Jihad

CHAPTER 50

By the time Marid Dabir arrived in Karlsruhe, Germany, the European al-Qaeda organizer realized that he was being followed by one of the German security forces. He decided he had two alternatives, either to flee or proceed; fleeing was impossible, and so his course was set. To flee meant to fail, and failure meant he would never return to bin Laden’s side. Better to die immediately as a martyr than wander in the wilderness any longer.

Who had betrayed him? Logically, it must be someone in his network here, though that seemed beyond belief.

Dabir went to the house he had rented as an adjunct teacher of Middle Eastern history at Karlsruhe University, doing everything one might do after returning from a trip abroad: picking up the mail, checking phone messages, answering the e-mails from university colleagues that had accumulated while he was gone. He then went to his office at the school, checked on his mail there, and while picking up papers from his department chairman’s office, pilfered the wireless PDA from his desk. Back in his own office, Dabir retrieved a cell phone hidden behind his bookcase. He connected the chairman’s PDA to the telephone, then slipped a small flash memory card into the top of the handheld computer. A screen for an instant message service appeared. Dabir tapped the bottom of the screen and a keyboard appeared; he used it to write seven short messages, which were then sent through the instant message service to the terrorists he had recruited. He wrote in simple German; one of the programs contained on the card he had put into the computer encrypted the messages into a string of letters and numbers that could only be read by someone with the same program. Within a half-hour all of the recipients had sent back a reply: ja.

“Yes.” They were ready.

Dabir returned the handheld computer to the chairman’s office without being noticed, then went back outside to resume his errands. A balding man in a sports coat followed as he walked to his car; clearly he was from one of the intelligence services. Dabir let him tag along for the time being, confident he could get rid of him when the time was right.