“Fellow members,” she continued, “we will soon spend billions on homeland security and yet we continue to have foreign nationals lured away from terrorist susceptible third-world countries working within information technology organizations located in this country. We do this under the guise of “economic feasibility”. It is more cost effective for American big business to employ foreign programmers, system designers, software architects, and information system users at substandard pay than it is to employ United States citizens and legal immigrants. As a result, there is a gaping hole in our national security that is growing larger every day. A dark void conceived by greed and nurtured by profit. I suggest to you that al-Qaeda and other known terrorist organizations may already employ lawyers, bankers, and accounting experts to conceal illegal gains as legitimate income or profit by ingenious state of the art innovations that abuse legitimate financial institutions, and high technology companies contracting and subcontracting to our government. Once these profits are reconfigured as legitimate profit or income, it is comparatively easy to reinvest in terrorist organizations, expand their capabilities within drug trafficking, financial fraud, intellectual property theft, firearms and weaponry theft, thereby expanding their operations and destabilizing our government. That is how they will win, if we do not act immediately. Here are my recommendations...”
EPILOGUE
Emily Byron Cowan’s recommendations to her committee for review and action became the basis for further governmental financial pressure freezing terrorist assets. The ISIS Project’s ongoing investigation revealed legitimate businesses owned by Osama bin Laden, such as Ladin International, an export-import firm, Taba Investments, a currency trading group, various construction companies responsible for building roads and bridges in terrorist cell friendly nations, an agricultural holding company trading in peanut farming, sunflower and sesame oil, corn, gum arabic, and ceramic manufacturing as well as commercial firms dealing with electrical appliances. Many of these provided instant cash resources for al-Qaeda cells worldwide. Other assets were derived or wholly funded by charitable organizations later learned to be allied with Jihadists, but with the use of unregulated yet minimal cash transfers within the Islamic banking system, such leads proved impossible to trace. Links to big business were taken under advisement and the war against terrorism continued. By design or default, Osama bin Laden would remain forever free.
The Task Force continued to convene until the liberation of Iraq, when a new committee was created under the auspices of a Washington think tank subcontracting to Homeland Security. The members of the ISIS Project task force did not keep in touch, save for Liam Nevan and Sinead O’Malley who contracted to the Iraq Liberation Task Force. Ms. O’Malley was the deciding factor in the identification of the corpses of the sons of Saddam Hussein. Nevan International Security was subcontracted by the Bethesda Institute to create a security system for Afghan President Karsai during his country’s restoration. Liam Nevan remained close to the Cowan family and, after careful thought, though with much disappointment, attended the celebration of the engagement of Haley Agar to Idris Farrukh.
Aunt Yacouta D’Aboville remained in Egypt, continuing her life as a socialite while frequently entertaining Yassir “Tony” Shallal, who was now attached to the British Embassy in Cairo.
Amahl received political asylum, attends a Islamic private school in Michigan and has settled into the American lifestyle. He will complete medical school and return to work with his Uncle Mason in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A marriage has been brokered on his behalf with a relative of Dr. Safiya Desai.
Khashar left Afghanistan, surrendered his U.S.Citizenship and returned to Northern England and his wife Fahima. He lectures at The School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool where he hopes to gain tenure. Both he and Amahl retained their Yemeni diplomatic passports, preparing for the eventual and perhaps inevitable emergency call from the Desai family.
Masud and Humera Ansari still maintain their quiet life in Paris, waiting daily for the release of their son, who remains to date isolated in a six by ten foot prison cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, now known to the government types as “Gitmo”, offering his daily prayers for the blessing and safety of his mentor, Osama bin Laden.
AFTERWORD
On December 31st, 2003 Emily and Harrison Cowan celebrated their 26th Anniversary. They received congratulatory telephone calls from family and well-wishers all over the world, and for this Emily was particularly thankful. Earlier that morning, just before dawn in the bitter cold, she left her home for her daily walk on the beach with her two dogs. Emily was now almost fifty-five years old and recognized fully the annoyances that came with her advancing age. As was her morning routine she centered her thoughts on life with her beloved husband and then on Mason and Haley who were both separated from her. Haley was now on sabbatical in England with Idris, who was awaiting transfer to the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. and Mason was living in Pakistan where he had in his care, his father’s wife, her son, his half sister and her husband. Mason had married Safiya and the harsh, wild border country between Afghanistan and Pakistan was now their home. Emily was in fear of his future, but as always, she gave her children to the spiritual care of the Great Mother.
As she concentrated on her breathing, staring at the winter sun dancing on the water, Emily dedicated, as was now her daily ritual, the morning to the souls of the people who died on September 11th 2001. She remembered with deep sadness the young law enforcement student Tedeuz Michalak, who had perished along with his sister in the Twin Towers that terrible day. The fragments of his broken lifeless body, like so many other victims, had not been brought home for burial.
The morning air was frigid as Emily walked to the icy waters edge. She raised her arms, embracing the red morning sun. Now in perfect harmony both with nature and her newly discovered sense of being, Emily lifted her voice in song. “One More Circle” celebrated the New Year. It was written by a singer named Peter Mayer from Minnesota whom she’d heard several times at local folk concerts. And so, gazing at the sun, releasing herself from the past and welcoming the future, Emily Byron Cowan, formerly Amina Desai, both friend and observer of terrorists and spies rejoiced.
“We have raised our fists in anger and we’ve tried,
To work it out, work it out,
That we need each other, we cannot deny
There is no doubt, there is no doubt
Let us weave another dream in outer space
While we’re turning, while we’re turning
On this planet home that holds our human race
Still are learning, all in all;
I’d say this year in flight together has been a good, good one
What say we make one more circle ‘round the sun”
THE END
Circle Around the Sun Page 64