by Giles Foden
Afterwards his mentor told him, privately, that he had been chosen a long time ago, as a superior figure to those who’d trained with him, and that soon his talents would be called upon in a special way. Zayn added that Khaled must nonetheless remember that knowing when to conceal superiority is a further proof of it; he wasn’t to tell anyone else about his special status at the camp.
The headquarters used to be in Peshawar, in Pakistan. In those days al-Qaida was something like a charitable foundation, providing funds and facilities for volunteers on their way to Afghanistan to do battle with the Soviets. The Emir had run a number of safe houses and hostels in the city, offering accommodation for fighters from abroad, together with health care for refugees from the war. The CIA had helped him in that time, Khaled had heard, before the Russians left in ’89.
Now they were the enemy, and the camp was in Afghanistan itself. Khaled raised his eyes to find the sight at the end of the barrel. Before the rock face opposite him was a line of targets. They weren’t Americans, these black-lined sketches of charging soldiers, but he, like all the trainees, was encouraged to believe they were. Once, a magazine picture of the queen of the kufr, Madeleine Albright, was pinned up for them to shoot at. The previous night, they had been shown videotape from a news programme called 60 Minutes, in which the Secretary of State said she thought sanctions against Iraq were worth the price of the half million children they had killed.
Zayn blew his whistle loudly. Khaled and the others pulled their triggers. The valley erupted with bursts of automatic gunfire. Splinters of rock flew up ahead as the bullets passed through the images and hit boulders on the mountain beyond. The young man squinted to see how he had done. It was a good set of rounds: one line across the chest, another raked across the lower abdomen. These were killing shots. Zayn Mujuj would be satisfied.
Khaled waited – lying on the ground, rifle in hand – as the leader of their cell, walking behind them with binoculars, checked their shots. Although he often found Zayn frightening – with his shaven dark head and heavy shoulders, and those intense, coal-black eyes – to Khaled this brooding figure was all the same a kind of surrogate father. For it was Zayn Mujuj who had cared for him, bringing him off Pemba, Zanzibar’s second island, and giving him a new life.
His benefactor made an approving noise behind him.
‘This is sufficient,’ he said, tapping the youngest member of his cadre on the ankle with his foot.
Khaled rose and Zayn, clutching him to his huge chest, kissed him on both cheeks, laughing.
‘More than sufficient! Soon, my little greenfinch, you will be as good a marksman as I.’
Then the cell leader spoke more loudly, so all the fighters could hear.
‘Return now. Make your ablutions and your prayers. Tonight the Sheikh will see us.’
The Sheikh. The Prince. The Emir. The Director. Khaled had not seen him. He had another name, but it was rarely spoken.
*
The man in question was sitting in his tent in conference with one of his closest advisers, who was also his personal cameraman. Leaning on the wall next to him was the 7.62-millimetre-calibre Kalashnikov that rarely left his side. It was well worn, with little dents and abrasions on its laminated wooden stock. It might be thought something of a trophy, gained as it was during the course of a three-day assault on a Russian position.
The adviser was known as Ahmed the German simply to distinguish him from other Ahmeds in the organisation. His true nationality was Jordanian and he had picked up the nickname because he had spent time studying in Germany. He was slightly fairer than most Arabic people – a hint of blue in his eyes, a touch of blond in his hair. He was more or less the only person in the camp who wore Western dress as a matter of course – including a trademark baseball cap with the words ‘SPORT TEAM OSNABRÜCK’ across it. He was permitted this indulgence because he frequently travelled in Europe and America on al-Qaida business, and because he was one of the Sheikh’s favourites.
Ahmed knew the leader of al-Qaida well enough to speak to him in familiar terms. ‘You are looking a bit weary, Sheikh. Your face has more lines in it.’
The face to which he was referring was long and thin. Its most striking feature was a pair of sharply arched eyebrows, which curved a good way down the side. The Sheikh’s lips were rather full, and he had a straggly, longish black beard with a fork of grey directly under the chin. Otherwise, it would be noted that his eyes were light brown – with a range of expression that included a distant stare, burning anger and a certain dreaminess of aspect. It was true, too, that the Sheikh smiled a good deal.
He was smiling now, as he spoke to his colleague in Arabic. ‘It is the burden of the work. And what the work might provoke. We do not yet know what the consequences of our action will be. Only Allah has foreknowledge. But I predict that when this thing is done, the Americans will put a price on my head, offering millions for my capture. Or they will send people or missiles here to kill me. Whatever is the case, I will accept my fate, relying on Allah.’
‘Inshallah, you will be safe. But you must not tire yourself.’
The Sheikh laughed. ‘Your concern is touching.’
The cameraman shook his head doggedly. ‘We need you. All of us need you. You are the only one whom all respect. You are our cornerstone.’
The Sheikh lifted a hand to Ahmed’s cheek. On one of his fingers he wore a gold ring with a large ruby set in the centre.
‘I am just the instrument of Allah, as this is my own hand. No more. This work we are doing will not stop if I am gone.’
The Sheikh let his hand fall. ‘Now, you are ready for the surveillance? I am also relying on you to marshal the activities of the forward teams, and extract them without notice. This is a crucial factor.’
‘I will leave after the instruction,’ Ahmed said. ‘Nairobi first, then Dar-es-Salaam. I will have the tapes sent here by courier, using one of our own people.’
The Sheikh fixed his eyes upon him. ‘I have decided to fast until you reach the continent of Africa. Let me know when you do.’
Ahmed nodded slowly, looking back at his master. ‘It is good. Now, we must prepare. They will be coming for instruction soon. First I will fetch the others and we will pray.’
‘Prayer is Allah’s due.’
‘It does belong to him and him only.’
With that, Ahmed salaamed and left the tent. The Sheikh walked over to the place where he made his ablutions, lifting up a canvas flap to reveal a china bowl on a wooden stand, half full of water. There was also a small square hand mirror, set in a plastic frame. With long, thin fingers, he picked it up and gazed into the glass, examining his own reflection, in the surround of soft pink plastic.
‘And so it begins,’ he said to himself.
But even as the words passed his lips, they were swallowed by the prayer call, echoing through the camp.
Allaaaahu akbar allaaaahu akbar!
The Sheikh made a mental note to have someone fix the Tannoy more securely to its wooden post.
* * *
With his lecture notes resting on his lap, Queller sat in a rented Lexus. He was in the car park at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security headquarters, Washington. On the seat beside him was a volume of Persian poetry and a bottle of mineral water. Only he wasn’t studying his notes, or even thinking of opening the plastic top of the bottle, or the book at a page of Hafiz or Attar. He was watching girls.
Two, playing tennis on a court adjoining the car park. They were pretty evenly matched. Pretty, too. Although it was not given to him to know it, they had played together nearly every morning of the year-long DS training course.
As the blonde called out ‘Forty–love,’ the other – a darker, more intense, luxuriant type whom Queller liked better – picked up the ball where it had run to the edge of the fence. She turned and approached the baseline. She looked good as, holding out her racquet arm, she tossed the ball up freely. She brought the racquet back over her shoulder. Quelle
r gazed in frank admiration as the girl’s white sports smock, already sleeveless, tightened with the motion.
Man, she looked good. Oval green eyes. Rich dark-brown hair, a pale, clear complexion. She reminded him of his wife. Strong, but easy on her feet at the same time. Beautiful, but not in the way magazines or Hollywood conceived it: something more particular to do with the curve of the cheek, the shape of mouth (a pomegranate, opening) and a curl of hair at the nape of the neck. Just a minute, and he was back in a world of hope. A refuge where she existed still, before the terror had crept – like a long, slow serpent – over the horizon.
He spun silently in his memories, feeling worn down, craving the taste of times gone by, wishing his body could have hers beside it once more. And be itself again, not denounced, over every inch of skin, by its own history. Queller was sixty next year and he thought a lot about decay. Time was getting to him: his hair was oyster-grey, his skin chalky, there were deep lines cut in his face and heavy swags of flesh under his eyes. Yet all people noticed was that one particular VDM. A Visual Distinguishing Mark, as the intelligence dossier would put it. Something missing. Today, however, he was wearing the artificial. He hated it, but he had a reason. He had a show to put on.
The serve was an ace. It whipped right past the receiver and hit the fence with a rattle. Queller clapped softly, flesh against plastic, and watched the two young women walk towards the bench and pick up their kitbags.
He heard their voices through the open window.
‘Probably our last game, Miranda,’ said the blonde, as they passed along the edge of the court.
‘Unless we both get posted here,’ replied Queller’s favourite, wiping her face with a towel.
The movement stung his memory, and for a few brief seconds she lived again: Lucy.
And then his wife’s ghost and her companion passed out of earshot. Once more the darkness came into his head like a stain. With a last farewell that scarcely reached his ears, she died a second death, falling back again into that same place from which she had come.
* * *
They marched along the spine of the ridge. The rifles – sights folded flush against the barrel – were heavy across their shoulders. At the head of the column was Zayn’s forbidding broad beam. At the back were the three Pashtun bearers with the bandoliers. Their loads were less heavy now that several hundred bright copper cartridge cases had, once again, been spilled in the mountains of Central Asia. Between Zayn and the bearers came the cadre. It included Khaled with his curly hair and young, Arab–African face, and Yousef, the pale Syrian with the awkward body and pencil moustache – silent Yousef who had been with the Sheikh’s organisation for years and was an expert bombmaker.
Khaled shivered as he walked. Through ragged, scarlet clouds, the sun was beginning to set. It was growing cold. Above the flanks of the valley, covered now with an angry red light, stood the Eagle’s Nest and the other peaks of the area. Below him he saw a bleak compound of grey, industrial-style concrete huts surrounded by wire fences and topped with razor coils. It looked like a prison – but for the past year it had been his home.
It was not a very comfortable place, but it was clean and they were well fed, receiving a ration of potatoes, onions, rice and tea every day.
Beyond the fence, on the slope of one of the treeless hills that are a feature of this region of Afghanistan, were the ruins of a mud-hut village and a cluster of green tents. Next to the tents stood an anti-aircraft battery. Two long barrels, gleaming in the dying sun, emerged from the sandbagged dais. This was the Taliban encampment, here to watch the al-Qaida men as protectors but also, Khaled sometimes felt, as guards.
He found them strange, these silent men with their dark beards and wool caps. He could not understand them, and not just because they spoke Pashtun; he could not understand their fierceness, their inflexibility, their intensity. They shared these qualities with Zayn, but there was something else about these fellows. Some of the older ones hunched in blankets over the bonfires had, he knew, been mujahidin, Afghan freedom fighters. They would remember the days when the Russians came in helicopter gunships and hunted them like dogs. But most were in their early twenties, as young as Khaled himself. He wondered what drove them. They had no scar of experience to remind them, to drive them on always in the service of Allah and hatred of a great enemy.
Whereas he – an alien here under these slate-grey skies – he had that. Written in blood on his memory, never to be forgiven. It had nurtured him during the arduous months of his training. All the while – as he fought with knife, or ran with pack, or squeezed the trigger of an automatic weapon – it was the image of his dead parents, lying on the floor of their house on Pemba, throats cut in a zigzag shape, that had given him strength.
Allahu akbar allaaahu akbar …
Hearing the prayer call from the camp, the column hurried its step.
* * *
The tennis players passed into a kind of tabernacle: the asphalt frontage of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. The Bureau – DS as it was known – was charged with the protection of US personnel overseas. Its primary function being to provide a safe environment for the conduct of foreign affairs, it also had a role in protecting the Secretary of State, the staff of foreign embassies, and visiting foreign dignitaries. It was, in fact, these subsidiary aspects of DS work that the young women were discussing.
‘Some do stay, you know, to work in the department and look after the foreign missions. Though I wouldn’t want it myself. I couldn’t see the point of going through all that training just to stick in Washington.’
‘I wouldn’t mind. I could still see Frank … Well, guess we better find out where they sent us.’
‘Shower first?’
They looked at each other, shook their heads in unison, and ran helter-skelter in their tennis kit to the noticeboard in the corridor of the central building.
The blonde girl traced her finger down the list of names. Graham, Kirsteen.
‘Hell, I am sticking here after all. Well, I guess that means another year of Frank. What about you?’
Her companion read it out.
‘Powers, Miranda. American embassy, Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. Executive Assistant (Logistical and Security) …’
‘Wow,’ said Kirsteen. ‘That’s Africa! How do you feel?’
She looked at her friend.
Miranda pursed her lips. ‘Kind of funny. You know, all the time we were doing this stuff, the weapons training, personnel review, construction security, the whole thing … all the time I knew I would end up going somewhere out of the way. Like, I knew it wasn’t going to be London or Paris.’
Kirsteen pulled a face. ‘The shops won’t be so good. Talking of which, I guess we better go get ready. Who are the speakers?’
‘One’s Jack Queller – used to be the top Arabist under Reagan.’
‘The one-armed bandit?’
Miranda nodded, feeling a bit aggrieved that her friend already had this piece of information. ‘They say he’s a kind of genius. A bit weird. Apparently he meditates every day.’
‘What about the others?’
‘Don’t know. Someone from the FBI, I think. We’ll find out at the door. Better get going.’
The two young women emerged from the central complex and headed for their room. Half an hour later, freshly showered and soberly dressed, the roommates were back again, lining up with the other graduates of the DS training scheme outside the lecture theatre.
Miranda felt excited. It was the last stage in the long journey of her training. With this over, she would be able to take possession of that coveted boon, a job in State. She hoped desperately that it wouldn’t be one of those experiences of which the anticipation proved more special and satisfying than the actuality. Her father, although generally an optimistic person, used to say all of life was like that: that only in heaven would we get everything we had been anticipating – and more besides, to be sure.
But then, he was a devout Cath
olic and she suspected this had been drummed into him by a priest. She heard him saying the word ‘anticipating’ again in her head as she and Kirsteen approached the door of the theatre. There was a printed sheet pinned up on the wall-board outside, detailing the imminent proceedings.
* * *
Khaled and the others assembled for prayers. The Sheikh’s construction workers had built a mosque at the camp. The small garrison of Taliban soldiers joined them. As for the Sheikh himself, he prayed alone in his tent.
Khaled knelt on the mat, trying to find some still point in the clamour: the clamour of his mind – any woven material like this still disturbed him – and that of his co-worshippers. The Talibs were very noisy when they prayed. Weeping and wailing, they rocked to and fro with such fervour they sometimes knocked into him. He suspected it was vanity that made them so ostentatious in their worship, rather than true righteousness. For did not the Prophet specifically enjoin us to recite the Koran slowly, so that our merely human ears might hear Allah speak to us with true profundity? And did he not say also that our Lord’s impression upon us was deepest in the silent hours of the night, when his words came to us with genuine eloquence?
But everywhere was the sound of battle. Zayn said politics and fighting happened because of the power of the kufr and the weakness of Muslim leaders. Like the rest of them, he saw America as the Satan of the age, but for him it was specific – the matter of Palestine and its freedom, and US support for Israel. Yousef had told him Zayn’s parents had been killed by the Israelis. So they shared something there, as the Americans and the Jews were one and the same. It was what the Sheikh said in his messages; it was what bound al-Qaida together; it all came down to history.