Foreign Influence (19 page)

Davidson looked down at the half-eaten plate of food. “We should also assume he’s not coming back here.”

“Agreed. So if you were him, where would you go now?”

“Someplace safe.”

Vaughan nodded. “Someplace with people you could trust.”

“Like members of your terror cell?”

“Bombers tend to need support, so I’m willing to bet there’s a cell.”

“But how do you track it down?” asked Davidson.

“We may not have to,” replied Vaughan. “Let’s finish up here and get back to your truck. I want to see if Nasiri will lead us to it all by himself.”

CHAPTER 24
 

Abdul Rashid’s cell phone vibrated again. He held it up so the man sitting across from him could see it.

Rashid was in his mid-twenties with dark hair and a handsome, angular face. He was lean and stood about six feet tall. He had green eyes, an unusual feature that marked his mixed Arab descent. “The longer we ignore him, the more dangerous this gets.”

The man gave a dismissive, backhanded wave.

“That’s your answer?” asked Rashid. “Are you serious? You know what? Fuck you, Marwan.”

Rashid stood up from his cushion and threw his cell phone at the man.

Marwan Jarrah, a man in his late fifties with gray hair and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, dodged the phone and smiled. He loved the younger man’s passion. Rashid had more than earned the right to be so outspoken. He was one of the very few true believers who could effortlessly stroll among the infidels without raising their suspicion. His methods of waging jihad were often unorthodox, but they were also brilliant. It was why Jarrah kept him close. It was also why Jarrah tolerated Rashid’s impulsiveness and foul language.

Blessed with a Caucasian father and an Egyptian mother, Abdul Rashid possessed a mixed set of features. Those features were such that
Westerners never saw him as an Arab, or as being distinctly Muslim. To them he appeared perfectly American, while to Muslims he looked Arab. Such was the magic gift of his parents’ combined DNA.

With family scattered across the Muslim world, he had a backstopped cover for the extensive trips abroad where he studied in some of the most rigorous and extensive mujahideen camps. Marwan had personally witnessed him gun down two Jordanians who had tried to double-cross them in Iraq. Though they had known each other for only a couple of years, he was proud to call Rashid his brother, even though he was more like a son. The man’s experience and skills were beyond question. So talented was he, and so beloved, that he was referred to in Arabic as
Shahab
—a bright star that illuminates the heavens.

As talented as he was, though, he often could be obsessive about details and got angered when others didn’t listen to him or follow his plans. Marwan attempted to calm him down. “The man doesn’t know enough to be a danger.”

“Give me my phone back so I can throw it at you again.”

“You worry too much, Shahab.”

“It’s my job to worry,” said Rashid as he walked behind his boss’s desk, parted the blinds, and looked out the office window over the showroom floor. “You should worry too.”

“Why?” said the older man with another wave of his hand. “You worry enough for both of us. Everything will be fine. We are in no danger. We will send Mohammed Nasiri back to Pakistan.”

“We can’t send him back to Pakistan now. The police are looking for him. His name is going to be on the no-fly list.”

“Then we’ll kill him.”

It was a choice made as casually as someone ordering off a menu.

“Wow, Marwan. You really wrestled with that decision, didn’t you?”

“Mohammed Nasiri will be a martyr for the cause of Allah. That is all that matters.”

“Did you ever stop to think,” asked Rashid, “that maybe Allah values success more than martyrdom?”

Jarrah smiled again. “Are you about to give me another lecture on our duties to Islam?”

“Consider it a lesson in management economics. We have a project to complete. This project must be completed on time. We have limited resources. If we remove Nasiri from the production line, we will miss our deadline.”

“Not if you take his place.”

Rashid was shocked and didn’t even try to hide it. “I can’t believe it. You want me to be a Shahid? After all that we have been through, you’re asking me to martyr myself?”

“It would put to rest all of the questions about whether or not we can really trust you.”

“Yeah,
permanently
. I’d rather you continue to doubt my loyalty.”

Jarrah laughed. “We both know you’re much too valuable to become a martyr. Besides, I’d be lost without your company.”

“What you’d be lost without is my ability to move amongst our enemies.”

“You have been a great blessing to us,” the older man said as he raised a finger in caution, “but never underestimate our opponents. You must never believe yourself completely beyond their grasp. When that happens, you will get careless. And when you get careless, that is when you will start making mistakes.”

“Which brings us right back to Nasiri.”

Jarrah sighed. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to bring him in; protect him. He made a mistake, but I don’t want the rest of us to suffer because of it.”

The older man began to speak, but Rashid held up his hand. “Wait, Marwan. Hear me out. Nasiri has been loyal to the cause. He will do whatever we tell him to do. He can still be useful. In fact, we may even find a completely different use for him.”

That remark piqued Jarrah’s interest. “A
different
use? What are you thinking of?”

“The police want him for his hit-and-run accident. Maybe we can use that to our advantage. We may be able to use him as a decoy of some sort.”

“That is interesting.”

“I haven’t figured the whole thing out, but I know that we can’t use him for anything if he’s dead.”

“You’re too soft,” said the older man, baiting him.

This time, Rashid laughed. “Listen, if I can’t figure out a use for him, I’ll kill him myself.”

“Fine. Next issue. Where are we going to keep him?”

“Give me my phone back first.”

“Why?” asked Jarrah. “Are you going to throw it at me again?”

“No. I don’t want
you
to throw it at
me.
”

CHAPTER 25
 

P
ARIS

Samir Ressam took another drag on his cigarette and tried to look bored as he walked down the Boulevard Saint-Michel toward the Seine. He had made his martyrdom video and knew that within the next half-hour it would be uploaded to the Internet along with the videos of seven other martyrs.

The setting for his had been particularly brazen. A graduate student at the International Film School of Paris, Ressam had eschewed the traditional backdrop of a black Islamic flag. This was to be his final film. It would be seen all over the world and he wanted it to be special. Therefore, it had to grab people, move them.

The introduction was shot in a park across the street from the U.S. Embassy and contained a raging diatribe about America’s imperialism as well as its moral and cultural decline.

The film transitioned to a montage of American tourists at different attractions across the city, focusing on the heaviest and most unattractive ones he could find. He conducted man-on-the-street interviews, asking Americans their opinions about Islam and the involvement of their country in the affairs of various Muslim nations. All of the responses were then edited to make America look as evil as possible.

In what would become a chilling reminder from beyond the grave, he spliced together a series of shots of unattended bags in churches, parks, sidewalk cafés, metro stations, and department stores.

It ended with Ressam reading several passages from the Qur’an set to a popular jihadist tune from his ancestral home in Algeria. The picture then faded to black, and the music was replaced with the sound of French revelers counting down the final ten seconds to midnight on New Year’s Eve. At zero, there was the audio and visual of a large, Hollywood explosion. Scenes of the 2005 Bali bombings were juxtaposed against scenes of supposed American atrocities against Muslim civilians and set to the music of the American national anthem.

Finally, the word
fin
appeared and the video was finished. There was a reason Ressam had never been able to find any work in the French film industry.

At this moment, though, it made no difference. As Ressam crossed the Boulevard Saint-Germain, he had no misgivings, no second thoughts. He was about to launch his greatest production ever. It was all in the name of Allah the most merciful, the most compassionate.

Had he been struck with a change of heart, there would have been nothing he could do about it and he knew it. He understood why the cell phone had been wired to the vest he wore beneath his clothes. If he tried to back out, his handler would complete the job for him—from a distance of course.

Twice he thought he caught sight of the man, but each time he looked back, the figure was gone. The sensation was somewhat disquieting. Why that would bother him considering what he was about to do didn’t make much sense, and the ridiculousness of the emotion made him laugh nervously to himself.

Ressam crushed out his cigarette on the sidewalk and lit another. He held the smoke deep in his lungs and thought about his family. As he exhaled, he banished all worldly emotion from his heart. Like the tendrils of smoke, the last vestiges of humanity within his soul were banished from his body and whisked skyward into the warm Parisian night.

The crowd of tourists thickened as he wound his way deeper into the warren of narrow, twisting streets around the Rue Saint-Séverin. Predominantly
off-limits to cars, it was one of the greatest concentrations of restaurants in all of Paris. It had almost every cuisine imaginable. Being in the shadow of Notre Dame guaranteed its popularity with tourists, particularly with Americans.

He had wanted to detonate inside one of the city’s many McDonald’s restaurants and had argued with his handler about it at great length. While the man agreed that it would have been wonderfully symbolic, the idea was to create the largest death toll possible and to make the Americans realize that there was no place they would ever be safe.

Firm in his belief that Islam could only prevail by slaughtering as many nonbelievers as possible, Ressam strode down the middle of the street to the busiest section of restaurants. All of the outdoor areas were packed. He checked his watch. He was right on time.

He unslung the backpack from his shoulder and casually carried it with one hand. Near the entrance to a Greek restaurant was a large sandwich board. It had a picture of a Greek fisherman holding a blackboard upon which the evening’s specials had been scrawled. Setting the bag on the ground near the opening of the tent-like sign he read the menu from top to bottom. Then he peered around to see what was written on the other side. As he did, he used his foot to nudge his bag underneath.

“May I help you?” asked the restaurant’s owner in a haughty tone.

“Do you serve couscous?” Ressam asked.

The owner dropped his voice, grabbed Ressam by the arm, and guided him off the curb and into the street. “Does this look like a fucking couscous restaurant to you, asshole? Go find someplace else to pick pockets. Get lost.”

The owner turned back to his guests and smiled. “No problem, no problem,” he said with a laugh. “Gypsies. Very bad.”

Ressam kept his temper in check and walked to the end of the block. Turning the corner, he stepped into a doorway, lit a cigarette, and watched the final seconds tick down on his watch.

The explosion was deafening. From his vantage point, he saw a cloud of smoke belched from the end of the street and watched as debris from his primary device rained down from above. As soon as the ringing in his ears started to abate, he could hear the sound of people screaming.

Leaving the security of the doorway, he walked back around the corner. His handler had been very specific about this part. He was so very close now. He needed to fight his urge to rush right in.
Let it happen
, he had been told.
Be patient.
It was much easier said than done.