“But then there are casualties in every battle. The goal is to avoid the larger war.”
“We got your message, that’s why I’m here,” “I thought you might find it of some interest—”
“You got our attention, all right,” McGarvey cut him off. “There’s a contingent in my government who are chomping at the bit to send the marines in here to wipe you off the face of the earth. There wouldn’t be a whole hell of a lot of people who’d so much as blink if it happened.”
“I didn’t ask for this war,” bin Laden replied angrily. The guards flanking the cave entrance clutched their rifles. “My people did not create the situation. We would have been content to live the way we have always lived. But you wanted your precious oil and you didn’t care who you destroyed to get it. Nor did you hesitate to invent nuclear weapons and use them. Your government, McGarvey, not mine.”
“Are you trying to tell me that blowing up our embassies and killing or hurting thousands of innocent men and women is the solution?”
“Your government thought so in 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
“Give me a break,” McGarvey said. “That was at the end of a very long war that we did not start. And as far as oil goes your own people are the ones who are profiting the most. Your own father made his billions because of it.”
Bin Laden’s hands went to his rifle. “Maybe I’ll kill you here and now, and send the bomb anyway.”
“Maybe you will,” McGarvey said. “Maybe that’s your plan, lure us out into the open one at a time and shoot us and our families down. Then send the bomb to blow up another one of our embassies, or maybe you’re crazy enough to try to get it to Washington and blow up the White House. Then what? Do you think that we’ll suddenly fold up our tents and go away? Are you that naive? Have you lived up here in the mountains for so long that you don’t know who or what you’re dealing with?”
“A great many people would die.”
“Yes, they would,” McGarvey said. “And not just Americans. We would strike back. The loss of lives on both sides would be terrible and unnecessary. It could even spell the end of Islam; certainly the end of your fanatical movements. Which is the real reason that you called me out here, and why I came.” McGarvey spread his hands. “The ball is in your court, pal. Either shoot me or let’s go inside and talk this out. Maybe we can figure out how to save everybody’s daughters.”
A play of emotions crossed bin Laden’s face, most of them impossible for McGarvey to read because of the vast cultural and religious differences between them. Bin Laden professed that everything he did was in the name of Allah. McGarvey on the other hand was an agnostic. He’d been so close to death so often that he could not believe in some afterlife in which half the people went to Paradise and the other half went to hell. If there was a God, he had decided early on, it rather than He had to be a force simply of creation. What was left was a dependency on civilization; on the good will of men, on the rule of law. Men were gregarious by nature. They formed villages, and communities, and finally states and nations, all predicated on the beliefs that being together was better than being alone; that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. And that the strong protected the weak. When religion spoke to the issues of the afterlife that was one thing, in McGarvey’s estimation. But when in the name of Jesus during the Crusades, and Allah nowadays in the struggle between Islam, Judaism and Christianity, innocent people were killed, that was another, reprehensible thing. The first gave comfort, the latter tore down civilizations.
Bin Laden looked up at the sky to the northeast where the sun was just touching the tops of the not so distant mountains. “It is time for prayers,” he said. There was anger, some fear, perhaps even some pain and something else in his eyes. Something that went even beyond the simple knee-jerk hate of the ordinary terrorist. Bin Laden was anything but a simple man.
“And talk,” McGarvey said.
Bin Laden nodded. “Yes.” He stepped aside, allowing McGarvey to go ahead of him into the cave. McGarvey had the fleeting feeling that he was stepping into the maw of a monster from which escape was utterly impossible.
A narrow, dark passage ran about fifty feet back into the hillside where it opened to a chamber at least forty feet in diameter. From this place and others like it scattered throughout the mountains of Afghanistan, bin Laden managed his war against the west with a very effective hand. But it was just a cave, after all, and the people living in it nothing but animals. The main chamber was dimly lit with hissing gas lanterns. Shadows played on the tall ceiling that sloped toward the back where another narrow opening led even farther back into the hill. Wall hangings were affixed to the rocks, the floor was covered with thick Persian rugs and along one curving wall dozens of cushions were laid out in a semicircle around a large cast-iron brazier on which live coals glowed. The chamber was warm, which was a welcome relief from the chill air outside, but not smoky because air funneled from the back of the cave and out the passageway.
From farther inside McGarvey thought that he could hear the muted hum of men in conversation, and perhaps computer printers; an dover the charcoal smell perhaps the distinctive odors of a great deal of electronic equipment. He could not hear a generator running, but it would be outside somewhere, under camouflage netting.
A tripod held a video camera pointed at the arrangement of cushions where the light was a little better. A cable snaked from the camera along the wall where it disappeared down the dark passage.
On the opposite side, prayer rugs had been laid on top of the carpets, beside which was a wooden stand that held a large ceramic bowl filled with water. Several small towels were neatly folded and lying on the floor.
Bin Laden motioned to the bowl. “Cleanse yourself,” he said. He laid his rifle next to one of the cushions and waited patiently.
The water was warm and scented and felt good, although a hot shower and a couple of beers would have been better. This was Arab hospitality. Bin Laden was watching him with an odd, almost ascetic smile. A Muslim warrior would slit your throat if you were his enemy, but if you were his guest he would treat you kindly. It was a matter of Islamic honor.
A pair of men brought fresh water and switched bowls. When they were gone, four armed mujahedeen came in and quietly hunkered down in the shadows, their rifles between their knees. One of them was playing with the safety catch.
Bin Laden indicated a spot for McGarvey to sit, and he graciously poured tea. “It is time for my prayers.” He gave McGarvey a baleful look. “Don’t make any sudden moves, your actions might be misunderstood.”
“The odds are in your favor.”
“They usually are.”
Bin Laden made a point of searing McGarvey within reach of the rifle he’d laid on the cushions. I’m the boss and I’m confident, his actions said.
McGarvey sipped the strong tea as bin Laden went through the Islamic ritual washing, then kneeled on a prayer rug facing southwest, and began his prayers, softly repeating the Sura Fatihah, which was the opening chapter of the Qoran, eight times.
Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, The Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgment! You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help. Guide us to the straight path, The path of those whom You have favored, Not of those who have incurred Your wrath, Nor of those who have gone astray.
To succeed in chaining the multitudes, you must seem to wear the same fetters. The line from Voltaire ran through McGarvey’s head. Bin Laden was a common man here at this moment, but he was a major figure among Islamic fundamentalists, and had been ever since the ten-year war against the Russians. He was a Saudi rich kid, but he’d come to Afghanistan to help the freedom fighters, putting his money and his life on the line for them, and everybody loved him. He had been bright, soft-spoken, gentle — except to the Russian invaders — even pious and helpful. But all that had changed by the time the war was over and he came back home. He had become a rabble rouser. He wanted to pull the Saudi royal family from power, install an Islamic fundamentalist government and go back to the old ways. The best ways. He wanted to get rid of all foreigners from the entire Gulf region, especially Americans, and he wasn’t afraid to tell anyone who would listen that he thought Americans should be killed whenever and wherever possible, and with any means at hand.
Watching him praying, the words gentle, McGarvey tried to fathom what had happened here to change the man so profoundly. War changed people, but not like that. Something drastic had happened to him here; something so terrible that he had changed from the son of a multi billionaire construction boss who would inherit everything to a terrorist content to live in caves and eat unleavened bread so that he could kill Americans.
The U.S. had supplied money and arms to the Afghanis, and presumably bin Laden had come in contact with
