YoungThing knows the protococlass="underline" BigBeard will have sent a text message to both FootSoldier and TruthTeller, confirming that YoungThing has picked up the carryall. Special events require special rituals, which are repeated many times over — each time an insurgent receives a cache of arms or a wad of cash from the men leading the insurrection.
Exhausted from lugging the carryall, YoungThing takes a long break, unsure that he’s going the right way. According to the driver, it should have been no distance at all to the house. But either he has been going around and around in circles or he was misled by the woman in the body tent. He senses that he won’t be on schedule. He quickens his pace, turns left, then right, and then right again. He happens upon two men conversing and decides they must be the two sympathizers who are supposed to give him further directions. The men do not pay him any mind at first, even though he stands close by. It seems to YoungThing that they cannot decide what to make of him. Then he remembers the agreed-upon code. In the rehearsed voice of an actor reciting his lines, he asks, “Will one of you please tell me which way is north?”
That the two men do not exactly match the descriptions given to him by his instructors does not worry YoungThing. Tired and hungry, he is becoming hazy about the details of his mission. The older of the men is slim and very dark, with intelligent eyes; he is in a sarong. His younger, stockier companion is in Bedouin robes.
The robed man, his teeth stained brown, is the first to speak. He turns to his companion and, with the characteristic flourish with which a highly literate man talks to the unlettered, says, “This young thing wants to know the way north.”
The older man replies, “What makes you think that he wants to know which way is north, when what he wants to know is the direction of the qiblah?”
YoungThing can no longer remember which stranger, or on what street corner, he was supposed to ask for directions, using the code word qiblah. From the tone of the older man’s voice, he suspects that they are leading him on. A longer look at them throws him into a further muddle. The robed man is behaving curiously, as if he wants to reach out and open the carryall. Then, as if to prove his superior knowledge to the older man, he creates further uncertainty in YoungThing’s mind. He says, “Does the young man think that the way north always points the way to the qiblah?”
Now doubts stir in the older man’s eyes, and his gaze, too, focuses on the carryall. He tells YoungThing to go back the way he came until he finds a big house with a green gate bearing the freshly painted inscription Allahu Akbar in red paint.
“How far is the house with the inscription?”
The older man replies, “It is a hundred and fifty paces to the four-way road. Then you turn right, and right again. That’s the way north, toward the qiblah, toward Mecca, the correct way. You can’t miss the green gate or the inscription in blood red. That’s the house you want.”
YoungThing is barely out of earshot when the robed man bursts into derisory laughter, amused at the thought that they have sent the boy to the wrong property, which belongs to a business adversary of the older man’s. The home owner is out of the country and has been renting it to a family from a rival clan with a questionable political history. “Two birds with one stone,” he says.
As YoungThing searches for the house with the green gate and the inscription, he blames the frailty of his memory on the fact that he has eaten no breakfast, and that a young thing like him can’t comprehend the intricate political games adults play. He suspects he is being used. Everything is a muddle. All at once, though, he finds the front gate with the inscription and he forgets his doubts. He walks past it and then takes a left turn. He wants the back gate, as per the directive. Here there is a high fence, which he must scale.
His heartbeat quickening, he sends a one-word text message informing his minder that he is at the back gate, and he receives a reply encouraging him to gain entry right away. He opens the carryall and takes out a light machine gun and a belt strung with bullets. He slings the collapsible gun over his shoulder, girdles the belt around his waist, and throws the carryall over a low part of the fence, then waits a few minutes.
YoungThing wishes himself good luck. As light-footed as a young dik-dik, he runs at the fence and shinnies up and over. He drops down on the other side with a quiet thud and remains in a crouch for a few seconds, his gun poised the way he has seen it done in movies.
An untended garden stretches before him, the shrubs low and scraggly, the trees stunted, and the wall of the house crawling with vines. He moves stealthily forward, as silent as the leopards in stories he has heard. He is certain his instructors at the madrassa would be pleased with him, assured that his training has turned him into a cadet ready to martyr himself in the service of the insurgency. He pauses for a startled fraction of a second when he picks out the sound of movement somewhere nearby. With purposeful speed, he retrieves the carryall and stands firm and unafraid behind the low shrubs — there are benefits to being of small size, after all, he thinks. But now he comes upon a shorter fence, of which no one has spoken. It goes to show, he tells himself, that even Shabaab’s intelligence gatherers are fallible. Still, he doesn’t look back, thinking that is the way of doom. Besides, there is no place for fear in a martyr. He’ll use the gun, shoot and kill, if there is need.
He backs up three paces, breathing in and out quickly until he feels a burning sensation in his lungs. Having omitted mention of the second fence, the men may have missed something of a trickier nature; he must be ready for all eventualities. Unless, of course, the omission was deliberate, meant to test his mettle. His minder has impressed on him the importance of using his weapon only when it is imperative or in self-defense, and of using the silencer if he does have to shoot.
One nervous move follows another. He throws the carryall over the fence. He waits for a few minutes, then runs at it, vaults over, and, landing, gathers himself into a tight ball — he’s learned this from watching videos on a jihadi website. In one video, the instructors encouraged young jihadis to retain the scalps of high-profile targets as trophies. YoungThing is uncertain that he will ever want to hang on to the head of a man he has killed. In fact, there is no chance in hell that he will want to do so, and in any case, he has no place to conceal a dead head; he has no home he can call his own.
Now he happens upon a second discrepancy in the directives given to him: he finds a half-open window, but it appears to lead not into a bathroom, as he was told, but into what looks like a kitchen.
He hides behind a huge tree with a trunk as big as a baobab’s. He is still as a worshipper waiting for the imam to resume his prostrations. Then, committing himself fully to every move he makes, like a jihadi leading the onslaught on the enemy from the front, he gains the back porch in two swift, long strides.
He scans the area for evidence of habitation: the telltale presence of a wicker chair someone has brought out to sit in; a cat curled up in purring slumber; clothes drying on a washing line.
He enters the property by the kitchen window, squeezing himself through. Of course, no instructions can prepare one for every contingency. There are decisions one must make on the job, without help. As far as he can tell, all is quiet inside. He walks about the house a little, feeling triumphant, then comes out to retrieve the carryall and take it back indoors. He makes a phone call to tell his minder that he is in the house and that it is safe.