Robert Baer - Blow the house down

out without a problem, no small feat since we were unofficially at war with the ayatollahs there. Just to sweeten the deal, I'd talked our no-vision bean counters into letting him fly business-class. He was going to see the world on our dime, and do so in a seat 20 percent wider than coach.

What we didn't know until too late was that Jamal's sister was an MIT engineer, founder of some fabulously successful niche dot-com company (think "cookies" and pop-up ads), and a devoted and generous sibling in the bargain. No sooner had O'Neill made the approach to Jamal than he phoned Sis, who rang up Mike Lyon, the last lawyer you'd ever want to meet in a courtroom. Lyon's frontal assault on the FBI included a temporary restraining order forbidding it from going within three blocks of the little mosque Jamal ran in Harlem (funded liberally by you-know-who). Washington, of course, caved in an instant: That news cycle would be hell to manage.

By the time the dust settled, Lyon had extracted not only a nice financial settlement for his client and himself but also a promise that the Bureau would never again talk to Jamal without Lyon's permission. Note the word Bureau in the previous sentence: I'd been along on that initial meeting, but only as a silent partner. Jamal no doubt had assumed I worked for John O'Neill. While my bosses would rather have committed communal hari-kari than let me anywhere near Jamal, seeing him didn't technically violate the Bureau's agreement with Lyon.

Up until now I'd been operating on Moscow rules: Shake the tree a little but don't saw it down. Fine, I'd confirmed I had surveillance, but if I was going to learn more, I had to "go provocative," as they know it back in Langley. I preferred my modified version: Beirut Rules-hit the bastards with everything short of one of those handy, backpack-size nuclear bombs. Only by really pissing them off could I force mistakes and make them show their hand. Jamal was just the ticket.

I hailed a cab around the corner from Teddy's gallery and had the driver dump me fifty blocks north on West 116th, at the Columbia Law Library. Then I set off on foot down the hill and through Morningside Park, marveling as I went at how the fauna around me was changing from Pretty much solid white to solid black. An ethnic two-step was sure to fry rhe watchers.

The mosque on 116th still looked on the outside like the wall bakery it had been before Jamal moved in and started sprinkling around his sister's money. The sliding window where the previous tenant had sold bread was now covered with a hand-painted sura from the Koran. The Arabic calligraphy was sloppy, but I knew the text by heart-the verse known as the Tawhid, or the Declaration of Oneness: There is no God but God…

The two Sudanese in dishdashes sitting on plastic chairs out front didn't seem to notice me as I pushed through the door, but the six-foot-five Mongol in a thigh-length black leather coat standing on the other side definitely did. I'd spent enough time in Central Asia to know he was a Kazak, the preferred hit men of the Russian mob. But what was Jamal doing with one?

Genghis Khan moved fast to block me from going any further. "Shto?" he asked, with the open palm of his hand in my face. He said it with just enough menace to let me know that he'd eat Iny young if I tried going around. When I told him I had an appointment with Jamal, he disappeared behind a curtain. Hanging from the back of the only chair in the vestibule was an empty shoulder holster big enough for a 60-millimeter mortar. From somewhere inside the mosque wafted the sweet voice of Joni Mitchell. "Big Yellow Taxi."

I was just beginning to wonder if everyone had gone out the back door when Jamal strode into the vestibule in a Brooks Brothers pinstriper, slim as a jockey, Palm Pilot in hand. He looked as if he was on his way to a

fund-raiser.

"You know, you gentlemen really are dumb as dirt," he said with an evil smile. I had the impression he was looking forward to Round Two with the Bureau. "Trust me, you're about to find out it's not worth the candle harassing me."

"Actually, I'm here from the Department of Education," I said. "You've been found in gross violation of the Federal Minimum Intelligence Act. Come on outside and I'll show you."

Jamal was so taken aback that he actually followed me. So did Genghis.

"See the tanween over the yah?" I said, pointing at one of the accent marks in the sura on the bread window.

Jamal leaned in for a closer look. "So what?"

"It's a grave solecism, it should have been-"

"What the fuck you talkin' about?"

"You've desecrated the word of God, meathead. Get a real Muslim in here next time to do the sign right."

I'm really not as big an ass as I make myself sound. But what I needed right now was for Jamal to get serious about playing the role I'd cast him in. Calling into question his faith seemed to be the shortest route, and it apparently was working. Genghis couldn't have understood a thing I'd said, but seeing Jamal's face was all the guidance he needed. His right hand went under his jacket. He either intended to drop me right there or drag me back into the mosque and do it where he wouldn't have to disturb the neighbors.

One thing I know about gunplay is that when someone intends to shoot you and you don't have a weapon, salvation lies in taking one step sideways and back, then another, and another. You move quickly enough and you don't get hit. Or at least that's what the knuckle-draggers down at the Farm tried to teach us. Just as I was getting ready to start shuffling, out of the corner of my eye I caught a white guy and an Asian woman sitting in a Ford Taurus station wagon parked at the corner of 116th and Frederick Douglass, less than half a block from where we were standing. Exactly where I hoped and prayed they would be, and in extreme discomfort from the locals gathering around them. Allah truly is great.

"See those two there?" I said to Jamal. "I got all the backup I need." By now the white guy was out of the car, talking on a cell phone. He'd been joined by two other white guys, materializing with a speed that suggested an entire Caucasian posse was about to ride over the ridge.

Jamal nodded to Genghis, whose hand reappeared out from under his jacket. Not even Mike Lyon could help with an assault-on-a-federal-officer charge. But I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that John O'Neill would be getting a call from Lyon even before I caught a cab. And in less than a niinute after that, the phones out at Langley would be lighting up like Times Square.

I now knew one other thing beyond a shadow of a doubt, too. The FBI ^as capable of screwing up with the twosome in front of Quick amp;C Reilly and the rest of the shitty tradecraft I'd caught along the way, but neither it

nor the local police nor anyone else I could think of in this nation or abroad would be idiotic enough to field a white surveillance team in Harlem. For that, you needed incompetence on a colossal scale. Langley had to be behind it. I was being followed by my own flesh and blood. All I had to do now was catch the 4 p.m. train back to Washington, get a good night's sleep, and wait until morning to find out why.

Langley, Virginia; June 22, 2001

Talleyrand advises expediting the inevitable. Figuring he knew something about getting out of scrapes, I showed up at headquarters right on the dot at eight, just as the time-card punchers were queuing up for admission. My plan was to stick my head into personnel and see if anything jumped out of its skin. Somebody had to have heard something about New York. Even a wild rumor would be comfort at this Point. I'd passed the night imagining the worst, a talent my employer had °nce praised me for.

No plan survives first contact. When I put my badge in the reader and tapped in my pin code, the red diode flashed instead of the green one. "Invalid identification," the digital reader said. "Please see security officer." Or, in everyday language: "Die like a rat in the road."