Long known as a trading entry, the Silk Road has always been a meeting place for Pashtun tribesmen going into and out of Pakistan. Favors are few and memories long but bartering as always is a way of life. Weapons, food, spices, livestock and sometimes even children are traded. Above all, political favor is nurtured in this region and it was without difficulty that Mason, Khashar and Amahl ventured in the opposite direction of the now fleeing Taliban Forces and al-Qaeda operatives and on to the village of Garikhil, while all around them the Americans intensified their attack. They had in their possession, should all else fail them, three Yemeni Diplomatic Passports, which were worth tens of thousands of U.S. dollars on the black market. They could also if necessary imply, not altogether untruthfully, that as physicians they had been abducted and forced into working for the Taliban. Their intent was to make contact with a key member of the anti-Taliban underground, an activist physician and foreign aid worker named Dr. Shah. Her name had been given to Khashar during a dialog with a Pashtun woman from whom he’d purchased bread. With great pride she told him that her own daughter had escaped to safety over the border of Iran before the fighting began.
The doctor, they were told, was a living legend, a true daughter of God who had helped hundreds of women and children escape the horrors of the Taliban militia. As the Silk Road was the place to bargain their passage to the village of Enjil in Herat Province, which would pass her clinic, it was over this road that the journey began.
They traveled first by mule over the mountains, always in the direct line of fire of Allied forces. They were prepared to bargain for their safety, if need be, and would offer the medical supplies that they had taken with them on their mule packs, including the coagulants which were in rare supply outside of the military. They also took with them the equivalent of approximately twenty thousand U.S. dollars in cash, which had been provided by Ghulam Ansari as a guarantee of their safety.
It did not occur to Mason Desai that he should recognize the gaunt women in the bloodstained lab coat when at last the travelers arrived in the village of Enjil. Khashar did all the talking, referring to Amahl by name and describing Mason only a western physician trying to leave the war zone. It was when she asked Mason directly when and where he began his training that he saw her stunned, then tearful reaction. Mason answered that he had prepared for medicine as a career when he was two and living in Heidelberg, Germany. He had gone on to say that his Afghan nanny had been a medical student and that she probably had chosen his career for him. She squinted her eyes and asked him in German if he was still her little angel.
“Atiya! My Atiya!” he cried as he picked her up, swinging her around him. His comrades were horrified.
“Atiya, I thought you were in Karachi with your husband. Allah, peace be upon his name, has brought me to you.”
“Masud, did your mother not tell you about the clinic? She has supported us for years, as have many of her friends. I am widowed. This place has given me a purpose since I lost my husband.” She led them into the small apartment next to her workplace.
“Your mother has contacted me. They are worried about you. They have heard many things from people who have seen you, but they did not know you had left the hospital at the training camp. How did you escape the bombing? The camp was the first place the allies targeted. It was obliterated, as was the village below the camp. There have been hundreds of refugees as a result. Many of the injured came here. My staff is small. I have volunteers though, but supplies are down and the allies are not giving us any help. They’re all searching for bin Laden. They don’t care what they hit, village or camp. They do not differentiate. They are monsters. I tell you, if I did not have an identification card as well as a passport and a good reputation, they’d have even killed me last week. The British lined us up outside. We are doctors, nurses; we have identification, Red Crescent and Red Cross badges. It made no difference. They lined us up and searched us. Very rough they were. My younger women were afraid. There are Muslim widows in burquas and they made them disrobe. Can you imagine that? These girls have never removed their veils in front of strangers. One of the men I knew from years ago, his name was de Crecy. I remembered him from the time with your family. He must be very important now, yes?”
“De Crecy. The name sounds familiar,” Mason asked, “Here?”
“Truly Masud, I would not imagine it. He is somewhat older now, aren’t we all? But I remember him. Your mother was afraid of him. I knew him immediately. I did not ask him his name. I felt it was better if I kept quiet. But he wanted to be alone with the women, and so I told him that was inappropriate and that I must remain with them. He did not expect me to speak English, nor did he expect me to be armed. Muslim I may be, I told him, but afraid I am not and I do not wear a burqua. Then I said I was the wife of a high ranking Afghan diplomat in the old regime as well as a physician and I still had powerful friends, if he wished to check he could immediately do so. I held out my cellular, and he apologized and left. The rest of the questioning was done by his men.
“Do you have diplomatic status?” Mason asked her.
“No. My husband is dead, but his reputation is alive and well. As I said, I still have friends.”
“I need a message sent to my mother in America. One that cannot be interfered with. It is very, very important.”
“I can send a ‘runner’ to the border,” Atiya replied, “and we can get perhaps some sort of message sent to the Americans here at the Embassy. I have a close friend at the Pakistani Consulate. Maybe he will help.” And within seconds she had contacted the Chancery at Chorah-e-Amoriat.
One hour and twenty minutes later, a messenger from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the State Department agency with the responsibility for protecting diplomats and embassies was cautiously eyeing a diplomatic pouch for immediate dispatch through Washington, D.C., and ultimately to “The Farm” on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Darryl Hammond, Chief of Security, had been advised by the Ambassador herself that the pouch was on its way and it should not be flagged. Hammond had no idea that it contained a message from the most wanted man in the world to a woman he had met very briefly in a bar in Lebanon thirty years previously, but whose life he had followed with a limited interest for two simple reasons. Osama bin Laden was blessed with a photographic memory. He never forgot a name or a face, and his informants within the American and British intelligence community had given him intricate details of the membership and goals of the ISIS Project and the woman leading it. And so it was that Emily Cowan, Chair of the the ISIS Project received the news that once more she had been used by those in power and her anger knew no boundary
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT
Cape St. Andrew, Maryland, November 2001
The intensified bombing raids and scourging of the Tora Bora al-Qaeda compounds was underway and Emily like thousands of others once again watched what she imagined could be the prelude to World War III, live on CNN. She made notes with the familiarity of a researcher fully cognizant of the sources of the information she gleaned from the media. Emily knew the buzzwords and could read the disinformation specifically targeted to impress a vulnerable people still reeling in the aftermath of 911. She could adequately determine the level of fatalities in the areas so far raided and plot where they would strike next. She checked for mention of prisoners taken, evaluated their appearances and again assessed for level of importance. Emily still remained well ahead of the “goon squad”. Their information would have to be processed by analysts and that would take time, twenty-four hours at least. Then she saw it! The footage of the response of the Arab world to the horror of September 11th. Emily’s stare fixed on the crowds of people screaming “Death to the Infidels”. She saw children, veiled women and old men dancing in the streets, burning effigies of Uncle Sam, holding placards high in the air for the media to film. It didn’t ring true. She’d seen it all before! The celebratory steps of a people overjoyed after the attack on the World Trade Center, the announcer said. Bu
t it wasn’t! She listened to the background voices in the harsh rasping nasal Palestinian Arabic, the language of the street vendors, but they weren’t praising the attack on the World Trade Center. This was old footage. This was from the Gulf War. They were yelling about what they perceived as the American occupation of Kuwait ten years previously, not what was happening now! What the hell was going on here? Why were the American people being led to believe that Palestinians were reveling in the diabolical attack on the World Trade Center? She called the TV station, claiming deliberate disinformation. She requested some sort of follow up. When her call was not returned, she made her decision to leave. She would go first to London, armed with contact information of people she hadn’t seen for years, and then on to Dublin where she would meet up with Sinead O’Malley. From there they would travel to Calais, board the Taurean Express to Mannheim and on to their final destination, Heidelberg.
Emily packed lightly and left for Baltimore-Washington International Airport, catching the 8.30 p.m. flight to London. She had, with her usual courtesy left instructions on Tony Shallal’s message center. “I’m frantic about my son. I need to take a break to think. I’ll be back in a few days,” she said, concluding, “Don’t wait up!”
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-NINE
By the time Tony Shallal realized Emily had left the country she was relaxing outside of Dublin, in a farm house owned by a relative of Sinead. Kieron Doyle, in his sixties and still handsome in a Clint Eastwood sort of way, was a former radical himself and no fan of the English or the troubles he felt they had brought to Ireland. He was trusted to make the calls to the numbers in England that Emily had given him. The contacts were in the south end of Liverpool, an area with a large Muslim population. It never ceased to amaze Emily how may Irish Catholic girls employed as nurses married Muslim men employed as doctors. Whenever this happened, Emily had noticed, the women became more profoundly Catholic, as if to make a point and the men often became more radically Islamist. In the past thirty years she had kept in touch with several such couples, all happily married with militant leanings to both Northern Ireland and the Middle East. In two cases they had been a regular source of information flowing to Emily’s company from all sides of the equation. She brokered information; that was her job! But this time the intelligence she received was to be used toward her own ends.
Emily knew that there was a supply of money flowing into the PLO. She also knew that much of it came from the American Arab population, just as the Irish population frequently funded the IRA. These cash camels filtered into the United Kingdom from Ireland via Dublin and then on to Liverpool, where the money was laundered in much the same fashion as the old days with Sammi’s Bazaar. Collections made at the Mosque for a non-existent but legitimate sounding charity would be ultimately redirected to Switzerland and transferred into several working accounts. Emily’s work with the task force for the past few weeks had enabled her to review Osama bin Laden’s financial structure completely. She had found no reason to suspect that anything other than his own good business acumen had originally and creatively financed al-Qaeda. Emily was however convinced that the new improved al-Qaeda was now completely self-supporting, in large part because of the Afghan drug trade. Not that the American people were remotely concerned with what was really going on in the drug trade. They were vulnerable and all they saw was the aftermath of 9/11. Emily understood that al-Qaeda operations were financed, not only through the sizeable yet discrete contributions of wealthy Saudi families as reported to the American people each time they turned on CNN, but also in part because the United States had, in the Iran-Contra days of the eighties, encouraged poppy production in Afghanistan to raise illegal and non-traceable funds to support its own clandestine efforts.
Unfortunately, when the West declared the Russians the losers of the Cold War, they had omitted to stop backing the Afghan drug trade. Opium was and continued to be the gross national product in Afghanistan. America and her allies had dropped the ball and new and improved, albeit no kinder or gentler enemies had picked up the ball and run with it.
Bin Laden, while himself opposed to drugs and their usage by fellow Islamists, was not averse to propagating the trade for profit with the intent of destabilizing segments of the American population at the same time. The heroin trade, flourishing in unchecked refineries within the border lands of Pakistan, now considered the West’s new best friend, was bringing in millions to al-Qaeda coffers while flowing with considerable ease back to the streets of America and Britain with full government knowledge. The poppy fields of course would not be bombing targets; that honor would be saved for the villages where women and children were ensconced instead. The oil pipelines would also be conveniently avoided, remaining totally safe and secure in order that when the alleged “cruel war” was over, the allied front could still appear heroic, salvage the spoils and make a sizeable profit on the side.
Twenty-four hours later, Emily set the wheels of contact in motion in Liverpool using the numbers she had secreted from the letter Sammi Farouq had written to her husband thirty years before and which she had recorded each year in each of her passports as a telephone contact number. These funds she knew had been utilized in part over the last three decades by her ex-husband to further the Palestinian cause. Her present circumvention would redirect the entire amount plus any interest to a far greater cause. Three additional accounts were then set up in Switzerland with one rolling over to a prestigious investment bank in Cairo, all created within fifteen minutes using six simple online commands. Atiya Shah’s clinic became the recipient of several million pounds sterling as a result. Emily had set up an account in Liverpool with a transfer point in Cairo some thirty years previously for the purpose of laundering money in case of emergency and she had regularly made small token deposits and withdrawals, thereby keeping it active over the years. It was all perfectly legitimate. Anger on her part with the system at large made this a greater emergency than liberating Palestine for Jihadist exploitation. Her only regret was being forced to make a sizeable contribution, termed a “tax” by Kieron Doyle, for his trouble, made in cash so as not to leave a paper trail. A high price indeed for the use of his specially acquired prepaid and therefore untraceable phones.
Finances in order, Emily and Sinead left Dublin for Liverpool by ferry, taking a train from Lime Street Station, then on to London’s Euston Station and finally the Dover-Calais channel crossing to the Taurean Express. Boats and trains were a cumbersome and time consuming method of travel, but they were always blissfully free of any type of scrutiny, outside of the cursory passport check. Emily used the fake identity given her by the British Embassy thirty years previously, which she had updated every ten years via mail at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., who had never bothered to correlate any facial similarities with her other passport. She had used her office address as her main contact point. Since Emily had taken American citizenship, she now actually had three working passports. This trip would require at most two, one of which was reserved for emergency situations only. All she needed was immediate and untraceable access to Heidelberg; from there it was possible to literally vanish and resurface if need be in Pakistan until Mason was found.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY
Heidelberg-Ziegelhausen, November 2001.
Margot Blatz was delighted to see her old friend and neighbor. For many years, Emily had sent research assignments and translations to her and Frau Blatz had built quite a profitable business on the strength of it. The apartment that Emily had lived in decades ago had become Blatz’s office as well as guest quarters for visiting clients. It was no surprise to either Emily or Sinead to find Haley there as well, firmly ensconced in paperwork on her laptop, supported by her favorite wurst salad and pomme-frites and a bottle of Westhofener Steingrube, the family’s favorite German wine.
“He’s at Atiya’s clinic. I’ve talked with him already. Dad and whats-her-name are on their way to Islamabad but he insists on talking with you. H
e says that a diplomatic pouch is on its way to the farm, but if you’re here he has to explain what’s inside it anyway. It sounds very important. I have Atiya’s cell phone number. You might be able to reach him.” She entered the number and within seconds was through to Mason.
“Mother, I have seen HIM. I have talked with HIM. He claims that he was in New Jersey when the Twin Towers was hit. You know this already, that’s why you’re here I know, but the thing is he has Yemeni Diplomatic passports and he can travel at will. No one will stop a diplomat. Moreover, he has arranged for his son to kill him, live on Saudi network TV if the Americans or the Brits are closing in on him. This will trigger attacks on Rome, Paris, Frankfurt and Washington. This cannot be allowed to happen! Millions of people could die, and all for nothing! It will make him a martyr to the cause, and there will be no turning back for Jihad and no chance of peace in the Middle East. Mother, listen to me carefully. I do not know if he is completely insane or whether he his truly a prophet. He has a presence, something I cannot describe; his eyes look straight into your soul. It’s almost as though he hypnotizes you. He places his hands on you and you feel an electric charge. I mean, I cried after he left. I felt like I wanted to follow him forever. I don’t know what he is, who he is, only that when he left it was as though the spell was broken, I was so depressed. When I came out of it, I had to get away from there before it destroyed me. I’ve thought about this for days now. I don’t know what happened; it was like I was bewitched.”
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