The Faithful Spy

“Captain Hamilton one more time. We’re just a few minutes outside Dulles, and as you can see the chop has lightened. Under normal circumstances I’d ask you to turn off all your electronic devices, but those should be off already, so I just need you to stay in your seats with your seat belts securely fastened. We’ll be on the ground shortly. Thank you.”

Deirdre rubbed her daughter’s hand.

“Almost home,” she said.

in shafer’s office, the phone rang. He listened for a moment, then hung up.

“They’re on approach,” he said to Exley. “Everything seems normal. No word from the Egyptians — it’s almost ten p.m. in Cairo. I told you it would be okay.”

“It’s not okay yet,” Exley said.

i n 42 h, z a k a r i a Fahd — the bearded man who had for the last ninety minutes been on the collective mind of the main cabin—

stepped into the aisle. A flight attendant ran toward him.

“You need to sit down, sir.”

“I need to use the restroom,” Fahd said.

“Get back in your seat!” Two more attendants moved in to block his path.

“Please — I need the toilet,” Fahd said.

“If you don’t sit down by the count of three, you’ll be arrested. There’s a marshal on this plane. One — two—”

In the midst of the fracas, no one noticed that Mohammed alNerzi, the quiet man with close-cropped hair in 47A, had turned on his cellphone, a prepaid model that had been bought in New York a month before. The phone found a working cell and blinked its eagerness to serve. Al-Nerzi held down the 4 key, automatically dialing a number that he had programmed into the phone the night before.

The number belonged to another cellphone, a phone that not coincidentally was also on board UA 919. No one could answer the second phone, but no one needed to. It was hidden in a red canvas bag in the baggage hold below. The bag had been slipped on board by Uday Yassir, a Syrian who had been hired three months before to join United’s ground crew at Heathrow after a routine background check found nothing untoward.

Unlike the passengers’ luggage, the canvas bag hadn’t gone through a security screen. It wouldn’t have passed. The phone inside it was hooked to a detonator wired to a pound of C-4, the plastic explosive preferred by armies and terrorists. The squat grayish brick had the power to tear a ten-foot hole in the plane’s aluminum skin, destroying the Boeing’s structural integrity and breaking the 747 apart in midair.

Across the cabin, the flight attendant said, “Three.”

Zakaria Fahd sat down.

And Mohammed al-Nerzi looked at his phone. The call hadn’t gone through. He couldn’t understand what had happened. He should be dead. The plane should be in a thousand pieces. Something was wrong. He silently cursed his misfortune, then tried to dial the number twice more before turning his phone off and slipping it into his pocket. The man in 47B never noticed. What al-Nerzi didn’t know, what investigators discovered only after the 747 landed and they found the bomb in the plane’s hold, was that the turbulence over New Jersey had smashed the second phone, preventing it from receiving the call to detonate the C-4. Only the sudden violence of a late-March squall had saved UA 919 from destruction.

“ w e ’ r e o n o u r final descent into Washington Dulles International Airport. Flight attendants please be seated for landing,” Captain Hamilton said. In 35A, Angela Smart craned her neck as the jet passed through three thousand feet, two thousand. They broke through a heavy layer of clouds, and she could see thick woods, roads heavy with traffic, the brown waters of the Potomac. The ride was mostly smooth now. One thousand feet. Five hundred. Touchdown. The jet bounced once on the runway, then landed for real. A giant cheer erupted across the cabin, whoops and applause. The captain threw on the brakes, and the big Boeing came smoothly to a stop. The cheering continued for a full minute before finally slowing down.

“We’re glad to have you home,” the captain said, and the applause exploded again. shafer’s phone rang. He listened for a moment, then hung up.

“They’re down,” he said to Exley. “But something happened on the approach. They want to scrub the hold, talk to some people.”

An hour later, with the 747 still on the tarmac at Dulles, an FBI agent found the red canvas bag, and the truth of what had almost happened to UA 919 finally became clear.

Finding the would-be bombers wasn’t hard. Inexplicably, alNerzi didn’t even try to get rid of his phone. And the timing of Fahd’s stunt appeared strangely coincidental, as did the fact that both men had bought their tickets the same day, through the same travel agent. Exley had little doubt that both men would end up in federal prison, or Guantánamo. But somehow she didn’t feel any better. Only an incredible stroke of luck had saved the lives of 307 people today.