His prayers complete, Qassam rose and went quietly downstairs to the kitchen, where he popped a capsule of French roast into the Keurig. Then, in the living room, he performed two hundred push-ups and five hundred abdominal crunches. His twice-daily workouts had reshaped his body. He was no longer the skinny kid from the Delta; he had the body of a cage fighter. In addition to his exercises, he had become a master of both karate and Brazilian jujitsu. Qassam el-Banna, Q-Ban, was a killing machine.
He finished the workout with a few lethal movements of each discipline and then headed back upstairs. Amina was still sleeping, as was Mohamed. Qassam used the third bedroom of the little duplex as his office. It was a hacker’s paradise. Entering, he sat down at one of the three computers and quickly surfed a dozen e-mail accounts and social media pages. A few more keystrokes took him to a doorway of the dark net, the murky Internet world hidden beneath the surface Web that can be accessed only if the user has the proper protocol, ports, passwords, and software applications. Qassam, an IT professional, had everything he needed—and more.
Qassam passed easily through the door and soon found himself standing before another. The proper password admitted him, a line of text wished him peace and inquired as to his business. He typed his answer into the designated box and after a brief delay was presented with a waiting message.
“Alhamdulillah,” he said softly.
His heart beat faster—faster than during his rigorous workout. Twice, he had to reenter the password because in his haste he had typed it incorrectly. At first, the message appeared as gibberish—lines, letters, and numbers, with no apparent purpose—but the proper password instantly turned the gibberish into clear text. Qassam read it slowly, for the message could not be printed, saved, copied, or retrieved. The words themselves were coded, too, though he knew precisely what they meant. Allah had finally put him on the path to greatness. And with greatness, he thought, would come immortality.
Gabriel declined Carter’s invitation to accompany him to the White House. His only previous meeting with the president had been a tense affair, and his presence in the West Wing now would only be an unhelpful distraction. It was far better to let Adrian tell the administration that the American homeland was about to be attacked by a group that the president had once written off as weak and ineffectual. To hear such news from the mouth of an Israeli would only invite skepticism, something they could not afford.
Gabriel did, however, accept Carter’s offer of the N Street safe house and an Agency SUV and security detail. After leaving Langley, he headed to the Israeli Embassy in far Northwest Washington. There, in the Office’s secure communications crypt, he checked in with his teams in Paris and London before ringing Paul Rousseau at his office on the rue de Grenelle. Rousseau had just returned from the élysée Palace, where he had delivered the same message that Adrian Carter was conveying to the White House. ISIS was planning an attack on American soil, in all likelihood while the French president was in town.
“What else has he got on his schedule other than the White House meeting with the president and the state dinner?”
“A cocktail reception at the French Embassy.”
“Cancel it.”
“He refuses to make any changes in his schedule.”
“How courageous of him.”
“He seems to think so.”
“How soon can you get here?”
“I arrive Monday night with the advance team. We’re staying at the Four Seasons.”
“Dinner?”
“Done.”
From the embassy Gabriel headed to the safe house for a few hours of badly needed sleep. Carter woke him in late afternoon.
“We’re on,” was all he said.
“Did you speak to Mr. Big?”
“For a minute or two.”
“How did he take the news?”
“As well as you might expect.”
“Did my name come up?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And?”
“He says hello.”
“Is that all?”
“At least he knows your name. He still calls me Andrew.”
Gabriel tried to sleep again but it was no good, so he showered and changed and with an Agency security team in tow slipped from the safe house in the last minutes of daylight. The air was heavy with a coming storm; leaves of copper and gold littered the redbrick pavements. He drank a café crème in a patisserie on Wisconsin Avenue and then wandered through the East Village of Georgetown to M Street, with its parade of shops, restaurants, and hotels. Yes, he thought, there would be other teams and other targets. And even if they managed to stop Dr. Leila Hadawi’s attack, it was likely that in a few days’ time Americans would once again die in their own country because of an ideology, and a faith, born of a region that most could not find on a map. The enemy could not be reasoned with or dismissed; it could not be appeased by an American withdrawal from the Islamic world. America could leave the Middle East, thought Gabriel, but the Middle East would follow it home.
At once, the skies erupted and a downpour sent the pedestrians along M Street scurrying for cover. Gabriel watched them for a moment, but in his thoughts they were running from something else—men with long hair and beards, their surnames taken from their hometowns. The appearance of an SUV curbside wrenched him back to the present. He climbed inside, his leather jacket sodden, and rode back to N Street through the rain.
49
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
THE SAME RAIN THAT DRENCHED Georgetown beat down upon Qassam el-Banna’s modest Korean sedan as he drove along a tree-lined section of Route 7. He had told Amina that he had to make a work call. It was an untruth, but only a small one.
It had been more than a year since Qassam had left his old IT consulting firm. He had told his colleagues and his wife that he was striking out on his own, a risky move in Northern Virginia’s crowded tech world. The real reasons for his career change, however, lay elsewhere. Qassam had left his previous place of employment because he needed something more precious than money. He needed time. He could not be at the beck and call of Larry Blackburn, his old supervisor—Larry of the sewer breath, the secret addiction to painkillers, and the taste for cheap Salvadoran hookers. Qassam was now beholden to a man of far greater ambitions. He did not know the man’s real name, only his nom de guerre. He was the one from Iraq, the one they called Saladin.