“On the second day I met with more women. Some had children. They were doing the same as me. We lived in the ruins until we crossed the lines into Kurdish territory. The Peshmerga found us and helped us.”
The director of national intelligence looked back to her assistant, to make sure she had everything written down and the recorder was on. Then Mary Pat said, “And now we will help you. Some Americans will come and talk to you tomorrow. They would like you to tell them exactly what Abu Musa al-Matari looks like, so they can try to draw a picture of him. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” Manal said, but she looked down and began playing with the frayed edge of a rug.
Mary Pat knew this girl was doing everything in her power not to think about this man, and the last thing she wanted to do was purposely try to remember his face.
“I am sorry, Manal. But it is very important. You can save many lives with your help.”
“I will do it,” she said softly.
“Thank you. We can make arrangements for you to come to America if you would like that. Just until the war is over, then you can return to Sinjar Mountain if that is what you wish. We need help from you, but we would like to give you whatever it is you want.”
Manal continued looking down to the rug in front of her. She thought for a moment, and said, “I would like to stay here, with my people. But I will help you catch him. He was a monster.”
“Okay. Is there anything you need here?”
“I am fine, but can I get some extra blankets for the older ladies at the camp? The floors are very hard, and some women complain of cold and pain in their backs at night.”
Foley bit the inside of her lip, then said, “I’ll see to it before I leave Sulaymaniyah.”
Outside the house, Mary Pat Foley walked toward the convoy of waiting SUVs. Stonefaced security officers stood all around with M4 rifles, watching the buildings around them as well as the distant hills. They were 120 miles from ISIS territory to the west, but CIA protective agents didn’t need to be in a war zone to maintain vigilance.
Foley turned to her assistant. “Carla, rugs and blankets. Anything else they can get to make it a bit more livable for as many as possible.”
“I’ll take care of it. CIA will be back here tomorrow to get an artist rendering from the girl and ask her some more questions. I’ll send them with a truckload of creature comforts to give to the UN to pass out.”
Foley said, “No. Get the officers to deliver the items directly to the Yazidis. The UN might sell them in the market.”
After a look from the young assistant, Mary Pat Foley said, “Carla, I’ve been around. Trust me, it’s happened.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The colonel grinned. “The Agency folks are gonna love handing out home accessories to old ladies.” Then, to Mary Pat, he said, “That’s definitely our boy, and it sounds like he’s back in play.”
“Yes, but something doesn’t add up.”
The colonel said, “No kidding. Musa al-Matari already speaks perfect English. If he was planning another attack, what other language would he possibly be studying?”
Mary Pat said, “My guess is the ‘Language School’ is a code name. A code name for what, I don’t have a clue. Get the analysts looking into it. Push them hard. I get the sense Abu Musa al-Matari is at the center of something that is about to happen. It’s somewhere in the West. And it’s sometime soon. And the son of a bitch has got a month head start on us.” She stopped herself at the door to the SUV, turned around, and waved to all the women and kids looking down on her from the rooftops and out the windows. Some hid around corners, tucked themselves into the buildings, but others waved back.
Every last one was transfixed by the power this lady commanded.
8
Mary Pat Foley thought she was hunting for the man who was orchestrating the next great attack on American soil.
But she was wrong. Abu Musa al-Matari was, in fact, the operational leader of an attack in the last stages before execution, and it was the right thing to do to put the entire force of the U.S. intelligence community into the hunt to stop him before the attack began, but the truth was he had done little of the strategic planning.
The U.S. intelligence community knew about Abu Musa al-Matari’s previous attempt to enter the U.S. with terror cells, and they knew he was in the wind again, so it was taken as fact by them that al-Matari would be the architect of any impending plot. He was the senior ISIS operator of the mission, yes; he was the on-scene commander, and he would be the middleman distributing intelligence to the individual cells on their way back to their homes and lives in the United States.
But the actual mastermind, the man who conceived the operation, forwarded his plan to those able to approve it, provided it with money and leadership and weaponry, was one of the last people anyone who knew him would ever suspect of being involved in international terrorism.
Fifty-one-year-old Sami bin Rashid was a Saudi Arabian technocrat. He wasn’t particularly religious; in fact, he drank when he could get away with it and visited the mosque less than most Muslims did.
Indeed, Sami bin Rashid was a damn peculiar choice to orchestrate an ISIS operation to attack the American homeland. For starters, he wasn’t a member of ISIS, and he hated all jihadis with a white-hot passion. He had a plum position in Dubai working for the Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional intergovernmental political and economic organization made up to further the interests of the Arabic states of the Persian Gulf.
He was hardly the type that turns to Islamic terror.
But the act al-Matari was preparing at the moment was one hundred percent out of the brain of Sami bin Rashid, and though it had begun for al-Matari only right after the two men met in an ISIS safe house in Kosovo, the plot came to bin Rashid after he lucked into access to a treasure trove of intelligence several months prior.
Sami bin Rashid had never killed anyone in his life. He had done some time in the Saudi military as a young man, but during the first Gulf War he had been a low-ranking intelligence officer, hundreds of kilometers removed from any battle lines.
After his military duty he remained in the Saudi government but moved into the Ministry of Energy, Industry, and Mineral Resources, working in a secret department that collated intelligence from Saudi intelligence and incorporated it into Saudi energy policy.
And then, after twenty years in quasi-corporate intelligence, bin Rashid left the Saudi government with the blessing of the House of Saud, the monarchy that ruled the nation. They placed him in a consultancy position at the Gulf Cooperation Council, located in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh. Here, he worked as a de facto intelligence chief, toiling behind the scenes developing initiatives to better integrate all the intelligence agencies of the GCC member states — a difficult task, considering that some of these nations had gone to war with one another at various times in the past.
As his purview changed over the years, bin Rashid had become something of a fixer for the GCC. A problem solver. A quiet man in a quiet office staffed with analysts and operatives who made problems disappear and dirty wars flare if they served the interests of his homeland. He became so good at what he did, in fact, that he was moved out of Riyadh and over to Dubai, set up in a private office that was, in fact, a shell for his real work, all to add another layer of deniability to the House of Saud that any of his actions were done in their name.