The Faithful Spy

No. Ghazi’s wife and children had been killed in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1983. He hated the Jews and the United States more than anyone Khadri had ever met. Ghazi would die before he betrayed his al Qaeda brothers. The kafirs had found Alaa some other way. Fortunately, Alaa didn’t know much, just the number of a cellphone Khadri would destroy as soon as he could, and an e-mail address that Khadri would never use again. A knock at the door startled him. Khadri looked at his briefcase, where he kept his gun. Were the kafirs coming for him already?

“Yes?”

“Room service.”

Right. His breakfast. He opened the door, still half-expecting to see FBI agents lined up, guns drawn. But the only person outside was a waiter with a tray. “Just leave it, please.”

“Yessir.”

Khadri looked down at his food: hot coffee, scrambled eggs with the steam still rising, a glass of fresh orange juice. Normally he would have been ravenous. But this morning he had lost his appetite. In just the last month, he had lost three of the ten sleeper agents that al Qaeda had in the United States. Including Qais, his best operative.

Khadri had explained to Qais that he’d designed the mission in Atlanta to test Wells’s loyalties. He had warned Qais to be careful, to kill Wells immediately if he felt at all threatened. So Khadri couldn’t understand what had happened. Wells had e-mailed him afterward, explaining that the mission had gone wrong because West wasn’t sleeping where they’d expected. He was outside the main house, having sex with his bodyguard. The bodyguard had shot Qais and Sami before Wells killed him and West, Wells said. The story was so bizarre that Khadri almost believed it. Almost. He wished he knew if he could trust Wells. He had debated that question endlessly with himself, and he still wasn’t sure. But he believed that the answer was yes. More important, he didn’t have much choice, especially after what had happened in Montreal. Yet another disaster, Khadri thought. Allah had not blessed him this month. Crazy Tarik Dourant. Khadri understood why Tarik had snapped. His wife had deserved what she’d gotten. But why couldn’t Tarik just have waited? Khadri would gladly have taken care of Fatima and her kafir boyfriend in due time. Instead Tarik had lashed out — and now his work was about to be lost. The Montreal police had already interviewed him about Fatima’s disappearance. Soon enough they would come for him. Before he was arrested, Khadri needed to get Tarik’s germs into the United States. Wells was his best choice. Khadri’s other sleepers might have problems at the border, but Wells could cross easily. And Khadri thought he had found a foolproof plan, one that would work even if Wells was an American agent. A plan that would turn everything around and shock the world.

As soon as possible Khadri needed to get authorization from Ayman al-Zawahiri for the new operation. Zawahiri wouldn’t be pleased with the change. Al Qaeda prepared its attacks years in advance. An operation as important as this wasn’t supposed to be revised on a few days’ notice, and the new plan would cost al Qaeda all its American sleepers at once. But Zawahiri would understand. Better their men should die gloriously than be arrested one by one. Better to strike while they still had the strength to land a heavy blow. This attack might not be as elegant as his original plan, but it would kill just as many people.

Khadri leaned forward to pray. He couldn’t delude himself. The noose was tightening. He would probably never see Mecca, his greatest dream. He would never be married or have a family. He would probably die in this alien land, surrounded by infidels. Yet he found himself more afraid of failure than death. In this, at least, he and Wells were alike. as soon as the phone rang Wells knew. Khadri was the only person who had this number. He pulled the handset out of his pocket, took a breath, and accepted the call.

“Jalal.”

“Nam.”

“Check your gmail account.” Click.

“As you like, Omar,” Wells said to the dead line. Finally, Wells thought. Finally Khadri had decided to use him. He felt certain this was the real mission, the one he had awaited for so long. And even if Khadri was sending him down another false path, Wells knew now that they would meet again. This time he would destroy Khadri. Even if he had to tear out the man’s throat with his bare hands.

Wells could see now that Khadri was Qaeda’s linchpin, even more important to the group’s plans than Zawahiri or bin Laden himself. Khadri and Khadri alone controlled Qaeda’s networks in the United States. Without him Qaeda’s ability to attack America would be set back at least five years. Maybe more. Not forever, but enough time for Major Glen Holmes and Wells’s old friends in the Special Forces to root out the last of the jihadis in the North-West Frontier. To catch Zawahiri and bin Laden himself. To defeat Qaeda. Khadri was the key.

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