by Tom Clancy
She smiled. “Please tell me you made your tiramisu.”
Despite his dark mood, Dom smiled as well. “I did.”
Adara pumped her fists in the air. “Hell, yes!”
Dom smiled. “Do you come over here because of me, or because of my tiramisu?”
“Mostly you, but you’re not the only sweet, good-looking guy in D.C. There are one or two others. You are, however, the only sweet, good-looking guy in D.C. who makes unbelievable scratch tiramisu.”
Dom raised his eyebrows. “You’ve tried all the others, have you?”
Adara laughed and climbed over onto his lap to kiss him.
7
The narrow, hilly street was full of women and children, all of whom had to move into alleyways and open doorways to let the convoy of big SUVs through. When the vehicles parked by the building at the top of the hill, dozens of women and girls converged around them and stared at the spectacle. Women on rooftops looked on, eyes wide, softly chattering to one another in amazement.
Six black SUVs were parked here on this narrow street in suburban Sulaymaniyah, in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan. Some dozen or more Westerners poured out of the vehicles, big men with guns, tactical wear, and expensive-looking sunglasses and watches, followed by another dozen Westerners in business attire. There were females in the group, all wearing chadors, even though these were clearly American women.
But that wasn’t the part that had all the Yazidi women and girls here utterly transfixed.
No, they were amazed that the person who seemed to be the one in charge of this entire entourage was herself a woman.
Mary Pat Foley climbed out of a Land Rover and a group of attendants and protectors coalesced around her. She was the director of national intelligence, head of the sixteen-member U.S. intelligence community, and she warranted the high security and the large number of assistants.
There was no mistaking that the American woman was, indeed, in charge.
Following her out of the vehicle was her chief of staff, an active-duty Air Force colonel, who straightened his blue service dress uniform upon standing. A young assistant stepped up to her from another vehicle, clipboard in hand, and Mary Pat’s interpreter for the day, a forty-five-year-old Kurdish woman who worked for the United Nations, motioned toward a whitewashed stone building close by.
This part of Sulaymaniyah had taken the name “Little Sinjar” because it served as an encampment for many of the Yazidi internally displaced persons who had fled their community on and around Mount Sinjar in the west. The Islamic State had overtaken Sinjar three years earlier, and since then the IDP camps in various parts of Iraq housed virtually all of the world’s Yazidi population.
Yazidis were an ethnically Kurdish people, but their different belief system had separated them from the Kurdish population. Still, they spoke Kurmanji, the language of the Kurds here in Iraq, so Kurdistan was the logical location for the IDP camps.
The front door to the whitewashed building stood open, and Kurdish and Yazidi officials stood around it, waiting for Foley and her entourage. Quick introductions were made. Mary Pat had met some of these men this morning at the U.S. consulate in Erbil before helicoptering east here to Sulaymaniyah, so the meet and greet took little time.
She then stepped inside, into the cooler, dark room. Here a young woman stood alone, wearing a chador and clean, simple robes. She looked nervous, completely bemused by all the attention that had been directed toward her since first thing this morning when she was awoken from her sleeping rug on the floor by a relief worker, asked her name, and shown a handwritten document she had signed a month earlier when she came to the camp. She swore everything on the page was true, and then she was taken from the room full of girls, moved to this building, and told some people from America were on their way in a helicopter to speak with her.
Mary Pat and most every one of the intelligence organizations under the umbrella of the DNI had been hunting for one man above all others in their never-ending quest to keep America safe from Islamic radical terrorism, and the hunt had led her and her people here to Kurdistan. The Kurds were good friends to America and they were helpful in the manhunt, but to say they had a full plate at the moment would have been a dramatic understatement. The Kurds were at war, fighting for their lives against the Islamic State, so it took a personal visit by the U.S. director of national intelligence this week to get their political leadership’s full attention.
And this morning their help had borne fruit. A Yazidi girl named Manal had made a report to Kurdish officials a month earlier, before she was put into a UN-run IDP camp and promptly lost by UN officials; but overnight she’d been identified and located in a camp far to the east of the battle lines.
Mary Pat Foley would be the first American to speak with her. There were tens of thousands of displaced Yazidis, and hundreds of thousands of refugees and IDPs here in Iraq. But seventeen-year-old Manal warranted this level of personal attention, as far as Mary Pat Foley was concerned, for one very important reason.
She had been forced to marry an ISIS operative in Raqqa named Abu Musa al-Matari.
And the most wanted man on planet Earth to U.S. intelligence was an ISIS operative known to be living in Raqqa with that very name.
The young lady extended her hand to Mary Pat, offering a handshake and a smile with a shy bow. In memorized English taught to her by a UN aid worker minutes before Foley’s arrival she said, “Very pleasure to meet. My name Manal.”
Foley smiled and bowed, genuinely appreciative of the effort. The interpreter stood close. “My name is Mary Pat and I come from the USA. I have heard some of your story, and I am so honored to meet such a brave woman.” The DNI knew Manal had recently managed to escape her captors, and that in itself was enough to earn her respect.
The interpreter translated softly between the two women, and the young girl blushed.
In moments all three were sitting on rugs on the floor. The colonel waited outside—he and Mary Pat agreed the Yazidi girl might be more comfortable that way—but one of Foley’s young female assistants remained in the room to record and take notes. She stood against the wall, just close enough to listen in.
Manal told Mary Pat about her capture, the brutal murder of the rest of her family, and then of being taken away with a group of girls as young as ten. Manal herself had been just fifteen at the time.
“They called us sabya,” Manal said through the interpreter.
The interpreter added, “It means ‘slaves captured in wartime.’”
Mary Pat could see in the nervous eyes of Manal that she had lived through unspeakable horrors.
The young girl said, “I was told I would be given as a gift to a special man. I waited days in a small apartment. I was not raped at this time, like all the other girls were. I was very lucky. Finally, a man arrived, dressed like a Westerner, a very short beard, short hair. Not like most men in DAESH.”
DAESH was an acronym for al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa al-Sham, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Al-Sham was also known as Greater Syria or the Levant.
“Did he tell you his name?”
“Of course. He was proud of who he was. He was Musa. Abu Musa al-Matari.”
“Did that mean something to you?”
“No. But he was important. People were always coming to see him. He had many phones and computers. He was given much respect.”
“I need to know if this is the Musa al-Matari I am looking for, but I do not have any pictures of him. Do you know where he was born?”
“He said he was from Yemen, close to the border with Oman. In a place on the ocean.”
Foley knew the Abu Musa al-Matari she was looking for was from Jadib, located exactly where Manal had just described.
“And his age?”
“I . . . I do not know. Much older.”
Mary Pat frowned. “Much older . . . like me?”
<
br /> “No. Not so old,” Manal said quickly. Mary Pat was in her sixties. She wasn’t offended, but she smiled at the interpreter’s discomfort relaying the young girl’s words.
The CIA had pinned al-Matari’s age at between thirty-five and forty. Mary Pat asked Manal how old her father had been when he died.
“He was forty-one.” Manal nodded. “Yes, maybe he was close to my father’s age.”
“You were with al-Matari for how long?”
“One year. I was a slave, but he married me. I think maybe he had other wives, because he was not at the apartment all the time.”
“And when did he force you to marry him?”
The young woman listened to the interpreter, then she looked at the older American lady for a long time. There was confusion on her face. Finally, she spoke, and the interpreter said, “The first time I ever saw him . . . we were married in five minutes.”
“I see. Did he spend a lot of time on the computer?”
“Yes,” Manal said. “Every day he was on his computer or on one of his phones.”
Mary Pat knew Abu Musa al-Matari was a top lieutenant in the Emni, a branch of the Islamic State’s Foreign Intelligence Bureau in charge of finding fighters willing and able to operate abroad. Al-Matari ran the North American section, and it was his job to recruit and train Americans and Europeans to conduct terrorist acts for ISIS in the United States. Nine months earlier he had managed to get sixteen U.S. passport holders into Syria for training, but all sixteen were either killed there in a U.S. drone strike or detained upon their return to the West. The destruction of the cell had been hidden from the press, mostly, to preserve the tactics, techniques, and procedures that led to the intelligence coup, but Mary Pat knew her nation had dodged a huge bullet with the operation. She also knew al-Matari had the skill, the motivation, and the backing in the Islamic State’s Foreign Intelligence Bureau that made it a certainty he would try again.
And she most worried that he had already begun.
She asked, “What else did you learn from him?”
“He told me he fought in many countries before I was captured. After I was made his wife, he was gone more than he was here. I don’t think he was off fighting. He wasn’t a soldier . . . He was something else. I don’t know.
“One day he came back to the apartment in Raqqa, and he told me he had to take a trip abroad.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“To me? No, he did not confide in me. I was only there to clean his home, to cook for his brothers and other family and friends, and to give him pleasure. But I heard him talking on the phone. He was going to Kosovo to meet with someone.”
Mary Pat nodded. “When was this?”
The interpreter relayed the young girl’s answer. “Three months before I escaped. I escaped last month. So . . . four months ago.”
“And did he return from Kosovo?”
“Yes, and he worked harder after this. Met with more men, foreigners. I mean . . . not Iraqis. Different accents. Then . . . maybe four weeks ago, he told me to pack his clothes. He told me he was going on a long journey, and inshallah, he would return.”
“Did he say anything about where he was going?”
“Not to me, but I heard him on the phone again. He talked about going to school.”
“To school?”
“Yes. A language school.”
Mary Pat cocked her head. “Where is this language school?”
“I do not know, but I am sure it was far away. He had books. Books in English. I don’t know what kind of books, I do not understand English, but he took them, along with Western clothing. He left his robes. This just four days before I escaped.”
“How were you able to escape?”
“When he left, he said his uncle would be watching over me. But his uncle did not come. The American bombs became heavy in the city. Maybe he was killed, or just too scared to leave the house. I did not have any food. Of course I could not go out into the streets myself in Raqqa. As a woman alone, I would be stopped by the ISIS religious police. If they caught me a second time, I would be arrested. A third time and I would have been stoned to death.”
“I understand,” Mary Pat said.
“But I got so hungry, finally I decided I had to try to leave if I wanted to live. I had heard that some people who go toward the sounds of the fighting make it through the lines and survive. I did not know if that was true, but I had no choice. I waited for late at night. I watched the sky to see where the flashes were coming from, and I walked toward the fighting.
“On the second day I met with more women. Some had children. They were doing the same as me. We lived in the ruins until we crossed the lines into Kurdish territory. The Peshmerga found us and helped us.”
The director of national intelligence looked back to her assistant, to make sure she had everything written down and the recorder was on. Then Mary Pat said, “And now we will help you. Some Americans will come and talk to you tomorrow. They would like you to tell them exactly what Abu Musa al-Matari looks like, so they can try to draw a picture of him. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” Manal said, but she looked down and began playing with the frayed edge of a rug.
Mary Pat knew this girl was doing everything in her power not to think about this man, and the last thing she wanted to do was purposely try to remember his face.
“I am sorry, Manal. But it is very important. You can save many lives with your help.”
“I will do it,” she said softly.
“Thank you. We can make arrangements for you to come to America if you would like that. Just until the war is over, then you can return to Sinjar Mountain if that is what you wish. We need help from you, but we would like to give you whatever it is you want.”
Manal continued looking down to the rug in front of her. She thought for a moment, and said, “I would like to stay here, with my people. But I will help you catch him. He was a monster.”
“Okay. Is there anything you need here?”
“I am fine, but can I get some extra blankets for the older ladies at the camp? The floors are very hard, and some women complain of cold and pain in their backs at night.”
Foley bit the inside of her lip, then said, “I’ll see to it before I leave Sulaymaniyah.”
Outside the house, Mary Pat Foley walked toward the convoy of waiting SUVs. Stonefaced security officers stood all around with M4 rifles, watching the buildings around them as well as the distant hills. They were 120 miles from ISIS territory to the west, but CIA protective agents didn’t need to be in a war zone to maintain vigilance.
Foley turned to her assistant. “Carla, rugs and blankets. Anything else they can get to make it a bit more livable for as many as possible.”
“I’ll take care of it. CIA will be back here tomorrow to get an artist rendering from the girl and ask her some more questions. I’ll send them with a truckload of creature comforts to give to the UN to pass out.”
Foley said, “No. Get the officers to deliver the items directly to the Yazidis. The UN might sell them in the market.”
After a look from the young assistant, Mary Pat Foley said, “Carla, I’ve been around. Trust me, it’s happened.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The colonel grinned. “The Agency folks are gonna love handing out home accessories to old ladies.” Then, to Mary Pat, he said, “That’s definitely our boy, and it sounds like he’s back in play.”
“Yes, but something doesn’t add up.”
The colonel said, “No kidding. Musa al-Matari already speaks perfect English. If he was planning another attack, what other language would he possibly be studying?”
Mary Pat said, “My guess is the ‘Language School’ is a code name. A code name for what, I don’t have a clue. Get the analysts looking into it. Push them hard. I get the sense Abu
Musa al-Matari is at the center of something that is about to happen. It’s somewhere in the West. And it’s sometime soon. And the son of a bitch has got a month head start on us.” She stopped herself at the door to the SUV, turned around, and waved to all the women and kids looking down on her from the rooftops and out the windows. Some hid around corners, tucked themselves into the buildings, but others waved back.
Every last one was transfixed by the power this lady commanded.
8
Mary Pat Foley thought she was hunting for the man who was orchestrating the next great attack on American soil.
But she was wrong. Abu Musa al-Matari was, in fact, the operational leader of an attack in the last stages before execution, and it was the right thing to do to put the entire force of the U.S. intelligence community into the hunt to stop him before the attack began, but the truth was he had done little of the strategic planning.
The U.S. intelligence community knew about Abu Musa al-Matari’s previous attempt to enter the U.S. with terror cells, and they knew he was in the wind again, so it was taken as fact by them that al-Matari would be the architect of any impending plot. He was the senior ISIS operator of the mission, yes; he was the on-scene commander, and he would be the middleman distributing intelligence to the individual cells on their way back to their homes and lives in the United States.
But the actual mastermind, the man who conceived the operation, forwarded his plan to those able to approve it, provided it with money and leadership and weaponry, was one of the last people anyone who knew him would ever suspect of being involved in international terrorism.
Fifty-one-year-old Sami bin Rashid was a Saudi Arabian technocrat. He wasn’t particularly religious; in fact, he drank when he could get away with it and visited the mosque less than most Muslims did.
Indeed, Sami bin Rashid was a damn peculiar choice to orchestrate an ISIS operation to attack the American homeland. For starters, he wasn’t a member of ISIS, and he hated all jihadis with a white-hot passion. He had a plum position in Dubai working for the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional intergovernmental political and economic organization made up to further the interests of the Arabic states of the Persian Gulf.