The Kill List

Chapter 12

The Preacher sat in his study inside his compound in Marka and thought about his enemy. He was no fool, and he knew he had one out there somewhere. The phony sermon on his website that had effectively destroyed his reputation proved it.

For ten years, he had deliberately made himself the most elusive of the al-Qaeda terrorists. He had moved from safe house to safe house in the mountains of North and South Waziristan. He had changed name and appearance. He had forbidden any camera to come near him.

Unlike a dozen, at least, now all dead, he had never used a mobile phone, for, unlike some of them, he knew the full scope of the American ability to pluck the tiniest whisper out of cyberspace, track the source to a single hut and blow both building and occupants to dust.

With one single exception, which he now bitterly regretted, he had never e-mailed anyone from the house in which he resided. He had always had his sermons of hate transmitted miles away from his residence.

Yet someone had penetrated. The actor on the phony sermon was too like him. The man who looked like him and spoke like him had announced to the world his real name and the pseudonym he had used as an executioner in the Khorosan.

He did not know how or why or who had betrayed him, but he had to accept that his pursuer could well have penetrated the real identity protocol of his computer in Kismayo. He did not understand how it could have been done, for the Troll had assured him it was impossible. But the Troll was dead.

He knew about drones. He had read volumes printed in the Western press about them and what they could do. He could presume that, even then, there were details that had never been divulged, even to the technical publications. He had to presume he had been traced and that, far above his head, invisible, inaudible, a circling machine was watching his town and even his compound.

All this had led him to the conviction that he would have to sever all contacts with his present life and disappear again. Then Jamma arrived from Kismayo with a message from his friend Mustafa in London that changed everything. It concerned fifty million dollars. He summoned his former secretary, now the Troll’s replacement.

“Jamma, my brother, you are tired. It is a long journey. Rest, sleep, eat well. You will not be going back to Kismayo. It is abandoned. But there is another journey for you. Tomorrow, perhaps the next day.”

Gray Fox was puzzled. His voice on the secure line from TOSA headquarters to the Tracker’s operations room in the U.S. embassy in Grosvenor Square revealed it.

“Tracker, are you up to speed on the traffic between the helper in London and his pal in Marka?”

“Absolutely. Why?”

“The stuff he has been passing to the Preacher. He picked that up from a half-assed lawyer at a Belgravia dinner party.”

The Tracker thought over his reply. There is a subtle difference between lying and being what a former British cabinet secretary once described as “economical with the truth.”

“That’s what Dardari seems to be saying.”

“What do the Brits think?”

“They think,” said the Tracker quite truthfully, “that the bastard is sitting in his London town house, passing scuttlebutt to his friend in the south. By the by, are my requests still getting a no-no from upstairs?”

He wanted to get the subject away from the issue of Mustafa Dardari, messaging out of London, when he was staring at the rain in Caithness with three former commandos for company.

“Absolutely, Tracker. No missiles because of Agent Opal and no beach assaults. And no heli-borne attacks from our compound in Mogadishu. One shoulder-fired rocket into a hovering helicopter full of Delta boys and we have another Somali catastrophe. You’ll have to find another way.”

“Yes, boss,” said the Tracker as he put the phone down.

The Preacher was right about the uselessness of his Kismayo computer for secret transmissions, but he did not realize that his ally in London, his boyhood friend and secret supporter, had also been unmasked, and his encrypted messages, shielded inside the vegetable price code, had also been broken. So he broke security again and sent Dardari a request from Marka. It was intercepted and deciphered.

Colonel Jackson?”

“Yes, Ariel.”

“There’s some very weird stuff going between Marka and London.”

“You should know, Ariel. You’re sending it in Dardari’s name.”

“Yeah, but Marka has just replied. He is asking his friend to lend him a million dollars.”

He should have foreseen it. Certainly the budget could stand it. That sum was just a fraction of a single missile. But why waste tax dollars?

“Does he say how he wants it to be sent?”

“Something called Dahabshiil.”

Tracker nodded, alone in his London office. He knew about it. Cunning and safe and almost untraceable. Based on the centuries-old figure of the hundi man.

Terrorism costs money, a lot of money. Behind the bomb-planting dupes, often no more than children, are the controllers, usually mature men who have no intention of dying. Somewhere behind them are the ring chieftans, and behind them are the financiers, often leading lives of apparent respectability.

For antiterrorist agencies, the money sources for terrorism have proved a fertile field for tracing the paper trail from operating account back to its source. For money movement leaves a paper trail. But the hundi man does not. In the Middle East, the system goes back many centuries.

It started because back then moving wealth through a landscape teeming with bandits was too dangerous without a small army. So the hundi man takes the money in country A and authorizes his cousin to disburse the same amount, minus commission, to the beneficiary in country B. No money moved across borders, just coded phone call or e-mail.

Dahabshiil was founded in Burco, Somalia, in 1970, presently headquartered in Dubai. In Somali, it just means “gold smelter,” and mainly remits money earned by the hundreds of thousands of Somalis working abroad back to their families in the homeland. Many of the Somali diaspora are in Britain, accounting for a flourishing office in London.

“Could you break into Dardari’s banking system?” asked the Tracker.

“I don’t see why not, Colonel. Can you give me a day?”

Ariel went back to his glowing screen and into seventh heaven. He delved into the Pakistani tycoon’s investments and his means of purchasing them, which led him to the offshore accounts, of which the principal was in Grand Cayman. It was protected by complex and sophisticated firewalls. The teenager with Asperger’s syndrome in an attic in Virginia went through them in ten hours, transferred a million dollars to Dardari’s personal London account and departed without leaving a trace, except confirmation that Dardari himself had done it legitimately.

The transfer from a London bank to the London office of Dahabshiil was a formality, along with details of the beneficiary, as listed by the Preacher in the e-mail that Ariel had intercepted and decoded. The Somali money brokerage warned that such a sum in U.S. dollars inside Somalia would take up to three days to assemble. And, yes, they had a branch in Marka.

Fort Meade and Cheltenham intercepted and logged the communications to and from the London computer but had no information other than the presumption it was Dardari sending and receiving. And their brief was to eavesdrop but not interfere.

Jamma, I have a task for you of great delicacy. It can only be done by a Somali because it involves people who speak no other language.”

With all its sophistication, Western technology can rarely intercept the personal emissary. For ten years, Osama bin Laden, not living in a cave at all but in a series of safe houses, communicated with supporters worldwide without once using a cell phone or being eavesdropped upon. He used personal messengers. It was the last of these, al-Kuwaiti, who was unmasked, tracked across the world and who finally led the followers to a compound in the town of Abbottabad.

The Preacher stood Jamma in front of him and recited the message in Arabic. Jamma translated it in his head into Somali and kept repeating it until he was word-perfect. He took one Pakistani bodyguard with him and departed.

He took the same pickup that had brought him from Kismayo two days earlier with the London message. From high above, foreign eyes watched the rear, filled with plastic jerrycans of extra fuel.

They were watching in the bunker outside Tampa as a tarpaulin was drawn over the fuel cans, but that was a normal precaution. Two men were seen to climb into the cab, but neither was the shrouded figure of the Preacher nor the slim young man in a red baseball cap. The pickup left and turned toward Kismayo and the south. When it passed out of view, the Global Hawk was instructed to resume its surveillance of the compound. Then the pickup stopped; the men in it removed the tarpaulin and painted the cab roof black. Thus disguised, it turned back, circled Marka to the west and headed north. At sundown, it skirted the Mogadishu enclave and pressed on toward Puntland and its numerous dens of pirates.

On pitted, rutted tracks, often driving over sharp-stoned deserts, with refuels and changes of tires, the journey to Garacad took two days.

Mr. Gareth, it is I.”

Ali Abdi was on the phone from Garacad. He seemed excited. Gareth Evans was both tired and strained. The relentless grind of trying to negotiate with people devoid of the simplest concept of haste or even the passage of time was always exhausting for a European. That was why the top hostage negotiators were few in number and highly paid.

Evans was also under constant pressure from Harry Andersson, who phoned daily, and sometimes more than that, seeking news of his son. Evans had tried to explain that even a hint of haste, let alone desperation, from the London end would make matters ten times worse than they already were. The Swedish billionaire was a businessman, and that half of him accepted the logic. But he was also a father, so the phone calls never stopped.

“Good morning to you, my friend,” said Evans calmly. “What does your principal have to say this fine sunny day?”

“I think we are moving toward closure, Mr. Gareth. We would settle now for seven million dollars.” Then he added, “I am doing my best.”

It was a remark that, even if he were being overheard by an English-speaking Somali in the service of al-Afrit, would not be offensive. Evans realized it meant the negotiator in Garacad was trying to earn his second million-dollar bribe. But north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, the word “hurry” has two different meanings.

“That’s very good, Mr. Abdi, but only so far,” said Evans. The previous minimum offer acceptable to al-Afrit two days earlier had been ten million dollars. Evans had offered three. He knew Harry Andersson would have clinched at ten within a heartbeat. He also knew that would have triggered a forest of red flags in Somalia, where they knew that four to five million dollars would be about right.

A sudden collapse by the Europeans would have indicated panic and probably sent the price back up to fifteen.

“Look, Mr. Abdi, I have spent most of the night on the phone to Stockholm, and my principals have agreed with extreme reluctance to release four million dollars into your principal’s international account within the hour if the Malmö weighs anchor one hour later. It’s a very good offer, Mr. Abdi. I think we both know that and your principal must surely see that.”

“I will put the new offer to him immediately, Mr. Gareth.”

When the line went dead, Gareth Evans mulled over the history of successful deals with Somali pirates. The uninitiated were always amazed that money would be paid into an account before the ship was released. What was to stop the pirates taking the money and not releasing their captives?

But here was the oddity. Of one hundred and eighty agreements written and exchanged by fax or e-mail between negotiators, all duly signed at each end, in only three cases had the Somalis broken their word.

Basically, throughout Puntland, the pirates realized they were into piracy for the money. They had no need or want of ships, cargoes or prisoners. To have broken deal after deal would have ruined their industry. Shifty and ruthless they might be, but self-interest was self-interest and it was supreme.

Normally. This was not normal. Of the three cases, two had been by al-Afrit. He was notorious, as was his clan. He was Sacad, a subclan of the Habar Gidir tribe. Mohamed Farrah Aideed, the brutal warlord whose thieving of aid supplies for the starving had brought the Americans into Somalia in 1993, and who had shot down the Black Hawk and slaughtered the U.S. Rangers, dragging their bodies through the streets, was also Sacad.

Speaking secretly on sat phones, Ali Abdi and Gareth Evans had agreed they would settle for five million dollars only if the old monster in the mud fort would agree and not suspect his own negotiator had been bought. Five million was, in any case, a perfectly acceptable figure for both sides. Harry Andersson’s extra two-million-dollar bribe to Abdi was only to divide the delay by a figure of ten, if that were possible.

Out on the Malmö, under the scorching sun, things were becoming smelly. The European food was gone, either eaten or turned rotten when the freezers were turned off to save fuel. The Somali guards brought live goats onboard and slaughtered them out on the decks.

Captain Eklund would have had his decks hosed down, but the electric pumps were fuel based, like the air-conditioning, so he had the crew dip buckets into the sea and use brooms.

There was a mercy, in that the sea all around was teeming with fish, brought close by the goat offal thrown over the side. Both Europeans and Filipinos appreciated fresh fish, but it was becoming monotonous.

Washing facilities had been rigged with salt water when the showers went off, and fresh water was liquid gold, for drinking only, and even then made disgusting with purification tablets. Capt. Eklund was glad there had been no serious illness so far, just occasional diarrhea.

But he was not sure how long conditions would last. The Somalis often did not even bother to hoist their rears over the taffrail when they needed to defecate. The Filipinos, glaring with anger, had to broom it all through the scuppers in the pounding, enervating heat.

Captain Eklund could not even talk to Stockholm anymore. His satellite telephone had been disconnected on the orders of the one he called the little bastard in the suit. Ali Abdi did not want any interferences by amateurs in his delicate negotiations with the office of Chauncey Reynolds.

The Swedish skipper was thinking such thoughts when his Ukrainian deputy called out that a launch was coming. With binoculars, Capt. Eklund could make out the dhow and the neat little figure in the stern in a safari suit. He welcomed the visit. He would be able to ask yet again how fared the merchant marine cadet called Carlsson. In all that landscape, he was the only one who knew who the lad really was.

What he did not know was that the teenager had been beaten. Abdi would only tell him Ove Carlsson was well and detained within the fortress only as an earnest of the good behavior of the crew still onboard. Capt. Eklund had pleaded in vain for his return.

While Mr. Abdi was on the Malmö, a dusty pickup drove into the courtyard of the fortress behind the village. It contained one large and hulking Pakistani, who spoke neither English nor Somali, and one other.

The Pakistani stayed with the truck. The other was shown into the presence of al-Afrit, who recognized the man as from the Harti Darod clan, meaning “Kismayo.” The Sacad warlord did not like the Harti, or indeed anyone from the south.

Though technically a Muslim, al-Afrit virtually never went to the mosque and rarely said any prayers. In his mind, the southerners were all al-Shabaab and insane. They tortured for Allah, he for pleasure.

The visitor introduced himself as Jamma and made the obeisances appropriate for a sheikh. He said he came as a personal emissary of a sheikh of Marka, with a proposal for the ears of the warlord of Garacad only.

Al-Afrit had never heard of any Jihadist preacher called Abu Azzam. He had a computer, which only the younger among his people really understood, but even if he had been thoroughly literate in its function, he would never have dreamed of watching the Jihadist website. But he listened with rising interest.

Jamma stood in front of him and recited the message he had memorized. It began with the usual lavish salutations and then moved to the burden of the message. When he lapsed into silence, the old Sacad stared at him for several minutes.

“He wants to kill him? Cut his throat? On camera? And then show the world?”

“Yes, Sheikh.”

“And pay me a million dollars? Cash?”

“Yes, Sheikh.”

Al-Afrit thought it over. Killing the white infidel, this he understood. But to show the Western world what he had done, this was madness. They, the infidel, the kuffar, would come take revenge, and they had many guns. He, al-Afrit, took their ships and their money, but he was not mad enough to trigger a blood feud between himself and the whole kuffar world.

Finally, he made his decision — which was to delay a decision. He instructed that his guests be taken to rooms, where they could rest, and be offered food and water. When Jamma was gone, he ordered that neither man retain the ignition key to his vehicle, nor any weapon he might have on him nor any kind of phone. He personally wore a curved jambiya dagger in a sash at his waist, but he did not like any other weapon to be near him.

Ali Abdi returned from the Malmö an hour later, but because he had been away, he did not see the truck arrive from the south, or the two visitors, one the bearer of a bizarre proposition.

He knew the times of his preagreed telephone talks with Gareth Evans, but because London was three time zones west of the Horn of Africa, they took place in midmorning in Garacad. So the next day he had no reason to leave his room early.

He was not present when al-Afrit lengthily briefed one of his most trusted clansmen, a one-eyed savage called Duale, just after dawn, nor did he see the pickup truck with the black roof drive out of the courtyard gate one hour later.

He had vaguely heard of a Jihadist fanatic who preached messages of death and hate over the worldwide web, but he had not heard of the man’s utter discrediting, or his online protestations, that he had been foully defamed in a kuffar plot. But like al-Afrit, albeit for different reasons, he despised Salafists and Jihadists, and all other extremist maniacs, and observed Islam as little as he could get away with.

He was surprised and pleased to find his principal in a reasonably agreeable mood when he appeared for their morning conference. So much so that he suggested they could lower their demand from seven million to six million dollars and probably secure closure. And the clan chief agreed.

When he spoke to Gareth Evans, he exuded self-satisfaction. He was so tempted to say, “We are almost there,” but realized that phrase could only mean that the pair of them were colluding on an agreed price. Privately, he thought: One more week, perhaps only five days, and the monster will let the Malmö sail.

With his second million dollars, added to his life savings, he felt a comfortable retirement in a civilized environment beckoning.

The Tracker was beginning to worry. In angling terms, he had dropped a heavily baited hook into the water and he was waiting for a monster to bite. But the floater was immobile on the surface. It did not even bob.

From his office in the embassy, he had a second-by-second patch through to the bunker outside Tampa, where a senior NCO from the Air Force sat silently, control column in hand, flying a Global Hawk high over a compound in Marka. He could see what the master sergeant could see — a silent collection of three houses inside a wall on a narrow cluttered street with a fruit market at one end of it.

But the compound showed no signs of life. No one came, no one left. The Hawk could not only watch, it could listen. It would hear the tiniest electronic whisper out of that compound; it would pluck a few syllables out of cyberspace, whether they were uttered, on computer or cell phone. The National Security Agency at Fort Meade, with its satellites in space, would do the same.

But all that technology was being defeated. He had not seen the pickup truck driven by Jamma change its configuration with a black cab roof, then double back and head north instead of south. He did not know it was on its way back. He could not know that his bait had been taken and a deal struck between a sadistic Sacad in Garacad and a desperate Pakistani in Marka. In Donald Rumsfeld’s unusual terminology, he was facing “an unknown unknown.”

He could only suspect, and he suspected he was losing, outwitted by barbarians cleverer than he. The secure phone rang.

It was Master Sergeant Orde from Tampa. “Colonel, sir, there’s a technical approaching the target.” Tracker resumed his study of the screen. The compound occupied the center of it, about a quarter of the space. There was a pickup at the gate. The cab had a black roof. He did not recognize it.

A figure in a white dishdash came out of the house at the side of the square, crossed the sandy space and opened the gate. The pickup drove in. The gate closed. Three tiny figures emerged from the truck and entered the main house. The Preacher had visitors.

The Preacher received the trio in his office. The bodyguard was dismissed. Opal introduced the emissary from the north. The Sacad Duale glared with his one good eye. He, too, had memorized his brief. With a gesture, the Preacher indicated that he could begin. The terms of al-Afrit were terse and clear.

He was prepared to trade his Swedish captive for one million dollars cash. His servant Duale should see and count the money and alert his master that he had actually seen it.

For the rest, al-Afrit would not enter al-Shabaab land. There would be an exchange at the border. Duale knew the place of the exchange and would guide the vehicles bearing the money and guards to it. The delegation from the north would make the rendezvous and bring the prisoner.

“And where is this meeting place?” asked the Preacher. Duale simply stared and shook his head.

The Preacher had seen tribesmen like this in the Pakistani border territories, among the Pathan. He could pull out all the man’s nails, both fingers and toes, but he would die before he spoke. He nodded and smiled.

He knew there was no real border between north and south on any map. But maps were for the kuffars. The tribesmen had their maps in their heads. They knew exactly where, a generation earlier, clan had fought clan for the ownership of a camel and men had died. The spot marked the place where the vendetta had begun. They knew if a man from the wrong clan crossed the line, he would die. They needed no white man’s map.

He also knew he could be ambushed for the money. But to what end? The clan chief from Garacad would get his money anyway, and what use to him was the Swedish boy? Only he, the Preacher, knew the true, staggering value of the merchant marine cadet from Stockholm, because his good friend in London had told him. And that immense sum would restore all his fortunes, even among the supposedly pious al-Shabaad. North or south, money not only talked, it shouted.

There was a tap on the door.

There was a new vehicle at the compound site, a small sedan this time. At 50,000 feet, the Hawk wheeled and turned, watching and listening. The same white-clad figure crossed the sand and conferred with the car’s driver. In Tampa and London, Americans watched.

The car did not enter the yard. A large attaché case was handed over and signed for. The figure in white headed for the main building.

“Follow the car,” said the Tracker. The outlines of the compound slid out of screen as the camera suite high in the stratosphere followed the car. It did not go far; under a mile. Then it stopped outside a small office block.

“Close up. Let me have a look at that building.”

The office block came closer and closer. The sun in Marka was overhead, so there were no shadows. These would come, long and black, as the sun set over the western desert. Pale green and dark green; a logo, and a word beginning with D in roman script: “Dahabshiil.” The money had arrived and been delivered. The overhead scrutiny returned to the Preacher’s compound.

Block after block of hundred-dollar bills were removed from the case and placed on the long polished table. The Preacher might be many miles from his origins in Rawalpindi, but he liked his furnishings traditional.

Duale had already announced he had to count the ransom. Jamma continued to interpret from Arabic to Swahili, Duale’s only language. Opal, who had brought the attaché case, stayed in case he was needed, the junior of two private secretaries. Seeing Duale fumbling with the bundles, Opal asked him in Somali: “Can I help you?”

“Ethiopian dog,” snarled the Sacad, “I will finish the task.”

It took him two hours. Then he grunted.

“I have to make a call,” he said. Jamma translated. The Preacher nodded. Duale produced a cell phone from his robes and tried to make a call. Inside the thick-walled building, he could get no tone. He was escorted outside to the open yard.

“There’s a guy in the yard on a cell phone,” said M.Sgt. Orde in Tampa.

“Grab it, I need to know,” snapped the Tracker.

The call trilled in a mud-brick fort in Garacad and was answered. The conversation was extremely brief. Four words from Marka and a reply of two. Then the connection was severed.

“Well?” asked the Tracker.

“It was in Somali.”

“Ask NSA.”

Nearly a thousand miles north in Maryland, an American Somali lifted the headphones off his ears.

“One man said, ‘The dollars have arrived.’ The other replied, ‘Tomorrow night,’” he said.

Tampa called the Tracker in London.

“We got the two messages, all right,” the communications intercept people told him. “But they were using a local cell phone network called Hormud. We know where the first speaker was — in Marka. We don’t know who replied or from where.”

Don’t worry, thought the Tracker. I do.