The Reykjavik Assignment

by Adam LeBor

  Najwa entered “Hafiz Bakshari KZX” into the Start Page search engine. A handful of other specialist newsletters dealing with the Middle East had picked up on Bakshari’s claims, as did a couple of Iranian and Iraqi opposition websites. The mainstream US media had also briefly covered the affair. In response KZX stonewalled and threatened libel writs. As Bakshari could not name the German scientist or produce another witness, the story faded away. Najwa continued scrolling until she came to a story in the Washington Post that gave her a chill as she read it. A month after giving his interview, Hafiz Bakshari had been killed in a hit-and-run accident in North Dakota, where he had relocated.

  *

  Clarence Clairborne sat in the leather armchair in the corner of his office, a heavy leather-bound volume in his hands. The climate in the room was carefully controlled at 68 degrees Fahrenheit, and the air was automatically replaced every four hours. But his shirt was damp and creased, sticking to the back of the armchair. He forced his right leg against the floor, trying to control the twitch in his thigh.

  The ceiling lights were turned down low. A cone of light from the reading lamp next to the armchair fell on the dense text, and the heavy yellow paper glowed as though it was illuminated. Clairborne glanced at the man sitting in the armchair next to his. The visitor looked like he had stepped out of a magazine advertisement promising health and wealth to financially prudent seniors. His carefully barbered white hair shone under the light of the reading lamp, and his pink skin radiated vitality. He wore blue formal trousers and a crisp, starched button-down shirt that matched his clear blue eyes.

  “Clarence, what happened to your hand?” asked Eugene Packard in his rich and sonorous baritone.

  Clairborne shrugged. “It’s nothing. An accident.” Samantha had come in earlier to clear up the mess but Clairborne could still smell the spilled bourbon. So could Packard, judging by the way he breathed in through his nose and the knowing expression on his face. He nodded, indicated that Clairborne should read.

  Clairborne picked up the book. “And there were lightnings, and voices, and thunders …” His voice, usually a deep boom, was a weak murmur. Clairborne coughed and drank deeply from the glass of water on the side table. His leg twitched again.

  Eugene Packard smiled and laid a manicured hand on Clairborne’s arm, as though he was reading his mind. “Clarence, take a breath. Slow down. We all have our own ways to get through the trials and tribulations the good Lord sends us.” He laid his fingers on the edge of the book. “This has been with us for two thousand years. It’s not going anywhere. Start again.”

  Clairborne nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment, opened them, and then focused on the text in front of him. “And there were lightnings, and voices, and thunders. And there was a great earthquake, such a one as had never been since men were put on the earth, such an earthquake, so great.” He sounded more confident now, drawing strength from the presence of the man sitting next to him. “And the great city was divided into three parts and the cities of the Gentiles fell. And great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the indignation of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found.”

  Packard smiled. “The islands fled away, and the mountains were not found. Such language. Very good, Clarence. Carry on.”

  Clairborne continued. “And great hail like a talent, came down from heaven upon men, and men blasphemed God for the hail, because it was exceedingly great.”

  Packard held up his hand.

  Clairborne stopped reading. He looked at Packard.

  Packard’s smile had vanished. His eyes were now glacial, his voice flat. “But the hail did not come down from heaven, did it Clarence? It did not come down from anywhere. And certainly not from a car that had been parked in a garage on New York Avenue in Washington, DC.”

  Clairborne swallowed, his tongue dry against his palate. “Yes. No. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.” He reached for his glass of water.

  Packard’s hand snapped around his wrist, holding it suspended above the side table. “What went wrong, Clarence? Do we have a leak?” The preacher’s eyes drilled into his. “A traitor, perhaps?”

  “No, no, of course not. It was just bad luck. An attendant in the garage was suspicious. He called the cops. Everything is on high alert here.”

  “Are you still a believer, Clarence?” asked Packard.

  Clairborne glanced at the photographs on the wall of him with three previous presidents. These men, each in his time the leader of the free world, had all sought his company and counsel. Soon after their conversations, inconvenient regimes had collapsed, revolutions had imploded, social justice movements had withered away, activists had been arrested or killed in mysterious auto accidents. Clairborne had helped remake the world in his own image. He had built his company from nothing. He had more money than he could ever spend, but could continue to name his price for any one of the multiple services his company provided, to be paid by bank transfer to a range of accounts or even in cash. Yet this elderly preacher made him feel like a nervous teenager. He nodded decisively. “Yes, sir, I am. In Jesus Christ our Lord, absolutely.”

  “And in the prophecies of John of Patmos?”

  “Those too. More than ever, as the day approaches.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they are true.”

  “And what do they tell us?” Packard’s grip tightened on Clairborne’s arm.

  “Rapture is coming.”

  “Rapture.” Packard smiled, an almost dreamy look in eyes. “Do you remember the last verse of Revelations, Clarence?”

  Clairborne nodded again. “I do.”

  “Recite.”

  Clairborne sat up, his back straight, his voice louder now. “And he said to me: Seal not the words of the prophecy of his book: for the time is at hand.”

  Packard released Clairborne’s wrist. “The time is at hand, to vanquish the Antichrist. But sometimes even the Lord needs a helping hand. A hand to clear away obstacles.” He reached into his briefcase and handed Clairborne a brown paper file, a small photograph stapled to its front. “You know what to do with this?”

  Clairborne glanced at the photograph. Yael, frozen in midstep, as she walked toward her apartment building. “Yes, sir,” he said, “yes, I do.”

  13

  Najwa scribbled on her pad, trying to put her thoughts in order: Abbas Velavi, Hafiz Bakshari dead. Salim Massoud?—KZX? Like spies, journalists sought patterns, similar incidents involving the same, or connected, actors. The pattern was forming now. Was the envelope from Bakri? He was certainly the most likely suspect, especially as the writing was in Arabic. If so, he was telling her that Salim Massoud, whoever he was, was killing Iranian dissidents and had also killed Henrik Schneidermann. But why? And what was Bakri’s agenda? Despite his admiring glances, he certainly wasn’t passing this material to Najwa to boost her career.

  The Arab League might be derided as a hopeless talking shop, but it was also a place where neighboring countries met and agreed on a common agenda. None more common than that shared in the Gulf, where Saudi Arabia and its neighbors were united in their fear and hatred of Iran. The rivalry between the Arabs and Persians for control of the Gulf, indeed for the whole of the Middle East, reached back centuries. The Persians, whose culture had produced masterpieces of art, architecture, and poetry, looked down on the ascetic Bedouin of the Arabian Peninsula. Religion introduced an extra dimension to a classic regional power struggle. The Saudis were Sunnis and the Iranians were Shiites. Because of a schism rooted in the death of the Prophet Muhammad, who was predeceased by his sons and did not designate a successor, each regarded the other as apostates.

  Most of Muhammad’s followers supported Abu Bakr, his father-in-law, and became known as Sunni Muslims after the sunna, the teachings of Muhammad. But a smaller group, the shiaat Ali, or partisans of Ali, claimed Muhammad had anointed Ali, his son-in-law, as his successor. The two branches went to
war. Ali’s son Hussein, Muhammad’s grandson, and his companions were massacred at the battle of Karbala, now in Iraq, in 680. Millions of Shia Muslims traveled there every year for Ashura, which commemorated the battle.

  So it was in Bakri’s interest to direct Najwa toward an Iranian connection to Schneidermann’s death. The Saudis were enraged by the nuclear deal between the United States and Iran. In exchange for strict controls of Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions were being lifted. Anything that was bad for the Iranians was de facto good for the Saudis. But there had to be something in his steer. And Najwa’s instincts told her that there was indeed an Iranian link. The Middle East was in turmoil as the Islamists advanced. Old certainties were evaporating, new alliances sprouting. Tehran was winning its struggle for influence and the Shia crescent now ran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Just this week she had watched a report on how America and Iran were cooperating against the Islamists in Syria and Iraq. The Pentagon denied it, but there were increasing reports about intelligence-sharing, even special forces working together.

  The Saudis and their allies were left standing on the sidelines, furious and fearful that Iran’s strategic victories might foment an uprising among their own restless Shia minorities. After all, Shia Islam had been the engine of the revolution in Iran that overthrew the Shah and brought the ayatollahs to power. Centuries of oppression and persecution at the hands of Sunni rulers hardened the Shia, who celebrated martyrdom and were known for being skilled at subterfuge, conspiracy, and secrecy. And amid this state of flux and confusion, the White House was flailing, assailed by enemies within and allies without. The Saudis and their neighbors were deeply worried by the uncertainty in Washington, and were developing ever-stronger secret ties with Israel’s defense and intelligence establishments. The news of the car bomb in DC would only increase their anxiety.

  Along with about 80 percent of the Muslim world, Najwa had been brought up as an observant Sunni. Sunni Islam was an egalitarian faith without a formal clergy, whereas Shia Islam had a clergy and a carefully delineated hierarchy, at the top of which sat the ayatollahs. As an adult, she did not pray or go to the mosque, but neither did she deny her faith and her roots. If asked, she answered that she was a Sunni Muslim. Her Western education and time living in Europe and the United States triggered complex emotions about her heritage. She felt a powerful loyalty to the Arab world, but burned with frustration, even anger, at the chaos and bloodshed across the region and the failure of so many Arab governments to provide even basic services for their citizens, let alone human rights and freedoms.

  Najwa picked up the remote control on her desk, pointed it at the LED screens on the wall, and pressed a button. Each television was tuned to a different station: Al-Jazeera English, Al-Jazeera Arabic, BBC, and CNN, but all four showed the same footage. Renee Freshwater, dressed in a white blouse and black jacket, with her black hair tied back and her strong features tight with determination, sitting at her desk in the Oval Office. Najwa turned up the volume:

  “We utterly condemn the barbarous attempt at a terrorist outrage tonight in our nation’s capital. A catastrophe has been averted, a catastrophe that would have taken dozens of lives and maimed many more.”

  A former United States ambassador to the United Nations, Freshwater had begun her career in the State Department, where her reputation as a liberal was solidified after she called for the United States to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. Her election had enraged Republicans, and more than a few southern and conservative Democrats, but in the beginning she rode a powerful wave of public support. Her first couple of years had seen a tsunami of legislation as she forced through an amnesty for illegal immigrants and reforms for labor law and banking regulation, infuriating both Wall Street and K Street, the avenue in Washington, D.C., where powerful lobbyists congregated. Now, after three years in office, the luster of being America’s first female president—one with Native American ancestry—had long faded. The Republicans had declared open war on her administration, aided by their covert allies in the Democratic Party. Her proposed bill to bring back all outsourced military and security functions from the private sector to government had been quickly vaporized by a bipartisan filibuster. In Syria, Freshwater had pushed hard to back the moderate Syrian opposition and called for airstrikes after the Assad regime gassed its own people. But the moderates were abandoned and the airstrikes never happened, and Najwa had heard from several sources that sections of the American intelligence agencies saw President Assad as a bulwark against the Islamists and were secretly cooperating with him.

  Either way, power was leaking away from the White House and down the corridors of Capitol Hill to those of K Street. Freshwater’s husband Eric had been killed in a strange skiing accident ten months ago. Despite her efforts, and the involvement of multiple government agencies, there had still been no concrete answer as to why his bindings had failed and he had hit a tree. The president herself was still recovering from Isis Franklin’s attempt to poison her. Losing Eric had garnered sympathy and brought a truce from her political enemies for a couple of months. The assassination attempt in Istanbul had brought temporary respite—but this time for just a few days. After that, her enemies used it to pillory her, asking how she could protect America if she could not protect herself. The president was once again dubbed “Dead-in-the-Water,” hobbled by Congress, dismissed by the ever-louder right-wing media as a one-term wonder before America recovered its senses.

  Freshwater continued talking, her praise of the police and emergency services presumably read from a teleprompter in front of her desk. Then she paused and looked directly into the camera, her dark eyes blazing with anger. “Whoever planted this cowardly bomb: I know you are watching. So listen up, because I have a message for you. I don’t care whether you have an army of forty or forty thousand. Know this: We are coming for you. We will never give up. The United States of America will hunt you down, will find you, and make you play.” She blinked once, then paused for a fraction of a second. “Make you pay.” Each channel switched back to the studio.

  Najwa grimaced. She switched off three monitors and changed the channel on the fourth to Fox News. The blowback about the president’s stumble would be instant. A ticker across the bottom of the screen already announced: Freshwater blunders over DC car bomb, promises to play with terrorists. The host currently live was Beau Clarkson, a former communications director for the Prometheus Group. A portly man nudging sixty, he turned to his guest, Heather Bowles, a Tea Party–backed congressional candidate.

  “Heather, how is our commander in chief going to track down the DC bomber when she cannot even finish a sentence?” he asked.

  Bowles, a rangy brunette in her forties, laughed out loud, throwing her head back before she spoke. “Beau, this is what I have been saying all along. It’s barely ten days since the president survived an attempted assassination. Lord knows, I have plenty of issues with the president, but this was a heinous attack not just on her, but on America and its values. She can’t speak properly, let alone command an intensive counterterrorism operation. She needs a rest. A long one.”

  Clarkson nodded, and looked serious. “But the White House doctors say she is fit to return to work.”

  “The White House doctors.” Bowles snorted derisively. “You and I both know she was never fit to start work. We still don’t even know what kind of toxin was administered. Ten days ago the president nearly died, and we are supposed to believe that she can run the country when we are under attack? The DC bomb could have been the worst terrorist outrage since 9/11, in the heart of our capital. We need leadership from the White House. We don’t need an invalid in the Oval Office.”

  Fox News was leading the charge, but Najwa knew an army would quickly go on the attack. She watched Clarkson and Bowles’s back-and-forth for a couple more minutes, then checked her Twitter feed on her computer. A hashtag was already trending: #playdeadinthewater

  She shook her head and switched off the television.
Najwa was an experienced reporter, but the public capacity to generate vitriol and hatred still had the power to unsettle her. The speed and timing of the tweets indicated a high level of planning and organization. Whoever was directing the Twitter storm had been waiting to pounce. Even if Freshwater had not stumbled, the attack would have been launched anyway on some other pretext. It would not be difficult, she knew, to whip the same people up into a frenzy against Al-Jazeera, or even her personally.

  She glanced at the door to the office. Not for the first time, she worried about security. This building was full of spies, many of whom were intensely interested in the work of the Arab world’s most influential television station. She had thought about asking for a CCTV link to the Safety and Security Service operations room, but that would mean staff there could watch her and her colleagues while they were at work so it wasn’t an option. And in any case, who knew who was watching the UN? Back in 2004, a British politician in then prime minister Tony Blair’s government had caused a scandal by revealing that the SG’s office was bugged by MI6, the British foreign intelligence service. The ensuing furor resulted in wry smiles throughout the complex, for this was hardly news to UN insiders. A door code and an alarm were adequate protection against thieves. But a hostile organization, like the Saudi Mukhabarat or Iran’s secret service, known as VAJA, would easily be able to get past them.

  Her phone beeped, so she picked it up and looked at the screen. A new tweet from a prioritized account: @darkstone

  D.C. bomb was loaded with shrapnel. Pieces now being tested for possible chemical/bio-contaminants. Who or what is Al-Jaysh al-Arbaeen?

  Najwa processed what she had just read. Contaminated shrapnel. Ugh. New York Avenue led directly onto Pennsylvania Avenue near the site of the White House. The streets around the president’s residence were always packed, with tourists and locals, and the carnage would have been terrible. The claim of responsibility by the Army of Forty had appeared from nowhere, sent to the news agencies. @darkstone was asking the right question. All Najwa knew was that Jaysh was Arabic for army while Arbaeen meant forty.