She looked at him, her eyes unreadable now, but it was as if she’d aged suddenly into a mature woman. “Did you come here after all to assassinate my father?”
“Just to talk,” McGarvey said.
“Very well,” Sarah nodded. “Then the sooner I bring you to him, the sooner you can talk. In the meantime you will be safe. You are our guest.” She smiled sadly. “It is a matter of honor, especially among the Afghanis.”
CHAPTER NINE
Osama bin Laden’s Camp
Bin Laden’s camp came as a surprise to McGarvey, the size of it, nestled in a high mountain valley, with conical nomad tents, mud and brick buildings, a dozen or more army vehicles parked under shelters and a Russian Hind helicopter, its rotors tied down, beneath camouflage netting. It looked more like his military base at Kunar than an isolated hiding spot.
It was early evening but still light by the time they finally topped the last rise above the camp and stopped. Their forced trek through the afternoon had been made in complete silence. This time Mohammed was in the lead, with Sarah in the rear from where she could keep an eye on him. They’d stopped only once to drink water, eat more nan and a handful of grapes that Hash produced from his pack, and once again for late afternoon prayers. Afterward McGarvey passed the cigarettes around, their talk friendly as if nothing had happened.
Sarah took a small walkie-talkie out of her pack and radioed something in rapid-fire Persian. A few seconds later she got a reply.
“They’re surprised we’re here so early,” she said. “Please give me your gun, Mr. McGarvey.”
Mohammed watched closely, a strange, dreamy look on his face as if he had been biding his time, and very soon now he would get to act. McGarvey took the gun from his belt, checked to make sure the safety was on, and handed it to Sarah.
“Do you have any other weapons?”
“No.”
She handed the Walther to Hash. “Put this with his other things. I’m making you responsible for their safe return.”
Hash glanced at Farid, then nodded and put the gun in his pack. “Ali will want to inspect the computer.”
“I’ll tell my father,” Sarah said. Mohammed started to object, but she silenced him with a glance, and he turned away sullenly.
Sarah was no longer friendly and curious. Now she was brusque and businesslike. On the trail they had become travelers together. Now I’m the enemy, McGarvey thought. The infidel come from the other side of the world at her father’s summons. But he was a very powerful, dangerous American, which made her father’s authority even all the more encompassing.
Gone too was the eye-averting shame from the incident at the river. She was once again Osama bin Laden’s daughter, and therefore an important power among these men even though she was a woman. And power was one thing that mujahedeen respected and greatly admired.
The camp was two hundred feet below them, down a very steep, rocky hill. The path switched back and forth so that it was another half-hour before they reached the floor of the valley and crossed another shallow stream. McGarvey picked out a dozen armed men, their rifles at the ready, peering out of doorways and tents. Two men had been working on the helicopter, but they too picked up weapons and watched the incoming procession. He also spotted a microwave dish concealed beneath camouflage netting halfway up the steep hill on the other side of the narrow valley. From the air this place would look like just about any other mountain village, or perhaps the encampment of nomads. There were even a few camels hobbled behind a tent sixty or seventy yards downstream.
Security seemed very tight, as McGarvey figured it would be. But except for the few mud and stone buildings, this place could be dismantled and moved out within a few hours. Secrecy, mobility and utterly devoted followers had kept bin Laden a free man and alive all these years. There would be a road leading out of here, but in an all-out emergency bin Laden could be whisked away in the helicopter, leaving his people behind to fight a delaying rear guard action.
Despite all that, however, the camp had the look of permanence. He spotted garbage dumps indicating that people had been living here for a long time, possibly a year or more. Were they getting tired of always being on the run, he wondered, or did bin Laden feel safe up here?
A broad path wound its way through the middle of the camp, past the helicopter and some trucks. Without a word, Mohammed and the other two mujahedeen headed over to a low stone building, leaving McGarvey to continue with Sarah. On the other side they started up the steep hill, only this time there was no path; nothing to mark that this was a well-used route to anywhere.
McGarvey was tired of climbing up and down mountains, he was hungry and he was dirty, and now that he was this close he couldn’t put Alien Trumble and his family out of his mind. If a nuclear weapon, even a small one, went off in New York or Washington or any other major U.S. city, there would be tens of thousands of Alien Trumbles and families. For what? That was the question he wanted to ask bin Laden. Why? McGarvey had killed in the line of duty; he wasn’t proud of it, but he’d never taken the life of an innocent person, and that was the difference between him and men Uke bin Laden. It was that aim of terrorism that he could not get.
Terrorism had never furthered any cause. Never.
“Here,” Sarah said, stepping aside.
Two armed mujahedeen sat fiercely in the shadows behind a pair of large boulders that flanked the narrow entrance to a cave. A tall, slender man with a long, graying beard, thick lips and dark melancholy eyes stood in the relative darkness just inside the opening. A Kalashnikov was slung across his chest, and he held a cane in his left hand. He wore a white head covering and white flowing robes. He was barefoot but he wore a bush jacket against the chill mountain air.
“Good evening, Mr. McGarvey. I am Osama bin Laden,” the man said in English. His voice was soft, his accent British, but there was an underlying tension there, a tightening of his mouth, the corners of his eyes.
“Good evening,” McGarvey said. He did not offer to shake hands, but he felt that bin Laden was waiting for it, taking his measure.
“Salaam alaikum,” Sarah said deferentially. “Hello Father.” They embraced warmly, but then he gave her a stern, disapproving look that nonetheless could not hide his obvious love and pride for her. He was clearly vexed.
“Sallam alaikum,” he said. Peace be to you. “It is nearly time for prayers. We will talk later.”
“Yes, Father,” she replied, lowering her eyes. She turned without looking at McGarvey and headed back down the hill into the camp. Bin Laden watched her go, a wistful expression on his face that curiously made him seem very human, even vulnerable at that moment. His daughter was his weak link, as daughters were for many fathers.
“Children can sometimes be trying,” McGarvey said.
Bin Laden’s eyes zeroed in on McGarvey’s, his face suddenly filled with barely controlled hate and contempt. It was like being next to a volcano that was ready to explode any second. “They are our future.”
“All the worse when young lives are cut short unnecessarily,” McGarvey shot back. He was not willing to back down. That’s not why he had come here. The sonofabitch was responsible for killing a lot of innocent people. “But then there are casualties in every battle. The goal is to avoid the larger war.”
“We got your message, that’s why I’m here,” “I thought you might find it of some interest—”
“You got our attention, all right,” McGarvey cut him off. “There’s a contingent in my government who are chomping at the bit to send the marines in here to wipe you off the face of the earth. There wouldn’t be a whole hell of a lot of people who’d so much as blink if it happened.”
“I didn’t ask for this war,” bin Laden replied angrily. The guards flanking the cave entrance clutched their rifles. “My people did not create the situation. We would have been content to live the way we have always lived. But you wanted your precious oil and you didn’t care who you destroyed to get it. Nor did you hesita
te to invent nuclear weapons and use them. Your government, McGarvey, not mine.”
“Are you trying to tell me that blowing up our embassies and killing or hurting thousands of innocent men and women is the solution?”
“Your government thought so in 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
“Give me a break,” McGarvey said. “That was at the end of a very long war that we did not start. And as far as oil goes your own people are the ones who are profiting the most. Your own father made his billions because of it.”
Bin Laden’s hands went to his rifle. “Maybe I’ll kill you here and now, and send the bomb anyway.”
“Maybe you will,” McGarvey said. “Maybe that’s your plan, lure us out into the open one at a time and shoot us and our families down. Then send the bomb to blow up another one of our embassies, or maybe you’re crazy enough to try to get it to Washington and blow up the White House. Then what? Do you think that we’ll suddenly fold up our tents and go away? Are you that naive? Have you lived up here in the mountains for so long that you don’t know who or what you’re dealing with?”
“A great many people would die.”
“Yes, they would,” McGarvey said. “And not just Americans. We would strike back. The loss of lives on both sides would be terrible and unnecessary. It could even spell the end of Islam; certainly the end of your fanatical movements. Which is the real reason that you called me out here, and why I came.” McGarvey spread his hands. “The ball is in your court, pal. Either shoot me or let’s go inside and talk this out. Maybe we can figure out how to save everybody’s daughters.”
A play of emotions crossed bin Laden’s face, most of them impossible for McGarvey to read because of the vast cultural and religious differences between them. Bin Laden professed that everything he did was in the name of Allah. McGarvey on the other hand was an agnostic. He’d been so close to death so often that he could not believe in some afterlife in which half the people went to Paradise and the other half went to hell. If there was a God, he had decided early on, it rather than He had to be a force simply of creation. What was left was a dependency on civilization; on the good will of men, on the rule of law. Men were gregarious by nature. They formed villages, and communities, and finally states and nations, all predicated on the beliefs that being together was better than being alone; that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. And that the strong protected the weak. When religion spoke to the issues of the afterlife that was one thing, in McGarvey’s estimation. But when in the name of Jesus during the Crusades, and Allah nowadays in the struggle between Islam, Judaism and Christianity, innocent people were killed, that was another, reprehensible thing. The first gave comfort, the latter tore down civilizations.
Bin Laden looked up at the sky to the northeast where the sun was just touching the tops of the not so distant mountains. “It is time for prayers,” he said. There was anger, some fear, perhaps even some pain and something else in his eyes. Something that went even beyond the simple knee-jerk hate of the ordinary terrorist. Bin Laden was anything but a simple man.
“And talk,” McGarvey said.
Bin Laden nodded. “Yes.” He stepped aside, allowing McGarvey to go ahead of him into the cave. McGarvey had the fleeting feeling that he was stepping into the maw of a monster from which escape was utterly impossible.
A narrow, dark passage ran about fifty feet back into the hillside where it opened to a chamber at least forty feet in diameter. From this place and others like it scattered throughout the mountains of Afghanistan, bin Laden managed his war against the west with a very effective hand. But it was just a cave, after all, and the people living in it nothing but animals. The main chamber was dimly lit with hissing gas lanterns. Shadows played on the tall ceiling that sloped toward the back where another narrow opening led even farther back into the hill. Wall hangings were affixed to the rocks, the floor was covered with thick Persian rugs and along one curving wall dozens of cushions were laid out in a semicircle around a large cast-iron brazier on which live coals glowed. The chamber was warm, which was a welcome relief from the chill air outside, but not smoky because air funneled from the back of the cave and out the passageway.
From farther inside McGarvey thought that he could hear the muted hum of men in conversation, and perhaps computer printers; an dover the charcoal smell perhaps the distinctive odors of a great deal of electronic equipment. He could not hear a generator running, but it would be outside somewhere, under camouflage netting.
A tripod held a video camera pointed at the arrangement of cushions where the light was a little better. A cable snaked from the camera along the wall where it disappeared down the dark passage.
On the opposite side, prayer rugs had been laid on top of the carpets, beside which was a wooden stand that held a large ceramic bowl filled with water. Several small towels were neatly folded and lying on the floor.
Bin Laden motioned to the bowl. “Cleanse yourself,” he said. He laid his rifle next to one of the cushions and waited patiently.
The water was warm and scented and felt good, although a hot shower and a couple of beers would have been better. This was Arab hospitality. Bin Laden was watching him with an odd, almost ascetic smile. A Muslim warrior would slit your throat if you were his enemy, but if you were his guest he would treat you kindly. It was a matter of Islamic honor.
A pair of men brought fresh water and switched bowls. When they were gone, four armed mujahedeen came in and quietly hunkered down in the shadows, their rifles between their knees. One of them was playing with the safety catch.
Bin Laden indicated a spot for McGarvey to sit, and he graciously poured tea. “It is time for my prayers.” He gave McGarvey a baleful look. “Don’t make any sudden moves, your actions might be misunderstood.”
“The odds are in your favor.”
“They usually are.”
Bin Laden made a point of searing McGarvey within reach of the rifle he’d laid on the cushions. I’m the boss and I’m confident, his actions said.
McGarvey sipped the strong tea as bin Laden went through the Islamic ritual washing, then kneeled on a prayer rug facing southwest, and began his prayers, softly repeating the Sura Fatihah, which was the opening chapter of the Qoran, eight times.
Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, The Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgment! You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help. Guide us to the straight path, The path of those whom You have favored, Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, Nor of those who have gone astray.
To succeed in chaining the multitudes, you must seem to wear the same fetters. The line from Voltaire ran through McGarvey’s head. Bin Laden was a common man here at this moment, but he was a major figure among Islamic fundamentalists, and had been ever since the ten-year war against the Russians. He was a Saudi rich kid, but he’d come to Afghanistan to help the freedom fighters, putting his money and his life on the line for them, and everybody loved him. He had been bright, soft-spoken, gentle — except to the Russian invaders — even pious and helpful. But all that had changed by the time the war was over and he came back home. He had become a rabble rouser. He wanted to pull the Saudi royal family from power, install an Islamic fundamentalist government and go back to the old ways. The best ways. He wanted to get rid of all foreigners from the entire Gulf region, especially Americans, and he wasn’t afraid to tell anyone who would listen that he thought Americans should be killed whenever and wherever possible, and with any means at hand.
Watching him praying, the words gentle, McGarvey tried to fathom what had happened here to change the man so profoundly. War changed people, but not like that. Something drastic had happened to him here; something so terrible that he had changed from the son of a multi billionaire construction boss who would inherit everything to a terrorist content to live in caves and eat unleavened bread so that he could kill Americans.
The U.S. had supplied money and arms to the Afghanis, and presumably b
in Laden had come in contact with some of the CIA’s field officers out here. It was a reasonable assumption. But McGarvey had found nothing in the record about any meetings; no contact sheets, no incident reports, not even a fleeting mention. It was almost as if the records had been erased or had been altered. Or as if bin Laden himself had purposely avoided contact with the CIA.
Whatever had happened out here during the war was a complete mystery that only bin Laden knew.
Though he denied it, bin Laden had been implicated in dozens of bloody incidents against Americans; the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Khobar Barracks attack, the slaughter of fifty-eight tourists at the Valley of the Kings near Luxor and the bombing of the American-run National Guard training center in Riyadh, the capital city of his own country.
And now this. The biggest one of all. The attack everyone in the West had been holding their breath waiting for. And still McGarvey could not understand why. Where was the sonofabitch coming from?
McGarvey took a closer look at the way bin Laden was kneeling, the way he leaned forward to touch his forehead to the rug. There was something wrong with him. He moved like he was in pain. Was that it, McGarvey wondered. Was it that simple after all? Was bin Laden sick, maybe even dying?
Bin Laden got slowly to his feet with the aid of his cane, a satisfied, almost happy look on his face that was in total contrast to just a few minutes ago. His eyes looked distant, almost as if he was on drugs, and he moved very carefully. He came over and sat down on the cushions, the rifle between him and McGarvey. “It had to have been a long and dangerous trip for you,” he slurred.
“Like I said, we got your messages.” He could see that there was a pallor to bin Laden’s skin, and a slight tremble in his right hand as he picked up his tea.
“I did not order the killings of Mr. Trumble and his family. I don’t work on such a small scale.” His matter-of-fact tone was chilling, almost irrational.
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