by Ian Hamilton
“Yes, but not precisely what we’re doing with them.”
“Have you told Ryan everything that’s going on?”
“His Jordan connections have been a big help and we’ll keep him in the loop, but he and I agreed that you and I should be managing this from now on,” he said, confirming what Poirier had told her the night before. “Is that a problem for you?”
“No, just as long as I’m not unilaterally sidelined and you continue to respect my desire to shield the Brotherhood.”
“You should have no worries about that,” he said. “And don’t worry about Ryan either. If we’re successful, he’ll get his share of the credit.”
“And if we’re not?”
“Failure can’t be part of our thought process.”
( 25 )
Ava gave herself five hours to get back to the hotel, pack, check out, and travel to Aquino International Airport. It took another hour to check in and clear Immigration and Security. By the time she got to the Qantas lounge, it was almost seven o’clock.
Dulles was already there, sitting on a couch with his carry-on by his feet and a glass of beer in his hand. He waved at her and she went to join him.
“I forgot to thank you earlier for buying my ticket, and what a nice surprise to see that it’s in business class,” she said.
He looked up at her and smiled. “I’m senior enough to get a few perks,” he said. “Do you want something to drink?”
She was about to say yes when her phone rang. She saw Wahab’s number and hesitated. When she hadn’t heard from him during the day, she assumed that Juhar had said it was okay for Ben and Alcem to collect some of al-Bashir’s possessions. Now she felt a twinge of doubt, and she was also slightly uncomfortable about talking to him while sitting next to Dulles. So far she’d managed to keep them separated, and this was, psychologically at least, one step towards bringing them together. I need to know, she thought, and hit the Talk button.
“Wahab,” she said, and just as she did, a very loud pre-boarding announcement came over the speakers in the lounge.
“Where are you?” he said.
“I’m at Aquino Airport,” she said, certain he’d heard the boarding call. “I’m flying to Australia tonight. I’ve managed to locate a student who left the college after two months and I’m going to talk to him. He should be able to fill in some details.”
“Has he agreed to meet with you?”
“Not yet, but he will.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“This isn’t the time to talk about that, but what I will do is call you the moment I’m finished with him,” she said. “Now, what’s going on with you?”
“Two things. First, we asked questions at the harbour in Bongao. No one knows anything about a boat chartered by the college, or about a charter boat that can hold more than ten people at a time,” he said. “Next, Juhar has agreed that the boys should collect whatever they can for you. Ben and Alcem aren’t working today but they have the early shift tomorrow morning. If they do get something, he wants them to leave the college right away, before the imam notices anything is missing.”
“Thanks for asking about the charters, and thank Juhar, Ben, and Alcem. Let’s just hope the boys get lucky.”
“But Ava, if you’re in Australia, what do we do with what they get?”
“Call me as soon as the boys leave the college and we’ll talk about it then. Sydney is three hours ahead of the Philippines, so the time difference won’t matter.”
“When will you be back?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe tomorrow, but probably the day after.”
“I’d feel better about this if you were here.”
“It can’t be helped. We need to find out what this young Australian knows.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Then we’ll talk tomorrow,” she said, ending the call before he could ask another question.
“The Brotherhood?” Dulles asked, looking up at her.
“Yes.”
“You haven’t told them that you’ve brought us into this?”
“No, it would only make them nervous, and my fear is that they’d stop working with me.”
“What was the call about?”
“They were confirming that they’re going to try to acquire something with Tariq al-Bashir’s fingerprints on it.”
“Good.”
“But if they do and I’m not in Manila, I’m going to have to tell them about your involvement — or make them wait until I get back and can receive the samples myself.”
“Time is not our ally,” Dulles said. “I think events are likely to unfold quickly, and as they do, more and more people will be brought into this situation and any hopes of maintaining control will disappear.”
“What makes you think events will unfold so quickly?” she said. “Has something happened that I don’t know about?”
“From a negative viewpoint — and one that really concerns me — we put the data you pulled from the Philippine immigration bureau into our system and came up absolutely empty. There isn’t a single record of any one of those students even attempting to enter the United States.”
“What does that mean?”
“I wish I knew. It would be nice to believe that your contacts misconstrued what they heard and saw at the college. But when you consider the trouble the group took to set up the banking situation and hide the identities of everyone involved, I don’t think that’s probable.”
“So what then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Jason Said or Omar Obeidat can shed some light. We’ve tracked Obeidat to Beirut. We figured that if he’s getting all the money from the casino, he should be flying from Amman or Riyadh to Beirut on a regular basis. But when we checked his travel patterns, we discovered the reverse — all his flights originated in Beirut. We’re trying to find a home address, and eventually we will,” Dulles said.
“How about the casino operators?”
“We’ll be meeting with the management in a few hours.”
“The management or the owners?”
“We don’t have a name to attach to ownership just yet; all we have is a numbered company registered in Liechtenstein. The company has a bank account, but thus far the bank officials are invoking local law and refusing to divulge who owns or can sign on the account. We’ll lean on the casino managers, though, and hopefully they’ll be more co-operative.”
Dulles drained his beer and then shook his head. “The billion-dollar question is, where are the students? Is the U.S. really their major target or do they have others? Are they waiting in the Philippines before going overseas? Have they found a way to get past our border security? Hopefully Said can help answer some of those questions. If he can’t, then we’d better get our hands on Obeidat, or pray that your Brotherhood friends give us what we need to identify the imam.”
( 26 )
The business-class section was full. Ava was seated two rows behind and three seats over from Dulles. She was tired, and her head was a whirling mass of questions and conjecture. The sense of helplessness and the nagging fear she’d felt earlier were also threatening to return. She knew she needed to shut down her mind.
She had a glass of complimentary champagne and, as soon as cabin service started, she downed a glass of white wine, quickly followed by another, and then a cognac. She scanned the entertainment system for anything that might divert her attention, but most of the films were recent Hollywood schlock. She reclined the seat, put on an eye mask, inserted earplugs, wrapped herself in a blanket, and tried to visualize her bak mei exercises. She focused on the Tiger, whose spirit epitomized the martial art, and began to mentally bring together all of its elements. She imagined she was at Grandmaster Tang’s house and he was her opponent. Back and forth they went, intercepting and checking each other’s strikes. Twice she blocked
his phoenix-eye fist, and the second time she used his energy against him, slipping inside his guard to deliver her own fist to his throat, stopping half an inch short. Grandmaster Tang took a step back and bowed in recognition of her success. She bowed in return. Again? he said. Yes, Grandmaster, she said, drifting into sleep.
It was an eight-hour flight to Sydney, and Ava slept for six of them. The cabin attendant woke her when they were about an hour away, which gave her just enough time to freshen up in the bathroom and have a couple of cups of coffee.
When they reached the gate, Dulles exited ahead of her but waited just inside the ramp. He had his phone in his hand. “I’m trying to get service,” he said.
Ava pulled her phone from her bag and turned it on. After a minute she said, “I don’t have anything either.”
“Let’s go. I imagine it will be better when we’re inside the main terminal.”
They walked side by side, Ava barely reaching Dulles’s shoulder. He walked quickly, his long strides carrying them past fellow passengers. She took two steps to every one of his but had no difficulty keeping up.
They were the first from their flight to reach immigration services. In less than ten minutes their passports were stamped and they’d been waved through Customs.
“Hey, Allie,” a distinctly American voice said when they entered the arrivals hall. A short, portly, balding man in baggy khakis and a white short-sleeved shirt stepped towards them.
“Phil, it’s great to see you. You haven’t changed a bit,” Dulles said.
“Neither have you. You still look like a goddamn GQ cover model.”
After they shook hands, Johnson turned and motioned to a tall, trim middle-aged man wearing grey slacks and a pale blue cotton shirt. “Alasdair, this is Manfred Pinson. He’s our host for the day, or for however long we need him.”
“This is very good of you,” Dulles said, extending his hand.
“Phil has been outstandingly co-operative since his arrival in Sydney, and I’m happy to oblige in return,” Pinson said with a vigorous handshake.
Ava was standing several feet behind Dulles while all this was going on, and neither Johnson nor Pinson paid her the slightest attention.
“There’s someone you have to meet,” Dulles said. Ava took a couple of steps forward and smiled. “Gentlemen, this is Ava Lee. Phil, I know I mentioned her to you, but I wasn’t sure if you’d told Manfred that Ava would be with me and will be a key player today.”
“Indeed, he did,” Pinson said, extending his hand.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Johnson said.
They were about to leave when Dulles said, “Just a minute.” He looked at his phone. “I need to look after something first. Excuse me while I do.” To Ava’s surprise he walked towards a bank of seats about twenty metres away and sat down.
“How long have you two known each other?” Ava asked Johnson. In that instant she felt very much like her mother, who couldn’t abide silence and was known for starting conversations with complete strangers.
“We met in Hong Kong at a regional meeting in 1997, just before the Brits turned over the island and territories to the PRC,” he said, his eyes on Dulles. “As it turned out, he’s from just outside Albany, in upstate New York, and my family farm is about fifty miles from his place. So we had geography in common — and bachelorhood. We’ve both moved around since then. We lost touch for a while when he was shipped to London and I was lost in the Langley maze, but we reconnected when we both got back to Asia. He’s been a good friend. You never have to worry about your back when Alasdair’s around.”
Ava wondered if that last remark was intended for her, and how much detail Dulles had passed along to Johnson about their reason for being in Sydney. She wasn’t about to ask. She was forming a question about what Hong Kong was like in 1997 when her phone vibrated and she saw that she had voicemail. She entered the access code and put the phone to her ear.
“Ava, this is Elisha. I want you to know that Zoey has already heard back from her colleagues in Indonesia and Malaysia. None of those ten students landed there. So I’m assuming those are dead ends. I’m sorry we can’t be of more help. Call me if you need anything else.”
“Shit,” she said.
“Bad news?” Johnson said.
“Moderately.”
“Here comes Alasdair,” Pinson said.
Dulles strode towards them with purpose, his face blank. “Sorry about that,” he said.
Pinson led the way, with Johnson at his heels. Dulles lagged a bit, and Ava sensed that he wanted her to do the same. When there were about five metres between them and the two men, he said, “I was speaking to Beirut. There’s been a development that’s going to need our attention, but I don’t want to talk about it in front of Pinson. Once we’re finished with Said, we’ll figure out what to do.”
Ava’s immediate reaction was to ask a question, but Dulles had already sped up and was closing in on Pinson and Johnson. When she caught up to him, she said, “And I’ve heard from Manila. They checked with Indonesia and Malaysia, and neither country has any record of the students.”
“Shit,” he said.
“Exactly.”
They left the terminal and walked into the bright morning sunlight. A white Holden Commodore was parked at the curb with an ON POLICE DUTY sign on the driver’s-side dashboard. Pinson hit the key fob and the trunk opened. Ava and Dulles put their carry-ons into it and then climbed into the back seat.
“Do you still know where Said is?” Dulles said to Pinson.
“He’s at his parents’ house in Lakemba.” Pinson looked at his watch. “He’s most likely still in bed. He was up half the night on his computer.”
“Where’s Lakemba?”
“It’s a Sydney suburb about a twenty-minute drive from here. It has a large Muslim population, mainly of Lebanese origin.”
“What’s the split between Shia and Sunni among Lakemba residents?”
“About fifty-fifty, but the Sunnis, especially those linked to Wahhabism — like your boy — cause us most of the problems. Last week we stopped two men from Lakemba from getting on a plane to join Daesh in Iraq.”
“I’ve certainly heard of Wahhabism, but I don’t know that much about it,” Ava said.
“It’s at the core of most of the fanatical Islamist groups in the world today,” Pinson said.
“A cult? A sect?”
“Those terms don’t come close to describing it. It has its own ideology: a blend of hatred towards everyone who isn’t Sunni and an anti-modern romanticism. The combination fuels rage, particularly in these young men. We’ve been trying for months to shut down a madrassa in Lakemba — financed by money from Saudi Arabia — that preaches it, but the government won’t let us do it. A breach of civil liberties, they say.”
“Did Jason Said go there?”
“We don’t know, but it’s a reasonable assumption. The two men who were on their way to join Daesh certainly did.”
“Daesh and ISIL are connected, aren’t they?” Ava asked.
Johnson nodded. “In Arabic Daesh means ‘al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham,’ and that translates to ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ in English, or ISIL.”
“Your Arabic has improved,” Dulles said to him.
“Manfred makes me look like a beginner. The first time I referred to ISIL as Daesh and then tried to show off a bit with my Arabic, he informed me that Daesh can also sound like daes, which translates into ‘one who crushes something underfoot.’ And it can also sound like dahes, which means ‘someone who sows discord.’”
“I am hopeless with languages. I spent all these years in Thailand and I can barely say hello and goodbye,” Dulles said. “Ava, how about you?”
“I speak fluent Cantonese and Mandarin, but I can hardly take credit for it — that’s how I was raised. I can’t re
member not being able to speak both them and English. They were interchangeable.”
“Traffic isn’t too bad,” Pinson said as they left the airport.
“What’s your plan for handling Said?” Johnson asked.
“We need to talk to him, that’s all,” Dulles said.
“Yes, but at the house or do you want to take him into custody?”
“We’ll start at the house. If he stonewalls us, what are the options?”
“We can take him into preventive custody and hold him for up to fourteen days in isolation,” Pinson said. “Most of them act brave when we take them in, but after a few days, when they realize that no lawyer, family member, or friend can help, they start to break down.”
“We don’t have time to wait for that to happen,” Dulles said.
Pinson glanced sideways at Johnson, and Ava could see concern on his face.
“Manfred, we’re not going to rough him up or do anything that would break Australian laws,” Dulles said quickly. “We’re just going to have to be especially persuasive. I’ve been told by a mutual acquaintance of Ava’s that that’s one of her many talents.”
Ava stiffened. The acquaintance was obviously Poirier. What else had he told Dulles?
“I wasn’t thinking anything different,” Pinson said.
“How old is this Jason Said?” Johnson asked.
“He’s twenty,” Dulles said.
“They get them young here,” Pinson said.
“They get them young everywhere. What makes this one interesting is that he walked away and came home.”
“Walked away from what?”
“I can’t discuss that,” Dulles said.
“Alasdair, if he represents any kind of threat —”
“We’d tell you, but we don’t think he does,” Dulles said. “If that opinion changes, you can count on our letting you know.”
Ava saw a sign that read LAKEMBA, and a few moments later Pinson eased the car onto a street lined with shops. It wasn’t eight a.m. yet, but all the stores were open for business and the sidewalks were crowded with people. They drove past an IGA advertising halal meat, a Masri Brothers kitchenware store, a Boutique Al-Houda, and a halal meat shop. About a kilometre along, Pinson turned left and entered the outskirts of a residential area. The stores disappeared, replaced by bungalows, split-levels, and the occasional two-storey home. The houses were well maintained and almost uniformly fronted by bushes, flowerbeds, and lawns.