Purpose of Evasion Read online

  Just how he actualized this self – Hasan the zealot, Hasan the imam, Hasan the jihadi – was a mystery to those who knew him best. His mother and father slipped into the U.S. after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act allowed for the cherry-picking of doctors, scientists, and engineers for special immigration status. The Egyptian beneficiaries of this treatment were mostly Copts fleeing persecution after the Six Day War, but America was glad to take a world-renowned petroleum geologist of any faith.

  Given his academic accomplishments, Hasan’s father was more noted for the fact that he had only won the Vetlesen Prize (geology’s Nobel) and not an actual Nobel Prize. His otherwise sterling academic career was augmented by generous stipends from global oil companies, willing to pay exorbitant fees for their association with a decorated scientist of Middle Eastern extraction.

  Hasan attended an elite New England boarding school where he starred at squash while his parents rotated through the series of college towns where his father taught and his mother charmed tennis clubs. Ann Arbor, Berkeley, and Boulder were not places where people thought twice if a local kid came home from college wearing a keffiyeh. Hasan’s rising activism was chalked up to youthful exuberance. There had been a knock-down-drag-out fight with his father when he announced that the next step after Columbia would not be graduate studies in the sciences, but in the Qur’an and Islamic law, at Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

  Even those disagreements were confined to the usual ebb and flow of parent-child relationships. They were disagreements over the course of Hasan’s career, his financial future, and his parents’ view that it was a bizarre choice to move back to a country from which they were grateful to have fled. No one thought the path would lead to terrorism. And maybe it would not have. If he had gone to Cairo five years earlier, it was impossible to say whether the path would have led to Annapolis, with Hasan in front of this keyboard, on an Internet Relay Chat with a bomb maker.

  But Hasan wasn’t there then. He arrived at Al-Azhar in 2010. Rather than assimilating himself among the mystic Sufis at the university, he fell into an activist social circle that included a good many members of the Muslim Brotherhood. As the calendar moved toward December’s parliamentary elections, his friends began to disappear. After the elections became an internationally recognized sham, President Hosni Mubarak’s forces ratcheted up their already heavy-handed tactics. A fruit peddler set himself on fire in Ben Arous and for the next month, Tunisia burned. Looking across the Maghreb as President Ben Ali was ousted, Mubarak tightened his grip. He only fanned the flames in his own country.

  On January 25, 2011, Hasan joined tens of thousands that descended on Tahrir Square to sue for their freedom. The police came, and he stayed. The plain-clothes baltagiya came, with their truncheons, and he stayed. The government shut down the internet. They opened the prisons. Mubarak went on TV to promise a new government. Hasan stayed.

  He was witnessing a dream come to life. It was not until the Army defied orders to engage the protesters with live ammunition that there seemed a glimmer of hope this uprising would end differently than past movements across the Arab world, recorded as mere challenges to the authority of their targeted strongman. On February 10, Mubarak made further concessions but still, he refused to resign. The protesters stayed. On February 11, Mubarak was forced out. Hasan and his brothers won. Or so it seemed.

  Hasan did not need to rehash what happened next in the IRC chat, for his counterpart had already established his bona fides where it came to America’s history of interventionism. The promise of a Muslim Brotherhood government was betrayed when newly-elected President Muhammad Morsi’s coalition partners abandoned him, and the military deposed him. Islam was routed again. And the American Secretary of State described the coup as a “restoration of democracy.”

  That lament was not one Hasan shared with his correspondent. What they shared was an agreement that America was too involved in Muslim affairs. They agreed that America was once a Christian nation and now it was a kafir nation. Secular. The nation had no connection to God, and indeed it denied God’s dominion and authority, supplanting it with the worship of secular deities, a culture of celebrity, an obsession with materialism, and overt and immodest sexuality that inevitably transmogrified into homosexuality and transgenderism. They agreed on all those things, and they agreed on one more point. America needed a wake-up call. A violent rending that could not be fitted into the usual narrative.

  The computer chirped, shaking Hasan from his Egyptian reverie.

  The plan is sound. The final stroke is ingenious.

  Hasan had laid out the operation for this stranger. It concerned him to share the details with anyone, let alone with someone he did not know and was assured he would never meet. But it also unburdened him.

  Hasan witnessed Tahrir Square. He was on hand for one of the greatest uprisings in modern history. But he was a graduate student, not a soldier. Not a terrorist. His activist ideas had formulated over a long period of intense thought, but he was not operational. He was not even connected to people with the capabilities and knowledge he needed. The attack that he had planned could not be carried out with a rifle or a rice cooker. It was much grander. As grand as anything since 9/11.

  That was why he contacted the Sheikh. And the Sheikh sent him to the man he was chatting with now. The plan was satisfactory. What next? It made him feel like an amateur to ask, but this man knew he needed help.

  “What next?” Hasan typed and clicked SEND.

  The chat window stared back at him, indicating that his correspondent was typing a message. As Hasan waited, he thought about his cell. Men like Karim, who would soon have their faces and life stories flashed across television screens throughout the world. He felt a pang of sorrow. Not for their glorious martyrdom, but because they would have to be deceived. But it was only a glimmer. In Egypt, he saw better men suffer much worse fates. And the stranger was right to tweak the plan. Keep Karim and the others in the dark. The better to carry off the mission, inshallah.

  A final IRC message flashed across his screen.

  Continue to prepare your team. We will prepare the packages. I will make contact.

  SIX

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

  Motorcycle or Mustang? Back tattoo or sleeve? Do I try to marry this girl, or just make this the best night she ever had working at Rumors? Whether in Fayetteville’s heat, Colorado Springs’s snow, or Southwestern Kentucky’s hills, outside of the Battalion Gate these were the decisions that awaited the mostly-male teenagers and twentysomethings returning from Iraq after the first few rotations of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

  Some of the Geardos would already have blown their wad in country, buying extra Kevlar, night vision goggles, and Garmins. These were among the most popular items that would become standard issue later in the war, but which Uncle Sam didn’t think to provide in the early rotations through Iraq.

  With nine to fifteen months of tax-free paychecks sitting in a bank account untouched during deployment, many soldiers came home from the War on Terror with more money than they had ever seen or imagined. The businesses that lined the streets of America’s military communities were waiting, as if in formation, to receive the bounty of these returning heroes.

  When Sami returned, it was a different decision about a soldier’s life in garrison that confronted him. On base or on the economy?

  “On the economy” was soldiers’ slang for choosing to accept the government’s housing allowance to live in private housing, rather than in the unit’s barracks. The financial windfall of a few hundred extra dollars a month was strong motivation for many, never mind that they might have to pile into an apartment with half of the platoon. Hey, it beat a dusty tent packed with fifty cots.

  After fourteen months living in a Conex with his whole platoon, Sami’s decision was easy. A private studio would give him some time alone. And if he didn’t come home alone some night, then the private studio would come in even more necessary. If
no one asked, he wouldn’t tell.

  There were no such conundrums now that he worked for Andy. Life was always “on the economy.” Sami had no access to government facilities. If he were running an official Op, all secured compartmented information would have been handled in keeping with procedural requirements. Such information would only have been briefed, discussed and stored in a government accredited Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF.

  For Operation Home Game, Sami improvised with a key man office near Old Town. Andy’s security and communications chiefs met with Sami in the morning, erecting electronic barriers to ensure that the facility was protected from eavesdropping. They also set up elaborate measures for the internet connection and created a storage system.

  The Comms Chief was impressed with the view of the Potomac. Riffing on that fact, the team’s OPSEC measures called for him to comment on the room’s favorable Southern exposure at 11:10 AM. As he finished his work, he noted, “You get great sun in this room in the morning.”

  Even with his most advanced listening equipment, the Security Chief sitting in his car down on Duke Street could not hear them. At 11:11, he texted the code to indicate that the countermeasures tested operational. The SCIF, as it was, was buttoned-up.

  Sami sent out for lunch from Panera and sat alone as the afternoon sun cleared the height of the building and began its journey toward the Blue Ridge. Or was it the Shenandoah? Or the Allegheny? Sami was not expert in what each segment of the Appalachian range was called by its locals. The realization reminded him of what Andy said.

  “Homegrowns are like everything else in politics, Dost. Local. Virginia. Masjid Almaany.”

  A knock on the door revealed that Alexa was the first arrival.

  If global politics in recent years taught Sami anything, it was that most people didn’t give a second thought to the details that elites and insiders spent most of their time worrying about. That lesson did not stop him from assessing that Alexa’s summer suit was Dior, completely New York, and not something that a woman in D.C. would ever wear. No surprise. Everything about Alexa was completely New York. Finding Princeton to be insufficiently feminist, even after her four-year assault on the place’s traditions, after graduation she took a job at what she called the “Bear Stearns Boys’ Club,” and set about attacking Wall Street from the inside.

  Over drinks once, Sami saw her smile as he had never seen her smile before. Another member of the team accused her of orchestrating the 2008 financial crisis, which resulted in the ultimate death of her firm.

  “I can’t claim the credit for that,” she said. Taking a small sip from her cucumber gimlet she added, “Not all of the credit.”

  “How’s New York?” Sami asked.

  “Hoboken actually, I can still see Wall Street, but I like to have the river between me and the Huns, now.”

  Hoboken. Manhattan. That was another distinction without a difference to most people. She still carried a $10,000 Birken bag, which she placed in a chair by the window before hugging Sami.

  Her job was to unravel an adversary’s web of financial transactions. Terrorists needed money. It was a fact of life. Without moving money around the world, the only targets accessible to terrorists were the places they lived and the people who lived there with them. Those places and people were still global terrorists’ bread and butter, despite all the focus on U.S. and European “homeland” attacks since 2001. But, when they attacked in the West, there were financial signatures. Wires, transfers, Western Union, PayPal: all these modalities left digital fingerprints.

  A smart and skilled money man could route funds through enough countries and enough entities to conceal the evidence, but they were no match for a money woman. Alexa would find the trails. No one could do it better. If she discovered the complicity of a multi-national financial institution along the way, all the better. She was spooning salad onto a small plate when the door swung open again, admitting Marc.

  “Ich! Is that ‘fast casual?’ It is, isn’t it? Alexa, call me an Uber.” It was the first of many jokes Marc would make that day about the commonality between his teammate’s name and the ubiquitous Amazon device.

  Marc Yoderman was Sami’s expert in the cyber domain. Unsurprisingly, given his name and profession, everyone called him “Yoda.” He was the only member of the team with an official connection to the U.S. government, by virtue of his ongoing service in the Marine Corps Reserve. It was not an exaggeration when Yoda claimed that he almost single-handedly created MARFORCYBER’s offensive capabilities in 2009 and 2010. For that, the Marine Corps was anxious to keep him around, even if it was ludicrous to expect him to remain a junior enlisted Marine.

  A gourmand of the highest order, Yoda joked that MARFORCYBER was in New Orleans because the Marine Corps knew he wouldn’t visit if he had to eat somewhere else. He lived in a French Quarter walk-up just across the river from the Marine Reserve headquarters SCIF in Algiers, where he came and went with an impulsiveness that rarely corresponded to one weekend a month and two weeks a year. He spent more time than his reserve duty required and offered a hell of a lot more value, and the Marine Corps had shaken off bureaucratic resistance to his comings-and-goings in the interest of the bargain they were getting.

  For Yoda’s part, he visited the SCIF so often for the same reason that he continued to serve in the Marine Corps at all. “They have the best toys!” With regular access to a near limitless budget for cyber, Yoda brought Sami ancillary benefits beyond his own skills. Yoda was on Silicon Valley’s short list when they needed outside perspective on a security challenge and his resume was rounded out by a steady rotation of consulting gigs with tech companies that were household names.

  “I know that this town stopped trying after it discovered the steak house, but was this the best we could do?” Alexa could only laugh as Yoda prodded a limp heart of romaine with a fork. Forging a relationship on past operations, somehow their strong personalities clicked, and they enjoyed working together.

  Emily was the last member of the core team to arrive. She slipped in almost unnoticed. No hugs or handshakes were offered, and before anyone knew it, she had her computer open and propped on her knees. Small and birdlike, with large glasses in a cat-eye shape out of favor since the 1950s, she was the natural enemy of the Security and Communications types that had “buttoned up” the room earlier in the day.

  Trained by the Air Force, and later a quiet but critical contributor to technological advances pioneered by the NSA, Emily was a rare Signals Intelligence talent who was as skilled at collection as she was at analysis. Sami nicknamed her “Section,” because she could replace the entire SIGINT section of an intel team. He would have wanted her for any operation, but for Sami, her demeanor was as critical to Home Game as her skill. If he was going to keep his own connection to Karim quiet from the rest of the team, he needed someone as discreet as Emily working on comms.

  His team was smart and experienced. Sami was fortunate to get his top choice in each of the key disciplines. As lunch mostly sat on the table, he briefed the intel Andy provided and then laid out their operation.

  “You all know how this works. The Incumbent,” that was how the unknown client was always referred to, “won’t give us much in the way of source intel, so we’ll have to reinvent the wheel on some of this. They have provided phone numbers and emails for targeting. We are in early stages on this, but I am confident it will be a brief operation. Someone is being overly-cautious, guys. If you ask me, this looks like amateur hour.”

  “You said it’s not small arms?” Yoda interrupted. “What are you thinking then? Bomb?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Then we follow the explosive. That’s always the path of least resistance. It has the additional benefit of focusing effort on the weapon. Prevents distraction. That’s the best way to prevent an attack from happening.”

  “I agree, but we have specific direction not to follow that trail.” Even Emily looked up at that. “I
assume the Incumbent is working the bomb from their side. Our direction is to identify members of the cell, own their comms, track their movements, figure out the flow of money, and identify links to the plot.” No one was satisfied with the answer, least of all Sami, so he continued quickly and finally. “We start now.”

  Sami left his team to their work, with plans to regroup the next day. He had his own work to do on Home Game, which he kept it to himself, except for a brief conversation with Emily on the way out. For a previous operation, she had devised her own mobile phone tracking software that captured voice, images, emails, web activity, keystroke data and other important data from a target’s cell phone. There were cheating spouse apps on the app stores, but Emily’s software was unlike anything available commercially. To truly own a target’s phone, Emily’s app made use of a combination of zero-day exploits that intel agencies had been hoarding for years.

  What made Emily’s solution so elegant was how she designed it to be uploaded to a phone with minimum access and few steps. To make the installation a success, Emily needed to be standing by. Sami reviewed the plan and the timeline with her. Then he left for drinks with a friend.

  SEVEN

  NORTHWEST WASHINGTON

  The invitation came out of nowhere. Karim hadn’t heard from Sami in months. Then again, ever since that night in college, “out of nowhere” was Sami’s modus operandi. If you had asked Karim to list his friends who were most likely to join the Army after college, Sami would have been dead last. But that’s what his friend had done. And then, after months of mysterious obfuscations about his civilian work after he was discharged, Sami told Karim about his “consulting job.” Sami wasn’t trained in business, economics, or anything else where his skills could help on a consulting gig.