, the top of which had frozen into a hard crust of ice. From the direction of the spring they heard the chop of an ax. A woman covered in black from head to toe came out with a tray of feed, and hens gathered round her skirts, clucking. There was no other sound.
"How long has he been here?" Ansar said.
"Two months," Bilal said.
Ansar shivered.
"Ansar," Bilal said.
"What?"
"Does he truly think Isa was betrayed to the West? And that one of us
betrayed him?"
Ansar, his equilibrium restored by the cold bite of the winter air, said, "He is old. The old have fancies."
Bilal noticed that Ansar took care to keep his voice down so the rest of them could not hear, and lowered his own voice accordingly. "But he is right. They were waiting for Isa in Baghdad. He barely escaped."
"But he did escape," Ansar said.
"You sound as if you wished he hadn't."
Ansar shrugged. "It is true, I don't trust him. He is not one of us. He was educated in the West. And someone betrayed our brother Zarqawi to the infidels."
"You think it was Isa?"
"I think Isa is not the first person to be seduced by his own ambition." Ansar's eyes strayed to the tiny cottage from which they had just emerged. "And he won't be the last."
Bilal looked troubled, and Ansar slapped him on the back. "Come! Let us return before the light is gone, and we are lost and fit only for food for the wolves."
"And Isa?"
"I will send word." Ansar gave an elaborate shrug. "What Isa does when he receives it is another matter."
"What happens if he does not come?"
"The old man can send word." Ansar's smile was thin and humorless. "What he does when Isa does not respond is another matter."
A WEEK LATER IN AN INTERNET CAFE IN ISLAMABAD, A MESSAGE DULY went out. A month later, when there was still no response, this was reported to the old man.
He sighed and covered his eyes. After a moment he dropped his hand. "Find him," he said. "Find him and bring him to me."
6
DOSSELDORF, JUNE 2007
If 9/11 had taught them anything it was that the simplest plan was the best plan. A small cell, independent, autonomous, well-funded. A clearly defined target. A strong leader to give the cell a focus, and to help them keep it. And most important, a clearly stated expectation of results, which Akil had found to be most motivational. Not a threat of what would happen if there were no results, no, no, nothing so crude, but the implication was there, and he made sure it was frequently reinforced.
Money was the least of his worries, a huge relief, but over the past twelve months since Zarqawi's death and his departure from Iraq, he had taken the precaution of emptying out the account in Bern in small increments and placing them into a series of other accounts in various banks in different Western nations. He had learned a great deal answering the phone for the bank in Hayatabad all those years ago, Zarqawi had filled in the blanks he hadn't been able to fill in for himself, and he put it all to good use now.
The result was a tidy sum of working capital resting anonymously in three different bank accounts, one in the Grand Caymans, one in Hong Kong, and the third in the original bank in Bern, naturally under a different name. Sooner or later, al Qaeda would come looking for that money, and he wanted to be certain it would be well out of their reach.
Sooner or later, they would come looking for him, too, and they wouldn't stop until they found him.
Or until he returned to them, trailing clouds of glory, his own man, master of his own wildly successful organization, and owing fealty to none. He smiled at the thought.
He opened two more accounts, one in New York and another in Miami, with the minimum balance necessary to avoid fees. One of the things he despised most about capitalism was the rapacious capacity of Western banking institutions to bleed their customers dry in fees. Did not the Koran say that which you give that it may increase your wealth has no increase in Allah, but that which you give in charity shall have manifold increase?
But then so much of Western culture was haraam. It amused him to use their own unclean practices to bring them down, and this was where his time in the West informed his actions. He'd chosen the American banks on the basis of the quality and efficiency of their web sites, and set up an automatic bill pay plan to deposit monthly amounts from one to another that approximated a credit card payment and a car payment, respectively. Nothing was more sure to draw unwanted attention than sums of money sitting idle, thereby accruing no income to their hosts.
All this took time, since haste in withdrawals and deposits was another flag for official attention, but he was in no hurry. He got a job drawing blueprints for the new Düsseldorf airport extension and worked himself seamlessly into the local expatriate Muslim community, forging friendships with young Muslim men of promise.
Identifying likely recruits was never difficult, especially since the West had seeded the ground so well for the introduction of Muslim extremism. Everything about their various societies, their creeping secularism, their capitalistic greed, their abominably unfettered women, and above all their support for the state of Israel and their acquiescence to the subsequent subjection of Palestine, affronted the very ideals of Islam, firing the imams to denunciations and calls for action that fell on ready ears. The resulting harvest of disaffected young men was thick on the ground in every Western nation and ripe for the picking.
Germany was no different. As in France, England, and Austria, Muslims, imported for cheap labor, had taken up residency and settled in to produce a second generation that by features, coloring, and dress alone were guaranteed to grow up isolated, alienated, and angry about it. In
Düsseldorf there was a small, provincial colony of them, and within this colony AMI looked to replenish the cell of Abdullah.
One man, Rashid Guhl, seemed at first very promising, bright, inarticulate, and a rapt follower of the local imam who preached a carefully obscure jihad against the Far Enemy every Friday from the local mosque. Isa cultivated Rashid's friendship over some months, and then Rashid repaid him by falling suddenly in love with the daughter of the owner of an appliance store. Isa knew better than to try to talk him out of it, instead attending the wedding to wish Rashid and his new bride the very best of luck, but afterward he allowed himself to withdraw gradually from Rashid's new life. There was nothing more debilitating to a sense of mission than family entanglements.
Instead he concentrated on Yussuf al-Dagma and Yaqub Sadiq, Yussuf another engineer in his own firm, and Yaqub Yussuf's best friend from childhood, now a traffic engineer in Düsseldorf. Both were of Lebanese descent, with parents who had immigrated in search of relief from the constant conflict with Israel. Both were single. Both spoke English, albeit with the hideous British accent of their primary schoolteacher, and both held dual citizenship in Germany and Lebanon. Neither was quite as religious as Rashid, who was now beating his Western-born wife into wearing the hijab, and Yaqub was something of a ladies' man and a little erratic. They both regarded themselves as strangers in a strange land, though, and Akil played on that sense of exile. It was not to be expected that these men, softened by a birth and an upbringing in a Western culture that at least pretended to tolerance, would be of that same burning, single-minded drive and that matchless experience and ability as his original men, veterans of the streets of Gaza and Beruit. He did not dare show his face in either place, however, not yet, and so had to make do with the clay at hand.
The three of them took to meeting over coffee after work and talking long into the night, the core of a group of young men with shared feelings of dislocation from their homelands, of not fitting into their new worlds whether they'd been born into them or not, and of revulsion of Western mores from the consumption of alcohol to the length of women's skirts to Western, particularly American, imperialism. To them, the invasion of
Iraq was a crusade, nothing less, the first wave of the attempt to subjugate and then obliterate Islam from the world.
Some of the hotheads in the group began speaking outwardly of taking direct action, of targeting local unbelievers for retribution. "The Jews," someone said, and someone else laughed and said, "Are there any Jews left in Germany?" Akil said nothing to encourage them, but neither did he say anything to discourage them, maintaining a silence in which the others read what they wished to read. Incidents of broken windows and assaults soon followed, with a great deal of boastful swaggering after the fact. Wh
en no repercussions were forthcoming, a Muslim woman who was seen talking to a German shopkeeper was beaten on the street, and a Protestant church with a woman priest was vandalized.
Akil used the resulting hubbub to suggest that he, Yussuf, and Yaqub begin to meet elsewhere. They agreed. Another man, Basil ben Hasn, overheard and volunteered to join them. Yussuf and Yaqub made him welcome and Akil concealed his displeasure. He didn't like Basil. The young man listened too much and spoke too little, making it difficult to see into his heart. And he was from Jordan, a nation notorious for collaborating with the United States. Bin Laden was not altogether wrong in his distrust of them, they had betrayed too many fighters to the West, some of whom Akil had known personally, and some of whom were now rotting in Guantanamo Bay.
And one of whom had very probably betrayed his master.
If he was wary of enemy action, he was far more alert to the possibility of action by his so-called friends. So, instead of moving their meeting to his living room and giving his fixed location away to anyone who might be interested enough to follow them, they moved to another coffeehouse at the edge of the neighborhood. It was far enough away from the first one to separate themselves from the first establishment's patrons, but close enough that when a week later the riot began they heard the noise from five streets away and ran to investigate.
It was a scene of chaos, drifts of tear gas making their eyes water, men shouting, women screaming, police with riot shields striking at everyone within reach of their clubs. With a faint shock Akil realized that their intent was to contain the inhabitants of the coffee shop where he had first begun to meet with his recruits. The line of officers tightened, one bloody Muslim head at a time. When someone fell, they were dragged away and tossed into the back of a police van. One of the victims was Rashid's new wife, her veil twisted in a tumble of long black hair, her face bruised and bloody. Akil wondered what she was doing out so late, and resolutely banished the memories of Adara the sight brought to mind.
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