Monday Night Jihad (26 page)

Thursday, January 1

Federal Bureau of Investigation, Denver Field Office

Denver, Colorado

Riley and Khadi stood up from the table and stretched. They had been poring over history, facts, and figures for the past three hours straight. Riley’s brain was about at bursting level, and he was sure Khadi must be tired of talking.

“How are you doing so far?” she asked him.

“Well, I have to admit it’s a whole lot of information to absorb in such a short amount of time.”

“And it’s not done yet. But I could see you starting to zone out toward the end.”

“Sorry about that. I guess it’s been a long day—for all of us. Tell you what; you lead me to the commissary, and I’ll spring for a Diet Coke.”

Khadi laughed. “Your military background is definitely kicking in. Around here we call a commissary a ‘break room.’ And if you don’t mind, I’ll take a coffee instead.”

As they walked down the hall, Khadi said, “Hadn’t you better call Grandpa Covington and tell him you won’t be home for dinner?”

“No, Grandpa’s used to taking care of . . . Wait, how’d you know he was at my house?”

“We’re CTD,” Khadi said in a mysterious voice. “We know all and see all.”

Riley laughed quietly. “Next time I see one of those black helicopters hovering over my house, I’ll know who it is.”

Khadi smiled briefly, then said, “Riley, I need to ask you something—especially since I’m going to be part of your team.”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t know you very well, but I hear so much in your voice—anger, pain, sorrow. I hope I’m not being too presumptuous here. . . . I guess I need to know that you’re going to be able to keep all that in check and not let your emotions get the best of you on the field.”

They entered the deserted break room and discovered that someone had put an empty carafe back in the coffeemaker. Riley started fixing another pot. “Hope you like it strong. My dad always told me that coffee isn’t coffee unless it’s strong enough to put hair on your—” he stopped short as he caught her eye—“uh, unless it’s really, really strong.”

“Don’t worry; I’m Persian. We serve our coffee with toothpicks.”

Riley sat down on a hard, blue plastic chair across from Khadi and used a napkin to wipe powdered sugar from the table between them. They both sat silently while Riley formulated his answer to Khadi’s concerns.

Finally he said, “Scott wasn’t my first number two in Afghanistan. His predecessor was a guy named Tony Werschky—very Polish, very Brooklyn. Tony was a great guy, unbelievably good at what he did. Two weeks in-country, we were out doing a scouting patrol. Tony’s telling me for the two hundredth time about his little son, Alex, back home, when—pop!—a sniper’s bullet hits him flush in the face. It was the first time I had ever seen anyone killed, let alone someone right next to me.

“I was so shocked, so angry, that I wanted to take off after the shooter right then and there. What stopped me was knowing that I had the rest of my team with me. If I did something stupid, they could all very well end up like Tony. So we reconned the area, set a plan, and ended up taking out the shooter and three of his friends with none of my other guys even getting a scratch.”

Riley paused for a moment, wondering why he was opening up so much to this woman he had just met. Maybe it was that she was so easy to talk to. Or maybe it was that he needed to talk to someone—anyone.

He pressed on. “On Monday night, the bad guys took my best friend from me. I spent yesterday evening with his widow—a wonderful woman whose whole world is completely shattered. And then there’s his beautiful baby daughter, sweet little Alessandra. She’s still trying to figure out why Daddy hasn’t come home.”

Riley stopped briefly so he could get control of his rising emotion. “And what kills me is . . . is knowing that this same scene is taking place all over Denver. And it will continue to take place until these people are stopped. So, yes, I’m angry about this. Yes, I want revenge. But, no, I will not let it cloud my judgment, and I will not let it cause me to sacrifice my team.”

“Fair enough,” Khadi said. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

Silence overtook them again.

Finally Riley spoke up. “So, what about you? I’ve poured my guts out. Your turn. What brought you here?”

“You mean, what’s a nice Iranian girl like me doing in a job like this?”

“Yeah, something like that. I’m interested in your story.”

Khadi picked up a coffee stirrer that had hidden itself behind the napkin dispenser on their table. She kept her eyes on the narrow red piece of plastic as she slowly twisted and untwisted it around her left index finger.

“My parents are from Iran. My dad was a surgeon there. In the late seventies, he saw the way the winds were blowing, so he packed up my mom—who was pregnant with me—and my two brothers and moved to Arlington, Virginia. That was November 1978—two months before the shah fled.

“My dad was able to establish himself in Virginia—first in the Muslim community, then in the wider medical community. I grew up a bit of a spoiled rich kid. My dad saw what was happening, and when I was fifteen, he gave me a talking-to that changed my life. He basically said that God has given us one life to live and that he wasn’t going to see his daughter waste hers. I took that night to evaluate my life, and believe it or not, I agreed with him. So I dumped a bunch of my friends and started taking school seriously.”

Riley glanced over his shoulder and saw that the pot was full. He got up and grabbed two mugs. He filled one all the way but left plenty of room to the top in the other. “Cream and sugar?”

“You insult me.”

Riley grinned and filled the second mug the rest of the way. He placed the cup in front of Khadi and sat back down.

Khadi blew on her coffee and took a tentative sip. “Wow—I can feel the hair sprouting already.”

Riley opened his mouth to reply, then found he had absolutely nothing to say. He shook his head. This girl was definitely different from any others he had met before.

Khadi picked the coffee stirrer back up and continued her story. “Anyway, I worked hard and was accepted into West Point. I loved the whole counterintelligence field, so when I graduated, I was branched into military intelligence as a 35 Echo—that’s army counterintelligence. Stop me if I get too much into my résumé.”

“No, please go on.”

“I spent ten months in picturesque Fort Huachuca, Arizona—six months in MIOBC and another four at 35E school. From there I was recruited for detached service by Homeland Security because of my TS security clearance and placed into the new Counterterrorism Division. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“And what do you do now?”

“I’ll tell you after your security clearance comes through.”

Riley chuckled, and they both stared at their coffee mugs for a minute.

Finally Riley grinned and asked, “So, what’s with this whole ‘Khadi with a D’ thing? I saw your reaction to Scott.”

Khadi groaned. “This is not a very flattering story.”

Riley simply smiled and waited.

“Fine. Growing up, I was always Khadijah—named after the Prophet Muhammad’s first wife. She was a wealthy businesswoman who married the Prophet, even though he was fifteen years younger. Khadijah supported Muhammad financially while he spread the faith, so of course there is great respect for her in Islam. As a result, even though all my friends had nicknames—Carrie, Suze, Nance, Tam—my parents wouldn’t hear of my being called anything but my full name, which to me always sounded so . . . so . . .”

“Ethnic?”

“Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that it was so different from everyone else. Anyway, I was Khadijah my whole life until West Point. When I got there, I thought, ‘Here’s my chance!’ But rather than have some shortened form of my first name, I became . . .”

“Faroughi.”

“Bingo!”

“Didn’t help too much on the whole ethnic front, huh?”

“Not exactly. I was Faroughi or Farougee or Garfooey or Fargoofy or any other of a list of name botches throughout West Point and until I arrived here at CTD. Finally, I figured here was my chance, so I started introducing myself as Khadi. It was very exciting, but I quickly found that there was one drawback.”

“‘Katie.’”

“Right. And in my typical over-the-top fashion, rather than letting it go, I began correcting everyone who mispronounced my name—‘That’s Khadi, with a d.’”

“Big mistake.”

“Oh yeah. Soon I was no longer Khadi or Katie. I became ‘Khadi-with-a-D’—sometimes shortened to Khadi-wad.”

“Nothing pretty about that,” Riley said, instantly wishing he hadn’t.

“Why, thank you. But you’re right. So, about a year ago I finally clued into the fact that I would be ‘Khadi with a D’ as long as I let it bother me. So now . . .”

“Now you let people pronounce it however they want. Good move.”

“Yeah. And when anyone . . . well, maybe anyone except for Scott, who for some reason just gets on my nerves—”

“It’s a gift.” Riley grinned.

“—when anyone jumps on me about being ‘Khadi with a D,’ I try to deflect it with a joke or something. You know, ‘Call me anything you like; just don’t call me late for afternoon prayers.’”

Riley laughed. “You know, that raises another question—and again, if I’m prying too much, let me know. How did your parents feel about their daughter leaving her roots and joining up with the American government?”

The stirrer stopped its movement, and Khadi looked up at Riley. “I guess I don’t understand the question—leaving my roots how?”

There was a defensive note in Khadi’s voice that should have waved a yellow flag.

Riley, being male, ignored the warning signs and plowed ahead. “I mean, leaving your Persian heritage and your Muslim beliefs to join the American military.”

“What makes you think that I am any less Persian or any less Muslim because I work for the American government?”

“I guess I’m having a hard time seeing how a Muslim could be trusted with state security in a time like this.”

Khadi’s face darkened. “Can’t be trusted? So is it somehow antithetical in your mind that someone who worships Allah can despise the evil people who carried out the Mall of America bombing or Monday night’s attack? You might be surprised to find out that not all Muslim women were hitching up their burkas and dancing in the streets after 9/11.”

“No, you’re right. You’re right,” Riley said, holding his hands up in surrender. “That was a stupid thing to say. I just . . . I mean, I thought . . . You know, I’m going to shut up now.”

“Probably a good choice,” Khadi said into her coffee cup.

They sat there without speaking for a few more minutes. Then Riley took their mugs and rinsed them out, leaving them in the sink, and they walked silently back to the conference room to begin Educating Riley—Session Two.

Thursday, January 8

Europe

Oh, the smells! Those incredible smells! The people were warm and welcoming, the flavors were rich, the music was celebratory, and the mood was festive. But those thick, dizzying smells—pomegranate soup, timman, lis-san el qua-thi, and kubba with its lamb and cumin and saffron and limes. Those smells were what carried Hakeem away—carried him back to a time when he was just a boy.

Kubba had been his mother’s specialty. He remembered working next to her, crumbling the bread, then mashing it together with the saffron rice. She would hold his hands as they rolled out little wet disks. Her arms would be on either side of him, and her body would be pressed against his. He remembered the love and security of that close contact. With no picture of her, he was having a harder time remembering her face as the years passed. But even if a thousand years went by, he could never forget her feel.

He would place a spoonful of the lamb mixture onto the bread and rice combination, and his mother would expertly roll small torpedoes to deep-fry. The rest of the day he would find himself unconsciously bringing his hands to his nose, inhaling the scent of the spices that were imbedded in his skin.

Hakeem was surprised to find tears in his eyes. This was the first time he had cried for his mother since the week after she had been taken from him. He quickly brought out his handkerchief and blew his nose, then laughed to those around him, wafting his hands toward his face to indicate that it was the pungent aroma of the cooking making his eyes water.

Everyone laughed with him.

The people here were still a little unsure what to make of Hakeem Qasim and his Westernized manners. But they knew one thing was true: this man was a hero. And they were going to do whatever it took to show their respect and admiration for him.

Hakeem had been picked up at the airport last night by some new friends and driven to the home where he was now staying. The house and surrounding neighborhood reminded him very much of an upscale part of Baghdad not far from his childhood home.

Whenever an expatriate community plants itself in a new country without taking on any of the host country’s culture, the neighborhood quickly develops the characteristics of the homeland. This was certainly the case in this little European enclave.

Hakeem had slept through the night, the morning, and into the afternoon. When he had finally awakened, it was to the sweet smell of cardamom tea with its generous dose of sugar at the bottom and a large piece of freshly baked um ali—a wonderful pastry dessert with pistachios, almonds, and cinnamon. These had been placed on the nightstand next to his bed. That was six hours ago, two hours prior to the beginning of this feast—a feast that showed no signs of abating anytime soon.

There were at least thirty people spread throughout the home. Everyone was congratulating him and giving him gifts. He hadn’t realized how rusty his Arabic had become over the years, but all were willing to accommodate him by speaking slowly and repeating phrases when needed. His welcome home was everything he had dreamed it would be.

He was speaking with an older man and his son, who was around Hakeem’s age, when a sudden hush fell over the house. All eyes turned toward the front door, where a man stood in the entryway. Hakeem thought the man looked vaguely familiar, but he didn’t recognize the burn scars that covered the right half of the man’s face and the patch that covered his right eye.