The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage (32 page)

Keven Smyth had already mentioned to her that the Suez Canal was occasionally blocked for short periods of time, most recently in 2006 when a 93,000 ton Hong Kong-flagged vessel drifted from its path in strong winds and became wedged across a narrow part of the Canal as it traveled the same route the
Aegean Apollon
would take, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The Canal had been shut down for about 24 hours while four tugboats pulled the vessel free. Lost revenue to the Suez Canal Authority amounted in that case to $7 million in fees. Untold millions more were lost by the owners of the vessels whose cargo was delayed. Why was the location of past blockages important? She didn’t see it.

After talking to Drayton, Kate walked to the Semiramis Hotel, a 750-room, 29-storey behemoth a few blocks from the Embassy. Because the hotel had a number of vacancies, she was able to book a standard room for $150 a night, which was low enough so that Mort Feldman was unlikely to complain. The truth was that she was tired of both travelling and of the third world and wanted to crash in a hotel that gave her the illusion that she was back in the United States. She crawled into bed after texting Smyth her room number, asking him to wake her up when he left the Embassy for the day. It was one in the afternoon. She was asleep within seconds of putting her head on the pillow.

Her cellphone rang at 3:00 PM local time. She glanced at the bedside clock.

“Keven, it’s only three o’clock in the afternoon!” she complained. “You were supposed to let me sleep until you left work.”

“My dear, this is your friend Mahmood Mahmood,” said a familiar voice. “I, too, am in Cairo. And I have news for you.”

Mahmood was waiting for her in the lobby of the Semiramis Hotel. He was wearing a Western business suit and could have been mistaken for a Cairene businessman circulating among the couches and desks in the vast atrium.

“You’re better dressed than last time I saw you,” Kate said, giving him a hug. “New suit?”

“I left Peshawar a bit hastily and dressed only in my
shalwar kameez
,” Mahmood said with a laugh.

“I’ve had to make a few essential purchases.”

“You’d better call Mort Feldman. He was worried. And Olof Wheatley is breathing down Mort’s neck. He doesn’t trust you. He thinks you’re going to screw us.”

“I already called Mort, which is how I was able to find you.”

“What’s the story? Al-Greeb wanted to see you pretty badly?”

“You saw the Learjet at the airport, I gather. It was one of the late Sheikh Osama’s, now at the disposal of Ayman al-Zawahiri and his deputy, Yasser Khalidi al-Greeb. I was flown to Jeddah, with the full knowledge of ISI, as you will have guessed yourself from where the Learjet was parked while in Pakistan. Of course, it would have been dangerous to try to contact you or Mort.”

“That gave Wheatley the impression you had turned on us,” Kate said. “But I knew better.”

Mahmood smiled broadly. “For that I am so glad,” he said. “Your good opinion means a lot to me.”

“So why did Al-Greeb want you in Jeddah?”

“To gloat a little, I think,” Mahmood said. “And to give me and my superiors advance warning of what he has in store for the world. No doubt he has also informed the Saudi’s intelligence arm, Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah.”

“What he has in store for the world? Which is what, exactly?” Kate asked.

“Which is simply that Al Qaeda will henceforth demand to be regarded as a sovereign nuclear power with all the perquisites such status entails. Frankly, we should have seen it coming. Al-Greeb has graduated from the primitive kind of terrorism evident in the destruction of the Twin Towers to a more sophisticated kind of political and economic blackmail. I believe he has no intention of detonating a nuclear device, unless it is forced upon him under circumstances in which he will likely be absolved by public opinion for using it.”

“In the Suez Canal?”

“That would work. Your theory exactly, as Mort related it to me. Al-Greeb will park his ship in the Canal and anchor it, announce to the world that Al Qaeda is a kind of stateless state, like Palestine. An organization with weapons, leaders, and an army, but no geographic territory. He will demand admittance to the United Nations, recognition as a sovereign nation, and, in essence, a seat at the international table of power.”

“An incredible transition, from terrorist to Head of State.”

“Hardly illogical, however. Al-Greeb is a new breed. He is not interested in bloodshed for its own sake. He is interested in real power, legitimate power, economic power most of all. I think, too, that he and his colleagues are tired of hiding.”

“And he’s going to achieve this how?”

“Just as you surmised. He’ll announce to the world that Al Qaeda is the tenth nuclear state and demand to be recognized as a sovereign entity with legitimate rights.”

“Representing whom, exactly? Where is the population of the Islamic State of Al Qaeda?”

“All of the world’s Muslims, or at least those who choose to be affiliated with Al Qaeda,” Mahmood replied. “It’s a new Caliphate, one that respects religious affiliation more than geographic borders. It makes sense in an odd way, in an internet age, does it not? Al-Greeb’s emirate is a virtual Caliphate. If any Muslim wants to be a citizen of Al Qaeda, he can become one no matter where he lives.”

“It’s incredible,” Kate said.

“No, it’s ingenious. The more I think about it, the more I realize it was inevitable, too. If not Al-Greeb, someone else like him would have thought of this. Think of how long Palestine negotiated on behalf of an ill-defined, non-ceded territory. Palestine existed only as a political idea, but with real leaders, a real army, long before there was a Palestine defined by geographical borders and hectares of land. Why not the same for Al Qaeda? The notion that one must have geographical territory to be considered sovereign is very much a 19th century idea. Al Greeb will declare sovereignty first and grab territory later.”

“And why not any other group, for that matter?”

"Well, forgive me if I mention the Vatican—a ‘state’ with no real territory, but one billion religious adherents. The Vatican is a kind of model, of sorts, for what Al-Greeb is planning. The Pope is regarded as a secular leader in Europe, a sovereign head of state, as well as a cleric. And in modern times, if you have the skill and
panache
to steal a nuclear bomb, perhaps you also have the skill to negotiate as a state,” Mahmood said.

Kate could tell he was not entirely joking.

“So Yasser al-Greeb is the pope of terror?”

“The fact is, Yasser al-Greeb is not interested in mass murder,” Mahmood continued, ignoring her sarcasm. “As far as I am able to peer into the obscure corners of his mind, what he is planning is political theater, to make what he considers to be a valid political statement, and an emphatic one. And by not wantonly killing people, he is unlikely to earn the sort of condemnation that was visited upon the 9/11 hijackers. He may even be taken seriously.”

As they were speaking in a quiet corner of the lobby, Kate saw Keven Smyth enter the hotel and walk toward the front desk. He glanced in her direction and she waved him over.

“Keven, I don’t think you’ve met Brigadier Mahmood Mahmood of the ISI in Pakistan,” she said formally.

“I know you by reputation, sir,” Smyth said, offering his hand. “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“I realize this is a bit irregular,” Mahmood said. “But I suppose that certain international situations are so profoundly dangerous that unique pragmatic partnerships are required.”

Smyth nodded his agreement.

“Kate, I wanted you to know that one of our guys in Suez has seen the
Aegean Apollon
enter Suez harbor,” Smyth said, “and is getting in line for tomorrow’s 6 AM convoy to Port Said.”

“Has it passed beneath your electrical gizmo?”

“Not yet. Probably this evening.”

“The
Aegean Apollon
was thoroughly inspected by the Israelis at Eilat,” Kate added. “They went over every square centimeter of that ship. There was no bomb on board.”

“Indeed, that’s true,” Mahmood said. “Because Al-Greeb had left it in a warehouse in Aqaba a few miles across the gulf. The minute the Israeli inspection was complete, they sailed right back to Aqaba to pick up their nuclear cargo. It was just a ruse to draw suspicion away from his vessel.”

“I suppose the good news, if any, in all this,” Smyth said, “is that nuclear blackmail is not the same as a nuclear detonation. It sounds like an actual explosion is not something Al-Greeb sees in the cards.”

“I think that’s a valid assessment, as I was telling Kate,” Mahmood said. “As your own nuclear theorist Hendryk Warsaw has often said, it is the threat of nuclear weapons that is their source of real power, not their use. In fact, to employ an atomic bomb is to invite global pariah status, a huge diminution of standing in the world.”

“So if the
Aegean Apollon
is now standing in line to make the Suez transit, what is our game-plan?” Smyth asked. “How are we going to throw a monkey-wrench into Al-Greeb’s calculations?”

“I think we have been dancing around this problem far too long,” Kate said. “We need to get aboard that ship. We need to stop this before it becomes the center of an international media circus.”

“Given that Al-Greeb has informed ISI through me, and that the Saudis are also aware of what’s coming, I can only imagine that the Egyptians have had some contact with Al-Greeb as well,” Mahmood said. “They will deny they know anything about this officially, of course, but nothing would please the government more than to have international attention shifted away from Tahrir Square.”

“Which means that boarding the
Aegean Apollon
will be next to impossible,” Kate said. “If the Egyptians are in on it.”

***

In the event, Yasser al-Greeb and Al Qaeda beat everyone at CIA and ISI to the punch. The tenth anniversary of 9/11 was only a few weeks away, and Al Qaeda was again making big news all over the world.

Using
Al Jazeera
and other media outlets in the Middle East, Ayman al-Zawahiri issued a taped statement at nightfall saying that Al Qaeda had obtained access to a tactical nuclear weapon which he was prepared to use in the service of Allah and the Faithful.

The statement mentioned the
Aegean Apollon
, a ship Al-Zawahiri claimed he owned, and the Suez Canal, “an important transport facility on Muslim lands and in Muslim hands,” and contained language about “the destruction of the wealth and property of the Zionists and Crusaders while sparing their lives.”

These statements created confusion at all media centers. What property and where? And whose lives? Compounded by problems of translation, the suspect origins of the tape, early reports were confused and deemed unreliable, even in Arab countries.

Western media were caught totally unprepared and initially reported the story with an air of incredulity, full of hedging and caveats about how hard it was to verify such extreme and unprecedented claims, (although one commentator at
Agence France Presse
said that terrorist access to nuclear weapons was “inevitable” and “should have been foreseen.”)

By next morning, a few experts were willing to go on air stating that the speaker did indeed appear to be Ayman al-Zawahiri, that his voice was recognizable.
Al Jazeera
then confirmed that the tape had been received from “sources previously linked to Al Qaeda.”

After much frenetic analysis of the tape and consultation with experts on terrorism,  the global news machine began to take the story at face value. Media superstars descended upon Cairo and Suez to photograph the tiny freighter
Aegean Apollon
and to provide continuous patter about the unfolding story of the vessel Al-Zawahiri had designated as the delivery mechanism for a nuclear device. CIA, NSA, GHCG, Mossad, and DGSE were all reported to be solemnly analyzing the situation.

Kate watched frenzied CNN and BBC reports when she awoke. The ship was pictured at the mouth of the Canal at the rear of a convoy of eighteen vessels. A pair of Egyptian Navy tenders was next to the
Aegean Apollon
, and Suez Canal Authority officials had apparently boarded her.

The CNN voiceover indicated that government officials were “investigating last night’s claim by Al Qaeda that the terrorist group is in possession of a nuclear bomb and is prepared to use it to destroy economic targets of importance to the West,” which was a roundabout way of saying the it was the Canal itself that was likely imperiled.

Kate called Olof Wheatley in Washington, but was told he was at the White House.

Kate walked to the American Embassy from her hotel, a distance of just a few hundred yards. It was a fine day, with the typical Cairene smog at bay, but Kate was not enjoying the weather or the clear sky. She was lost in thought. How had events slipped into the public sphere so quickly? What could she, or anyone, do now that a thousand cameras were trained on
the Aegean Apollon
?

When she reached the 16th floor of the Embassy, the first person she saw was Keven Smyth, whose face showed both the surprise and discomfort of the last few hours that she was sure was also etched on her own.

“I suppose you’ve been glued to the cable news channels,” Smyth said.