Brad Thor - Blowback

“Which was?”

“He had unapproved contact with someone active in the espionage community. That’s one thing a host country absolutely will not tolerate. They put a roof over your head, and in exchange you give them your old team’s playbook and you hang up your spikes. You do not put your spikes back on unless your hosts tell you to.”

“So who was he talking to?” asked Jillian.

“The man was a floater. He worked for several different governments, none of whom the British were too fond of. Yuri claimed the man was just an old friend whom he was talking to for a book he wanted to write about bin Laden, but the powers that be at MI6 didn’t give a damn. He broke the rules, and he got the boot for it. It was Sweden who finally took him in,” said Harvath.

“Interesting,” replied Jillian, “but what does that have to do with the idea that someone is pulling al-Qaeda’s strings?”

“Yuri believed that al-Qaeda was a front.”

Jillian looked at him. “A front? A front for what?”

“What do you know about the beginnings of al-Qaeda?” he asked.

“Not much. I know that bin Laden fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and that when he returned home to Saudi Arabia he was extremely unhappy with the Saudi Royal Family. Somehow al-Qaeda came from all of that.”

“Their roots go a lot deeper and cover a piece of terrorism history most people are unfamiliar with. You see, when the Soviet Union invaded predominantly Muslim Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden was one of the thousands of devout Muslims who heeded the call to help repel the invasion. As the son of one of the wealthiest men in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden brought with him quite a sizable bank account, and it’s here that we get to the part that a lot of people don’t know about.

“Along with a man by the name of Sheik Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden founded the Maktab al-Khidamat, or Offices of Services, in1984. It served as a recruiting and command center for the international Muslim brigade that fought throughout Afghanistan.

“It’s rumored that the MAK trained, equipped, and financed anywhere between ten thousand and fifty thousand mujahideen, or holy warriors, from more than fifty countries. The MAK had offices around the globe, including Europe and even in the United States. Bin Laden’s fame grew like wildfire throughout the Islamic world, and soon all sorts of interesting people were coming to see him. One of these visitors, according to Yuri, began to mold bin Laden’s vision of what he could do on a worldwide basis.”

“You’re saying he was manipulated?” asked Alcott.

“That’s too crass a word. It was much more elegant than that. His fervor was already there. It was just a matter of directing it. What’s important, though, is that toward the end of the decade-long Soviet-Afghan conflict, a rift started to develop between bin Laden and Azzam. Azzam wanted the MAK to focus its efforts solely on Afghanistan, but bin Laden increasingly wanted to focus on this new idea of “global” jihad. He had come to believe that not only was jihad a personal responsibility, but all Muslims were honor bound to establish true Islamic rule in their own countries by any means necessary, even violence. Concepts like democracy and the separation between church and state were anathema to him.”

“Which immediately made the United States and the rest of the West enemies of Islam,” said Jillian.

Harvath nodded his head in agreement. “With the help of the aforementioned outside influence, bin Laden began sketching out rough plans for his global al-Qaeda organization in 1987, but he couldn’t bring himself to split with Azzam and the MAK, no matter how divergent their ideas. Over the next several months, bin Laden held many meetings with a certain shadowy international figure who, according to Yuri, urged him to go his own way, but bin Laden either couldn’t or wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t until the next year, when Azzam was assassinated under very mysterious circumstances, that al-Qaeda broke off from the MAK and threw down the gauntlet to the rest of the world.”

“You said that al-Qaeda was being used as a front. For what?”

“To ignite global jihad,” replied Harvath, “and overthrow any apostate regimes in Arab or Muslim countries they see as corrupt or anti-Islamic.”

“And what would they replace those regimes with?” asked Alcott.

“From what I understand, a single Muslim government strictly ruled by sharia-the religious and moral principles of Islam-the law of the Muslim land so to speak. Essentially what they want to see created is another Muslim caliphate. One nation, under Allah, headed by a caliph who would be the recognized leader of the entire Islamic world.”

“So bin Laden wants to rule the world. Big surprise.”

Harvath shook his head. “Bin Laden’s not smart enough to be caliph. He might be the movement’s emir-general, providing operational and tactical management, but for all intents and purposes he’s nothing more than a Koran thumper, a zealot. He has some useful skills, but not what it would take to run an empire. He’s too wrapped up in the fundamentalism. He’s nothing more than an extremely clever bully. Once all of the crusader infidels have been driven from the Muslim holy lands and all of the apostate regimes have been disposed of, who would run this new, unified Muslim dynasty he has helped bring to life? Who would be caliph?”

Jillian had never thought about that before. In fact, she had never thought that bin Laden and his organization were anything more than that-bin Laden and his organization, much less that they would ever succeed in achieving their goals. In her mind, al-Qaeda was enough of a terrifying handful without exploring the possibility that they could unite the Muslim faithful and overthrow the rest of the world. “I don’t know,” she responded. “Bin Laden’s a Sunni, so based on their way of doing things, I guess the Muslim faithful would vote for who would be caliph.”

“Unless somehow an effort was going to be made to include the Shia in this new Muslim dynasty,” replied Harvath.

“But you said the Sunnis saw the Shia as worse than Christians.”

“Many do, but Yuri suggested that the person behind al-Qaeda was going to be able to deliver a leader acceptable to both camps.”

Jillian thought about that a second and then replied, “Which would mean the person would have to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and acceptable to a majority of the Sunni population. How do you do that?”

“I have no idea,” said Harvath as he pulled up in front of their hotel, “but I think I know where some of our answers might be found.”

“Don’t say Château Aiglemont.”

Harvath didn’t say it, but the look on his face was enough to tell her that’s exactly where he wanted to go.

RIYADH

SAUDI ARABIA

Chip Reynolds loved the hypocrisy of it all. After spending hours in their mosque listening to a radical imam spew anti-American hate speech, the first thing the three young fundamentalists did was head to a downtown Starbucks for iced Frappuccinos. America might be the great Satan, but their coffee concoctions were nothing short of a divine paradise right here on earth. You can keep your seventy-two dark-eyed virgins, Allah, just make sure the house blend keeps flowing.

Reynolds would have laughed if it wasn’t so despicably sad. Radical Islam blamed America and the West for everything that was wrong with their fucked-up countries. He had had his fill of all of it. He couldn’t wait to get out. He hadn’t been back to his cabin in Montana since his wife had died and didn’t think he’d ever return, but he knew at some point he was going to have to try to put his life back together. One more year and he’d have enough to retire very comfortably, and no matter what his situation, he’d made a promise to himself that he would try. And once he left, he never wanted to set foot in the Mideast or deal with security or intelligence work ever again.