“Fruehauf was managing the handling agents who were processing the Iraqis. According to him, even though the handlers were prohibited from finding out the new identities of the Iraqi dissidents, Fruehauf instructed them to breach protocol when it came to anyone with blatant jihadist tendencies. They kept an unofficial log of the Iraqis’ original identities and who they’d become.”
That sounded sensible to Blackwell. “It wouldn’t have been hard for a good agent to figure it out. Just follow their guys around for a while after they changed their identities. Check their mail, break into their apartments, or just ask the neighbors.”
“Bull’s-eye. Fruehauf was foreseeing a situation like the one we’re in today where this information could come in handy and when the subpoenas would take too long to get.”
“Smart guy. Can he track down the handlers and get us these logs ASAP?”
“He doesn’t need to. Fruehauf is also a shrewd man, he kept a master log of all the jihadist dissidents for himself. It took him less than three minutes to check his book for me. Our guy now goes by the name of Mounif Ilham—Syrian-born, according to his new fake identity.”
Monica clutched her phone, ready to pounce on this. “Where is he?”
“You’re not going to believe it. Right here under our noses. He has a file this thick with Homeland. Came to this country in 2003 after winning the green card lottery and has been living in Palmdale in Southern California since 2004. Single, no kids, none we know of at least. He’s thirty-seven now and has done pretty well for himself. The American dream, jihad edition.”
Monica put her phone down. “What does he do?”
“He’s a contractor and works across LA county. He’s also an ardent follower of a hate-spewing cleric at the Lancaster Community Mosque. A firebrand Imam called Hassan Ghazawy who makes Ahmadinejad look like a girl scout.”
Monica’s jaw dropped and her eyes bulged. “The Egyptian?”
“Is there anyone else?”
“I know that scumbag.”
Slant nodded. “Don’t we all? I called the LA field office to bring in Iyad Malki, aka Mounif Ilham, for questioning. They’re heading there now. If my instinct has aged better than my body, we’re probably not going to find him in Palmdale. I think he’s the guy Alex’s been talking to all night.”
SIXTEEN
Sunday, November 6, 2011—1:45 a.m.
Palmdale, California
Agent Sean Rodriguez of the Los Angeles FBI scanned his rearview mirror. Only the headlights of the other black Suburban trailing him was visible as both vehicles penetrated the sleepy desert city of Palmdale. Soaring through the Antelope Valley Freeway in two cars, Rodriguez and three other agents exited west toward their destination four miles further on Dalzell Street. Their target was a two-story house in a residential neighborhood occupied mostly by recent Arab and Pakistani immigrants, just south of Air Force Plant 42. The SUVs crept in like predatory cats with their headlights switched off, then parked at the corner of East Avenue.
When the two agents in the car behind him emerged, Rodriguez and his second in command, Pete Avakian, got out and the four men convened for a quick recap. Their guns cocked and their mission clear in their mind, they snaked north on Dalzell, greeted by the spicy aroma of ethnic food wafting in the air. A few houses were still awake inside, some with music playing and others with the flickering lights of late-night television.
Three small boys who should have been fast asleep were playing soccer on the driveway of one of the houses, using cardboard boxes as goal posts. The agents tiptoed across the street like ghosts until they reached Mounif Ilham’s house without attracting the soccer boys’ attention.
Nothing about the exterior of Ilham’s house suggested this was the residence of a terrorist mastermind holding twenty-five people hostage in midtown Manhattan. Rodriguez knew better. He had stumbled on loaded guns with the safety off stashed in cribs, premium cocaine in the place of baby formula, and hair-raising terrorist plots handwritten on children’s sketch pads and shelved between the holiest of books.
The only thing unusual about Ilham’s house was its understated elegance, lacking the new-immigrant kitsch of every other property on the block. No alabaster columns or palm trees. Absent was a pole on the front yard waving the American flag to overstate patriotism. And not one neon light anywhere around Ilham’s house, which was unexpectedly modern and minimalist. Perhaps being a prolific local contractor who’d been paid to commit enough building atrocities across Palmdale, Ilham had decided to spare his own home.
Rodriguez rang the doorbell, stepped back and waited.
Nothing.
His partner of ten years, Avakian, spied through the window.
“This place is alarmed.”
Inside the house a familiar green light blinked silently in the darkness.
Rodriguez turned to Darren Boyer, the third in order of superiority on the team and said, “Call home-base and have them pull the plug on the security system.”
Before Rodriguez completed the request, Boyer had speed-dialed the FBI command center in Los Angeles and was barking terse orders to a most likely sleep-deprived operator at the other end of the line, who was no doubt stoked to be getting some action for the night. The FBI’s deep contacts with the major security system providers comes in handy in situations like this. Not that Rodriguez and his team lacked the necessary warrants to access and search the premises legally, but a screeching siren and the flashing lights of a home security system would attract the undue attention of a nosy neighbor.
“The alarm system was armed for ‘away’ on Friday afternoon,” Boyer repeated what he was being told. “The security company is shutting it down for us in ninety seconds.”
“Ring the bell one more time.”
Once again, a long stretch of silence.
Rodriguez turned to Justin Fernway, the young rookie in the group. “Circle round the back and see what’s happening there.”
A few minutes later Fernway’s voice crackled through the radio.
“Sir, all clear back here. House seems abandoned except for a colony of frogs in the pool.”
“Can you find a soft entry point and let us in from the inside?”
“Copy that.” Fernway went offline briefly.
“There’s a sliding door leading into the kitchen. I’m turning on video now.”
Avakian pulled out a tiny LCD monitor from his jacket pocket to view a live feed of everything Fernway was doing, via cameras attached to his glasses.
With a flashlight in his mouth providing the light, the rest of the team watched as Fernway fiddled with a small tool that looked like nothing you could buy at the Home Depot. With the persistence of an expert burglar, he pried the door open and stepped inside what appeared to be a spacious but sterile kitchen. An open pantry extended all the way up to the ceiling. Except for a vase on the third shelf from the bottom, the pantry was empty. Fernway stood staring at it, almost hypnotized.
“Have we admired the pantry enough, Agent Fernway?”
“Sorry, boss.”
Fernway scanned the rest of the kitchen, then stopped in front of a brushed aluminum fridge.
“Artwork stuck on the door, how quaint.”
“Zoom in closer, Justin.”
“How’s this?” Fernway closed in on a picture of Ilham surrounded by a group of sullen, bearded men somewhere in a monochrome desert. Impossible to tell if they were at the Mojave or the Registan. Next to the photo, a prayer schedule and an Islamic calendar also piqued their attention.
Fernway opened the fridge and took a peek. A half-empty bottle of Poland Spring water, a jar of kosher pickles and a pack of freezer-burned Hebrew National franks.
“Hands off the chow, Agent Fernway. This is federal evidence.” Standing by Rodriguez, Boyer and Avakian chuckled in subdued voices.
“Very funny
,” Fernway muttered back.
When he finally found his way to the front door, he unlocked it to allow Rodriguez and the other agents in. A gentle chill was trapped inside like the house had been closed for a while with the heating switched off.
The team dispersed like hunting dogs from one room to the other on both floors of the house. They weren’t just searching for Ilham but combing for evidence to tie their suspect to the Exertify hostage standoff, or any illegal activities.
The master bedroom was tidy and done up like a hotel, but the remaining four rooms on the second floor were empty, confirming whoever lived here was chronically single. Other than the master bathroom, not one of the remaining three in the house had so much as a bar of soap or toothpaste, let alone towels or toilet paper.
The only other inhabited room was a small study on the ground floor adjacent to the kitchen. A home office with a tempered glass desk and an expensive brand-name mesh chair faced a line of bookshelves. Whoever lived here only read building construction books and thick zoning and urban codes. Not one bomb-making manual let alone anything in Arabic, Urdu, Pashto or Dari.
The garage was even less exciting, housing a white Toyota pick-up loaded with building tools in the bed.
When they were done combing for anyone or anything incriminating, Rodriguez ordered his team to scan the entire house a second time but still nothing nefarious came up. Just the emptiness of a single man, which wasn’t in itself a felony. If Mounif Ilham was behind the Manhattan hostage standoff, this certainly wasn’t the command center he had used to mastermind his operation.
“Let’s get out of here.”
Avakian froze suddenly in the foyer of the house, his hands leaning on the wall.
“What’s wrong?
“Did you feel that?”
Rodriguez and the other two agents had nothing but blank faces to offer.
Even though no one had breathed let alone uttered a single word, Avakian hushed them and pointed to his ears. “Listen.”
“What are we listening for?”
“It’s coming from down there.” Avakian dropped flat on his belly with his ear pressed to the floor. His face suddenly lit up and he motioned incessantly with his hands.
Rodriguez was the only one to take the cue and he too dropped flat on the floor next to his partner. At first he couldn’t hear or feel whatever had roused Avakian. When he closed his eyes and bated his breath, he heard it. A rhythmic back and forth squeaking shrouded in a gentle vibration. Impressive that Avakian caught it in the first place, the sound was barely detectable on the floors and walls of the house.
“It’s coming from some sort of basement.”
If there was one, the home permits they had pulled off the City of Palmdale’s department of building and safety didn’t include it. The only explanation was Ilham had built an underground floor in his house and decided to keep it a secret. Things were just about to light up.
Rodriguez rose from the floor, adrenaline rushing through his body for the first time all night. “Anyone seen a basement door?”
Negative.
“There must be a false one or a trapdoor somewhere,” Avakian said after he too had listened enough and stood up.
Fernway’s eyes suddenly widened. “Damn...I think I know where it is.”
The team followed the rookie back to the kitchen where it had all started, and from where they had planned to exit. He stopped and pointed to the barren pantry with the blue vase he had stared at earlier. “This could be a door.”
Fernway ran his hand on the pantry, looking for a latch or some kind of switch. Then he removed the vase and put his hand inside and retrieved what appeared to be a tiny remote control with a single button.
“My nana always said never trust an empty vase. If it holds no flowers or ’aint pretty or dainty then it serves no purpose, right?” Without thinking about the perils of operating an unknown remote, he clicked it. The pantry swung open on a rotating axis and revealed a staircase going down.
Rodriguez crept down first, his men behind him as they descended into the illegally constructed basement. Dimly lit, the space was configured in an L-shape. Freshly painted walls and plush tan carpets on the floor.
The squeaking sound Avakian had detected upstairs was now clearly a metallic one. Faint music was also playing in the background.
In the main living area, two La-Z-Boy chairs were parked generically in front of an oversized LED television with Al Jazeera playing on mute. An ashtray on a small table between the two chairs bore the smell and remnants of a hashish joint.
Across from the entertainment center, a small kitchenette was equipped with a fridge and a small stove with a few pots of food.One had golden scrapes of crusted rice and the other a fragrant tomato-based meat stew. A few feet away, a small round table displayed the aftermath of a hearty dinner for two. Rodriguez gripped his gun tighter.
The lead FBI agent signaled to his men to walk back toward the source of noise and light at the other side of the basement.
They stopped outside a space cordoned off by a white curtain.
Boyer slid the curtain open with his gun pointed ahead. A burning candle provided the only source of light and a musky incense. Next to it a cheap laptop was emitting the tinny music they’d heard. The throaty voice of a woman singing sensual, intense Arabic lyrics.
The shadow cast by the candle masked what was happening in the room. Rodriguez and his men froze in position trying to decipher the scene fast.
And there it was. A sturdy cast-iron California king bed in the center of the room, squeaking.
Fernway fired his flashlight.
A large naked man with olive skin and short frizzy hair was face-down on the bed, his hands spread open in front of him and his ass pumping in and out. His hairy body glistened with beads of sweat. Beneath him and withstanding the spirited thrusting, someone else was spreadeagle, eclipsed by the large surface area of the lover taking charge on top.
The four agents tiptoed closer and formed a circle around the bed, but its occupants were irretrievably lost in drug and sex-induced bliss, oblivious that the FBI had joined their party, their lusty moans now reaching a crescendo.
“FBI! Freeze! Hands on top of your head.”
The man on top jumped out of his position and fell on the floor by the bed, kicking the candle to its side. Avakian ran to make sure the flame was extinguished.
Fernway focused his flashlight on the naked man, frozen like a possum. A distinguished white beard and a huge belly. His eyes scanned the room wildly, his hands flat on his head as he had been instructed.
The other person in the bed turned to face them, also adhering to Rodriguez’s orders. A younger man in his late-thirties, unable to look the FBI agents in the eye.
“State your name!” Rodriguez roared at him but got no answer.
“I won’t repeat it a third time. State your name now!”
“Mounif Ilham,” he finally whispered then dug his face in his hands.
Rodriguez turned his gun to the older man on the floor and asked, “And who are you?” Not because he didn’t know, but to hear him confirm what he had already figured out from the man’s resemblance to the gallery of photos the FBI had of him.
“Hassan Ghazawy.”
Rodriguez was right.
The man on top was no other than the sixty-eight-year-old imam of the Lancaster Community Mosque.
SEVENTEEN
Sunday, November 6—9:15 a.m.
Mediterranean Sea, Italian Air Space
The private jet was an improvised solution negotiated by Ambassador Wagner at the eleventh hour. It came courtesy of an American mining company with a favor to pay. The Canadian crew of the Gulfstream IV was security-cleared to transport US politicians and diplomats traveling with the senior executives of Oromine, the gold mining company that owned the jet.
>
Fifteen minutes into the flight to Naples, the Canadian copilot had come through with hot beverages and small breakfast boxes. The image of American black ops men hand-feeding convicted terrorists buttered toast smothered with jam was worse than a scripted scene from a reality TV show.
Smythe flirted with sleep for the remainder of the journey from Qena to Naples but resisted. An elite unit of tough-as-nails Special Forces was sitting at the back of the Gulfstream watching over the two handcuffed Jordanians waiting for either of them to just think of misbehaving. A short nap wouldn’t have jeopardized the safety of the operation by any stretch of the imagination. Still, Smythe feared dozing off would diminish his newfound credibility with the black ops guys, who probably deemed sleep an indulgence for mortals.
No sooner had he finally surrendered to the sweet seduction of some shut-eye, than Smythe was startled by the captain’s deep voice breaching the silence in the cabin.
“We’ve just been cleared to land. Should get you on the tarmac in the next twelve minutes—that’s about a quarter of an hour better than our original schedule. Gonna get a little bumpy on the descent so stay put, gentlemen.”
The legal implication of what would happen once the plane touched Italian soil was precarious at best. Nabulsi and Madi had been hastily pardoned by the Egyptian government, but left the prison with nothing in their possession to indicate their identities. Free but stateless.
Their passports had been confiscated upon their conviction and turned over to the Jordanian government when the two men were sentenced to death. All Arab nationals wishing to travel to Italy required a valid passport and a visa to the Schengen States, the application for which was at best tumultuous with an uncertain outcome for even the most honest and upright Jordanians. Convicted felons freed as part of a clandestine body swap deal obviously needed a more exotic arrangement.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, the American ambassador to Italy had requested from the Italian foreign minister to turn a blind eye to the passengers of the Oromine Gulfstream jet when it landed. The request was most likely made with not so much as an explanation why two Arab terrorists would be on that flight. The Italians were staunch allies and reliable friends. A time would come when they would cash in on the favor and ask the Americans to turn a blind eye to an equally dubious proposition of their own.
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