Purpose of Evasion Read online

  Brad was closer than Sami expected. Closer than Sami wanted him to be. Sami wanted to ask the next question: Did the FBI have anything on Tahir Hussein other than being a known associate of Hasan Khalifa? But he couldn’t ask that question. It would tip his hand too much. Instead, he showed some leg.

  “If you think this American white supremacist group is connected to Islamists there has to be more. We know Hasan Khalifa, and he’s not the cutout. There’s someone else.”

  Halif. But Sami didn’t say the name. He knew it was a meaningless alias anyway.

  “Tom Tinker isn’t a simpleton like the old Aryan Nations leadership. We’ve known he was making bombs for 40 years. An FBI file on him back in the late 80s had that and it brought him down. Before that file made its way around town, Brian Lydon was connected in government. Remember the Moral Majority? It was Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and all these televangelists in the 80s? Well, they split after ’88, but Bush 41 had his own group of religious advisers. Less well-known, less publicized. And non-sectarian. It wasn’t just Christians. Don’t forget, Bush was connected to the Saudis— “

  “Oh, come on!” Sami cut him off.

  “What, too Michael Moore for you?”

  “Worse!” Sami said. “You sound like some walk-in to a CIA station, spouting crap from the National Enquirer.”

  “Look, the connections are there. Those are indisputable. I’m not saying Bush. I’m not. Or even his White House. It doesn’t have to be anyone we’ve heard of or anyone in a visible position of power. There are people around the Presidents and Princes.” Brad shook his empty bottle at the bartender and another bottle materialized too fast to be anything other than the bottle opened when Sami ordered earlier. Brad was too dialed-in to notice.

  “You have to win the Electoral College, right? The people who get you 270 electoral votes get White House jobs. Carville, Begala, Stephanopolous. Rove and Hughes. Axelrod, Plouffe, Favreau. But before 270, you need precincts. You have to win primaries in every little shitheel county in Iowa and New Hampshire. Between Iowa and election night, you have to win in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. And in Pennsylvania. There are a lot of people involved in that. We might not know their names. They’re not on Sunday shows. But, a lot of favors go out. A lot of access is granted. Running a familial monarchy, a kingdom, is the same.”

  “From the Al-Sauds, you draw a line to the Wahhabis,” Sami said.

  “And from the Bushes, you draw a line to the fundamentalist Christians,” Brad continued.

  “Then you’re drawing a line that connects them?”

  “Actually no,” Brad smirked, “Gerald Seymour drew the line.”

  The name was familiar to anyone in the Beltway, but Sami had to run through a mental checklist. Seymour wasn’t a household name. Not Carville or Rove or Axelrod. He had been profiled once or twice, but reluctantly. He was well-known among insiders for things that were said about him and could not be proven. That he spread racist rumors about one candidate in South Carolina. That he leaked when another candidate’s wife had been in drug and alcohol rehab. He was rumored to cut deals with reprehensible people who led fringe groups. All of this was coming to Sami, but Brad blanched at the glacial pace of Sami’s recall.

  “Senior Advisor to the President. He organized back in the 80s and 90s, but he was more niche. Religious groups were his specialty. And not Methodist churches. There was an article about him on Breitbart a few years back. They got him to talk about how he corralled these fundamentalist groups. He said, ‘It wasn’t hard once I showed them all they had more common ground than just the Temple Mount.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that Muslims and Christians have plenty to fight over in Jerusalem. Throw in the Jews and Palestine, on it goes. But in America, the fundamentalists all thought gays were evil. They all thought the American melting pot was a cesspool of miscegenation. They agreed on the proper role of women. Salafists and evangelical Christians agree on a lot.”

  A chill shot down Sami’s spine. Brad was paraphrasing Hasan’s conversation with Halif. Sami knew he had gone as close to the line as he could. He was grateful that Brad’s intel had been so enthralling, or he might have had another martini. He stood.

  “Wow!” He accompanied the exclamation with an eyebrow raise that said, You have overwhelmed me. “I need to pee. I’ll be right back.” He walked toward the back of the club, where the bathrooms were. And the back door.

  Just before he entered the hall leading to the bathrooms, Brad called his name and Sami turned.

  Brad raised the Shiner Bock in salute. “It was good to see you.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  CULPEPER COUNTY

  Back at the safe house, the team was working their areas of expertise and their personal networks to fill in the blanks on James Clewes. They continued to exploit Hasan’s PC and phone, examine his internet history and access whatever accounts they could. As it had been since they grabbed Hasan almost two days ago, the TV was tuned to 24-hour cable news.

  They monitored the news in shifts because it was their best open intel source, but they had stopped calling out to the other members of the team whenever something new “broke” because the breaking news never stopped: the attack in Annapolis, Hasan’s video, the thwarted attack in Tysons Corner, the arrest of Tahir Hussein. The breaks were almost all the result of several daily FBI press conferences.

  Between breaks, there were the talking heads, of two types. A steady rotation of former officials speaking as experts on everything from terrorism and explosives to geography and theology, and the advocates with an ax to grind. Republicans playing to the cheap seats back in Red America. Democrats vying to show Blue America the limitless bounds of their political correctness. And Muslims. Muslim political groups. Muslim theology scholars. A few clerics.

  It was too much to process and Andy only wanted “substantive” updates in real-time. The rest could wait for team meetings, held twice a day. So, Yoda was barely listening to the TV when familiar words washed over him like the shower he needed.

  He glanced up to see another imam on camera. A familiar one. Famous, even. If Yoda were asked to name an American imam, first he would say al-Awlaki. If he were restricted to the living, he would say this guy, Abu Muhammad. It was his third or fourth interview in the last day. Yoda had no idea that the imam was Sami’s grandfather. Though it had been a point of contention between Andy and Sami, it had not been discussed in front of the team.

  The beginning of the interview was predictable enough. Abu Muhammad dispatched questions and insinuations about his connection to Hasan Khalifa. But then Yoda noticed something. Something familiar.

  “We wish to be supportive of the law enforcement community. We have long partnered with them. Local agencies and the FBI. But this is different. Over the past two days, intelligence agencies have been pouring into our mosques. Accosting our members. And this stokes latent resentment in the American Ummah.”

  The speech, and the term “American Ummah,” had a vague familiarity. Yoda was squinting at a hunting scene hung on the opposite wall, trying to place the memory, when Sami walked in.

  “Where’s Andy’s car?”

  Yoda punched the MUTE button.

  “Gone. With Andy.”

  “He left?” Sami continued through the living room, looking for Emily and Alexa. With their present guests, calling the women’s names out loud was an OPSEC risk.

  Yoda waited for Sami to return before answering. “Took off not too long after you did.”

  “OK.” Sami met Yoda’s gaze. He saw the fatigue. They needed formal rest breaks, working in shifts, no more hurdling from crisis to crisis. He waited for Alexa and Emily to enter the room before he began.

  “Starting now we work in a rotation of 18 on and 6 off. Everybody’s strung out. We need to get control of that. And make sure you’re eating.” Sami checked everyone’s face. They were all still in. He hadn’t lost them yet. He knew that debriefing the meeting with
Brad would only help to lift their spirits. Or, at least, focus their energy.

  Concealing the source to protect Brad, and – by extension – the fact of his insubordination of Andy, Sami told the team everything Brad said. They were good listeners, there were no interruptions. Sami saw Alexa scratch a few notes as he spoke. She met his nod with an affirming gesture, the notes would be destroyed as soon as their conversation was over. Other than that, there were no distractions. Sami just told the story. It took about ten minutes.

  “He mentioned Gerald Seymour?” Alexa asked.

  “He did. To illustrate the point that these groups have common ground,” Sami said.

  “But we know that the ‘line drawn through’ Rebel Creek and Hasan’s Council of Muhammad is Halif,” Yoda added.

  “No,” Emily corrected. Sami considered the same question on the drive back from D.C. He understood what Emily meant but also understood Yoda’s confusion. The data was running together for all of them now.

  “Emily’s right. Halif is someone from Rebel Creek, presumably. Maybe even Tinker himself. Remember the intermediary?”

  “The ‘mutual friend,” Emily added, quoting Hasan.

  “OK, fine,” Yoda said, “But the ‘mutual friend’ doesn’t matter. Right?”

  “I’m not so sure— “

  Yoda continued over Emily’s soft-voiced objection. “Tinker or Lydon or whatever we’re calling him. He’s the driving force. We stop Lydon.”

  Alexa nodded and picked up the point. “Right. We need to focus on him. We already know what no one else does. The Muslims are patsies. This is all Rebel Creek. Hasan was just herding scapegoats. Whatever connections there might be to radical Islamic groups, they are irrelevant. At least now. Tinker and Clewes, they were the ones blowing up buildings. And still trying to.”

  “I think that’s right. We need to exploit Clewes more than just open source. Get whatever else we can on him.”

  “But we can’t go to the house,” Yoda complained.

  Sami spoke up over him. “I’ll talk to Andy as soon as he’s back. We have to find whatever we can that might indicate the next attack. Where. When.”

  ***

  It was just before 11 PM when the team adjourned, and Yoda took the first sleeping shift. Armed with her computer, a 24-ounce Diet Mountain Dew, and the information on the shell company that produced the Netflix documentary, Alexa went to the back porch to unpack Rebel Creek’s finances. Emily took a laptop to the chair designated for guard duty, watching Hasan and Clewes on a split-screen monitor.

  Two hours later, she found Sami by the blue glow of the muted TV.

  “You need a bathroom break?” he asked her.

  “No.” She said no more but lingered over him.

  “What’s up?” Sami hoped Emily wasn’t leaving the team. He couldn’t deal with a personnel shuffle and she was the best person he knew for the role she played on the team.

  “I looked back at the group you mentioned from the early 90s. Gerald Seymour’s campaign project. The fundamentalists.”

  “Yeah?” Sami sat forward.

  “Look, Sami, it’s not my business…” Her confidence wavered, but she found it again. “I don’t care that you didn’t tell us. OK?”

  “Tell you?” The problem with living a life of so many secrets was that Sami didn’t know what Emily was referring to. No doubt there was something.

  “About Abu Muhammad.” She paused, painfully. “He’s your grandfather.”

  “Emily— “

  She spoke over him. “I won’t tell the others. If you don’t want me to, I guess there’s no reason I need to.”

  “OK.” Sami was relieved, but hesitant. Emily was not finished.

  “I won’t tell them about your relationship. There is something you need to know. And them, too. He’s connected to Tinker. Through the group in the 90s. By Gerald Seymour.”

  “What?” Sami was shocked.

  He was young then. Too young to remember much about his grandfather’s organizations and activities. Emily turned the laptop screen toward him. There was a grainy scanned image from a newspaper archive, alongside an Op-Ed decrying the rise of religious influence in Republican politics.

  Sami wanted to read the story. He wanted to see more. But he knew that Emily was good. She was thorough. For her to have come forward in this way, he knew the connection was rock solid. The photo of his grandfather, standing in a group of men, was unmistakable.

  Emily was right. On one side of Abu Muhammad stood Gerald Seymour. On the other side was Tom Tinker.

  “He’s connected to Lydon, which we couldn’t have known until now. Then there is the peripheral connection to Hasan. Why aren’t we talking to him, Sami? What’s going on?” She pleaded.

  “Andy has been telling me to reach out since day one—" He stopped himself to explain that he hadn’t spoken to his grandfather in years, but Emily interrupted.

  “Andy knows?” She asked.

  “I’m not sure how much. But he was pushing me before we made any connection to Hasan, much less Clewes or Lydon.”

  “Now you found out about Lydon, from someone. Andy ran off at the same time. And all of it is connected back to Gerald Seymour. Sitting in the White House.” Her face was a mask of fear.

  “Whatever Andy’s doing, it has nothing to do with my information. That came from…” Sami didn’t want to compromise Brad. It was not his right to. “It came from a friendly service.”

  “If we rule out Seymour himself, and I’m not sure why we would, but if we do,” Emily said, “then it seems obvious who the most likely candidate for the ‘mutual friend’ is.”

  Sami wondered how the conclusion had escaped his own notice. He realized it was because he didn’t want it to be true. Not because of anything as understandable as paternal affection. None remained. There had never been any. His grandfather had always been cold and distant, and not without reason. Not based on what Emily discovered, and not if her supposition was correct.

  Sami didn’t want to consider this possibility sooner because he was afraid. It was no longer fear of censure or reproach, but fear of confronting what he discovered was true about himself. Not that he was gay and a Muslim and an American. That was a reality that others could not accept, not him. But he was his grandfather’s blood and there were facts about his family that he was not prepared to confront.

  Sami forgot that Emily was before him. After a long silence, he gathered his thoughts.

  “You’re right,” he started.

  Emily could see the pain and fear in his eyes. “It’s OK,” she said.

  Sami saw fear reflected back. They were in danger and Sami had put them there.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I know. It doesn’t matter now though, does it?” she asked. “Whatever connection Abu Muhammad represented, it is behind us now. We need to focus on Clewes and Rebel Creek. Tinker.”

  Spies are trained to be dispassionate. Calculating. But no amount of training can make them inhuman. Sami grabbed the emotional lifeline that Emily threw with every ounce of his strength.

  “You’re right. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  LOUDON COUNTY, 2001

  It was a Friday in May. The cherry blossoms had bloomed, and Washington was in the glory of its springtime. Few of its transplants – neither the Southerners who resented its snow storms, nor the Northerners who complained of its sweltering summers – could find complaint with the climate.

  Sami was supposed to be at school. If he had been there, he would have spent the afternoon playing basketball at the College Rec with Karim. A gaggle of undergrads, law and med students, and young faculty members ran pickup games every week. They cleared the court when the serious ballers, former high school varsity players, borderline walk-ons, and local non-GW talent showed up. Sami and Karim would have showered back at the dorm and then hit the cafeteria before hitting a party or a movie.

  Sami told Karim he had an interview for a sum
mer job. An odd excuse for a Friday night, but Karim didn’t ask. Sami’s own whereabouts might have been a matter of uncertainty, but he knew just where his grandfather would be. His grandfather would have led Jumu’ah just after noon and the evening after Friday prayers was a time Abu Muhammad reserved for solitary reflection.

  Sami took the train to Fairfax and then a taxi to the top of the cul de sac where his grandfather lived. His own home. Or, at least, where Sami lived ever since his parents died. He approached the house on foot. He walked around the back and keyed into the door off the small deck. Sami winced as staccato cracks issued from the old stairs on his climb to the second floor. He was sure his grandfather would have heard them.

  The landing at the top was in a wide-open area with a small bedroom to the left, a bathroom straight ahead, and a hallway running off to the right. A right U-turn took him down the narrow corridor that ran parallel to the stairs, back toward the rear of the house where his grandfather had converted a bedroom, study, and bathroom into a multi-room office suite.

  Stealing his nerve, Sami breathed deeply outside the door to the office. On the train ride over he drank two airplane bottles of vodka, knowing he would need the boost of liquid courage for this moment. Even that nearly failed. But he thought of his parents’ faces and their voices, how he had been deprived of a chance to say goodbye to them, to ever hug them again or tell them he loved them. He pushed through into the outer office.

  The walls were lined with books. One wingback chair sat in the corner, next to a floor lamp. On the floor, by the east-facing window, lay a prayer rug. The door to the inner office was closed. As a child, Sami never would have pressed on. This is where he would have stopped and called “Grandfather!”

  Sami had never seen the next room, but he knew when he opened the door his grandfather would be in there, sitting behind a desk. When he saw Sami standing in the threshold, the imam’s eyes widened in surprise, and then lit with rage.