“Maybe the better question is, why?” Scott said. “A very close friend of a very important person was seriously hurt.” Again he paused. “Very badly hurt in an explosion at an embassy in the Persian Gulf.” Scott thought a moment, as he took another sip. Hell, the Scotch, the fatigue… I may be saying too much.
“People get hurt all the time in this new world. Why should it really matter, to me or you?”
Scott wasn’t surprised by Parker’s bluntness. Parker really had no reason after Korea to trust him. But Parker wasn’t going to do this mission for Scott no matter what he said. William Parker accepted a mission for his own reasons.
This mission would not be an easy sell, but as he looked around the room, he felt certain that Parker would buy it. The great room was perfectly furnished with the finest art, rich leather chairs, and sterling silver lamps with white silk shades. There was even a single freshly cut red rose in a crystal vase. However, there was not one photograph — not a single photo of family and friends, no pictures of children on swings, or aged, kindly parents. For Scott, this confirmed his initial hunch: He had William Parker.
“Have you ever heard of an Iranian operation called Operation Intekam?” Scott took another sip of the Dalmore.
“No.” Not a complete truth. Something about the word struck a chord in Parker. Intekam? He let the word play in his mind as he turned the glass in his hand.
“There is a Saudi named Yousef al-Qadi. He didn’t seem very important. He had plenty of money and got out of Harvard with a MBA back in the mid-eighties. But he kept a low profile. Until recently.”
“Why now?” William Parker watched his guest lean back in the thick leather chair. He could see the fatigue in Scott’s eyes.
“His name keeps coming up. We think he is making his move.”
“Move?”
“Yes.”
“To what?”
“We don’t know, exactly. In a word, jihad. At some time, fanatics like him always make their move. A desire to be remembered, to be revered — who in the hell knows? We do know that he is charismatic, egotistical, absolutely ruthless, and fully capable of anything. He’s the next generation.”
“Sounds right for the part.”
“But this guy’s got ambitions that make others look like pikers.”
Parker shook his head in acknowledgment as he swallowed the Scotch. It had a smoky flavor with a sharp, stinging feel as it went down his throat. Parker was more a bottled-water man than a Scotch drinker. He preferred the high from the physical exhaustion of running ten miles to a drink.
“And he has a particularly hard Muslim from Grozny who’s known to do his dirty work.”
“That probably describes several.”
“Yes.”
Scott moved his glass in front of his body. His eyes wandered to the ceiling.
“Intekam and Yousef are connected. We didn’t discover the Intekam operation until some time after the bombing.” Scott moved his hand to his cheek, stroking it several times, his eyes moving up and to the right. “And we didn’t know of Yousef ’s involvement until much later.”
Parker waited for Scott to continue.
“Intekam was Lockerbie.”
“The CIA didn’t know of Intekam until later?” Parker asked the question with a specific purpose.
“Did we know of Intekam until later?” Scott repeated the question. “No, absolutely not.”
A lie. Parker knew the liar checklist from his days as a prosecutor. There were other signs. Scott’s hands were turned down. Parker looked directly at his eyes. Scott looked away, again up and to the right. His body language was stiff. He repeated the question and got the same response. Scott hit every box on the liar’s checklist. His body language was absolutely clear.
“So what’s the point?”
“Yousef is on the path to be much more in the Muslim world. He is protected by the Pashtun tribes in the mountains of Pakistan. The Sherani clan treat him like a sheik. No.” Scott hesitated. “Even more. He could have a man’s child executed in front of him with a point of the finger.”
“So what’s the threat? He seems another tyrant quietly killing his people on the other side of the earth.”
“He wants to kill more than just those in the Sherani clan he doesn’t like. Some time ago this man, in the shadows in a videotape on the Internet, started talking of a new state of Islam.”
“Where?”
“Good question. On the lands of the Ghaznavid Empire. Ghaznavid stretched from western Iran, across Afghanistan, and into most of Pakistan.”
“Okay…” Parker’s response was more of a question than an acknowledgment.
“Even more important is why. He wants to establish a totalistic Islamic state.”
“The Ghaznavid Empire was over a thousand years ago.”
“Yes.”
“It was known for butchering the babies of its enemies. But he has one sizable problem.”
“I know what you’re going to say.”
“Central Command is in his way.” Parker had to give Yousef credit for dreaming big. Much of the military force of the United States lay in the center of his planned kingdom.
“Don’t think he is a fool,” Scott said. “He is bright and persuasive. And extremely well financed. He makes bin Laden look like a child.”
“Shit.” Parker rubbed his shoulder. “What would it take for him to pull this off?”
“A horrific event that breaks the will of the American people.”
Scott paused.
“Do you want to meet him?”
“Yousef?”
“Yes, the man who put the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103. Would you like to meet the man who murdered your father and mother?”
Parker said nothing. Scott was being obnoxious in his directness. He stared into the fire as the wood popped with the occasional flare-up. The ember bounced against the screen and flew back into the fire. Listening to Scott, he had to wonder whether he was the ember or the fire.
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
Scott slept well past sunrise, which was unusual for him. He was nearing his fortieth birthday but felt closer to fifty as he rubbed his face with both hands while sitting on the edge of the bed. He had not slept for more than five hours at a time in the last decade. As he dressed, he slipped on his Rolex, looking at his watch. It was well past 9:00 A.M.
The bedroom was connected to a small library that was just off the great room where the night before he and Parker had drinks by the fireplace. Scott heard the rattling sound of someone in the kitchen on the other end of the lodge. The previous night he thought he had heard the same noise of someone in the kitchen, out of sight. The smell of fresh, brewing coffee was mixed with the smoky residue of the fireplace.
Scott paused as he stepped from the bedroom into the library. It was more of a small office than a library, with a table desk, a leather chair where the arms were well worn, down to the yellow leather under the stain, and across from the desk another smaller table with a chessboard. The marbled men on the board were paused mid-game. He recognized the opening move. The knight had been moved before the bishop.
On the center of the desk was a small blue-and-yellow Chinese ceramic bowl with a gold-leaf trim around its edge. It was full of medals. Scott picked up one of the medals, each having long, brightly colored ribbons. This one was pewter and engraved with Boston Athletic Association and the Boston Marathon. Next to the bowl, on the center of the desk, was a gold pocket watch linked to a thin chain. Scott, without thinking, picked it up. The chain had a fob on the end. A Phi Beta Kappa key etched on the back with “Columbia University, Class of 1959.”
Obviously not Parker’s. Perhaps his father’s, Scott thought. He knew that both of Parker’s parents had been killed by the terrorist bomb that took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland. William Parker knew what terrorism was well before September 11.