Intercept

by Patrick Robinson

  “Well, get ’em to France.”

  “Unescorted?”

  “Hell, no!”

  “Someone better call Sarkozy.”

  “We’ll put four agents on the plane.”

  “Same guys to track ’em onward to Karachi?”

  “No. We’ll change the guard at Charles de Gaulle.”

  “Then what? Chase ’em into the fucking Himalayas!”

  “No, but we can’t let ’em loose.”

  The message came through to Langley that the four terrorists were being transferred to the cells in Indiana Avenue. From that point on, State, the CIA, and the Pentagon moved quickly and aggressively.

  “We need four clear rows in coach class. Then you’ll have to throw people off the flight. You want to go on flying in and out of the USA, you’ll clear those four rows. If I have to I’ll have the president call Sarkozy right now.”

  The Air France agent finally understood that this had nothing to do with tickets, and bookings, and cancellations. Right here was something that looked like a national emergency. And whatever it was these lunatics from the American government wanted, it was obvious they were going to get it. The ticket agent told the CIA official that someone would be back within a few minutes with detailed seat allocations for the flight to Paris.

  Bob Birmingham himself put in a call to an old friend, General Michel Jobert, commander-in-chief of the French equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALs. General Jobert’s headquarters was in the outer suburbs of Paris in Taverny, home of France’s Commandement des Operations Speciale (COS).

  Jobert answered his private telephone and smiled at the sudden sound of the voice of his old friend and golfing partner Bob Birmingham, who was, so far as Michel was concerned, the most useful man in the United States. “Bon jour, mon vieux!” he exclaimed.

  “Hey, Michel,” replied the CIA boss. “We need to talk. The U.S. Court of Appeals just liberated all four of those killers from Guantanamo . . . ”

  “I know,” interrupted the General.

  “You do? It only happened five minutes ago.”

  “I knew five minutes ago.”

  “I should have guessed. But anyway, we now have the problem of getting these guys out of the USA. They’re going to Pakistan, Dulles to Paris, Air France, then Paris to Karachi, Pakistan International Airlines.”

  “And you want me to organize CDG security.”

  “Well, I know your slightly hysterical government will take more notice of you than anyone else.”

  “You will have an escort on board from Washington to France?”

  “Yes, two U.S. marshals, and two of my top guys.”

  “Will you keep the prisoners in handcuffs?”

  “Well, that’s the point. I don’t think we can, not on a foreign airline in international airspace.”

  “Well, why not use a U.S. airline as far as France? That way you can do what you like.”

  “So can you . . . ”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “French customs or immigration could refuse to let them step out onto French soil—then they’d have to come right back to the USA, on their American aircraft, and for us, that is not an option.”

  “You mean if they arrive on Air France, we really have to let them out, and then get them back on a foreign airline as fast as possible?”

  “Correct. And it has to be PIA because Pakistan is the only nation, so far, which has agreed to accept them.”

  “A little co-operation, eh? And the problem goes away.”

  “Precisely. But we shall ask for your help in boarding four CIA men on PIA to track the prisoners into Karachi. We’d like to exchange agents at Charles de Gaulle. The first four will return immediately to the United States.”

  “Bobby, I will take care of it. I’ll send you an e-mail with a couple of contact phone numbers. But it’s all on one condition . . . ”

  “Shoot,” snapped Birmingham.

  “You’re not going to assassinate these characters on French soil, nor will you blow up the aircraft?”

  “You have my word.”

  SOMBRE “COUNCILS OF WAR” were regular in the Mossad’s situation room in the basement of the Israeli embassy on International Drive, Washington NW—as regular as Friday evening prayers for the Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah. There was always something, an atrocity, a Muslim rally or demonstration, hundreds of fanatics pledging loudly their support for Hamas or Hezbollah.

  Sometimes the threat was worse. Sometimes, like tonight, even Ambassador Gavron was in attendance. To the nine men gathered informally in this nuclear bomb-proof room, sipping tea, the U.S. courts had done the unthinkable. Judge Osborne and his colleagues had liberated two of the worst mass murderers in Israel’s recent history.

  These men were very close to being mercenaries, except they killed not for money, but for their God, which made them maniacs rather than professionals. The Mossad knew them both to be members of the hated Soldiers of the Companions of God, an operation born of madmen who believed Hamas was neither tough enough, nor sufficiently effective, to batter a surrender out of Israel.

  Both Ben and Abu had fought Palestine’s Holy War and joined the war being conducted by Osama bin Laden. They were also happy to fight and kill for the Taliban, as comrades-in-arms in the Hindu Kush. This cross-pollination of fighters between jihadist groups these days gave the Mossad the chills, as these highly dangerous commanders moved from Baghdad, to Gaza, and then Kabul.

  And, in their judgment, Ben and Abu were among the most worrying, having been caught for their crimes thousands of miles apart, and yet plainly operating on the same side, striking quite separately against Israeli civilians.

  “Of course,” said Ambassador Gavron, “the problem is the American lawyers. If they refused to represent these scum, this would never have happened.”

  “Well, if they didn’t, surely the sheikhs would simply bring in foreign lawyers?”

  “They can’t,” retorted Gavron. “To try a case in New York you have to be a member of the New York Bar. Same with Washington or anywhere else. They would always need American attorneys—especially to file for a writ of habeas corpus to be heard in a Washington circuit courtroom.”

  “Can’t we get some Republican Senator to make it illegal for a U.S. attorney to represent a foreigner accused by the U.S. military of crimes against the State?”

  “Probably could’ve done it if President Reagan was in the White House,” replied the ambassador, “or President Bush. But not with this guy. He wants these guys freed and sent home because he wants the Middle East to love him when he shuts down Guantanamo.”

  “You mean we have to just sit here and watch these murderers being liberated by U.S. judges because of powerful arguments assembled by U.S. lawyers.”

  “Well stated,” said the ambassador. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Unless of course we were able to discourage them ourselves,” interjected Israel’s military attaché, a cousin of the beloved former prime minister, General Arik Sharon. “Perhaps somehow we should let them know there are powerful world forces that do not approve of their antics in either the prison camp or the courtroom.”

  “They already know that,” said David Gavron. “But the money for their services is enormous. And there have been unscrupulous lawyers since time began.”

  There was a sudden silence in the room, until Itzak Steiner, the youngest of the Mossad cultural attachés spoke up and ventured, “That summation by James Myerson blew the U.S. Navy’s attorney out of the water. That speech made it easy for the judge to find for the petitioners. All that stuff about decency and the American sense of fair play. If he had not done that . . . ”

  “It may not have gone through,” said Gavron. “I agree with you.”

  THE LIGHTS BURNED late into the night at the offices of Epstein, Myerson, and Marsh. Josh Epstein was there as midnight approached. James Myerson and Tom Renton were drinking cups of coffee with him, waiting for word, any word from the underground cel
l-block at 500 Indiana Avenue. And all the while, the other clock ticked on at three thousand dollars an hour.

  The marshals had denied them access to the holding pen under the cast-iron excuse of “national security,” but they had given their word that all four of the petitioners would be on Air France’s morning flight to Charles de Gaulle. This was, of course, news of a mixed blessing, because it meant the billing clock was running down fast.

  Midnight came and went. The billing clock bleeped its special little digital bleep to signify the start of a new day, and the steady accumulation of a new pile of Saudi riyals. That bleep would be the last sound they ever heard, however, as just then, a truly stupendous explosion blew 296 12th Street right off the face of the earth.

  It began in the basement and blasted upward, slamming the building to smithereens, floor by floor, before detonating yet again up near the roof and hurling concrete hundreds of feet into the air. It was an explosion sufficiently powerful to have almost knocked down the Capitol building.

  Shattered gas mains lit up the street like the Fourth of July. And yet there was something professional about the blast. It was narrow, shaped, causing mostly superficial damage to the adjoining buildings, but blowing its target construction to hell and back, essentially vaporizing it.

  The final act on this night of massive destruction took place in the parking lot, when a colossal hunk of masonry came hurtling down from the stratosphere, and smashed straight through the dark blue roof of Josh Epstein’s Bentley. The bodies of Josh Epstein, James Myerson, and Tom Renton were never found. Indeed it was three days before it was definitely established that they had been in the building at all. No one had even noticed the big Mossad transit van leaving the area at around 11:45 p.m.

  And, on the other side of the Atlantic, most of London was asleep at approximately seven minutes after 5 a.m. (local), when an entire office block on London Wall was blown to high heaven in another gigantic explosion, which obliterated the law offices of Howard, Marks, and Cuthbert.

  But no one died, and there were no injuries on the deserted winter streets of England’s capital. The incident seemed isolated, pointless, and utterly random. Nothing appeared to connect the London explosion and the one in Washington, and all evidence had been incinerated. There was not a single document from either law firm that would cast light upon the motives for the destruction.

  Meanwhile a large reception party gathered at 6 a.m. at Dulles Airport to await the arrival of Ibrahim, Yousaf, Ben, and Abu Hassan. Bob Birmingham was there in company with a dozen CIA personnel, two of whom would travel on the Air France flight to Paris. Two of the U.S. marshals escorting the four terrorists to the airport would also travel as far as the French capital.

  There was a group of six officials from the State Department that had provided documentation for the terrorists—tickets, temporary passports with identification, plus cash, Pakistani rupees. The idea was to eliminate mistakes and unforeseen hitches.

  There were several military personnel, four officers from the Pentagon, plus a platoon of armed U.S. Navy SEALs, flown in from Virginia Beach, just in case someone tried something, well, unusual.

  General Jobert had plainly put a rocket underneath Air France and the French government. The airline was insisting the four terrorists remain handcuffed, and three French security guards from the Washington embassy were also booked on the flight. The changing of the guard at Charles de Gaulle was formally in place. The French had insisted and Pakistani Airlines cooperated fully.

  Just after 7:30, the black prison van from the U.S. marshals’ building arrived under police escort and was driven directly to the base of a stairway leading to the rear door of the gleaming white Boeing 777-300 jetliner. The prisoners were led out and their ankle manacles removed. State officials handed them each a brown envelope with their cash and documents, and the CIA men led the way up the staircase.

  There were four complete rows, right at the rear of the aircraft, set aside for the U.S. government group. A blue curtain had been drawn across the area. The four terrorists were ordered into separate rows, and then manacled to the armrest. One guard would sit with each man. Already Ben al-Taburi was joshing and laughing with his man, and, to an extent, so was Ibrahim. The other two remained sullen, their eyes filled with hatred and loathing just as they had been for five long years.

  At this point the regular passengers were boarded, and finally the huge doors were closed, and the Boeing taxied down to the end of the runway for its top-priority take-off.

  Bob Birmingham and his team waited on the hard top and watched the plane rise into the overcast skies. Within moments, it was out of sight. There should have been a brief interlude of pure relief, but there was only a suspended atmosphere of profound foreboding. What now? Where will these guys end up? And how do we prevent them from striking at us again? And perhaps again?

  As far as the SEAL commanders were concerned, there was only one solution to that, and the CIA men agreed completely. But that solution was unmentionable, either in public or in private.

  THE CIA TOP BRASS, with their inviolate connections to paramilitary operations in the more troubled parts of the globe, needed to speak, to make contacts, and discuss the ubiquitous worry of the four freed killers.

  There was a certain amount of criticism in Washington surrounding the recent promotion of thirty-five-year-old Jimmy Ramshawe, a career Intelligence officer, to the director’s chair at the National Security Agency. Jimmy had been moved to the Fort Meade complex several years ago, and his rise had been meteoric, thanks mainly to a God-given capacity to bring even the most elusive issues to the ground. He spent more time lost in thought than rampaging around the various ops rooms, more time pondering than speaking, and much more time drawing correct, cast-iron conclusions than making wild speculations.

  He was every Intelligence officer’s ultimate alter-ego, a natural, with a gift for examining wide-ranging international conundrums. American-born to Australian Naval and diplomatic parents, Jimmy had never lost his Aussie way of speaking. His office was, according to the recently retired ex-NSA Chief Admiral Arnold Morgan, where the “Man from Snowy River meets James Bond.”

  With the retirement of Admiral George Morris, the service chiefs had recommended almost unanimously that Commander Ramshawe be given his shot in the Big Chair, mostly because if he was passed over and left the agency, it would take about ten years for anyone else to catch up.

  The young Aussie American had a colorful background. His father had been an admiral in the Australian Navy, who had risen to military attaché in the Washington embassy, and became a friend of Admiral Arnold Morgan.

  The tall, lanky, young James had been schooled in Connecticut, where he became an outstanding baseball pitcher, later following in his father’s footsteps and enrolling in the Naval Academy in Annapolis. From that point, he began to excel. His stratospheric IQ and capacity for the most infinitesimal detail made him a warship commander in the making. In a way, it was his brain that set him apart, and his brain that tied him up. One of his instructors famously observed, “Ramshawe could end up a second Captain Queeg, counting the fucking strawberries while all hell was breaking out.”

  But the U.S. Navy is masterful at channeling talented people, and it swiftly noticed that Ramshawe’s meticulous and tireless approach to his academic work were the God-given natural talents of an Intelligence officer.

  Jimmy was furious because he saw himself as a potential battle commander, not, as he phrased it, “Fucking George Smiley, friggin’ around at that bloody Kremlin in the middle of Maryland, with a bunch of right weirdos.”

  But the Navy was not joking. A couple of very senior admirals had a surreptitious word with his father, and the Selection Boards offered James a rare three-year tour of duty at Fort Meade, with a gilt-edged promise that if he hated it, his career would be reviewed with the intention of sending him to sea with the rank of Lt. Commander. Ramshawe senior told his son he would be crazy to turn that down, and
Jimmy duly reported to the National Security Agency, where it took the Director Admiral George Morris only two months to recognize him as probably the best young Intelligence officer he’d ever met.

  Ramshawe had just been slotted into the world’s largest and most powerful Intelligence agency: a gigantic global listening center, fluent in ninety-five different languages, plus every possible dialect of Arabic, including Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian, Saudi, Jordanian, and Modern Standard Arabic.

  There were thirty-nine thousand people on the payroll in the NSA, all spread around the sprawling spacious campus, where people operated behind bullet-proof glass walls, in buildings set inside a razor-wire perimeter. There were enough guards to hold back the Red Army, and the military assessed that life expectancy for anyone who broke in was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five seconds.

  And today, sitting in the Big Chair, was Commander James Ramshawe, the rookie from Annapolis, who had started out as some kind of “teacher’s favorite,” and then earned the profound respect of the entire military Intelligence world for his relentless, shrewd and brilliant pursuit of the truth.

  His unassuming Aussie manner made him one of the most popular directors ever, likely to address anyone from a five-star general to the gardener as “mate.”

  Right now, Director Bob Birmingham wished to caucus with Jimmy more than anyone else in the country because this was Jimmy’s kind of problem: keeping tabs on four dangerous but low-profile tribesmen, who would shortly be journeying north through Pakistan, almost certainly heading toward the al-Qaeda training camps in the Swat Valley.

  The questions rained down on Bob: Do we track them? If so, who does the tracking? Do we stay with them? Or do we wait until they head back west, for an operational hit on the Great Satan? Do we get a spy, or a mole, in there? Or do we concentrate on satellite observation? Do we tip off the SEALs to take them out as soon as they cross the high border into Afghanistan? How about a rocket hit with a Predator?

  Bob’s helicopter touched down at Fort Meade. He was driven directly to the office of the new director, where he tapped on the door and entered.