Direct Action (9 page)

“Shahram,” Tom interrupted. “Ben Said—please.”
“He is more than a bomb maker, Tom. He is an assassin. Others use a knife or a gun. He uses plastic explosive. He has killed hundreds— hundreds. He is a chameleon. His tactics are fluid; he changes his appearance regularly. He has had plastic surgery half a dozen times. He uses”—the Iranian paused as he searched for the right word—“des prosthétiques—devices to change his appearance.”
“And now?”
“And now he has allied himself with al-Qa’ida.” The Iranian set his water glass down. “For money, of course. Tens of millions of Euros. I have been reliably told that the bomber Ben Said was recently seen in the company of this man.” The Iranian produced a second photograph and slid it across the table. “Yahia Hamzi. Based in Paris. He imports Moroccan wine—a company with the unlikely name Boissons Maghreb, with a small warehouse near the rue du Congo near the Pantin industrial zone. Hamzi himself is secular, not religious at all. But he is very active in civic affairs out beyond the nineteenth.”
Tom examined the photo, which had obviously been duplicated from a passport because a portion of an official seal was visible in the bottom right-hand corner. The clean-shaven man had sharp Arabic features and curly hair—what might almost be described as an Afro. He wore the sort of thick-framed eyeglasses favored by old-fashioned Parisians.
“Hamzi.” Tom looked up from the photo. “The nineteenth, you say?”
“Affirmative.”
It made sense. The nineteenth arrondissement was out near Aubervilliers and Pantin, where there were huge apartment blocks of suburban slums known as banlieues, as bad as the worst Chicago, Washington, D.C., or Los Angeles had to offer—filled with North African immigrants. And gangs. Drugs were rampant, killings commonplace. The north end of the nineteenth was a hotbed of Islamist activity. “What’s the Iranian angle?”
“Hamzi uses the importing business to launder money for a Salafiya splinter group known as the CIM, for Combatants Islamiques Marocains.”
Tom took a sip of his wine. “Don’t know of them.”
“No one knows of them. The reason is because CIM does not exist. It is a cover name, created by Seppah to throw hunters like you and me off the scent. Just the way Seppah created the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon during the 1980s to fool Western intelligence. CIA treated the IJO as an Iranian-sponsored organization. It wasn’t. IJO wasn’t Iraniansponsored; it was a creation entirely molded by Tehran. By the Seppah.”
The Seppah again. Tom frowned. Shahristani wasn’t making sense. “CIM is a Seppah creation?”
“That is my guess. And therefore Hamzi is a Seppah agent. I believe he is also what you might call Ben Said’s banker.”
“Might call?”
In response, Shahristani shrugged. Tom decided to take another tack. “You just said Ben Said is al-Qa’ida’s man.”
“By his own choice. He also takes contracts from Tehran.” Shahristani made a face. “You should have dealt with them years ago.”
“You have no argument from me about that.”
The Iranian nodded. “It appears to me,” he said, “that much of the original structure of al-Qa’ida is fractured. Degraded. Dispersed.”
Tom had no idea where Shahram was going. But he played along. “Agreed.”
“So what do they do? They adapt. They improvise. They metamorphose. They transmogrify.”
“You mean they change identity?”
“No, Thomas. I mean that like a pilot fish on a shark, al-Qa’ida attaches itself to an existing organization, uses it for a while, and then moves on. I believe Ben Said, whose real name could be anything, is also a pilot fish. Now he has attached himself to both al-Qa’ida and the Seppah.” “Do the French know about Ben Said?”
“No. They keep an eye on Hamzi from time to time—they think he may be engaged in smuggling. But the name Ben Said is unknown to all of Western intelligence.”
Tom’s right index finger pulled at the skin below his right eye, indicating that he was dubious.
Shahristani continued unfazed. “Ask the Israelis. They know there is a bomber out there with a unique talent. They just have no idea who he is.”
“How unique?”
“You know how hard it is to build a miniature explosive device.”
“Of course.” It was true. For all the current hysteria about bombs, Tom knew it was incredibly difficult to make a sophisticated explosive device that was simultaneously powerful and small. Sure, you could use dynamite, C4, RDX, or nitro in a car bomb. But none of those could be miniaturized. You could make a shoe bomb out of Semtex. But there wasn’t a lot of Semtex around these days. Vaclav Havel, God bless him, had quickly destroyed most of the Soviet-era Czechoslovak stocks after he’d become president of the Czech Republic. Besides, what Semtex there was could be detected by the latest generation of explosives-detection sniffers. To be able to create a truly undetectable, miniature IED—that was something. Tom was intrigued. “Has this Ben Said done it?”
The Iranian dismissed Tom’s question with a flick of his hand. “No one knows who he is. No one fit the pieces together.” Shahristani lit a fresh Dunhill and gave Tom a Cheshire cat smirk. “Except me.”
Tom was going to have to wait for his answer. He focused on Shahristani. “Go on.”
The Iranian exhaled smoke through his nose. “Ben Said’s legend began in August of 1978. He was not even twenty, as best I can tell. But it was his bomb design that assassinated the Englishman Lord Louis Mountbatten by blowing up his fishing boat at Mullaghmore in County Sligo. He taught the Lebanese how to perfect car bombs, making them twice as lethal. He has worked with the Chechens. And with Islamists. The sneakers worn by Richard Reid, the British Islamist shoe bomber who frequented the Finsbury Park mosque in London, were of Ben Said’s design.”
“But Reid’s shoe bomb didn’t work.”
“That was because of time constraints. Al-Qa’ida insisted on using prototypes. The fusing hadn’t been perfected. If they’d waited six more weeks, Reid wouldn’t have needed matches or a lighter. He would have yanked on one of his shoelaces and the plane would have been brought down.” The Iranian knocked the ash off his cigarette. “For the Chechens, he is rumored to have designed explosives so small Black Widows can wear them onto aircraft.”
“How does he get them past security?”
“I am told he has reformulated Semtex into something twice as powerful and absolutely undetectable. It is time-consuming, dangerous, and he can make only small batches. But with this new formula, he can make bombs the size and shape of tampons. The fuse is self-contained. The bomber goes to the rearmost lavatory, removes the weapon from her privates, sets the fuse, and flushes the IED down the toilet. It’s impossible to retrieve and at cruising altitude the explosion is capable of blowing the tail off the aircraft.”
“Incredible.”
“In 2001, a Wahabist imam in Saudi Arabia paid Ben Said a million dollars to reconfigure the exploding vests used by Palestinian suicide bombers, making them smaller and lighter—and thus less identifiable and more deadly. The French have been on his case since 1995, when Ben Said was hired by GIA—Groupe Islamique Armé. He provided GIA with three bombs, which Algerian Islamists set off in the Paris metro. DST has a thick file. The British, too. And Israel. But no one has ever been able to pinpoint him.”
“So whoever he is, he is a shadow.”
Shahristani nodded in agreement. “A ghost, a wraith.” He indicated the photograph lying on the tablecloth. “It’s altogether possible you are looking at the only surveillance picture of Ben Said that exists.”
Tom squinted at the picture. Ben Said was the taller of the two men. He didn’t look like your typical Hollywood assassin. No muscular build, chiseled profile, or catlike bearing. What Tom saw was a slightly pudgy, cleanshaven man of about forty or so with a square face and a full head of longish dark hair combed straight back. His double-breasted sport coat was open and flapping as he walked, revealing dark trousers held up by a wide belt with an oversize oval buckle. “Who took this? Is it from a credible source?”
“Thomas, please.” Shahristani gave him a sly smile. “Sources and methods, dear boy.” He paused, then stared into Tom’s eyes. “I took the picture, Thomas. And verified who was in it.”
“How?”
“I discovered Ben Said’s safe house.”
“When did you do this, Shahram?”
“Just over two months ago. In August.”
Tom turned his attention back to the photograph. Two steps behind Ben Said was a shorter, older man, also clean-shaven, with a round face, a prominent, Roman-like nose, and gray hair.
“Who’s the number two?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Shahram—”
The Iranian’s expression was grim. “It is Imad Mugniyah, Thomas. Imad Mugniyah. After Usama Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist. The man with a twenty-five-million-dollar bounty on his head.”

¹⁰
In doing so, Mossad also managed to recruit dozens of Iranians, many of whom even now still report to Mossad case officers on a regular basis.
¹¹
Shahristani’s memory is on the mark. On January 22, 1979, a Mossad officer using the alias Erica Mary Chambers remotely detonated one hundred kilos of plastique explosives packed into a Volkswagen parked on rue Madame Curie, a heavily traveled street that runs on an east–west axis slightly southeast of the Ras through the heart of West Beirut, just as Ali Hassan Salameh’s tan station wagon and its Land Rover chase vehicle passed by on its way from Salameh’s apartment on rue Verdun. Salameh and his eight bodyguards were all killed instantly.

“ WHAT?” TOM WAS INCREDULOUS. “Impossible.” There were only two surveillance photographs of Imad Mugniyah in existence. Tom had copies of both, and this guy was not the man in those pictures. Tom had pinned one of the Mugniyah pictures to the wall of his cubicle at CTC so he could stare at it every single day he went to work. He tapped the photo. “This isn’t Imad Mugniyah.”

“It is. He, too, has had plastic surgery.”
That was news. “When?”
“Most recently, two years ago.”
“We heard nothing about it—not a whisper.”
“Why would you?” Shahristani said dismissively. “You have no agents in

the Seppah. You have penetrated no one into Hezbollah—in fact, your CIA officers are still forbidden to operate in West Beirut. Forbidden—it is insanity. And you have no agents inside the Palestinian terror networks, either.”

“That’s because I work for a private company.”
“You know what I’m saying.” The Iranian’s dark eyes flashed at Tom. “I am telling you the truth. Imad Mugniyah himself killed your three Americans. There were three kilos of Ben Said’s precious new plastique— virtually his entire supply from what I can tell—planted on the motorcade route and detonated using a cell phone. The explosives were sent by Tariq Ben Said on an Air France flight from Paris.”

“Impossible.”
“Not impossible. I told you: Ben Said has been working for years to fabricate a form of plastique that gives off no scent. He’s obviously done it, because the explosive was shipped right under the Israelis’ noses, using a European mule. The plastique was concealed in a suitcase on the September tenth Air France flight to Tel Aviv. That same day, Imad Mugniyah took a train to Rome. The next day he flew Alitalia to Cairo, and he slipped through the Rafah tunnels on the twelfth.” The Iranian saw Tom’s incredulous expression and made a dismissive gesture. “Ben Said himself arrived in Israel the last week of September—just before the Jewish holidays.”
“From where?”
“Paris.”
“Israel is a hard target, Shahram. Why would Ben Said risk exposing himself?”
“The stakes were very high, Thomas. There was a lot of money involved. Ben Said’s presence was Imad Mugniyah’s way of proving to Arafat that Iran and al-Qa’ida are willing to put aside religious differences in order to wage jihad against Israel and the West.”
“Why do they need Arafat?”
“Because Arafat has something both Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said lack: he has an organization that enjoys diplomatic status and is favorably received in the European capitals.” Shahristani made a sour face. “The Europeans are fools. No—worse. They are petit bourgeois who want to keep their thirty-hour work weeks, their full pensions, their government subsidies, and their full bellies, and if paying off terrorists helps them, then so be it.” He rapped his knuckles on the tablecloth. “Europe’s comfortable lifestyle makes it blind to the truth.”
“The truth?”
“That Arafat has never stopped employing terror.” Shahristani sipped Evian. “PLO emissaries travel with immunity. How do you think Arafat ships the millions he’s skimmed from the Palestinian aid packages? He used the PA’s diplomatic pouch. Now Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said need those same diplomatic pouches to move their supplies around Europe—even into America.”
“And the Gaza hits?”
Shahristani frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“Motive?”
“I’m not sure,” Shahristani said, far too quickly. “Imad Mugniyah’s presence in Gaza was close-hold. He had his own security—his Hezbollah guards from Lebanon, and two men from Seppah.”
Shahram had changed the subject. It was classic tradecraft, indicating reticence, or deception. Tom decided to press the issue. “Motive, Shahram...”
Shahristani lit another cigarette, took a long drag, and let his silence do the talking.
Tom tried another tack. “So, we knew nothing?”
“Nothing. You were blind.” Shahristani shook his head. “And so were the Israelis—until it was far too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“Twice in the last three months, the Israelis uncovered Ben Said’s untraceable explosives. But they didn’t realize the implications.”
“What? How?”
“This past August, there was an explosion in a second-story room at the Nablus Road Hotel in East Jerusalem. When the authorities arrived they found a tourist—a German citizen of Arabic descent named Heinrich Azouz—who’d blown both arms and a good part of his face off. Obviously, Azouz had been building a bomb and he’d set off the explosives by accident. Shin Bet checked Azouz’s records. He’d traveled from Frankfurt the previous day on Lufthansa. Shin Bet assumed—incorrectly—that he’d been supplied with explosives domestically. When the Shin Bet lab did its forensics on the residue, they identified it as Semtex—assumed it was from the Fatah stocks. Ben Said’s formula prints just like Semtex. It employs virtually identical tagants. So that’s what they saw: Semtex. Just like the stuff the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades uses. They never did any follow-up analysis. Never sent the explosives to their security people. Never reverse-engineered the explosives and put samples through any of their detection devices.” “But?”
The Iranian paid no attention to Tom’s interruption. “Last month, a French citizen named Malik Suleiman, whose papers identified him as the London correspondent for a Paris-based Arab literary magazine, suicidebombed a Tel Aviv nightclub. When the Israelis checked, they discovered that the magazine Suleiman worked for existed only on paper. There was a phone number, and a letter-drop address. But no offices—and more to the point, no magazines. Suleiman was traveling with a British woman named Dianne Lamb. Lamb was in the nightclub’s lavatory when Suleiman blew himself up. Shin Bet learned they were involved romantically and believed he’d had second thoughts about killing her. Since both of them had just visited the West Bank—Ramallah, to be exact—the Israelis assumed Suleiman received the explosives there, because once again the residue printed as Semtex. Shin Bet was wrong. Suleiman, too, was using Ben Said’s materials. In fact, the woman had unknowingly carried them all the way from Heathrow concealed in a portable radio—something the Israelis finally realized only after they’d fully interrogated Lamb.” Shahram’s eyes flashed behind his glasses. “These were disposables, Thomas. Azouz, Suleiman, Lamb—all of them.”
Instinctively, Tom understood. Ben Said had been probing his adversaries’ weaknesses. The KGB had done the same thing during the Cold War. They’d send a disposable and see how far he got. Then they’d make adjustments and send another. Then a third and fourth, if necessary. The Sovs were never worried about losing people. Christ, they’d lost tens of millions during wars and purges. What were the lives of a few dozen agents? And now, it seemed, al-Qa’ida had adopted the tactic, too. Just like the Soviets, al-Qa’ida didn’t worry about losing agents.
Now Tom saw the Gaza bombing in a new light: it wasn’t an operation in and of itself. It was a penetration exercise: Ben Said had been testing the limits. Seeing how far he could go before being discovered. Watching what the Israelis did—how they reacted. If bells and whistles had gone off, he’d have known they’d discovered his new plastique formula.
But there had been neither bell nor whistle. In fact, Tom had called 4627’s Tel Aviv office the minute he’d heard the radio bulletin about the Gaza bombing. Reuven Ayalon, the retired Mossad combatant who ran the one-man 4627 base out of his house in Herzlyia, had trolled his sources. Thirteen hours later, he’d telephoned Tom to report that despite Palestinian attempts to pollute the Gaza crime scene, Shin Bet had managed to obtain a trace amount of residue from the explosive that had blown up the embassy Suburban. The sample had printed as Semtex.
But there had to be more. If the two incidents had indeed been penetration exercises, what was Ben Said trying to penetrate? Israeli security? Possibly. But al-Qa’ida might just as easily have larger targets in mind. Western Europe. The United States.
“You know why?” Shahram asked.
“Why what?”
“Why Ben Said was in Israel.”
“Of course I do. He was testing to see how far he could go before his weapons were discovered.”
“You are wrong.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You are thinking too logically, Thomas.” Shahram slipped into French. “Ben Said was using Israel as a testing ground to perfect weapons that would be used this winter against the West. Against America. Against Britain. Against France.”
“Impossible.” Tom was incredulous.
“Not impossible. Just as Hitler once tested his war-making capabilities in Spain, so was”—Shahristani looked around then continued in a whisper—“Ben Said using Israel as a laboratory for clandestine weapons of mass destruction that will be targeted at the West.”
“Why in heaven’s name would he do that?”
“Because he could, Tom. Because what makes headlines in Paris or London gets hardly a mention if it carries a Tel Aviv dateline.”
“That’s awfully far-fetched, Shahram.”
“Perhaps.” The Iranian went back to Arabic. “But there you have it.” He sipped water. “More to the point, you have Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said in the same photograph. That is something, Tom. That is something.”
Well, Shahram was right about that. If, that is. If the information was good—if it was twenty-four-karat stuff. Even the prospect set Tom’s pulse throbbing. Quickly, he took a gulp of wine to mask his excitement. “Shahram, how long have you had this information confirmed?”
“Six days.”
Jeezus, that was an eternity. “Why didn’t you call me immediately?” “Because,” Shahristani said, “I wanted to verify things to my own satisfaction before I wasted anyone’s time.”
“And did you?”
The Iranian’s face was oblique. “I am satisfied with what I know.”
Tom had one final base to cover. “Did you contact our embassy?”
The Iranian nodded.
“When?”
“A short while after I’d confirmed my information.”
He was being evasive. He was trying to deflect. Tom wondered why. “I need specifics, Shahram.”
Shahristani paused. He scanned the mirror behind Tom. “I phoned.”
“When?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“Reaction?”
Shahristani fell silent as a salad was placed in front of him. He glanced at Tom to make sure the American had concealed the photographs, which he already had.
When the waiter withdrew, Tom repeated the question. In response, Shahristani merely shrugged. Tom pressed him. “You gave no specifics?”
“You know how careful I am on the telephone, Thomas.”
Shahram was both prudent and circumspect on the telephone. Tom tapped his shirt pocket where he’d slipped the photos. “Who has seen these photos, Shahram?”
“Not so many people.” Shahristani read the expression on Tom’s face. “You and I, Tom, and the people who first passed the information on to me.”
“And whomever you talked to at the embassy.”
Shahristani shrugged. “I never got past your former employer’s gatekeeper.”
“Who was?”
The Iranian shrugged the question off. “Still, I can see why Langley would be... reticent. Langley completely bungled all the preinvasion intelligence on Iraq. Ever since, it has badly misjudged the situation on the ground there. Then there’s the global war on terror. CIA’s operational resources are stretched thinner than a crêpe. Don’t you think Tehran and al-Qa’ida understand that if there’s a major terror campaign this winter, there’s a good chance Langley will implode under the operational stress?”
Tom Stafford’s expression never changed. But Shahram was practicing tradecraft again. Shifting the subject. He was evading, deflecting, sidestepping. It was a common technique when agents didn’t want to fabricate outright, but were reluctant to continue about a specific matter. Shahram was a canny individual. He’d shifted subjects by telling the truth: CIA had long suffered operational stress fractures. In its present state, Langley was incapable of fighting the multifronted war it was being asked—no, ordered—to fight.
The Iranian leaned forward. “The doves have taken over CIA’s analytic side. They’re all globalists these days—Europhiles. The last thing anyone at CIA wants to know is that Tehran—which Langley’s National Intelligence Estimates have long maintained wants a dialogue with the West—is about to ally itself with an assassin working for al-Qa’ida.”
Shahristani took his fork, stabbed at the salad, and waved the forkful of greens in Tom’s direction. “But that’s what’s happened. Gaza was a joint Seppah–al-Qa’ida job. Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said are working together, and CIA covers its eyes and plugs its ears. Full stop, Thomas. End of story.”
Tom wasn’t about to let Shahram off the hook. “The embassy, Shahram. What happened when you called the embassy?”
“Imad Mugniyah and Tariq Ben Said in the same photograph, Tom.” The Iranian filled his mouth, chewed, swallowed, then laid the fork tinesdown on the rim of his plate. “I see your face. You know I’m right.”