The Faithful Spy (11 page)

“I CALL JOSHUA
Goldsmith, our bar mitzvah, to the microphone to lead us,” Rabbi Nachman said. Josh felt his legs wobble as he stood. In the front row, his sister Becky looked at him and pretended to pick her nose before his mom elbowed her sharply. He smiled at her and felt his stomach loosen up. Those people out there were just family and friends. Think Blue.

FAKHR PILOTED THE
van up the steps at the northeast corner of the temple, the corner nearest the intersection. A middle-aged security guard barely had time to stand before the van plowed him down and smashed through the temple’s entrance into the hall outside the sanctuary. Fakhr steered toward its doors. He wouldn’t be able to get into the sanctuary itself, but that didn’t matter.

Don’t be scared, Fakhr told himself. Do it quickly.
“Allahu akbar,”
he said aloud.

He had taped the detonator, a small plastic box connected to a thick black wire, to the passenger seat so it wouldn’t bounce as he came up the steps. He tore it off the seat, looked at it for a moment, and pressed the button in the middle of the box.

JOSH HAD ALMOST
reached the microphone when he heard a loud crash outside. The congregation turned around, and three men stood up to investigate.

THE BUTTON CLICKED.
A jolt of electricity ran through the wire to the blasting caps attached to the dynamite in the back of the van. The dynamite exploded, and a moment later the ANFO detonated.

INSIDE THE SYNAGOGUE,
the world ended.

The explosion looked nothing like the Hollywood version of a car bomb—a smoky fireball that blows out windows but leaves the body of the car intact. Those explosions are produced by low-velocity explosives like black powder, which burn in small showy blasts. High explosives like dynamite don’t burn; they detonate, turning from solid to gas instantaneously and in the process generating tremendous heat.

In a fraction of a second, Fakhr and the van ceased to exist, as the gas produced by the explosion moved outward and created a huge pressure wave that pushed the air forward at two miles a second. Effectively, the bomb created a super-tornado in the synagogue, a tornado with winds fifty times more powerful than those seen in nature.

The pressure wave and the shrapnel it created blew apart the back wall of the synagogue and tore to pieces everyone at the back of the sanctuary. Others burned to death in the flash fireball from the explosion, which reached a temperature of several thousand degrees. No one could run, hide, or duck. Survival was a matter of luck and distance; Josh’s parents in the first row had better odds than his cousin Jake six rows back. His uncle Ronnie against the wall had no chance at all.

Then the pressure wave reversed direction to fill the vacuum left where the van had stood. The explosion had blown the ceiling off its walls. As the roof was pulled back down, the walls—now weakened and out of alignment—could no longer support it. The ceiling fell in progressively, from the back to the front of the synagogue, dropping tons of concrete and wood and steel on the survivors of the initial blast.

For Josh Goldsmith, the collapse of the ceiling came as a relief.

Josh had the misfortune to be standing when the explosion occurred, so he took more than his share of shrapnel. Metal fragments from the van turned his face into a bloody pulp. A larger piece sliced into his stomach and cut his liver nearly in half. Lacerations covered his body. Fortunately, his agony lasted only a few seconds, until a slab of concrete from the ceiling crushed his skull.

ON HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD
it was just another Friday night. Convertibles and tricked-out pickups cruised slowly, bass thumping. The evening was unseasonably warm for April, and girls in thigh-high skirts flirted with boys in muscle shirts. A red Lamborghini Diablo competed for attention with a black Cadillac Escalade on gleaming twenty-six-inch rims. Tourists snapped pictures of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Near the corner of Hollywood and Ivar, dozens of kids had lined up to get into the Ivar, a restaurant and club that attracted the masses from the Valley. Across the boulevard, police barricades held back a hundred fans who’d shown up for the premiere of
Number,
a campy horror movie about a crazed accountant, at Cinespace, a movie theater in the same building as the Ivar.

From a Nissan Altima parked two blocks east, Khadri watched Aziz’s van snake slowly west on Hollywood. Aziz was running a few minutes late, though Khadri didn’t expect him to have a problem. The police and firefighters would just be reaching the synagogue. They would need a minute to realize they were looking at a crime scene, and their immediate response would be to lock down the city’s other synagogues, not to look for a bomb in Hollywood. Still, Khadri wished Aziz would hurry.

Khadri had parked outside the blast zone but close enough to feel the bomb for himself. He knew he should have left Los Angeles already, but he couldn’t help himself. He wanted to see his handiwork firsthand. He had his escape route mapped, of course: east to Phoenix, Arizona. He would stay for a few days—no need to rush—then leave the Altima at Sky Harbor International and fly to Mexico City. No one would notice the car for weeks, and it couldn’t be connected to him anyway.

Khadri looked at the men and women walking past his car. Those heading east would live; those walking west might die. Their fates were no concern of his, he thought, any more than American generals worried about what happened to the inhabitants of the cities they attacked. This was war, and sometimes war killed people who didn’t think of themselves as combatants. These people weren’t innocents, though they preferred to imagine themselves that way; no one in America was an innocent.

He drummed his fingers against the wheel, anxious to feel the blast.

ARMS FOLDED, BENNETT
stood outside the Paradise Club, a half block west of the corner of Hollywood and Ivar. Paradise was harder to get into than the Ivar, so the lines were smaller but just as unruly. Tonight a crowd had formed early.

“Puta!”

“Asshole!”

Near the front of the line, two guys in their early twenties, one white, the other Hispanic, got in each other’s faces. Bennett stepped forward. “Easy,” he said. They appealed to him simultaneously.

“This
maricón
pushed me,” the Hispanic guy said.

“He was checking out my girlfriend.”

“That fat bitch?”

Just like that the white guy stepped up and swung wildly. Bennett grabbed his arm before he could connect. This crap didn’t usually start until later. In the distance Bennett heard sirens screaming west. A lot of sirens.

The white kid tried to pull his arm from Bennett’s hand. “What’s your name?” Bennett said.

“Mitch.”

“Mitch, you’re walking this way,” Bennett said, and pointed west. He turned to the Hispanic guy. “What’s your name?”

“Ricky.”

“Ricky, that way.” He pointed east.

“Man—”

Bennett shook his head. “Start walking.”

They looked at Bennett’s huge arms and walked. He watched them go until the blare of horns down the block grabbed his attention. Hollywood was always loud on Friday nights, but this was ridiculous.

COLD AIR POURED
out of the vents of the Mitsubishi panel truck, but Aziz couldn’t stop sweating. The cab stank with the acrid smell of his fear, overwhelming the faint scent of the rosewater he had dabbed on himself as he prepared to make his journey to paradise. Nine forty-five, five minutes late, and he still wasn’t there. Far worse, he could feel his resolve weakening. He had felt confident in the motel room, but as the moment approached he could no longer control his terror. Would it hurt when he pushed the button? What if he didn’t get to heaven? He knew he would, of course. The Koran said so. Abu Mustafa said so. He would be a
shahid,
a martyr, surrounded by the most beautiful virgins, drinking the purest water, eating the sweetest dates.

“Allah hath bought from the believers their lives and their wealth because the Garden shall be theirs,” the ninth sura said. “They shall fight in the way of Allah and shall slay and be slain.”

So he knew he would get to heaven.

But what if he didn’t?

The light ahead turned green but no one moved. Aziz leaned on his horn, and finally the cars ahead crawled forward. He looked at the street around him. These people walked around in a haze while their soldiers raped prisoners in Iraq. They sucked up the world’s oil and lived like kings while Muslim children starved. They treated their bodies with disrespect. They believed in a false god. They were pigs in slop. Everything they did was
haram,
forbidden. Anger surged in Aziz. He had no reason to fear. They deserved to die. It was Allah’s will.

The light dropped green again, and Aziz inched through the intersection of Hollywood and Ivar. Crowds filled the sidewalks. This was the spot. Aziz stopped the truck. He picked up the detonator and turned it back and forth in his hand.

I can’t, he thought. Allah forgive me, I can’t.

INSIDE THE TRUCK,
time moved very slowly. Aziz knew he had to decide. People were looking at him, and a police officer would tell him to move along soon. But he felt paralyzed. He wormed his thumb over the detonator, pressing down on its button ever so slightly, feeling the tension under his finger. He looked out the windshield and silently murmured the first sura to himself.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful…”

Now, he told himself. Now or never.

He pushed the button.

THE SECOND BOMB
proved even more devastating than the first. The explosion blew a crater fifteen feet deep and thirty feet around, and shot a cloud of smoke, debris, and fire hundreds of feet into the sky. With no walls to slow it, the overpressure wave killed everyone in an eighty-foot radius. The people nearest the truck were blown apart and barbecued; farther away the bodies were left recognizably human, although many lacked arms and legs. A few of the dead appeared basically unhurt; the blast wave had left their bodies intact but shaken their brains to jelly.

The blast partially knocked down four buildings, including the Ivar-Cinescape building directly across the street. Inside the Ivar, a fire began, and with only one emergency exit left, panic set in. Eighty-five more people were crushed or burned to death.

FOR JUST A
moment after the explosion a shocked silence descended on the street, a false peace splitting before from after. Then chaos: car alarms ringing, fires roaring, screaming. So much screaming, most of it hardly recognizable as human: a high-pitched keening that started and stopped at random.

Bennett found himself on the ground. He pushed himself to his feet and ran toward the wreckage, not even noticing the blood dripping from his face. He didn’t know where to turn or what to do; he wished that he had taken that first-aid class at Crenshaw.

He slowed down, crunching broken glass under his feet, then nearly tripped over what he thought at first was a blue denim bag. He looked again and discovered that the bag was a leg, a leg that wasn’t attached to a body, not anymore. Hell. This was hell on earth.

A few feet away, a man lay trapped under a black Jetta, groaning softly. Ricky, the guy from the line. Oh God, Bennett thought. I told him to walk this way.

Ricky motioned feebly. “Shit, help me.”

Bennett threw his shoulder into the Jetta. It didn’t budge. He tried again.

“How ’bout some help!” he yelled.

Ricky was starting to shake, Bennett saw.

“Just be cool,” he said. A big white guy joined Bennett. They lifted together, inching the Jetta higher. Another man grabbed Ricky under his arms and began to pull him out.

Ricky screamed in agony, the worst sound Bennett had heard yet. The Jetta had masked his pain by crushing the nerves in his hips. Now they could fire again, and Ricky was learning the truth of his injuries.

“Ricky, Ricky—” Bennett said. The scream became a whimper. He grabbed Ricky’s hand and squeezed. “Ambulance’ll be here soon. Just—” Ricky’s hand went limp as he slipped into unconsciousness. Bennett looked at the other two men and wordlessly they decided to leave Ricky and see if they could help anyone else. Help? Bennett had never felt so helpless.

At that moment Bennett decided he would sign up for the army the next morning. He would kill whoever had done this. It was all he could do.

IN HIS REARVIEW
mirror, Khadri saw the truck disappear. A moment later the blast wave rattled his car.

He drove off, careful not to speed. He and his men had dealt America a mighty blow tonight. KNX was already reporting a massive explosion at a Westwood synagogue. But even before he reached the highway, his jubilation faded. He had so much more work ahead.

And his next mission would put this night to shame.

RICKY GUTIERREZ MIGHT
have lived if he had reached a hospital in time, but the twin blasts overwhelmed the Los Angeles police and fire departments. They had drilled for one bomb, not two explosions miles apart. By the time ambulances arrived in force at the Hollywood explosion, Ricky and dozens of others who survived the initial fireball had died.

Two weeks later, when the last victim died at Cedars-Sinai and reports of the missing stopped coming, the death toll from the Los Angeles bombings reached 336: 132 at the synagogue, 204 in Hollywood. It was the worst attack since September 11, and no one was surprised when al Qaeda took responsibility.

EXLEY WOKE ON
the first ring. She hadn’t been fully asleep anyway. The boundary between sleep and consciousness, once easy for her to cross, these days seemed bounded by barbed wire and broken glass. She grabbed for the phone and heard Shafer’s voice. “Jennifer. Get in here.” Her clock radio glowed 1:15
A.M.
in the dark. “There’s been a bombing. In L.A.”