The Panther

CHAPTER EIGHT


I got back to my desk, and Al Rasul informed me that he’d called downstairs, but Nabeel hadn’t shown up yet.

It was still early, so there was no reason to send a cop car to get him. I did call Nabeel’s cell phone, and it went to voice mail—Arabic and English. I left a message in English, then gave the phone to Al, who left the same message in Arabic—except Al’s tone was very sharp. He explained to me, “That’s how the police talk to citizens in Sandland.”

“Right.” Anyway, Nabeel al-Samad was the least of my priorities today, but you have to follow up on everything because sure as hell the thing you didn’t follow up on is what comes back to bite you in the ass. The people who dropped the ball on the pre-9/11 clues can verify that.

I gave Al a pencil and said, “Transliterate the Arabic word for ‘panther’ into real letters.”

“ ‘Panther’?”

“Yeah. Big black cat.”

He took a scrap of paper from my desk and said, “There are a few ways to transliterate…” He wrote, Nimr—Nimar—Numair, and said, “The last is maybe the most standard transliteration.” He pronounced the word for me.

“You need a tissue?”

He asked me, “What’s with panther?”

“If I tell you, I have to kill you.”

“Anything else I can do for you today?”

“Yeah, if Nabeel shows up.” I added, “Thanks.”

Al’s a good guy and he takes a lot of crap well. But he also knows how to dish it out. If you’re an Arab and you work here, you have to have a sense of humor—and very thick skin. I wondered why Al Rasul wasn’t asked to go to Yemen. Right?

I checked my e-mail and found a note from Tom to me and Kate telling us that we were expected at Legal Affairs and the Medical Office before noon. I’ve never seen government workers move this fast. Tom really wanted us out of here, which compelled me into some paranoid thought processes, and the word “expendable” kept popping into my mind.

I had an e-mail from Betty Alvarez informing me that she had no info on a Yemeni male named Nabeel al-Samad. She asked for his passport info and visa, if any. I replied: Still waiting for subject to show.

I used my ATTF password to access the internal files on ACS—the Automated Case System. I didn’t have a case name, but I typed in “USS Cole,” which got me hundreds of hits, though probably nothing I didn’t already know. I typed in “Panther,” which got me nothing, then “Numair”—thank you, Al—which got me a file that said “Restricted,” followed by rows of Xs. Usually you get something, even on the restricted files, like when the file was opened, what the classification level was, and who to see about getting access to the file. But apparently all this was above my pay grade, and all I saw was “Numair” and Xs. Well, at least Walsh didn’t make that up.

I e-mailed Walsh and asked him about getting access to the Numair file, based on my recent need-to-know.

A few minutes later, he replied: Your need-to-know begins when you’re in Yemen. P.S. Stop snooping. He didn’t actually write that, but that was the message.

Kate came over to my desk and asked, “Where to first? Legal or Medical?”

“Medical. We need our heads examined.”

“That could take all day. Legal first.”

The FBI Legal Affairs Office here normally deals with cases, warrants, wiretaps, documents, and so forth, and not with employees’ problems or work assignments. But this was a special case, and it needed to be done on an expedited basis.

We had a few papers to sign, including a new confidentiality statement, and also a statement having to do with “interrogation under duress.” As I signed it, I said, “As a married man, I am an expert on interrogation under duress.”

No laughs.

Our wills were on file and we checked them over, then we were given powers of attorney to fill out and sign. Jennifer, a young lawyer I’d seen before my first trip to Yemen, explained, “This is in case you’re abducted or go missing.”

I asked, “So we just show this to our kidnappers?”

“No. You—”

Kate interrupted and explained to me, “If we’re dead, the executors of our wills handle our affairs. But if we’re missing or unlawfully imprisoned, then someone has to act on our behalf—someone to write checks, pay our bills, and so forth. It doesn’t have to be an actual attorney.” She inquired, “Didn’t you do this last time?”

“Right. I named you as my attorney-in-fact.”

“Good. We’ll name each other. But… if we share the same fate, we’ll need an alternate.”

This was getting a little heavy.

Kate said, “It should be a family member.” She suggested, “How about my father?”

Am I related to him? I mean, what if we both wound up kidnapped or missing, then got free and found out that her father had spent all our money on his collection of J. Edgar Hoover memorabilia?

“John?”

“Yeah. Fine.” They’ll never take me alive anyway.

We filled out the forms, signed them, and Jennifer notarized them.

Finally, Jennifer produced our black diplomatic passports, which had been kept in a safe since our last make-believe diplomatic assignments to Tanzania and Yemen.

Jennifer also informed us that the State Department had called the Yemeni consulate office and our visas should be ready after 1 P.M. for us to pick up.

There aren’t many Americans who go to Yemen, so by now our Yemeni allies were aware that John Corey and Kate Mayfield would be arriving soon. Maybe they’d have someone at the airport to greet us.

Another thought popped into my head—a thought about the speed of all this paperwork—and I asked Jennifer, “When did State call the Yemeni consulate about our visas?”

She replied, “Thursday.”

Kate and I glanced at each other. Thursday?

Anyway, we finished up with Jennifer, who said, “You get to do exciting things. I wish I was going.”

I wish you were, too, Jennifer.

As we walked down the hallway, Kate said, “Thursday?”

“The Friday meeting was just a formality. Yemen is our fate. It is written in the sands of time.”

No reply. Clearly she was not happy with her friend Tom. Good.

I said to Kate, “By the way, I went into ACS and there’s a file called Numair, which is Arabic for ‘panther,’ and it’s restricted.”

“Who do we see about getting access?”

“Didn’t say.”

“Odd.” She suggested, “We’ll ask Tom.”

“Did that. He said go to Yemen.”

We took the elevator down to the nurse’s office, where a young lady named Annie was expecting us.

Because Kate and I were scheduled for departure within five days, we couldn’t get the shots spaced over the recommended seven days, and sweet Annie stuck us like we were voodoo dolls.

We got eight shots—diphtheria, dysentery, typhoid, anthrax, scarlet fever, and three diseases I’ve never heard of. I especially enjoyed the two shots in the butt. Annie gave us each a starter vial of malaria pills and said, “Start taking these now.” She added, “Come back Friday morning for the rest of the shots.”

“How many more diseases could there be?”

“Leprosy, for one.”

Jeez.

She advised us, “You have a lot of vaccines in you, so you may not feel well later.”

“Can I have alcohol?”

“Sure. Just be close to a toilet.”

We went to Kate’s desk, and she called the FBI Travel Office at Headquarters in D.C.

Kate put it on speaker phone, and a woman answered, “Travel Office. Mrs. Barrett speaking. How may I help you?”

Kate said we were calling from the New York office, and she gave our names and our travel authorization numbers.

Mrs. Barrett replied, “Hold on… yes, here you are. Sana’a.”

“Santa Ana,” I corrected. “California.”

“No… Sana’a. Yemen.”

Kate picked up the phone and disengaged the speaker, saying, “Ready to copy.”

She listened to Mrs. Barrett, made some notes, then said, “Thank you,” and hung up. She said to me, “American Airlines to London, British Air to Cairo, Egyptair to Sana’a. First class.”

“Hard to believe there are no direct flights to Sana’a.”

“There are. From Cairo.”

“How do the deli guys get back and forth from Brooklyn?”

“I’m sure I don’t know.” She informed me, “If you really want to go direct, there is a military flight twice a week from Dover Air Force Base in Maryland. One to Sana’a, one to Aden.”

That was interesting. Sounded like we were getting our noses a little farther under the tent.

Kate said, “If we want to go that way, Mrs. Barrett will check it out. Departure times and days vary.”

“Yeah. Let’s check it out. Might be interesting to see who and what is going to Yemen.” Also, this was probably the way we’d sneak The Panther out of Yemen. Direct U.S. Air Force flight from Yemen to Guantanamo. The shithole to hellhole express.

I went back to my desk, and Al informed me that Nabeel had not shown. It was 12:15.

Al called Nabeel’s cell phone, but got his voice mail again and left a loud message. I phoned the deli, a place named George’s in Bay Ridge, and spoke to some guy with an accent who wasn’t helpful. Al took the phone and spoke sharply in Arabic, then discovered that the guy was Mexican. Funny. What a great country.

Al volunteered to drive us to George’s Deli, but I had lots to do and Brooklyn was not on that list. I suggested, “Find one of our guys in the area and ask him to check out the deli and Nabeel’s home address.”

“No, I’ll go. I could use a break here. What’s this guy look like?”

“Green teeth.” I described Nabeel’s other features and related a little of my short conversation with him in Ben’s Deli. I suggested, “See if this deli is under the eye for any reason. Maybe we have surveillance photos.”

“I did that. Nothing.”

“Okay. Thanks, Al. I owe you one.”

My next task was to go to a separate stand-alone computer where I could access the Internet. We can’t do that from our desk computers, or we’d be playing video games all day. I did a Google search on Al Qaeda in Yemen, and got a few hits on al-Numair, The Panther, and I actually got his real name from Wikipedia—Bulus ibn al-Darwish. No wonder he changed it.

Apparently some of this info was not as classified as Tom thought. In fact, there is little that is not available online if you know what you’re looking for.

I checked out the Wikipedia entry. Bulus ibn al-Darwish, a.k.a. The Panther, was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, on May 8, 1965, making him thirty-nine years old in May, if he lived that long. So he was not a naturalized citizen—he was actually born here. Interesting.

His parents were both Yemenis who’d immigrated to America, but there was no further info on them. Dead? Alive? Living where?

Little Bulus attended public schools in New Jersey, then graduated from Columbia University in 1987 with a degree in economics—making him an Ivy League terrorist. He should have gone to Wall Street—same work, better pay.

At some point, according to the entry, Mr. al-Darwish became radicalized and went to Yemen in the early 1990s.

The remainder of the entry was a mix of facts and speculation about his activities in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps Iraq. He was identified as one of the planners of the attack on the USS Cole and also the 2002 attack on the French oil tanker Limburg in the Gulf of Aden.

Additionally, the subject a*shole had been implicated in two or three armed attacks on Westerners in Sana’a, Aden, and the surrounding areas, resulting in a number of deaths and kidnappings. Plus, while he was at it, he’d planned two rocket attacks—one on the American Embassy in Sana’a, one on the Sheraton Hotel in Aden. Both attacks had been thwarted. The planned attack on the Sheraton interested me, because that’s where I stayed with the other American personnel in Aden. We called the place Fort Apache.

And last but not least, Mr. al-Darwish and some friends had been involved in a shoot-out at the Saudi Arabian border last year, resulting in the deaths of six Saudi soldiers.

Bottom line, this was a bad guy. Maybe fearless, maybe nuts, and definitely angry about something. Maybe he got teased in school.

Also, I’d never heard of this guy. And I knew the names of lots of terrorists. So this guy was being kept under wraps. Why? Probably because this was strictly a CIA case, and they were not sharing the info with the FBI. Until now. The Agency only talks to you when they need you.

I clicked next onto the website of the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a and checked out Citizen Services and what’s called Warden Messages. The Department of State, I saw, was concerned about Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and had issued a Travel Warning for Yemen regarding “possible attacks by extremist individuals or groups against U.S. citizens, facilities, businesses, and perceived interests.”

I guess that included the embassy itself, not to mention everyone working or visiting there.

The embassy website further informed me that “travel on roads between cities throughout Yemen can be dangerous.” Really? “Travel outside Sana’a is restricted.” Right. That’s where those roads are. “Travel in tribal areas north and east of Sana’a is particularly dangerous, and kidnappings are common.” Best to avoid the whole country.

There was also a mention of the ongoing civil war that Kate and I had seen reported on BBC. This rebel leader, al-Houthi, was taking control of bigger parts of North Yemen. And that led me to wonder why anyone wanted to rule this f*cked-up place.

So to recap, Yemen was ruled by a corrupt dictator, and the country was half overrun by a rebel leader, and the rest of the place was run by tribal warlords, except the areas that were infiltrated by Al Qaeda. Plus, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden were infested with pirates. The good news was that everyone was stoned on khat and didn’t give a shit.

I read a last entry on the embassy website, which advised, “From time to time, the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a may temporarily close or suspend public services as necessary to review its security posture and its adequacy.”

With luck, they’d shut down before I got there.

Anyway, I could have spent a week surfing the Internet, getting background on Yemen and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and The Panther, but why bother? By Saturday or Sunday I’d be in the belly of the beast.

I logged off the computer and went back to my desk.