Not according to the Director, though.
“Listen, my friend,” the Director had said from the back seat. “Think of this as being like a game of blackjack. In 2001, we showed our first card, and the enemy saw it. But our second card is still face down on the table. Think! The enemy knows we can hijack planes – yes, we showed that. But the enemy doesn’t know what we intended to do with those planes, do they? Oh yes, one or two smart ones in the government thought about that, but they fired the one who spoke about that. They’ve gone to war in Iraq and forgotten about 2001. They think they’re safe – that we wouldn’t try the same tactic again. That all works to our advantage. Oh yes!” He cackled his mad laugh, which always annoyed Jarrah to no end. Jarrah said nothing in reply. At times like these, it was best to let the Director get everything out.
“Yes,” the Director went on. “They have taken measures, but they haven’t gone far enough. Have they made any real effort to check foreign cargo? No. Have they truly sealed the cockpits? No. Are the TSA crews able to tell with 99 percent accuracy who’s an innocent civilian and who’s a muhjadeen? No. They make little old ladies go through long security lines and check their hands for bomb residue, and at the same time you can go through without a second look, Jarrah. You told me that, right?”
Jarrah had taken some flights since 2001, testing out security measures. Indeed, there had been times when old ladies were subject to extra security, and he, carrying his assumed name and identification, had been waved through. But he had noticed the extra security aboard aircraft, and he’d read that the government now stationed security people on almost every plane. Besides, he thought, Americans were no longer blissfully ignorant about the possibility of hijacking. After the Sept. 11 collision, there’d been a campaign by the government to make people more aware of what do to in the event of a hijacking and how to recognize suspicious passengers. He also knew that pilots were far more prepared now to take measures against hijackers than they had been before 2001.
Jarrah told the Director as much, and the Director slammed his fist against the seat.
“Don’t believe their lies, Jarrah,” the Director had said, and looking through the rear-view mirror, Jarrah could see the Director’s frenzied eyes, shining with zeal. “You say the passengers are educated? No, they’re still ignorant. They still don’t know what we planned to do with those planes. You can count on them to sit quietly and behave, like lambs to the slaughter. We did a good job of hiding our plans in 2001, and no one suspects anything. Don’t try to talk me out of this. The plan is going forward.”
And of course, Jarrah thought as he exited the expressway and headed south toward Midway with his two elderly passengers, the Director got his way. Backed by the Sheik, the plan took shape. It wouldn’t be as complex as the 2001 attacks, of course. There’d be only two planes this time, and the planes would take off from Chicago for New York. But the towers were still the goal, and the date, May 14, 2008, to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Zionist entity - was rapidly approaching. The tests they’d been conducting at O’Hare the last few weeks, designed to see how easy it would be to sneak weapons aboard passenger jets, had gone smoothly. They’d proven they were able to work with their ground crew contacts to put the test materials – in this case combination locks – aboard the planes without passing through a security check.
The problem rose when he had spied the two Americans watching their operation last week. Hanjour had traveled to New York to discuss the situation with the Director – you didn’t call or email the Director about stuff like this. Now the Director had to make a decision. Killing or kidnapping the Americans would draw unwanted attention their way. But letting the Americans go to the police with their photos or put them on the Internet – Jarrah’s fear – would also threaten their operation.
Jarrah’s plan – which he knew Hanjour was sharing now with the Director – was a middle-of-the-road one that he thought would work. The airport workers they’d enlisted believed Hanjour and Jarrah were drug traffickers, and the workers were being paid off to sneak the locks onto the planes in hope of gaining even bigger payoffs once the actual drugs started flowing. Jarrah had no interest in directly confronting the two spying Americans, but Jarrah’s airport worker contacts could be told about them and asked to run interference, paying off the spies to go away.
Certainly neither of the spies were wealthy. Jarrah had followed them back from the airport, learned their addresses and researched them online. A payment of $5,000 each and a request to shut up would probably suffice. If the Americans went to the police in spite of that, more dramatic measures would be needed, Jarrah thought. Either way, they had to act quickly. They’d first seen the spies four days ago, and Jarrah kept an eagle eye on both of their websites to see if they had posted anything. Nothing so far, and he doubted that even if they did so it would get much attention. But any leak was unwelcome, and he had to be on top of it. He could disable the websites if necessary, but he didn’t think it would come to that, and he didn’t want to yet, as it might attract more attention.
Midway Airport drew up on their right, bright red lights shining, signs pointing the way to long-term and short-term parking, and the Orange Line rapid transit station. Jarrah pulled into the circular terminal driveway and stopped the car. “We’re here, honey,” the man in back told his wife. “Already?” she asked sleepily.
“The fare is $40,” Jarrah said and took the man’s credit card. The man gave him a $10 tip, and Jarrah got out and helped with the luggage.
“Have a good trip,” Jarrah said. The man thanked him quietly and slowly walked into the terminal carrying luggage, his wife at his side. Jarrah watched them for a minute and then got back into the cab, drove over to the pick-up area, and waited for his next fare.
As he waited, his phone rang. He checked the number. It was the familiar one.
“Hello, Alev,” he said in his calm voice.
“Hello, Ziad,” Alev said.
“Did you decide?” he asked. His heart beat a bit faster in anticipation.
“Yes. I’m flying in on December 5,” Alev said. “You’ll pick me up at the airport?”
“I’ll be there. What flight?” He drummed his fingers eagerly on the steering wheel.
She told him. There was awkward silence again.
“Ziad?” she finally said.
“Yes?”
“Can you tell me why you want me all of a sudden?”
“I miss you,” he said truthfully. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever been close to. And I’m lonely.”
“I’m lonely too,” she replied. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Jarrah smiled, knowing how right she was.
“I’ll see you December 5,” he said quietly.
CHAPTER 7
Nancy in Iraq
When Nancy finished the NPR interview, she rode the elevator back up to her hotel room. It was 2 a.m. in Baghdad, and she was exhausted, and wondering not for the first time why she’d ever come to the Middle East. A sudden wave of homesickness burst through her, leaving an empty feeling in her middle, and she pictured Joanna’s face and felt once again the longing for her voice and touch. It was almost physical, this longing. She clenched her teeth as she stepped out of the slow elevator into the dimly-lit hallway and walked toward her room.
She collapsed on the lumpy bed without bothering to turn on the light. As she had promised, she took out her Blackberry and sent one more email to her mom and Joanna, telling them she had gotten through another day. Outside her window, the Baghdad horizon glowed orange from the city lights. Often she had lain here at night listening to explosions echo across the city. Sometimes they sounded very close. Even here in the protected zone of Baghdad where foreign journalists lived, she knew she wasn’t completely safe. There’d been reporters killed not far from her hotel, and one hotel which had housed reporters had been bombed early in the war.
The irony was, she wasn’t even supposed to be in this w
ar-torn place. She’d come to the Middle East expecting to work out of the Cairo office, and had done so for several weeks. But then the paper had an unexpected need for another reporter in Baghdad as the pace of the war picked up, and Nancy’s boss had asked her to come and fill in the gap until they could find someone permanent. The editors knew she had family reasons for wanting to stay out of a war zone, but then again, she was the one who took the Middle East job, and it wouldn’t really do to say no, especially since this was a temporary assignment. She’d been here for three weeks, and a replacement was due in three days. Nancy was counting the hours till she could return to the comparative calm of Egypt.
The Baghdad assignment, of course, hadn’t gone over very well with her mother and Joanna. Nancy tried to soothe her daughter, but it was hard to do from 5,000 miles away over the phone. They’d tried to Skype a few times, but the technology wasn’t too good, so they’d given up.
Though Nancy felt incredibly guilty about taking on this assignment, and part of her wanted to quit and take the next flight home, the journalist in her was filled with excitement. Here was a chance to cover history as it happened, even though at the moment it seemed like a tragic one. Since arriving, she’d seen things she’d never imagined – mostly violent ones. The U.S. military kept reporters on a pretty short leash, but that hadn’t prevented Nancy from doing some more aggressive reporting, getting out into the streets and interviewing the civilians who’d been impacted most by the situation. One of her articles, about a merchant in one of Baghdad’s markets who’d lost his entire family in a sectarian bombing, had made the front page. Yes, she told herself, the stories here were nearly all tragic, but, as a journalist, this was how you made a name for yourself. The greatest journalists all covered wars, or at least went overseas. Every day, Nancy learned something new, and she’d actually become pretty good at Arabic, which she’d taken a crash course in starting back in the U.S. when she learned she’d get the Middle East assignment.
And even though part of her was counting down the days till she could get out of this awful place, another part of her regretted that her time here would be so short. Ever since that fateful day when she’d talked to Virgil Walker in the Thai restaurant in Washington, she’d been convinced that Virgil was right about Al-Qaeda being a threat to the United States. Here in Iraq, Al-Qaeda was ascendant, and many of the bombings were its doing. What better place than here to learn more about the terror organization, track down its leaders and write about their motivations? Not that it would be easy, of course. Al-Qaeda leaders didn’t make it a habit to conduct interviews or let it be known where they hid, but she figured she had a better chance here than nearly anywhere else. She’d even asked her editors if after this temporary assignment in Iraq, she could travel to Pakistan, where she hoped to get a better handle on the terror group. So far, she hadn’t heard back on that one.
It was 2:30 a.m. when Nancy finally fell asleep, knowing she had to be back at the bureau at 8 a.m. Outside, the sky over Baghdad glowed, and a dull roar thudded many miles away, the sound of artillery thumping outside of town. Despite the late hour and the distant explosions, cars still ran up and down the nearby highway, headlights on as late-night drivers headed to destinations known only to them.
Nancy was woken the next morning by the sound of the muezzin’s cries echoing over the city. “Alluha Akbar,” the voices echoed. She wondered vaguely if people here ever got used to these prayer calls enough to ignore them. Five times a day, the city rang with their somewhat mournful cries, and she still jumped each time. Maybe it’s like moving to a farm, she thought. Eventually you get used to the roosters.
She showered, dressed, sent an email to Joanna and her mom (“Just three more days!”) and then left the hotel for the bureau office a few blocks away. Both her hotel and her office were inside the so-called “Green Zone,” where it was relatively safe for Westerners to move about. Outside, the day was pleasantly cool, around 70 degrees, and the palm trees blew in a light wind. What a shame that the city was so violent, she thought. It must have once been a nice place to live. Of course, this was fall. She’d heard the heat was brutal in the summer.
“Hi Nancy, how’s it going?” the Baghdad bureau chief, Ron Kolarik, greeted her as she entered the office and walked toward her desk, where papers were piled in neat stacks next to her white coffee mug emblazoned with a photo of Joanna. “We’ve got some local treats this morning - Kleicha.” He pointed to a plate on a table in the middle of the small room where there was a plate of Kleicha tamur, cookies filled with dates. The bureau consisted of one room about the size of a hotel room, with three desks crammed into the corners and a lone window looking out at palm trees and the calm brown waters of the Tigris River. A barge floated by lazily.
“Thanks, I’ll take a pass,” Nancy said, with a dramatic eye roll. Ron enjoyed teasing Nancy. Everyone in the bureau knew about her aversion to ethnic foods, and that she’d come to the Middle East with a huge supply of packaged American products. If she had to survive this assignment on PowerBars, then so be it.
“I figured you’d say that,” Ron said with a smile. He was a sandy-haired, red-faced man in his mid-40’s who’d spent 20 years stationed in several Middle Eastern countries. He spoke Arabic fluently, and often gave Nancy tips on how to improve hers. But she despaired of ever achieving his level of expertise. Ron moved through Baghdad as if he’d always lived there, and the Iraqi people seemed to accept him almost as one of their own. He’d spent part of his childhood in the Middle East, which helped him understand the culture in a way other reporters never could.
Still, Nancy wasn’t intimidated. She knew she could cover any story, and Ron respected her talent. She had the same ability as he did to make sources feel comfortable, and to deliver big stories the competition couldn’t get. She’d never be the seasoned Middle East expert that Ron was, but that wouldn’t stop her from doing a good job. She approached every day just as she had in the White House, determined to push the U.S. military and government leaders for answers to her myriad of questions.
Today, Ron gave Nancy an assignment. In the past, she had set her own schedule and decided what to cover. But she’d given up a little of that freedom here in Baghdad as she learned about the country and the war, and this was one of those times. After Ron gave her the details, she returned to her desk and packed her green backpack to go out of the office for the day.
• • •
Three hours later, lying in the back of the hot SUV, mouth parched, the militants’ excited voices in her ears, Nancy thought back upon what had happened. The day had started out normally enough, with Ron asking her to go along with U.S. troops to a neighborhood in Baghdad where the soldiers were helping dedicate a new elementary school. A U.S. general, accompanied by his Iraqi Army counterpart and about two dozen U.S. and Iraqi soldiers, performed a ceremonial ribbon cutting, and the little children – aged kindergarten through early teens – cheered. It had been a happy, feel-good event, and Ron wanted Nancy to write more stories about some of the positive attributes of the American campaign. “We’ve certainly written enough about the bad stuff,” he’d said. “The paper is getting a lot of pressure from the military to provide ‘balanced’ coverage. I think the bad far outweighs the good, but when they do something right for once, I guess it’s not a bad thing to highlight it.”
After the U.S. General cut the ribbon and said a few words, his Iraqi counterpart had taken the podium, and that’s when things got hazy for Nancy. There’d been a loud booming noise from out on the street, she remembered that much. Then there was the noise of children screaming, and she realized she was on the floor, covered with dust. All around her was chaos, with moans of pain, more screaming and excited voices in Arabic and English. That’s when she’d noticed the pain in her left leg, and looked down and saw blood on her pants. She’d felt around the rest of her body and everything seemed to be in place, but she couldn’t get up to move away from flames that were licking the wall nearby.
She had dragged herself in the direction she thought was the back of the room, hoping to get away from the fire, and had crawled right into a soldier lying on the floor. His face was covered with bloody pinpricks, and his legs were sprawled in an unnatural way. She couldn’t tell which army he belonged to because his uniform was covered with dust, but his glassy, wide-open eyes told her he was dead. Nancy had seen enough dead bodies in her three weeks covering Baghdad to recognize that much.
Her leg ached with a dull, numb, prickly pain, but even as she lay there sweating profusely, clutching her leg, she realized what a great story this would be if she could get out alive. She cried out for help, but the air was filled with noise and dust. She couldn’t see or hear anyone, and she supposed no one could see or hear her. She decided to stay where she was. Crawling was painful, and she was far enough away from the flames that they didn’t seem like an immediate danger. Surely someone would come and save her if she waited.
A minute later, she saw a large man with a dark beard and a head wrapping emerge from the smoke in the direction of the front entrance. He looked down at her and the dead soldier and said something in Arabic that she didn’t understand. He didn’t appear to be an Iraqi soldier or a medical person, and Nancy’s heart beat faster. Who was this guy? Could she expect help from him?
“Ma ismik?” he asked.
Ah, she knew what that meant.
“Nancy,” she replied, trying not to moan from the pain in her leg.
“Oh, you’re American,” he said in accented English. “You’re hurt.”
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