Bin Laden stroked his beard, looked away, looked back at Wells with cunning narrow eyes. Finally he smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. Thank you, Jalal.” And with that the sheikh waved him out.
* * *
TWO YEARS LATER Wells had been taken to a different cave for another meeting, where bin Laden had asked him about the Hoover Dam. “Is it a great symbol of America?” he had said. Wells had answered honestly. Most Americans had no idea what or where the Hoover Dam was.
“Are you sure, Jalal?” bin Laden said. He sounded disappointed.
Wells looked at the guards flanking bin Laden and wished for a gun or a knife tipped with rat poison. Even a chip in his shoulder so a B-2 could drop a bomb on this stinking hole. “Yes, Mujaddid,” he said.
Bin Laden nodded. “Shukran,” he said, and the guards escorted Wells out. He did not know how much credit he deserved for the fact that the Hoover Dam was still in one piece.
NOW, AS HE sat in the Toyota, Wells wasn’t sure what to think. If they had wanted to kill him they could have taken him into the mountains, or even shot him while he slept. The Pakistani cops wouldn’t exactly launch an all-out investigation. The police hardly came into the North-West Frontier without Pakistani Army escorts.
But they weren’t going into the mountains. They were heading toward Peshawar. Wells figured that increased his chances of survival. As long as they didn’t get hit by a bus. The roads in Pakistan were a constant game of chicken, and Bassim drove as though he wanted to catch afternoon tea with Allah. Wells’s head snapped back as Bassim swerved into oncoming traffic to pass a truck stuffed with cheap wooden furniture. As an oncoming gasoline tanker blasted its horn, Bassim cut in front of the furniture truck and back into his own lane, nearly sliding off the road and into a ravine.
“Easy, Bassim,” Wells said. Bassim turned to stare at him, ignoring the road. The Toyota accelerated again, closing in on a tractor dragging a cartload of propane cylinders.
“You don’t like how I drive? You want to drive?”
Jesus Christ, Wells thought — a mental tic he supposed he would never lose. The whole Muslim world suffered from a massive testosterone overdose, and the jihadis were the worst. “Of course not,” Wells said, careful to keep a straight face. If he as much as smiled Bassim really would take them into the ditch, just to prove he could. “You drive great.”
A long honk pulled Bassim’s attention back to the road. They were about to slam into the back of the propane cart. Bassim stamped on the brakes and the Toyota skidded to a stop by the side of the road. “See,” Bassim said. “There is nothing wrong with my driving. My reflexes are superb.”
“Nam,” Wells said.
“My father was a famous driver. I learned from him.”
“Your father,” the otherwise silent Shihab said from the back seat, “died in a car accident.”
Bassim turned to glare at Shihab as Wells bit his lip to stifle his laughter. Finally Bassim tapped the gas and they lurched back into traffic. No one said anything the rest of the trip.
TWO HOURS LATER the Toyota rolled into Peshawar, the biggest city in the North-West Frontier, a million-person jumble of crumbling concrete buildings and brick huts. Bassim nosed the sedan through a slum clogged with donkey carts hauling propane tanks and garbage. The roads became so crowded that the car could go no farther. In front of a tiny shop whose windows were filled with dusty tins of condensed milk, Bassim killed the engine. Shihab hopped out and opened Wells’s door.
“Come,” he said, tugging Wells down the street. The rich heavy stench of sewage and mud filled the air. Wells stepped through piles of rotten fruit and donkey shit. Children ran around them, kicking cans and a torn sphere that had once been a soccer ball. So many children. They were everywhere in Pakistan. They sat on the streets, selling toys and overripe bananas, eyes shining with hunger. In neighborhoods like this one they surrounded anyone standing still, their hands out, smiling and asking for “rupees, rupees.” The lucky ones found their way to the madrassas, Islamic schools that educated them well in the Koran and badly in everything else. What would they do when they grew up, if not join the jihad?
Bassim pushed open the rusting steel door of an apartment building and pulled Wells inside. “Third floor.” He and Shihab seemed desperate to get off the street. Wells wondered whether bin Laden would really risk living here.
The stairwell was dark and smelled of piss and onions. When they reached the third floor, Bassim tugged Wells toward the back of the building. He knocked twice on a steel door, then paused and knocked twice again.
“Nam?” a voice said from inside.
Bassim said nothing but knocked twice more. The door swung open. A man in a turban waved them in with his AK.
The room was dark and dreary, lit by a trickle of fading daylight that leaked through the dirty window high on the back wall. Beneath the window, a small poster of bin Laden had been pinned up carefully.
“Sit,” the guard said, pointing to a bench covered with tattered red cushions. Wells took a closer look around. Behind a blue beaded curtain, a narrow corridor led to the back of the apartment. In a corner, water boiled on a stove beside scissors, a razor, and a blue plastic mirror. The only other furniture was a wooden chair that had been placed atop a bunch of newspapers.
The minutes ticked by. No one said a word. Wells had never seen Arab men quiet for this long. He wondered if they really planned to shoot him in here. So be it. He had done his best. Nonetheless, he looked around, half-consciously plotting escape routes. That boiling water would come in handy.
Wells heard the shuffle of footsteps in the corridor. “Stand,” the guard said quickly, gesturing with his rifle. As they jumped up, the curtain parted and four men walked in, led by a heavy man wearing square steel glasses. Ayman al-Zawahiri. Wells understood why his minders had been so nervous. Zawahiri was bin Laden’s deputy, a man almost more important to Qaeda than the sheikh himself. He knew the details of the group’s operations, its financing, where its men were hidden. Bin Laden set broad strategy and spoke for the organization, but without Zawahiri Qaeda could not function. Zawahiri hugged Shihab and Bassim and nodded to Wells.
“Salaam alaikum, Jalal.”
“Salaam alaikum, Mujahid.”
“Allahu akbar.”
“Allahu akbar.”
“We have much to talk about. But first you must shave.” Zawahiri pointed at the pot of water.
“Shave?” Wells was proud of his thick, bushy beard, which he had not trimmed since coming to the North-West Frontier. Every Qaeda member wanted “a beard the length of a fist,” which fat-was — religious edicts — had decreed the minimum acceptable length. Wells’s was even longer.
“The Prophet would not approve,” Wells said.
“In this case he would.” Behind the glasses, Zawahiri’s eyes were flat.
Wells decided not to argue. “To the skin?”
“Nam,” Zawahiri said. “To the skin.”
So while the other men watched, Wells clipped his long brown beard with the scissors, leaving tufts of curly hair on the counter by the stove.
He looked in the mirror. In place of his beard, a pathetic coat of peach fuzz covered his face. Already he hardly recognized himself. He dipped the razor — a plastic single-blade — in the pot and scraped it over his skin. He had to admit he enjoyed the sensation of shaving, the heat of the blade on his face. He took his time, using short smooth strokes, tapping the razor against the pot to shake out the stubble. Finally he was done. Again he looked in the mirror.
“Very handsome, Jalal,” Zawahiri said. He seemed amused.
Wells rubbed his newly smooth face. “It feels strange,” he said. More than strange. He felt young and soft without the beard. Vulnerable.
“Sit,” Zawahiri said, pointing at the chair with the newspapers beneath it. “I will cut your hair.” Wells sat silently as Qaeda’s No. 2 went to work. He tried to remember the last time someone else had cut his hair; in Afghanistan and the
North-West Frontier he had done the job himself. In Washington, maybe, the night before he had left the United States to join the camps.
The night he had stayed at his apartment instead of meeting Exley for a drink after work. Just a drink, say good-bye before I go, he’d said, and they’d both known he was lying and had laughed to cover their nervousness. Yes, he thought. Had to be that night. He had gotten the haircut for her. But then he hadn’t shown up. He’d been ashamed, embarrassed, for his wife and for Exley’s husband. He’d driven home after the haircut, hadn’t called to cancel, and the next morning he had left on a trip that hadn’t stopped yet. He had forgotten that night, or shoved it into a corner of his mind where he put all the things that didn’t help him survive over here. Now the memories came flooding back. Exley. Was her hair still short? Did she still have that long blue dress?
He’d been gone a long time.
ZAWAHIRI TAPPED HIS shoulder. Wells looked down to see clumps of his curly brown hair scattered over the newspaper. “Now you don’t look so Arab. Good,” Zawahiri said. He handed the mirror to Wells. A little ragged, but surprisingly decent.
“Stand here,” Zawahiri said, pointing to the beaded blue curtain. “Waleed, take Jalal’s picture.” One of the men who’d come in with Zawahiri held up a portable passport camera. Wells wondered whether they were taking a death shot, to be FedExed to Langley along with a dozen black roses.
“Look at the light,” Waleed said. Click. Click. Click. “Shukran.” He walked down the corridor.
“Sit,” Zawahiri said to Wells, tapping the bench beside him. “Jalal, what would you do if the sheikh said your time for martyrdom had come?”
Wells looked around the room, readying himself. Only one gun out, though the others were surely armed. He might have a chance. Yet he thought trying to escape would be a mistake. Zawahiri’s manner seemed professorial, as if he were genuinely interested in Wells’s answer. They wouldn’t have brought him all this way just to kill him; they could have done that easily in the mountains, and Zawahiri wouldn’t have bothered to come.
“If Allah wishes martyrdom for me, then so be it,” Wells said.
“Even if you did not know why?”
“We cannot always understand the ways of the Almighty.”
“Yes,” Zawahiri said. “Very good.” He stood. “Jalal — John — you are American.”
“Once I was American,” Wells said. “I serve Allah now.”
“You served in the American army. You jumped from airplanes.”
Don’t argue, Wells told himself. He’s testing you. “My past is no secret, Mujahid. They taught me to fight. But they follow a false prophet. I accepted the true faith.”
Zawahiri glanced at the man sitting in the corner, a handsome Pakistani with neatly trimmed black hair and a small mustache.
“You have fought with us for many years. You study the Koran. You do not fear martyrdom. You seem calm even now.” Zawahiri took the AK from the guard. Almost idly, he flicked down the safety, setting the rifle on full automatic. He pointed the gun at Wells.
“Every man fears martyrdom. Those who say they don’t are lying,” Wells said, remembering the men he had seen die. If he was wrong about all of this, he hoped Zawahiri could shoot straight, at least. Make it quick.
“So you are afraid?” Zawahiri said. He pulled back the rifle’s slide, chambering a round.
Wells stayed utterly still. Either way he wouldn’t have long to wait now. “I trust in Allah and I trust in the Prophet,” he said.
“See?” Zawahiri said to the mustached man. He again pulled back the slide on the rifle, popping the round out of the chamber. He clicked up the rifle’s safety and handed it back to the guard.
“If you trust in the Prophet, then I trust you,” he said. “And I have a mission for you. An important mission.” Zawahiri motioned to a fat man who had sat silently in the corner during the meeting. “This is Farouk Khan. Allah willing, he will have a task for you.”
“Salaam alaikum.”
“Alaikum salaam.”
Then Zawahiri pointed to the mustached man. “And this is Omar Khadri,” he said. “You will see him again. In America.”
Khadri wore Western clothes, a button-down shirt and jeans. “Hello, Jalal,” he said. In English. English English. He sounded like he’d come straight from Oxford. Khadri put out a hand, and Wells shook it — a very Western greeting. Arab men usually hugged.
“They’re ready,” Waleed said from the corridor.
“Bring them,” Zawahiri said.
Waleed walked back into the room and handed two passports to Zawahiri.
“Very good,” Zawahiri said, and handed the passports to Wells: one Italian and one British, both featuring the pictures of Wells taken a few minutes before, and both good enough to fool even an experienced immigration agent.
“Today is Friday,” Zawahiri said. “On Tuesday there is a Pakistan Airlines flight to Hong Kong. A friend in the ISI”—the Inter-Service Intelligence, the powerful Pakistani secret police agency—“will put you on it. Use the Italian passport for Hong Kong customs. Wait a week, then fly to Frankfurt. From there you should have no problems getting into the United States with the British passport.”
“Your skin is the right color, after all,” Khadri said. He laughed, a nasty little laugh that scratched at Wells. He would have been glad to watch me die, Wells thought.
“And then, Mujahid?” he said to Zawahiri.
Zawahiri pulled out a brick of hundred-dollar bills and a torn playing card from his robe. He handed Wells the bills, held together with a fraying rubber band. “Five thousand dollars. To get to New York.” He held up the card, half of the king of spades.
“There’s a deli in Queens,” Khadri said. “Give them this. They’ll give you thirty-five thousand dollars.”
Hawala, Wells thought. The bane of American efforts to clamp down on Qaeda’s finances. The informal banking system of the Middle East, used by traders for centuries to move money. The other half of the card had been mailed from Pakistan to Queens, or maybe brought over by hand. The two halves functioned as a unique code, a thirty-five-thousand-dollar withdrawal waiting to be made. Eventually the accounts would be evened up; Zawahiri would funnel thirty-five grand in gold bars — plus a fee — to the deli owner’s brother in Islamabad, or diamonds to a cousin in Abu Dhabi. The owner might be a jihadi, or just a man who knew how to walk money around the world without leaving footprints.
Zawahiri handed the card to Wells. He looked at it — an ordinary red-backed playing card — then tucked it into the brick of bills. “I’ll do my best not to lose it,” he said. “How will I know the deli?”
“We’ve set up an e-mail account for you — SmoothJohnny1234@ gmail.com,” Omar said. “All one word.”
“Smooth Johnny?” Wells said. “I’m not so sure about that, Omar.” He laughed as naturally as he could. Best to get on the guy’s good side. “And then?”
“Then you move to Atlanta,” Zawahiri said.
“And wait. It may be a few months. Practice your shooting,” Khadri said. “Get a job. Keep out of the mosques. Blend in. It shouldn’t be hard.”
“Can’t you tell me more?”
Khadri shook his head. “In time, Jalal.”
“Good luck,” Zawahiri said.
Wells hoped his face didn’t betray his fury. They had shoved him to the edge of a thousand-foot drop, made him see his own death. And he had passed their test. So he was alive, with five grand in his pocket and a ride to Hong Kong. But they still didn’t trust him enough to tell him what they had planned.
Fine, Wells thought. In time. He tapped his chest. “I won’t fail you, Mujahid,” he said. “Salaam alaikum.”
“Alaikum salaam.”
Zawahiri and Khadri stood to leave. At the door, Khadri turned and looked at Wells. “Alaikum salaam, John. How does it feel to be going home?”
“Home?” Wells said. “I wish I knew.”
2
United
Airlines flight 919, above the Atlantic Ocean
THE LITTLE GIRL in 35A saw them first. Angela Smart, of Reston, Virginia, flying home with her family from a spring break trip to see her grandparents in London. Angela was glad the trip was almost over. She missed her friends, and Josie and Richard — her grands — were nice, but they smelled funny. She looked out the window again and wondered when they’d be home. When she asked her dad, who was in the seat behind her, he just said, “Not far now, Smurfette,” and snorted like he’d said something funny. She didn’t even know who Smurfette was. Her dad was goofy sometimes.
At least she had a window seat. The empty blue sky was beautiful; maybe she would be a pilot when she grew up. Being up here all the time would be fun. Then she saw it, a speck in the sky at the edge of the horizon. She pressed her face to her window. Was it? It was. A plane. Two planes, far away but coming closer. They looked like little darts with wings. She nudged her mother, sleeping next to her in 35B.
“Stop it, Angela,” Deirdre Smart muttered.
The darts were definitely getting bigger. Angela poked her mother again. “Mommy. Look.”
“What?”
“Look.”
Deirdre opened her eyes. She was annoyed, Angela could see. “What, Angela?”
“Outside.” Angela pointed.
Her mother looked. “Oh good Lord,” she said.
She grabbed Angela’s hand.
“Is something wrong, Mommy?”
“No, dear. Everything’s fine.”
The big jet’s speakers crackled to life. “From the flight deck, this is Captain Hamilton. You may have noticed that we have some company to the left and right. Those are F-16s, the pride of the United States Air Force. They’ll be riding with us into Dulles. No reason to be alarmed.” The captain sounded utterly confident, as if fighter jets escorted his flights home all the time. He clicked off for a moment, then clicked back on.
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