The Kill List

Chapter 10

Hardly had the Malmö dropped her anchor in twenty fathoms of water in the bay of Garacad than three aluminum skiffs were seen heading toward her from the village.

Jimali and his seven co-pirates were eager to be back on land. They had been at sea for twenty days, most of them cooped up in the Taiwanese trawler. Their supplies of fresh food were long gone, and they had been existing on European and Filipino cuisine, which they did not like, for two weeks. They wanted to get back to their native goat stew diet and the feel of sand under their feet.

The dark heads crouching in the oncoming skiffs from the shore a mile away were those of the relief crew, who would guard the ship at anchor for as long as it took.

Only one of those approaching the Malmö was not a ragged tribesman. Primly at the back of the third skiff sat a neatly dressed Somali in a well-cut fawn safari jacket and trousers. He held an attaché case on his knees. This was al-Afrit’s chosen negotiator, Mr. Abdi.

“Now it begins,” said Capt. Eklund. He spoke in English, the language common to the Swede, Ukrainians, the Pole and Filipinos onboard. “We must be patient. Leave the talking to me.”

“No speak,” snapped Jimali. He disliked his captives speaking even in English because his grasp of it was not very strong.

A ladder was lowered over the side and the mainly teenage relief guards came up it, hardly seeming to touch the rungs. Mr. Abdi, who did not like being at sea, even a mile out, took his time and clung firmly to the guy ropes as he climbed. His attaché case was passed up to him when his feet hit the deck.

Captain Eklund did not know who he was but recognized from his dress and manner that this was at least an educated man. He stepped forward.

“I am Captain Eklund, master of the Malmö,” he said.

Mr. Abdi held out his hand. “I am Ali Abdi, the appointed negotiator for the Somali end of things,” he said. His English was fluent, with a slight American intonation. “You have never been. . how shall I put it?. . a guest of the Somali people before?”

“No,” said the captain. “And I would prefer not to be now.”

“Of course. Most distressing, from your point of view. But you have been briefed, no? There are certain formalities that must be gone through, then meaningful negotiations can begin. The sooner an accord is reached, the sooner you will be on your way.”

Captain Eklund knew that, far away, his employer would be in conclave with insurers and lawyers, and they, too, would appoint a single negotiator. Both, he hoped, would be skilled and experienced and would accomplish a quick ransom payment and release. He clearly did not know the rules. Speed was now the concern of the Europeans only.

Abdi’s first concern was to be escorted to the bridge to make contact on the ship’s satellite phone with the control center in Stockholm and then the negotiation office, presumably in London, the home of Lloyd’s, which would be the epicenter of the whole bargaining process. As he surveyed the deck from the vantage of the bridge, he murmured: “It might be wise to rig canvas awnings in the spaces left by the deck cargo. Then your crew can take the sea air without being roasted by the sun.”

Stig Eklund had heard of the Stockholm syndrome, the procedure whereby kidnappers and captives formed a friendship bond based on shared proximity. He had no intention of relaxing his inner loathing for the people who had seized his ship. On the other hand, the neatly dressed, educated and well-spoken Somali, in the person of Ali Abdi, was at least someone he could communicate with on a civilized basis.

“Thank you,” he said. His first and second officers were standing behind him. They had heard and understood. He nodded to them and they left the bridge to hang the awnings.

“And now, if you please, I must speak to your people in Stockholm,” said Abdi.

The sat phone had Stockholm on the line in seconds. Abdi’s face lit up when he heard the ship’s owner was even then in London with Chauncey Reynolds. He had twice negotiated, albeit for other clan chiefs, for the release of vessels through Chauncey Reynolds and each time they had been successful, with only a few weeks of delay. Given the number, he asked Capt. Eklund to raise the London lawyers. Julian Reynolds came on the line.

“Ah, Mr. Reynolds, we speak again. This is Mr. Ali Abdi on the bridge of the Malmö, with Captain Eklund beside me.”

In London, Julian Reynolds looked pleased. He covered the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Abdi again.” There was a sigh of relief, and that included Gareth Evans. Everyone at the London end had heard of the foul reputation of al-Afrit, the cruel old tyrant who ruled Garacad. The appointment of the urbane Abdi caused a flicker of light in the gloom.

“Good morning, Mr. Abdi. Salaam aleikhem.”

“Aleikhem as-salaam,” responded Abdi over the airwaves. He suspected the Swedes and British would happily wring his neck if they had a free choice, but the Muslim greeting was a nice attempt at civility. He appreciated civility.

“I am going to pass you to someone I think you already know,” said Reynolds. He passed the receiver to Gareth Evans and switched to conference call. The voice from the Somali shore was clear as a bell. It was just as clear to the ears at Fort Meade and Cheltenham, who were recording everything.

“Hello, Mr. Abdi. This is Mr. Gareth. We meet again, if only in space. I have been asked to handle the London end of things.”

In London, five men — the shipowner, two lawyers, an insurer and Gareth Evans — heard Abdi’s chortle over the speaker system.

“Mr. Gareth, my friend. I am so glad it is you. I am sure we can lead this matter to a good conclusion.”

Abdi’s habit of putting the “Mr.” in front of the given name was his way of landing between frostily formal and too intimate. He always referred to Gareth Evans as Mr. Gareth.

“I have a room set aside for me in the law office here in London,” said Evans. “Shall I move in there so that we can start?”

It was too fast for Abdi. The formalities had to be observed. One was to impress on the Europeans that the hurry was all on their side. He knew Stockholm would already have calculated just how much the Malmö was now costing them on a daily basis; ditto the insurers, of which there would be three.

One firm would cover the hull and machinery, a different firm the cargo, and a third would be the war risk underwriters holding cover on the crew. They would all have different calculations of loss, ongoing or pending. Let them stew with their figures a while longer, he thought. What he said was: “Ah, Mr. Gareth, my friend, you are ahead of me. I need a little more time to study the Malmö and her cargo before I can propose a reasonable figure that you can confidently put to your principals for settlement.”

He had already been online from his private room, set aside for him in the sand-blasted fortress in the hills behind Garacad, which was the headquarters of al-Afrit. He knew there were factors such as age and condition of the freighter, perishability of the cargo and loss of future likely earnings to be computed.

But he had done all that and had decided on a starting figure of twenty-five million dollars. He knew he would probably settle on four million, maybe five if the Swede was in a hurry.

“Mr. Gareth, let me propose we begin tomorrow morning. Say, nine o’clock London time? That will be midday here. I shall by then be back in my office onshore.”

“Very well, my friend. I shall be here to take your call.”

It would be a satellite call by computer. There would be no question of using Skype. Facial expressions can give too much away.

“There is one last thing before we break for the day. Do I have your assurance that the crew, including the Filipinos, will be detained safely onboard and not molested in any way?”

No other Somali heard this, for those on the Malmö were out of earshot of the bridge and could not speak English anyway. But Abdi caught the meaning.

By and large, the Somali warlords and clan chiefs treated their captives humanely, but there were one or two notable exceptions. Al-Afrit was one, and the worst, a vicious old brute with a reputation.

At a personal level, Abdi would work for al-Afrit, and his fee would be twenty percent. His labors as hostage negotiator for pirates were making him a wealthy man much younger than usual. But he did not have to like his principal and he did not. He despised him. But he did not have a corps of bodyguards around him.

“I am confident that all the crew will remain onboard and be well treated,” he intoned, then ended the call. He just prayed he was right.

The amber eyes gazed at the young prisoner for a dozen seconds. Silence reigned in the room. Opal could sense the educated Somali, who had let him into the courtyard, and two Pakistani bodyguards behind him. When the voice came, it was surprisingly gentle and in Arabic.

“What is your name?”

Opal gave it.

“Is that a Somali name?”

Behind him, the Somali shook his head. The Pakistanis did not understand.

“No, Sheikh, I am from Ethiopia.”

“That is a mainly nasrani country. Are you a Christian?”

“Thanks be to Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate. No, no, Sheikh, I am not. I am from the Ogaden, just over the border. We are all Muslims and much persecuted for it.”

The face with the amber eyes nodded approvingly.

“And why did you come to Somalia?”

“There were rumors in my village that recruiters from the Ethiopian army were coming to press-gang our people into the army to fight in the invasion of Somalia. I escaped and came here to join my fellow brothers in Allah.”

“You came from Kismayo to Marka last night? Why?”

“I am looking for work, Sheikh. I have a job as tally clerk at the fish dock, but I hoped for something better in Marka.”

“And how did you come by these papers?”

Opal told his rehearsed story. He had been motoring through the night to avoid the blinding heat and sandstorms of the day. He noted his petrol was low and stopped to fill up from his spare jerrycan. This was, by chance, on a concrete bridge over a dry wadi.

He heard a faint cry. He thought it might be the wind in the high trees that stand near there, but then he heard it again. It seemed to come from below the bridge.

He climbed down the bank into the wadi and found a pickup truck, badly crashed. It seemed to have come off the bridge and dived into the wadi bank. There was a man at the wheel, but terribly injured.

“I tried to help him, Sheikh, but there was nothing I could do. My motor bicycle would never carry two, and I could not bring him up the bank. I pulled him out of the cab in case it caught fire. But he was dying, inshallah.”

The dying man had begged him, as a brother, to take his satchel and deliver it to Marka. He described the compound: near the street market, down from the Italian roundabout, a timber double door with a latched door for the lookout.

“I held him while he died, Sheikh, but I could not save him.”

The robed figure considered this for some while, then turned to look through the papers that had come from the satchel.

“Did you open the satchel?”

“No, Sheikh, it was not of my business.”

The amber eyes looked thoughtful.

“There was money in the satchel. Perhaps we have an honest man. What do you think, Jamma?”

The Somali smirked. The Preacher let out a torrent of Urdu at the Pakistanis. They moved forward and seized Opal.

“My men will return to that spot. They will examine the wreck, which must surely still be there. And the body of my servant. If you have lied, you will surely wish you had never come here. Meanwhile, you will stay and wait for their return.”

He was imprisoned again, but not in the decrepit shed in the yard from which an agile man might escape in the night. He was taken to a cellar with a sand floor and locked in. He was there for two days and a night. It was pitch-dark. He was given a plastic bottle of water, which he sipped sparingly in the blackness. When he was let out and brought upstairs, his eyes puckered and blinked furiously in the sunlight from the shutters. He was taken to the Preacher again.

The robed figure held something in his right hand, which he turned over and over in his fingers. His amber eyes moved to his prisoner and settled on the frightened Opal.

“It seems you were right, my young friend,” he said in Arabic. “My servant had indeed crashed his truck into the bank of the wadi and died there. The cause”—he held up the object in his fingers—“this nail. My people found it in the tire. You spoke the truth.”

He rose and crossed the room to stand in front of the young Ethiopian, looking down at him speculatively.

“How is it you speak Arabic?”

“I studied in my spare time, sir. I wanted the better to read and understand our Holy Koran.”

“Any other language?”

“A little English, sir.”

“And how did you come by that?”

“There was a school near my village. It was run by a missionary from England.”

The Preacher went dangerously quiet.

“A nasrani. An infidel. A kuffar. And from him you also learned to love the West?”

“No, sir. Just the opposite. It taught me to hate them for the centuries of misery they have inflicted on our people and to study only the words and the life of our prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace.”

The Preacher considered this and smiled at last.

“So we have a young man”—he was clearly speaking to his Somali secretary—“who is honest enough not to take money, compassionate enough to fulfill the wish of a dying man and wishes to serve only the Prophet. And who speaks Somali, Arabic and some English. What do you think, Jamma?”

The secretary fell into the trap. Seeking to please, he agreed their discovery was fortunate indeed. But the Preacher had a problem. He had lost his computer expert, and the man who brought him his downloaded messages from London, while never revealing that he himself was in Marka, not Kismayo. Only Jamma could replace him in Kismayo; the rest were not computer literate.

That left him short a secretary but facing a young man who was literate, spoke three languages apart from his Ogaden dialect and sought work.

The Preacher had survived for ten years on the basis of a caution bordering on paranoia. He had seen most of his contemporaries from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the 313 Brigade, the Khorosan executioners, the Haqqani clan and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen group, traced, tracked down, targeted, wiped out. More than half of these had been betrayed.

He had shunned cameras as the plague, changed residence constantly, altered his name, hid his face, masked his eyes. And stayed alive.

He would tolerate in his personal entourage only those he was convinced he could trust. His four Pakistani bodyguards would die for him but had no brains. Jamma was clever, but he needed him now to oversee the two computers in Kismayo.

The new arrival pleased him. There was proof of his honesty, his truthfulness. If he took him into his employ, he could be monitored night and day. He would communicate with no one. And he needed a personal secretary. The idea that the young man facing him was a Jew and a spy was inconceivable. He decided to take the risk.

“Would you like to become my secretary?” he asked gently. There was a gasp of dismay from Jamma.

“It would be a privilege beyond words, sir. I would serve you faithfully, inshallah.”

The orders were given. Jamma was to take one of the pickups in the compound and drive to Kismayo to take over the managership of the Masala warehouse and the Preacher’s sermon-broadcasting computer.

Opal would take over Jamma’s room and learn his duties. An hour later, he pulled on the bright red baseball cap with the New York logo on it that he had been given by the wrecked truck. It had belonged to the Israeli skipper of the fishing boat who had had to give it up when fresh orders came through from Tel Aviv.

Out in the courtyard, he wheeled his trail bike over to the decrepit shed in the wall to store it out of the sun. Halfway across, he stopped and looked up. Then he slowly nodded and walked on.

In a buried control room outside Tampa, the figure far below the circling Global Hawk was seen and noted. An alert call was made and the image patched through to a room in the U.S. embassy in London.

The Tracker looked at the slim figure in dishdash and red cap, staring at the sky in faraway Marka.

“Well done, kid,” he murmured. Agent Opal was inside the fortress and had just confirmed all Tracker needed to know.

The last killer neither stacked shelves nor served on a garage forecourt. He was a Syrian by birth, well educated and with a diploma in dental studies, and he worked as assistant to a successful orthodontist on the outskirts of Fairfax, Virginia. His name was Tariq Hussein.

He was neither refugee nor student when he arrived from Aleppo ten years earlier but a legal immigrant who had passed all the tests for legitimate entry. It was never established whether he bore with him, that far back, the raging hatred for the West in general and America in particular that his writings revealed when his neat suburban bungalow was raided by the Virginia state police and the FBI or whether he developed it during his residence.

His passport revealed three journeys back to the Middle East during that decade, and it was speculated he may have become “infected” with his rage and loathing during those visits. His diary and his laptop disclosed some of the answers but not all.

His employers, neighbors and social circle were all intensively questioned, but it seemed he had fooled them all. Behind his polite, smiling exterior, he was a dedicated Salafist, subscribing to the meanest and harshest brand of Jihadism. In his writings, his contempt and loathing of American society emerged from every line.

Like other Salafists, he saw no need to wear traditional Muslim robes nor grow a beard nor pause for the five daily prayers. He was clean-shaven daily, with neat, short black hair. Living alone in his detached suburban bungalow, he nevertheless socialized with work colleagues and others. With the American love of friendly-sounding diminutives for first names, he was Terry Hussein.

Among these friends at the local bar, he could explain his teetotalism as a desire to “keep in shape,” and this was accepted. His refusal to touch pork or sit at a table where it was being consumed was not even noticed.

Because he was single, a number of girls made eyes at him, but his rebuffs were always polite and gentle. There were one or two gay men who frequented the neighborhood bar, and he was asked once or twice whether he was one of them. He remained polite as he denied it, simply saying he was waiting for Miss Right.

His diary made plain he believed gay men should be stoned to death as slowly as possible, and the thought of lying beside some fat, white pig-eating infidel cow filled him with revulsion.

It was not the teaching of the Preacher that created his rage and hatred, but it channeled it. His laptop showed he had followed the Preacher avidly for two years but never betrayed himself by joining the fan base, though he longed to contribute. Finally, he decided to follow the Preacher’s urging: to perfect his adoration of Allah and His prophet by the act of supreme sacrifice, and go to join them in paradise eternal.

But also to take with him as many Americans as he could and die a shahid, a martyr, at the hands of their infidel police. For this, he would need a gun.

He already had a Virginia driver’s license, the principal photo ID, but it was in the name of Hussein. Given the media coverage that several assassinations that spring and summer had already generated, he thought the name might be a problem.

Staring at his face in the mirror, he realized that with black hair, dark eyes and a swarthy skin, he looked as if he might have come from the Middle East. The surname would prove it.

But one of his coworkers in the laboratory was similar in appearance and he was of Hispanic origin. Tariq Hussein determined to secure a driver’s license in a more Spanish-sounding name and began to scour the Internet.

He was surprised by the simplicity. He did not even have to present himself in person nor write a letter. He simply applied online in the name of Miguel “Mickey” Hernandez, up from New Mexico. There was a fee, of course: seventy-nine dollars to Global Intelligence ID Card Solutions, plus fifty-five-dollar express delivery charge. The Virginia license to replace his “lost” one came in the mail.

But his principal research online had been for the right gun. He spent hours poring over the thousands of pages concerning guns and gun magazines. He knew more or less what he wanted and what he needed it to do. He just sought advice on which gun to buy.

He dawdled over the Bushmaster, used at Sandy Hook, but discarded it due to its lightweight 5.6mm bullets. He wanted something heavier and more penetrating. He finally settled on the Heckler & Koch G3, a variant of the A4 military assault rifle, using standard NATO ordnance of 7.62mm, which, he was assured, would tear through tinplate without shredding.

The online research engine informed him he would be unlikely to secure the fully automatic version under U.S. law, but the semiautomatic version would suit his purpose. It would fire a round for every time the trigger was squeezed — fast enough for what he had in mind.

If he was surprised at the ease of obtaining a driver’s license, he was bewildered by the simplicity of buying a rifle. He went to a gun show at the Prince William County Fairgrounds at Manassas, hardly an hour away and still in Virginia.

He wandered in some perplexity through the sales halls, offering an array of lethal weaponry sufficient to start several wars. Finally, he found the HK G3. On production of his driver’s license, the beefy salesman was delighted to sell him the “hunting rifle” for cash dollars. He just walked out with it and loaded it into the trunk of his car. No one raised an eyebrow.

The ammunition for the twenty-round magazine was just as easy, but from a gun shop in Falls Church. He bought a hundred rounds, an extra magazine and a magazine clamp, to clip the two mags together and give him forty rounds without the need to reload. When he had all he needed, he drove quietly back to his small house and prepared to die.

It was on the third afternoon that al-Afrit came to visit his new prize. From the bridge of the Malmö, Capt. Eklund saw the larger fishing dhow when it was already halfway between the shore and the ship. His binoculars picked out the suit of Mr. Abdi, beside a white-robed figure, under an awning amidships.

Jimali and his fellow pirates had been replaced by another dozen youths, who were indulging in a Somali practice the Swedish mariner had never seen before. When they boarded, the new guard crew brought with them large bundles of green leaves, not sprigs but bushes of them. This was their khat, which they were chewing steadily. Stig Eklund noticed that by sundown they were high on it. Then they varied between somnolent and easily angered.

When the Somali standing beside him followed his eyeline and spotted the dhow, he sobered up fast, ran down the companionway to the deck and shouted to his companions, lounging under the awning.

The old clan chief climbed the aluminum ladder to the deck, straightened and looked around him. Capt. Eklund had his cap on and saluted. Better safe than sorry, he thought. Mr. Abdi, who had been brought along as interpreter, made the introductions.

Al-Afrit had a lined and almost coal black face beneath his headdress, but his legendary cruelty showed in his mouth. In London, Gareth Evans had been tempted to warn Capt. Eklund but could not know who might be standing beside him. Mr. Abdi had also said nothing. So the captain was unsure exactly whose prisoner he was.

With Abdi tagging along to interpret, they toured the bridge and officers’ wardroom. Then al-Afrit ordered that all the foreigners line up on the deck. He walked slowly down the line, ignoring the ten Filipinos but staring at the five Europeans.

His gaze lingered for a long while on the nineteen-year-old cadet, Ove Carlsson, neat in white tropical ducks. Through Abdi, he ordered the youth to take his cap off. He stared at the pale blue eyes, then reached up and fondled the corn blond hair. Carlsson blanched and pulled away. The Somali looked angry but took his hand away.

As the party left the deck for the ladder, al-Afrit finally uttered a stream of Somali. Four of the guards he had brought with him jumped forward, seized the cadet and hustled him to the ground.

Captain Eklund rushed out of the line to protest. Abdi grabbed his arm.

“Do nothing,” he hissed. “It is all right, I am sure it will be all right. I know this man. Do not anger him.”

The cadet was forced down the ladder into more waiting hands in the dhow.

“Captain, help me,” he shouted.

Captain Eklund rounded on Abdi, the last man off his ship. He was red-faced with rage.

“I hold you responsible for this lad’s safety,” he snapped. “This is not civilized.”

Abdi, with his legs already on the ladder, was pale with distress.

“I will intervene with the Sheikh,” he said.

“I am going to inform London,” said the captain.

“I cannot permit that, Captain Eklund. It is about our negotiations. They are very delicate. Let me handle this.”

Then he was gone. On the way back across the swell to the beach, he sat in silence and cursed the old devil at his side. If he thought snatching the cadet would put pressure on London to raise the ransom price, he would ruin everything. He was the negotiator; he knew what he was doing. That apart, he feared for the boy. Al-Afrit had a reputation with the prisoners.

That evening, the Tracker called Ariel in his Centerville attic.

“You recall the short film I left with you.”

“Yes, Colonel Jackson.”

“I want you to screen it on the Jihadist Internet channel, the one the Preacher always uses.”

It went worldwide an hour later. The Preacher sat in his usual chair, talking directly into the camcorder and thus to the Muslim world. With an hour of preannouncements, the entire fan base would be listening, plus millions who were not converted to extremism but were interested, and every counterterrorist agency in the world.

They were all surprised, then riveted. The figure they saw was a hard-looking man in his early to mid-thirties, but this time he wore no covering drawn from his headdress over his lower face. He had a full black beard, and his eyes were of a strange amber hue.

Only one man watching knew that the eyes were contact lenses and that the speaker was Tony Suárez, who lived in Malibu and could not comprehend a word of the Koranic inscriptions on the sheet behind him.

The voice was accent-perfect, the tones of the British mimic who had listened to only two hours of previous sermons before producing an identical replication of the voice. And the screening was in color, not black and white. But to the faithful, it was undoubtedly the Preacher.

“My friends, brothers and sisters in Allah, I have been missing from your lives for some time. But I have not wasted my time. I have been reading, and studying our beautiful faith, Islam, and contemplating many things. And I have changed, inshallah.

“I wonder how many of you have heard of the Muraja’at, the Revisions of the Salafist-Jihadist cause. These are what I have been studying.

“Many times in the past, I have urged upon you all to dedicate yourselves not simply to worship of Allah, may His name be praised, but also to hatred of others. But the Revisions teach us that this is wrong, that our beautiful Islam is truly not a creed of bitterness and hatred, even of those who think differently from us.

“The most famous of the Revisions are those of the Series for the Corrections of Concepts. Just as those who taught us hatred came out of Egypt, so also did the al-Gama’a al-Islamiyyas, who wrote the Corrections, and I now understand that it was they, not the teachers of bigotry and loathing, who were right.”

The Tracker’s phone in the embassy room rang. It was Gray Fox from Virginia.

“Am I hearing correctly or has something very weird happened?” he asked.

“Listen a while longer,” said the Tracker, and hung up.

On the screen, the uncomprehending Tony Suárez carried on.

“I have read the Revisions now a score of times in English translation, which I recommend to you all who speak and read no Arabic and to those who do in the original tongue.

“For it is clear to me now that what our brothers the al-Gama’a say is true. The governmental system known as democracy is perfectly compatible with True Islam, and it is hatred and lust for blood that is alien to every word ever spoken by the Prophet Muhammad, may he rest in peace.

“Those who now claim to be the True Believers and who call for mass murder, cruelty, torture and the death of thousands are in truth like the Kharijite rebels who fought against the Prophet’s Companions.

“We must now consider all Jihadists and Salafists like those Kharijites, and we who worship only the one true Allah and His blessed prophet Muhammad must destroy the heretics who have led His people astray these many years.

“And we True Believers must surely destroy these advocates of hatred and violence as the Companions once destroyed the Kharijites long ago.

“But now is my time come to declare who I really am. I was born Zulfiqar Ali Shah, in Islamabad, and raised as a good Muslim. But I fell and became Abu Azzam, a killer of men, women and children.”

The phone rang again.

“Who the hell is this?” yelled Gray Fox.

“Hear him out,” said the Tracker. “It’s almost over.”

“So, before the world, and especially before you, my brothers and sisters in Allah, I pronounce my tawba, my true repentance, for all that I have done and said in a false cause. And I declare my complete bara’a, my disavowal, of all that I said and preached against the true teachings of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate.

“For I showed no mercy and no compassion, and must now beg you to show me that mercy, that compassion, which the Holy Koran teaches us may be extended to the sinner who truly repents his former sinful ways. May Allah bless you and be with you all.”

The screen faded. The phone rang again. In fact, phones were ringing right across the umma, the world community of Islam, many of them to give vent to screams of rage.

“Tracker, what the hell have you done?” asked Gray Fox.

“I hope I have just destroyed him,” said the Tracker.

He recalled what the wise old scholar at al-Azhar University had told him years ago when he was a student in Cairo: “The merchants of hatred have four levels of loathing. You may think you Christians are at the top level. Wrong, for you are also believers in the one true God and thus, with the Jews, also People of the Book.

“Above you come the atheists and idolaters, who have no god but only carved idols. That is why the Mujahideen of Afghanistan hated the communists more than you. They are atheists.

“But above even them, for the fanatics, come the moderate Muslims, who do not follow them, and that is why they seek to topple every Western-friendly Muslim government by exploding bombs in their marketplaces and killing fellow Muslims who have done no harm.

“But highest of all, a dog among the unforgivables, is the apostate, the one who abandons or denounces Jihadism, then recants and returns to the faith of his fathers. For him, forgiveness is out of the question and only death awaits.”

And then he poured the tea and prayed.

Mr. Abdi sat alone in his suite, a bedroom and office, in the fort behind Garacad, his knuckles white on the tabletop. The two-foot walls were soundproof but not the doors, and he could hear the sounds of the whipping down the corridor. He wondered which wretched servant had incurred the displeasure of his host.

There was no disguising the crack as the instrument of torture, probably a semirigid camel crop, rose and fell, nor did the rough timber doors mask the shrill screams following each lash.

Ali Abdi was not a brutal man, and although he was aware of the distress of the mariners imprisoned in their anchored vessels out under the sun and would not be hurried if extra money could be extracted by delaying, he saw no reason for maltreatment — even of Somali servants. He was beginning to regret ever agreeing to negotiate for this pirate commander. The man was a brute.

He went ashen white when, in a pause in the flogging, the victim pleaded for mercy. He was speaking in Swedish.

The reaction of the Preacher to the broadcast worldwide of the devastating words of Tony Suárez was almost hysterical.

As he had not given a sermon online for three weeks, he was not watching the Jihadist post when it broadcast. He was alerted by one of his Pakistani bodyguards who spoke a smattering of English. He heard the end of it in stunned disbelief, then replayed it from the start.

He sat in front of his desktop computer and watched in horror. It was phoney — of course it was phony — but it was convincing. The likeness was uncanny, the beard, the face, the dress, the backcloth, even the eyes — he was looking at his own doppelgänger. And his voice.

But that was nothing compared to the words; the formal recantation was a death sentence. It would take many weeks to persuade the faithful that they had been deceived by a clever fraud. From outside the study, his servants could hear him screaming at the figure on the screen, that the tawba was a lie, his recantation a foul untruth.

When the face of the faraway American actor faded, he sat, drained, for almost an hour. Then he made his mistake. Desperate to be believed by someone at least, he contacted his one true friend, his ally in London. By e-mail.

Cheltenham was listening, and Fort Meade. And a silent Marine colonel in an office in the U.S. embassy in London. And Gray Fox in Virginia, who had the Tracker’s request on his desk. The Preacher might be destroyed now, Tracker had told him. But it was not enough. He had too much blood on his hands. Now he had to be killed, and he had laid out several options. Gray Fox would take it to the commander of J-SOC, personally, and he was confident it would go for discussion and judgment right up to the Oval Office. He didn’t know what that judgment would be, however.

Within minutes of the e-mail out of Marka, the exact text and the precise location of each computer and the owner of each computer were proven genuine. The placing of the Preacher was completely beyond doubt, the complicity at every level of Mustafa Dardari the same.

Gray Fox was able to get back to the Tracker within twenty-four hours, on the secure line from TOSA to the embassy. The news was not good.

“I tried, Tracker, but the answer is no. There is a presidential veto on missiles on that compound. It’s partly the dense civilian population all around it and partly the presence of Opal inside it.”

“And the other proposal?”

“No to both. There will be no beach landing from the sea. Now that the al-Shabaab have reinfested Marka, we do not know how many there are or how well armed they are. The senior brass reckon he could slip away into that labyrinth of alleys and we’d lose him forever.

“And the same applies to a heli-borne drop on the roof, bin Laden style. Not the Rangers, not the SEALs, not even the Night Stalkers. It’s too far from Djibouti and Kenya, too public in Mogadishu. And there is the danger of a shoot-down. The words ‘Black Hawk Down’ still cause nightmares.

“Sorry, Tracker. A great job. You’ve identified him, located him, discredited him. But I guess it’s over. The bastard’s inside Marka and unlikely to come out, unless you can find one helluva bait. And there’s the problem of Opal. I guess you had better pack up and come home.”

“He’s not dead yet, Gray Fox. He has an ocean of blood on his hands. He may not preach anymore, but he is still a dangerous bastard. He could move west to Mali. Let me finish the job.”

There was silence on the line. Then Gray Fox came back.

“OK, Tracker. One more week. Then you pack your kit.”

As he replaced the phone, the Tracker realized he had miscalculated. In destroying the credibility of the Preacher throughout the entire world of Islamist fundamentalism, he had intended to force his target out of his bolt-hole and into the open. He wanted him on the run from his own people, devoid of cover, a refugee again. He had never intended his own superiors to call him off the chase.

He found himself facing a crisis of conscience. However he might vote as a citizen, as an officer and a U.S. Marine to boot, his commander in chief had his total loyalty. And that meant his obedience. Yet this he could not obey.

He had been given an assignment. It was not over. He had been tasked with a mission. It was not accomplished. And it had changed. It was now a personal vendetta. He owed a debt to a much-loved old man lying on a bed in an ICU ward in Virginia Beach and he intended to discharge it.

For the first time since cadet school, he contemplated resignation from the Corps. His career was saved a few days later by a dental technician he had never heard of.

Al-Afrit retained his horror picture for two days, but when it suddenly flashed up on the screen in the operations center at Chauncey Reynolds, it caused stunned shock. Gareth Evans had been talking to Mr. Abdi. The issues, of course, were ransom money and timescale.

Abdi had come down from twenty-five million dollars to twenty million, but the time was dragging — for the Europeans. It had been a week, to the Somalis a chronological fleabite. Al-Afrit was demanding all the money and he wanted it now. Abdi had explained that the Swedish owner would not contemplate twenty million. Evans was privately of the view that they would finally settle at about five million.

Then al-Afrit took over and sent his picture. By chance, Reynolds was also in the office, and Harry Andersson, who had been advised to fly home and wait in Stockholm. The picture made the three men sick and silent.

The cadet was held facedown over a rough wooden table by a big Somali, who had his wrists. His ankles were apart, each lashed to a table leg. His trousers and undershorts were missing.

His buttocks had been caned to a bloody mess. His face, turned sideways against the timber, was clearly screaming.

The reaction of Evans and Reynolds was to realize they were dealing with a sadistic madman. Nothing like this had ever happened before. The reaction of Harry Andersson was more extreme. He uttered a cry close to a scream and rushed to the bathroom. The others heard the retching as he knelt with his head over the pan. When he returned, his face was ashen save for two red patches, one on each cheek.

“That boy is my son!” he shouted. “My son!” He grabbed Gareth Evans by the lapels and hauled him out of his chair until they were face-to-face, inches apart.

“You get my son back, Gareth Evans, you get him back. Pay the swine what they want. Anything, you hear? You tell them, I pay fifty million dollars for my boy, you tell them.”

He stormed out, leaving the two Britishers pale and shaken and the hideous picture still on the screen.