Sleeper Cell

by Chris Culver

“That’s rough,” said Paul. “You doing okay?”

  “The FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility cleared me in the shooting.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” said Paul, smiling just a little.

  “That’s the only answer I have.”

  We slipped into silence and watched the kids and Emilia run around the yard. After a few minutes, Paul joined the soccer game and played goalie. It was fun to see everybody running around and laughing. As soon as Hannah took some potatoes out of the oven, lunch would be ready, but our last guest had yet to arrive. I hadn’t expected him to be on time, though.

  Nassir was never early.

  I went inside and grabbed a soda from the fridge. Nassir knocked on the front door about ten minutes later. He had tulips in a clear glass vase.

  “I would have brought food, but I’m not a good cook,” he said. “I thought Hannah would like these.”

  “She will,” I said, taking the flowers. “Come in. We need to talk.”

  I led him from the entryway, through the living room, and then to the kitchen. Rana was there, and she immediately crossed her arms. Hannah grimaced. She had known Nassir was coming, but she didn’t know exactly why I had invited him.

  “Nassir,” said Rana, her voice cold. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows. “Ashraf, can I see you outside for a moment?”

  “You can. Nassir’s going to be with us,” I said.

  Rana furrowed her brow but followed us outside anyway. I waved to the kids, Paul, and Emilia. Eventually, they got the hint and came to the porch, too. Megan smiled at her uncle.

  “Are you here to play badminton, Uncle Nassir?” asked Megan.

  Nassir looked at me and then to her. He knelt in front of her and smiled gently. “I’m here to visit, but I’m not sure how long I can stay.”

  Megan looked at me with a confused look on her face. Before she could say anything, I smiled.

  “Sweetheart, can you and your brother go inside with Ummi? I think she needs some help making cookies for desert,” I said. I then looked to Paul and Emilia. “I need you two to stay here.”

  My daughter had no idea her aunt and uncle were in the midst of a difficult split, but she could sense that something was wrong. She went back to the lawn, where she grabbed Kaden’s hand and led him inside. I watched them go and then looked to the adults. Paul clearly wanted to say something, but I held up a hand to stop him. He took the hint. My sister didn’t. She looked over her shoulder at Paul and Emilia and then turned to me, her expression simultaneously angry and hurt.

  “If you think you need your friends here to break up a fight, you’re wrong,” she said. She looked at Nassir. “If he’s here, I’m leaving.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nassir. “For everything.”

  “It’s far too late for apologies,” said Rana. She looked at me again and then drew in a breath. “I appreciate what you’re doing, but an afternoon picnic won’t fix my marriage.”

  “I’m not here to fix your marriage,” I said. “I’m here to talk to you about my investigation.”

  Rana took a step back. Nassir sighed.

  “I thought that was over,” he said.

  “After today, it will be,” I said. “I’m closing the case.”

  “Then why am I here?” asked Nassir.

  “Because even after everything was over, I was left with a lot of questions,” I said. “For the past week, I’ve been working with Jacob Ganim’s ex-wife to figure out what actually happened to her ex-husband and what led to the attack on Indianapolis.”

  Nassir walked to my table and pulled out a chair to sit down. Rana did likewise near him. Paul and Emilia both looked confused, but then I gestured to the table.

  “Why don’t you two take a seat, too? This will take a few minutes.”

  The two of them sat down, and I leaned against the deck’s railing.

  “Three months ago, I was hired by Special Agent Kevin Havelock to investigate the death of an undercover FBI agent named Jacob Ganim. Nassir, you knew him as Michael Najam.”

  Nassir nodded. “I know.”

  “At the time of his death, Ganim worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency and was on permanent assignment with the FBI’s counterterrorism task force. In 2014, Jacob Ganim was stationed in Raqqa, Syria. He was given a position within the hisbah, the state religious police. Unofficially, his job was to plot troop movements within the city and report them to his superiors in Washington. While in Syria, he also assisted resistance fighters who were smuggling people out of the city.

  “As a hisbah officer, Jacob worked under the guidance of a cleric named Hashim Bashear. Bashear believed that Arab Muslims were a superior race and that they deserved their own homeland. He wanted an Islamic State within the Islamic State. To fund this dream, he used his connections within the Islamic State to traffic young people to wealthy families in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and other Middle Eastern states. The boys and girls whom he helped escape were treated as property. They were bought and sold and abused by their owners.

  “Hashim couldn’t do this alone. He had an entire network, including a man named Waleed Ayad. Waleed Ayad has a brother-in-law in the United States. His name is Saleem al-Asiri, and he was a guidance counselor at a high school near Dayton, Ohio.”

  Nassir’s shoulders slumped. He covered his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “I’m not quite done yet,” I said. Nassir nodded and sat straighter. My sister’s face was blank, but she was paying close attention. “Jacob Ganim’s cover was blown somehow in Syria. Nobody seems to know how it happened, but he was arrested and tortured over the course of several weeks. Before Hashim Bashear’s men could extract the information they wanted from him, Kurdish fighters from Turkey overran their camp. Ganim was rescued and eventually made his way to Ramstein Air Force Base, at which point he was flown home.

  “Fast forward a couple of years, and the Islamic State is in disarray. Hashim Bashear believes Muslim fighters across the world need an accomplishment they can rally behind. They need an attack on the order of September 11th. About six months ago, the DIA received word that a major attack was being planned. They didn’t know details, but they knew it involved Hashim Bashear. Ganim tracked one of Bashear’s associates—Saleem al-Asiri—to a property in Brown County, Indiana. That’s why he became interested in Nassir’s group.”

  Nassir stared down at his hands. When he looked at me, his eyes were red.

  “It was my fault,” he said. “Jacob was a good man. He’d be alive if it wasn’t for me.”

  “Jacob did his job. He died doing something he believed in. Don’t blame yourself for that,” I said. “I talked to Saleem al-Asiri. Whether Jacob joined your group or another, Saleem was going to kill him. He recognized Jacob from a picture his brother-in-law had given him.”

  “What about the girls who died?” asked Emilia, taking a step forward.

  “They were women Hashim had trafficked,” I said. “Kim Peterson and her partner were videographers. They shot wedding videos, mostly, but they were making a documentary about human trafficking in the Islamic State. According to Saleem al-Asiri, Hashim knew that if people learned he had sold good Muslim children into slavery, his own supporters would turn against him. He had hoped to kill the women during a larger attack on Indianapolis, but my investigation made him change his timeline. I was getting too close to Omar Nawaz, the crooked imam who was hiding them.”

  Rana looked from me to Nassir and then back to me.

  “So you’re saying my husband had nothing to do with the attack?”

  “It felt like every piece of evidence I had pointed to him, but he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “That’s good news,” said Paul.

  I didn’t say anything. Emilia furrowed her brow.

  “Why did Saleem al-Asiri join Nassir’s group?”

  “The FBI thought Nassir just had bad luck,” I said. “Saleem was going to join some group. They thought he happ
ened to find Nassir and took advantage of what looked like a good opportunity.”

  A curious smile formed on Emilia’s lips. “But you don’t think that.”

  She said it as a statement, not a question. I nodded to her.

  “The FBI gave me access to some documents that made me change my mind. If you remember, the attack on Westbrook Elementary was filmed by a very expensive commercial drone. After the attack, the FBI found that drone and traced it to an online purchase at a camera shop in New Jersey. The drone had been delivered to a warehouse leased to Safe Haven, LLC, in Indianapolis. You and Paul should remember that warehouse because it burned to the ground before we could search it.”

  “I remember,” said Emilia, nodding. “So Saleem ordered the drone?”

  I looked down and shook my head. This was the moment I had dreaded, and I didn’t know whether I could go through with it after all. My heart thudded in my chest, and I swallowed hard.

  “The drone was an expensive piece of hardware, so the camera company that sold it required a signature certifying that it had been delivered in good shape. It was signed for by Nassir Hadad.”

  Rana closed her eyes. “How could you, Nassir? You killed all those people…”

  “It wasn’t Nassir’s handwriting on the form,” I said, my voice lower and sharper than I expected. “It was our mother’s. The FBI knew it wasn’t Nassir’s signature, but they didn’t know whose it was. I recognized it the moment I saw it. You remember how you practiced it, Rana? You’d spend hours just signing her name. You got so good at it that Ummi couldn’t tell your signature from her own.”

  Rana leaned forward. The world seemed to go quiet around us.

  “Ashraf,” she said. “I need you to listen very closely. I don’t know what you think you’ve found, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation.”

  I allowed my anger to flow freely into my voice. I knew that anger would turn to pain soon enough, but for now, I allowed myself to feel it.

  “That was my initial reaction, too. I thought there must have been a mistake, but the drone wasn’t the only shipment from that camera store. Someone also ordered some very high-end surveillance equipment. Coincidentally, that was also delivered to Nassir at the warehouse and signed for by him in our mother’s handwriting. That surveillance equipment was then placed in the home of Jacob Ganim.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, Ashraf,” said Rana, starting to stand, “but I’m going home. If you want to talk to me like this, you can talk to my attorney.”

  I looked to Paul and Emilia. They stood up and walked toward my sister.

  “Don’t you dare do this,” she said.

  “That surveillance equipment connected to the neighbor’s wireless router. The moment I entered Jacob Ganim’s house during my investigation, an alarm went off on your phone. You then called me with some bullshit story about a home invader.

  “While I raced to your house, you called Saleem al-Asiri, who cleaned out Ganim’s house and put incriminating pictures of Westbrook Elementary in his basement in place of the ones I saw. Saleem already admitted everything, and FBI technicians found the app on your phone. They also found that you had cloned Nassir’s address book on his cell phone. That’s how you knew the phone number of my burner cell.”

  Rana closed her eyes but didn’t say anything. Nassir looked to his wife. He had tears on his cheeks.

  “I am curious about one thing,” I said. “Why did you go after President Crane’s family instead of him?”

  Rana opened her eyes again. She looked almost relieved.

  “You’re not going to ask why I became involved with Hashim Bashear? Why we decided to kill anyone?”

  Nassir gasped and covered his face. Paul put a hand on his shoulder and then whispered to him. The two of them left the deck. Emilia stayed put near my sister.

  “I’ve done this job a long time,” I said. “I learned to stop caring about people’s motives long ago except as a means to catch them.”

  “You’ve never believed in anything bigger than yourself your entire life, Ashraf,” she said. “How sad the world must be for you.”

  “I’m not going to get into an argument about this,” I said. “You participated in the murders of hundreds of people. I don’t care what your reasons are.”

  Rana looked directly in my eyes. Then she leaned forward and whispered so that only I could hear.

  “We went after the first lady and her family because it was easier than killing President Crane. His limo was armored. Her SUV wasn’t. How does that sit with your morality?”

  “I suppose that’s a sensible answer. Thank you,” I said, nodding. I looked to Emilia. “Detective Rios, please arrest my sister. I don’t want to see her right now.”

  Emilia nodded. Her voice was subdued as she put a hand on Rana’s shoulder.

  “You heard the lieutenant. You’re under arrest. If you go quietly, I won’t put cuffs on you until we get to my car.”

  Rana looked to me. “Our father would be ashamed of you right now. He was a good Muslim. He’d know that what I did was right.”

  “I never met him,” I said. “But that’s probably for the best. If he’d be proud of you and what you did, I’d be ashamed to be his son. Good luck, Rana.”

  She didn’t fight or say anything else. She just walked out. Emilia kept one hand on Rana’s elbow and the other over the firearm on her hip. I stayed where I was, leaning against the deck’s railing. Eventually, Hannah came out.

  “What just happened?” she asked. “First, Nassir came by crying. Then your sister and Emilia came by. It looked like Emilia was arresting her. What just happened?”

  I blinked and felt my cheeks grow hot. Hannah must have sensed what I was feeling because she walked toward me and put her arms around me.

  “What just happened?” she asked again.

  I clenched my jaw and drew in a deep breath before speaking, feeling a well of anger and sadness in equal measures build in my gut.

  “I did the right thing.”

  Hannah took a step back and covered her face. “Don’t tell me Nassir was involved in that attack.”

  “It wasn’t Nassir. Everything seemed to come back to him, but it wasn’t him. I focused on the wrong person.”

  For a moment, Hannah just stared at me, not comprehending what I had said. Then tears came to her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “I am, too,” I said, reaching for her hands. Hannah and I stayed like that for a few minutes, and then she stepped forward for a hug. I felt her tremble against me, so I rubbed her back.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said again and then again, whispering. “I don’t know what to say.”

  I pulled my face back and forced myself to smile as I looked at her. The more I looked in her soft, kind eyes, the easier that smile became. I held her for a few minutes. Eventually, Megan opened the back door. I had seen pictures of Hannah as a child, and Megan could have been her twin. She looked at both of us dubiously.

  “Are you guys going to kiss?”

  “Not right now,” said Hannah. “What do you need?”

  Megan looked back at the door. “Are Uncle Paul and Uncle Nassir coming back? Because I still need somebody to help me put up the badminton net.”

  “I’ll call them in a few minutes and see,” I said. “You go in and keep your brother company.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “You are going to kiss, aren’t you?”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “Gross,” said Megan, turning to go back inside. “That’s seriously gross.”

  Hannah and I watched her leave without saying anything for a few minutes.

  “Rana is my sister,” I said, finally. “I love her, and I always will, but I didn’t choose her. I don’t know what’s going to happen to her, and I’m so mad at her right now that I’m having a hard time feeling anything else. Whatever happens, though, I’m not alone. I’ve got you and the kids, I�
��ve got Paul, Emilia, even Nassir and Captain Bowers. I’ve got more family than I know what to do with.”

  Hannah patted my chest. “Yeah, you do, and we’re not going anywhere.”

  My wife and I stayed like that for a few minutes. I didn’t know what came next in my life. My sister would probably go on trial, and I’d have to answer a lot of questions. The media loved stories like this, so reporters would probably beat down my door any moment. They’d spin it every way they could so that no one would know the truth. I would know, though. Nassir and Hannah would know. Eventually, even my kids would know. We’d lean on one another and get through it together, though. Because that’s what family does. For a brief while, the night sky might grow dim for us, the stars and moon might seem to disappear, but there was always hope with the coming dawn.

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