Purpose of Evasion Read online

  The reality of his Samarra epiphany came into focus again, and he realized that it took more than a gun. Someone had to pull the trigger. Someone had to be defenseless, merciless, hopeless. That was what it took to pull the trigger. Without guile, without planning, he spoke.

  “You’re a politician. Worse, you are a demagogue. You do it from this room and so the consequences are invisible to you. You have a theory about everything. Your religion and your biases have concocted those theories, but they mean nothing. To kill takes anger. It is the activation of hatred. You’re right, I am gay. All over the world, there are people who hate me for that. Worse yet, I am a gay Muslim. Hated among some of my own people. Hated in my own home. In my own agency, in my own army, in my own country, there are others like you. They hate me for everything I am. You want to activate that now, in me.”

  Sami lowered the gun, silently dropping the hammer.

  “America is not perfect, but it stands for the proposition that people can try. You teach some of your own people to hate and Tinker teaches some of his. You feed into ignorance that makes Americans afraid of Muslims and Muslims afraid of Americans. I won’t let you succeed. That is not my oath of allegiance to this country, which welcomed you and which you now hate. It is not a measure of my commitment to the military and intelligence agencies you see as crusaders. The kafiri. What you think makes me weak is what makes me strong. I cannot let you succeed because I am a gay, American Muslim. Thanks to you and your kind, I know what a future without hope looks like. I will prevent that future. I will preserve my hope. Or, I will kill.”

  In his grandfather’s face, Sami read something he could not place. For the briefest moment, he interpreted an expression of bemused pride. He was focusing on his grandfather’s face so intently that he barely noticed when Gerald Seymour entered the room.

  ***

  “I’m sorry to alarm you,” Seymour said. “I don’t suppose you will surrender it, but it would give me great comfort if you would holster your weapon.” He was smiling. Playing the politician.

  Sami had never seen another person in his grandfather’s inner office, the room from which Seymour emerged. With no other way into or out of that room, Seymour must have heard the entire conversation. The White House advisor seemed to read the young intel officer’s mind.

  “There were several instances when I might have preferred to reveal myself, but the timing never seemed opportune. I trust you understand the dilemma.” He spoke softly, more like “a grandfather” than my grandfather, Sami thought. “I have been privy to this conversation, and given my position, I think you’ll understand that I have an obligation to expound upon it.”

  Seymour finished on an up note, though it was not a question. Whatever else is happening here, Seymour seemed to imply, you are a U.S. intelligence asset and I am a senior ranking official of this government. You are subject to my command and control.

  “What you have been discussing is serious, and in some ways personal. Abu Muhammad has long been a friend, I care about him, and so this concerns me. Alas, graver concerns impinge upon my sentimentality. This is not a family matter. It is an issue for all Americans. About security. Not just this week, but in the long-term. And for all Muslims, too. The accusations you have made against your grandfather are grave. Sometimes our friends make mistakes, and when the mistakes are…” Seymour sought the precise phrase, “of a certain kind, it is incumbent upon people who have accepted certain duties to set aside personal relationships and do their duty.”

  Sami didn’t remember replacing it, but he felt the weapon holstered at the small of his back. He was sitting in the room with a person he knew to be a terrorist co-conspirator, and another whom he suspected of complicity, but he hadn’t searched anyone, or asked them whether they were armed. And now, he had holstered his own weapon. It was the instinct that had driven him all of these years. He could not kill these men now. He didn’t even know if he was able. But he knew that if he did, he might never have the truth about his parents.

  “You have done your duty, as you see it. The threat to our country is being taken care of right now, in Pennsylvania, by Americans whose duty it is to bear arms in our defense. You have done your duty. They are doing theirs. But yours and theirs are not the same as mine. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.’ You know it?” Seymour asked.

  Sami nodded. Henry IV, Part 2. He was impressed that Seymour had quoted Shakespeare correctly, rather than the common misquote “heavy is the head,” but Sami didn’t speak. Seymour waved away the question as a distraction.

  “My duty is to all Americans, for the preservation of their long-term security. This duty requires the synthesis of complex factors. Our allegiances, the partners we select, do not share our narrow self-interest. At times our interests are at odds, friends and allies do things we cannot endorse. And so do we, in their eyes. To preserve our allegiance, we sometimes look the other way. Anyone on the internet can spout off about this. It’s rather easy to see, isn’t it? Why do we support one regime which violates human rights while we vilify another? Allegiance. Security. Self-interest. What people fail to see is that it is often in our own self-interest to…” Again, Seymour grasped for the right word, “permit activities that are unsavory.”

  “You knew about the attack? The White House knew?”

  “Son,” it was the first note of condescension from Seymour, “did Winston Churchill evacuate London when he knew bombs were coming? No. He used the deciphered Nazi codes to misdirect the German bombing campaign. He allowed British citizens to die because he knew it was in the long-term interest of his country, all its people. That is war. We are at war, too. Do you see?”

  “You don’t need to tell me about our war. I was there.”

  “So you were. True enough. You are upset and you are failing to understand nuance. That being the case, it behooves me to stop here.” Seymour drew a deep breath. “Not stop but shift tactics. Your work is done. You should not be here, and you should not be armed. There are professionals who will handle the issue from here.”

  “I shouldn’t be here?” This is my home. Sami didn’t say the words, but he felt the full load of their resentment. “What should I be doing then?”

  “You should forget everything you discovered, too much of it you were never meant to know. I have been briefed throughout and as I understand your role in this affair you are an intelligence analyst. You are afforded access to secrets of our government. Whether you agree with the policy choices that are made in consideration of that information, you are trusted to keep those confidences. I trust you will do that now.”

  “This is different— “

  “So said Edward Snowden. And so said…” Seymour paused, his expression changed to that of a person who had just tasted something unpalatable, “Oh God, what do I even say about that reprehensible Manning? He? She?”

  Seymour’s ploy was crude but effective. He compared any action that Sami might take to counter Rebel Creek’s attack to the cases of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Whistleblowers? Traitors? Whatever the merits and demerits of their actions, in intelligence circles the two were considered to have breached an understanding. Analysts are not policymakers.

  Few people, and no one at Sami’s level, had all the information they would need to put policy into context. They knew what they needed to know to do their jobs, nothing more. It was why Andy had been so strident they maintain their focus, and it was an argument so familiar and so sympathetic to most in the intelligence community that Seymour was very astute to deploy it.

  “You have become emotional because your work is enmeshed with personal matters. Only that can explain why you are confronting your grandfather, and now a senior White House official, with a gun. Without anyone’s permission. You and I know, son, that the men with guns, the men who know how to use them, are somewhere else right now. You have your ass way out over the side of the boat. You know that too. I am here to tell you that the shit is flying.” Seymour paused and
stared hard. “I run this government. All its power resides in me. You have seen that power brought to bear on others. You know its might. You don’t want it to come down on your head.”

  There was a moment of silence. The hum of cicadas from the backyard rose. It all seemed so mundane. Life went on.

  When Seymour continued, he was professorial instead of prosecutorial.

  “As is always the case, I am sure you will agree, operations have gaps of information. There are things you know and things you don’t know. Fragmented information is impossible to draw conclusions from. At least, accurate conclusions. As on each of your previous missions, there are people in our government who are afforded all the information. People who have all-access clearances. People who sit daily in the Situation Room of the White House and deal with one crisis after another. Unemotionally. Like Churchill. That is our job. Your job is to keep our secrets. Go back into the dark. That is where you thrive. You have lectured your grandfather here tonight to know his depth. Take your own advice. And now, take mine. Keep your secrets.” Seymour breathed in, seemed to rise to his toes and raise his shoulders, seemed to look down his nose before adding, “Keep all of your secrets, lest they come back to haunt you.”

  That was it. Seymour and Abu Muhammad stayed. Sami left through the same back door he had entered. He began a surveillance detection route to his parked car before he realized the tradecraft was needless. His cover was already blown and his adversary was among the most powerful men in the world. He was in shock.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  NATIONAL HARBOR

  The first call came at 3:30 AM. Later investigation revealed it came from a prepaid mobile phone, a burner, bought months ago at a convenience store in Anacostia. The hotel clerk was watching Netflix on his own phone, which was propped up behind the front desk. He described the voice on the phone as “matter-of-fact,” and “yeah, kind of foreign.”

  “You have a hotel guest, Abdullah Ibn Abdullah. He picked up a rental car at Dulles airport yesterday, loaded a two-hundred-pound bomb in the trunk, and it is now parked in your garage. Before the morning news, it will explode.”

  The ensuing series of calls to increasingly responsible hotel personnel were each more frantic and fragmented than the last, like a child’s game of telephone. When events were pieced together, it took longer than the hotel preferred to admit, until 4:25 AM, for someone to call 911.

  “There’s a bomb!”

  “You saw a bomb?” The operator asked in a strained voice. Given the events of the past week, the level of seriousness given to bomb threats had risen right along with the number of fraudulent and erroneous calls. A perfect storm.

  “No, I didn’t see it. But they told us it’s there.”

  “Who told you?”

  “He didn’t leave his name!” The hotel caller became unhinged, but the call was credible enough to merit a response. Within minutes, every black-and-white and fire truck within 10 miles was in route to National Harbor. The FBI’s bomb squad was close behind. Anyone with a police scanner heard the news. Some TV trucks beat the bomb squad.

  At 5 AM the scene commander ordered an evacuation. By then, the helicopters were circling overhead. By 5:15 authorities had ordered them back. But they got the shots, which ran on the local broadcasts that were already live and went national when the morning shows started at 6 AM. Another hotel. Another bomb. There happened to be a convention of American Muslims meeting at the hotel.

  Sami may have been pulled off the operation by Andy Rizzo and warned off by Gerald Seymour, but his credentials were still enough to get him through the roadblocks that were set up at the entrance to National Harbor. There was nothing more he could have done after Seymour ambushed him last night, but he knew the White House aide would be nowhere near National Harbor if there was a bomb.

  Seymour’s complicity confirmed there was no play working this through proper channels. Sami was alone again, just as he had always felt in the Army barracks and on his prayer mat at the mosque. An outsider. This was Sami’s best chance, and maybe his last, to confront his grandfather and stop the attack. His identity and his mission had finally come together.

  The scene was surreal. Everyone had been on high alert for days, and now it was happening again. This time, authorities hoped they caught it. The energy was the closest that Sami had ever felt in the U.S. to a war zone. That sense was heightened by the hard, angular impression the Sig made in Sami’s lower back. Yesterday was the first time in months he carried the pistol. This morning, he tucked the gun into the holster at the small of his back by instinct.

  He approached the command center at 6:41 AM and was not the least bit surprised when he saw Andy step down from the command RV a moment later. He flagged his boss down, afraid he would receive a sneer in response.

  But this was when Andy’s pressure valves released. The tension of an operation was in the uncertainty. Wondering when to pull the trigger. Wondering how long to keep the secret. Once things were back in normal channels, it was someone else’s problem.

  “Nothing,” Andy said when he approached.

  “Nothing to it?” For a moment, the tightness in Sami’s chest eased.

  “No, there’s a big ass bomb. But nothing for us.”

  That’s not true, Sami thought and almost said aloud. But Sami knew things that Andy didn’t. It felt wrong and it was. The only way for Andy to know what Sami had discovered was for Sami to tell him. He trusted Sami to do that. That was how information flowed, up the chain. This was different because Sami knew what waited at the top of the chain.

  “It’s a clusterfuck,” Andy continued, unable to contain his amusement even as a bomb threatened to explode at any moment. “They evacuated the building, but they don’t want guests to leave. Or get away, I should say.”

  “Suspects, you mean?”

  “It’s in a car, rented to an imam from Detroit. Abdullah. Anyway, it took a few minutes to find him, but they got him under hot lights now.”

  “Does someone have the guest list? By room?”

  “Hey,” Andy’s expression changed towards sternness. “Not our monkeys, ain’t our circus.”

  “It’s fucking bullshit, Andy. Some imam from Detroit? I’m not saying it isn’t him, but we have the MO. The other attacks were plants— “

  “By Rebel Creek, who we shut down last night.”

  "Last night! Whatever’s in that trunk was already in there. And I wouldn’t say we shut them down. We got a handful of guys, right?”

  “They aren’t Hezbollah. We got the guys. And a shitload of explosives!” Andy was annoyed. They had slid back into the recriminations of the past 48 hours. Then his brow furrowed, too. “We didn’t get Tinker.”

  This was news. Through backchannels, Sami heard the raid was a success.

  “We didn’t get him?”

  “No. He wasn’t there.”

  “Where is he?”

  “No one knows. We were looking, and then…” Andy gestured to the building.

  “Get the guest list, Andy. We need to check the names against our Rebel Creek list.”

  “Oh, come on!” It wasn’t objection, but regret. Andy knew Sami was right.

  “They need to match the list against the evacuees. They need to be sure everyone is out of the building— “

  “That’s impossible!”

  “We have to.”

  “We can’t. Anyway, the list only has registered names. Right? Not their wives, children, boyfriends, girlfriends, hookers, whatever.”

  Andy was right, but Sami had already moved to the next question.

  “They have to go room-to-room.”

  “What?”

  “Before they let anyone back in— “

  “Sami, right now they are just trying to get the bomb defused in the garage. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

  Andy was walking towards the command center, so Sami shouted.

  “They cannot let people in until we have gone room-to-room. It’s the easiest thing
in the world to check into a hotel room, or five hotel rooms, with big rolling suitcases filled with explosives. Spread them around and coordinate the detonation. It will make Annapolis look like nothing.”

  Sami’s voice was loud. People on both sides of the rope line were watching now. Andy stalked back.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind? Even this White House isn’t that crazy! Go room-to-room? Inspecting the suitcases and hotel rooms of Muslims at the national Muslim convention? Even if we could get approval to do it, it would take forever, and then it would be an absolute media circus.”

  Andy pulled the rope up, nodding to a police officer that Sami was allowed through.

  “I’ll get the guest list.” He gestured for Sami to follow. “Stay with me. Keep quiet. Don’t make me regret this.”

  ***

  The next two hours proceeded with perfect normalcy for people whose lives were anything but normal. There was brief but spirited debate over whether to detonate the bomb in place, which posed the least risk to the bomb squad. Over increasing protestations from the resort’s owner – who only seemed to increase the FBI’s tolerance for a detonation with each self-interested plea – the commander decided that the damage to property and potential risk to life was too great.

  The bomb would be loaded into a concussion containment unit and trucked to a safe area for detonation. This was fraught with peril but unlike the bombs over the past week, scans inside the package showed the device was not rigged for remote detonation.

  The process took time, and though Sami had no role in the discussion or execution, he almost screamed: The signature is remote detonation! Why isn’t this one the same? Because it’s a diversion!

  Once he had the guest list, Sami headed to the grassy area 300 yards from the hotel where the FBI was holding guests. A grid of sawhorses and police barricades encircled people in pajamas. As the sun climbed in the July sky, some guests were shedding the blankets they wrapped themselves in for the predawn evacuation.