Counterplay

God, she’d shouted with the others when word reached their camp in the Chechen mountains, and then more softly later in the arms of Ajmaani. She wished that she had been there, listening to the screaming of the jet engines and the passengers just before they struck the building. To be in the cockpit, shouting Allah akbar!..God is great!” and see the frightened faces of the people in the offices and on the planes when they realized they were about to die.

Shortly after the glorious event, she’d returned for a visit to Afghanistan. She allowed her mentor to have his way with her body so that she could learn more about future plans and beg to be allowed to take on a mission of similar importance. She had actually wept-one of the few times since childhood-with frustration that others were getting the glory that should have been hers. But he’d only told her to be patient and that her time would come.

Azzam left Afghanistan before the Americans attacked in retaliation for the World Trade Center. She was disappointed that the mujahideen and the Taliban had hardly put up a fight. But she had not wept when she learned that her mentor had been vaporized by a cruise missile that had zeroed in on his cave in Tora Bora and caught him standing at the mouth enjoying the fresh air. There are casualties in every war. She shrugged and went back to planning attacks against the Russians with Ajmaani.

They had begun with bombings at Russian bus stations and marketplaces. The Russians, as they had for years only now more viciously, retaliated with their own brutality against the Chechen population, leveling whole towns, raping women, and murdering the men. When the Chechen nationalist complained to the Western press that the acts had been committed by Islamic hard-liners and outsiders, the Russians pointed out that they, too, were fighting the War on Terrorism against Islamic extremists, and the West turned their backs on the abuses.

Azzam was overjoyed when Ajmaani suggested they ramp up the violence by seizing the Nord-Ost musical theater in Moscow. She’d hoped to die with the others, but had been ordered to escape before the Russian troops stormed the building. It was Ajmaani who led her to a tunnel, once used to carry coal beneath the streets to the furnaces that heated the buildings, and out behind the surrounding Russian forces.

As successful as it was, the attack on the theater had paled in comparison to their greatest achievement, the seizing of the school in Beslan, Russia, on September 1, 2004. The attacking force was comprised of the more radical element of the secular nationalist movement-those for whom negotiation was too slow, or driven to more extreme tactics by Russian brutality-as well as Islamic hard-liners and Arabs intent on the establishment of an Islamic state. More than three hundred Russians had died in the school-two-thirds of them children-and she would have gladly died with them. But once again, her lover Ajmaani was there to lead her to safety during the confusion when the building was stormed. Once outside, they’d blended into the crowd of Russian parents who waited word of their loved ones.

The attack had been a public relations success for al Qaeda. The Western press, which had begun to turn a sympathetic ear to the nationalists and even reported on Russian atrocities, swung 180 degrees. In their eyes, Muslim nationalists were no different from Islamic extremists-murderers all.

With the climate too hot in Chechnya-the nationalists and the Russians were hunting for her-Azzam and Ajmaani had fled to the wild country on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan where al Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban were regrouping. There Azzam fretted as al Qaeda grew bolder in Europe, and still she wasn’t called upon to give her life. She grew more outspoken and critical of the planning. The attacks on the Madrid rail system had been too little, she said. The work of amateurs.

Then she heard about the plan to blow up Times Square on New Year’s Eve, a blow that would have been even more glorious than that which had destroyed the World Trade Center. But the mission had been placed in the hands of that idiot, al-Sistani, who somehow managed to botch a perfect plan.

Tired of listening to a woman criticize their plans, she had at last been given a mission that would get her out of their hair. She didn’t care about their reasons; all she knew was that this attack would make all the others, even the World Trade Center, pale by comparison.

Odd, she thought as she entered the room of the house in Aspen, considering how much I hate him. But she owed her good mood to the plan of the man sitting at a table near a window with his back to her. He was looking out of a large window across the valley at the ski slope on the other side. Aroused at her approach, he reached out toward her. “Ah, the lovely Samira Azzam.” He gestured at the seat across from him. “Please, sit down and let us resume our game.”

Games, she thought scornfully. He plays too many games and allows himself to be distracted by revenge. I use vengeance to help me focus on the task I am assigned. He uses his for petty personal vendettas.

Andrew Kane turned his gaze from the window and the tiny figures sliding down the slope and faced her. “Silly sport, skiing,” he said, his voice partially muffled by the wrappings of gauze that covered his face. “It’s cold and you could fall and break something. And for what?”

Azzam smiled and looked into Kane’s newly designed brownish appearing eyes peering at her from under the bandages. “It does seem to be a waste of time.”

She did wonder about these Americans. She’d expected them to panic and collapse after the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. When they didn’t, and instead seemed to find some inner reservoir of strength, she’d felt trepidation, a moment’s wavering in her resolve. Perhaps, they can’t be brought to their knees, as her al Qaeda masters preached. But the anger had returned and she’d determined that it would simply take more and better blows.

They are a stupid people. Surely they knew there were killers in their midst, plotting against their cities, hoping to take down their economy. Yet, here in Aspen, they wandered around in their fur coats, lived in mansions that would have housed a dozen Palestinian families from her old neighborhood, and acted as if the struggles going on in other parts of the world were annoying inconveniences, not matters of life and death. Aspen was the epitome of everything she hated about the United States-superior, wealthy, comfortable, and safe. At least for the moment, she thought with satisfaction.

The owner of the home where Kane was staying was one of the myriad members of the Saudi royal family, a distant cousin of the king, living off the oil proceeds that belonged by rights to the Saudi people. He was a flabby, lazy man who secretly supported al Qaeda with cash donations and by playing host to the occasional operative who needed a safe place to stay. She supposed he was hedging his bets for the day when the royal family was brought down and Saudi Arabia turned into a theocracy, like Iran.

Azzam snorted. Fools like her host and his piggish little wife and their fat, Westernized daughters and corpulent sons would be purged from the Islamic state. In the meantime, they served a purpose greater than themselves.

“I believe it is your move,” Kane said.

Azzam studied the board. She hated games, but he’d insisted that she learn to play chess. He said it sharpened the mind and was “good training for staying a step ahead of your opponent” and had started a daily “tournament.” So far she had yet to win a game and was growing tired of the loser’s penalty.

She studied the board carefully. To open, Kane had moved his king’s pawn ahead two spaces. It seemed harmless enough, so she mirrored his move by jumping her king’s pawn two spaces forward, too.

“Has it begun?” Kane asked casually, moving his king’s side bishop diagonally through the space opened by his pawn until stopping in front of his other bishop’s pawn.

This move required more study. Moving the bishop seemed to presage an attack from that side. She moved a pawn forward one space toward his bishop. The move freed her queen to sally forth and meet the danger on that side.

“In sha’ Allah,” she said.

“Yes, God willing,” Kane said dryly, “though I don’t suppose He will have much to do with this. Just remember, don’t rush. These first moves are not the ultimate targets. They are insignificant pieces on the board, not the king.” He studied the board as if surprised by her move. His hand went to his bishop but then retreated. Instead, he moved his queen diagonally to the right, into the space in front of his bishop’s pawn, facing her bishop’s pawn across the board.

Azzam’s eyes narrowed as she glanced at his queen. He was up to something but seemed to be building toward one of his precious “classical attacks” that he used over and over to break down her defenses. She thought she might gain the upper hand by attacking before he was prepared. She moved her knight’s pawn ahead two