The setting, fittingly enough, was Mecca. Rashid had been invited to speak at the university, a high honor for a cleric who had been cursed with an American passport. Given the fact that Mecca is closed to infidels, the CIA had no choice but to allow him to go alone. He flew from Amman to Riyadh, where he met a final time with one of his CIA handlers, then boarded an internal Saudia Airlines flight to Mecca. His speech was scheduled for eight that evening. Rashid never showed up. He had vanished without a trace.
“At first, we feared he’d been kidnapped and killed by a local branch of al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Our prized possession resurfaced on the Internet a few weeks later. The eloquent, enlightened young man of moderation was gone. He’d been replaced by a raving fanatic who preached that the only way to deal with the West was to destroy it.”
“He deceived you.”
“Obviously.”
“For how long?”
“That remains an open question,” said Carter. “There are some at Langley who believe Rashid was bad from the beginning, others who theorize he was driven over the edge by the guilt of working as a spy for the infidels. Whatever the case, one thing is beyond dispute. During the time he was traveling the Islamic world on my dime, he recruited an impressive network of operatives, right under our noses. He’s the ultimate talent spotter and skilled in the art of deception and misdirection. We hoped he would stick to preaching and recruiting, but that hope turned out to be misplaced. The attacks in Europe were Rashid’s coming-out party. He wants to replace Osama Bin Laden as leader of the global jihadist movement. He also wants to do something Bin Laden was never able to accomplish after 9/11.”
“Strike the Far Enemy in his homeland,” said Gabriel. “Shed American blood on American soil.”
“With a network bought and paid for by the Central Intelligence Agency,” Carter added soberly. “How would you like that chiseled on your headstone? If it were ever made public that Rashid al-Husseini was once on our payroll . . .” Carter’s voice trailed off. “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”
“What do you want from me, Adrian?”
“I want you to make the bombing in Covent Garden the last attack Rashid al-Husseini ever carries out. I want you to smash his network before anyone else dies because of my folly.”
“Is that all?”
“No,” said Carter. “I want you to keep the entire operation secret from the president, James McKenna, and the rest of the American intelligence community.”
Chapter 13 Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
ADRIAN CARTER WAS DOCTRINAIRE WHEN it came to matters of tradecraft, which meant he could not talk for too long within the confines of a safe house, even if it was one of his own. They descended the curved front steps and, with a single CIA security man in tow, headed westward along N Street. It was a few minutes after nine o’clock. Carter’s penny loafers tapped rhythmically on the redbrick sidewalk, but Gabriel seemed to move without a sound. A Metro bus rumbled past, filled to capacity. Gabriel pictured the same bus torn in half and engulfed in flames.
“Where did he go after leaving Mecca?”
“We believe he’s living under the protection of tribal elements in the Rafadh Valley of Yemen. It’s a completely lawless place, without schools, paved roads, or even a reliable supply of water. In fact, the entire country is dry as a bone. Sana might be the first capital city on Earth to actually run out of water.”
“But not Islamic militants,” said Gabriel.
“Oh, no,” Carter agreed. “Yemen is well on its way to becoming the next Afghanistan. For now, we’ve been content to lob the occasional Hellfire missile over the border. But it’s only a matter of time before we have to put boots on the ground and drain the swamp.” He glanced at Gabriel and added, “There actually are swamps in Yemen, by the way—a string of marshes along the coastline that produce malarial mosquitoes the size of buzzards. My God, what a dreadful place.”
Carter walked in silence for a moment with his hands clasped behind his back and his head down. Gabriel deftly sidestepped a tree root that had risen through the sidewalk and asked how Rashid managed to communicate with his network from so remote a place.
“We haven’t been able to figure that out,” Carter replied. “We assume he’s using local tribesmen to ferry messages to Sana or perhaps across the Gulf of Aden to Somalia, where he’s forged a relationship with the al-Shabaab terror group. We’re certain of one thing, though. Rashid spends no time on the phone, satellite or otherwise. He learned a great deal about American capabilities when he was on our payroll. And now that he’s gone over to the other side, he’s put that knowledge to good use.”
“I don’t suppose you also taught him how to plan and execute a synchronized series of attacks in three European countries.”
“Rashid is a talent spotter and a source of inspiration,” said Carter, “but he’s no operational mastermind. He’s clearly working with someone good. If I had to guess, the three attacks in Europe were carried out by someone who cut his teeth in—”
“Baghdad,” Gabriel said, finishing Carter’s thought for him.
“The MIT of terrorism,” Carter added, nodding in agreement. “Its graduates are all PhDs, and they served their internships by matching wits with the Agency and the American military.”
“All the more reason why you should deal with them.”
Carter made no reply.
“Why us, Adrian?”
“Because the American counterterrorism apparatus has grown so large we can’t seem to get out of our own way. At last count, we had more than eight hundred thousand people with top-secret clearances. Eight hundred thousand,” Carter repeated incredulously, “and yet we still weren’t able to prevent a single Islamic militant from planting a bomb in the heart of Times Square. Our ability to collect information is unrivaled, but we’re too big and far too redundant to be effective. We are Americans, after all, and when confronted with a threat, we throw large amounts of money at it. Sometimes, it’s better to be small and ruthless. Like you.”
“We warned you about the perils of reorganizing.”
“And we would have been wise to listen,” said Carter. “But our unwieldy size is only part of the problem. After 9/11, the gloves came off, and we adopted a whatever-it-takes attitude when it came to dealing with the enemy. These days, we try not to mention the enemy by name, lest we offend him. At Langley, counterterrorism jobs are considered politically risky. All the best officers in the Clandestine Service are learning to speak Mandarin.”
“The Chinese aren’t actively plotting to kill Americans.”
“But Rashid is,” Carter said, “and our intelligence suggests he’s planning something spectacular in the very near future. We need to break his network, and we need to do it quickly. But we can’t do that if we’re forced to operate under the new rules put in place by President Hope and his well-intentioned accomplice James McKenna.”
“So you want us to do your dirty work for you.”
“I’d do the same for you,” Carter said. “And don’t try to tell me that you lack the capability. The Office was the first Western-oriented intelligence service to establish an analytical unit dedicated to the global jihadist movement. You were also first to identify Osama Bin Laden as a major terrorist,