Purpose of Evasion Read online

  He was an American-born Muslim with the ability to speak several languages and a past in military intelligence. Karim knew what kind of consulting Sami did. It didn’t bother Karim. Everyone needed to feed their family. Except Sami didn’t have a family.

  After that night in college, Karim watched his friend drift away from the life that everyone expected for him. He drifted away from Karim and Masjid Almaany, too. He drifted away from his grandfather.

  “What is he supposed to do?” Karim’s wife asked him. “Go to one of those brainwashing places where they cure people so that his grandfather will talk to him again?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Exactly. There is nothing he can do. Besides, people change. You can’t hold it against him that he isn’t the same guy he was in third grade. Or freshman year. He’s your friend.” She was right.

  Like Sami, Karim was not the same guy he had been in college, or during their shared childhood in the Northern Virginia suburbs. That would become evident as soon as he ordered a club soda with lime at the bar. He wondered what Sami might say about that and dismissed the thought just as quickly. Sami wouldn’t say anything. They were friends.

  Sami barely raised an eyebrow, but Karim had no idea how heavily the decision not to order alcohol would weigh on Sami’s mind.

  The boys were raised within a mile of each other in the same suburb that Masjid Almaany occupied. They met because both families were communicants at the mosque, but their parents shared much more in common than religion. They were all of Pakistani extraction and their stories of childhood in the old country were as familiar as the tales told by Irish immigrants a hundred years before. Sometimes happy but also wistful. Mostly happy that they now lived in the United States.

  Both sets of parents were highly educated and had taken jobs in the Washington-based economic development and foreign aid sector. Despite his grandfather’s fervency, Sami’s parents were casual Muslims. Almost secular. This was something else that they shared with Karim’s family.

  Both boys were less concerned with Islam, Pakistan or foreign aid than they were with the NBA. Most conversations turned on questions like should Allen Iverson have won the MVP in 2001? Karim didn’t think so. Iverson shot too much. Karim was a Jason Kidd fan.

  They went to mosque on Friday, just like other kids went to church on Sunday. But that was it. Karim and Sami were normal kids. Just who had changed that paradigm first would be a point of debate between them. One night, Sami had told Karim things that not many high school buddies and college roommates were ready to hear. Sami himself was forever coming to terms with those things, and how those things impacted his life as a Muslim and an American; but he had settled on one thing for certain. It wasn’t wrong. It was how he was born.

  After the two drifted apart, Sami was surprised when he heard that Karim married a devout Muslim woman in a traditional Nikah. At a past meeting, they discussed the matter, Karim wondering aloud whether Sami had expected him to marry a Presbyterian girl in the National Cathedral. They were Muslims, and while Karim was forever coming to terms with how his religion affected his life as an American; he had settled on one thing for certain. It wasn’t wrong. It was how he was born. And it was how he raised his children.

  That was why Sami made so much of Karim’s club soda with lime. Intel officers tried to inhabit their subjects. Even with a lifelong friend, behavior could only reveal so much. Sami could not know that Karim’s abstention – while in stark contrast to some of their nights in college – was very much in keeping with his life as a thirtysomething husband and father. There was no alcohol at Karim’s wedding, and there was none kept in his home. Was that radical?

  They met at a busy, upscale place near Metro Center, and rather than sit at the bar they took two seats at a high countertop along the windows. After they ordered, Sami stood and pretended to struggle with removing his keys and phone from his pockets.

  “Let me see pictures of the kids, man!” He gestured toward Karim’s phone. From his standing vantage point, Sami carefully observed Karim’s password as he unlocked the phone. Karim held the screen toward Sami.

  “Oh, man! They’re so big. How old now?”

  “Muhammad is 8 and Mariam is 5.”

  “Let me see.” Sami grabbed the phone and made an exaggerated pop of his eyes. “It sucks getting so old, I can barely see anymore.”

  Sami noticed his friend flinch almost imperceptibly and he hoped he hadn’t overplayed his hand already. Worse, he hoped that what he witnessed was not the panic of an operative in a homegrown cell, alarmed that a former Army intel officer and “consultant” now had hands on his phone. It was neither. Sami’s use of the expletive caused Karim’s reaction. That seemed a little puritanical, which Sami registered, but he also noticed that Karim didn’t seem bothered at all by relinquishing control of the phone.

  Sami returned it and retook his seat.

  “Well, if you’re not going to drink, let’s get food, man. I’m not just going to watch you drink a club soda. I’m starving!” Sami rubbed his hands together over the menu. It was a gesture matched well with his casual enthusiasm. It had been too long since he had a conversation that was not orchestrated. He needed to remedy that, but it would have to wait for after Home Game.

  They shared hummus and pita and shared a few laughs over how every restaurant in D.C. tried the Mediterranean chickpea dish now. The conversation was casual. They were once so close that they slid into a rapport more easily than Sami expected or could have hoped.

  Sami directed the conversation back to their shared passion for the NBA.

  “You won’t believe who I met, man!” Sami almost shouted. It was enthusiasm. Excitement. Setting the hook. Karim’s eyes lit up.

  “Grandmama!” Sami shouted.

  “What!” Karim was impressed.

  Larry Johnson, AKA “Grandmama,” was a 1990s basketball star who won a national championship at the University of Nevada Las Vegas and was drafted 2nd overall by the Charlotte Hornets. He gained wider fame for the Converse shoe commercials where he dressed as an old woman in a long gingham dress. An old woman who could ball.

  “We didn’t do a selfie— “

  “Oh, come on!” Karim interrupted.

  “I know. I blew it, but I was trying to play it cool. I got a picture though.”

  Sami tapped away at his phone, sending an SMS to Karim with a photo of the erstwhile basketball star that he and Emily had downloaded earlier in the day from Google. He put the phone down again. “Check it out!” He indicated that Karim should check his phone.

  When Karim received the SMS, Sami encouraged him to click on the photo.

  “Zoom in. Check out his right hand.” Sami stood, walked behind Karim and looked over his shoulder. To his friend, and to anyone watching, it was a simple gesture of excitement. But Sami did it to make sure that Karim clicked on the photo, which would upload the malicious file. “Boom! Right there. UNLV championship ring. I shook that hand, dude!”

  While Karim registered the impressiveness of his friend’s feat, Emily’s app was uploading.

  The tricky part was installation. Any good tracking software used the phone’s own systems as its backbone. The interoperability that Global 100 companies programmed into even the most basic phones was an unintended boon to SIGINT collection. But phone programmers required a user to approve every app’s access to the phone’s hardware and other apps. Anyone downloading and installing an app was familiar with the series of pop-up windows that would have come next.

  Can this app access your camera?

  Can this app access your contact list?

  The elegance in Emily’s coding was the combination of zero-day exploits that bypassed this entire process.

  Next, apps ask to be configured. This process takes time, creating the slowly-filling progress bar scenario familiar from spy movies. Not with Emily’s app. Stage two allowed for remote configuration. The design had the immense benefit of allowing for the detail work
to be done remotely. Sami hoped Emily was starting the configuration from Alexandria, without risk, even as Sami retook his seat.

  Sami’s own phone vibrated with the text he was waiting for.

  Can you do the call tomorrow at 1?

  It was the confirmation. The seed was planted. Emily was beginning configuration back at the makeshift SCIF. Sami’s work was done.

  Karim’s wasn’t. Soon after the plates were cleared, Sami realized that his friend had been screwing up his courage throughout the meal.

  “Have you spoken to Abu Muhammad?”

  “I haven’t even thought of him,” Sami lied.

  “He’s a wise man, Sami. You can’t blame him for—” Karim stopped, unsure what to say. A word danced through his mind. It was a word he was never comfortable with and one he had never spoken until that night in college. He had never spoken that word since and he would not say it now. “He is from a different place and time. They had different attitudes. That is not his fault.”

  “I don’t fault him for his place or time. I blame him for his attitudes. It is ironic that I should not fault him for when and where he was born. I only ask not to be judged for how I was born.”

  Even this oblique conversation was too much for Karim’s sensibilities and his cheeks flushed. Sami was returned to that night, in their dorm room. He remembered how brilliantly his strategy worked. He knew what he had discovered and how it drove him away from his grandfather. But Karim never found out. No one ever would. Sami’s deception was carried off so perfectly that he not only fooled Karim, he fooled himself.

  For a few moments that night, the biggest problem in his world was that he was gay. On that excuse could be hung the reason Sami would never see his grandfather again. But sexuality was not what had driven Sami from his grandfather. It was something else. Something Karim never heard because Sami told no one.

  His betrayal of Karim’s trust today was on par with that night. If Karim was embarrassed now, Sami wondered how the anger would look on his face. Would he turn redder still if he knew what Sami had done by exploiting their friendship? With the spy software uploaded on Karim’s phone done, and the topic of his grandfather broached, Sami suddenly wanted their meeting to be over. He decided that he would deploy the same tactic that had worked to such tremendous effect before.

  “I’m gay, Karim.”

  If he could have, Karim would have burst through the plate glass window. The night in college was a vivid memory he did not wish to relive. He asked questions then that he wished he did not know the answers to. Karim rose to his feet, marking his imminent intention to leave.

  Even though the misdirection worked as Sami planned, it had infuriated him. A voice rose within, repeating I am a person. I am your friend. Your friend!

  But then another voice rose. A friend? A friend? Do you spy on your friends?

  There were parts of himself that Sami did not like. They were not the same parts that Karim and Abu Muhammad had a problem with.

  Karim was confused by Sami’s sudden distance and he broke the silence. “I know that he would like to see you. That’s all. He raised you. He deserves to see you before he dies.”

  “You don’t know what he deserves,” Sami deadpanned. He resisted the urge to say more.

  And you don’t deserve what I am doing to you. Unless Andy’s right.

  If he was, Sami would know soon enough.

  EIGHT

  ALEXANDRIA

  “We have nothing,” Sami said.

  “You know I want details, Dost. Let me hear from the team.”

  “You want the details of nothing?”

  A weekend of work complete, the Home Game team were in the temporary office-cum-SCIF and Andy Rizzo was visiting for an update. His mere presence indicated the speed of the operation. Andy thought something was imminent. Which only made Sami more suspicious, because he wasn’t lying. They had nothing. He nodded at Alexa to begin.

  “The money trail is real, but it’s low-tech.” She began before Andy interrupted

  “No signs of sophistication?”

  “I didn’t say that. Someone is moving it through several cutouts. There’s a combination of fake PayPal accounts, some Western Union cash transfers that are U.S. to U.S. But it doesn’t add up. We’re missing money. Which leads me to believe that there have been hand to hand deliveries. Or at least cash drops.”

  “It’s homegrown,” Andy added.

  “We already knew that—" Sami interjected before Andy raised an annoyed hand in his direction.

  “The weird thing about the trail,” Alexa continued “is that it’s there at all.”

  “How so?”

  “If you can do cash drops, why not just keep it up? If you ask me, the online and wire activity is there for a reason.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense, darling,” Andy said, after a brief silence.

  Alexa blanched at Andy’s term of address. She reminded herself, as she had each day on Wall Street, that Andy’s money was still green.

  “Either it’s a false trail, to make someone not as smart as me, think the money is not coming from someone in the U.S., which it is…”

  “Or?”

  “Or, the trail is there just so we would find the recipient.”

  Andy flipped pages of the team’s briefing binder before saying, “Hasan Khalifa.” It was a charade. The name was front and center in his mind.

  Sami picked up the narrative from there.

  “The money all goes back to Hasan Hamad Khalifa.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Imam at a new mosque in Annapolis. American. The parents left Egypt in ’67. His father was a famous geologist— “

  “There are famous geologists?” Andy was feigning perusal of the bio on Hasan.

  “He was as famous as they get. Hasan has no notable history. No notable ties. His Arab Studies Masters comes from a school in Cairo. He was there during the Arab Spring, but it was dumb luck. No other foreign travel to indicate international connections.”

  “Not in person, but there’s a virtual world out there. Where has he gone online?”

  Sami gestured his approval and Yoda responded.

  “Hasan’s internet history is similar to the rest of the group. They are clearly part of a group. The internet histories establish a connection. But it seems like a religious studies group. They look at the same passages from the Qur’an on the same day. Nothing that stinks, on any of them. One spends a lot of time on his fantasy baseball team. Another on Redskins blogs. Looks like a couple travel heavily for work. They spend a lot of time cruising hotel websites.”

  “Nothing that doesn’t fit?” Andy asked.

  “Hasan has an IRC chat client on the computer. Internet Relay Chat. Everyone knows Signal, because Snowden endorsed it, but it is for mobile devices. This is the laptop version. That’s notable I guess.”

  “Use history?”

  “The app erases any exploitable usage data. Even if we were online with him when he was chatting, it’s encrypted.”

  Sami waded back in. He voice was tinged with impatience he didn’t have to try hard to feign. But it was feigned. In part to disguise him cutting off the briefing before Emily was put on the spot. He also broke in for the benefit of his team, he wanted them to witness what happened next.

  “That’s it, Coach. All we have are a whole bunch of U.S. Muslims who have normal jobs and spend a lot of time playing fantasy baseball and trying to figure out which hotels to stay in when they take business trips.”

  “Who, we can assess, are connected in some sort of group based on their internet activity,” Andy added.

  “They study the Qur’an together.” Sami dismissed. “They all attend the same mosque.”

  “What about the cash?” Andy countered. “By whatever means, it enters Hasan’s accounts and then goes out to buy these guys trucks.”

  “Agreed. That’s the smoking gun right now. But we need more. If you think something is happening, and happening soon, we
need the raw intelligence. Or we could watch these guys until there’s an attack and get nothing.”

  “I can’t give you any raw intel. Because I don’t have it. You know that.”

  “Then we need the analysis on the explosives, at least.”

  Andy’s expression flashed anger at Sami’s breach of the chain of command. Sami might have confronted Andy with the supposition that this was a potential bombing on day one, and the team might all have concluded the same thing, but Andy never confirmed that. He didn’t appreciate being dressed down by a subordinate in front of a team of contractors. A deep breath allowed him to compose himself.

  “Look,” the words came out through a clenched jaw. “We do our job. We do what we can with what we have. Keep watching. If something is happening, you’ll catch it.”

  “And hope it’s not too late?” Sami had emboldened Alexa, who was happy to have Sami’s back and strike a revenge blow for Andy’s earlier condescension.

  Andy ignored the comment. “Dig deeper into the data. We’re a small team, so prioritize. Who are we watching? Get eyes on, ears on. 24/7. Use the access to the group that we have.” Andy stared daggers at Sami, clearly indicating he was disappointed with the lack of development of the Karim connection. He turned back to Alexa before finishing. “And if something is happening, you need to get us there on time.”

  A look around the room was met with four tight nods. The briefing book could not leave the SCIF, so Andy dropped it on the table and headed to the door.

  “Walk me out, Dost.”

  They rode the elevator down in silence. Outside, a mild breeze off the river reduced the day’s heat index to mild. Andy walked about thirty feet away from the door and turned on his heel.

  “I appreciate the need for the theatrics. I’m not pissed about that, OK?”

  “OK. Good.”

  “The reason I’m pissed is that you haven’t gone after Karim Sulemani.”