The Faithful Spy

“Very handsome, Jalal,” Zawahiri said. He seemed amused. Wells rubbed his newly smooth face. “It feels strange,” he said. More than strange. He felt young and soft without the beard. Vulnerable.

“Sit,” Zawahiri said, pointing at the chair with the newspapers beneath it. “I will cut your hair.” Wells sat silently as Qaeda’s No. 2 went to work. He tried to remember the last time someone else had cut his hair; in Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier he had done the job himself. In Washington, maybe, the night before he had left the United States to join the camps.

The night he had stayed at his apartment instead of meeting Exley for a drink after work. Just a drink, say good-bye before I go, he’d said, and they’d both known he was lying and had laughed to cover their nervousness. Yes, he thought. Had to be that night. He had gotten the haircut for her. But then he hadn’t shown up. He’d been ashamed, embarrassed, for his wife and for Exley’s husband. He’d driven home after the haircut, hadn’t called to cancel, and the next morning he had left on a trip that hadn’t stopped yet. He had forgotten that night, or shoved it into a corner of his mind where he put all the things that didn’t help him survive over here. Now the memories came flooding back. Exley. Was her hair still short? Did she still have that long blue dress?

He’d been gone a long time.

z awa h i r i t a p p e d h i s shoulder. Wells looked down to see clumps of his curly brown hair scattered over the newspaper. “Now you don’t look so Arab. Good,” Zawahiri said. He handed the mirror to Wells. A little ragged, but surprisingly decent.

“Stand here,” Zawahiri said, pointing to the beaded blue curtain.

“Waleed, take Jalal’s picture.” One of the men who’d come in with Zawahiri held up a portable passport camera. Wells wondered whether they were taking a death shot, to be FedExed to Langley along with a dozen black roses.

“Look at the light,” Waleed said. Click. Click. Click. “Shukran.” He walked down the corridor.

“Sit,” Zawahiri said to Wells, tapping the bench beside him.

“Jalal, what would you do if the sheikh said your time for martyrdom had come?”

Wells looked around the room, readying himself. Only one gun out, though the others were surely armed. He might have a chance. Yet he thought trying to escape would be a mistake. Zawahiri’s manner seemed professorial, as if he were genuinely interested in Wells’s answer. They wouldn’t have brought him all this way just to kill him; they could have done that easily in the mountains, and Zawahiri wouldn’t have bothered to come.

“If Allah wishes martyrdom for me, then so be it,” Wells said.

“Even if you did not know why?”

“We cannot always understand the ways of the Almighty.”

“Yes,” Zawahiri said. “Very good.” He stood. “Jalal — John—

you are American.”

“Once I was American,” Wells said. “I serve Allah now.”

“You served in the American army. You jumped from airplanes.”

Don’t argue, Wells told himself. He’s testing you. “My past is no secret, Mujahid. They taught me to fight. But they follow a false prophet. I accepted the true faith.”

Zawahiri glanced at the man sitting in the corner, a handsome Pakistani with neatly trimmed black hair and a small mustache.

“You have fought with us for many years. You study the Koran. You do not fear martyrdom. You seem calm even now.” Zawahiri took the AK from the guard. Almost idly, he flicked down the safety, setting the rifle on full automatic. He pointed the gun at Wells.

“Every man fears martyrdom. Those who say they don’t are lying,” Wells said, remembering the men he had seen die. If he was wrong about all of this, he hoped Zawahiri could shoot straight, at least. Make it quick.

“So you are afraid?” Zawahiri said. He pulled back the rifle’s slide, chambering a round.

Wells stayed utterly still. Either way he wouldn’t have long to wait now. “I trust in Allah and I trust in the Prophet,” he said.

“See?” Zawahiri said to the mustached man. He again pulled back the slide on the rifle, popping the round out of the chamber. He clicked up the rifle’s safety and handed it back to the guard.

“If you trust in the Prophet, then I trust you,” he said. “And I have a mission for you. An important mission.” Zawahiri motioned to a fat man who had sat silently in the corner during the meeting.

“This is Farouk Khan. Allah willing, he will have a task for you.”

“Salaam alaikum.”

“Alaikum salaam.”

Then Zawahiri pointed to the mustached man. “And this is Omar Khadri,” he said. “You will see him again. In America.”

Khadri wore Western clothes, a button-down shirt and jeans.

“Hello, Jalal,” he said. In English. English English. He sounded like he’d come straight from Oxford. Khadri put out a hand, and Wells shook it — a very Western greeting. Arab men usually hugged.

“They’re ready,” Waleed said from the corridor.

“Bring them,” Zawahiri said.

Waleed walked back into the room and handed two passports to Zawahiri.