Quest for Honor (13 page)

The CIA station chief narrowed his eyes. Who could Shalita be referring to? If not al-Zawahiri, then who? His mind raced. Ilyas Kashmiri, who planned the 2008 commando attacks in Mumbai and had been planning similar strikes in Europe, was taken out by a U.S. drone in Waziristan back in June. Al-Zawahiri was announced as al-Qaida’s new leader only days after the Kashmiri hit. The CIA was hunting him at this very moment, and Simons had no doubt about their ultimate success. Yes, it would be nice to get him right away, but…

Wait a minute. There had been scuttlebutt in the past couple years about someone else, a man whose existence was fiercely debated within the Western intelligence agencies. Simons had just been talking with a colleague from the Baghdad station a few weeks ago about the rumors…”Are you referring to someone who is known as ‘al-Qa’im’?”

Their eyes locked for a few tense, silent moments. Then, Simons saw a very minute change in those brown eyes.

The Ugandan spoke. “I will give you two items for free, Mr. Simons, as a sign of my good faith. Yes, al-Qa’im exists. That is the first item. The second is this: Hamas is preparing a strike in Israel in three days. This is an operation planned and supported by al-Qa’im. A test run, so to speak. The target is the town of Ashkelon.”

Simons knew the town. It was on the Mediterranean coast, just south of Ashdod, only a few miles north of Gaza. “What, specifically, is the target in Ashkelon?”

Shalita shook his head. “That is all I can tell you. The date is three days from now. I am sure your Mossad friends will be able to figure it out from there. But if successful, it is a harbinger of things to come from al-Qa’im. If you wish to find out more, you must agree to my conditions.”

“Why would Hamas want to attack Israel now? The Palestinians are seeking recognition as a state in the United Nations. Why would they want to jeopardize that?”

Shalita shook his head and frowned. “You have not been listening to me. You assume that Hamas is under the control of Abbas and his regime in the Palestinian Authority. Where does Hamas get its funding? Its weapons?”

“They get most of their money and weapons from….” It hit Simons like a thunderclap. Two and two suddenly added up to four.
Iran.
How could he have been so dense as to miss that right away? “I see,” he said, nodding. It took all of his Marine Corps discipline to control his growing excitement. “That is most interesting indeed,” he said finally. “What are your remaining conditions?”

“I spent a few years in your country, Mr. Simons, when I was a young man. I came to admire you Americans in many ways. But I also learned, in the years after I returned to Africa, that most of you cannot be completely trusted. Americans, by and large, are selfish and greedy. Many of them are naïve about the world. Your new president has made a big show of going all over the world and apologizing for his own country. He bowed down to the King of Saudi Arabia, a ruler who has turned a blind eye to the money flowing from his country’s madrassas to fund our jihad. Yet surely you know that the men of jihad laugh at your president. In the end, he will be like every other American, out to protect Number One, as you so often say. So, my one remaining condition is this: I will surrender myself to one American, and one American only. He is the only one I remember from my time in your country that I found to be an honorable, trustworthy man.”

“And who would that man be?”

“He was a fellow student of mine, at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. His name was James Hayes. I will surrender to him, ten days from now.”

“Assuming we can find him, what if he refuses to cooperate?”

“It was a long time ago, Mr. Simons, but if James Hayes is anything like the man I once knew, he will help you. He was a man of honor.”

“What if he’s dead?”

Shalita’s eyes narrowed. “He is not. He has a page on Facebook, and he posted a message there just two days ago. In seven days I will send further instructions to you about our next meeting, the one in which you will be accompanied by Mr. Hayes, to a place of my choosing.”

Simons spread his hands. “I will do what I can.”

Shalita stood up. “See that you do.” He leaned on the table. “You can be assured of this, Mr. Simons. If you do not bring James Hayes to me, I will disappear. You will never find al-Qa’im on your own. He is far too clever for you.” He turned to go, then stopped and faced Simons again. “I know that many in your country now feel you won your war against us, now that Osama is dead. But know this, Mr. Simons. Our cause is more than just one man. There are over a billion Muslims in the world. If only one in a hundred supports us, that is ten million people. Ten million. How many Americans are willing to put their lives on the line to defeat us? Not very many.”

Simons fought against his temper again, forcing himself to stay impassive. “The few that we have seem to be doing pretty well against you so far.”

Was that a slight nod of grudging respect from the Ugandan? Simons allowed himself to breathe a little bit. Shalita stood and leaned forward on the table. His eyes were hard.

“Yes, your soldiers and Marines are formidable fighters, Mr. Simons. Al-Qa’im has much respect for them, which is why his plans are designed to attack your weaknesses, not your strengths. Our jihad will continue, and we might very well win. We Muslims are a patient people, Mr. Simons. You think in terms of days, even hours; we think in centuries. Will the black flag of Islam fly over the ruins of the White House one day? You and I might not live to see that, but our grandchildren might. Do you want to see your granddaughter wearing a
burqa
? I thought not.” He stood up straight, eyes blazing. “One week, Mr. Simons. Find James Hayes and prepare to bring him to me.” He raised his voice and issued an order in Somali. The door opened behind Simons and hands gripped him under the arms, lifting him roughly to his feet.

Sudika gave him one last look, then turned and left the room.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Somalia

Y
usuf was leaving
the camp’s makeshift mosque the next morning after prayers when Heydar approached him. The Iranian offered a friendly smile and asked, “May I have a word with you?”

He’d had only a few hours’ sleep in his own bed, so Yusuf was not feeling very alert this morning, but he was alert enough to notice that Heydar had once again failed to address him as “brother”, which was common among the senior leadership in the camp. The more junior fighters always used the Arabic “Ra-iss”, and the Somalis who were contracted to do the menial chores, considered beneath the dignity of the foreigners, always used the traditional “hogaamiye”. Heydar, however, had subtle ways to remind everyone that he was not only the equal of anyone else in the camp, but first among equals.

“Of course, brother,” Yusuf said, slightly emphasizing the last word. He was fluent in Arabic, which was the common language used in the camp among the foreigners, and he was conversational in Somali. He had been pleased to find that his English was still very good. “We can have privacy in my office.”

The trip to Mogadishu and the meeting with the American had exhausted him. The temptation to simply surrender to the CIA agent had been almost overwhelming, but Yusuf summoned his willpower and stuck to the plan. Besides not trusting the CIA, it was entirely possible that neither one of them would have been able to leave the building alive. The security detail he’d taken to the capital was a mix of some of his own men from the camp and local Somalis, and who knew how many of them could be trusted?

I am getting paranoid
. But, as the Zionist leader Golda Meir had once said, even paranoids have enemies. He remembered reading that when he was at university in Wisconsin, studying the Arab-Israeli conflicts in a history class. The American students had engaged in lively discussions about the Palestinian question. Yusuf rarely said anything. What did any of those fools know about the suffering of the Palestinians, not to mention his own people in Uganda? The people he associated with, when he met with them over coffee in the commons or in the evening at the campus bar, did not even consider that he might be a Muslim. With one exception, he reminded himself; among his silent prayers to Allah this morning was a prayer of hope that this man would be willing to help him now.

His quarters came into view as they turned right down a narrow “street”. The camp was housed in a large walled compound, very similar to the many Yusuf had seen in Afghanistan, but with more modern amenities, or at least as many as Somalia could provide. Generous financial inducements to the proper authorities ensured that the compound would have reliable electricity and was left alone by what passed for a government in this wretched country. With about two hundred fighters in the camp, Yusuf had a formidable force, more than enough to discourage all but the most foolhardy challengers who might decide to alter the status quo. In this land that was ruled by gangsters, nobody was that foolish. To attack the camp would have been bad for business. Yusuf’s superiors, after all, spent a considerable amount of money to support their operations in Somalia, and if the Somalis for some insane reason were to cause trouble for Yusuf, there was always Sudan. Perhaps even his homeland, which he had not seen in ten years.

Ah, Uganda. Sometimes he caught himself longing for the streets of his old neighborhood in Kampala. His father had been a highly-ranked official in Milton Obote’s government, wealthy by African standards, so much so he was able to send his only son to university in America. Yusuf thought often of the family’s villa on Lake Victoria. He tried to remember it as it was in the heyday of his youth, a place of beauty and laughter and music. The last time he’d seen it, the villa had been neglected, its once-sumptuous lawns and gardens overgrown with weeds. He had not been able to bring himself to go inside. His parents fled to Kenya when Obote was overthrown in 1985, and they now lived on what money Yusuf could send to them in Nairobi. He wished that someday he could bring them home, but that was impossible as long as the current dictator, Yoweri Museveni, was in power. Museveni had overthrown the general who had overthrown Obote, and had not relinquished power in a quarter-century. He would likely live longer than Yusuf’s parents, unless the Lord’s Resistance Army got him first. Yusuf had once been offered an important position in that group, which had been fighting Museveni in the north of the country for years and coveted al-Qaida support, but Yusuf would have nothing to do with them. They enslaved children and had murdered and displaced thousands of his fellow Ugandans. Of course, what had al-Qaida done to his fellow Muslims? It struck Yusuf now that it had all led here.

His quarters was a simple four-room building that had the only bathtub in the compound, a rare luxury Yusuf indulged in as he dared, never wishing to give his men reason to be jealous. There was his bedroom, a small kitchen, and his office, plus the small anteroom that functioned as a guest room of sorts, where Amir frequently slept. Furnishings were sparse, but his needs were few. He had grown up in Kampala in relative comfort, thanks to his father’s position in Obote’s foreign ministry, and his student lodgings in America were simple for that time and place but luxurious by African standards. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to live in a large, comfortable house, with lights that never dimmed, and hot water out of the tap whenever you wanted it.

He led the way to his office. “Can I get you some refreshment?” he asked the Iranian.

“Thank you, that would be most appreciated.” They made small talk as Yusuf brewed some tea. Heydar could be charming when it suited him, which was most of the time. He never lacked for female companionship, that was for certain. Yusuf strictly enforced the rule that forbade his men to fraternize with the few unmarried women in the camp, but Heydar had found ways to get around that, and Yusuf had chosen not to challenge him on it. He regretted that now, regretted the several instances where he could have stood up to the Iranian and put him in his proper place. It was too late now, perhaps. But perhaps not. Yusuf knew he must be careful. He could exile Heydar from the camp, but without very good cause, that would come back to haunt him. The mullahs in Tehran wielded considerable influence, far more than they should have, in his opinion, but he had to deal with reality. In America he had learned that he who writes the checks makes the rules. That was true everywhere.

They took seats in Yusuf’s cramped office. “What can I do for you today, my friend?”

“I received a private communication last evening from Tehran, and I wish to share it with you.”

“Indeed.” This was unprecedented. Yusuf knew that Heydar was the only other person in the camp who had access to the internet, and he assumed he received his instructions from his superiors via encrypted emails. Yusuf and his al-Qaida brothers had learned some time ago that this method could not be trusted, as the Americans were quite clever in their code-breaking abilities. Most of his own orders came via courier. It was slower but more secure.

“I am informed that you will be receiving similar orders in a day or so by courier,” Heydar said.

“But you wish to give me advance notice? That is most…interesting, Heydar.”

“I understand your skepticism, ra-iss,” Heydar said, and Yusuf did not miss his use of the honorific. Oh, but he was a smooth one. “I hope you understand that I am not your enemy. I am here only to provide assistance. My government is a strong supporter of your movement.”

“Even though your leadership is Shia and mine is Sunni?”

“We have a common goal: to crush the Zionists, to throw out their crusader allies, and to establish the caliphate. Is this not so?”

“That is true,” Yusuf said, choosing not to let this devolve into a theological discussion. It all came down to politics, anyway. Yes, the caliphate was the ultimate goal: a Muslim state, stretching from Morocco to Indonesia, over a billion people strong and armed with a mighty arsenal of nuclear weapons. Then they would move on Europe and India, and eventually America. China and Russia would be more difficult, both huge nations with nuclear arms, but even now they were making inroads in the more remote provinces of those countries. The big question, of course, was who the caliph would be. Osama had seen himself in that role, but now he was enjoying his virgins, or so many of his followers thought. In his heart of hearts, Yusuf was not so sure about that.

The Iranians believed that the caliphate would be led by the Twelfth Imam, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Mahdi, a descendant of the Prophet himself who was born in 869 A.D. and did not die, but was hidden by Allah, an action known as the Occultation. He would emerge in the future to bring peace and justice to the world, and he would do so by the sword. As a Sunni, Yusuf had been taught that the Mahdi has not yet been born, but was coming, and when he grew to manhood he would lead the faithful, as the Shia believed too. The big difference, it seemed to Yusuf, was that the Iranian rulers professed to know that the Mahdi was about to emerge from his Occultation. Their president, Ahmadinejad, claimed to have been in personal contact with the Mahdi and was ordered to prepare for his arrival. At one time Yusuf had thought that was hogwash, but since his trip to the Aladagh, things had changed. Not his own religious beliefs; not for one second did he believe that the man he had met in those mountains was indeed the Mahdi. He had his doubts as to whether the man himself believed it to be so.

But if the Iranians believed it, that was all that mattered, wasn’t it? Yusuf recalled his history classes from university. Nobody outside Germany had believed Hitler would do what he said he would do, but the Germans believed, and that proved to be decisive. Yusuf had studied that movement very carefully. In many ways it was very similar to the jihad of the Islamists. And how close did Hitler’s jihad come to achieving success? Very close indeed. He led only a relatively few million followers, and they did not have nuclear weapons, yet because of the Germans’ iron discipline and meticulous planning, combined with their awesome conventional military strength, their jihad nearly triumphed. Today, the Islamists did not have any real kind of armed forces in the traditional sense, but times were different than in Hitler’s day. Victory could be achieved in ways that did not involve overwhelming military power.

With the Mahdi, the Iranians might now believe they had found that way. It was a thought that had crossed Yusuf’s mind many times in the past few years, and the more he thought about it, the more he feared it. He hoped that Simons was taking his offer seriously. The strike on Ashkelon was now only two days away.

Heydar was talking, and Yusuf forced himself to concentrate. His mind had been wandering a lot recently, and that was dangerous. “Your leadership has requested our assistance for a mission that you and your men will undertake in a few weeks’ time.”

“Indeed?”

“I would assume that you and your men have not had much experience in maritime operations?”

Yusuf couldn’t help but grin ironically. “We do not exactly have the facilities here to practice our swimming skills.”

Heydar chuckled. “That is certainly understandable,” he said. His tone of voice could have been interpreted as fraternal, or perhaps patronizing. Yusuf would give him the benefit of the doubt, for a while longer. “Our target will be at sea. In August, a British cruise liner will be moving up the eastern coast of Africa. The ship begins its voyage in Lisbon, Portugal, and will sail around the Cape of Good Hope.” From a shirt pocket he produced a map of the continent, spread it out before Yusuf on the desk, and traced a course southward, along the Atlantic coast. “The itinerary includes several stops, including Cape Town and Durban in South Africa. Then it sails northward, stopping in the Comoros, then Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. From there, to the Seychelles. Its ultimate destination is Mumbai, India. On the eighth of August, it should be here.” His fingertip came down on a spot just across the equator, around fifty degrees east longitude.

“You refer to it as ‘
our
target’, my friend. Does that mean you will be accompanying us?”

“Yes, I will,” Heydar said. His dark eyes betrayed a slight hint of excitement.

“Well, that is intriguing,” Yusuf said. Heydar had been attached to his camp for almost a year, and the three operations Yusuf’s brigade conducted during that time had all been without the Iranian’s direct participation. He was involved in the planning and training, of course, but when the time came to “ship out”, as the Americans would’ve said, Heydar always stayed behind. There was some grumbling about that among the men, Yusuf knew, and he did nothing to really discourage such talk. “I assume you have had some experience in these types of operations?”

The Iranian nodded. “I have,” he said. “To assist us, a small group of my countrymen will be arriving in two days’ time. There will be six of them, and they have considerable experience in planning and executing these kinds of missions.”

Yusuf assumed the visitors would be members of Iran’s Quds Force, as was Heydar. As the special operations arm of the Pasdaran, Quds Force operatives had been active for years in support of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention al-Qaida. The IRGC also had a naval unit, Yusuf knew, which had been involved in missions in the Persian Gulf, relatively close to the Iranian coast. Four years earlier, IRGC boats seized a dozen or so British sailors and marines in the Gulf and held them for two weeks before they were released. Yusuf had not heard of any operations conducted as far away from Iranian waters as the tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

But of course this would not be an Iranian mission, would it? Yusuf doubted that any of the Iranians, except Heydar, would actually be going on the mission. In the event the mission failed and his men were captured, the Iranian government would not want to be put in the awkward position of having to explain something like that. Yusuf assumed Heydar would not allow himself to be taken prisoner. But could it be possible that all of the Iranians would go? Yusuf had a hard time believing that his men, as experienced and dedicated as they were, would be able to handle the challenges of this type of mission without direct assistance. If the Quds Force commandos were going along, that was ominous indeed. It would represent a significant escalation of Iran’s involvement. Was there a connection to the Ashkelon strike? He suspected that was so. Then he recalled the date Heydar had given him for the mission. Something clicked in his brain. His trip to the Aladagh…