“Al-Qaeda is finished, Samir. Don’t you see? Those Pakis give you a little money, keep you busy, let you pretend you’re putting something together. Then when they need to make the Americans happy, do something to distract from their own business, they sell you out. When was the last time you did anything that mattered?”
Samir Khalili didn’t want to hear this bitter truth. “And what have you done but chop the heads of other Muslims? Make them hate us? The sheikh may be dead, but he was right. Concentrate on the far enemy”—the United States and the West. “Killing other believers doesn’t help the cause.”
“Except that while you’ve been in the mountains, we created a caliphate. Our own government, land, money. Our own Sharia”—Islamic law. “We don’t depend on lying Pakistanis or anyone else. The Americans keep saying they’re going to destroy us, but they haven’t.” Hani was a braggart, as Wells had heard on that very first tape. Wells wanted to let him spout on, but Khalili felt differently.
“We’re the only ones to have attacked the United States.”
“For now.” Hani spoke so confidently that Wells wondered if the cover story that he and Shafer had invented for the seventh floor was true after all, that the Islamic State had a big attack planned. Hani was practically daring Khalili to ask more, too.
Instead, Wells stepped forward to finish his prayers. Now that they’d connected, he didn’t want to seem too interested. Nothing frustrated a boaster like a story left untold.
When prayers were done, the door opened and a guard waved the prisoners out. Wells wondered if the rest of the prisoners would be waiting to use the room, but apparently they had already done so.
“Exercise time,” a guard said. “Single line, two steps apart.”
Wells felt his pulse speed. The moment was coming.
—
THE GUARDS led them out of the cellblock and past the intersection that led to the electrified gate. The prisoners seemed excited now. Time outside must be a luxury. Still, they stayed in line. Their docility didn’t entirely surprise Wells. Prisons were strange places. A few convicts would die before being broken, like the Irish hunger strikers who had starved themselves to death in Britain in the 1980s. But most prisoners, here and everywhere, did what they could to get along with their captors and make their lives easier.
They turned left down a short corridor, stopped in front of a steel door. The lead guard said, “Remember, forty minutes. And if you climb the fence, you will be shot without warning.”
The yard wasn’t much, a rectangle fifty feet long, seventy feet wide, surrounded by tall cyclone fencing. The high exterior walls of the prison stood ten feet back from the fence, creating a no-man’s-land where four Dobermans ran. The dogs barked wildly and bared their teeth as the jihadis walked out. Two guards, both slinging AKs, watched from a post on the wall. A light rain seeped from the gray sky, but the prisoners didn’t seem to mind. They tilted their faces skyward to the drizzle.
Twenty or so Bulgarians were already inside. They wore dark green uniforms instead of the powder blue of the jihadis. The local prisoners were a dull-eyed, brutish bunch. Blurry prison tattoos striped their hands and faces. They didn’t seem pleased with having to share the space. They formed a loose cordon that stretched diagonally across the yard, backing the Muslims into a corner, yelling in Bulgarian.
“They always like this?” Wells muttered to Hani.
“Mostly.”
“Let me ask you, Hani. If the Islamic State is so powerful, what are you doing in here?”
“My own fault. Went to Turkey and the Americans picked me up. They knew who I was right away.”
“They were waiting for you.”
“Yes.”
“Someone betrayed you. No different than me.”
“My traitor, we’ve already dealt with him.” Hani sliced a hand across his throat. Where Wells had hoped he’d go. “And his family.”
“I hope you had the right man.”
“Don’t worry about that. We don’t make those mistakes. The ISI who gave you up, you’ll never touch them,” Hani said.
“After I get out of here, I’ll go back to those mountains, find them.”
“I’m surprised you lasted so long, Samir. You seem . . . confused.”
Wells stepped close to Hani. “Say it again—”
Suddenly three other Arabs were tugging at Wells.
“He doesn’t mean trouble,” Hani said. “Right, Samir?”
Wells nodded. The other jihadis backed off.
Two Bulgarians had taken advantage of the distraction to edge closer. “Move,” Hani said to them. In English.
“Arab scum.” The prisoner was short, muscled-up, eyes as faded as his tattoos.
“We don’t bother you, you don’t bother us.”
The Bulgarian muttered but stepped away. Hani turned to Wells.
“Your little dream about the ISI. First of all, if the Americans move you out of here, it’ll be to bring you somewhere else.”
“They send people home now.”
“Not you. If they’ve put you on my side, they think you’re high-value. Why, they only let us out with the others once a week. I can’t imagine what they think you know—”
“And you never will.”
Hani didn’t answer for a while. “First smart thing you’ve said,” he finally said. “Anyway, if they think you know something important, they’ll hold you forever.”
“You, too.”
“No, because eventually they’ll have to recognize the Islamic State, talk with the caliph. They’ll want peace, and part of peace is letting prisoners of war go free.”
You call me delusional. “How often do the Americans come for interviews?”
“For me, once every few weeks. They don’t hurt me or anyone else. They offer bribes, a transfer to a better prison. I won’t talk to them at all. They always give up after an hour or two.”
“This place could be worse.”
“Yes. They let us pray, and they don’t bother us if we don’t make trouble for them. It’s not political for these guards. Not like Guantánamo. The Americans give the Bulgarians a lot of money to keep us and the guards get some. That’s what they told us.”
“But some brothers must want to fight.”
“It doesn’t do any good. I haven’t been here that long, but when I came, I told them I wanted my own Quran and they laughed at me. Then they dumped me in a punishment cell for two days, no food.”
“So we stay here forever? Like sheep?”
“You have a better idea?”
“Find a way out.”
Hani tilted his head at the guards outside the tower. “The walls are ten meters high, razor wire, dogs, they put us in concrete cells, no place to hide anything. Tell you what, Samir, you see a way, you let me—”
But Hani didn’t have a chance to finish his thought. Suddenly the little prisoner who had called them Arab scum yelled in Bulgarian, and he and the other local convicts were on them—
—
HE’S as tall as you, and even bigger. Bald. A scythe on his cheeks, a skull on the back of his head.
Sure I’ll recognize him?
Kirkov didn’t smile. He’ll be in the yard. The first or second time you’re out there.
The play Kirkov had suggested to Wells, back at the airport in Munich. Have a Bulgarian prisoner attack Hani so Wells could defend him and prove his loyalty in the most visceral way possible.
The very first time? Won’t that seem obvious?
Sooner will be better because, after, you’ll be on lockdown for at least a few days. And, believe me, the way this man and his friends come, no one will think it’s a setup. You’d better be ready.
I was born ready.
It’s no joke, John—
—
IT WASN’T.
>
The Bulgarians had the numbers. And boots instead of open-toe sandals, a big edge in a scrum like this. The little guy was pumping his right arm low and fast in a way that suggested he had a shiv. Wells had only one edge. Knowing what might be coming, he’d put himself and Hani at the outside edge of the jihadis, near the fence. He could move. The best chance to win a melee like this was to attack quickly, take out the other side’s leaders, before everyone else fully engaged.
Wells stepped into the scrum, pushed aside two men, went for the little guy, who was facing away from him, stabbing furiously, focused only on drawing blood—
Wells wrapped his big left hand around the guy’s forehead to line him up and pulled back his right arm and hit him with an open-handed chop in the neck just below the skull. A rabbit punch. He felt vertebrae buckle. The guy screamed and dropped. A toothpaste handle with a three-inch razor blade taped tight came out of his hand and Wells reached for it—
Above them, the guards shouted—
Wells turned, saw the big man ten feet away, the tattooed skull on the back of his naked head staring balefully. The guy was going for Hani. Three jihadis had lined up to protect their leader, but the guy was bashing them with a piece of concrete. Wells stepped toward him—
Staggered as a blow caught him below his left armpit. Not a fist, something harder—wood, maybe. If not for all those crunches, it would have knocked him down. As it was, he felt a rib crack, but, no matter, that’s what ribs were for. He turned and swung the shiv at whoever had just hit him, aiming high.
The man leaned back, but Wells stretched his arm and the shiv dug a red straightaway on the man’s cheek. He yelped. Wells stepped up and kicked him between the legs, and the yelp rose to a full-on castrato scream and the man doubled over.
Wells spun again, saw the big Bulgarian had taken out the first two jihadis guarding Hani. Now he clouted the third with a sweeping two-handed shot. Whatever else he might be, he wasn’t subtle. The Arab dropped like a spent round.
Hani had his hands up. But he was pinned against the fence, nowhere to go. The convict lifted his big right fist, a piece of concrete jutting out. Wells saw he couldn’t reach Hani in time to stop the blow. Instead, he threw the shiv, sidearm, spinning it, hoping for enough torque to keep it in line. The razor caught the Bulgarian low in the back of the head, between the skull’s grinning teeth—and stuck in his heavy flesh. The giant reached for it, pulled it out, roared, turned around.
Let’s dance. Wells felt the frenzy of hand-to-hand combat surge through him, the best drug in the world, and he and the big man raised their fists and stepped toward each other—
Then, above, the rip-rip-rip of AKs on full automatic. Wells, the big man, and everyone else looked up. Two guards fired into the air, brass jackets pouring out of their rifles. Three others aimed their AKs into the yard—
The shooting stopped. An amplified Bulgarian voice yelled from speakers above the yard door.
The Bulgarian convicts looked at one another, raised their hands and backed away. Wells couldn’t help himself, he felt nothing but disappointment, and he knew the big man agreed.
The guy whom Wells had rabbit-punched couldn’t walk. He crawled, awkwardly, on two hands and one leg. The big man went to him, picked him up, something almost tender in the gesture.
“On your knees, Arabs,” the voice shouted in English.
“Thank you, Samir,” Hani murmured.
“Brother for brother. Muslim for Muslim. I’d kill them all, if I could.”
The strange alchemy of close combat. At that moment, Samir Khalili and Wells both meant every word.
15
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
ALMOST TWO weeks since Shafer’s trip to Baltimore to see Vernon Green’s cousin Ali Shabazz. To his surprise, Shafer had heard nothing from Green. No late-night phone call. No knock on Shafer’s door. Not even an email telling him to get lost.
Maybe Shabazz hadn’t told his cousin about the meeting. Though he didn’t seem like the type to keep his mouth shut. Maybe Green had decided the best play was to lay low, for whatever reason.
In any case, Shafer had waited long enough for a response. He still couldn’t exclude Pushkin, Crompond, or Green, much less decide who was the most likely traitor. Under normal circumstances, he would have gone to them by now, tried to force the issue. But Duto would be furious. Maybe furious enough to fire him.
Shafer had no choice but another sideways play. He’d shake Aziz Murak, the imam at the Islamic Center of Northern Virginia, the guy whom Walter Crompond had tried and failed to cultivate. Going at Murak carried its own risks. The imam appeared regularly on cable talk shows to defend Islam and even argue that American Muslims shouldn’t be prosecuted for fighting in Syria. “Nothing wrong with Muslims standing up for fellow Muslims,” he’d told Fox News. “The war over there, there’s been atrocities on all sides. We shouldn’t criminalize people who may just be trying to save their families, their homes.”
So Shafer knew that his visit might lead Murak to complain, both to Langley and in public, that the CIA was hassling him. But he had to take the chance.
—
THE ISLAMIC CENTER was an attractive complex of modern white buildings in Alexandria. It included a school, a community center, and of course a mosque. Tens of millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia had helped build it. The Kingdom gave money to mosques and madrassas around Washington to project a positive image of Islam. The grants were neither hidden nor illegal, but Shafer didn’t like them. He wished the Saudis would worry less about how they looked in the United States, more about the crisis that radical Islam was causing in their own society.
It was just past noon on Friday. The week’s most important prayer and sermon were happening inside. The center’s parking lot was nearly full. The call had sounded fifteen minutes before, but discreetly. The blocks nearby were residential, and the Islamic Center didn’t advertise its presence too aggressively. We’re good neighbors. Part of the community. An American flag hung from a pole in front of the parking lot, though Shafer cynically noted it had been put as far from the mosque as possible.
The cars, too, belonged to the broad upper middle class—new Hondas and Fords, a few Mercedes and BMWs sprinkled in. The BMWs made Shafer think of Reg Pushkin. He wondered if he dared approach Pushkin’s in-laws about the money they’d given him.
Shafer had come a few minutes before the call to prayer and watched men and women hurry to the mosque. Now that the cars around him were empty, he stood out. Five minutes before, a trim Arab man in a suit walking through the lot had spotted him, stopped, and discreetly ducked his head toward the mike on his shoulder. Shafer was not entirely surprised when two Alexandria police cruisers rolled into the lot and turned his way, their light bars flashing a silent warning. You protecting me from them or them from me? An officer stepped out, a young guy wearing wraparound shades despite the overcast sky. Shafer lowered his window.
“Sir. We’ve had a complaint.”
“I get that a lot.”
“Sir?”
Shafer liked to talk back to cops, not his finest habit. He reminded himself to save his energy for Murak. Getting old meant choosing your battles. He handed over his driver’s license and CIA identification.
The cop pulled his shades, squinted at the agency ID. “People who really work there don’t normally show us these.”
“Cutting to the chase.”
“This is official business?”
Shafer shrugged: Draw your own conclusions.
“You need to go in, talk to someone? Do it,” the cop said. “You want to watch them from across the street? Do that, too. But they don’t want you just sitting here. I have to ask you to leave.”
Stickler for procedure, this one. “I know somebody at your HQ can make a call, make sure I’m real.” The agency and FBI had programs in place with police departments for
these situations. “You want to run me? I won’t get you in trouble—”
“How would you get me in trouble—”
“But no more questions.”
The cop hesitated. Shafer thought that he might simply hand back the ID and go. Then he walked to his cruiser, holding the identification card and license. “Be right back.”
Too polite or well-trained to say so, but he doesn’t buy the story because he thinks I’m too old.
The Arab guy at the gate had watched this interaction with open interest. As the cop stepped away, the guy pointed a finger at Shafer: Busted.
“We’ll see,” Shafer muttered.
The cop returned ten minutes later. His face was vaguely puzzled as he handed Shafer the license and identification. “How much longer do you want to stay, Mr. Shafer?”
“Not too.”
“I’ll tell them—”
“Do me a favor. Don’t say anything. Roll out, and let whoever called you wonder.”
“I—”
“You did your job. Let me do mine.”
—
WHEN the cruisers were gone, Shafer walked to the front gate. A frown replaced the guard’s smirk.
“Sir? Here for the service?”
Shafer shook his head.
“You’ll have to leave.”
“Funny, I think you saw the cops let me stay.”
“This is private property.”
“I have business with your cleric.”
“What kind of business?”
“Why don’t you run inside, tell him when he’s done talking about how great Allah is, and was, and always will be, there’s a government-issued kaffir who needs a moment?” Shafer was enjoying himself now. “I’ll keep an eye on things out here. Make sure there’s no trouble.”
The man was clearly torn between his desire to toss Shafer and his awareness that the police had just let Shafer go. He muttered some Arabic in his mike, and after a couple of minutes another guard arrived. This one was more obviously muscle, a bruiser who barely fit into his suit.
“You want the imam? Go with him.”
As the big guy led him around the mosque, Shafer heard murmured prayers in Arabic. He would never understand what Wells saw in this religion. Of course he was an atheist, so none of this voodoo meant much to him. As far as he could tell, it was all a failed effort to make people feel better about the big dirt nap everyone took sooner or later. Grandma’s in the big blue sky with angels and trumpets, Junior! You can see her if you squint hard enough.
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