by Gary Haynes
Without any prior warning, three monitors began to beep loudly. The door swung open and a young doctor with a military haircut and a cleft chin rushed in. Crane hadn’t seen him before.
“You’ll have to leave,” he said.
“Is he gonna be okay?”
“Sir, please leave, now.”
Chapter 75
As the jet taxied on the Quantico runway, Tom looked over at Lester opposite, who was drinking a small glass of bourbon and making appreciative noises by smacking his lips together. Outside, despite it being dark, the vapour light from the military base made it as bright as that of a small city at night. Tom now knew about the details of the disguise and the forensics the French had found at the mall.
“So this guy you saw in that mall is Ibrahim?” Lester said, putting the glass down on the teak table between them.
Tom had already decided that the guy he’d called out to there and Ibrahim were one and the same, and he said as much.
“Got some balls, I’ll give him that,” Lester said.
“Crane’s having the sketch checked against photos of known or suspected Caucasian males who have links with jihadists, however tenuous, even down to the ones who’ve been watching videos on YouTube. But the CCTV has come up zilch. He spotted the angles, shielded himself and avoided them. He’s sharp.”
“The NSI checked out my search history, they’d think I was obsessed with big asses, or some shit,” Lester said.
“You are,” Tom said.
Ignoring him, Lester said, “Whatcha make of TSM?”
Tom shook his head. “Who knows? But he got us to the airfield. So I guess he’s cool.”
“Coulda called the Somali guy in, too. I don’t trust him. What now?”
“I’m going to see my father,” Tom said.
Lester nodded sympathetically. “Yeah.”
Tom knew there wasn’t anything else his friend could say about the situation. There wasn’t anything he could say about the wider situation, either. Ibrahim was still out there, still a massive threat.
He didn’t know if his involvement in Department B was at an end, but suspected that that wouldn’t be the case, especially after he’d seen the man he knew was Ibrahim, a Westerner. He was well aware that hundreds, if not thousands of Western Muslims were fighting in Syria and Iraq, elsewhere in the Middle East, too, and that this was a continuation of those Westerners who had gone to fight with the Afghan mujahedeen against the Russians in the 1980s. But the vast majority of those had been and were Muslims, the sons of Middle Eastern and Pakistani immigrants. This Ibrahim, this Caucasian, was something different and, to his mind, something chilling and inexplicable.
Chapter 76
It was morning in Gaza, and Esther Markowitz was washing her long hair in a green-tiled shower room after sleeping with a Hamas politician she’d met purposely the night before, although she’d seen him at various meetings for the past three months and had noticed his eyes on her. But she hadn’t had sex with him. She’d put a sleeping pill together with a little Rohypnol in his coffee before bedtime. The drug was odourless and tasteless. It lowered inhibitions but also caused forgetfulness. He’d done nothing other than grope her before he’d passed out.
An ugly man with ugly habits, but he’d talked a lot. The enigmatic Ibrahim had come home and the fighters were getting excited. He was planning a great jihad, called the Silent Jihad. When she’d asked the politician why it was called the Silent Jihad he’d slurred at first but then said that it was called that because the method Ibrahim would use wasn’t a submachine gun or a bomb, it was much more subtle. It was silent.
Despite all of her prompting he’d said he didn’t know anything else about it. He wasn’t in the inner circle of jihadists. She’d asked if the Silent Jihad would be undertaken by the military arm of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad group. He’d said it was neither, but rather some unknown group ruled by an old man called the Amir, but no one knew his name, including him.
The group was linked to many Islamic militant groups, from Al-Shabaab to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and yet it was beholden to none, and did not get involved in their internal or group-on-group power struggles, such as those between al-Qaeda, al-Nusra and the Islamic State group.
They had settled here in Gaza for one reason. In Syria, Yemen, Africa, Iraq, North Africa and the Horn, the situation on the ground was even more precarious and lawless than the Palestinian territories. Almost all of those states were subject to a regime that was vehemently opposed to them. Even the Saudis and the other Gulf States had outlawed the Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS, because that group considered the Saudi royal family to be anti-Muslim, and they sought to overthrow them and others like them, despite many wealthy Saudis funding the jihad in Iraq and Syria.
In these Muslim countries jihadists could be taken in the night by the state. Afghanistan was still too crazy, with many corrupt warlords, and the Taliban were just too unpredictable to be trusted. Even Pakistan, where bin Laden had had his not-so secret lair, was capable of capturing a foreign jihadist for propaganda reasons. That state like many others in the Greater Middle East was prone to instant regime change, too, as had happened in Egypt.
But here in Gaza, he’d gone on, nothing ever changed. Although it was subject to targeted drone strikes and other airborne missile attacks, and periodic ground incursions from the Israelis, it was still a safer haven.
Esther had been driven back from the secluded COMMS centre to the eastern border of the Gaza Strip at night. The car had parked three miles away, among the dusty scrubland and occasional palm trees. She’d been escorted to the high chain-linked fence that, apart from Hamas’s tunnels, kept the Palestinians in what was effectively the largest prison on earth. Israel justified it, she knew, on the basis that it prevented suicide attacks on the nearby kibbutz, but since she’d been in Gaza she’d felt herself becoming less convinced of that. She wasn’t losing faith in her country, far from it, but she was forming an opinion that in order for Israel to be safe, the Palestine territories would have to feel safe, too.
With her hair wrapped in a multi-coloured towel now, she entered the bedroom. The light yellow drapes were half drawn, the flabby, moustachioed politician spread-eagled under the single sheet, snoring. The warm breeze made the drapes billow, the air scented with a heady mixture of sea salt, pomegranates and clematis.
She walked to the closet opposite the bed, thinking of what kind of life her daughter, Miriam, would have in the future, hoping that by the time she was a woman, she wouldn’t have to do what she herself had to do, to live a life without truth.
The last time she’d seen Miriam had been three weeks ago. She’d been playing her own cello, with her eyes closed; Dvorak, the concerto in B minor. She knew the piece by heart. She’d played since she was seven. The sorrowful strains had filled her senses, yet had left her feeling uplifted. She loved this duality most about the cello, together with the sense of caressing the instrument with her whole body, like a lover.
She’d opened her eyes, sensing movement in the darkened room, and had held the bow over the strings. Miriam had been staring at her. She’d noticed that her daughter’s rosebud mouth had appeared to be caught in a frozen gasp, as if she’d seen an angel or a benevolent alien. She’d been wearing pink pyjamas, with an embroidered baby elephant.
“Mommy, don’t stop,” she’d said.
“Okay, darling.”
She had begun to play again, but this time had kept her eyes open.
Miriam was bird-like, with pipe-cleaner limbs and a thin face. Her hair had been in a ponytail, which had made her dark eyes appear disproportionately large.
“It’s time to go back to bed, honey.”
“Can you play for a little more? Please,” Miriam had said.
“Just for a little longer.”
After Esther had put Miriam to bed, she’d read her ten pages from Alice in Wonderland.
Staring down at the Hamas politician in her bed now, she tho
ught her head was about to explode. She should be in Tel Aviv, the man in her bed should be her deceased husband, her daughter should be sleeping nearby.
She walked over the powder-blue tiles and looked out at the hapless city, at the white villas and the concrete apartment blocks, at the minarets and narrow streets. Somewhere out among the beleaguered population was the man called Ibrahim, a man who did not bend to the will of Israel, a man who would not be tamed by bombs or bullets.
A sound made her start. She saw the plume of grey smoke but no explosion had occurred. She knew instantly what it was. A so-called knock on the roof technique, an empty shell targeted at a roof, which meant that the inhabitants had between one and ten minutes to evacuate before the subsequent warhead shattered the house and a black-grey smoke ball rose above the rubble.
She counted fifty-seven seconds in her mind. The explosion was deafening. On the ground the smell of explosive powder would block out everything else, the shockwave would make the spines of those nearby shudder. Then the wailing of the women would begin, the inconsolable and terrible wailing.
The politician stirred before opening his bloodshot eyes. “What is it?” he mumbled.
“A nightmare,” she replied.
The whole of the Middle East is a nightmare, she thought.
And her life was a nightmare now, too.
Chapter 77
Sitting in the back of a black SUV Crane approached the secret Homeland Security prison along a picturesque, tree-lined road that belied the ugliness beyond. There were no walls, but a formidable fence enclosed eighty acres of the prison proper, punctuated with yellow Department of Defense warning signs.
Constructed from concrete and steel, the fence was topped with thirty-thousand yards of crisscrossed razor wire. Unlike federal prisons, the facility didn’t have different levels of security, depending on the individual classification of the prisoner. There was just maximum level one. They were housed in single-occupancy units, designed to keep contact between the other inmates, and the guards, to a minimum. The cells had metal food slots and individual showers. They were called Z blocks.
Crane knew his visit was a long shot. But if the guy at the mall was Ibrahim and he was linked to the Somali who’d followed Tom, then the Somali he’d seen arrested in Lafayette and had ordered taken into military custody, with the aid of a presidential signature, could be useful.
He needed a link in the chain and he hoped he’d found it. Nobody knew the guy was here. The two women at the bungalow, illegal immigrants from Sierra Leone, had been deported on a plane back to West Africa and, he figured, would be plying their trade in London or Hamburg within a few weeks. The other man who’d been there had been poleaxed by buckshot and was history.
After his arrest by the FBI, the Somali hadn’t been taken before a magistrate judge for his initial appearance and detention hearing. He’d been held without trial on the grounds of being a terrorist and a danger to national security. Crane had read the few pages on a tablet that constituted the highly classified background and intelligence report on the man.
The Somali’s father had died when he was twelve. His mother had worked three jobs to get him what passed for an education in the Horn of Africa. But he’d won a scholarship to a school funded by Saudi Arabia and had been sponsored to study electronics at Florida State University, and had worked in the aeronautics industry before becoming a US citizen in 2012. He’d left the country soon afterwards, ostensibly working in the Middle East and Africa, but it had all gone sour for him them, getting involved in foreign jihadist groups before returning home. It was apparent that he’d become disenchanted with the cause and, unable to find work due to the gaps in his CV, had taken to alcohol and substance abuse.
Apart from the detention blocks, the prison’s other thirty buildings were uniform redbrick, dating from the 1920s, when it had been a remote asylum for the mentally ill. The facility’s thousand acres of grass were punctuated with colourful flowerbeds and vegetable gardens, together with a baseball pitch and several basketball pitches, sectioned off by wire mesh fence. There were outdoor, tarmac weightlifting areas, and two thousand white pine trees formed a natural barrier between the Z blocks and the rest of the prison. In reality the inmates never got outside of their cells, except in a linked cage, the surrounding areas giving the appearance of a secluded military training centre, which was how it was listed on the few sensitive Department of Defense databases in case some journalist sniffed around.
Crane lit up a cigar in the back of the vehicle, ignoring the driver, rehearsing now what he’d say to the Somali. Thinking too about what he had said to the Mossad, that he wanted a man to work with them, a very particular man, who had special skills and was the best he had.
But what he hadn’t told them was that it was a man with a motive, a man who lived by a code of honour unto himself, a man who might be the only Westerner alive who could ID Ibrahim, a man who could be trusted as no other man could be trusted in such times. And that man was Tom Dupree.
Chapter 78
The Somali lay on his front on the cell bed, his skinny legs dangling over the end. He was naked except for a pair of white boxer shorts. His cell was twelve foot long and eight foot wide, with a low ceiling. Apart from the food slot and the shower, there was a stainless steel toilet and washbasin, a single bed, with a thin plastic outer mattress, and a corkboard for personal artwork or unsent letters.
The bright artificial light reflected off the white paint of the cinderblock walls. The cell smelled of a mixture of disinfectant and the body odour of the other countless unknown inmates. There was a 06:00 wakeup call, and lights went out at 21:00 sharp. No books were allowed, no TV, no conversations with fellow inmates at any time. It was an oddly monastic existence.
A guard appeared at the cell door. He was enormous, at least six-five. His hands, in particular, appeared outsized, each one looking as if they were able to span a pillow. The Somali guessed he’d had his navy blue prison officer’s uniform made especially for him.
“You got a visitor,” he said.
“I don’t get visitors,” the Somali replied, still lying on the cell bed.
“You got a visitor. He’s waiting.”
He threw his legs around onto the concrete floor.
“Get dressed.”
The prisoner put on his regulation orange jumpsuit before bending down to slip on a pair of canvas shoes, smiling inanely as he did so. “Why do I have to wear this?”
“Now let me guess,” the guard said. “If you escaped, which you won’t, but if you did, who do you think is going to pick up a fool like you and give you a ride to Mexico?”
The guard looked impassive as he waited for the cell door to open, via the secure remote control station. After the Somali exited the cell they walked to the special visitor’s room, through the blue cinderblock hallways, decorated only with signs warning inmates not to put their hands in their pockets. He wondered who his visitor might be. And then he remembered the man at the bungalow, the overweight guy who he guessed was CIA.
And if it was him, he had an agenda of his own to fulfil when the time was right.
Chapter 79
“Abdul Lincoln Harrah,” Crane said, riding his chair. “Did your parents have a sense of humour?”
“How’s that?” Harrah asked.
“Lincoln. As in the president, who fought against racism and slavery.”
The Somali smirked. “You are not even close. My father drove a 1977 Lincoln Continental around Mogadishu. Loved it.”
“Sure he did,” Crane said.
The interview room was shabby. There were no windows, except for one in the door. It had reinforced glass, crisscrossed with wire, and looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned for weeks.
They were sitting on metal chairs at a metal table that was bolted to the floor. Perched above them on the wall was a single CCTV camera. The harsh fluorescent tube lighting flickered now and then. Two large, black prison guards were standing outside the
door.
Crane had settled himself as best he could, but given his experience in Lebanon, he hated being in a prison. It was the sounds that did it, the clunking of heavy doors, the indecipherable shouts and barked orders, the high-pitched screams of those driven to the edge.
He’d already decided en route that he’d taunt Harrah a little more.
“Your mother still living the Somali dream?”
Instantly, Harrah stood up and leaned over the table towards Crane, resting his clenched fists on the metal. The guards had advised that he’d be shackled, both hands and feet. But Crane had insisted that he be unfettered. Due to his credentials, they’d relented.
“You keep my mother out of this,” he said, quietly. “Or they’ll come for you.”
His face was so close to Crane’s that he felt his breath. It was surprisingly fresh and smelled of mint.
The two prison guards rushed through the door and were on him in an instant, one arm each. They pulled him back down into the hard seat. Crane raised his hand, keeping calm. They retreated to the door. He leaned back again, forcing the chair onto its two back legs, and rocked back and forth.
“Now, my mother, God rest her soul, told me not to ride a chair. She said I’d break my neck one day,” he said. “But I never did take to people telling me how it would be.” He glared at the Somali. “And who’ll come for me, you skinny ghost?”
Harrah looked a little subdued.
“The freakin’ bogeyman?” Crane said. “I don’t need evidence to keep you here, boy. I don’t need nothing. At the very best, by the time you get out, you won’t even be able to take a leak without staining your pants. So start doing yourself some favours. You can’t wriggle out of stuff like this. It sticks to you like a goddamned leech.”
Crane took out a cellphone, with a green case, and put it on the table between them. He saw the flicker of recognition from the Somali. It was his, after all.
