Afraid of the Dark

Chapter Thirty-eight

Midnight was fast approaching in central London-lunchtime in a day in the life of the Dark.

The tube ride from Bethnal Green to King’s Cross was about twenty-five minutes, most of which the Dark spent reviewing his plan. The man seated behind him was snoring like a drunk, and the grind and hum of the underground railcar had lulled a handful of other riders to sleep, or near sleep. The Dark, however, was wide awake. His regular six hours of rest were from nine A.M. to three P.M., which meant that London’s winter suited his needs perfectly. Some days he never saw the sun. Still, he wore his sunglasses everywhere, including the underground. He was no vampire; even artificial light bothered him. Not that vampires were a bad thing. Hell, the number of schoolgirls reading Twilight on the tube was enough to make him bloodthirsty.

“Farringdon Station,” came the announcement over the loudspeaker. One more stop until his destination.

The train squeaked to a halt, and the doors opened. The smell of urine and feces entered the car, and the Dark spotted the mess someone had left on the platform. He ignored it, but not entirely. He’d read somewhere that memory was most closely linked to the sense of smell, and this unmistakable odor was indeed taking the Dark around a strange bend of memory lane. It smelled like the central market in Mogadishu, and the fact that his mind was making that connection was far from random. He’d been thinking about the Bakara Market on and off, ever since he’d sent that e-mail to Jamal’s father.

The e-mail hadn’t been part of the original plan. It was definitely beyond the scope of what he’d been hired to do. But getting paid for this job was just the icing on the cake. The Dark wanted that Somali son of a bitch to know that his son was dead, and he wanted to be the one to break the news. There was history between the two men, and the root of his animosity was burned into the Dark’s memory. As much as he wanted to stay focused on the present journey to central London, his mind was taking him back to that hot summer day in the Bakara Market, when the East African sun made the stench unbearable, when the sounds of war were never far away, and when the smell of newly spilled blood was in the air. To a time when he was known only as Habib, a foot soldier for al-Shabaab, and he worked under a cell leader named Abukar-Jamal’s father.

It was midmorning, and Habib was looking east across the Bakara Market from the charred second story of yet another building that had been destroyed by mortar fire. Years of armed conflict had reduced the Italian architecture of Somalia’s colonial period to rubble. Despite the recent shelling, Somalia’s biggest trading center was alive with the dangerous blend of war and commerce. It was just Habib and his cell leader on patrol, each of them well armed with an AK-47 rifle.

“There,” said Abukar, pointing.

The market was mostly shanty shacks made of old wood, rusty corrugated steel, and any piece of cloth that was large enough to provide shade. With temperatures exceeding 110 degrees, the stench of raw sewage and garbage rose up from the streets. At the whim of the breeze, Habib caught whiffs of the business being conducted at the various kiosks. He could smell live animals-camels, chickens, and goats-and the putrid piles of guts and puddles of blood that baked in the sun after the animals were slaughtered on-site. He detected sour goat and camel’s milk in unrefrigerated steel drums, which stank like a rotting corpse. There were rancid meats, many of them unidentifiable. Habib did not smell it today, but he’d been told of kiosks where human corpses-villagers dead from disease or starvation-were butchered and sold as animal feed for the dogs and hyenas that the poorest of the poor kept as pets, watchdogs, or a future meal.

And there were the arms traders. An RPG-2 grenade launcher would set the buyer back about five hundred American dollars. Ammunition for your AK-47: just seventy-five cents. Around these booths, it didn’t take a trained nose to breathe in the smell of gunpowder.

“The man by the orange tent?” asked Habib, his gaze trained on the kiosk to which Abukar had pointed.

“Yes. That one. He sold to the alliance.”

Abukar meant the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism (ARPCT), a group of secular warlords that was funded in part by the CIA. Militia loyal to the Islamic Court Union had driven the alliance out of the capital in what had come to be known as the Second Battle of Mogadishu, though to most Somalis it was all just one continuous battle with no beginning or end. In a single month Habib had been all the way down the coast to Marka, yanking out teeth because gold and silver fillings were sinful. Next it was Awdheegle, to punish women who did not wear the veil, with a stop along the way to carry out the sentence-public whipping-for two boys caught playing soccer. Then it was on to Afgoye, to destroy American textbooks in schools; to Baidoa, to defile the graves of infidels and loot the UN offices; and to Balcad, where Islamist clerics belonging to the Ahlu Sunna Wal-Jama faction were beheaded. More blood was spilled in northern Mogidishu’s Maslah Market: firing squads for spies and public amputation of hands for anyone caught stealing-common punishment for common thieves. Next week his team would take over six UN vehicles for use in suicide bombings against the African Union’s main base.

Important work, to be sure. But Habib’s calling was the high-tech stuff. He got started by simply monitoring reports about al-Shabaab on the Web-“100 Britons a year coming to Somalia Training Camps,” or “American from Seattle Kills 21 Peacekeepers in Suicide Bombing”-and reporting back to his superiors. His goal was to work with the production team on the latest propaganda video in progress, At your Service, Osama, in which al-Shabaab would formally and publicly pledge its allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Habib checked his watch, then glanced at Abukar.

“One minute,” said Habib.

Timing was critical. They were implementing one of two separate but simultaneous suicide attacks in the city. It was Habib who had delivered the stock of explosives for use in the Bakara Market bombing: forty kilograms of fertilizer, the same amount of ammonium nitrate that last week had delivered up a thirty-year-old husband and father of four to martyrdom. Habib was dependable in all he did for al-Shabaab, and his reward was to witness firsthand the fruits of his labor.

“Ah,” said Abukar as he peered through his binoculars into the busy market. “She is right on time.”

“She?” asked Habib. He didn’t know the bomber’s identity; very few did.

“They will not suspect a woman.”

“She must be very brave.”

“You should be proud. It’s Samira.”

Habib did a double take. “My sister?”

“Our shaheeda.”

Habib glanced at the bustling marketplace, then at Abukar, then back at the crowd. He spotted several women dressed in traditional black burkas, any one of whom could have been a human bomb. Before Habib could speak-before his anger could even begin to find words-a huge blast ripped through the usual daily commerce. Screaming bystanders scattered as bloodied body parts flew through the air.

“Samira!” he cried out, invoking his youngest sister’s name.

“Allahu Akbar!” his cell leader shouted.

“King’s Cross St. Pancras.”

The crackle over the loudspeaker stirred the Dark out of his memories. The blur of the platform whizzed past in the train’s window, slowing steadily to a stop. He was the first one off when the doors parted, and he walked straight to the escalator.

The largest tube station in central London was so named because it served two rail stations: King’s Cross and St. Pancras. Forty million riders coursed through the complex each year. The Dark was interested in a select few of them. The tube had delivered the goods in the past, but tonight he would try the Suburban Building. Platforms 9 and 10 to be exact.

In the Harry Potter series, King’s Cross is the starting point of the Hogwarts Express. Riders enter secret platform 9? by passing through the brick-wall barrier between platforms 9 and 10. The books and movies are set in the main part of the station, but platforms 9 and 10 are actually in a separate building. Nonetheless, authorities did their best to capitalize on the phenomenon, erecting a cast-iron PLATFORM 9? sign on a wall in the right building. Part of a luggage trolley has also been installed below the sign, half of it seeming to have disappeared into the wall. Fans of the series were always flocking there for photographs, one after another taking a turn at pretending to push the cart through the wall.

That was where girls of the right age would be. Silly girls who hung out in train stations late at night and who wanted to disappear like Harry.

The Dark passed a row of shops in the concourse, checked his reflection in a storefront window, and smiled to himself.

Disappear, they will.