—
Five minutes later, Wells found himself in a cell all his own. Aside from the fact that it was underground and thus windowless, it wouldn’t have been out of place in a maximum-security American prison. It had a cot with an inch-thick mattress, a pillow that smelled like a locker room, and a plastic gallon jug half filled with water that Wells hoped wouldn’t make him sick. His clothes were too wet to wear, but the guards had fetched him underwear, a T-shirt, and sweatpants, all in the same shade of gray.
The day had gone worse than a country song. Wells wouldn’t know until the morning at least if the interrogator had bought his story. Still, he counted his blessings. If he hadn’t found that brick of heroin in his hotel room, he’d still be in Volgograd, in a cell far less inviting than this one.
Sometimes the only sane move was to lie down and sleep.
So he did.
15
BEKAA VALLEY, LEBANON
Hussein Ayoub considered himself lucky.
More than lucky. Blessed.
Ayoub commanded the soldiers and militia who fought for Hezbollah, the Shia political party that dominated Lebanon. His army totaled more than ten thousand fighters, three thousand full-time and the rest irregulars. Despite its small size, it was highly capable. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, his people fought the IDF nearly to a draw.
Ayoub was forty-one, and tall. He wore his thick black hair swept up and back, in what was almost a pompadour. A handsome man. He had made his reputation in the ’06 invasion. Wearing a stolen Israeli uniform, he had walked up to four IDF soldiers at an outpost near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre and killed them at point-blank range.
Ayoub had commanded Hezbollah’s army for a year. Twice already he should have been killed. Once in Syria, fifteen kilometers south of Damascus. Rebels strafed his convoy with rockets, blowing up the cars behind and in front of his. Six of his guards died. The second time in Beirut, just a month before. A van loaded with artillery shells leveled an office building. Ayoub was supposed to be inside, but he was running late.
Inshallah. Truly. He had stopped fearing his own death after that morning outside Tyre. Dawn, the best hour for a surprise attack. The night watchers were worn out. Everyone else was still half asleep. He came in from the east, knowing the sun would be behind him, in their eyes. Still. They should have cut him down before he got close. His Hebrew was good, not great. The uniform was good, but his shoes were wrong. But back then the Jews were used to fighting kids in Gaza who threw rocks and Molotovs. They didn’t know what real war looked like.
Worse, for them, they didn’t know they didn’t know. Ayoub would never forget the way they’d yelled in surprise when he raised his rifle.
So he lived. But his life belonged only to Allah, and one day Allah would call for him. Until then he would fight for his people. At this moment, with the Israelis keeping to their side of the border, the fight was mainly in Syria. Years before, Hezbollah had joined the Syrian civil war, siding with Bashar al-Assad against the rebels who wanted to demolish his regime.
Ayoub disliked Assad. He and his friends drank, gambled, used drugs. Charity was one of the five pillars of Islam, but Assad lived in a palace while his countrymen starved. As the war ground on, Assad’s crimes multiplied.
Yet Ayoub never questioned Hezbollah’s choice. The rebels on the other side raged against Shia like Ayoub. No matter that Shia and Sunni were all Muslims, that they all believed that Allah was the only God, and Muhammad his messenger. The Sunnis ruled the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia. There were five Sunni for every Shia. But that dominance wasn’t enough for them. They wanted to eliminate the Shia entirely.
Ayoub had seen the torture videos. Mostly they came from Iraq. Men begging for mercy as their eyes were gouged out, their faces sliced apart. Men led stumbling through the empty desert on the Iraq–Syria border. Held down. Chains strapped to their arms and legs. Each chain locked to a car. Each car driven a different way. He’d made himself stop watching them. He’d tried to forget.
But one he couldn’t. It was the simplest of all. No sound, a fixed camera focused on a plain wooden table. On it, a ten-liter bucket of water beside a cardboard box filled with puppies. Ayoub didn’t know the breed. In truth, he didn’t like dogs. But these creatures were impossible to hate. They curled over one another, full of life. They couldn’t have been more than a few days old. Eight in all.
A pair of gloved hands picked them up one by one, held them underwater as they squirmed and tried to breathe, their desperation obvious even without sound. Until their wriggling stopped. Then the hands threw the sodden corpses back in the box. They twisted over each other like broken vines. The hands pointed, proudly: See what I’ve done?
The screen went black. A single Arabic line splayed across it: The Shia are worse than dogs.
If the video had ended there, it would have been one more piece of Sunni propaganda. Not the stuff of nightmares. But it went on. The table reappeared. The bucket of water sat alone now. Until the gloved hands reached out, set a baby boy beside it. An infant, black-haired, black-eyed, naked, newly circumcised, his skin light Persian brown. He wriggled. He opened his mouth, screamed soundlessly at the camera. The gloved hands picked him up, carried him toward the bucket—
And the video ended.
What had happened to that boy? Ayoub wanted to believe that whoever had made the video had put him down after the camera was off. Maybe he was a prop, not Shia at all. But Ayoub knew these Sunnis. They had turned from Allah. Hezbollah could be cruel, but never without reason. Never with the joy the desert Arabs took in the suffering they inflicted.
They weren’t beasts. They were something worse, men with the souls of beasts.
And one had held that boy under the water until he drowned. In a basement somewhere in Syria or Iraq, a laptop held the truth. On nights when the wind stirred the dust in the Bekaa and kept him from sleeping, Ayoub promised himself that one day he’d find that computer and the man who owned it.
So, yes, Hezbollah had sent men to fight with Assad. As had Iran. The Iranians were Shia, too, the most powerful Shia nation by far. Naturally, Iran worked with Hezbollah. It gave the group seventy million dollars a year, trained Ayoub’s soldiers at bases outside Tehran, snuck freighters loaded with weapons through the Suez Canal and past the Israeli coast to Beirut.
And eight days before, when an Iranian friend of Ayoub’s sent a courier to tell him they needed to meet in Beirut, now, that very hour, Ayoub didn’t hesitate. He canceled his meetings, locked his phones in his desk, grabbed an old Honda motorcycle for the ride over the Dahr al Baydar pass into Beirut. He would make this trip with no guards. He preferred two wheels when he traveled alone.
—
The Iranian was a senior officer in the Quds Force, the foreign intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard. A very senior officer. He reported directly to Qassem Suleimani, who ran Quds. He called himself Ali, though Ayoub couldn’t be sure that was his name. They had met twice before. Both times Ali asked for help in Syria. Both times Ayoub agreed, sending more than a thousand paramilitaries. Ali didn’t explicitly promise what Hezbollah would receive in return. But weeks later, Hezbollah’s charities took in millions of dollars from Iranian expatriates in Europe.
On this third trip, Ayoub parked his motorcycle outside an apartment building in Haret Hreik, a crowded suburb south of downtown Beirut. Ayoub had never seen the building before. Each meeting with Ali happened at a different safe house. Not that Hezbollah would be foolish enough to try to monitor Ali’s comings and goings. And not that any other faction in Lebanon had any idea who he was. Ayoub knew how dearly Ali prized his anonymity. The Jews or the Americans would pay dearly for him if they stumbled across him.
Ali was small, hollow-cheeked, in his fifties. He had close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a neat beard. He dressed modestly, Western-style, button-down shirts and sneak
ers. He hadn’t wasted time with small talk in their earlier meetings, and he didn’t today. No offers of tea or platters of hummus and big green olives.
“I need your help. Hezbollah’s help.”
“Of course.”
“This is about the Americans. As you can imagine. You saw the President’s speech?”
Twenty-four hours before, the United States had brazenly attacked the airport at the center of Tehran. Then the President gave Iran two weeks to open its borders or face invasion.
“Of course.”
“What he says, it’s a lie. He stares at the camera, lies to the whole world. I swear to you.”
“They lie always.”
In fact, Ayoub wasn’t sure the President had lied. Iran kept its nuclear strategy secret even from Hezbollah. Only a few people in Tehran knew the truth. Maybe the Iranians were trying to smuggle a bomb into America. So be it. Some part of Ayoub hoped that the President was telling the truth. Let the people in Washington or New York fear an Iranian bomb. The Americans were no friends of Hezbollah. They called Ayoub and his men terrorists. Never mind that Hezbollah ran medical clinics and handed out food all over Lebanon.
Worse, the United States sent billions of dollars to Israel every year, money the Jews used to buy jets and tanks to invade Lebanon. Worst of all, the United States fed the carnage in Syria.
“Why do you think the Americans have done this?” Ayoub said.
“Isn’t it obvious? They want an excuse to attack us. We have too much power for them. They’re angry about Iraq, how we outsmarted them. They fight a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, replace him with their friends. Instead, the Shia take over.” Meaning one who did what Iran wanted. “They see now in Syria their choices are Assad or the Islamic State, and they hate that they must work with us to help Assad. So they make this up.”
“To go to so much trouble—”
“They know their people are tired of war. They need a reason to send their soldiers against us.”
The explanation made sense to Ayoub. Which didn’t mean it was true.
“And you can’t open your doors, prove to the world it’s a lie.”
“Ayoub, if the Jews said that Hezbollah was making bombs to blow up the Qubbat al-Sakhrah”—the Dome of the Rock, the holy shrine that sat atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem—
“I understand.”
“That they would blow up your camps unless you let them in—”
“We would never agree.”
“Just so. We’ll fill the streets with martyrs before we do what they ask.” Ali leaned close enough for Ayoub to smell the mint tea on his breath.
“What, then?”
“They must know the price they’ll pay if they keep on this path.”
Now they reached the heart of the matter. Ali explained what he wanted, and where. He would provide the surface-to-air missiles in Mumbai, Ayoub the men. Hezbollah had no shortage of soldiers trained to use SAMs. Missiles were its best defense against the Israeli air force.
The mission disturbed Ayoub, though not for the obvious reason. He didn’t question the morality of blowing up this plane. A couple hundred innocents would die. So be it. The Syrian war killed more civilians than that every week. No, Ayoub’s concern was tactical. He didn’t see why Ali didn’t just use his own men. But he couldn’t ask directly. Ali was polite enough to phrase his orders as requests, but he was the master in this room. Hezbollah depended on Iranian support to survive.
Instead of asking Ali directly, Ayoub tried a different tack. “You’re sure my men can do this? Without advance training.”
“Did you have training when you walked up to those Jews in Tyre?”
“I knew their post. I’d watched them all night. These men, they’ve never been to India, much less Mumbai. The airport must have security.”
“The airport, yes. But the slums are around it, and police there, they’re too lazy to go inside. Not even for bribes. Trust me. I’ve been there. Your men come tonight. My officer meets them. Walks them through the slum, shows them where to set up. No missiles. Tomorrow afternoon, they come back in daylight to see for themselves. Then, tomorrow night, they bring the missiles, they aim—” Ali raised his hands, hoisting an imaginary surface-to-air missile launcher. He cocked his head to look through the sight, squeezed the trigger. “Just like you and those Jews, Ayoub. Only a bigger explosion at the end.”
Ali sounded almost wistful.
“And your man can’t do it?”
“Better if he’s not there.”
So he wouldn’t be caught when the Americans went crazy afterward. “And my men? Do you get them out after? Or is that up to me?”
“Neither.”
Ayoub needed a few seconds to realize what Ali meant.
“You want them caught? But when the Americans see they’re Lebanese—” Then Ayoub understood the game. Ali was playing both sides. He wanted the United States to know that Iran had ordered the shooting. But he didn’t want to give it proof. He, or his boss Suleimani, wanted the flexibility to deny Iran’s involvement. The Iranians used proxies whenever they could. Though puppets might be a better word.
Ayoub remembered a saying of his father’s: When a mouse mocks a cat, you can be sure there’s a hole nearby. For this mission the Iranians had chosen Hezbollah as the hole. But Ayoub wouldn’t waste his breath protesting. “My friend, if this is what you want, my men will be proud to help.”
“You have someone in mind.”
“Yes.” Two cousins who ran a truck-repair shop in Baalbek. Jafar and Haider. Late twenties and fearless. Ayoub wondered what to tell them. Only bare outlines, and nothing about Ali, of course. They were smart enough to figure out for themselves that Iran was behind the mission.
But he would have to make sure they knew they wouldn’t be coming home.
“I think through Dubai is the shortest route,” Ali said. “MEA”—Middle East Airlines, the national Lebanese carrier—“has a flight at two p.m. Then Emirates to Mumbai.”
Telling, not asking.
“Done. Once they land in Mumbai, they’re yours.”
“And clean phones, of course.”
“I’ll get your courier the numbers. Anything more, my brother?”
“Later this week. Five more teams.”
Five more pairs of soldiers? Five more planes? Ayoub’s mask of civility must have dropped for half a second. Ali grabbed Ayoub’s wrist. “All right?”
“Of course. Will these be”—Ayoub hesitated—“active missions?”
“Not yet.”
—
Ninety minutes later, at a supermarket two kilometers from Hariri International Airport, Ayoub met Jafar and Haider. As he’d expected, they came without question when he called. And they didn’t flinch when he described the mission.
“An American jet,” Jafar, the older cousin, said. His meaning was clear enough. The Americans have this coming.
Ayoub didn’t expect the cousins to escape capture for long, but he gave them six thousand dollars and told them to hide, come back to the Bekaa Valley once the pressure lifted. They laughed.
“When they find us, do we tell them that this was a Hezbollah action?” Jafar asked.
“Yes.” The Americans would know the truth anyway.
“Good.”
—
The next night, the reports came in from India. They’d lit the sky with United 49.
Ayoub sent a third man to Mumbai, too, a truly clean operative who could travel on a Turkish passport. Not to help the other two, just to walk the streets and watch the local television channels so Ayoub might have a few minutes of advance word when they were caught. But the cousins managed better than he’d expected. A week passed with no word of their arrest. Ayoub wondered if the Americans had snatched them in secret.
He heard nothing from Ali
, either. Probably the man wasn’t even in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, he had other concerns. That morning, the Syrian Minister of Defense had called to tell him that the Sunnis were preparing a major offensive. No surprise, they figured a potential war with the United States might distract Iran from helping the Syrian government. The minister asked Ayoub to send another two thousand men. Ayoub put him off, spent the day debating with his deputies what course to recommend to Sayyed Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s ultimate leader. If America invaded Iran, Hezbollah would be on its own. Maybe this wasn’t the moment to risk fighters he might need to defend Hezbollah’s own territory from the IDF.
The debate was exhausting. They all felt the pressure of war rising. Finally, after dinner, Ayoub sent his men home. The choice was ultimately Nasrallah’s anyway.
Ayoub arrived at 10 p.m. to a dark house, his wife Rima and their five children asleep. Rather than wake her, he pulled out the cot in his office. He could have slept on a stone pillow this night. He closed his eyes—
Bees surrounded him, buzzing wildly. He pulled himself from the dream, reached for his phone. His fourth phone, the least used and most important. Even Rima didn’t have the number. It was one of six that Hezbollah’s most senior commanders used to send one another coded text messages, a way to set meetings when they didn’t have time to rely on couriers.
Adhan Habibi, Nasrallah’s second deputy and his top military advisor, had sent the message. It consisted of the first five words of the fifth verse of the Quran’s first Surah: You alone do we worship . . . A few seconds later, another message popped up from the same phone: 10059.
The system was simple. The first message set the meeting’s location, in this case a disused warehouse fifteen kilometers west of Baalbek, near the town of Zahle. Habibi and Ayoub had met there once before. The commanders had five pre-agreed meeting sites, each signaled by a different Quranic verse. The second message set the time: one hour from now. One hour . . . fifty-nine minutes . . .
It was 1:45 a.m. Ayoub had no idea why Habibi would call a meeting so late, but when they created the system, they agreed never to question these summonses. They all knew that the more they used the phones, the more vulnerable they would be to American and Israeli spies. Ayoub would have to trust that Habibi had a good reason to ask for him.
Twelve Days Page 22
