Frederick Forsyth - The Kill List

“The most famous of the Revisions are those of the Series for the Corrections of Concepts. Just as those who taught us hatred came out of Egypt, so also did the al-Gama’a al-Islamiyyas, who wrote the Corrections, and I now understand that it was they, not the teachers of bigotry and loathing, who were right.”

The Tracker’s phone in the embassy room rang. It was Gray Fox from Virginia.

“Am I hearing correctly or has something very weird happened?” he asked.

“Listen a while longer,” said the Tracker, and hung up.

On the screen, the uncomprehending Tony Suárez carried on.

“I have read the Revisions now a score of times in English translation, which I recommend to you all who speak and read no Arabic and to those who do in the original tongue.

“For it is clear to me now that what our brothers the al-Gama’a say is true. The governmental system known as democracy is perfectly compatible with True Islam, and it is hatred and lust for blood that is alien to every word ever spoken by the Prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace.

“Those who now claim to be the True Believers and who call for mass murder, cruelty, torture and the death of thousands are in truth like the Kharijite rebels who fought against the Prophet’s Companions.

“We must now consider all Jihadists and Salafists like those Kharijites, and we who worship only the one true Allah and His blessed prophet Muhammad must destroy the heretics who have led His people astray these many years.

“And we True Believers must surely destroy these advocates of hatred and violence as the Companions once destroyed the Kharijites long ago.

“But now is my time come to declare who I really am. I was born Zulfiqar Ali Shah, in Islamabad, and raised as a good Muslim. But I fell and became Abu Azzam, a killer of men, women and children.”

The phone rang again.

“Who the hell is this?” yelled Gray Fox.

“Hear him out,” said the Tracker. “It’s almost over.”

“So, before the world, and especially before you, my brothers and sisters in Allah, I pronounce my tawba , my true repentance, for all that I have done and said in a false cause. And I declare my complete bara’a , my disavowal, of all that I said and preached against the true teachings of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate.

“For I showed no mercy and no compassion, and must now beg you to show me that mercy, that compassion, which the Holy Koran teaches us may be extended to the sinner who truly repents his former sinful ways. May Allah bless you and be with you all.”

The screen faded. The phone rang again. In fact, phones were ringing right across the umma , the world community of Islam, many of them to give vent to screams of rage.

“Tracker, what the hell have you done?” asked Gray Fox.

“I hope I have just destroyed him,” said the Tracker.

He recalled what the wise old scholar at al-Azhar University had told him years ago when he was a student in Cairo: “The merchants of hatred have four levels of loathing. You may think you Christians are at the top level. Wrong, for you are also believers in the one true God and thus, with the Jews, also People of the Book.

“Above you come the atheists and idolaters, who have no god but only carved idols. That is why the Mujahideen of Afghanistan hated the communists more than you. They are atheists.

“But above even them, for the fanatics, come the moderate Muslims, who do not follow them, and that is why they seek to topple every Western-friendly Muslim government by exploding bombs in their marketplaces and killing fellow Muslims who have done no harm.

“But highest of all, a dog among the unforgivables, is the apostate, the one who abandons or denounces Jihadism, then recants and returns to the faith of his fathers. For him, forgiveness is out of the question and only death awaits.”

And then he poured the tea and prayed.

Mr. Abdi sat alone in his suite, a bedroom and office, in the fort behind Garacad, his knuckles white on the tabletop. The two-foot walls were soundproof but not the doors, and he could hear the sounds of the whipping down the corridor. He wondered which wretched servant had incurred the displeasure of his host.

There was no disguising the crack as the instrument of torture, probably a semirigid camel crop, rose and fell, nor did the rough timber doors mask the shrill screams following each lash.

Ali Abdi was not a brutal man, and although he was aware of the distress of the mariners imprisoned in their anchored vessels out under the sun and would not be hurried if extra money could be extracted by delaying, he saw no reason for maltreatment — even of Somali servants. He was beginning to regret ever agreeing to negotiate for this pirate commander. The man was a brute.

He went ashen white when, in a pause in the flogging, the victim pleaded for mercy. He was speaking in Swedish.

The reaction of the Preacher to the broadcast worldwide of the devastating words of Tony Suárez was almost hysterical.

As he had not given a sermon online for three weeks, he was not watching the Jihadist post when it broadcast. He was alerted by one of his Pakistani bodyguards who spoke a smattering of English. He heard the end of it in stunned disbelief, then replayed it from the start.

He sat in front of his desktop computer and watched in horror. It was phoney — of course it was phony — but it was convincing. The likeness was uncanny, the beard, the face, the dress, the backcloth, even the eyes — he was looking at his own doppelgänger. And his voice.

But that was nothing compared to the words; the formal recantation was a death sentence. It would take many weeks to persuade the faithful that they had been deceived by a clever fraud. From outside the study, his servants could hear him screaming at the figure on the screen, that the tawba was a lie, his recantation a foul untruth.

When the face of the faraway American actor faded, he sat, drained, for almost an hour. Then he made his mistake. Desperate to be believed by someone at least, he contacted his one true friend, his ally in London. By e-mail.

Cheltenham was listening, and Fort Meade. And a silent Marine colonel in an office in the U.S. embassy in London. And Gray Fox in Virginia, who had the Tracker’s request on his desk. The Preacher might be destroyed now, Tracker had told him. But it was not enough. He had too much blood on his hands. Now he had to be killed, and he had laid out several options. Gray Fox would take it to the commander of J-SOC, personally, and he was confident it would go for discussion and judgment right up to the Oval Office. He didn’t know what that judgment would be, however.

Within minutes of the e-mail out of Marka, the exact text and the precise location of each computer and the owner of each computer were proven genuine. The placing of the Preacher was completely beyond doubt, the complicity at every level of Mustafa Dardari the same.

Gray Fox was able to get back to the Tracker within twenty-four hours, on the secure line from TOSA to the embassy. The news was not good.

“I tried, Tracker, but the answer is no. There is a presidential veto on missiles on that compound. It’s partly the dense civilian population all around it and partly the presence of Opal inside it.”

“And the other proposal?”

“No to both. There will be no beach landing from the sea. Now that the al-Shabaab have reinfested Marka, we do not know how many there are or how well armed they are. The senior brass reckon he could slip away into that labyrinth of alleys and we’d lose him forever.

“And the same applies to a heli-borne drop on the roof, bin Laden style. Not the Rangers, not the SEALs, not even the Night Stalkers. It’s too far from Djibouti and Kenya, too public in Mogadishu. And there is the danger of a shoot-down. The words ‘Black Hawk Down’ still cause nightmares.