Porter Goss lives in southwest Florida, now retired from many years of activity in America’s intelligence community. He was the last Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and the first Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under the changes enacted by Congress in intelligence reform legislation after 9/11. Prior to that, he served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, including several years as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. His earlier days as a clandestine services officer in the CIA triggered a keen interest in our national security and an unshakable awareness of how critical good intelligence is for our national well-being.
PART I
Allah Is Our Objective, the Quran Is Our Law, the Prophet is Our Leader, Jihad Is Our Way, and Dying for the Sake of Allah Is Our Highest Hope.
—Credo of the Muslim Brotherhood
Fight and Slay the Unbelievers Wherever Ye Find Them.
—Quran, Sura 9:5
1. Paris: Neuilly-sur Seine
In the darkness, on the city’s outskirts, Farid stood on the ladder leaning against the wall separating the Saudi ambassador’s and the American’s back gardens. Wearing designer glasses and dark silk slacks, he seemed more like an aging poster-boy for the business-casual look than the typical second-storey man. In fact, Farid bin Abdullah was one of the thousands who depended on the patronage of the five-thousand royals of Saudi Arabia. A distant cousin had obtained this choice Paris assignment for him. The American’s powerful security lights provided an excellent view of his garden and of the double stairway that led from the gravel walkway to each side of the patio on the first floor. On the patio, a French window was slightly ajar, as he had been told it was on warm nights. He lifted one leg up and, for a moment, stayed prone on the wall. He was conscious that he was about to leave the diplomatic immunity of the Saudi ambassador’s residence to enter the infidel’s space. He felt as though he was crossing the border between the land of Peace, the Dar al Islam, and the land of War, the Dar al Gharb. More accustomed to diplomatic cocktails than to surreptitious entries, he had never been a risk-taker. But he was confident in his ability to recognize a low-risk, high-reward mission; just as he was confident that the warmth of the night was the cause of his perspiration.
Before letting himself down, he pulled the aluminum ladder up. His sweating hands and the unexpected weight caused the ladder to hit the wall. The noise resounded into the quiet night of the residential suburb and was answered by a filthy dog yelping several houses away. He froze for a second, looking at the back of both residences, but he noticed no movement. Straining, he brought the ladder down on the American side of the wall. He descended the ladder and kept to the narrow grass and dirt strip at the foot of the wall to avoid the noisy gravel as he approached the stairs.
Farid knew that the house was empty. The American’s cook, Benjamin, obviously a Jew, had told the Saudi maid that Dr. Coogan was going away for a couple of days and that he, Benjamin, was going to stay with a friend during that time. That was when Farid decided this would be the perfect time to carry out Tariq al Khalil’s order. He corrected himself, al Khalil, a Salafist, didn’t give orders to an officer of the Kingdom’s Al Mahabharata Al A’ amah (General Intelligence Directorate). However, both the international Salafists and the Saudi Wahhabists, who basically agreed on the need for a pure Islam based on the earliest writings, were outraged at Dr. Coogan’s public statement that newly surfaced Quranic documents were causing the academic community to question the uniqueness of the Quran, a blasphemous concept. The word of God was incomparable and unchanging. There was only one Quran, unlike the gospels, which allowed the Christians to choose one they liked best. His mission tonight was to find the Quranic forgeries that Coogan certainly kept in his house.
When he reached the French windows, he took off his Gucci belt and folded it into a loop, which he then introduced through the slightly open doors and above the handle. He placed the loop around one side of the horizontal handle and pulled up, disengaging the iron rods secured into the bottom and top of the door frame. He pushed and both windows opened.
His flashlight scanned the room—a large dining room table was the centerpiece. China and crystal-ware glass-front cabinets lined one wall and paintings the other. Documents could be hidden almost anywhere. Luckily, there was no one home, and he felt unhurried. He moved to the next room, an office. The walls were covered with photographs of a person he assumed was Coogan with European and Middle Eastern personalities. He first emptied desk drawers filled with business cards, files on investments and newspaper and magazine articles on the Middle East. His heart skipped a beat when he saw one file neatly named “Quran Project.” He opened it but there was only one letter from the German Knights of St. John (Hospitaller) informing Dr. Coogan that documents pertaining to the Quran had been donated to a research institute in Berlin. Nothing new about that. The original information had come from Germany. He guessed al Khalil had a source in the institute but had been unable to find the documents, the forgeries, in Germany. He dropped the file onto the floor.
He was moving toward a
