“Yes.” She knew what it all meant. And she didn’t want him to go. But his insomnia, his restlessness, and his recurring nightmares provided a compelling counterargument. Clearly, William was not cut out for the quiet life, which must have felt like premature retirement to him. If taking on some other military or intelligence mission meant he’d be happier, then it would be hard to convince him to decline it. In truth, Clark had been expecting such a telephone call for some time.
“Can you trust Scott?”
“Probably not.”
“Oh.” She looked away, wondering if she should have ignored the call. She had been the only feasible way of contacting William Parker. His cabin lay far off the beaten path and had no phone, computer, or fax. To call Scott back, in fact, William would have to use her cell phone.
“What exactly did he say to you?”
“Just that he needed to talk to you as soon as possible. It concerned your past.”
William stopped running and turned to face her in the path. “My past?”
She nodded.
“Exactly how did he say it involved my past?”
Clark took a breath, then said what William must have expected — or feared:
“He said it was about Lockerbie.”
CHAPTER 6
The two pickup trucks bounced wildly over the potholed road, leaving a cloud of dust as they crossed the plateau. Both were packed with turbaned, bearded men carrying AK-47 rifles. Occasionally, the lead truck would veer off what little was left of the paved road and cross the open desert, thus avoiding sandstorm drifts, some as high as the cab of a truck, that blocked the main route.
Finally, they entered through a mountain pass into a small, enclosed valley. The valley was surrounded by a range of jagged, chocolate-brown mountains with steep walls that cut down to its floor. On the far end of the valley, a village of mud and stone huts tucked up against the mountain ridge. As they got closer to the outskirts of the village, they came to a patchwork of small apple orchards.
The valley lay so deep among the steep mountain walls that any eyes in the sky could only view the village when directly overhead. The American drones were limited in number. They had to cover much of both Afghanistan and the western border; consequently, they flew farther to the north. Satellites were a bigger concern. The people on the ground now knew the flight path and timing of such space-borne surveillance craft. When one of the birds was set to fly over, everything below would become quiet. The farmers would tend their apple orchards. The children would play and smoke would come from the fire pits. The truck-mounted weapons were pulled under the thatched roof huts. They knew the game.
The lead truck turned off the main road, cutting through a small orchard, the driver haphazardly avoiding the branches of the trees at breakneck speed. His passengers swung with the truck as it cut first to the left and then to the right, ultimately sliding to a stop in front of a small, stacked-stone house tucked up against a wall of rock at the far western edge of the valley.
A short, pudgy man, dressed in a white-collared shirt and Western-style brown slacks, stepped out from the passenger seat of the truck. Despite his young age, Masood Akram, barely in his thirties, had a round face and large belly that pushed his white shirt out over his belt. The people of this tribe all looked hungry, had sunken eyes, and showed ribs when they removed their woolen shirts. One look told them that Akram was from the West.
There he is.
The reason Masood had withstood nearly thirty-six hours in cramped economy seats.
“Yousef!”
A man turned, hearing his name, and stopped playing with his two children for a second. Then one of the toddlers climbed on the father’s back, giggling loudly, as the father yelled out a false protest and then collapsed as if overcome by a stronger force.
This is the man who will change the history of Islam. Masood waited patiently for Yousef to turn his attention to him.
The guards in the truck jumped out and formed a semicircle, facing out toward the orchard as Yousef al-Qadi stood to greet his younger visitor.
“As sala’amu alaikum,” Masood said to Yousef.
Yousef al-Qadi was much more than just the senior member of the pair. The rail-thin, bearded man with a bony face and mournful eyes was even much more than a leader of the jihad. Yousef had set forth a goal that eclipsed even the greatest aspirations of al-Qaeda. It was this goal that had brought the younger visitor halfway around the world to meet Yousef al-Qadi.
“Walaikum as sala’am,” responded Yousef, who turned to his two children, kissed them on their foreheads, and instructed them to go inside to their mother.
“Your children are growing up quickly.”
Yousef al-Qadi smiled at the compliment. “You have come a long way. I have some tea and sweet biscuits for you.”
He pointed to an opening in a stone gate to the side of the mud-walled house that led to a small garden, where a trellis, covered with a twisted, thick grapevine, provided some shade and protection. A stacked-stone wall surrounded the garden, and the smell of juniper followed a faint breeze up from the far side of the valley. They sat across from each other on two stone benches as a woman brought a silver tray with small, blue Dresden china cups of tea and a plate of honey-soaked biscuits. The tray and china seemed strangely out of place in these bare surroundings.
“Tell me, how is your charity work?” Yousef spoke softly through the gray-streaked beard.
“Fine, very fine.”
Masood had first heard of Yousef al-Qadi as a young college student in RU-MSA, the Rutgers University Muslim Student Association. The other students spoke of the mythical man who’d graduated from Harvard Business School as bright, serious, and often intense. He also had become the man who would create a new state of Islam out of the wilderness of western Pakistan, Afghanistan, and some of Iran — the old kingdom.
As always, Yousef wore the dress of a Pashtun, the common brown, rough weave of a farmer. Masood knew that Yousef ’s dress belied his lineage. Yousef was a sayyid, the son of a descendant ten generations removed from the Prophet’s daughter, and the son of the Muslim Brotherhood. But he had also been the only son of his father’s third wife, the daughter of a gardener, who as a child of fifteen was married to the owner of the garden. She was a frail child and had died giving birth to her son.
Being the grandson of a gardener, Yousef received little respect from the other wives and children. Growing up that way, Yousef ’s self-respect had come to depend upon the respect of others. Masood understood this, for he’d had a similar childhood.
Yousef ’s father would often beat the child with bamboo, as it was the father’s role to be the strict, often brutal disciplinarian. In many families, the mother would be there to console the child. Masood’s own father had disciplined him with a stick, but Masood could always turn to his kind mother for relief. For Yousef, however, there had been no consolation.
But the father did give Yousef al-Qadi something Masood did not receive. Oil. Whether the father had guilt or not, he gave his third wife’s son the El Haba oil field that would pump crude for generations. Although Saudi Aramco operated the field, 27 percent of its revenue would go to Yousef and Yousef ’s children and grandchildren for more than a hundred years.
Yousef ’s large brown eyes stared intently, his arms crossed in judgment, making Masood feel suddenly unprepared. Masood had witnessed his mentor’s rage more than once. Once, when Masood had failed to follow his master’s specific instructions and held a stock position too long, Yousef told him that they would discuss it when he next made the trip to Afghanistan. Nothing else was said. But when he arrived, Yousef ’s voice soon had Masood literally trembling in fear. But Yousef had every right to such anger. Like Muhammad, Yousef had rejected the rewards of this world. His half brothers and sisters flew their Gulfstreams from Riyadh to Gstaad. But the master believed the Koran spoke of a different way of living. It required a humble life. And it required that infidels be sought out and a great slaughter be made. The respect Yousef lacked as a child would be gained as a man. And Masood would follow this man on his jihad.