The Towers (3 page)

It was slow work. Jigsaw puzzling moved like lightning compared to building an effective case.

She leaned back and stretched, locking gazes with the little girl on-screen. Tashaara was home in Harlem. Aisha saw her every time she got back, which wasn't nearly often enough. Well, day after tomorrow, she'd be on her way. To her mother, to Tashaara—and to a wedding.

She smiled, then sighed and bent again over the keyboard, trying to boil down eighteen hours of Arabic interrogation into a one-page report in bureaucratese.

*   *   *

YEMEN'S
president had been a close buddy of Saddam Hussein's, if anybody
was
Saddam's buddy. The president bought antitank missiles from North Korea. He'd played the Soviet Union off against the United States, back when there'd been a Soviet Union, and was now trying the same game against Saudi Arabia, his giant neighbor to the north.

Aisha had to admit the country didn't have much else going for it. In ancient times the fabled Sheba had been wealthy, exporting the frankincense and myrrh of the Bible. These days it was one of the poorest states in the Middle East, with little water, constant warfare among desert tribes, a secession movement in the south, Shiite unrest in the north, and six Kalashnikovs for every adult male. One thing she'd brought out of her experiences in Ashaara was not to expect high standards from governments only one notch above anarchy.

Her eyes went again to the picture. She'd saved one child, yes. But hundreds of thousands more … no one had been able to save them.

Her own experiences here had been mixed. On her second visit to his mosque the imam had invited her to chai with him and his wife and eventually asked her to hold a women's English class. The Yemenis loved guests; soon she'd had dozens of invitations, to shop at the Bab Al'Sabah, the fruit souk, the Rock Palace, to drive to Shibam to see the fortifications of Koukabanb. Dressed local, she'd shopped with a chattering throng of sisters, the darkest among a dozen. Yemenis didn't wear burka. Just black abayas, the hijab—headscarf—and sometimes (the older ones mostly) the slit-eyed
niqab
. Hundreds of women wandered among gaudily bedecked stalls and shopfronts. Colorfully costumed proprietors called,
“Shoof, shoof”
—look, look—from trays of silver jewelry, cheap gold she was warned was alloy, fabrics, spices, trinkets, shoes. And the wonderful food: peaches, apricots, walnuts, almonds, honey-filled pastries, date cookies, chocolaty
mokha,
shawarma eaten hot off a stick. She bought an embroidered headdress for her mother, a curved, wicked-sharp jambiya for Albert, tiny silver earrings and carved animals for Tashaara.

But Yemen also hosted people its neighbors considered terrorists. The man they were going to see tonight, Abu-Hamid al-Nashiri, had been crossing the border back and forth even as Saudi intelligence was demanding his arrest for plotting to attack the armored limousines of their princes with North Korean antitank missiles. Not long before, the Saudis said, al-Nashiri had been drinking tea in a café here in Sana'a, and not alone, either—he'd been laughing and joking with the deputy director of the Yemeni police. Now he was in custody, but that didn't seem to mean the same thing here as it did elsewhere. The Amna Siyasi—the Political Security Organization, the main intelligence service—was riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers.

Which led to the question, why had the president allowed American law enforcement into his country at all, after stonewalling them for years? She guessed he was hedging his bets. Angling for aid, and cooperating just enough not to become a U.S. target the way Saddam had. So far, though, the PSO had treated her with respect. Mainly, she suspected, because they hadn't quite figured her out. What was a black woman, an Arabic-speaking Muslim, doing working for the Americans?

Sometimes she wondered herself.

A blare of horns, a screech of brakes. She looked up. They were at the palace.

*   *   *

THE
usual holdup at the high iron gates while the guard asked why they were there, who they were there to see. He knew perfectly well, of course. All part of the ritual, and she kept typing while they sat there, although feeling vulnerable. The GrayWolf security men had dismounted and stood around, weapons out, scanning the upper floors of the buildings across the street. An antitank rocket would go through the Suburban's armor like a bullet through cottage cheese. “Why do we have to travel in such obvious vehicles?” she muttered.

“The air-conditioning works,” Doanelson said.

“We don't need it. It's not even hot.”

But finally the gate swung open.

Lieutenant Colonel Abdulaziz Al-Safani was in his usual thobe, slacks, the little white keffiyah beanie under a red-and-white-checked shemagh. His jambiya, the ceremonial dagger all male Yemenis wore, was slung over his right leg, half-covered by a gray-and-olive Harris tweed jacket that would have looked at home in Mayfair. His holstered Makharov hung reversed on the other side. He nodded to Doanelson but came right to her. Didn't take her hand, didn't hug or kiss her, the standard greeting between men. Instead he bowed.
“Salaam aleikum.”

“As-aleikum salaam, Mûqoddam
. You're looking healthy today,” she continued in Arabic, not bothering to interpret for Doanelson. “And what a handsome blazer. Your family, they're well?”

“Very well, praise Allah. You too look healthy, Special Agent Ar-Rahim. Your daughter, she is well?”

“Very well. Your son's eyes are better?”

“Much better, praise Allah. And your wedding—it's still on? When are you leaving?”

“Day after tomorrow, Allah willing. I'm all packed.”

“He has converted, yes? Last time we spoke you were not sure he would.”

She smiled. “I want Albert to say his Shahadah at the masjid where I grew up. Where my father and mother went, the girls I went to school with. Where my family still goes.”

“In New York, yes? In your village of … Harlem?”

She wondered how Al-Safani would react on seeing the “village” of Harlem. “Yes—in my village. On 113
th
, between Malcolm X Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.”

“And he said yes?”

She caught Doanelson's eye. He looked irritated. Shut out of the conversation, with his hesitant, schoolbook Arabic. “Well, we had a discussion. I told him he couldn't do it just because he wants to marry me. I said that's not a worthy reason.”

“He has to want it just from loving God.”

“That's what I told him. And he said, ‘I can love God without being a Muslim. I can stay a Baptist,' he said.”

“Then he can't marry you.”

“He's a man. That means he's stubborn.” And, although she loved him, it was true; Albert did sometimes assume things about a woman's place.

Al-Safani looked shocked, then chuckled. A month ago he'd have just stared. She smiled at him. “But he says now he loves God enough to marry me.”

The colonel threw back his head and laughed. “Let's get out of this dust! What news do you bring? I'm still hoping for the electronic package the general spoke to madame ambassador about.”

Inside, Doanelson trailing, and up two flights of dusty, echoing stairs to the colonel's office. Spacious but casually dirty, furnished like a 1940s private detective's sanctum. Rusty file cabinets, scruffy metal folding chairs, tarnished brass ashtrays full of stale butts, a swaying overhead fan stirring a miasma of tobacco, coffee, sweat. A half wall with a swinging door partitioned a nook that must once have held a private secretary's desk. For the next hour they sat drinking cups of strong coffee and discussing the news. Aisha always read the
Times Online
before coming over. Al-Safani hung on anything about Mideast policy. Grist for the reports he no doubt had to submit on his dealings with the Americans, and she supplied it patiently, though Doanelson frowned and fidgeted. She'd told him before not to check his watch, it insulted your host, but he didn't seem to care.

They couldn't afford to tick off the Yemenis. Al Qaeda—“the foundation” or “the base” in Arabic—seemed to be the nickname of the loose confederation that'd attacked USS
Horn
in Bahrain, USS
Cole
in Aden, and U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. Those attacks had put Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri on the Most Wanted list.

Unfortunately, Saudi intelligence had reported that the man whose office they were in, Colonel Abdulaziz Al-Safani, had been seen socializing in a café with the suspect that same Al-Safani now held in custody.

She lowered her third tiny cup of sickly sweet, molasses-thick coffee. “Have you made any progress with our friend?”

Al-Safani beckoned to the guard. Apparently he'd been waiting in the hallway, because a shuffle and a sharp order ensued.

A short, heavily-bearded man in dirty pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved yellow shirt slouched in. He wasn't shackled or manacled. He walked with a limp, and sharp dark eyes met hers for just a moment but avoided Doanelson's. He settled in the chair on the far side of the half wall. As she pulled her own seat to the partition, she caught his smell: tea and cologne and old sweat. A junior PSO officer clicked a ballpoint above a yellow notepad.

Abu-Hamid Al-Nashiri was a veteran of Afghanistan and Bosnia. He was fifty-one, his beard streaked with gray. After two months of interviewing, she knew him better than she had her father. Al-Nashiri had two wives in Yemen and one in Afghanistan. His limp came courtesy of a Russian mine. A dangerous killer, almost certainly a link between Al-Zawahiri and the Yemeni branch of ALQ. She flipped open her computer, which had been powered up and was recording everything already, and looked at the next question. The rules, negotiated between the ambassador and General Gamish, were strict. She said politely to Al-Safani, who'd perched one buttock on the partition between her and Al-Nashiri, “The prisoner was having problems with his back. Is he feeling better?”

Al-Safani bent his head to light a Pall Mall. The PSO smoked only foreign cigarettes, no doubt seized from smugglers. Without looking at the seated man he said, “Is the prisoner's back feeling better?”

“It still hurts.”

“The prisoner's back still hurts.”

“The surgery was probably done wrong. We could fly him to the US and have it looked at.”

Al-Safani repeated this, but Al-Nashiri didn't answer. Doanelson muttered, “This isn't getting us anywhere.”

“We've talked about his back before. He's worried about it. That's how this works, Scott. Find out what makes the subject tick, then exploit it.”

The FBI agent rolled his eyes. The heavyset man darted a malevolent glance over the half wall at Al-Nashiri, then away. Aisha sighed and refocused. “We were speaking about the duty to oppose an apostate government. Is it the prisoner's view that the current government of Yemen is un-Islamic?”

“Is our current government an apostate government?” Al-Safani asked him.

Al-Nashiri said in a weary monotone, the same tone he'd maintained for two months, “The Quran is clear. There is no leadership other than the commander of the faithful. Power comes from God, not man's law. The only acceptable laws are those laid down by God and the Prophet. Yet this government executes those who wage jihad for God. Like Zein Al-Abidine al-Mihdar, punished for defending the faithful. Therefore it is apostate and no true Muslim can obey it.”

He went on in a droning soliloquy, to which she listened closely. To every word, every intonation. Once in a while, her fingers tapped keys. She'd debrief from her notes at the video teleconference tonight, then follow up by e-mail with the text of the interrogation. The al-Mihdar he mentioned had been Islamic Jihad, executed by firing squad for killing British and Australian tourists. Interesting, though, that this time he used a different word for al-Mihdar's death. Before, he'd always said
murdered,
or
martyred.
This time, the word was softer.
Punished
. Significant? Or not?

“I'm not following this,” Doanelson whispered.

“Shut up, Scott.”

“What's he saying? Is this another sermon?”

“It's the standard Salafi jihadi line. Just listen.”

“The prisoner says, yes,” Al-Safani said, in English. Aisha stiffled a snort. Doanelson flushed. Al-Nashiri had spoken for five minutes; the official translation had been one word.

The FBI agent bolted up and paced back and forth, hard leather soles scuffing the floor. He knocked into one of the brass spittoons and only just caught it before it went over. When he circled back, he muttered, “Let's bet the house. We been here long enough. Ask him what's going down. There's something big. We know that. And we know he knows.”

“This isn't some twentysomething hacker, Scott. He's gold-plated Al Qaeda. Tough as they come. The only way he's telling us anything is if I can convince him we're on God's side. If I can, we'll own him.”

“Can't these PSO guys apply some persuasion? They're serving him breakfast in bed, instead. Buddies with the deputy director—”

“Excuse me?” said Al-Safani.

“Nothing. Or, yeah. Let's cut the bullshit, Colonel. Ask this asshole what Osama's got planned. Ask him—”

Doanelson stopped abruptly, cut off with a squawk as she put out one foot. He toppled, flailing, and only just caught himself on the desk. He glared, face flaming. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

“What did the fat one say?” Al-Safani asked in Arabic.

“He was asking about the prisoner's beliefs. Whether he truly believes killing other believers is the true way of jihad.”

Al-Nashiri didn't wait for the relay. For the first time, the prisoner looked across the half wall and met her gaze square on. “You say you are Muslim?”