Team Red Page 5

  “Professor Mahmoud Jaburi,” the woman next to him was saying, “I’d like to introduce you to three of my best students. This is Nada Rashad, Buthaina ib-Yaakub, and Shamika Johnson Muhammed. I was just telling Nada . . .” The woman prattled on, while Jaburi pretended to be listening. He smelled alcohol on her breath, even though he’d been quite specific that he would only attend an alcohol-free reception. Had she not been his host as one of the Kennedy School of Government’s deans, he would have walked away, but he could not, so he smiled politely as she spoke, twisting the ring on his finger behind his back and shifting his weight from heel to heel.

  “I wanted to tell you, professor,” the shortest of the three girls said, “that I’ve found your comparison of the Muwatta of Ibn Malik with the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal to be extremely relevant to my own studies in international law. I have been trying to convince my department that it should be a required text.”

  “That is very kind of you to say,” he replied. “Some schools can’t even teach the five pillars correctly. I know of one where Sahih Bukhari is not part of the curriculum. So first things first, I believe.”

  “Shamika spent a semester in Riyadh working on the Sunna Project for the HSA,” the dean said, putting her hand on the back of a black girl and urging her to step forward. The black girl was wearing a head scarf, like the other two, tan, though black would have been more respectful and appropriate. He hoped she would not be another one of those irritating American Black Muslims who were constantly foisting their opinions on him.

  “Do you speak Arabic?” he asked her. She lowered her eyes.

  “Oh, no,” she said humbly enough. “Very little. But I do speak HTML. I was working with the English translations anyway. Mostly just a lot of coding and data entry, but it was a fascinating experience.”

  “And whose translations were you working with?” he inquired, referencing the continuing project to create a searchable database of all the sayings and deeds of Mohammad.

  “Abdul Hamid Khan and M. Muhsin Siddiqui,” the girl named Shamika replied. “And a number of lesser translators.”

  “Shamika is a published poet,” the dean interrupted. “She told me she was surprised at the amount of latitude she was given to utilize her own English language skills.” Jaburi considered explaining to the woman that the Koran and its adjuncts were living documents, but he decided instead to ignore her.

  “And do you approve of the website currently entering all 880,000 nonauthenticated Hadith outside the Sahih?” he asked the black girl. The Hadith comprised the sayings and deeds of Mohammad. The Sahih was the true collection, as agreed upon by scholars through the centuries.

  “Only as a source for study by those interested in the isnad,” she said, referring to the oral tradition by which the Hadith had been passed down through the generations, before scholars established the science of Hadith study. “I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the oral traditions of politically repressed peoples, using American and Caribbean slave narratives and folk tales. There are parallels between what happened in America and what’s been perceived in Islamic nations where religious enculturations have been deprived of the right to free expression. I’ve also been working on a translation of a Kurdish poet, outside of my doctorate.”

  At least she spoke proper English, without resorting either to black slang or to the ridiculous forms of elevated diction and pretentious stilted elocution so many American Black Muslims seemed to find so absurdly empowering.

  “You speak Kurdish, then?”

  “Well, I’m learning,” she said. Why anyone would want to learn Kurdish or translate a Kurdish poet was beyond him, though he understood how two low cultures might resonate with each other.

  “And where are you from?” he asked her. The third girl edged closer, obviously dying to get a word in, but she was fat and ugly and probably stupid, judging by her vacant expression, and Jaburi wanted nothing to do with her.

  “I’m originally from Baltimore,” the one called Shamika said.

  “May I ask, will you be writing the introduction for the Sunna project? I was told you’d been invited to, but I hadn’t heard what your response was.”

  Jaburi sighed wearily, looking toward the ceiling.

  “Yes, I’ve been asked,” he said. “I don’t really know if I will have the time. These days I seem to spend all my free hours and minutes on television news programs answering questions about what’s going on in the Middle East. But yes, I suppose I will do something for IHSAN, even though we know the Internet represents all that is base and vile.”

  He smiled as if he were joking.

  “Perhaps I’ll see you again when the project is formally launched,” she said. He wondered briefly if the whore was trying to seduce him. She was probably only trying to represent to him an inflated understanding of her own status, implying that she’d been invited back to Riyadh for the ceremony. This was a problem inherent with educating women—it was never enough for them to merely receive knowledge.

  “Yes, perhaps.” He smiled.

  “May I have a word with you?” someone at his elbow intervened.

  Professor Jaburi turned to see the man he’d had an appointment to meet.

  “Andrew,” he said in greeting, embracing his friend. “La ilaha ill Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah. I wasn’t sure you would make it. Did you hear my lecture?”

  “I did,” the other said. Jaburi suspected he was lying. “Brilliant as always.”

  “And what part did you find the most illuminating?”

  “Oh, all of it,” Andrew said. “Athabuna wa athubukum Allah. Did I pronounce that correctly? ‘Divine Reward and Punishment in the Hereafter, as Miscegenated by Twenty-first Century Jihad.’ Very interesting. And quite relevant. I was just reading Joseph van Ess’s thoughts on the subject last week.”

  Reading an encyclopedia, Jaburi thought. Still, the man he knew as Andrew Timmons was better educated than most of the CIA agents he’d met, and he did seem to take care to inform himself, insofar as that was possible.

  “Professor,” the third girl interrupted. Jaburi was immediately annoyed. He didn’t like to be interrupted. “Can I ask you one question? What do you think of John Ashcroft?”

  “What do I think of John Ashcroft?” Jaburi said. This mere girl had the audacity to bait him? Was she currying favor, or trying to impress him? “Let me ask you,” he said, “what do you think of him? Have you met him?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “Well I have,” Jaburi snapped. “Several times. I find him a man of astonishing principle and a true and pious believer. I would wish that all people, whether Christian or Muslim, were as true to their beliefs as he is. He understands the significance of correct belief as well as the tenet that it is the combination of God’s grace and human intelligence and effort that will save us, as individuals and as nations. Now if you are asking me if I approve of how the rights and freedoms of Arab-Americans or of Muslims traveling or visiting in this country might potentially be abridged by the misapplication of the Patriot Act by zealous enforcement agencies unable to see beyond their own paranoia, I would give you a different answer, but you asked me about my friend John Ashcroft. Excuse me.”

  He turned and accompanied Agent Timmons, making their way through the crowd to an adjoining library, a wood-paneled room lined with bookshelves stocked with leather-bound volumes. A second CIA agent stood watch at the door, which Timmons closed behind them.

  “Do you think I was too rough on her, Andrew?” Jaburi asked.

  “Not at all,” Timmons said. “That’s what education is all about. I got straight A’s at Yale but I swear today I only remember the things taught to me by the professors who tried to kick my ass. Pardon the expression.”

  “Pardon granted,” Jaburi said graciously. “I always make allowances for vulgarities when I’m dealing with government officials. What was it you wanted to see me about? Your call sounded rather urgent. I take it this is not a social visit?”
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br />   “Actually,” Andrew Timmons said, “I wanted to run something by you. Hopefully I won’t take up much of your time but I need to test that photographic memory of yours. Just between you and me, my boss at Langley bet me twenty dollars you wouldn’t be able to do this but I told him never underestimate that intellect of yours.”

  “Memory and intellect are two different things,” Jaburi said. “And the correct word would be ‘hopeful,’ not ‘hopefully.’ Also ‘you and I,’ not ‘you and me.’”

  “There you go,” Timmons said. “Just kick my ass. It’s good for me.”

  “What is it you have?”

  Timmons reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat and extracted a piece of paper, folded into thirds, which he opened and handed to Jaburi. Jaburi set the reading glass hanging from a chain around his neck on the end of his nose and scratched his beard as he read a list of telephone numbers, perhaps twenty in all, with a variety of international country codes preceding them. Jaburi studied the paper for a few moments before handing it back to the CIA agent.

  “And what is this from?”

  “These,” Agent Timmons said, “were found in the call log of a cell phone that was taken off an Al Qaeda operative in Jiddah. We were just wondering if any of the numbers meant anything to you. Would you like to see it again?”

  Jaburi shook his head, insulted by the unnecessary offer.

  “The Swiss numbers are none I’ve ever seen,” he said, “though I would guess they would be numbers for those who facilitated the May 12 bombings in Riyadh. And the Saudi numbers would be for those who participated more directly, but you have no doubt already come to the same conclusions. The Sudanese and Omani numbers are not known to me, but the fifteenth number in Yemen is that of a man named Faris al-Farük, whose name I gave you last year when you were asking me about the Cole attack. Was that number truly in this person’s cell phone or were you testing me?”

  Timmons smiled apologetically.

  “I’ll split the twenty dollars with you if that would make it up to you,” he said.

  Jaburi smiled again.

  “The number I truly would suggest you look into would be the one in Vancouver. The third one on your list in the 604 area code. This is a man named Yasseen ibn-Rezwan. His wife’s name is Selwa and he has two sons named Hakim and Hatem, seven and four. He is on the board of the Al-Awda there and he has had me come speak at his fundraisers on two occasions, but the last time I was there, he told me at dinner that he’d been raised in Najaf where his father worked for the Iraq Oil Ministry before coming to this country in the 1950s, even though Iraq did not have an Oil Ministry until much later. He also claimed to have no knowledge of the Ahmed Rezzam incident in 1999. I found that suspicious. Though I believe I informed you of my suspicions at the time.”

  “You probably did,” Timmons said. Rezzam had been a thirty-four-year-old Algerian who’d been arrested while mixing bombs in a Vancouver motel with the intention of blowing up the Los Angeles airport on New Year’s Eve of the year 2000. “Unlike you, I don’t have a photographic memory. But that’s good. Seeing his number on this list should confirm your suspicions. We’ll look into it. Anything else?”

  Jaburi shook his head.

  “Oh—one more thing,” Timmons said. “I almost forgot. Where’s Osama bin Laden?”

  “I believe he has shaved his beard and is working as a busboy at a Denny’s in Youngstown, Ohio,” Jaburi replied with a smile. It was a joke he and Timmons always made to end their briefings.

  “Okay then,” Timmons said. “I’ll have some of my people look into it. As always, professor, it’s been a pleasure.”

  Professor Jaburi returned to the reception, where he told the dean that he was feeling tired and needed to go to his hotel. There, he used one of the computers in the media center off the lobby to check his e-mail. In addition to all the spam offering him Viagra and penis enlargements, he read one from his travel agent, giving him an updated itinerary for his speaking tour, and another from his wife, Aafia, who told him their son Asgher needed more money for school clothes.

  There seemed to be no limit to the amount of money Asgher needed just to get by, and his sister Nesreen was worse, insistent on having all the latest name brands to wear to school. The money wasn’t the issue—it was the way they saw the world. It was a question of values, where despite his best efforts, his children had none. He’d given up. The struggle was not worth the effort it took, and it was too late anyway. Things would be different when he was reunited with his family in paradise, which would happen soon enough.

  He went to his hotel room, where he lay on the bed. It disturbed him to think of how throughout the Arab nations, any young boy or girl with a computer could, in a matter of moments, see things no grown adult was ever meant to see, women having sex with five or six men, or with each other, or with the common beasts of the field. He turned on the television to see the latest news from his homeland, still occupied by the infidels, the nation dissolving in chaos, impurity, and mediocrity before his very eyes. It was depressing, and yet it made him feel better to know that it would all be over soon enough and that Allah had chosen him to be his agent. It was because of his gifts, Mahmoud knew, that he’d been chosen to be the next prophet, even though he, too, had been corrupted. God’s forgiveness knew no limits. In that sense he knew himself to be a savior, the vessel and the mechanism through which this world and all its evil would be obliterated, in order that a new world, true to Islam and created in accordance with the correct teachings of the Koran, could emerge to take its place, occupied by the true believers who survived. God had sent plagues before to purify the world when man had turned to sin and lost his way. He was sending one again.

  Al-w’ad wa al-wa’id.

  A threat is a threat. A promise is a promise.

  La ilaha ill Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah.

  Before going to bed, he got down on his knees to face Mecca, and then he gave a brief prayer of thanks, and a humble request that Allah would give him strength for the holy mission he was about to embark upon.

  Chapter Four

  THE COMMAND CENTER DELUCA AND OTHER members of the 419th Military Intelligence Battalion worked out of, the OMT (Operations Management Team), about a five-minute drive from the TOC, was in a converted adobe Iraqi Air Force building, inside of which three rooms had been partitioned. The main room, at the end of the hallway, held tables along the walls where computers and printers sat, one wall featuring a large whiteboard where the names of agents, their missions, and the vehicles they’d check out were charted in grease pencil. In the center of the main room, a large wooden table overflowed with manuals, maps, and files currently in use, which sometimes made it difficult to hold briefings there. Halfway down the hall, on the right, was the TR or “Team Room,” where the THTs kept their files and did their reports. The room was full of classified material and therefore off-limits to informants or to agents looking for a place to interrogate suspects. Reicken’s office stood opposite.

  The secretary at the desk in the reception area outside Lieutenant Colonel Stanley Reicken’s office was a specialist named Washington, first name Marilyn, DeLuca had come to learn, a black girl in her early twenties from Georgia who’d joined the National Guard for the educational benefits, she’d told him, adding that it beat working at Waffle House. Lately she’d come to feel less certain of that, she’d said with a weak smile.

  He’d gone over the Al-Tariq files as soon as he got back to base, finding a free terminal at the TR and logging on with his team username, THT80, and his personal password, Hazel, the name of his first dog. There were entries regarding Al-Tariq dating back to the fifties—CIA reports, DIA summaries, photographs at various ages, as well as a biography that included where he started his political career, his military background, how he joined the Ba’ath party, how he’d risen through the ranks (including the names of the rivals he’d killed or made disappear), brief bios of his family members, his tribal history, and the nam
es of his tribal allies and/or rivals. DeLuca was most concerned with the sitreps at the end of the folder. The evidence that Al-Tariq was dead was compelling and complete. It was one of the few cases where they actually had a body, with a 100 percent DNA match from tissue samples. They had fingerprints taken before the war that matched fingerprints from the scene after the bombing. They even had part of the face, with a registration of 98 percent according to the NSA’s face recognition program. There truly was no reason to doubt that the man was dead. Ali’s story was getting harder and harder to believe.

  If Al-Tariq were still alive, the syllogism was ominously clear. Saddam’s was a regime based on fear, emanating from the top down. U.S. policy, from the very start, held that in a fear-based regime, if you chopped off the head, the body would die. Al-Tariq had been head of the Mukhaberat, and the Mukhaberat was in charge of the WMD. According to the satellite communication intercepts DeLuca found in his file, Al-Tariq had been talking to Al Qaeda operatives before the war, mostly fielding calls from men asking him for sanctuary after being driven out of Afghanistan. The Pentagon’s greatest fear all along had been that Saddam, through Al-Tariq, would provide Al Qaeda operatives with WMD. If Al-Tariq was dead, then the Mukhaberat would probably collapse, once the fear that held it together was gone. That was why his compound had been so heavily targeted.