The Mirage

by Matt Ruff

  “Keep talking to Dr. Costello. While he’s still with us.”

  Mustafa stared through the glass at the man in the interrogation room. Something about you scares the men in power, he thought. It can’t be this crazy story you’re telling, so what is it? What secret are you hiding? What does Osama bin Laden not want me to know?

  THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

  A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

  Osama bin Laden

  Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (born March 10, 1957), a Sunni Muslim, is a senator from the state of Arabia. He is a member of the National Party of God. Since the year 2001 he has been the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

  EARLY LIFE

  Osama bin Laden is one of 25 sons of Mohammed bin Laden, whose Bin Laden Construction Company (now part of the Saud/Bin Laden Group) is responsible for such projects as the expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and the restoration of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

  Osama was born in a suburb of the federal district of Riyadh and grew up in Jeddah, Arabia. He attended Jeddah’s elite Al Thagr School and studied economics and business administration at Jeddah University.

  HOLY WARRIOR AND STATESMAN

  In 1980, displeased with the Arab government’s “tepid” response to the Russian Orthodox invasion of Afghanistan, Osama left school and traveled to Peshawar, Pakistan. There along with Abdullah Azzam he founded the Afghan Services Bureau, an organization that helped deliver money, weapons, and recruits to the Afghan resistance. Desiring a more direct role in the conflict, Osama eventually established a camp within Afghanistan and became the leader of his own mujahideen unit.

  Following the defeat of the Russians and the breakup of the Orthodox Union, Osama returned to Arabia a hero. In 1990 he ran for Congress, easily winning election as Jeddah’s representative in the House. He served two and a half terms, then in 1995 won his Senate seat in a special election held after the untimely death of the incumbent, Wafah al Saud.

  FACTS ABOUT OSAMA BIN LADEN

  · At nearly two meters in height, he is the tallest man ever to serve in Congress.

  · He has been married five times and divorced once.

  · His personal worth is estimated at 50 million riyals.

  · An extremely religious man, he does not listen to music, attend movies, or watch any television programs other than news.

  · His relationships with both the Party of God and the House of Saud have been described as “complicated.” It is rumored that upon his return from Afghanistan, Osama initially intended to run for office as an independent candidate; only after numerous meetings with high-level party officials did he agree to join the POG.

  · He was an early, ardent supporter of the War on Terror and the invasion of America. He is one of very few invasion supporters not to have suffered politically as a result.

  · He is often mentioned as a potential presidential candidate; many pundits were surprised when he decided not to seek the POG nomination in 2008. When asked whether he would run for president in 2012, he said that he might, “if there still is a presidency.” Asked to explain what he meant by this statement, he replied, “The Day of Judgment may come at any time.”

  Costello’s apartment was in one of four identical towers surrounding a dusty cul-de-sac. It was after 10 p.m. when Samir and Amal arrived, but a group of boys were still outside playing soccer. A pair of police cars were parked in front of Costello’s building, and a cop leaned against one car’s back trunk, smoking a cigarette and watching the game.

  Samir pulled up beside the police cars, and he and Amal got out and showed their IDs. “Are our colleagues inside?”

  “No,” the cop told them. “They cleared out twenty minutes ago. They said they were done.” His tone was accusatory, as if Samir and Amal were breaking a promise by showing up this way.

  “So what are you still doing here?” Samir wanted to know.

  “Securing the premises.”

  Amal, only too familiar with the ways of the Baghdad PD, chuckled at this.

  “We need to get into the apartment,” Samir said. “You want to take us up, or should we just ring for the super?”

  “One moment,” the cop said. He stepped away, speaking quickly and softly into his walkie-talkie. A few minutes later, another policeman appeared inside the building lobby and opened the door for them.

  Two more cops waited in the hall outside Costello’s apartment. A warning notice had been taped to the apartment door, and a red Homeland Security seal placed across the crack between the door and the doorframe. The seal was broken.

  “ ‘Securing the premises,’ ” Samir said.

  The first cop, who’d ridden up with them in the elevator, just shrugged. “They said they were done.”

  “Yes, and now you’re done, too. Open this door for us and get the hell out of here.”

  A whirlwind had been through Costello’s living room, yanking cushions from seats, knocking objects from shelves. A plastic date palm had been uprooted from its pot and now lay on the floor, pretending to be dead. A wooden hutch held a few DVD cases—all popped open, the discs tossed aside—but there was no player to go with them. Bolted to the wall above the hutch was a pair of reinforced bracket mounts that had, until quite recently, held a flat-screen TV.

  “What do you think?” Amal said, gauging the size and spacing of the brackets. “One-and-a-half-meter widescreen?”

  Samir nodded. “One of those nice plasma jobs, probably.”

  Amal looked past a serve-through counter into the kitchenette. The whirlwind had been in there too, opening cabinets and dumping out cans and boxes. “I guess the microwave wasn’t worth stealing . . . So what are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know,” Samir said. “But if we find a second plasma, it’s mine.”

  A wooden cross hung on the wall in the apartment’s single bedroom. Samir checked the closet, finding only a few shirts and a threadbare suit. Amal peeked under the bed, then turned to the dresser—its contents had already been pawed through, but she removed each drawer in turn, checking to see if anything was taped to the backs or undersides.

  Samir stepped to the window. There was a scatter of paperbacks on the sill and on the floor below it. The books were in English and German, neither of which Samir could read, but he recognized some of the covers. In addition to a Bible and what appeared to be some sort of catechism, there were several volumes of the Left Behind series and a new edition of Martin Luther’s 16th-century polemic, On the Jews and Their Lies.

  “Nothing here,” Amal said. “What’ve you got?”

  “Typical Christian hate literature. No secret blueprints hidden between the pages.”

  They checked the bathroom next. While Amal tugged at the mirror above the sink, Samir investigated the toilet tank, known colloquially to Halal Enforcement as a “Bavarian ice chest” because of its popularity as a hiding place for bottled beer. But the tank lid was askew, and any contraband had already been taken by the cops or the federal agents who’d been here before them.

  “Hey,” said Amal. “I need a tall person here.”

  Concealed near the top of the mirror frame were a couple of sliding catches; when Samir pressed on them, the mirror tipped forward and came loose, revealing a hole in the wall. Inside the hole was a pistol, a banded stack of riyals, a bottle of whiskey, and a wrinkled newspaper in a plastic pouch. “One of these things is not like the others,” Samir said.

  They opened up the newspaper. The ornate typeface at the top of the front page was opaque to Samir, but Amal, whose high school French had given her a firmer grasp of the Roman alphabet, was able to deduce that this was, or at least purported to be, an American publication: “New York . . . Times,” she read.

  The above-the-fold photograph had an eerie familiarity: twin skyscrapers, one partially obscured by the black smoke pouring from its sides, the other wreathed in an expanding billow of flame. But these were not the Tigr
is and Euphrates towers, nor did the stone-piered suspension bridge in the foreground resemble any of Baghdad’s bridges.

  “Something from the war?” Amal speculated, sounding doubtful.

  “I’m leaning towards Photoshop,” Samir said. “I don’t think America has buildings that tall. Besides, it looks fake. Can you make out the headline?”

  “ ‘U.S. attack . . . destroys towers,’ then something about a pentagon. And the last word is ‘terror.’ ”

  “Wait.” Samir tapped his finger on the dateline. “What month is this?”

  “September. September 12, 2001.”

  Samir laughed. “September 12 . . . So the day before was September 11 . . . 9/11, get it? These towers, they’re located in the magical American superpower. And the guys flying the planes into them, they must be those poor loser third-world Arabs . . .”

  There was a loud thump from the front of the apartment. They heard footsteps in the living room. “Maybe I spoke too soon about the microwave,” Amal said.

  Frowning, Samir leaned his head out the bathroom doorway. “Hey!” he called. “Who’s out there?”

  No answer but abrupt silence. More annoyed than concerned, Samir walked forward through the bedroom, saying: “This is Homeland Security! Whoever you are, if you don’t have a federal badge you’d better start running n—”

  As Samir entered the living room, he was attacked from the side, punched in the head and spun around to face the wall. He tried to jab behind him with his elbow, but a sharp blow to the kidneys dropped him to his knees, and then he felt a gun muzzle press against the back of his neck.

  A second assailant had darted into the bedroom to grapple Amal. Samir heard her cry out, and the clatter of her pistol being knocked to the ground. He watched from the corner of his eye as she was dragged by the hair into the living room and shoved to the floor; her attacker squatted on her and aimed a submachine gun at the base of her skull, commanding her to lie still. About the only good news in all of this was that the gunman was an Arab, which meant he probably wasn’t a terrorist.

  A voice demanded: “Who are you?”

  “I told you, we’re Homeland Security,” Samir said, then hissed at a jab from the gun muzzle. “Homeland Security, damn it! My ID is in my pocket.” A rough hand was already inside his jacket, removing first his pistol and then his identification.

  “Homeland Security has been ordered off these premises. What are you still doing here?”

  “We received no such order.”

  “You are lying.” A pause, as the speaker examined Samir’s ID. “Samir Nadim . . . Where do I know that name from?”

  “Oh God,” Samir said. That voice . . . “Idris?”

  He was dragged to his feet, turned around, and shoved back against the wall. His assailant, like Amal’s, was armed with a submachine gun, but Samir barely glanced at the weapon before focusing his attention on a third man, a tall bearded figure who stood behind and slightly to the left of the gunman.

  “Idris,” Samir said, not at all happy. “It is you.”

  “Baby-fat Samir,” Idris said. “Not so fat anymore I see. But you still insist on trespassing where you don’t belong.”

  Samir bristled. “We have every right to be here. We are conducting an investigation—”

  “The investigation has been reassigned, as you well know. You are trespassing.” Idris bent to pick up the copy of the New York Times, which Samir had dropped during his brief scuffle. “Where did you get this?”

  “We found it in the bathroom. Costello had a—”

  “Who else has seen it?”

  “No one,” Samir said. “We just—”

  “I will tell you what I think,” Idris interrupted him. “I think you are not with Homeland Security. I think you are a common thief, one of the Shia riffraff who infest the slums of this city. I think you heard this apartment was vacant and broke in to see what you could steal.”

  “Right . . . Fine then. Arrest me.”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “What, then? . . . Wait.” His eyes widened. “Idris. You can’t be ser—”

  “Shoot them both,” Idris said.

  “Wait a minute!” Samir shouted. “Idris, you can’t— . . . Do you know who this woman is? She’s Anmar al Maysani’s daughter! Do you have any idea what kind of trouble—”

  “Anmar al Maysani’s daughter. And whose daughter are you, eh?”

  “That is a very rude thing to say,” a new voice spoke up. “Is this what passes for manners in the capital these days?”

  “Farouk!” Samir said. “Mustafa! Thank God!”

  “It’s all right, Samir,” Mustafa said. “Relax.”

  “Yes, relax,” said Farouk. “We’ll discuss your disregard for protocol some other time.”

  “Farouk.” Idris took a moment to hide his irritation before facing him. “We seem to have a misunderstanding here.”

  “Indeed,” Farouk said. He nodded to where Amal was pinned to the floor. “Please tell your lackey to get off my agent.”

  “Of course. Abu Asim, release her.” Freed, Amal got up slowly, rubbing the back of her neck. Idris asked: “What are you doing here, Farouk?”

  “I’ve had a call from Riyadh.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “No, sorry,” Farouk corrected himself, “I’ve had two calls from Riyadh. It’s the second call that brings me out. There’s been a change in plan.”

  “Senator Bin Laden hasn’t told me anything about a change in plan.”

  “Senator Bin Laden’s wishes are no longer relevant, I’m afraid. The president has asked me to retake control of this investigation.”

  “The president?”

  “The commander in chief,” Farouk said. “Surely you’ve heard of him?”

  “Why would the president—”

  “That brings us back to the subject of disregard for protocol, and, oddly enough, to Senator Bin Laden.” Stepping forward to pluck the New York Times from Idris’s grasp, he continued: “Let’s discuss this back at my office, shall we?”

  THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA

  A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE

  Al Qaeda

  Al Qaeda is an alleged clandestine agency of the Arabian government, supposedly specializing in anti-terrorist operations. Although Al Qaeda’s existence has never been officially confirmed, it is a popular subject of Internet rumor and speculation, particularly among conspiracy theorists.

  CLAIMS MADE ABOUT AL QAEDA

  · Al Qaeda’s purported mission is to hunt down and destroy “the worst enemies of God and the state.” It is said to operate outside the bounds of civil law and to be answerable to only a handful of government officials.

  · It is claimed that Al Qaeda was founded by combat veterans of the Afghan War, and that service in that or another holy war is a prerequisite for membership. Another common claim is that members must be devout Sunni Muslims.

  · Most accounts hold that Al Qaeda was created as a direct response to the 11/9 attacks, but there are a few stories that suggest it actually predates the War on Terror.

  · Public figures whose names have been linked to Al Qaeda include Senator Osama bin Laden (POG-Arabia), his chief of staff Ayman al Zawahiri, and his former campaign manager Abu Yusuf Idris Abd al Qahhar.

  · One popular Al Qaeda rumor holds that the group’s existence was first uncovered by a Baghdad Post reporter who died under suspicious circumstances after revealing what he had found. The Post’s publisher, Tariq Aziz, has denied this rumor, joking that “No one gets killed at my newspaper unless I order it.”

  AL QAEDA IN POPULAR CULTURE

  · In the second season of 24/7 Jihad, it was revealed that super-agent Jafar Bashir is a former Al Qaeda member expelled for being “too overzealous” in his pursuit of terrorists.

  “He’s a Wahhabi fanatic,” Samir said.

  “His family are Unitarians,” Mustafa demurred. “Idris always struck me as a member of the cult of Idris.”

&n
bsp; “But who is he?” asked Amal.

  They were on the roof of AHS headquarters, watching the moon rise over the Tigris. Inside, Farouk and Idris were in the second hour of a conference call with the powers that be in Riyadh. Mustafa and the others had come up here to get away from the shouting.

  “An old schoolmate,” Mustafa told her. “Idris was an upperclassman at the boys’ academy where Samir and I first met. He was popular, but also a bully. Some of the other students called him ‘Iblis’ behind his back.”

  “Satan?” Amal glanced at Samir, who was scowling at some private memory of humiliation.

  “He dropped out of school a month before graduation, to go fight in Afghanistan—”

  “Where he would have died, if there was any justice in the world,” Samir interjected.

  “—and after that, we didn’t hear anything of him for years. Until one day he turned up on Al Jazeera as a spokesman for the Bin Laden campaign. He had a family by then, and went by ‘Abu Yusuf,’ but it was the same old Idris.”

  “The Party of God political strategist?” Amal said. “That Abu Yusuf?”

  “You’ve heard of him, then. Ah, of course . . .”

  “When my mother ran for the Senate, Abu Yusuf Abd al Qahhar was in charge of the POG’s smear campaign against her.”

  “The ‘Whore of Baghdad’ robocalls.” Mustafa nodded. “I remember the uproar over those. Didn’t one of your brothers threaten to kill whoever was responsible?”

  “Not just one of my brothers . . . So this is the same guy? And what is he now, Bin Laden’s personal hatchet man?”

  “Abu Yusuf’s current job description is a matter of some speculation. Officially he’s attached to Homeland Security as ‘special liaison’ to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Unofficially . . . I assume you’ve heard the stories about Bin Laden forming his own private anti-terrorism squad?”