“Then we can start checking car rentals, airlines, credit cards, cell phones,” Shafer said.
“No problems with a warrant?” Wells said.
“We’ll get a finding from the president. I think even the ACLU won’t mind.”
“Any decision on releasing the names of the bombmakers publicly, if we get them?”
“Duto and the rest of the big-boy club”—official title, the Homeland Security Emergency Interagency Executive Committee—“are heading to the White House to talk about that now. You know the problem.”
The problem, as always, was that publicizing the manhunt might push the terrorists to immediately detonate whatever they had. But putting out their names was also the quickest and most efficient way to find them. The problem was made even more complicated by the fact that the State of the Union was scheduled for the next night. Allowing it to proceed with a nuclear bomb potentially loose would be insane. But canceling it would be as good as telling the terrorists to blow the bomb immediately.
“So what can I do?” Wells said.
“You? Let the machine crank for a couple hours, get some sleep,” Shafer said to Wells. “There’s nothing for you to do now and tomorrow’s going to be a long day. Dream about Bernard if you can. These guys have been careful the whole way and I don’t think we’re going to find them right away even with their names. Bernard’s the closest we’ve come so far and you’re the closest we came to him.”
“I’ll do my best,” Wells said. He lay down on the couch and tried to rest his head on Exley’s lap, but she pushed him off.
“Not now.”
So he shuffled down the hall to his office and lay on the floor and closed his eyes and dreamed of Bernard. Bernard, lying on his deathbed in the Hotel Stern, trying through his cracked skull to tell him the secrets of the bombmakers. Where they were. What their crates held. But then a German agent wearing a bear suit suddenly parachuted into his office and Bernard disappeared. Then Wells was in Bernard’s office again, tapping on the melted keys of Bernard’s laptop, looking at the burned-out screen. He reached down for a sip of coffee—
And suddenly woke.
In Shafer’s office, Exley and Shafer were hunched over his screen.
“Ellis. Jenny. Can you think of any reason why Bernard Kygeli would have a coffee cup from Penn State?”
“Penn State as in Pennsylvania State University in Happy Valley, Pennsylvania? Not a good one.”
“He did. In his office.”
“Kids go there?” This from Exley.
“Don’t think so. They live in Hamburg.”
“Cousins, nephews?” Shafer thinking out loud now. “The BND can give us the names of any relatives he has in Germany. And I guess we get the FBI to look for students with Arab names. Though I’m not sure we’ll be able to bring anybody in without some kind of connection. You’re sure it was Penn State.”
“I’m sure.”
“Forty thousand students just in undergrad. Too bad it wasn’t Swarthmore.”
“There was something else . . .” Wells shook his head. The memory, whatever it was, lurked just outside his consciousness.
“Go back to dreamland, John, see what else you get.”
32
Bashir lay awake, his fingers interlaced behind his head, his wife snoring gently beside him. His last night as a husband. His last night as a surgeon. His last night.
He saw now that he had agreed to help build this gadget without believing they would succeed. Like every Egyptian child, he’d dreamed of scoring the winning goal in the World Cup finals, bringing the trophy home to Cairo. Through grade school, he worked on his kicks, his footwork, even his headers. But on the day he turned nine, playing with his friends and cousins in a dusty park around the corner from his apartment, he’d realized he wouldn’t have the chance. He wasn’t the slowest player on the field, but he was far from the fastest. And though his footwork was solid, his friends—two of them, anyway—controlled the ball so easily that they seemed to have it leashed to a string.
And this was just one little field. All over the neighborhood, all over Cairo, millions of kids were playing soccer. He wasn’t even the best here. How would he ever be the best in Egypt? The realization didn’t spoil Bashir’s love for soccer. He still played, and he still dreamed of playing beneath the lights in Paris or London or Barcelona. But for the rest of his childhood, he knew his vision was nothing more than a pleasant fantasy.
Somehow he’d deluded himself into thinking this project was equally impossible. Even as the stable turned into a machine shop, even after he learned how to forge steel, even after Nasiji and Yusuf arrived in Newfoundland, even after they disassembled the warhead and built the molds and crafted the dummy bomb, even this week as he’d molded the pits, he’d somehow failed to accept the reality of the project. He didn’t know whether his imagination had been too strong or too weak.
Now the bomb was done. He and Yusuf had finished the second piece of the uranium pit three hours before. Bashir had surprised himself with his speed, but then Nasiji’s scowl and Yusuf’s dead eyes were powerful motivators. Nasiji had briefly slid the two pieces of the pit over each other—a step that was safe as long as the pit was in the open air and not surrounded by the reflective steel tamper. The pieces fit together as lock and key. Then they had fused the bottom piece to the hole in the tamper, using a steel cap to be sure that it was exactly centered. The penultimate step, welding the recoilless rifle with the tamper, took only a few minutes. Finally, they’d used high-strength epoxy to glue the waterglass-shaped cap of uranium to the Spear’s high-explosive 73-millimeter round.
And then they were done. The bomb could be fired as quickly as Nasiji or Bashir or Yusuf could load the round into the barrel of the Spear and pull the trigger. After they were finished, Yusuf and Nasiji silently examined their handiwork, backyard barbecuers contemplating a perfectly cooked steak. Bashir puttered around the stable, putting tools in place, wiping down the welding torch.
Finally, Nasiji whistled sharply at Bashir.
“Quit that,” Nasiji said. “There’s no point. We won’t be making another one.”
“Yes,” Bashir said. “I suppose my surgical training, I always neaten up after the operation—” he was stammering now.
“It’s late,” Nasiji said. “Let’s have supper and then to bed.”
OVER DINNER, Nasiji outlined their final steps. In the morning they’d load the bomb and the remains of the Iskander into the Suburban, drive to the final safe house—a place Bashir hadn’t even known about before tonight, a temporary spot where they could stay for a few hours but no longer—and hole up for their final run to Washington. The State of the Union started around 9 p.m. and Nasiji didn’t want them on the D.C. streets for very long beforehand. If the State of the Union was canceled or postponed, they’d assume that their plot had been discovered and that they were being hunted. In that case, they’d head for New York City and try to hit midtown Manhattan. Philadelphia, the city closest to their safe house, was the third option. Before they left, they would upload the video they’d made to several jihadi Web sites, and FedEx copies of the DVD to CNN, The New York Times, and other Western media outlets. Without the beryllium, the detonation probably would be too small to be confused with a real Russian weapon, but the video could add to the Americans’ confusion and increase the pressure for a retaliatory strike.
“Before you sleep, make your absolutions,” Nasiji said, as Thalia cleaned the table. “Tomorrow we won’t have much time. Make your peace with Allah tonight. Think of the reasons you’ve chosen this path. Think of what the Sheikh”—bin Laden—“said before the Crusaders came to Iraq.”
Nasiji pushed back his chair. “Come with me,” he said. He walked outside.
In the dark, under the clean pale starlight, the three men stood shivering. A thick crust of snow covered the trees and the earth, white and silent, reminding Bashir how far he was from home.
“I shall lead my steed and hurl
us both at the target,” Nasiji said. “Oh Lord, if my end is nigh, may my tomb not be draped in green mantles. No, let it be the belly of an eagle, perched on high with his kin. So let me be a martyr, dwelling in a high mountain pass among a band of knights.”
Nasiji reached out his hands for Yusuf and Bashir.
“Tomorrow we descend from the pass.”
A FINE, KNIGHTLY MOMENT. Then Bashir had come to his bed and his wife had clutched at him with the same ardor she’d displayed all week, grinding her hips against his and making the fluttering noises that he’d thought until now existed only on the banned pornographic channels that half of Egypt watched on satellite television. He wondered if she was making love to him, Nasiji, the bomb, or all three at once.
When they were done, she wrapped her arms around him and whispered, “Tomorrow.”
She was nervous, Bashir thought. Understandable. “My love,” he said. “I wish this weren’t all happening so fast. If we had time, I would have sent you home. But it’ll be safer for you to stay here. You’ll just have to tell the Americans when they come that you didn’t know what we were doing, that we kept it secret from you—”
“My Bashir. My husband. I’m coming with you.”
Bashir was silent. He couldn’t have heard her right. “No,” he said finally. “I won’t allow it. You don’t understand what these bombs do—”
“I do.”
He rolled atop her, pushing her down. “You don’t. And as your husband, I order you—”
“I’m coming. Bashir, if they find me here, do you think they’ll believe I had no idea? Why shouldn’t I come? Why shouldn’t I be part of this?”
“All right,” Bashir said. Nasiji wouldn’t possibly allow her along, but for tonight Bashir decided to let her think she’d be included. Otherwise she would never sleep.
“Are you scared, my husband?”
“Why would you think that?”
“There’s no reason to be. This, what you’ve built, it’s Allah’s will.”
“Yes? Did you speak to him?” Bashir tried to smile in the dark, to make his words a joke, but he couldn’t.
“I’m not a prophet, Bashir.” Not a hint of laughter in her answer. “But this I know.” She kissed him again. A few minutes later, her breath eased and he knew she was asleep beside him, one hand wrapped around his arm, her nostrils fluttering, her full lips opened slightly. The sleep of a child. His wife, blessed with a certainty he couldn’t imagine.
33
The Black Hawks from Langley and the Pentagon arrived on the back lawn of the White House just as the armored limousines from the FBI and Foggy Bottom rolled through the E Street gates. One by one, a string of grim-faced men made their way into the west wing of the White House. Midnight had already passed, but each visitor had independently chosen to wear a freshly pressed suit and a smoothly knotted tie. The gravity of this meeting demanded formality.
Inside the White House, they were directed not to the Situation Room, as they’d expected, but to the Oval Office. No one questioned the choice. Like the suits and ties, the Oval Office seemed appropriate. Anyway, the Situation Room was cramped and low-ceilinged and not particularly comfortable compared to the double O.
The meeting had been scheduled for 12:15 a.m. and the president didn’t like latecomers. Duto, the last to arrive, slipped in at 12:13 and took his seat beside the secretary of defense. Everyone else in the room was equally senior: the director of national intelligence, the director of the FBI, the secretaries of state and homeland security, and the national security adviser. Principals only. The director of Los Alamos and the general in charge of Strategic Air Command were waiting by their phones in case the president had questions, but they weren’t part of the meeting.
Duto had been in this office hundreds of times before, but he couldn’t remember a situation as serious as this one. The confrontation with China had been tricky, but they hadn’t realized how tricky until after it ended. At the time, no one had really thought they were facing a nuclear threat. This time they knew better. And until they could narrow down where the bad guys were hiding, they had only two options: tell everyone in the country and create a national panic, or hold the information close while they searched in secret.
Duto didn’t mind letting someone else make the decision. The way he saw it, his job was to lay out the options, maybe pushing one a bit more than another, but never explicitly expressing his opinion unless asked. After the president decided what to do, the agency would carry out his orders as best it could. In truth, though, the CIA’s powers were more limited than either its critics or its supporters believed. Want to invade a country? Call in the army. Hoping for a prediction of what Afghanistan will be like twenty years from now? Get a crystal ball. The agency was neither all-powerful nor all-knowing. It gave its best guesses, did the nasty work that no one else would, and tried not to embarrass the United States along the way.
It was a big, heavy bureaucracy, and Duto spent much of his time just trying to keep it going, and much of the rest keeping it afloat in the even bigger bureaucracy that was the American intelligence community. He didn’t set policy, and he didn’t try to embarrass the president. And so he survived. He’d survived two administrations, a mole, Guantánamo, and that near-miss in New York. He’d survived long enough to defend the CIA’s turf, his turf, from the FBI and the Defense Department, which had tried to muscle in on the covert operations that by right and custom belonged only to Langley. And yet some of his own agents, the very men and women whose turf he was protecting, had the gall to call him a lapdog.
Like John Wells. Duto knew exactly how Wells saw him. And Wells had proven useful the last couple of years, no doubt about it. But he didn’t like Wells and he never would. The guy grated on him. Wells was like Kobe Bryant, Duto thought. Big skills and an even bigger ego. Guys like that always imagined they were indispensable. And they were, for a while. But no one was indispensable. These guys, they lost a step and the game moved past them. The teams were eternal, but the players came and went. One day, Wells would lose a step, too. And when that moment came, Duto would gladly show him the door.
BUT FIRST THEY HAD to get through this night, and the next day.
In the Oval Office, Duto and the other six men waited in silence. No one wanted to be caught bantering about the weather or the Super Bowl when the president arrived. He showed at 12:17, wearing khakis and a blue shirt, thumbs looped into his belt, as if he were about to host a late-night card game instead of discussing the most dangerous nuclear threat the United States had faced since the Cuban Missile Crisis. His chief of staff, a tall man with pasty skin trailed a step behind. The chief of staff’s name was Bob Hatch. Inevitably, and accurately, he was known in the top ranks of the government as Hatchet.
The president nodded at each of the men in the room and sat down behind his massive desk. Tucked under his arm, Hatchet held the briefing book that the CIA and FBI had prepared two hours before. At a nod from the president, Hatchet dropped—not placed, dropped—the book on the desk. It thumped against the wood, the sound of failure. The president put a finger on top of the book.
“Here’s my executive summary. We don’t know where these men are. Nor their names. Nor who’s paying them. Nor if they have a working bomb. Nor their targets. As for the Russians, they’re lying to us, but we don’t know why.” The president’s eyes had locked on Duto. “Director, would you say I’ve accurately summarized the report?”
“Mr. President, I can’t disagree with what you say. However, we have made great progress in the last six hours. We believe that in the next few hours, certainly by sunrise, we will have the names and passports under which they entered the United States. We’re pursuing every possible avenue to get answers to your questions. As to whether they may attempt to use the bombs for ransom, we judge that possibility unlikely, sir.”
The president took his eyes off Duto and glanced around the room. “I hoped this report would help me decide whether I should postpon
e the State of the Union. Or evacuate New York and Washington, God forbid.” He tapped the book impatiently. “Instead I get this. I can’t order any evacuations, not off this. I’m not going to terrify the country until I’m certain what we face. I’m not going to cancel the State of the Union either, though I am going to order the Vice to stay home. Just in case. Until we get more information, I don’t think we should make anything public at all. We’re going to treat this as a law enforcement matter. BOLOs, right? That’s what they’re called?” He was looking at the head of the FBI now.
“Yes, sir. Means be on the lookout for. We send them to the agencies, counterterrorism units at the big police forces—”
“I know what it means and what you do. So we’ll start with that. And if you can nail these guys down to the point where going public would actually make sense, I’ll reconsider.” Again he looked around the room. “I’m not going to do anything as juvenile as threatening to fire any of you. We’re way past that. I am simply going to tell you something you already know. We need to find these men before they blow this bomb. Or it’s over. Understand?”
Silent nods.
“Now, let’s turn to another equally pleasant topic. If we don’t find it. And it takes out midtown Manhattan. Or the Loop. Or this very office. What then? If it turns out that this weapon has come from the Russian arsenal, what then? Do we hit back? With what? We’re going to talk this out for fifteen minutes. Then you’re going to go back to your offices and make sure it never happens. But first. This is a yes-or-no question. We’ll discuss it after. How many of you think nuclear retaliation is justified in the case of a nuclear attack on American soil?”
Duto had thought he’d understood the danger they faced. But he realized, as the president asked his question, that he hadn’t. Not really. The late-night helicopter ride to the White House, this meeting, they’d all seemed almost unreal. No, they hadn’t found the bombmakers yet. But they would, and then the world would go back to normal, and this night would seem almost a dream. Or, more accurately, the crowning moment of his career, the moment that would put his memoirs on the best-seller list.
The Silent Man Page 33