Crocker told Holly he’d call back, then reminded Anders that he was staying in the Sheraton, which was only a few hundred yards from the consulate.
“It’s almost impossible to enter the diplomatic enclave if you’re not in an official vehicle,” Anders explained. “Security here is very tight.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Dammit, Crocker.”
“See you in ten.”
Nine minutes later, a perplexed Tom Crocker was ushered into a video conference room and shown to a large leather chair in front of a crescent-shaped table that faced a wall displaying a series of TV monitors. At the opposite end of the walnut crescent sat Lou Donaldson talking to Jim Anders, who was beside him. Another gray suit stood behind them, leaning on the back of Anders’s chair.
A big woman with a pile of brown hair occupied the middle seat and spooned yogurt into her mouth when she wasn’t speaking into a cell phone. Next to her was a quiet, almost invisible Asian man in a shirt and tie, sparse black mustache, and black-framed glasses.
Donaldson frowned at Crocker and growled to the assembled, “All right, he’s here. Let’s get started.”
Anders picked up a phone from the console in front of him, and soon the lights dimmed and the monitors lit up. Serious-looking men and women appeared on five of the ten screens. They introduced themselves as the director and deputy director of the Al-Qaeda Working Group from CIA headquarters; the deputy director of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), also at Langley; the CIA station chiefs in Kabul and Oman.
They were all business.
Crocker learned right away that the officials at Langley were taking the Syrena more seriously than he’d thought. The station chief in Oman reported that the Omanis were prepared to board and search the vessel as soon as it docked at Salalah.
Donaldson seemed pleased.
The woman to Crocker’s right asked about the latest intel on Zaman. She pointed out that Crocker was the last American to see him in person.
The two representatives of the Al-Qaeda Working Group did most of the talking. They cited reports that tracked Zaman’s recent movements into north Waziristan, then into Khost, in eastern Afghanistan, where he was believed to have attended a meeting of local tribal leaders.
“There’s no question that he’s the operational leader now,” a bearded male analyst said from Langley. “We hear through our assets that he’s planning something big. You know, to make a statement that al-Qaeda is back.”
“He needs to,” the woman next to Crocker said. “Lately, Lashkar-e-Taiba has stolen their thunder.” She was referring to the Pakistani terrorist organization that had carried out the bloody attack on Mumbai, India, in November 2008, which resulted in the death of 175 people, including dozens of Westerners. Crocker had passed through Mumbai only a week before the attacks and had eaten dinner at the Leopold Café, where the terrorists later sprayed the crowd with automatic-weapon fire, killing ten tourists.
The CTC woman on the monitor drew Crocker’s attention back to the conference with her shrill, loud voice. “If we got that intel regarding Zaman and his current location from the ISI, I wouldn’t give it a whole lot of credence,” she said through the speaker.
He agreed. He knew that a large portion of the Pakistan intelligence outfit known as the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) secretly supported the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and had for years. The Pakistani government steadfastly refused to acknowledge the ISI’s duplicity. And many U.S. officials didn’t want to believe it.
But the Pakistanis were playing a double game-officially expressing their opposition to al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organizations, but secretly colluding with them through the ISI. The reasons for this were complex, and reflected the treacherous nature of Pakistani politics and the country’s obsession with India.
But that’s not what they were there to discuss. The CIA analysts turned their attention to an official al-Qaeda proclamation that had come out of Peshawar the week before.
A man with a salt-and-pepper beard who was identified as the head of CIA’s Al-Qaeda Working Group explained that the statement was mainly a reiteration of al-Qaeda’s longtime goals: one, to involve the United States and its proxies in a war of attrition in the Middle East; two, to drive the Jews out of Jerusalem and Palestine and return these areas to the Palestinians; and three, to overthrow the Saudi monarchy and establish a caliphate to rule the Arabian Peninsula. What stood out, he said, was a paragraph at the end that vowed “to soon unite the trinity of objectives in one important event.”
None of the CIA analysts seemed to know what that meant.
The Asian man with the mustache read from a chart of NSA statistics and algorithms that measured the frequency with which “attacks against the West” had been mentioned on jihadist websites and monitored phone calls. They had spiked in recent weeks. “The confluence of Muslim holidays and the recently stepped-up Israeli-Palestinian peace talks could explain what we’re seeing,” he cautioned.
The head of CTC disagreed. He felt that some sort of attack was imminent. So did the woman to Crocker’s right.
As they debated, the SEAL team leader looked down at his watch. The meeting had already lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. From his perspective, it hadn’t accomplished anything. Mikael Klausen and his men were waiting. He had nothing more to add to the discussion.
In his mind’s eye he saw the girls’ pale, bruised faces. The faraway looks in their eyes.
The anger he felt brought clarity and purpose.
He rose and walked quickly to the elevator, ignoring the footsteps that hurried after him.
“We’re not finished, Crocker,” Anders called, out of breath.
“I am.”
“Where the hell are you going?”
“There are things I need to accomplish.”
“What things? What are you referring to?”
He stepped into the elevator and watched the doors close and shut out Anders’s troubled face.
Outside the consulate, Crocker moved purposefully.
Action, not talk.
Passing the waiting limo, he walked briskly through the iron gate, through ranks of heavily armed soldiers guarding the perimeter of concrete barriers stacked high with sandbags, and continued down Abdullah Haroon Road.
Although the sultry air caused his shirt to stick to his skin and sweat to run down his pant legs, he felt better. Almost exhilarated.
Crocker was at his best when in motion. When the fear or danger grew so intense that he acted without thinking. When he did what he knew he had to do.
Chapter Fifteen
The only easy day was yesterday.
– U.S. Navy SEAL motto
He rode in the Sheraton Karachi elevator with a youngish couple from Vancouver who’d just been shopping on Tariq Road. Both tall and full of pride, wearing designer jeans, carrying multiple shopping bags. She had blond windswept hair, a tight little mouth, a dimpled chin. Assuming that the SEAL team leader was an American, the young couple started complaining about the room service at the hotel.
He half listened, still wrestling with his emotional response to the meeting. But the outrage behind their words drew his attention.
“It’s a crime, with what we’re paying,” the man said, thrusting out his square chin. “My wife ordered eggs Benedict for breakfast and they brought us something that looked like it had been scooped out of the sewer.”
“Completely disgusting. It smelled bad, too.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She tossed her head back and swiveled her narrow hips as she stepped off. “We’re never coming back!”
Why? Because of the eggs? What about the fact that Pakistan is harboring terrorists who want to destroy our way of life?
He wanted to put her over his knee and spank her; tell both of them to wake up. But what good would that do?