“You’re not just sentimentalizing things? You’re moved by her, you feel sorry for her—so do I, and who wouldn’t?—but you want to improve her mental health by bringing her in on this and feeling like part of the solution when it is explicitly her amateur status that risks it?”
“Maybe I am. But trying to take my feelings out of it, we’re not sending her in to get the plans for the X11 bomber or to blow up a bridge. She knows mosques, she’s been visiting them for fourteen years. Her job is to determine, as casually as possible, if anything seems out of the ordinary. There are too many mosques, and we do not have enough time to run deeper hunts of each of them. She can save days, maybe weeks, and if we can nail this bird here, think what it’ll mean.”
Gold was agnostic. “I’ve seen cases where passionate amateurs have performed brilliantly. I’ve seen them where they’ve turned triumph into catastrophe. As she’s an American citizen, I will not take a position.”
“These people are not amateurs,” said Nick. “They are ruthless and violent and do not believe that killing an infidel is a sin. We could get this poor woman’s throat cut.”
“We can cover her the whole way,” said Swagger. “Do we need a warrant if an undercover’s life is in jeopardy?”
“Houston?” asked Nick.
The Detroit SAIC answered. “We can get an emergency verbal warrant. It’s rare, but it can happen. But suppose we need it, and the one judge likely to provide it has gone to the movies?”
“It’s too damned dangerous,” Nick said. “And getting a civilian killed could be a bigger scandal than letting Juba proceed. And if we go without it, nothing we acquire will be usable in court.”
“No, but Israel can extradite because of the bus. His number is fixed if we nab him.”
On and on it went, according to the immutable law that the human factor is more responsible for administrative inaction than any failure of policy, plan, or hardware. Finally, the need for speed became the decisive factor. If Juba was here, it wouldn’t be for long.
Nick said, “We have to cover her. Let’s figure out how.”
So Agent Chandler had to make sure Janet was locked in on security.
Janet said, “I check into the Dearborn Holiday Inn tomorrow afternoon under the name Susan Abdullah. My story: I married Saleem Abdullah, an Iraqi psychiatrist, thirty years ago. We lived in Baltimore, Maryland, where he had a private practice. I converted to Islam shortly before the marriage. I learned my pidgin Arabic from him. He was radicalized after nine/eleven. He went to Baghdad in 2012 as a volunteer aid worker for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and was killed in an American air strike. I have come to Dearborn to worship at the big mosque at the American Muslim Center because I’ll never be able to get to Mecca. The big mosque is as close as I can get. I will embrace Dearborn because it is as close to my husband’s native Iraq as I can get. That will be my first mosque. Then I am to enter five mosques, as listed, and attempt to ascertain if anything is subtly amiss. But I am to be strictly observational—no eye contact, no questions, no opening closet doors or going down hallways or trying to get into the basement. Just what I pick up in an informal way. Sewn into the hem of my hijab is a small bead containing a GPS transmitter. If my life should be in danger, I am to crush it through the material. When it stops transmitting, that will be the signal that something is amiss, and the SWAT team, orbiting outside, will hit the mosque under the doctrine of police endangerment.”
“Good, good,” said Chandler.
“Thank you so much for this opportunity,” Mrs. McDowell said. “I know you can’t tell me what this is about, but I presume it’s something important, and I am so pleased to play a part in it.”
* * *
• • •
Of course, she violated every admonition within minutes. She looked aggressively into the mosques. After ablutions and prayer from the carefully delineated women’s section, she rose and wandered. She tried closets and stairways. She peeked in men’s rooms. She went into offices, recreation centers, basketball courts, weight rooms—all the appurtenances of the modern American house of worship, as much community center as prayer platform. Her hijab made her bold in this world, as it always did. She looked for burly security types, and, with the first four mosques, found none. She asked other women worshippers about changes in mosque operating procedures, or evidence of heavy traffic or other business at night, when all was supposed to be quiet. She wondered if the calls to prayer were on time. She wondered about strange deliveries. In all places, the women were eager to gossip, and she had no problem. The fact that no one paid her any attention she took as the ultimate indication that nothing was amiss or held in secret in each building. Twice she spoke to an imam and found both to be charming, educated men, eager to make conversation with an American convert and sympathetic to the tragic death in Baghdad of Saleem Abdullah, M.D., at American hands.
She came to the last mosque on the list, another domed building with administrative wings off of it. It was far from majestic, but, at the same time, far from shabby. It was no storefront, with an angry young imam in blue jeans and teenagers hanging about, talking of jihad. It looked sedate, unlit, almost slumbering. But even though the last evening prayer was done and darkness was falling on Dearborn, she entered the dim space and quickly noted three women performing ablutions. She joined them and started to chat them up, and it seemed to be going quite well, when one said to her, “Sister, you have many questions.”
“As a visitor,” she said, “I like to learn of new places. This city is almost a shrine in itself. To walk the streets, to buy from the shops, to hear the calls to prayer, it’s like the trip to the homeland I’ll never make.”
“Many of the men here are suspicious. My suggestion is, enjoy the closeness of Allah but not the closeness of men. It seems Imam el-Tariq has surrounded himself with some tough ones. I tell you this only for your own good. I should not even be seen talking to you. But God be with you, sister.”
With that, Janet was abandoned.
She waited a bit, put her socks back on, and turned to the domed prayer chamber. A few prostrated solitaries were there, but none paid her any attention. It was as if the place were deserted.
She went to an outer circle of the chamber and went to the mat herself before Allah, His name be praised, and she praised it aggressively. No watcher, if there were any, could doubt her ardency. She prayed hard, believing if her goals were not the goals of her coreligionists, they were still the goals that the true Allah would find virtuous. When she had been there for some minutes, she felt safe, under His protection.
She rose and made as if she was headed for the door but diverted to the women’s restroom instead, went in, washed, calmed herself, again absorbed the silence of the place, listening for signs of habitation but heard none. She exited the room, but instead of turning left, to the door, to escape, she turned right and came to a corridor. It was empty.
She turned down it and made her way tentatively as if lost. She peeked in each door, finding an office of some sort, nothing of any ramification. Finally, she came to a stairwell.
Don’t do this, Janet, she told herself. Don’t.
But she did it anyway.
Courageous or not, she learned nothing on the second floor. It was just another office corridor, with doors along each side, from where the imam ran his enterprise, made plans to visit the sick and the lame, gave comfort, supervised goods for the bake sale, coached his basketball team, and raised money, much as any other clergyman did in any other house of worship in America. She turned, started back down the hall, when a flash of movement jerked her out of serenity, and, in a second, she realized that she was confronting a man with a strange package in his hand.
It was a pizza.
“Mogdushani?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody up here now. Maybe downstairs.”
“Thanks, lady,” he said.
He was young and black, and he turned and bounded down the steps. Someone working late wanted a pizza, the universal snack. Yet . . . it did seem odd. Why would someone in a mosque order a pizza, especially long after the hours of administration. Who but her would be here so late?
She followed her nose. Tomato, cheese. Terrorists? Juba the Sniper? To the main floor, then a quick look in the stairwell, darting down it just to make sure, then a quick turn, another corridor—nothing—another turn and—
“May I help you, sister?”
The man was Arabic, dressed casually.
“I just got confused,” she said. “I’m just trying to find the way out.”
“This way. I’ll show you.”
“Praise be His name.”
“Praise be.”
He led her back to the upstairs, where they ran into the pizza man.
“Hey, thanks,” he said again, and departed.
“You were here before?” asked her escort, pausing a second.
“Ah, I blundered about, in my confusion. I ran into that young man. I didn’t really help him, I only told him to go downstairs.”
“But what were you doing upstairs?”
“As I say, I was confused.”
He thought about this intently for a bit, decided it was problematical, and said, “I think you should see the imam.”
“Oh, I hate to bother him. I’m just a visitor. I’ll leave now, and that’ll be that.”
Again, concern clouded his face, and he said, “I do not wish to offend, but something here is amiss. I must ask you to accompany me. I just want to make sure he’s comfortable with this.”
“Why, there is nothing to be comfortable with. I tell you, I merely lost my way and—”
“Please, madam,” he said, and took her elbow, “humor me, or I will make the imam mad at me.”
Not force, exactly, was applied against her, but strength, communicating his need to fulfill his instructions versus her feeble explanations, and he took her this way and that and into an office of no particular significance, no RPGs or sniper rifles lying about, just desks, one messy, one not so much, and asked her to sit. He vanished. Was the door locked? Was she a prisoner? But to investigate would be suspicious, the actions of a spy, so she simply sat, waiting, feeling her heartbeat increase.
He returned.
“This way, please,” he said.
“Of course,” she said, and followed him into the well-appointed office of Imam Imir el-Tariq, who was sitting behind his desk, in his robes but with his hair uncovered. A handsome, bearded man in his forties, as befit his rank, with the face of the earnest and the committed, but with brown eyes that were not the sort to be found in zealots.
“Madam, please,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “We’re not comfortable with strangers wandering about. We have no secrets, of course, but, alas, we do have enemies, and many nonbelievers hold us responsible for things over which we have no control.”
“I assure you, Imam, I have no agenda save the faith.”
“May I ask for credentials of some sort.”
She handed her purse over.
“Here, examine the whole thing. I have no secrets either, and I hope I have not given offense.”
He looked at her driver’s license.
“Mrs. Abdullah. Yet you are not Arabic.”
“My husband was. And, under his auspices, I joined the faith.”
She told her story.
“I am sorry for your husband, sister. Many have died unjustly. The pox of our times.”
“If I enter the houses of worship, great or small, it helps me find peace,” she said. “I am content here, and the emptiness in my heart is not so severe.”
“Allah, His name be praised, is merciful.”
“His name be praised, He is always merciful.”
“I hope you will not mind if I give your license to an assistant to run a check.”
This was the best news. Her legend had been constructed by professionals of the highest quality, and she was assured that it was invulnerable to scrutiny.
“Of course. I should have offered it to you earlier to save time, Imam.”
He touched a button, the assistant entered, took the license, and departed.
Simple chitchat followed.
First time in Dearborn?
What did you think of the Great Mosque?
I hope you will wisely stay out of the bigger city. It can be dangerous.
It went on for a bit, seemingly untethered in time, and she kept up with the insignificant patter easily, fully confident that, as promised, her license would check out, the backstory would stand up to vetting, and she’d be on her way in a bit.
The assistant returned and whispered to the imam.
The iman nodded and turned back to her. She heard three more men enter.
“I am confused,” said the imam. “Indeed, your husband’s name is carried on the Maryland Board of Psychologists, as is the date of his death. All seemed perfect. But then—”
“Is there a problem?”
“I have a very good assistant on the computer. We try to stay up to date. In any event, he was able to get into the Social Security database, and though we found over forty Susan Abdullahs, we were unable to find one living in the Baltimore area. Are you new to the city?”
“No, no. Actually, I think my Social Security number might be listed under my maiden name. I never worked again after I married my husband. I tried to be a good Islamic wife, you see.”
“Impressive. You will not mind if we run that name?”
“Isn’t the Social Security database off-limits? Aren’t you hacking something illegally? I’d hate to get you in trouble. My thought is, perhaps you could call the police. Surely their techniques surpass yours, and they could verify me. I am a little hesitant about my Social Security number. That, actually, was something my husband was adamant about. It’s not to be trifled with.”
“I can’t help but notice that while you’re not seeming to evade, you are, in fact, evading.”
“I want to cooperate, but you don’t have any right to hold me against my will. You can call the police, and if you are not satisfied with their explanation, you can bring charges against me for trespassing. It would be a waste of everybody’s time, but I do understand your anxiety about the mosque’s security and will happily wait until the police arrive. Perhaps we can continue our conversation about Dear—”
“You see, you could be a scout for some kind of guerrilla attack. Someone wants to bomb the mosque, but they want to know where to place the bomb. This is information you now have, and it appears to be information you’ve gone to some trouble to obtain.”
A cold breeze of fear swept through Janet. She had been in these situations before and each time the results had been disastrous: forceful hostility, beatings, rapes, hatred at its most naked.
“Sir, please, I beg you. I am no bomber, no fanatic, I am just an American woman who has seen the way to the faith and is still in grief over her husband’s death. The worst you can say of me is, I sometimes act irrationally. I know that. It gets me in trouble all the time. Perhaps my need to go to mosques for the therapeutic value makes no sense, but I can’t really seem to help it.”
The imam considered for a bit.
“I am in an unfortunate position, Mrs. Abdullah. Alas, I owe more to the mosque and its followers than I do to you. You understand, no? Now, let’s start over at the beginning. Please give me facts—facts than can be checked. This may take some time, but I would like you to stay until I am satisfied that you are of no danger to us. Or, perhaps admit that you are an FBI agent seeking to penetrate our security based on some intelligence you may have. Then we could easily disprove that intelligence—many false things are said of Moslems in the United
States, many false conclusions are drawn—and you could go on your way. Would that not be the simplest?”
“But it would not be true. There is no FBI, there is no intelligence, I am merely—”
“Enough,” said the imam. “I want this to be pleasant, but you’re provoking me to behavior that I find abhorrent. I ask again, please do not make such a provocation.”
Janet thought of something to put between herself and them, something that would baffle, slow, confuse them. Nothing occurred. She felt her fear rise, and the urge to beg for mercy came over her hard. She couldn’t go through another beating. The last one had almost killed her. But when she opened her mouth, she said something that surprised even her.
“Please,” said Mrs. McDowell. “Torture me.”
* * *
• • •
Swagger stared at the blip. It had not moved in an hour.
“Okay,” he said, “maybe we have a complication.”
“Maybe she’s helping put up decorations for a dance,” said Nick.
They stared at the screen of the monitor that was receiving the signal from McDowell’s GPS.
“Where’s the team?” said Swagger.
“They’re in orbit around the building,” said Chandler. “They can pop the raid in a minute if I send them the go.”
“Hold on,” said Nick. “Folks, we have nothing here to go on.”
“A, she’s been in that building for over two hours,” said Swagger. “B, she’s in a room in the administrative section, not in the prayer center, so she’s obviously either imprisoned or undergoing interrogation.”
“Maybe she’s watching a ball game with some of the kids in hopes of overhearing something.”
“I just don’t like it.”
“We are on very thin ice here,” said Nick. “This is not the vacuum of combat where the only criterion is taking the objective. It is Main Street America 2018, and the rules are different. We cannot raid an innocent mosque with guys in Kevlar and carrying HKs. These folks are savvy, they’re on the phone in seconds, lawyers are there in a few more seconds, and, in minutes, TV is there and the Free Press, and we have a major administrative fuckup. MARJORIE DAW is disgraced and closed down.”
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