Alex Berenson: The Secret Soldier

But he took too long cutting the second video. The curfew turned into a problem. So he told Abdul to let Hassan know that they’d deliver the video in the morning. Technically, the deadline for Bakr’s demands wouldn’t pass until noon, and Bakr wanted to wait until after the deadline to post the video. Of course, the United States would never agree to his demands, but waiting would look better. In any case, the video would be online by late tomorrow afternoon, and the United States and Saudi Arabia would be on the edge of war.

Abdul called Hassan. “He’s not answering.”

“Leave a message, then.” Bakr wasn’t worried. Hassan might have been on the roof, watching the neighborhood. Or even on the toilet. “If we don’t hear from him, we’ll call back later.” From a different cell. Since the raid on his camp, Bakr had become even more cautious about his phones and e-mail accounts. He never used the same phone twice in a row, and he turned them off whenever he wasn’t using them. E-mail he tried to avoid entirely, although he couldn’t always.

Sure enough, a half hour later, with the video finally finished, Hassan called Abdul back. But Abdul spent most of the call shouting into the phone. “What did he say?” Bakr asked after Abdul hung up.

“I couldn’t hear very well. Something about a helicopter. He’s worried. I asked him for details, and he said he’d get Usman, and after a few seconds the phone disconnected.”

“Lots of helicopters out tonight.”

“I tell you, he sounded upset. Not like himself.”

There were only four of them in the house: Bakr, Abdul, Ramzi, and Marwan. The last two were in their mid-twenties and did the menial work, running errands and cooking and watching Kurland’s cell. Bakr wasn’t worried about Kurland escaping, but he did fear that Kurland might try to hurt himself, stop him from making the video.

“Come on,” Bakr said. “Let’s talk to the infidel.”

A MINUTE LATER, THEY stood beside Kurland. The ambassador’s skin was pale and slack. His breaths came fast and shallow. Bakr put a thumb into Kurland’s right nostril and tugged until Kurland came awake.

“Did you tell them where we are?” Bakr said, Abdul translating. Kurland shook his head. Bakr moved his hands up Kurland’s face. “Tell me. Or I’ll put out your eyes.”

Now Kurland giggled quietly. The sound he made was not noise as much as the idea of noise. “I believe you might. Wouldn’t even need the saw. Just get your thumbs in and push. You fool. How could I tell anyone anything? I don’t know where we are.”

“He says no,” Abdul said. “He says he doesn’t know where he is, anyway.”

“Is that all he said?”

“Yes.” Abdul didn’t want to translate exactly what Kurland had said. He had no wish to see Kurland’s eyes rolling loose, staring up at him from the floor of the cell.

“Fine, then.”

“They coming for you?” Kurland said. “Is that it? Coming to get you?”

“Tell him I’m going to cut his throat. The next time I see him,” Bakr said. Abdul hesitated. “Tell him,” Bakr repeated. So Abdul did.

“Good,” Kurland said. “It’ll be a relief.”

THEY HAD JUST LEFT the cell when Abdul’s phone buzzed with a text from Hassan. “False alarm. All clear.” Yet Bakr wasn’t relieved. The message should have had the code “66” at the end to prove it was real. It didn’t. Maybe the stress had caused Hassan to forget, though Bakr had drummed the necessity for the codes into his commanders.

Bakr stepped outside, paced slowly around the house. Could the muk or the Americans be on their way? Bakr couldn’t imagine how. Hassan didn’t know the house’s exact location. No one did, except the four men inside it. And nothing connected Bakr to it. He’d rented it months before, paying cash, from a man who owned a dozen houses in Mecca. Anyway, the announcers on Saudi 1, the official television network, had said that the muk were focusing their search on the Najd and Riyadh. The announcers might be lying, trying to hide the truth about the search. But Bakr didn’t think so. He had been very careful. And the neighborhood was quiet. The streets were empty, and the helicopters well away.

He was safe. They were safe. He was sure. Almost.

Inside, he picked up another phone, called Hassan. But the call went directly to voicemail. Hassan’s cell was off. What was happening in Jeddah? He wished he could send Abdul to check, but the curfew made travel impossible. They would have to wait until the morning.

Ten minutes later, Abdul’s phone buzzed again. This time the message came from Usman, not Hassan. “At Ramada Shubaika. Room 401. Come soon. No more messages.” The Shubaika was a neighborhood in north-central Mecca, a couple of kilometers away, reachable on back roads. Even with the curfew, Abdul or Ramzi could probably get there on a scooter. But Bakr didn’t understand how Usman had gotten to Mecca. Barely fifteen minutes before the curfew, Hassan had said that Usman was on the roof in Jeddah. And if something was really wrong, why had Hassan texted the all-clear?

Nothing made sense. Unless Hassan had already been captured when he called, and Usman had somehow escaped and gotten here. Bakr stared at the Nokia’s screen: “Come soon. No more messages.” He didn’t fully believe the words, but he was afraid to ignore them. He couldn’t go himself, and he couldn’t chance losing Abdul. But Ramzi… and if something went wrong, if this turned out to be a trap, Bakr was certain that Ramzi wouldn’t be afraid to martyr himself.

“Ramzi,” Bakr called. “Come here.”

WELLS LAY PRONE BESIDE A CONCRETE WALL, WATCHING THE HOUSE where he hoped Kurland was hidden, waiting to see whether his bait would draw the jihadis. He was just a few feet off the road but well hidden from the houses on both sides, thanks to the high, unbroken walls that lined the street. And he’d hardly heard a car since the curfew started. The muk were in a mood, and no sane Saudi wanted to anger them.

Glass scratched at Wells through his thin gown. Dust coated his mouth and throat. Yet Wells couldn’t pretend that he didn’t enjoy this hunt. Growing up, he’d spent more than one November Saturday sitting with his dad on the forested flanks of the mountains outside Hamilton, waiting for deer and elk to bring their brimming bodies close. Hunting was as close as they came to bonding. Though his father hadn’t talked much, on those hunts or anywhere else. Most surgeons didn’t. A noisy operation was a troubled operation. Surgery was a strange way to spend a life. Surgeons saw the hidden damage time wreaked, blocked arteries and collapsed lungs. Inevitably, they grew to think of their fellow humans as broken machines. They cultivated their own inhumanity to cut with perfect dispassion. Yet a successful surgery was a kind of miracle. While Wells, whatever his philosophical musings, was a kind of anti-doctor, bringing death wherever he went, a one-man appointment in Samarra. Not for the first time, he wondered what his father would make of him.

So he lay on his stomach, staring at a gate two hundred feet away, in a hunt exactly like and exactly unlike the ones he’d known as a boy. Gaffan was a block back. Wells hoped someone came out in the next few minutes and made going in easy. He was tired of playing hunches. In Lebanon and again in Jeddah, they’d been forced to attack without knowing if they had the right target. This time, he wanted to be sure.

SOMEWHERE BEHIND THE GATE, an engine croaked to life. It was gaspowered and no more than a couple hundred CCs. It had to be the motorbike that Shafer had seen on the overheads. Wells stood, held his pistol loose. He’d left the M-16 in the car, figuring on silence and speed instead of maximum firepower. He was flush with the wall and certain that no one in the houses could see him.